Posts by Julia

Quote from Cassius

This isn't likely to be satisfactory, but I am tempted to suggest that we might sort of parallel the view that DeWitt suggested - that "life" rather than "pleasure" was Epicurus' greatest good. We might observe that from an Epicurean perspective the meaning of "pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain" comes down to a proper perspective on the verb "to live!"

I agree, but it's not quite what I meant; I can see where I was unclear now. Allow me rephrase, please:

I am looking for a total of two and only two verbs. Verb #1 shall be synonymous to "pursuit of pleasure" in the Epicurean sense (which means it shall allow for work which yields net pleasure). Verb #2 shall be synonymous to "avoidance & prevention of pain", also in the Epicurean sense. Neither #1 nor #2 shall be a multi-word construct, a paraphrase or fragment of a sentence, such as those which they are to be synonymous with already would be in their own right. In addition, I am looking for a total of two and only two nouns to that same effect.

My play/avoid set of words helps me as a tool for practical everyday life (which is how I ended up in this subforum). With it, I manage to avoid slipping from the correct "pleasure & pain" view back into a wrong "virtue & vice" view, because it forces me to stop thinking in terms of "work versus play". Having two direct words (not paraphrases) helps me stay in the Epicurean mindset with much more consistency and strength.

So…do any such words exist yet? Did I reinvent the wheel? I don't speak Latin or (Ancient) Greek

Quote from Cassius

I am reminded of that Latin poem by Catullus which contains "Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus..."

[…]

I'm easily reminded of it cause I've never gotten it out of my mind after seeing this:

That's an wonderful poem and a great rendition of it – thank you for them both!

Quote from Kalosyni

to go back to the extant texts […] discussing language usage

Yes, to sum up and rephrase virtually my entire original post:

Is there a single verb or noun synonymous with "pursuit of pleasure" either in English, Latin or (Ancient) Greek? Is there such a single verb or noun for "avoidance and prevention of pain"?

That's really all I'm wondering about at this time. Things somehow got rather wordy for such a simple question, and maybe this thread belongs into Translation Issues (General) even though I also wonder about English? I should have thought more about my intention behind this thread. Sorry about that…

I would like to present for discussion a perspective and (mostly) a choice of words, which seems helpful to me. I do not yet know of an Epicurean source for this idea (there might be one; I'm still new here), but I currently consider it to be compatible (with Epicurean philosophy) and helpful (to me and maybe a subset of Epicureans). Okay; here we go:

Premises & initial chain of thought:

1. We agree that only two feelings exist.
2. Regarding any one thing in life, one either moves-towards, moves-away-from or stays-at.
3. That makes two directions (move-to & move-from) and one absence-of-direction.
4. Two feelings times three (non-)directions makes six possible combinations.
5. To move-from pleasure, move-to pain or stay-in pain are not things I should do; let's ignore them in this post.
6. For the sake of this idea, movement/activity/doing includes thinking and similar cognitive action.

This leaves three combinations:

1. To stay-in pleasure. This experience doesn't tend to last long, and it is an absence-of-direction. This means: I can desire it and pursue it, but I cannot do it, because not-doing cannot be done. It can only be engineered to come about, but once it begins, the doing has to stop for the not-doing to be present. Note: not-doing does not mean not-experiencing; we always experience, but passively experiencing a pleasure while neither thinking nor moving is not an activity – it is a passivity. It is not a behaviour, but a (momentary) absence of behaviour.
2. Moving-from pain. I have begun to call this action "to avoid", to call the process "avoidance" and the behaviour "avoiding".
3. Moving-to pleasure. I have begun to call this action "to play", to call the process "play" and the behaviour "playing".

Numbers 2 & 3 are what I care about in this post. It was very helpful to categorise everything I feel into pleasure and pain. However, to categorise everything I do by using the semantic relation of "movement/direction + reference-feeling" was too indirect and cumbersome: the "pursuit of pleasure" only does half the trick for me.

However, using special words (to play/to avoid) to encapsulate the same meaning in a single, direct linguistic entity made it much easier to shift myself. It seems quite useful to me to categorise my behaviours into avoidance and play, to think of everything I do as either avoiding or playing.

Playing can involve trading some pain for more pleasure. During hide and seek the effort of finding a good hiding place or of having to count to 100 is offset by the expectance and experience of fun. During adult life the pain of working is offset by the expectance and experience of things which money will buy. This reduces the harmful effect certain connotations of "to work" have on me.

"To avoid" adds some helpful connotations to "moving-from pain", which I would otherwise miss out on: I don't want to avoid everything, don't want to shy away from life, go back under my rock and wait to die – but I also don't want to end up back in Stoic territory of embracing pain. The word "avoidance" seems to hit that sweet spot in the middle, where I know that it's not something to build my life around, but I also know it is healthy to do with regards to pointless pains (those which won't yield net pleasure).

Do direct words for these two activities already exist? Other than describing or paraphrasing them, because it seems to really hold on to the concept during the course of each day I need an immediate verb/noun. Thank you

1. PS: I think the reason why "movement/direction + reference-feeling" as in "pursuit of pleasure" only partially works for me, is because in the city that is my mind the neighbourhood where feelings live and the one where activities reside are still debating the terms of their Good Friday Agreement. Having special words for these two activities with bilaterally agreed-upon definitions appears to facilitate mutual understanding.

2. PS: Upon further reflection, an additional aspect seems important: The Stoic's dichotomy is between work (virtue) and play (vice). By subsuming (sensible) work into play and adding avoidance, the frame shifts and the dichotomy is no longer vice-virtue but pleasure-pain, as it should be. I used to think in terms of "work and play" so much that having equally simple, direct words to reflect the correct foundation (pleasure & pain) was important.

Quote from Cassius

(4) But we do not agree that when pleasure is withdrawn uneasiness at once ensues, unless the pleasure happens to have been replaced by a pain: while on the other hand one is glad to lose a pain even though no active sensation of pleasure comes in its place: a fact that serves to show how great a pleasure is the mere absence of pain.

Okay, that confirms the model I use for both directions; especially: The gladness of losing a pain is a consequence of having lost the pain; it is not what caused the pain to be lost in the first place.

Thank you! That's a relief

Quote from Cassius

[…] It is impermissable to them to think that when someone says "all pain is gone" that the kitchen is then FULLY STOCKED […]

I think I get it now – thank you for your patience!

Noting that it is seen as the absence of a negative along with using the analogy of physical objects helped me (in establishing an understanding of the erroneous view). Indeed, I can see how "the absence of shortage" might be commonly mistaken for an in-between state instead of being correctly identified as synonymous with "fully stocked". To me, pain has never been a negative; instead:

I view both the pleasures and the pains as things in their own right – like two bacteria strains. Both strains live in the same petri dish (my mind), which is fully covered (no uncolonised space left). The two strains compete for space, such that whenever one is reduced for any reason, the other expands, and vice versa. This way, any would-be empty space is immediately covered by the other colony. In this analogy, the absence of one is not by itself a synonym for the other – it only becomes a synonym because it just so happens that both live in the same dish, all space is covered, and they compete for it.

The root cause and justification for "absence of one is synonymous for the other" lies within neither player; it lies instead within the rules of the game.

Quote from Cassius (emphasis added by me)

Any hypothetical that seeks to be a true analogy has to stipulate that there are only two classes of items possible, and that if you don't have items from class1 then you by definition have items from class2, and vice versa.

That leaves me wondering whether my model is in contradiction with the texts, because it identifies the rules of the game – not the categories of pleasure and pain themselves – as the cause for the validity of the synonym…?

(1) To work using a negative (kitchen analogy: shortage vs food) instead of making pleasure & pain things in their own right (competing strain analogy);
(2) and also to identify a negative-positive duality (shortage and food extinguish each other by their nature) as the cause of an inherent synonymity of absence of one for the presence of the other, instead of identifying the game's rules and playing field (not per se competition against each other, but for limited and exhausted space) as the cause of a de facto synonymity of such same kind;
each of these two aspects (1) and (2) would be in such stark contradiction to my experience that – dare I say it – I don't see myself ignoring the evidence my life's path gathered in their regard…

Luckily, we seem to agree that regarding (1) my model is congruent with the Epicurean view; but what about (2)?

In my view, it is not necessarily a pleasure which eliminates a pain, or vice versa; both pleasures and pains may come and go for any number of reasons. It is merely the case that whatever space is available to hold experience will in fact be holding experience. For example: a single pain may be superseded by a mixture of numerous pains and pleasures of various qualities and quantities, none of which was necessarily a part of the cause for the previously existing single pain to disappear – all provided that the space available to hold experience is, in fact, utilised and holding experience.

Quote from Cassius

If you're NOT careful, then you run into this trouble that plagues Epicurean philosophy today: "Absence of pain" can be confused as referring to a particular experience that nobody can adequately define outside of a particular context, and thus a great source of confusion, rather than being seen as a definition of the "limit of quantity of pleasure" in which context it is a very useful and helpful definition.

To me, the plainest statement of a negative implicitly refers to the broadest interpretation (any → not one).
Example: "There is an absence of food" means that my kitchen is entirely empty. It does not mean "I ran out of rice" or "I have no more soda." Instead, the "absence of food" means I have nothing whatsoever left at all.

The plainest statement of a positive implicitly refers to the narrowest interpretation (some → at least one).
Example: "There was a police presence" only asserts that there was one officer somewhere on the site. There might have been hundreds right on target, but the assertion is only made of one officer somewhere on site.

So maybe I'm just still not getting the point(?!), but I've never understood how "absence of pain" could possibly be referring to particulars? To me, "absence of pain" has always been "absence of any pain whatsoever". Otherwise it would have to be explicated via one of these three options: "absence of a particular pain", "absence of any pain to some extent", or "absence of a particular pain to some extent"…

I should probably revisit this threat after I'm more caught up with the podcast

I might try following this convention

• the pleasures (definite, plural) refers to the category
• a pleasure (indefinite, singular) refers to one particular
• pleasures (indefinite, plural) refers to an undefined group of particulars
• these/those pleasures (determiner, plural) refers to a defined group of particulars

to see if that reduces the amount of confusion, in me, in others, or both

Quote from Cassius

the issue that ended up being the topic of our podcast Episode 241

I'm not even close to 241 yet, but continue to catch up

Quote from Cassius

I think the terms "pleasure" and "pain" are in fact properly used both to refer to "categories of experiences" as well as "particular experiences," and we have to be clear which perspective we mean when we discuss them.

I'm not sure what it is you're saying
The category of pleasures is filled with these fundamental experiences: Joy, relief, et cetera.
The fundamental experiences (joy, relief, …) inside that category each are a pleasure.
To have one of these experiences is pleasurable.

Is it correct to state that the ambiguity arises (mostly) because I tend to imprecisely refer to the category of pleasures by the singular? Is that an adequate way to rephrase the objection you're raising?

I feel like with inanimate objects I would be less tempted to slip up regarding that singular/plural imprecision; for example: The category of trees contains apple, pine, et cetera. A pine is a tree.
It would not occur to me for me to say "The category of tree contains", and if someone were to say that to me it would strike me as odd.

Quote from Martin

I agree, at least in the sense that I am not aware of a meaningful way to compose a desire of smaller units.

Thank you for confirming (always risky to extrapolate from oneself to general human nature). For the time being, I shall maintain my point of view then:

• desire: a fundamental unit of experience (cannot be divided into smaller experiences; is not made up of smaller units); by being fundamental in this way, it is simultaneously something we somehow just know (like "sweet taste", "feels warm") and yet very hard to define, to pin down with other words
• pleasure & pain: not fundamental units of experience themself, but innate categories of fundamental experiences. When undistorted by judgements of others (religion, society, …) and undistorted by scarring life experience (eg "fear of joy" as is possible in PTSD), pleasure is the set of fundamental experiences which humans by nature find agreeable (joy, relief, …) and pain is the set of fundamental experience which humans by nature find disagreeable (physical-pain, grief, …). (Moving away from pain is called avoidance. Moving towards pleasure is called play.)

When one considers pleasure to be a sin or at least a dangerous temptation (such as Aristotle, Plato and the Stoics did) then if even a steady state of homeostasis is identified as a pleasure, there remains no more escape from sin/temptation except in pain. This might be a more honest reason for why the backlash Epicurus received was such a "persistent and vigorous condemnation" and yet remained "really superficial and captious".

The argument that he was conflating two distinct states under one label is, to me, null and void, because he simply wasn't doing that: Babies, toddlers and animals all enjoy their share of normal, neutral, static states, and with a look at primates, so should adult humans. As a matter of fact, few humans are more miserable than those haunted to the degree where they can no longer find pleasure in what should, ordinarily, be a neutral state…

Do we all agree that "to desire sth" is an "atom of experience" just like "feels warm" is, too, meaning both are indivisible and not made up of smaller, lower-level, more fine-grained units of experience?

Quote from Cassius

Julia I agree with the thrust of most of your post but as to this I am not completely clear on what you are saying: […]

At the very least, as to pleasure, it seemed absolutely clear to Cicero, and I would say to Norman DeWitt and now to me also as the only logical way to read the texts, that Epicurus was in fact taking a very non-standard and radically different stance. He was redefining "pleasure" to include not only sensory stimulation but also all other experiences which are not painful, even if not normally considered by the majority of people to be included in pleasure. I see no other persuasive way to explain numerous statements by Torquatus, including his response to Chrysippus' "hand" argument.

I agree. What I meant by saying…

Quote from Julia

In my opinion, getting fancy with "desire"/"desirable" and "pleasure"/"pleasurable" would be like getting fancy with emotion-words, like "happiness", or, more precisely, with experience-words, like "joy". When first grasping the word, it matters to be precise about the inner experience it refers to (eg something fun-but-forbidden may cause joy and guilt, pleasure and pain; it matters to delineate that honestly, precisely, without getting hung up on morals).

…was that:

If we look inside of us, we will see that we feel "joy" when we hit the goal, master a formula, win a cup of ice cream, when our crush agrees to being our prom date, when we feel the soft warmth of a cat purring next to our ears. Those are mental, emotional, physical, social, … joys – but they're all, equally, joy. Joy makes our faces light up, we stand tall, we get lightheartedly energetic; the specific type of joy doesn't change that, because joy is fundamental in the sense of atomic. Joy is one form of pleasure.

We feel relieve when we finally get to a rest room, when we can take a shower for the first time in a fortnight, when we are found not-guilty, when we found our misplaced wallet after all. Those are many different kinds of relief – but they're all, equally, relief. Relief makes us sigh, makes tension drop from our minds and bodies, makes a heavyhearted energy flow out of us while it lifts a weight off our shoulders; the specific type of relief doesn't change that, because it is atomic. Relief is also a type of pleasure (though the pain we go through beforehand makes it not worth it, or else we would instinctively seek relief instead of joy).

Joy and relief are distinct fundamental ("atomic") building blocks of the human experience, and so is desire: While I could classify desires into various groups, the experience of desire I cannot subdivide any more than I can subdivide the experience of joy. Desire and joy are not built from smaller units; they're already atomic.

Unlike desire, pleasure and pain are umbrella terms (hypernyms). Pleasure and pain are not themself atoms of experience in adults, but instead they are categories of experiences: Joy and relief are examples of pleasures, sadness and physical-pain are examples of pains. As such, I can easily subdivide a painful experience: If, in sports, I stumble, break my ankle and miss the shot, I will feel sadness and physical-pain; those two will be the atoms of my painful experience, and pain will merely be the adequate umbrella. Any mammal is born with the two categories of pleasure & pain, but (at least) humans only develop sufficient insight to differentiate the experiential atoms underneath later on. A newborn will know: "This is pleasurable", but it will not yet be able to see and name the elements this pleasure is made of (eg, lots of joy, moderate relief and a little bit of bitter-sweet melancholy). Vice versa analogous for pain.

So, despite pleasure and pain being umbrella terms (not atoms of experience), they are innate, which is rather unusual; as a matter of fact, I cannot come up with any other such instance. Children aren't born with an innate sense of the category of "tools" or "works of art" or anything, except for pleasure and pain. This is what makes pleasure & pain such odd fellas: they're innate, but not atomic (except in newborns).

"Getting fancy" with pleasure would be to artificially manipulate which items naturally fall under this umbrella: "Sex is only for procreation", "Food is only for sustenance", "Giving all your money to the church is fun" would be examples of trying to artificially modify the experiences which by nature are pleasurable. As such, Epicurus' redefinition of pleasure was rather only a reinstatement of its pure form, before all the manipulations of culture came to taint it; the way toddlers and piglets still perceive it. (Vice versa analogous for pain.) To me, this is what is in line with DeWitt:

Just because pleasure/pain might no longer be customarily applied to something due to various elements of society and culture having twisted and tainted how we verbalise these categories doesn't mean it is unclear, unjustified or unhelpful to right that wrong, and to adjust the structure of language to (again) match the structure of our minds.

There is a long history of societal forces manipulating language to control people; a process which was present 2500 years ago and still is going on. In the middle ages, instead of saying "war is peace" people said "sex is sin"; likewise, in ancient times, various distortions were commonplace. So another way to say Epicurus reinstated the pure form of the umbrella terms would be to say he undid a type of newspeak.

With so much said about how I see pleasure & pain, allow me to circle back to desire:
Desire is easier, because it isn't just innate, it is also atomic – like joy.

The experience of desire is not made of smaller experiences, and so definitions like "passionate longing" or "sexual wanting" are necessarily false by being too narrow. I can desire something without having a passionate longing for it, but I cannot have a passionate longing for it without having a desire for it. Desire is the fundamental unit. Just like the experiential atom of joy, I can recognise various types of desires (social, mental, physical, …) but the experience of desire still cannot be subdivided.

I don't have the scientific reference at hand just now, but: There was a study done where specific clusters in the human brain were stimulated from the outside (using strong magnets). The subjects then experienced various fundamental/atomic states, such as "conviction". When asked what it is they were so certain about, they didn't know. They said: "I'm just very certain!" This is an analogy to what I mean by saying that joy, relief and desire are fundamental/atomic.

Quote from Martin

Quote

..., he did not think it was important, and in fact was willing to radically redefine, that to which ordinary words are used to refer.

This is in contradiction to the quoted part of the letter to Herodotus:

Quote

For this purpose it is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, ...

This means that typically, we should use words the way they are usually meant. Epicurus himself made exceptions from this and then usually gave an explanation why a word would be used with a different meaning than commonly (mis)understood.

I very much agree!

Quote from Cassius

I think it is clear from the texts for example that he used "gods," and "pleasure," and even "virtue" in ways radically different than common usage, and so he was not willing to accept terminology that is used in everyday speech.

What strikes me as important is: "gods" and "virtues" are abstract concepts of things which exist neither in the external world, nor in the internal experience of humans by nature. Toddlers don't know of gods or virtues. So redefining gods and virtue is like redefining justice and good behaviour. Epicurus certainly didn't "behave well" when he invited women, even women of low social status, to join his garden and be heard. He did that, because he thought it was unjust they were excluded. "Justice" does not mean the same thing around the world, it might not even mean the same thing for you and me. Saying "justice" is like saying "a picture of a tree" – the tree which we see will differ (fruit vs pine; civic law vs religious law) and the technique with which it is made will differ (oil vs mosaic; capital punishment vs forensic psychiatry). Yet, all of those are equally "pictures of trees", equally "justice". You see were I'm going with that?

Desire is not an abstract concept; it is as real as our emotions are – we cannot touch them, others cannot see them (not without modern scanners, like fMRI, anyway), but they're there, they're real, and we all have them. Crucially, we all have them and we also all have the same range of them: everyone gets sad, happy, angry, afraid. (There are rare psychological exceptions, but there are also humans with two heads, so let's stick to the 99% case here, please.) Like emotions, we all have desires and the internal experience of "I desire something" is known to all humans. Some desires may be overshadowed with shame or fear, not all desires exist in all humans, but we all have these two related but distinct internal experiences: 1. "I desire Xyz" and 2. "Xyz is desirable" just like we all have a) "I love abc" and b) "Abc is lovable"

The same holds true for pleasure: Epicurean pleasure is broad, it contains things which are fun but "bad behaviour" and continues to encompass things which are neither sexual nor sensual. ("Pleasure" has, in my experience, been increasingly sexualised, but that wasn't always the case, or else the idiomatic "My pleasure!", "Pleasure to meet you." would be a rather lewd expressions!)

So where Epicurus redefined words, he either did so to more truly reflect actual human experience (desire, pleasure) or they were abstract concepts which he simply disagreed with (gods, justice).

(Regarding the gods, things might seem clearer to us today if he had said "There are no gods at all, instead there are [new word] and they are like this and that" but that's a whole new rabbit whole, so suffice it to say that I'm sure he had his reasons given the importance of the subject.)

In my opinion, getting fancy with "desire"/"desirable" and "pleasure"/"pleasurable" would be like getting fancy with emotion-words, like "happiness", or, more precisely, with experience-words, like "joy". When first grasping the word, it matters to be precise about the inner experience it refers to (eg something fun-but-forbidden may cause joy and guilt, pleasure and pain; it matters to delineate that honestly, precisely, without getting hung up on morals).

Just like joy, desire simply denotes a certain human experience. Which is what Todd already said:

Quote from Todd

[…] A desire is a state of mind: […]

Another example would be jealousy/envy/begrudgery: They are neighbours in the semantic vector space and colloquially confused for one another, but they are in fact clearly delineated and separate: jealousy is fear someone takes what you have, envy is wanting what someone else has, and begrudgery is not wanting someone to have what they have.

Likewise, desire & desirable, pleasure & pleasurable are semantic neighbours but do already all know what they are, just like we all know what joy, warmth, tiredness and sweet are. Because there are "experiential atoms", they are indivisible units of the human experience. I cannot subdivide joy. I cannot subdivide desire. Unlike mixed emotions, unlike complex experiences, they are pure in the sense of one-thing-only.

This, and the fact that the majority of Epicurean philosophy wouldn't make any sense, is why I

Quote from Cassius

This would be at the root of the controversy we continually have over whether Epicurus was attempting to "eradicate all desire" as Buddhists or Stoics would argue, or whether it was only particularly harmful desires (those that cannot possibly be attained or clearly can be expected to bring more pain than pleasure) to which he was advising caution.

I'm firm in that "eradicate all desire" was certainly not on the agenda of ancient Epicureans, and so…

Quote from Cassius

But the real objective is clarity and for the purpose of happy living, and when that means rejecting the majority definition, seems to me he is advocating rejecting it.

…this is, to me, is in line with that we simply need to get to the core of human experience – eg, delineate pleasure and guilt if we did something fun-but-forbidden – but I feel like that has been accomplished in the way in which we use "desire" and "desirable": as fundamentals of human nature, as experiential atoms.

To me, this "experiential atomism" is what Epicurus uses himself and what (among other things) he refers to in his Letter To Herodotus.

Quote from Todd

A desire is a state of mind […] Plenty of people go through life desiring things that they never choose.

Yes, that!

Quote from Todd

Also...nice to see many you here again after my long hiatus.

Welcome back!

"What is desire?" reminds me of how important it is to stick closely to ordinary language, to not redefine things but to remain as close to everyday speech as possible.

Some – in my mind very mistaken – dictionary definitions of "desire" even go so far as to say desire is something sexual. If that were the case, the entirety of Epicurean philosophy would not be applicable to children, even though its central tenet is, in part, derived from observation of toddlers and piglets. If we only go so far as to define it as "passionate longing", then – keeping in mind the importance of sticking to ordinary everyday language – it also just doesn't make sense anymore. To proof that point by counterexample:

I am neither passionate about nor longing for death;
however, I very much do desire to eventually die, one way or another.
As I sit here, I don't have a passionate longing for a good death;
however, as I sit here, I'd say drifting off in my sleep would, someday, be desirable.

To me, this is sufficient proof that "desire" is much broader than "passionate longing" or, even worse, as "something related to sex". (A bit besides the point, but what would an "unnatural passionate longing" even mean? That sounds very much like what I imagine is catered to in the back room of an adult video store…)

So I'll have to very much come back to my definition based on Old English with a pinch of what, to me, is just "common sense" (in the meaning of "one just knows", obvious; ordinary, everyday language):

Quote from Julia

Would you consider it to be well? Then it is desirable.
Are you willing to do/have it? Then you desire doing/having it.

Crucially, this quasi-definition allows for things to be desired even though they are not desirable, which is a situation the word "desire" has to be able to capture; I'm not sure how this would be possible with "passionate longings": I cannot have a passionate longing for something which I am dispassionate about. That just doesn't compute in my mind.

(Of course, none of this means that a passionate longing cannot also be a desire; that something sexual cannot also be desired. However, it is not the ordinary meaning in the context of Epicurean philosophy. Just like a car, ordinarily, would be an civilian automobile, not a street car, not a baggage car, not a cable car, not an elevator car, … even though all of these can, arguably, be seen as "cars" one way or another…)

Quote from Cassius

I do not view that as referring only to, or primarily to, "passionate longing"

I agree, and I also agree with that, ultimately, words always mean something a little different for everyone. But whether we call it desire or kxtzqptrr, what I wanted to stress was: It helps a lot to be precise and honest with oneself about what it truly is one wants, and why.

For the linguistically inclined, trying to grasp the word via Latin didn't get me far:
to desire, desidero, of/from the stars (figures of speech like heavenly/shooting star/…). Related with consider, considero, with the stars (less clear, but I speculate it is meant as: in agreement with the constellations).

However, looking at the Old English word which is replaced was more illuminating:
The root of wilnung (the desire; -ung is a noun-forming suffix) and wilnian (to desire; -nian is a verb-forming suffix) is still familiar to us in words like "welcome", which means "desired-one-who-came". It is rather something related to our will, our volition, related to things which we are willing to do, experience or be participant of, and related to things which we would consider well if we did, had or experienced them.

Would you consider it to be well? Then it is desirable.
Are you willing to do/have it? Then you desire doing/having it.

That's how I understand the word. That's why I do not desire to take the trash out, but I desire to have a clean kitchen so much that I endure undesirable tasks to get there – and that distinction changes everything, because taking the trash out for the sake of it is very much a Stoic attitude in my mind, which would soon make me lie in bed to stare at the ceiling all day long…

Quote from Godfrey

Some desires lead to pain if unfulfilled, these are natural and necessary. Some lead to net pain and these are unnatural desires. Some lead to short-term pain in order to obtain net pleasure, these I think would be considered natural and unnecessary desires.

I agree with your premise, and

Quote from Godfrey

This last category would include something like "I'm going to go work out, which I hate, and which will bring me pain. But I'm doing it for the net pleasure of fitting into my old jeans or having a wild affair or going on a ski vacation &c."

…I just want to explicate what I think you're already saying: The desire is neither the working-out (event-in-process) nor the having-worked-out (event-concluded); these cause net pain. The desire is the wearing of old jeans, which causes pleasure. Only with this pleasure is the net pain needed to obtain it outweighed, confirming the classification of wearing the old jeans as a natural-but-unnecessary desire.

What surprises me – but what I would agree with! – is that if this same person was working out for the sake of working out, that would be an unnatural desire in that person (because, without the eventual wearing of old jeans, they don't get pleasure from the workout). (That's a useful detail to me, because before this conversation, my mind's examples for unnatural (limitless) desires were still centred around "vices" like addiction and power, and didn't readily contain "virtuous actions" like workout.)

I'll have to remember that for the next cold-call about gym memberships

Quote from Cassius

Does everyone agree that "I desire to brush my teeth right now" is a perfectly acceptable ordinary English equivalent of "I choose to brush my teeth right now"?

The point is that we can use

desire = the object of desire

and we can also use

desire = choose

I cannot recall having encountered anyone who would, in their everyday ordinary speech, use "desire" to replace "want to" or "choose to". Do people say "I desire to take the trash out"?! To me, conflating "desire to" with "choose to”, “want to” or even "have to" either conjures up stilted speech in a tense situation or some sort of Victorian era dialogue.

Furthermore, for the sake of this discussion, the distinction is quite important to me, too: I never desire to brush my teeth; it's painful. What I desire is the sensation after having brushed them; that's pleasurable. That might, once again, seem like splitting hairs, but it makes all the difference between whether or not I end up doing it! Only when I call to mind and keep in mind how it is going to feel afterwards will I begin to move my mental cogs, shift where I am inside my mind, eventually move the body, get up, move towards the bathroom, and go through with it.

With repetition, this process gets easier: The ignition power required to spark it drops. Once it's begun, the various individual steps begin to fall into place more easily, increasingly happen by habit, automatically. As such, I can see how eventually I might be tempted to say "I want/choose to brush my teeth" even though I very much dislike doing that. I can also see how I might say "I have to brush my teeth", especially when I am relating that to context, eg when stressing that, say, I can't go to bed just yet, because there's still this one item left to do on my agenda.

But even at that point, I don't see myself as saying "I desire to brush my teeth". For me, that would be just as weird as saying "I desire to go to work tomorrow" even though I really don't. What I desire is shelter and orange juice. And toothpaste, I guess

If I wasn't so painstakingly clear about what it is that I desire, my entire behaviour and daily structure will soon be fragile again, prone to collapse, subject to both internal and external sources of corrosion. When I get sloppy with what I desire, the only sensible desires which continue to prevail are natural, necessary and immediate ones: food, water, sleep and shelter, but not even showering, doing dishes, or airing out the flat, and more abstract, more indirect things like work completely fly out the window anyway.

My point in saying this is not to whine or get a pat on the back; my point is that while the extend of this effect is a bit extreme in me, I am quite certain the underlying mechanics are the same for everyone. Therefore, when faced with a lack of drive, energy, motivation, consistency, structure, discipline, …, everyone might benefit from being extra clear to themselves about what it is they desire.

That might just do the trick.

Quote from Don

It does appear you're correct. To use Saint-Andre's translation as a starting point: […]

Thank you! I do appreciate your verification

It seems so obvious to me now: When placing myself into the future action would be a Cyrenaic position and placing myself after the future action is Epicurean, then of course I got tripped up by choosing, prioritising and planning my actions according to their outcome (Epicurean) but trying to start and accomplish them whilst fixated onto their progress (Cyrenaic).

_{(I feel like life threw me two compounding curveballs: the Stoics and 3rd wave dialectic behaviouralism, a type of “therapy” which anchors itself in the Stoics' radical acceptance and then adds "mindfulness" as an awareness of the present moment, environment, emotions and sensations – as if enduring everything wasn't enough, one has to also feel every detail of it! Now, I just do what brings me pleasure, and if doing something is itself not pleasurable, I may simply escape to the future, move my mind ahead in time, to after the task's completion, until reality catches up with me and the future pleasure I held onto finally materialises. That notion makes me very happy!)}

Quote from Godfrey

To my understanding, desire can be considered something that motivates me. The object of one's desire is, for example, a new car or true love. Or, in my current case, dinner. What will happen to me if the object of my desire is accomplished is, ultimately, pleasure or pain.

To you and quite possibly to most people, this might be splitting hairs, but to me it makes all the difference that it is not the desired object-or-event itself which motivates me. What motivates me, is the pleasure of having accomplished my desire. For example, the knowledge that I desire a new car and true love does not motivate me one bit. What motivates me – and indeed the only thing about that which motivates me! – is the pleasure I can predict to experience once I have attained a new car or true love.

Quote from Godfrey

Desire is the motivator, pleasure/pain is the result. The only qualification is that some desires might be considered pains. But they are still a motivator in that they make you want to do something. The way that you choose to eliminate that pain can lead to either pleasure or to more pain, so it's helpful to think what categories of desire might be involved as you choose/avoid how to eliminate that pain in order to obtain the resultant pleasure.

Desire is not the motivator, according to VS71 desire is the thing to be evaluated (“Every desire must be confronted by this question: […]”). Pleasure – if it is predicted to arise from attaining the desired object-or-event – should be the motivator (pleasure is the guide to life – not desire!). In my understanding of language, a desire which was determined to lead to pain ceases to be a desire, and will henceforth be, variously, an addiction, a compulsion, a confusion, an obsession, an urge, …

Classic example for a less-motivating versus more-motivating desire:
a) “I want to lose some extra pounds, so that I can be a little healthier / fit into old jeans / ….”
b) “I want to lose some extra pounds, so that I can have a wild summer affair / date with confidence / ….”
Both sentences are logically valid (internally consistent), but (b) is typically considered to be more motivating than (a), because it emphasises what is presumed to be a pleasure. The action remains the same, but with the change in objective the predicted reward in pleasure changes.

Quote from Godfrey

At least for me, willpower is another subject.

I concur. Willpower has oddly little to do with desire/aversion, avoidance/inclination, pleasure/pain. Neurologically, there are two parallel-but-opposite dopamine-powered circuits in the basal ganglia: One which starts with and persists in an action, and one which stops with and desists from an action. The action itself is largely irrelevant, the circuit is generic. (Whether you suppress an urge say "I will not check my messages again!" or whether it is "No, I'll not eat another piece of candy!", the circuit is the same, and the strength it has gained from controlling one impulse carries over to other impulses; analogous with the start/persist.) When we are children, our parents (hopefully) give us sane rules and structure, and "learning to behave" mostly equals suppressing impulses. That builds willpower, because it is unpleasant – and pleasant actions are self-reinforcing anyway: Children rarely need to be lectured about the importance of eating all their candy.

As adults, many people have internalised "how to behave" to such a degree that any impulse to misbehave is more or less dead anyway. (What that implies is a whole new post…) What is more, many people start to design their life such that they no longer have to use their stop/desist muscles, which leads the neural circuitry to eventually weaken (synaptic long-term depression). This is why some people, as kids, could sit still and quiet in the back of their family's van for hours, but fail to stay away from that cheap chocolate bar marketing-strategically placed at the cash register for impulse buyers…

Willpower is a vague expression, but if I had to define it, I'd identify it with start/persist-&-stop/desist-ability (and that is different from fortitude, from delayed gratification, from motivation, from drive, from wanting, from tenacity, from resilience, from …).

Julia's mind-blowing realisation of what should probably have been obvious to her all along

Quote from Cassius

[…] in the fundamental abstract that the first question is always as stated in "VS71. Every desire must be confronted by this question: What will happen to me if the object of my desire is accomplished, and what if it is not?"

The key of VS71 is in the grammar more than the words: "is accomplished", not "is being accomplished"! VS71 places my point of view after (the completion of) the action, not during (the process of) the action. I already vaguely had this perspective in item #4 of this post, but that was almost by chance, without much explicit cognitive awareness. Here's why this distinction matters so much to me:

In my mind, these four items are (almost) entirely separate: 1. desire, 2. emotion, 3. pleasure/pain, and 4. avoidance/inclination. Pleasure/pain are two sides of the same coin, one starts where the other ends. Similarly for avoidance/inclination. (Willpower is a distinct and more complicated thing, which I think doesn't actually matter that much here.) Either way, in my mind, these four concepts/entities/… are not structured in any way that would cause me to lead a happy, or at least logical, or even safe life at all without considerable navigation and active steering.

My desires are mostly sensible, but they don't carry any drive by themself. Only when I visualise having attained them, only when I make vivid the future sensation of pleasure of having made real what I desire, does the drive materialise to direct my willpower outward and toward the pursuit of my desires. Otherwise, either nonsensical emotions continue to make me behave in dysfunctional ways (just because these emotions were once upon a time sensible as they lead to behaviour which then was adaptive) or I display no behaviour at all (such as staring at the ceiling all day long, because the action happens inwardly, inside of me).

I feel negative emotions before/during many pleasurable actions, and positive emotions before/during painful actions. Other times, I strongly avoid things which I want to do, or pursue with fortitude that which I do not want to do. Many things inside of me are rather upside-down and inside-out. For example, being talked to while I brush my teeth frightens me. (I doubt I was born that way, and I'm not recommending this; it just is how I am now.) I can, however, still analyse things cognitively according to whether they will bring me pleasure upon completion. Cognitively – upon completion:

It is much easier to correctly predict (cognitively, by thinking ahead) pleasure/pain about a result, than it is to correct my contorted feelings about an action and its result (emotionally, the feeling-ahead), let alone to correct the emotions during the action (the feeling-now).

For example, even when eating disgusts me, I still like having eaten. When I jump ahead cognitively and live in the conclusion, I can begin eating with reasonable ease and won't get too perturbed by the process, either. Once reality catches up with where I was all along – in the result, after it is done – things are just fine. This means I can do something which I otherwise avoid, because I have cognitively predicted that the result of having done it will bring me pleasure and mentally stayed in the space of that prediction – if I were to think about the process of doing it, my aversion would kick in and keep me away, even if is good for me, even if I desire it, even if I want to, even though I have considerable willpower. If I derive everything in this way, I can create a life which is capable of making me happy – but it doesn't come natural to me at all. It does – at least in the initial phase I'm still in – even cause many unpleasant emotions, which only slowly begin to subside as the first results-of-action start to trickle in, the unpleasant emotions during the actions that lead to these results begin to fade, and further yet, the first emotional expectations (rather than cognitive predictions) of pleasures-of-results begin to form, still faint and vague, but increasingly present all the same.

Emotions, desires/aversions, and avoidance/inclination are learned, whereas pleasure/pain is not, and it turns out the pleasure/pain I feel about results-of-actions never actually changed; it was merely buried. Artificially twisted consequences-to-results lead to emotions associated with action and emotions associated with consequences-to-results, but not to emotions associated with the results-as-such: e.g., doing xyz scares me, the result of xyz would be pleasurable, but the thought of it also brings fear of the consequence, such as shame. The being-scared and fear-of-shame are learned. The scaredness is attached to the action, which offers a lot of sensory anchors for emotional memory, and it is independent of a 3rd party; that's pretty hard to unlearn, because sensations remain largely the same whenever xyz is repeated. The shame is associated with a 3rd party, thus fear-of-shame is (comparatively) easy to unlearn once the source-of-twisted-consequences is gone, as there is little sensory attachment with the result or the action leading to it, rather than with particular (past) circumstances and people.

Curiously, while I am breaking the rules and mental chains of my previous life, I imagine the same basic structure at work in some premeditated crimes: e.g., robbing a bank is scary, having the money would be pleasurable, but the thought of the consequences is a deterrent. Only by focusing on the result and staying focussed on it can the emotions about/during the process and its potential consequences be overcome. Upon release from prison, being haunted by what happened during the supposed-peaceful-heist-gone-wrong and the experience gained by having done time* will amplify the deterrent. However, crucially, the predicted pleasure of suddenly having lots of money remains just the same.

This is why I know to do anything to begin with, and what to do when I do something: because “what [I will feel] if the object of my desire is accomplished” is either pleasure or pain, and unlike any emotion or value-judgement, this compass and guide has not been corrupted!

_{* (Just to clarify: According to statistics, locking people up and throwing away the key doesn't make them better members of society, but giving people ample time to work on themselves and offering them plenty of assistance with and opportunities in which to do so, including behind bars, sometimes helps some to be somewhat better.)}

Things which (in comparison) seem minor to me now, and which we seem to agree on anyway

Quote from Cassius

I think Epicurus would say that the practical implications of political issues as the affect individuals cannot be ignored, and I would personally encourage everyone to firmly maintain awareness of world affairs that could impact them, and adjust their lives accordingly.

Quote from Cassius

The time spent on feeling bad about suffering is just subtracted from your life never to come again. […]

VS10. Remember that you are mortal, and have a limited time to live, […]

[…] Some things can't be changed, but there's usually something that can be done to improve almost any situation.

I concur; however, I tend to get hung up on politics, which makes it important for me to stay out of its day-to-day affairs and focus on overall developments only. For example, there's no point in me fretting over the countless instances of misconduct of politicians, parties and press, no matter how grievous, while a war is being brewed up all over the continent.

More generally speaking, I think it is very easy to get lost in ultimately pointless things nowadays, because today information is practically endless. I need to be very careful about delineating being "comprehensively informed" (painful, paralysing, …) versus being "sufficiently informed (often also painful by itself, but necessary to ensure pleasure long-term). For example, it isn't necessary to buy the absolute best value-for-money speaker (comprehensive information required), if all I want is to sing along in the shower (sufficient information is enough).

Quote from Kalosyni

[…] which is helpful for dealing with frustration […]

It's a good chart, but neither frustration, anxiety nor tension were the issue.

Quote from Cassius

What I want to think further about is whether it makes sense to elevate the "is it in my control?" to a first level division

True, and very good point. If one is powerless but enjoys thinking about something – maybe the outcome of match of one's favourite sports team – then there would be nothing wrong with that. For me – by chance – it happens to be that everything I do in fact think about but cannot change are things which make me very unhappy (primarily contemporary politics).

So, more correctly, the first question should be: "Does it cause pleasure?"

If it does bring pleasure, it should be analysed further (left half of chart).

If it does not bring pleasure, it should be avoided unless it is a feeling, in which case it should be allowed without getting lost in it (“feel through it but avoid melancholy, etc”, because suppressing feelings only causes problems down the road). This basically awards and exemption to unpleasant, but natural & necessary emotions (e.g. grief, loss). Technically, with sufficient foresight, they could be handled by the left-hand side of the chart -- but it might be valuable to grant them a special category like this, because they're usually overwhelming and have a tendency to shut down rational thought. For example, if I were given the option, I (or certainly a younger me) would probably decide that my grief is limitless (unnatural) anyway and thus to be avoided (equal parts naive to or wilfully ignorant of the fact that this will cause psychological baggage for the rest of my life), rather than allow myself to feel it, to work through the emotion (and thus trade unpleasantness now for more of a spring in my step later).

Thank you, Cassius! I feel a lot better about this revision!

Revised version:

Before I came across Epicurean philosophy, I found this flow chart online. Sometimes, when I'm confused, I now find myself circling back to a similar basic structure of thought, albeit with the contents rather different, so I took it upon myself to professionally and artfully tweak the original chart to match my current thinking. Feedback and comments welcome