Posts by Todd

Some minor feedback:

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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.

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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...

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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.

The Full Vessel

This one doesn't make sense to me.

I've always liked this example, and I think it was useful to me when I was first learning about Epicurus.

My understanding of the cup model (which could be incorrect):

The cup represents us or our life at any given time. The liquid is pleasure. The unfilled volume is pain. The point is once the cup is full, all pain has been removed, and there is no more room to add pleasure.

This article seems to imply that the cup can only be full or empty - but why? A cup can obviously be partially full.

Maybe it's trying to make a different analogy, and I'm confused because I'm used to the usual one?

Quote from Cassius

"pleasure" and "absence of pain" can be interchangeable

Are they though?

It seems more correct to say complete absence of pain is perfect / complete / the limit of / the fullness of pleasure.

Or you could say a reduction of pain is an increase of pleasure. Or a given sensation is either pleasant or painful.

But by treating those terms as equivalent you could easily give people the idea that you only experience pleasure if you are completely free from pain, which is obviously not what Epicurus said.

I think there is a technical sense in which they are interchangeable. The problem is that "absence" suggests complete absence, while "pleasure" by itself just suggests some pleasure.

Nice.

Cassius, I came across this old post of yours:

Quote from Cassius

According to Wikipedia, Hieronymous of Rhodes lived from c. 290 – c. 230 BC, while Epicurus lived from 341–270 BC. That means that Hieronymous lived after Epicurus, and had Epicurus' works to reference, but Epicurus was no longer around to respond to Hieronymous. If indeed Epicurus had taken the position that "absence of pain" is a correct and full statement of the goal of life, why would Hieronymous have had to deviate from Epicurus, and why would Cicero have had to set them up as opposites?

To me, this is a strong argument against the absence of pain view. I'm not sure if others would find this as persuasive, or if it would fit well in the article though. There is also this quote from Cicero in the course of the discussion you're referring to:

Quote from Cicero, De Finibus, 2.6.18

[Epicurus] might have confined the name of pleasure to this state of freedom from pain, and despised pleasure as Aristippus understands it; or else, if he approved of both sorts of pleasure, as in fact he does...

The quotes you have from Cicero are good too, but you can't get much more clear than this.

Also a minor nitpick:

Quote from Blog article

It transforms a vigorous, life-affirming system into something that looks, in practice, indistinguishable from the Stoic, Buddhist, or ascetic counsels that Epicurus directly opposed.

Obviously it is the counsels that Epicurus opposed. But it could also be read as Epicurus opposing those schools, which is not true. Especially that word "directly". I would suggest re-wording this somehow.

Quote from Cassius

I don't know that it is limited to England by any means, but I'd say that England seems to produce the highest concentration of it.

I wasn't aware of that, but if true, I would say it is an example of a more general phenomenon that is not specific to scholars of Epicurus.

Ever since the vernacular languages displaced Latin as a common language for intellectuals, there have been numerous instances of significant ideas developed on the continent that the English-speaking world was oblivious to.

That obliviousness often lasted for decades, and by the time the English-speakers became aware, their own thinking had progressed in different directions, making the ideas of the continental thinkers seem, well, foreign, and maybe threatening.

Quote from Todd

To summarize my understanding of DeWitt

To elaborate a bit more (still following DeWitt here)...

The two most well-known only positive examples of anticipations from Epicurus himself are justice and the gods. Do we get a prolepsis of justice from repeatedly seeing examples of it (maybe arguable, but seems like a stretch). Do we get a prolepsis of the gods by repeatedly seeing gods?

Quote from Cassius

Anticipations are the generalized pre-concepts and pattern-recognitions that the mind builds from repeated sensory experience.

This is the thing that jumps out at me.

To summarize my understanding of DeWitt, the anticipations must anticipate something. That something can only be experience. To say that they result from past experience removes them as an independent criterion.