Posts by Todd

Quote from Cassius

I could defend that being a related question in the sense that if you think life is not worth living in general then you're not likely to think it's a good idea to bring more children into the world.

That is probably true.

My point was more that "good" or "bad" have to be attached to concrete choices, not abstractions. Life is good (necessary) for experiencing pleasure. Death is bad for that, but it might be good if you only care about avoiding pain. You always have to ask "good or bad for what".

In that sense, they are very different questions and a person could both prefer to live and not to have children without contradicting himself.

Quote from Kalosyni

This question could come up when considering whether to have children or to not have children.

To me, this is not the same question. As I understand it, the question is specifically regarding one's own life or death.

Quote from Kalosyni

From the Letter to Menoeceus, it seems to me that the philosophical attitude regarding the value of life vs death are equal

Are you saying Epicurus teaches life and death are of equal value? If so, I would strongly disagree with that interpretation.

Quote from DaveT

Due respect to anyone taking the question seriously but to me it is not a serious question when as a general proposition. Of course life!

This would be my first reaction also.

Quote from Cassius

Ultimately it is not logic but FEELING which is the key element.

Yes, in a sense...but maybe the sense in which I see it is not the sense in which you meant it...

The desire to pursue pleasure (and thus life) is so deeply embedded in the human psyche, that even people who have convinced themselves that they should pursue something else, or that life isn't really that important, nevertheless cling to it tenaciously, and live with the contradiction.

(Seems like an argument for psychological hedonism! )

Quote from Cassius

Or is this position so ingrained in the people who would ask the question in the first place that little help is possible?

It's important to understand your objective.

In this kind of debate, you are often not really trying to convince the person you're arguing with. You are rather trying to convince others who are (or will be) observing the debate.

And in that case, I think the performative contradiction argument is a powerful one.

Quote from Cassius

Presuming they are more on the "not consistent thinker" edge of the range, for reasons that we might choose to find sympathetic (so we continue to talk to them!) what else can be said to help them see that their position is damaging?

It is quite possible to arrive at this conclusion without any logical inconsistencies. For example, if you believe your telos to be removal of pain, then it would be perfectly consistent to see death as a shortcut to that end. In that case, death would not be merely a matter of indifference, but should actually be preferred over life, which will inevitably involve pain at times. The only inconsistency would be a failure to act on that conclusion.

Since I would not want to convince someone that suicide is their only logical choice...I think the best approach would be to understand why they have this belief in the first place (which you have not stipulated) and approach it from there, rather than attacking the life-vs-death logic directly.

Quote from Cassius

such a person might say:

1. There is nothing preferable about being alive over being dead.

Such a person must be alive in order to say that, thus demonstrating their preference for being alive, and contradicting their claim.

Some minor feedback:

Quote

A person whose primary orientation is the avoidance of pain does not choose pain. Full stop.

This is a straw man argument. Such a person would certainly choose a lesser pain as a means of avoiding a greater one.

Quote

Epicurus pursued nature because he recognized that every day lived in unnecessary fear — of death, of the gods, of what the neighbors will think — is a day of a finite life squandered and taken away from the pursuit of pleasure.

"pursued nature"

I think that should be "studied nature"

"fear...of what the neighbors will think"

While Epicurus would not have advised fearing what our neighbors might think, he definitely did not recommend ignoring their opinions.

His advice was to live so as to avoid attracting either envy or contempt.

(My source for that is DeWitt. PD 39 is certainly one of his sources, but translators seem to disagree about the meaning of that one. I have not looked into what other sources he cites.)

Quote from DaveT

My point is that in his wisdom, Epicurus may have not considered that most people in his time or ours don't negotiate the terms of the social compact.

Epicurus didn't say anything about a "social compact". He talked about justice and laws. Justice is defined by agreement. Laws can be just (if they result from agreement), or unjust (if not).

Where is the agreement in your examples?

Quote from DaveT

For example, me (hypothetically) paying a higher percentage of my income in taxes than (insert any billioniaire's name)? I never consented to that inequality.

Did you agree with this billionaire that you would pay equal percentages of your income in taxes?

Quote from DaveT

Should I worry about being unjust to my neighbors if I'm tempted avoid paying some of my taxes illegally?

Did you make some kind of agreement with your neighbors that you would each pay a certain amount of taxes?

Quote from DaveT

Should I not be anxious if I'm willing to do the time if I commit the crime?

Despite what people may say when they're angry, I think the sober answer is that most people would not be willing to do the time. It would mean risking your freedom in exchange for a few % more dollars. That doesn't sound very Epicurean.

I'm not aware of any counter-examples, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were at least some.

It makes a lot of sense that what you say would be the case, though. When you have a philosophy that is not only attractive to the average person, but whose principles are self-evident, or logically derived from what is self-evident, you would have nothing to gain, and much to lose by any kind of appeal to authority.

(And I'm not really sure how much the Greek philosophers were really considered authorities outside their own students. I have the impression they were frequently thought of more like clowns, or potential trouble-makers.)

For the later Stoics and the Christians, the situation was different. At that time, there were lots of Epicureans, they were known as being difficult to convert, and they definitely wanted to convert them. So it makes sense that the Stoics and Christians would try to portray their ideas as compatible with Epicurus' teachings as much as they could.

Edit:

...then once they had accomplished that, that they would try to erase the memory of Epicurus. Interestingly, the Jews, who were not trying to make converts, just straightforwardly called him a heretic.

Quote from Don

Mea culpa

No need to apologize.

I didn't like using "devalued" either, but nothing else came immediately to mind, so I went with it and added a qualifier.

Quote from wbernys

So even where pains appear “purely mental,” Torquatus will argue that they still arise from bodily life, sensory imagination, memory, anticipation, and our natural aversion to painful and horrifying experiences of sights, sounds, and pictures. And i think this is more persuasive than it's given credit for.

I agree.

There is also this this quote from Torquatus:

Quote from Cicero, On Ends, 1.9.30

Strip mankind of sensation and nothing remains

I think the point you are making would follow directly from this premise.

Quote from Don

I also didn't get the sense that he "devalues" the Menoeceus, but rather sees the two texts as doing two different things.

This is all I meant. The emphasis was intended to be on "relative".

My thoughts on the Sedley paper

I think it makes a lot of sense. The parallels are certainly suggestive.

In my opinion, Sedley's framework is most useful for filling in gaps in our understanding of Epicurus' ethics. For one thing, I think it gives additional credence to On Ends (subject to the usual caveats about Cicero), and it relatively devalues the Letter to Menoeceus.

I have the impression that you see something in the the paper as useful for helping explain Epicurus to newcomers. If so, I don't see what that would be. But maybe I'm mistaken.

Incidentally...

Sedley seems to argue Epicurus was saying we do pursue pleasure, rather than that we should. Of course, he is following Torquatus, so that is not too surprising.

Quote from Cassius

I don't think that Epicurus would used wording that implied this possibility if he were not writing (to Menoeceus) to someone he expected to know better than make this mistake.

Sedley says something similar to justify relying on On Ends over the Letter to Menoeceus. It's an elegantly written letter, not a systematic exposition of ethics.

Quote from Cassius

Saying he is "without pain" says NOTHING about the particular pleasures in that person's mix of experiences except that he is at the "limit" and can experience only variations in pleasure.

Agree, but it is suggesting something else that I see as problematic.

Being "without pain" (completely, entirely) is the maximum limit of pleasure. It is not a state that the average person frequently, or maybe ever, enjoys. I think it is a mistake to use this or similar expressions casually for a general audience unless the meaning is very clear.

The Graphic

I actually like the graphic better than the article.

Maybe replace alive/dead with life/death - it offends my sense of grammar to have 2 pairs of nouns and then a pair of adjectives.

The Article

I see that you've tried to address my feedback in the article. Unfortunately I think it only adds to the confusion. If you need that much explanatory material, I think there must be a better way to say what you are trying to say.

My recommendation is to remove all references to, and explanations of, the limit of pleasure. Re-word the material to make it clear in all cases that you are referring to specific instances of feelings and not the sum of the individual's total experience at a given moment. But not by including lots of explanatory language! Rather by using language that makes it unambiguous.

For example, the first paragraph is pretty good, clearly focused on a specific instance of feeling:

Quote

Epicurus makes a claim that is both simple and radical: there are exactly two feelings, pleasure and pain, and nothing else. Every sentient experience falls into one category or the other. There is no neutral third state that is neither pleasant nor painful, no middle ground where sensation has somehow opted out of the binary.

The next paragraph right away starts confusing matters...

Quote

This claim carries an immediate consequence that critics of Epicurus have resisted for two thousand years: the absence of pain is not a neutral condition — it is pleasure. Not a pale or diminished pleasure, not a placeholder waiting for “real” pleasure to arrive, but pleasure fully and actually present. When pain is gone, what remains is not a void. What remains is the other of the only two things there are.

As far as I know, the critics weren't talking about specific feelings. They were talking about the overall experience of the individual. It was the downstream consequences that they were arguing about. In this case, I think you could just drop this entire paragraph. It also flows better that way.

Edit: if you think it is important to have some kind of "why this matters", I think would be fine to talk about the limit of pleasure / absence of pain there. I just think it should be kept out of the material that is trying to convey that there are 2 and only 2 feelings.

Sedley

I have only skimmed it at this point, but it looks very interesting. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'm sure I'll have more to say after I spend some more time digesting it. (Interestingly, he seems to say that Epicurus believed the pursuit of pleasure is non-rational. )

I will give this one try to explain my issue with this article.

Two different (but related) things are being mixed up here: the feelings, and the limit of pleasure.

The binary illustrations are great to explain that there are exactly 2 feelings.

When you add in the limit of pleasure, the AI is trying to describe that in terms of binaries too.

For example, in the cup model, the binary is what is in the cup - liquid or air, there is no third thing, and they are not mixed.

The level of the liquid in the cup is a continuum between the two limits. The AI does not seem to be getting that. It is implying that the level of the liquid is a binary too. That the cup is either full or empty.

That seems wrong to me. (This issue is pervasive throughout the article, it is not limited to the section on the full vessel.)

I was going to go through the some of the other examples, but I've realized that I just don't like this article at all.

I think it is just going to create more confusion rather than clarifying anything.

We can discuss this more if you want, but I won't pollute this thread with more negative feedback unless asked.