Posts by Todd

OK, so here is my summary of that article.

Epicurus said something like "all sensations are true."

He was arguing against skepticism, and he meant "real" (I would say, "actually experienced") as opposed to "factually correct".

That he didn't mean "factually correct" is abundantly clear from other things he said.

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As a philosopher he was engaged in the struggle for survival in a den of philosophers, many of them sceptics. Before them he maintained the doctrine that all sensations are true in the sense of real. In practice his attitude was thoroughly pragmatic, like that of the modern scientist. He looked upon sensations as possessing an infinite range of validity.

I also liked the following quote, because it's something I had been thinking myself, as a response to idea that reason cannot refute the senses.

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Far more deceptive...is the third prong of the argument: reason cannot refute the sensations because reason is dependent upon the sensations. This is true in one sense and false in another. The sense in which it is true is this: reason in the aggregate cannot refute sensation in the aggregate, because reason depends upon the senses for its data. The sense in which it is false is this: reason in the aggregate cannot refute the particular sensation.... In this sense, reason constantly refutes the sensations.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but if we agree that it is false as generally understood, what is the value of continuing to use it?

Need to read the article though...perhaps all will become clear.

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The aim of this article is to show reasons for believing that the statement in the heading is false as usually understood

So far so good!

In what way are the sense experiences of a person under the influence of psychedelics "true"?

I can only make sense of "all sensations are true," as meaning "all sensations are experienced," or, "all sensations are sensed."

If by "true", you mean, "corresponding to reality", I would have to say that statement is false.

How would you respond?

Yes, agreed.

In this case, the only clue to DeWitt's reasoning given in the text is the extensive use of satire. Presumably one would not use satire to engage in a debate with rival philosophers, in which one expected to be taken seriously.

That does indeed seem like flimsy evidence.

Quote from Don

About halfway through and had a thought about being open to other ideas, etc. At least the Epicureans didn't walk themselves off from other philosophers' ideas. The number of books they wrote against other schools show that they definitely engaged with other ideas. To counter them and argue against them, of course; but they were engaged in the marketplace of ideas.

I feel like you are baiting me, Don, and I'm not above taking it!

That is all true, of course. But I think a more focused approach is required when trying to clarify (or communicate) one's own ideas.

Also, since this is a thread about DeWitt, it seems appropriate to cite him for support:

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In the case of the refutative writings...the objective was not victory in controversy, but rather to discredit all rival teachings...and to insulate the minds of disciples against all other doctrines.

I take that with a grain of salt, though, as possibly an over-broad generalization. Still, I think it makes my point that different approaches are required in different contexts.

That is an excellent point, Joshua.

In my comment that you quoted, I was actually thinking of way further back - the neolithic and earlier, the arrival of empire with Sumer (possibly), etc.

But the point you make about ancient Greece is a good one, and I fully agree. (And you put it so eloquently!)

I would add only 2 things:

1) There were competing influences too: power-seekers looking to use new ideologies (or old ones) to secure or expand their power. I thought the observation in the paper about Solon was particularly interesting/damning/incriminating. Probably the competition was a major factor in making Greek civilization so fertile.

2) Also, remember the Greek city-states were built on a slave economy (like most other ancient civilizations, so not a unique failing of the Greeks). They accomplished great things, no doubt, and deserve credit for that. But slavery was a huge fly in the ointment. Slavery could also have been an ideological factor - as in, "we can't let all those slaves start getting any crazy ideas."

Quote from Cassius

No doubt there is also a non manipulative reason to develop generic words for different uses

Right. To be clear, I am not saying anyone who wants to discuss good or the good is being manipulative. Certainly among Epicureans it would be quite the opposite.

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Plato sought to distinguish sophists from philosophers, arguing that a sophist was a person who made his living through deception, whereas a philosopher was a lover of wisdom who sought the truth.

LOL!

Student: Master Plato, how can one distinguish a philosopher from a sophist?

Plato: a philosopher is a person who loves wisdom and truth, such as myself. A sophist is a lying liar who lies.

That's from the Wikipedia entry for Sophist, BTW - not from the paper Don linked to.

Curious how we seem to end up with "only fragments and other pieces of evidence" for philosophic schools that have serious disagreements with Plato!

Quote from Todd

I think the idea of "the good" was probably a tool for manipulating people from the very beginning.

Finding circumstantial evidence for this in the paper Don linked to earlier.

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In Homer’s epics, a unique value system is founded on convictions about the superiority of people of good birth, whose task was basically to take part in war

Solon, in his poetic works, indicates the necessity of subordinating the value system to political activity

Theorizing about Good began with the emergence of Pythagorean philosophy....There are three aspects of this first philosophy school that can be discussed.7 First of all, it worked as a religious-cult association, which had its origins in Orphic religion. Secondly, it was a school with a political character

Also, these Sophists sound interesting. They have the right enemies. And in a striking similarity to Epicurus, their name has become synonymous with false reasoning.

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The philosophical idea that refused to grant any ontological status to the good is taken up and developed in new directions by the sophists...

...as in the case of other presocratic philosophers, we have only fragments and other pieces of evidence to rely on, and many of them are preserved in the works of Plato, a violent opponent of the sophists [emphasis mine].

The enemies of the sophistic movement have accused the sophists of corrupting the minds and souls of Greeks (especially young men). According to them, the corruption was to consist in teaching that there is no absolute good or goods.

The reduction of the good to the purely subjectivistic area was made by the members of the so-called Sophistic Movement. Things for them are neutral, and the good appears as the effect of human activity. It is not, however, something objective, because it depends on the judgment of the individual person or a group of people.

Quote from Don

I think you have to establish pleasure as "the good" before you start to use it as your criteria. Otherwise, it's just an assertion. By establishing pleasure as that to which all else points, you've set an end point - a goal - on which one should stay focused

Quote from Todd

I disagree on this, but it's a comparatively minor point. I don't assert that pleasure is "the good"; I reject the need for such a concept as "the good". Pleasure just is. Attaching other labels to it doesn't make it more impressive.

I think I want to take an even stronger position.

People were doing things for thousands of years. They were using some criteria (deliberately plural). They didn't have to stand around and ponder "the good" (or if there was one good, or many goods, or any good at all) before they could do anything.

It was only later that philosophers (and rulers?) came along and said, "Wait! You can't just do what you want (i.e., what gives you pleasure)! You need to do what is Good (i.e, what we tell you)."

I think the idea of "the good" was probably a tool for manipulating people from the very beginning. Certainly it has been used that way in more recent history.

Quote from Todd

Quote from Cassius

PD03. The limit of quantity in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful.

An analogy would be that this folding yardstick is the feeling of "pleasure," the tool by which we measure how desirable something is. The "limit of pleasure" would be a reference to this tool, straightened out to its maximum extent, at which it measures the largest quantity of pleasure that is possible to measure. At that point, there is no more crookedness ("pain") left in the tool, the pain is totally gone.

This analogy helps us draw many important conclusions in intellectual debates, but tells us exactly nothing about what we are using the yardstick to measure. The tools of precision tell us nothing about the type or purpose of the wall we are building. What we are measuring is the way we spend our time while we are alive, and that is going to vary for each of us according to our individual circumstances.

We don't obsess over yardsticks, and we should not obsess over the "limits" of pleasure as a measurement. We simply use the yardstick of pleasure to construct the most pleasant life that is possible to us given our individual circumstances.

Oh, crap. Now pleasure is a yardstick!

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But is it The Yardstick? Or only a yardstick?

Quote from Cassius

PD03. The limit of quantity in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful.

An analogy would be that this folding yardstick is the feeling of "pleasure," the tool by which we measure how desirable something is. The "limit of pleasure" would be a reference to this tool, straightened out to its maximum extent, at which it measures the largest quantity of pleasure that is possible to measure. At that point, there is no more crookedness ("pain") left in the tool, the pain is totally gone.

This analogy helps us draw many important conclusions in intellectual debates, but tells us exactly nothing about what we are using the yardstick to measure. The tools of precision tell us nothing about the type or purpose of the wall we are building. What we are measuring is the way we spend our time while we are alive, and that is going to vary for each of us according to our individual circumstances.

We don't obsess over yardsticks, and we should not obsess over the "limits" of pleasure as a measurement. We simply use the yardstick of pleasure to construct the most pleasant life that is possible to us given our individual circumstances.

Oh, crap. Now pleasure is a yardstick!

Quote from Don

But there are schools and people who say pleasure can lead you astray from a happy, fulfilling life, therefore it must be repressed, avoided, or rejected outright. Establishing it as the goal - that to which all else points - short circuits that argument.

Here is where I think you have to go back to the physics; you can't just jump into an ethical argument with people who don't accept your premises.

What ELSE besides pleasure do these people propose? (rhetorical question) Does that thing even exist in nature, apart from causing pleasure and pain for humans?

Quote from Don

The concept predates Epicurus, but he was more than willing to weigh in on the controversy/ argument by using that specific term, ταγαθον "the good." It seems to me that Epicurus acknowledged the debate and felt he could swoop in with the only solution that made any sense. I believe that he believed there was indeed ONE thing to which all else points and it IS pleasure. (Epicurus drops the mic, walks off stage.)

Yeah, Epicurus was willing to wade into that argument. And it seems less dangerous in Greek where you have 2 distinct words. Maybe the transition to Latin was where it all started to go wrong.

Quote from Don

I think you have to establish pleasure as "the good" before you start to use it as your criteria. Otherwise, it's just an assertion. By establishing pleasure as that to which all else points, you've set an end point - a goal - on which one should stay focused.

I disagree on this, but it's a comparatively minor point. I don't assert that pleasure is "the good"; I reject the need for such a concept as "the good". Pleasure just is. Attaching other labels to it doesn't make it more impressive.

I think I would argue in the other direction (just thinking out loud...don't hold me to this): everything we think of as good, we ultimately consider good because it produces pleasure.

Quote from Don

So, here's my (current) thinking:
The Good/ The End/ Telos / Summum bonum for Epicureans is pleasure.
I think this is correct, i.e., makes the most coherent argument.
There are a limited number of candidates in answer to "What is The Good?" Other philosophies have different choices, but, to Epicureans, all other candidates are means to the end of pleasure.
Those are all in one category.
Pleasure is then the criteria (the yardstick, the canon) by which we determine if something is to be considered a good thing or a bad thing from a human perspective.
However, we use reason, with the criteria in 5, to determine what good things are conducive to living pleasurably.

Reserving the right to extend and revise my remarks

Does this list move us closer together, Todd ?

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Not just closer together, but I would say we are in nearly perfect agreement there.

Your # 5 has really been my main point. But then IMO, it follows from there that you can't claim that the yardstick is also one of the things being measured (goods). Maybe that is just me being pedantic.

I've also been trying to avoid The Good, etc. because I don't think that is even an Epicurean concept. I think we've been tricked by idealists into arguing about those things on their terms.

Quote from Don

Quote from Todd

Yes. I said this before too. The Good, The Chief Good, The End, Telos...these are all not the same things as goods.

LOL! Have we been talking past each other all along? (i.e., Have I been missing your point all along or simply misunderstanding?)

Have we? Maybe.

Quote from Todd

There are 2 relevant concepts:

Pleasure (aka The Good, The End, Telos)
goods

I have not seen anyone arguing that there is overlap between those 2 categories

But then you did start arguing that. Or at least questioning. I never got the impression that you had a firm position.

Quote from Don

The Chief Good is a category unto itself. It is "that which is not itself a means to anything else, but to which all else is a means."

So the discussion was about determining what was the end point of All human action, what should humans base their actions on

Quote from Don

This category of candidates for Chief Good is NOT the category of every "good thing" that produces pleasure. That's a whole separate thing.

Yes. I said this before too. The Good, The Chief Good, The End, Telos...these are all not the same things in the same category as goods.

To an Epicurean, these are all just other labels for pleasure (which is also not a good)!

Quote from Godfrey

So it would seem that what's important to discuss and work with is pleasure/pain, and not "the good," "a good," or "good."

Sort of. Pleasure/pain are fundamental, primordial things. Good is a derivative concept.

However, it is still a common word that people use, so it's not like we can just avoid it altogether. The meaning of good to an Epicurean would just be "producing pleasure" or "a thing that produces pleasure".

Quote from Godfrey

And there's a context in which it's important to parse good/a good/the good, but that's peripheral to a functional understanding of Epicurean philosophy

Yes. That context is when you're dealing with other schools of philosophy.

And then, I think the Epicurean approach should be to demand that they provide a definition of good, if they don't want to accept ours. And we should not allow them to define it in a circular, self-referential way, and then proceed as if we all agree.