As To The Three Legs Of The Canon (Sensations, Feelings, Anticipations) Is it Possible to Experience (Receive Data?) From One Without The Others?

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What DeWitt is saying is that pleasure ≠ sensation; that no pleasure is a sensation because pleasure presumes judgment ("I like this") and sensation is irrational and incapable of judgment. I realize that after a certain point this all begins to get a little nit-picky.

I hate to throw a monkey wrench here but I am not thinking I agree that Dewitt is saying that. Joshua can you point to what you are referencing?

I think the problem is that the word pleasure is like "true* and can be used in multiple ways, but I would say one of the ways is that pleasure is a feeling and operates automatically and irrationally just like sugar is sweet.

Yes you can look at those words and say that sugar and sweet are concepts, but in these cases the meaning is obvious and nothing is needed beyond "pointing to them."

Pleasure can also be viewed as a concept on the same level as "virtue" and "piety"

The trick is being clear in how we use them.

Happy is also fairly clear in meaning, but "happiness" would be almost like "pleasure ness" - a term we do not use. If we did use that term we would evoke similar problems and ambiguities as we do when we refer to "happiness"

This is a VERY productive conversation because I think its resolution will clear up a lot of problems.

We definitely need to turn some attention to "conceptual reasoning in Epicurean philosophy.". In my view this is a cause of the confusion in Diogenes Laertius as to anticipations.

It seems to me that the description of seeing oxen and assigning a word to them, and then judging future animals against that word, is standard conceptual reasoning with which Epicurus would have had no issue. When he was criticizing excessive decision-making he was not criticizing obvious things like "look at those two animals that look like each other lets call them oxes."

He was criticizing abstractions built on a abstractions which grow further and further away from observation to the point where there is no further linkage.

I think Dewitts position, with which I agree, is that this process of labelling oxen is a matter of language formation that contains many elements of opinion that would not be related to the instinctive process of pattern recognition in the first place.(1)

But for purposes of this discussion the key is to establish that we agree that basic conceptual reasoning is not a reference to Platonic idealism, and is something that Epicurus himself used and embraced. (For example, an "atom").

(1) I edited this post for the record to make clear that I think that's why the best term is prolepsis or pre-conception or anticipation, and the absolutely worst possible term is what Bailey uses in his translation, where he in fact uses the term "conception" rather than something that indicates an input into the concept-formation process. In my view Bailey guts the entire discussion by presuming that pre-conceptions = conceptions, and that is something that needs to be totally revisited and refuted. We can deal with this when we talk elsewhere about anticipations. Right now we need to establish that the formation and use of concepts in ordinary life attached to real observations does not constitute Platonic idealism. Here is a reference to concept-formation being endorsed by Epicurus in the letter to Herodotus: "First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning." Another: "[40] And if there were not that which we term void and place and intangible existence, bodies would have nowhere to exist and nothing through which to move, as they are seen to move. And besides these two, nothing can even be thought of either by conception or on the analogy of things conceivable such as could be grasped as whole existences and not spoken of as the accidents or properties of such existences." Plus I know some disagree on this, but DeWitt cites this from Diogenes Laertius in the context we are talking about it now, and I think it applies: "The internal sensations they say are two, pleasure and pain, which occur to every living creature, and the one is akin to nature and the other alien: by means of these two choice and avoidance are determined. Of investigations some concern actual things, others mere words." This is from Chapter 8 of EAHP:

I agree with your last comment Don. I think "happy" has become so ambiguous that it needs a lot of caution and description of how we are using it. Pleasure is much more clear, but as a word it too could be taken out of context by the word-splitters.

Maybe what we are looking for is a description of all these things using words that are resistant to splitting

Oh I am sorry Joshua is saying that Dewitt is saying rhat pleasure is not one of the five senses. True, but..... That is a reference to the concept of pleasure as one of the three legs of the canon, right?

This is where we need to get into the subtleties of pathe perhaps, because we all refer to pleasure as a "feeling" and that is also a word we use to describe many items of data received from the five senses (at the very least "touch").

So pleasure may not be one of the five senses, but as a canonical faculty we are considering it as a direct contact with or means of measuring reality, correct? It is giving us an analysis automatically and without opinion of what we are sensing, right?

So while pleasure is not one of the five senses, it acts like, and we talk about it, in much the same way, and also regularly refer to "a sensation of pleasure", correct?

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By pleasure: I mean the feeling that comes when tasting honey or the feeling that comes while drinking water when thirsty.

Yes, but you also use the term "pleasure" to describe many other feelings besides honey and drinking, and so you use the word both to describe specific concrete individual instances PLUS the "placeholder term" or "concept" that you use to summarize each and every pleasurable experience under the commonality that "you find them pleasing."

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By happiness: I mean the evaluation of the last month as having been filled with many pleasurable moments.

You're including here your "evaluation" of last month or last year or your whole life or any time period you wish to include, which means that the meaning you are giving it in a particular usage needs clarification. Same with "pleasure," but when we scrutinize what "pleasure" means we quickly get back to "a good feeling that we all recognize immediately by nature.

In regard to "happiness" when we scrutinize what that means we also associate that word with a good feeling within ourselves. But in the case of "happiness" we also have to take notice that it is a word that people like Plato and Aristotle and the Pope and all sorts of other people define in entirely and grossly incompatible ways.

There's a problem of agreement as to definition in both cases, but:

- in the case of 'happiness" what makes a man happy is loaded up with so many conflicting terms by the stoics and peripatetics and the religions that the term becomes almost infinitely maleable.

- in the case of "pleasure" we have individual disagreements on what we find pleasurable (chocolate vs vanilla) but we're all generally in the same ballpark that we're talking about a gut-level feeling that is desirable to have for obvious reasons.

Earlier today I was traveling and my posts were a little rushed. I'd like to repeat that as stated in my post 28 above I think that Joshua is right in bringing up this issue of ambiguities in considering pleasures to be sensations, and we really need to talk about that.

I really don't like the term "sensations" or "the senses" as implicitly linked only to seeing hearing tasting touching, and smelling. Those may be the "classical five" or the "primary five" but Epicurus' own texts talk about the brain receiving images directly, and as Don and others have noted we now recognize sense of balance and other bodily functions that make direct contact with the outside world other than the primary 5.

Since we regularly refer to "a sensation of pleasure" or "a pleasurable sensation" then we really need some terminology that more clearly separates (1) the feeling/sense of pain and pleasure that determines whether something is desirable or not from (2) the automatic bodily functions of which there are 5 primary but also some other number, all of which are unified in that they report automatically without injection of opinion or evaluation as to desirability.

The following is speculation but there is the old theory, still very controversial, that women can be synchronized to the moon phases. (One of many articles on a much-disputed topic.  This one cites Aristotle.) I don't think it undercuts Epicurean philosophy at all for us to recognize more than five physical senses, and I personally speculate that someday there will be discoveries that make Epicurus' theory that the brain is affected by "images" seem somewhat less absurd than it does today. The main commonality between however many there are is that nature provides them and they operate without injection of conscious opinion (errors in interpreting them would be in the mind, not in whatever the faculty is).

So there really ought to be a better term than "the senses" to separate those more clearly from "the feelings."

This is probably repetitive but might be worth repeating:

I don't think Epicurus saw anything wrong with conceptual reasoning whatsoever as long as we recognize that it is humans who are assigning the definitions to words, and that the definitions/meanings are not assigned by "God" or some kind of mystical or semi-mystical "ideal form" or "essence."

As long as we recognize that humans give definitions to words, and we can make mistakes the further we get away from things that are directly observable, then we can keep speculation in line and come up with methods for determining when we think things are true, when we think things are false, and when we need to "wait" or accept multiple possibilities.

That seems to me to be the premise of the whole Epicurean canonics: We have to use conceptual reasoning in order to reach conclusions and not be absolute skeptics. But in doing so, we can't stand by idly while people falsely claim that their definitions of the concepts (especially concepts which are moral conclusions like "the good" or "virtue" or "piety") are blessed by God or by Nature or by Ideal Forms or by Essences or anything else that gives them a mystical quality that we must accept, overriding and overruling our own conclusions that derive from our own senses, anticipations, and feelings.

I am editing our podcast episode 160 where we stumbled through the beginnings of this issue, and much of it is going to end up on the cutting room floor due to the stumbling. However one observation that Joshua made that ought to be part of this discussion is that even if you consider "relief from pain" to be a pleasure that is not associated directly with one of the five senses (that itself would be a question) it would still probably be proper to consider that relief from pain to be a "stimulus" involving some kind of change or action that would seem at least analogous to a sensation.

We weren't sure whether that observation helps or not, but in this question of whether pleasure (or pain) occurs totally separately from "sensation" it might be helpful to consider "change." Is all change felt as a sensation? I doubt this is by any means an ultimate answer to the question but it might be helpful as part of the analysis.

I think we have hinted at this in the discussion already, but we need to confront it directly:

I think everyone understands that the intent of PD02 is to provide a complete and total immunity defense to fear of pain after death (or hope for reward after death).

If that is accepted, then whatever word(s) are being used by Epicurus to refer to "sense" are intended to be global and sweeping, and not leave open the possibility that we can feel pain or pleasure after those "senses" are gone. Agreed?

Don or others, any thoughts on how the wording used in PD02 helps us with this question of whether pain and pleasure can be experienced separately and apart from "the senses"?

Is it not safe to presume that (just like with "atoms") Epicurus might not be using the same words we would use today (we might use "consciousness" or "experience" or "feeling" (in a general sense)), but that he is intending to include within a broad designation of "feeling" every possible experience of the mind and body? Should we consider that this may in part the use of the "images," as a theory of how the brain processes thoughts physically so that "touch" is not limited to the outer skin?

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Here, I think Epicurus is explicitly referring to the technical stimulation of sensory organs (or, rather, the lack thereof).

Nate do you agree that he means to include within these words everything that we might consider ourselves to be "conscious" of? Is this an implication that there is nothing going on in our experiences in life that is not brought within this category of the sensory organs?

Because if we can experience pain and pleasure apart from the sensory organs (at least in the way we are talking about it here), then PD2 doesn't give nearly the protection against fear of death as it would otherwise.

I am thinking that however this is interpreted, the end result must be in a way that is consistent with lack of sensation including all consciousness whatsoever. Pleasure absent sensation would imply pain without sensation and if those exist then the whole argument about death being the end of sensation would miss the mark that seems clearly intended for it.