Posts by Todd

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.

Quote from Godfrey

"good" is pleasure and "a good" produces pleasure/good.

I'm actually fine with that. I would turn that first part around, and say pleasure is good, a good produces pleasure. Sounds more natural, and pleasure logically precedes the concept of good. But I do not object to that.

Quote from Cassius

"good" has multiple meanings

Does it really, though? I mean in a strict grammatical sense, that is obviously true. But all meanings of good that I can think of describe a thing that produces pleasure. Do you have an example in mind where that is not the case?

Quote from Don

agathon ἀγαθόν good — often with a connotation with utility and advantage (for the agent), i.e. ‘good for’

All the proposed definitions for good that I've seen so far just introduce more terms that need to be defined, and at some point it's going to either become circular, or it has to come back to pleasure. I don't see any other way out. But, maybe I will be proven wrong.

On a lighter note, and In the spirit of Frances Wright...

==========

Scene opens. Epicurus and Metrodorus out for a pleasant stroll.

A philosopher approaches.

Philosopher: Epicurus! What do you say is the greatest good?

Epicurus: I don't even know the meaning of good without reference to pleasure.

Epicurus turns to go.

Philosopher stands mouth-agape.

Metrodorus starts to say something.

Epicurus: Metrodorus! Let's go. We don't need to get into a debate over this.

Scene fades as Epicurus and Metrodorus continue on their walk. Philosopher left standing in road.

Quote from Cassius

I recall a sentence in Frances Wright to the effect of Epicurus saying that there is no good but pleasure, no evil but pain, and although that forumulation might violate the construction that Todd is looking for (and i might remember the wording wrong), the thrust is probably the same point.

See, now I really like those kind of constructions from an aesthetic, marketing/PR perspective.

Just not when we're talking nuts-and-bolts philosophy.

Quote from Don

I am taking pleasure in this discussion, and hope I've engaged in a respectful manner.

Of course, I have thoughts ...

As am I. You have definitely been respectful. I know I have a tendency to sarcasm, so thank you for being patient. I was hoping you would have thoughts.

Quote from Don

from the human perspective, there are good things and bad things in nature with respect to their effect on humans

But it seems like we can only know which things are good things, and which are bad things, by reference to pleasure or pain. Not sure if you are heading somewhere with this. I don't disagree though.

Quote from Don

I found the LSJ definition of αγαθός instructive in that it used words like benefit to define the word. A "good thing" provides a benefit of service. That's why other schools can say virtue or reason are "good things."

"Ben-" is just the latin root for good, though, right? That seems circular, unless you now want to define benefit...

Quote from Don

pleasure is the ultimate motivation underpinning all....

You said this didn't seem right, but you could meet my criteria by saying goods are things that are pursued/sought/desired. Pleasure certainly qualifies there, as do the instrumental goods. I still prefer my way of putting it, because it seems simpler, but if you needed a definition of good that non-Epicurean would accept without immediately giving away the game, this might be it.

I guess the TL;DR version of that is:

If you say pleasure is a good, you have to provide a definition of good that doesn't use pleasure.

And because we're Epicureans, you have to do it without introducing new concepts that don't exist in nature. Or you at least have to provide definitions for your new concepts that meet that criteria.

If anyone still cares to take this up, I will re-state my proposition that pleasure is not a good. And I'll take it all the way back to the physics and canon, so the whole thing is laid out to be picked apart.

1) There is no such thing as a good (or a bad) in nature. The concept of a good is a product of human reason. So first we need to define what a good is (or stop talking about them).

2) How would we define a good, using only the tools nature gave us? Pleasure and pain seem like the obvious tools for the job.

Aside: maybe you would like to use anticipations for this job. I can't say that is wrong, exactly, but it does not seem like an approach that is likely to be persuasive to others (because how could you ever falsify an anticipation)? Also, last I checked, we didn't even have a solid understanding of what Epicurus meant by anticipations. But I would have no problem if anyone wanted to say that anticipations point us in the same general direction.

3) A good, then, is something that produces pleasure. Producing pleasure is not just a property that goods happen to have. It is the very standard by which we are able to say they are goods at all. It is the ONLY property of a good, as such. Everything that has this property is a good. Nothing that lacks this property is a good.

4) So is pleasure a good? Does it produce pleasure? No, it IS pleasure. Therefore, it is not a good.

That's the main point.

If you want to continue into the weeds...

Don suggested an idea earlier, that there is a category called Goods that includes pleasure and a sub-category called Instrumental Goods. (A Venn diagram would be handy here.)

That seems internally consistent, in that Instrumental Goods and pleasure are clearly differentiated. But I would still reject it, because the meaning of the super-category Goods has been left undefined. How would you define it? It seems like an unnecessary concept.

Pleasure and goods do not share any properties, in my view (see #3 above). They are of course closely related. But they are different things, and should not be treated as similars.

To belabor the point (no one is obligated to keep reading). It's like you have a category "Yellow" that includes both the color yellow, and Things that are Yellow. Those are not similar things. Related, obviously. Not the same.

One more point I should have added regarding language:

I'm not saying we can just ignore the Greek, if I gave anyone that impression. We certainly do need to know what Epicurus actually said, not just how somebody translated it. And we need to know what Epicurus meant by those words too.

For myself at least, I care more about the consistency of the ideas than of the words. I am fine with not reading too much into some words, if it makes more sense of the ideas. I'm sure not everyone will agree, and that's fine.

I'm ultimately concerned with reality and truth. I study Epicurus because I think he had a better grasp of those things than anyone we know of before him, and better than the vast majority after him too. I'll cut him some slack if he made a few mistakes, or occasionally said some things that were not consistent. (That is, rather than assuming there is some meaning that we have yet to grasp that will make everything consisent.)

Quote from Cassius

You may not have seen this quote from a review written by Norman Dewitt:

Cicero's Presentation of Epicurean Ethics. New York, The Columbia University Press, 1938. Pp. 127. Columbia Diss.

Interesting. I think I have seen that before, but had forgotten about it.

Still, I wonder if the "crafty old lawyer" wasn't just letting the Epicureans hang themselves.

Quote from Godfrey

1. This seems like exactly the type of rabbit hole that Cicero cleverly led to in his discussion of Epicurus.

After reading Torquatus (I will admit that I didn't get all the way through), I didn't get the impression that Cicero was cleverly misleading his readers. OTOH, maybe he was just very good at it!

Rather, I felt that he was trying to give an accurate impression of contemporary Epicurean views...and the Epicureans were still not clear on all these things themselves.

Quote from Godfrey

2. Todd you have mentioned repeatedly that in this thread you are only discussing ethics. I think that that's a mistake, because there's no Epicurean ethics without the physics. To me, separating the two is in this instance an error of dialectics, which can be useful for winning arguments but not terribly useful in gaining a complete understanding of a subject.

I knew someone would bring this up.

1. I completely understand that the ethics depends on the physics.
2. I assume that all of us here more or less agree on the physics, to the extent that they are relevant to this discussion.
3. We are already trying to discuss too many things at the same time in this thread, as you yourself point out.
4. My point about limiting the discussion to ethics (and further to a very specific part of ethics) is not to ignore things that are relevant, but to keep the conversation sufficiently focused that we might establish some things that we agree on and can refer back to in the future, or at least figure out precisely what our disagreements are.
5. I feel like as we work our way through the issues, if we are disagreeing due to a different ideas about the physics, then that will become apparent, and then of course it would be highly relevant to discuss.
6. At a higher level, I don't think (this is only my opinion) there is some bright line where physics stops and ethics starts (for Epicureans). It is not just dependent, it is inextricable. But that doesn't mean every conversation has to start from very first principles.

Quote from Godfrey

3. In light of 2, I think that we all agree that pleasure is the positive/attractive part of the faculty of Feelings. As such, a prudent understanding of one's feelings and desires is the core of Epicurean ethics.

Yes, of course.

However, saying things in such a general way that no one could possibly disagree and still call themselves an Epicurean is not interesting to me (possibly a personal failing).

Quote from Godfrey

4. Pleasure is good. It's a good. It's The Good. It feels good. It's everything described in the previous 138 posts.

for the clever way of putting that.

But this strikes me as a rather bland, (somewhat) non-controversial flavor of Epicureanism. I would like to be able to make stronger claims, and to do that, you have to be very clear on what words actually mean and how concepts relate. Again, this is possibly a personal failing of mine.

I really do appreciate the way you phrased that though.

Quote from Godfrey

5. From my perspective, there seem to be three things being discussed in this thread: a) parsing the concept "good," b) trying to gain a clear grasp of Epicurean philosophy, and c) coming to a way of presenting the philosophy to others. If I'm correct in this, it might be helpful to put a) into one thread and b) and c) into another thread. Combining them all, at least for me, is creating a lot of confusion. If new terminology is necessary, I think it would best derive from a discussion of the intent of the philosophy, from general to specific. Parsing the meaning of specific ancient words is important, but needs to be done in a very specific context. And, at least for me, the specificity of that context seems uncertain in this thread.

a) concept of "good"

This is what I wanted to focus on in this thread. More specifically, the relationship of good(s) and pleasure.

=====

b) clear grasp of Epicurean philosophy:

c) presenting philosophy

Either of those things would be a tall order for a single thread!

I mentioned those things for context, to explain why I was trying to focus on certain things, and especially to explain why I said in a few places that I did NOT want to get into certain subjects.

I'm happy to discuss other topics elsewhere, but I had a sense of where I was trying to get to with this thread, and I felt that introducing other concepts would just open up entirely new areas of disagreement when there was a very specific disagreement that I wanted to get to the bottom of.

New terminology is actually something I want to avoid. But also I want words to mean what people expect them to mean in a given context.

Refuting an argument of Plato or commenting on Aristotle is one thing. Finding out that Highest Good and highest good might not mean the same thing - that is something else! Language should be an aid to understanding, not a hindrance.