Pleasure And Pain Modeled With Math

Another possible model for pleasure and pain is the act of making a painting. There are continuous judgements being made as to the various colors to use, and how to use them. What are the varying intensities of each of the colors? What are their locations? As your eyes travel over a painting, what is the duration of each particular color? (That might be a little abstract; how pervasive is the color?)

These also apply to the forms or shapes in the painting, to spatial relationships, to subject matter and to multivalence of interpretations of the painting.

A model such as this is valuable partly because it demonstrates the complexity of choices and rejections, as well as their intuitive nature. For me, attempting to accomplish a model like this through mathematics introduces a degree of removal from and abstraction of the process of living which conflicts with the nature of the Epicurean Canon: something that would delight a pompous aristocrat like Cicero.

Quote from Godfrey

Judging by this, "calculus" wasn't even a word in Greek. So "hedonic calculus" would be a later overlay onto choices and rejections, which probably doesn't add any clarity to this thread. 🤔

Jeremy Bentham came up with the idea of the "felicific calculus" although he didn't use that exact phrase in his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). If you want to see someone apply mathematics to pleasure and pain, that book is a tour de force!

The words Epicurus used translate to things like decide, judge, etc. Section 129 of Menoikeus is probably the most succinct exposition. Here's my paraphrase/translation:

[129] Because we perceived pleasure as a fundamental good and common to our nature, and so, as a result of this, we begin every choice and rejection against this, judging every good thing by the standard of how that pleasure affects us (i.e., how we react to considering experiencing that pleasure). And because pleasure is the fundamental and inborn good, this is why not every pleasure is seized and we pass by many pleasures when greater unpleasant things were to result for us as a result: and we think many pains better than pleasures whenever greater pleasure were to follow for a longer time by patiently abiding the pain.

κρίνοντες “judging, deciding + (accusative” πᾶν ἀγαθὸν “every good thing,” i.e., “every pleasure” against or by the κανόνι τῷ πάθει “the standard of how we react to what happens to us when we experience - or consider experiencing - that specific good thing.

“And against this (that pleasure is a fundamental good and common to our nature), judging every good thing (i.e., every possible pleasurable experience) by the standard of how that pleasure affects us or how we react to considering experiencing that pleasure.”

By the way, I'm translating πάθει (pathei) in its literal sense as "that which is experienced."

See also:

DL 10.34 (Diogenes' commentary)

They affirm that there are two states of feeling, pleasure and pain, which arise in every animate being, and that the one is favourable and the other hostile to that being, and by their means choice and avoidance are determined

κρίνεσθαι < κρίνω "judge, decide"

So, it seems to me we're more of a judge than a mathematician.

Quote from waterholic

Applying some sort of rule-based standard will create a structure and force the person to face the truth.

This sounds to me to be at odds with a philosophy based on individual responsibility. Isn't the point that, in a purely material universe, there is no rule-based standard?

However the fact that there is no rule-based standard leaves open the possibility that one can create a rule-based standard for oneself, as long as they don't assume that it will necessarily apply to anyone else. That's part of the beauty of the world we live in!

I don't know that I would consider it a "rules based standard," but I think we have to all face the question and answer for ourselves whether different types of pleasure are in fact interchangeable, or whether they differ in at least intensity, duration, and location.

And are those three considerations the *only* distinctions? I think probably not.

What I see us discussing here is that while all pleasures are not reducible to atomic "pleasure units," it is still essential to confront and answer for ourselves whether our rankings of them are totally subjective whims of the moment, or whether they are linked to repeatable and regular bodily or mental phenomena that can usefully be described in repeatable observations, or what.

I do think that it is useful exercise to at least in our individual capacities examine how we want to answer those questions.

My bright line is drawn that I think it's totally inappropriate to take "my" measurements of relative values of pleasure, and presume that my own measurements apply to other people, or that there's any natural design to "maximize pleasure units for all" -- that kind of thing. "The greatest good for the greatest number" has always seemed to me to be a prescription for total monotheism / authoritarianism.

But short of that, I think the exercise we're engaging in is useful, at the very least in that it emphasizes this bright line where I gather that (apparently) the Benthamite utilitarians went far afield.

Thanks for that clarification @waterholic ! This makes perfect sense; I interpreted rules based standard quite differently so now I understand what you're getting at.

Quote

Does anybody recall where the phrase "hedonic calculus" was first used?

It seems Plato was the first to present the hedonic calculus (in "Protagoras"), apparently as a strawman to beat down hedonism:

(PDF) Pleasure in Plato's Protagoras and what Aristotle and Epicurus think about it (Hebrew) | Itai Greif - Academia.edu