One missed in your opening is Erich Fromm's notion of love as an art: Rather than an emotion Fromm thinks the various forms of love are actions we perform, and just as we can become better piano players so we can also become better lovers -- in all capacities of loving.

I wanted to ask: why is this question given such low priority? The arts are filled with references to love. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Naturally I'd say it's because of individualism :D -- it's considered a topic for an individual to "figure out", and it's generally thought to be understood so people don't believe there's a need to think about love. Rather than thinking about love many prefer to simply feel it and that's enough to count as an understanding.

Which, to be fair, sentiment is important in loving. Or at least emotion if not sentiment if we want to emphasize the active components of love.

But I do like that Fromm puts forward a notion of love as a practice that can be improved upon or diminished -- it makes a lot of sense of people who have no capacity for love, and how some people have a deep capacity for love. Rather than a character trait it's just something you learn how to do (or don't learn).

Perhaps another way of looking at it --

Sentences are not the bearers of moral worth. Actions are. Whether the sentence is true or false isn't important -- what we do is what's important, and actions are not truth-apt because they are not propositions.

If error theory is correct then moral language is a kind of important fiction. And I note faith because I'm wondering if it's similar to the important fiction, for some, of the belief in God. Isn't moral worth a common point for people who believe in God? Then in what way is our moral deliberations different?

It's important to me that they are different if we want to claim that they are real, because I'm an atheist. I simply cannot believe there is a God in the world I live in.

So I'm happy to entertain the notion of a non-scientific moral realism. But then I want to know what that theory is such that we're not just asserting our convictions.

I mean it sounds nice to me, but I don't think it makes sense to pursue it anxiously because that's counter-productive to the goal -- at least for me I have to accept who I am and live with that, and who I am is not that. I have my various anxieties and strange attachments and wanting to be content does not change this. But I still want to be happy and content with life. Why wouldn't I?

The problem, as you note, is that this can be harder to do than it seems.

But at the least I think that striving for contentment is counter-productive. Indeed, contentment strikes me as a lack of striving at all!

 

Many of us seem to be persecuted by the idea that we should be more serious, more transcendent, more ethical. I'm somewhat simplistic - I think we should just get on with living and try not to be a cunt. — Tom Storm

:D

It may be true that "phlogiston" doesn't have the same meaning now that it used to". If so, it is worth drawing attention to our realising that this is the case. We've moved beyond the incommensurability of the duck- people versus the rabbit-people to the "transcendental" realisation of the duck-rabbit.

This capacity for "transcendence" (I don't like that word...) permits one to take on an historicist approach. So either one is parochial in taking on the mantle of one conceptual scheme in order to asses other; or one takes a position outside of the various conceptual schemes in order to assess them - an impossibility; or one agrees with Davidson in rejecting the notion of conceptual schema.

If we adopt the historicist perspective, then we must look at the situation at the time Davidson was writing. Davidson's philosophically pretentious theory of meaning was necessary in order to break through the wall built by Feyerabend and Kuhn by providing a formal backbone to his argument.

Further, if we take an historicist approach we must deal with the differing situations not just of Kuhn and Davidson, but of Davidson and Wang. Wang will not be addressing the same paper that Davidson wrote. — Banno

Yes! And no! :D

Let's see... the historicist approach, as I understand the method, has no need for transcendence as much as situatedness. A historian is aware that they are coming from a perspective so much so that their are multiple theories of history and you choose one to write within. So rather than a transcendent view from outside of history the historian writes from where they are, at least in modern historiography. This is why multiple histories of the same event are important for understanding an event -- there are many points of view which must be elaborated upon in order to get a full sense of that event.

But, yes! I agree that in adopting the historicist perspective we must look at the situation at the time Davidson wrote, and I agree that Wang is not responding to the exact same paper which Davidson wrote -- the question I have is, why was it necessary to break through the wall of Feyerabend and Kuhn?

Nor does the idea have any credibility. "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true; the remainder of your post shows that you agree that it is true. You sensibly wish ethics to work in a way quite different to science, but throw out the babe.

Indeed, adopting the proposal that ethical statements are not truth-apt is a way not of highlighting ethics but of reducing it so it may be thrown out of consideration. If ethical propositions are not truth apt, they cannot take a place in logic, and hence are outside of rational consideration.

So, please, reconsider. — Banno

Would that I could! These are genuine doubts on my part, though. I'd say that it's error theory which demonstrates how ethical propositions can be truth-apt, but false. So they can take on logical forms but they cannot form sound inferences. My thought is that if this were not so there'd be a way we could demonstrate moral truths -- but instead it seems to me that we're stuck with simply asserting them. This reminds me of declarations of faith in Christ more than it reminds me of logical inference.

But I'm not willing to let go of the importance of ethics -- in fact I think it's central. So a lot of my thinking in this area has been to attempt to understand how it is ethics is important, how it's still part of a rational inquiry, and yet does not rely upon truth -- or at least, if it does, attempting to understand the manner in which it does.

Further I think that by relying upon moral facts, in particular -- maybe truths is better -- we run the risk of scientism. Another part of my motivation is my doubt that a science of ethics is possible, and I think that talking of moral facts gives more credence to the idea of a science of ethics than it should.

I love that paper. It's so incredibly good.

But also note how in talking against incommensurability Rovelli does not shy from "conceptual structure" -- that's still a working metaphor in trying to describe knowledge. So he's not exactly a friend to Davidson either.

It's been a minute since I've read that Davidson paper, and I'm finding myself more able to respond this time around. So I'm going to post first my response to Davidson, then go through Wang as a way of participating.

Feyerabend is quoted by Davidson:

Our argument against meaning invariance is simple and clear. It proceeds from the fact that usually some of the principles involved in the determinations of the meanings of older theories or points of view are inconsistent with the new . . . theories. It points out that it is natural to resolve this contradiction by eliminating the troublesome . . . older principles, and to replace them
by principles, or theorems, of a new ... theory. And it concludes by showing that such a procedure will also lead to the elimination of the old meanings.

I'd say there is such a thing as Kuhnian loss through meaning change as the scientific practices change -- "phlogiston" doesn't have the same meaning now that it used to because we don't use it as a serious scientific concept, but rather we use it as an example of how science undergoes changes and abandons concepts. We don't need to go along with Davidson's rendition of conceptual schemes as intertranslatable languages, and treating language meaning as something an individual can "check" strikes me as the wrong way since language is a collective practice. But I can't help but note that this "wrong way" is a common way of thinking so there's still something good about the paper's argument -- it forces a person to make sense of conceptual relativism while making the distinction explicit (be it scheme-content, or something else).

I find historicism adequate to the task of understanding concepts -- it's the historical method, as applied to texts, which allows us to differentiate between concepts, at least (I'm less certain about "schemes", though -- I'd rather talk about the structure of an argument or a philosophy than a conceptual scheme). And rather than Saturnian and English I'd just note that even German and English have problems of intertranslatability, and that this is commonly known among translators as a kind of irresolvable problem. Against the extensional emphasis I put forward poetry translation as a case where we are able to differentiate meanings such that we can partially translate one language into another language, even if we don't know how it is we do this. But then if we have an example of partial translation (and so the case against partial meaning translation can be set aside as being factually wrong), and a method by which we can differentiate concepts, then the question of how it is we're able to make the claim for conceptual-relativism is made explicit and doesn't rely upon an implicit scheme-content dualism: Just as we can learn English and German and translate meanings between languages so we can learn concepts which differ, and it is through that knowledge, rather than a criterion or a duality, that we are able to judge the meanings of sentences. Then it's just a matter of being acquainted with more concepts -- having more knowledge -- which would allow one to make a judgment -- one that could be false! -- that scientists are at least using different concepts (if not inhabiting different worlds -- being-in-the-world, perhaps, but even that doesn't follow by necessity).

And if we can do that then it seems that Davidson's objections are addressed, albeit not with the conceptual tools he chose to set it out with. We abandon scheme-content, and make the heady and exotic doctrine explicit. The question for me would be whether this still counts as a conceptual relativism, or not? In addressing Davidson's concerns do I, by that addressing, make conceptual schemes and relativism to conceptual schemes moot, or at least reducible to the predicate "...is true"?

The problem I feel is that while I doubt schemes, I don't doubt it on the basis of a criteria for translation due to even mundane examples of translation being known to not be able to fully translate meaning. In a way I'm accusing Davidson of having a philosophically pretentious theory of meaning in relation to how we actually use these words.

But I also doubt our ability to tabulate schemes very effectively such that we can make the relations between the elements of a scheme explicit. It seems to me that each time we try to render such a scheme it comes out slightly different -- or, at least, the meanings of sentences we use in describing such a scheme changes with each iteration, and so the task of articulating a scheme becomes incompletable, or at least artificial as we decide to hold some meanings constant in order to specify relations between them. At which point I begin to wonder-- why even call it a scheme if we are unable to articulate a structure without fiat? Why not just "a set of concepts", rather than a scheme, with the attendant difficulty of specifying what "concepts" means?

***

But now onto Wang's paper, which I've never read until now. So it's fresh, and therefore more of a first reaction to the paper (but I didn't want to post before having read the paper, so here it is)

I'm pleased to find Wang's statement:

A radical conceptual relativist can respond to Davidson on two fronts: either to defend the translatability criterion or to separate conceptual relativism from the Quinean relativism as Davidson construes it by removing the translatability criterion out of the equation. The first route is a well-worn path that I will not belabor here. The second route, for me, is more effective and will be discussed in detail in section 3.

Mostly out of vanity as it gets along with how I've managed to think through relativism in light of Davidson, and we seem to agree that separating conceptual relativism from Quinean relativism is an effective strategy for making the case.

I found this paragraph to be similar to my strategy above talking about English and German:

However, neither natural languages per se nor scientific languages construed as sentential languages can be identical with conceptual schemes. A natural language per se such as English or Chinese is in no sense a conceptual scheme. Does any conceptual relativist really seriously think that all Chinese would inherit a unique conceptual scheme different from the scheme that all English speakers are supposed to possess simply because they speak different natural languages? A natural language is not a theory. A natural language like Chinese or English does not schematize experience, nor even metonymically predicts, fits, or faces reality. Although part of a natural language, i.e. its grammar, does in some sense determine the logical space of possibilities (Whorf, 1956), it is the theoretical assertions made in the language that predict and describe reality and in so doing assert that which logical spaces are occupied in the world. Furthermore, a natural language is not even a totality of beliefs. It is absurd to assume that people who speak the same natural language would have the same belief system.

And this line of argument to get along with my notion of historicism being adequate to the task of differentiating concepts:

My major reservation with the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes is not just about many theoretical difficulties it faces, but rather with its basic assumption QT; for it does not square with observations of many celebrated conceptual confrontations between opposing conceptual schemes revealed in the history of natural sciences and cultural studies, especially those under the name of incommensurability. Examples include: Ptolemaic astronomy versus Copernican astronomy; Newtonian mechanics versus Einsteinian relativistic mechanics; Lavoisier's oxygen theory versus Priestley's phlogiston theory of combustion; Galenic medical theory versus Pasteurian medical theory; and so on. These familiar conceptual confrontations are, to me, not confrontations between two conceptual schemes with different distributions of truth-values over their assertions, but rather confrontations between two scientific languages with different distributions of truth-value status13 over their sentences due to incompatible metaphysical presuppositions. The advocate of an alien conceptual scheme not only does not hold the same notion of truth as ours, but also does not agree with us on the truth-value status of the sentences in question. These scheme innovations, in the end, turn not on differences in truth-values (different truth-schemes), but on whether or not the sentences in the alternative conceptual scheme have truth-values (different truth-value schemes).

I'd say that these arguments highlighted here are well and good enough in that they highlight an underlying assumption which a relativist does not need to accept, which in turn gives room for the defender of conceptual schemes to come up with a different way to speak about conceptual relativism -- but Wang goes on to articulate a competitor all the same to give some credence to the idea that there are other ways of talking about conceptual schemes.

I found this potent:

. On the contrary, it is exactly due to the abandonment of the concept-neutral content and the denial of a fixed and absolute scheme-content distinction that turns Kantian conceptual absolutism upside down and thus makes conceptual relativism possible.

A good bit of philosophy is accepting the conclusions of another philosopher, but then working out a different or opposite set of implications for that conclusion. His use of a thick/thin-experience distinction is good in that it gives a believable basis for thinking through concepts as relative: it's our thick experience of the world, the very one Davidson seems to care about in his closing remarks, that gives rise to the belief we are "in different worlds" due to the beliefs or concepts which shape our thick experience.

And I found this insightful:

Although Davidson realizes correctly that scheme-content dualism could well survive after the fall of the analytic-synthetic distinction, he is wrong to allege, ‘giving up the analytic-synthetic distinction has not proven a help in making sense of conceptual relativism’ (1974, p. 189). On the contrary, it is exactly due to the denial of a fixed, absolute analytic-synthetic distinction that makes alternative conceptual schemes possible. Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction (Quine, 1951) leads to abandoning the rigid distinction between concept, meaning, or language on the one hand and belief, thought, or theory on the other. It is no longer a novel idea today that all concepts themselves are empirical and none a priori; concepts we deploy upon experience are themselves the products of empirical inquires. In other words, concepts are theory-laden, fact committal, and change with theories. Accordingly, conceptual schemes change and evolve with corresponding theories. Thus, the Kantian absolute conceptual scheme gives away to relative, alternative conceptual schemes.

In that he's making way for a post-Kantian conceptual relativism that makes sense in light of Quine. That's a great way of rendering the very idea at least coherent.

... I find this bit at the end relying upon evolutionary theory odd:

We can safely assume, based on Darwinian evolution theory, that there are some basic experiential concepts shared by human cultures and societies.16 In this sense, they are global or universal.

Because I don't think we can safely assume that, nor should we assume it, and even more so I don't think we need this assumption to make the case for a fuzzy distinction between scheme-content. And, even more, it would seem we'd have less reason to believe in conceptual relativism if we had some basic experiential concepts which are shared! If, in articulating a relativism we end up saying there's something the same between us it almost sounds like we're conceding the point to Davidson, that we do share concepts, and its this basis of shared concepts which makes it possible for us to articulate difference? Perhaps the difference here is one of degree, though -- which shouldn't be downplayed because sometimes the degree can at least be intense, and perhaps intense enough to want to use the word "radical" -- but it's at least similar to the notion that we have some kind of agreement from which we can articulate disagreement, putting the conceptual relativist in a shakey position if we want to express ourselves in terms of criteria.

The section in Wang on WMT vs CMT is by far the weakest in the paper. We could exercise charity ourselves here and agree to ignore it! — J

I'm not so sure, here. One of the things that's nice is that it's an actual example. And differences or changes in meaning are frequently the way this thought works out, and here what's nice is that Wang points out that the difference of meaning isn't one of distributing "...is true" across sentences, but rather is a different kind of difference. Whether we ought to call this a radical or incommensurable difference I'm still on the fence about -- but I can at least recognize that the kind of meaning Wang is talking about isn't the same as Davidson's project of translation through truth. It's whether a sentence counts as truth-functional at all to a practice that marks the difference, rather than a distribution of truth-values.

Well, how is akrasia overcome? I would be surprised if the depraved Epicurean becomes upright without a significant expenditure of effort and will. For example, just because his master tells him to do something, it does not follow that that something will be easy to do. — Leontiskos

The cure!

The way I understand it -- if the Epicurean master had a brain surgery he could perform on people that would be effective that'd be acceptable. In a way this is, for the Epicurean, a question for medical science. It's not just telling people what to do, but more or less manipulating them for their own good. It's not just a spiritual practice, it's a cure that must be performed on the human soul for their benefit.

This is what I'd say is the most uncomfortable aspect of the philosophy from my perspective -- but we do practice like this in some circumstances in our society, we just limit it to whether a person can be rightly judged to have agency. The way I'd hodge-podge these two concepts would be to say from the perspective of the Epicurean doctor you don't have agency until you've been cured because people resist the cure. It's just not their will which is being taken into consideration, but rather their happiness. (at least, in accord with the Epicurean notion of happiness)

Okay, that makes sense. I think I associate Epicureanism with asceticism because Epicureans give up a great many things that most people take for granted. It is a minimalism, albeit not practiced for the sake of a religious end. — Leontiskos

That's true!

That one ought not kick puppies for fun is a moral statement.
It is a true statement that one ought not kick puppies for fun.
Facts are true statements.

Therefore there are moral facts. — Banno

If it is a true statement its truth does not share a sense with other uses of "truth". "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is false, in sense of the natural world. It fits the form of a proposition, but it doesn't rely upon any feature of the natural world for its truth. Rather we are using the word "true" in the place of the moral words "good" or "bad", which have no natural instantiations.

Now this would get along with the notion of non-natural moral facts. A more minimal anti-realist position is simply to note that there are no such facts.

For my part, though, I'd just say the significance of animal cruelty far outweighs whether there even is a fact to the matter. Animal cruelty is bad is enough for me; it need not be true. And stated like that could it even be true? ""Animal cruelty is bad" is true" -- what does that mean other than to simply assert the first sentence? Then aren't we actually talking in terms of goodness and badness, and not in terms of truth? So what is truth doing here anyways? Making our commitments Real, and thereby more important?

This is the line of questioning that begins me thinking towards anti-realism on ethics. It seems to me that the heart of the matter isn't the same as the way the sciences work, and so it worth noting that there is a distinction to be made between moral truths -- if we wish to speak that way -- and truths of the natural world. I have a deep doubt of any claim to a science of ethics.

Perhaps "fact" is the wrong word then. Maybe a better word would be "truth", Where there is a best or correct moral ideal, that may not have a burden of proof as high as "fact". Because while "fact" and "truth" may have different levels of burden of proof, they come to the same conclusion, being that there is a correct moral theory. — Lexa

Maybe there is. Changing whether we call it a fact or a truth, though, doesn't change my doubt.

I would say that the reason why there is so much disparity is because we don't have a language like mathematics to describe these situations. Mathematics is a language where its components always mean the same thing. 2 will always mean 2 no matter what mathematician you talk too, but you talk to two philosophers in your own department they may define things vastly different. So if we could create a language with concrete definitions we could perhaps come up with these truths. Obviously that begs the question of "what should be the concrete definitions be?" and "how do we find them?", but I feel that those questions also have truths to be found. — Lexa

So you would say that no one disagrees, but rather they misunderstand one another. Is that about right?

To be honest at the moment I do not have a concrete argument as to why we should believe in moral facts, which is why I am only arguing that the arguments for moral nihilism doesn't necessarily rule them out. So, the only argument I can posit for is that we should continue to try and uncover them. That argument being that since the arguments for moral nihilism don't necessarily mean that moral facts can't be real. — Lexa

Cool.

While I don't rule out moral facts by necessity, I remain uncertain of them in fact. I acknowledge that I may be wrong -- my belief is itself true or false, or so I contend -- but I don't believe there is a moral fact in this sense that I'm uncertain what such a fact would be or mean.

I don't believe in astrology lol, But I would differentiate claims like astrology and something factual by saying that things like astrology don't have any repeatable theories. A factual moral theory would have repeatable outcomes. For example, you would be able to know what is moral and immoral, and how to navigate moral situations. Astrology cannot make repeatable theories. For example, everyone who is a libra will not be extroverted, or possibly most of them will not be extroverted. Therefore, things like astrology cannot be facts. — Lexa

Also cool. We at least agree that astrology is not factual.

And we agree that mathematics is factual.

That means there is a question to be asked -- how do we make this judgment, and when? Sometimes we can speak factually, and sometimes we can speak in the same way that looks like it's factual but, as we agree, astrology doesn't quite hit the mark.

I find the argument from difference persuasive enough to need some kind of response. If morality is real why is the disagreement so disparate in relation to, say, mathematics? What are the conditions under which we should accept a moral proposition as a real one, and a moral proposition as a not-real one, given the disparity of disagreement?

What are the moral situations that a that we'd be able to navigate?

These seem like non-trivial, in the sense that they are also ethical, questions. But I don't know of any way to solve them by way of a math.

And if they're all false that would at least explain why people disagree.

So why does moral nihilism exclude moral facts? — Lexa

I want to focus on your second argument which you address first. (and if you're interested reading more...)

While I would agree that morality was created by humans and has no other concrete basis, I wouldn't say that morality has no facts. I wouldn't say that morality has the same type of facts that the natural world has, meaning that if intelligent life didn't exist, neither would morality. However, abstract human constructions often do have facts. For example, mathematics is a human construction with inherent facts. The infinite number of primes is an abstract fact of mathematics that has no basis outside of the intelligent mind. You could say that the way we describe a mathematical system is the reason that it can contain facts, meaning that since math as a language leaves little room for subjective interpretation of its findings means that it is an objective practice. However, I would say that is a fundamental problem with how we talk about morality rather than a stark difference between mathematics and morality. — Lexa

I grant the analogy between mathematics and morality. But notice how your argument simply means that moral facts are possible on the basis that we already believe in non-concrete facts, namely mathematical ones, so we can't rule them out just because they are not concrete. What it doesn't do is assert why we ought to believe in moral facts, though. The argument from difference gets along well here because it gives us a reason to believe that there are no moral facts. So I'll pivot to your first argument you address second:

Furthermore the argument that different cultures have different conceptions of morality doesn't mean that moral facts don't exist either. Just because a different conception exists doesn't mean that there is no facts about a certain subject. People disagree about every subject under the sun, even those that have a concrete basis under them. To say that just because there is different conceptions of an issue means that the issue is subjective would be to say that any metaphysical claim means nothing and the entire practice of reasoning about metaphysical claims would be utterly useless. — Lexa

I agree with your arguments here. But notice how these are reasons to accommodate difference while granting moral realism, and not reasons to believe that there are moral facts. These are addressing the arguments for moral anti-realism, rather than giving reasons for moral realism.

I swear it's related, even though it sounds like it's out of nowhere: do you believe that astrology is factual? Astrology is a body of sentences that people believe and utilize to understand the world around them, there are different conceptions of astrology and people disagree over what it means. Using your argument above this wouldn't be a reason to believe that astrology isn't factual, just that there are people who disagree on the factual basis -- but surely that's not right because astrology is not factual.

So the question then becomes: how to differentiate talk which is factual from talk which is not factual?

What the anti-realist asserts is that moral talk is more like astrology and less like math.

I still can't tell. Desire as described in Anti-Oedipus is one of the theories of desire that I have in mind, though. That intersection between Marx and Freud is perfect for the question of the relationship between desire and justice.

I think that it'd be possible to accept desire as productive and still articulate a difference, though I'm not sure how it'd work out. Like I already admitted I find myself going back to thinking about desire whenever I try to articulate a relationship between desire and justice, so in practice I'm basically in the same boat at the moment.

Well, that's kind of the question :D

If values are distinct from -- not identical to -- desire then it would still be possible to articulate a relationship between desire and at least injustice under the presumption that injustice is the way we talk about competing values within our partisan bubble. So for example if desire is a lack, and injustice is an articulation of competing values, then I think I'd say that the two are distinct such that a relationship could be articulated since at least the articulation of competing values is not obviously desire-as-lack.

But if desire just is the basis of competing values then the question of desire would "settle" the question of justice, which is as I understand the Epicurean account to be committed to.

In an attempt to classify the example within Epicurean desire you've driven me to the Vatican Sayings, which I haven't really braved before.

If sight, association, and intercourse are removed, the passion of love is ended. — Vatican Sayings 18

Let's presume she associates with the building, and that this is our maxim of love. Then the passion of love has not ended. The question would then turn to: how do you classify the passion of love? Is love a natural or groundless desire, and if it is natural is it necessary or unnecessary?

That the passion of love can include association seems to allow for a concept of love that would be natural, and so insofar that her passion is one of love then a case could be made that, though we find this a strange desire, it isn't a bad desire.

Now could the case be made that love is a good desire? That'd probably be where I'd mark a difference between Christianity and Epicureanism. I think the above quote is meant to point out that love consists of material relationships. So love is a good desire (insofar that it does not become groundless), but love is also "sight, association, and intercourse" -- which, given Paul, love is clearly at least not intercourse.

I always thought that injustice was just the way we talk about competing values from within our own partisan bubble. — Joshs

If so -- does this way of talking reduce to desire, or are the competing values from within our partisan bubble distinct from desire?

It seems to me that the deeper idea here is not that ethical homogeneity produces harmony, but rather that injustice is a consequence of unhappiness, and that if people were happy then the problem of injustice would solve itself. This is not such an uncommon idea, nor is it so implausible. Epicureanism always faintly reminds me of Indian religion, and I sometimes hear this idea from that subcontinent. — Leontiskos

That's a good rendition -- better than I've provided.

I feel doubt at the proposition that injustice would solve itself. Or maybe I just feel doubt in the Epicurean cure as a cure, rather than as a philosophy. As you say:

Mostly, I'm not sure if anyone—ancient or modern—really understands how to make people virtuous. It seems to always be a haphazard and uncertain endeavor. — Leontiskos

That makes sense to me. It does represent an important facet of desire, but I'm not sure it captures the whole picture. This is more or less why I said above that Aristotle would accept and incorporate Epicurean premises into his thought as a subset, but Epicurus would probably reject many of the Aristotelian add-ons. — Leontiskos

I think this would depend upon how we'd read the history, honestly. Which facts are we going to emphasize in telling the story of ancient philosophy? In thinking through desire I have reasons to want to find differences -- I'm not really settled on a theory of desire so the differences stand out as important to me as a basis for judgement.

I mean, this is why I emphasize that there's more than one way to read these texts -- my rendition of Epicurus and my rendition of Aristotle definitely disagree :D . Though that does make sense of some things like that they had different schools, rather than Epicurus attending the Lyceum. I had to look up dates on the Lyceum because I wasn't sure, so I thank you for the prodding. Another thing I completely missed is that Cicero's On the Ends features a peripatetic as distinct from both Epicureanism and Stoicism!

So there are some reasons aside from my emphasis to at least think they must be different in some ways.

Well, for Aristotle the incontinent man is "weak-willed" and the continent man could be considered "strong-willed," but the goal is to be temperate, and the temperate man is well-ordered, not strong-willed. A strong will is only necessary to overcome a disordered soul and disordered passions. — Leontiskos

Cool. So a point of agreement would be that the temperate man does not need a strong will.

But a strong will is not necessary to overcome a disordered soul in the Epicurean philosophy.

I think there are two distinctions at play, here. The first distinguishes between a focus on earthly life and a focus on the eschaton. The second distinguishes between a conception of human nature and a conception of fallen human nature. I think the second distinction is going to be a bit harsher for Epicureanism, although the first is also significant. — Leontiskos

That fits.

It strikes me that Epicureanism coincides to a large extent with the ascetic traditions of Christianity, particularly the tradition of the desert fathers and the monasticism that grew up out of that. In those traditions exists a Platonism that is agreeable to Epicureanism, whereas the later more Aristotelian strand of Christianity is in many ways more urban and cosmopolitan, and less agreeable to Epicureanism. The irony here is that Epicurean asceticism in certain ways coincides with the more extreme forms of Christian practice, despite lacking some of the motivations.

In part this is probably due to my emphasizing the concepts and how they fit together from the perspective of Epicurus himself; almost always the way ethical concepts fit together and the practices they inspire are not the same. I know there are more cosmopolitan Epicureans who lived after: Diogenes of Oenoanda was rich enough to have land and build an inscription which details the Epicurean philosophy because, so it claims, it lays the path to salvation. So the concepts would lead one to practice a certain way -- a way in which Epicurus did -- but later practitioners found benefit in the philosophy in spite of not following the ascetic way of life that the ideas clearly outline too. My thought on this is that there was a distinction between The Doctors -- like what Epicurus was -- and the people who learn and live the Epicurean philosophy, in a similar way that many religious communities have at least two social layers with different social rules depending upon how much influence you wield within the social organism.

EDIT: Although I should say -- yes! There are definitely resonances between this and other philosophies which aim at being a way of life, or in some sense are religious.

This is how Epicurus relates pleasure to justice:

"we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly" -- Letter to Menoeceus"

So pleasure requires justice and justice requires pleasure, but there are other factors at play as well, such as wise and honorable living. I myself am not really convinced that perverted desire is the cause of injustice, although it is surely one cause of injustice. For example, scarce resources can lead to injustice even apart from perverted desires. Have you thought any more about this question of justice? — Leontiskos

I've thought about it, but my thoughts aren't any deeper than what's been presented so far. The best interpretation of Epicurean justice I can muster is that it comes about because people are living happy and tranquil lives -- but that's a lot like an eschatology to my mind which amounts to the thought: if everyone just followed the same ethical creed then everyone would live in harmony and then justice would prevail! But it seems like a weak theory of justice to me because it sort of begs the question in its own way -- it's not exactly a surprising conclusion that if everyone agreed to what is ethical and lived ethically then they'd agree and continue to live a just life. That's pretty unsatisfactory.

Then there's the fact that while I think Epicurean desire is an interesting theory of desire I'm uncommitted to it as a universal theory of desire -- basically I'd say I'm still stuck on the structure of desire and describing desire, and anytime I try to think the relationship between desire and justice I find myself thinking about desire again.

But the second question is whether this really tracks Epicurus. Specifically, you seem to be positing that, for Epicurus, desire which is natural but unnecessary is only disreputable because it is more difficult to satisfy, and that if one were able to satisfy it reliably then there would not be anything problematic about it. If this is right, then it seems to throw a wrench into the Epicurean system, implying that some of the core claims are based on accidental factors. It would be something like, "Live simply, unless you have the means to live luxuriously." — Leontiskos

On whether it really does or not I'm happy to concede there are multiple ways to emphasize the text, especially with regards to Epicureanism. And truth be told in rethinking the example I'm finding myself going back on what I said before, but I think it's a better working of the example of the depraved soul:

The Epicurean would hold that it is better to have an ataraxic rather than depraved soul because the depraved soul, while able to satisfy perverted desires, they are still in an anxiety loop of a kind -- it's an exciting life where they are able to continually pursue and fulfill excitement rather than a tranquil life where one knows that their desires will be satisfied tomorrow.

I think the uncertainty of the world we inhabit also gives justification to pursue the ataraxic soul over the depraved soul with the means to satisfy them: only the ataraxic soul can say and mean "What is good in life is easy to obtain", where the depraved soul must strive to continue to satisfy their many desires. As you noted above about scarcity: if we lived in a world of infinite resources then perhaps the ataraxic soul would best be seen as a kind of quaint attachment to an ascetic existence, but given the vagaries of a world composed of nothing but atoms and void moving in accord to the swerve it makes sense to want the kind of soul which is happy with anything.

I found it sort of interesting that you would say this, as it rings of the idea that the akolastos is better than the akratēs (in <Aristotle's terms>). In some ways this is the crucial difference between ancient and modern ethics, and it might be called the question of the normativity of individual action. The modern idea is that the akolastos and the sophon are equally undivided, and therefore equally good.* I think Nietzsche plays a role in this modern conception. A basic counterargument here is that if the akolastos is to become a sophron then he must pass through the stage of akrasia, and therefore the akratēs is better than the akolastos. The analogy to Epicurus from Aristotle doesn't work perfectly, but it works to a point. — Leontiskos

I'd think that for the working Epicurean administering the cure they'd say that the incontinent man is on a path to the cure, but is still not tranquil and so needing the cure. But this brings out another point of contrast here between Aristotle and Epicurus: it's not willpower which brings about the continent man, but a master who prunes your desires such that you desire to and are able to live tranquilly.

The Greeks used the term phusis ('nature') to distinguish it from what is by convention or law or custom (nomos). When applied to ethics, what is by nature is universal, true for all human beings by virtue of human nature.

In Judaism, however, no appeal was made to nature but to God. Rather than a nature man has "ways". Some ways are straight, others crooked. Some God approves, others he does not. Some men are on the path, others stray.

Christianity inherits both opposing views. On the one hand God's Law, and on the other, through Paul, man is born in sin and powerlessness against it. Augustine goes further with the belief in original sin. What is most natural becomes the source of sin. — Fooloso4

That's how we get to a conceptual place where sex can be viewed as sinful, wrong, to be cast away. As Paul said:

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.

Marriage is put towards the end of warding off sin so that you aren't tempted, but celibacy is given clear spiritual priority as the better path.

I hadn't thought of going that route, but actually this could prove quite fruitful. You reminded me of a paper I read forever ago -- Michael Levin's Why Homosexuality is Abnormal.

One of the reasons I think the appeal to nature within Epicurus or within Aristotle is at least interesting, rather than question begging is I think that the rest of the philosophy gives the concept boundaries to judgment -- there's the normative element, and the norm fits within a whole philosophy. With that come boundaries for proper judgment so you can at least get a feel for it as a concept rather than it just being an assertion or a negation of a particular belief, such as Levin's paper claiming that homosexuality is abnormal and leads to unhappiness.

What I'm thinking now is homosexuality would be a good case to explore a fallacious use of the appeal to nature, and now coming back to Levin's paper: it is full of the fallacious. His argument begins:

To bring into relief the point of the idea that homosexuality involves a misuse of bodily parts,
I will begin with an uncontroversial case of misuse, a case in which the clarity of our intuitions
is not obscured by the conviction that they are untrustworthy. Mr Jones pulls all his
teeth and strings them around his neck because he thinks his teeth look nice as a necklace. He
takes pureed liquids supplemented by intravenous solutions for nourishment. It is surely natural
to say that Jones is misusing his teeth, that he is not using them for what they are for, that
indeed the way he is using them is incompatible with what they are for. Pedants might argue that
Jones's teeth are no longer part of him and hence that he is not misusing any bodily parts.

To them I offer Mr Smith, who likes to play "Old MacDonald" on his teeth. So devoted is
he to this amusement, in fact, that he never uses his teeth for chewing - like Jones, he takes
nourishment intravenously. Now, not only do we find it perfectly plain that Smith and Jones
are misusing their teeth, we predict a dim future for them on purely physiological grounds; we
expect the muscles of Jones's jaw that are used for - that are for - chewing to lose their tone,
and we expect this to affect Jones's gums. Those parts of Jones's digestive tract that are for processing
solids will also suffer from disuse. The net result will be deteriorating health and perhaps
a shortened life. Nor is this all. Human beings enjoy chewing. Not only has natural
selection selected in muscles for chewing and favored creatures with such muscles, it has
selected in a tendency to find the use of those muscles reinforcing. Creatures who do not
enjoy using such parts of their bodies as deteriorate with disuse will tend to be selected out.

Jones, product of natural selection that he is, descended from creatures who at least tended to
enjoy the use of such parts. Competitors who didn't simply had fewer descendants. So we
expect Jones sooner or later to experience vague yearnings to chew something, just as we
find people who take no exercise to experience a general listlessness. Even waiving for now my
apparent reification of the evolutionary process, let me emphasize how little anyone is tempted
to say "each to his own" about Jones or to regard Jones's disposition of his teeth as simply
a deviation from a statistical norm.
****

The application of this general picture to homosexuality
should be obvious. There can be no reasonable doubt that one of the functions of the
penis is to introduce semen into the vagina. It does this, and it has been selected in because it
does this .... Nature has consequently made this use of the penis rewarding. It is clear enough
that any proto-human males who found unrewarding the insertion of penis into vagina have
left no descendants. In particular, proto-human males who enjoyed inserting their penises into
each other's anuses have left no descendants. This is why homosexuality is abnormal, and
why its abnormality counts prudentially against it. Homosexuality is likely to cause unhappiness
because it leaves unfulfilled an innate and innately rewarding desire. — Levin

Fulfilling sexuality has nothing to do with the "natural use" of a penis; people don't get horny or feel sexual satisfaction due to the proper-functioning of their bodies, just as they don't get hungry or full because their teeth have a theoretical proper-function. If what Levin says is true then people wouldn't masturbate their penis (or, at least, it would make them unhappy to do so), and the desire for oral sex would similarly lead one to an unhappy and unfulfilled life. This view on sexuality is so out of date that the Kinsey reports, published some 30 years prior to Levin's paper, refute it, which is why he's forced to generate imaginative counter-examples to demonstrate what he means by proper function.

But sexual research isn't his claimed theory -- he tries to draw conclusions from the theory of natural selection. They are not warranted, and the obvious point you've already pointed out @Fooloso4: animals besides humans engage in homosexual behavior, and so we ought to recognize that natural selection simply doesn't select for homo/hetero-sexual behavior in the manner described -- whatever the relationship between sexuality (however defined) and natural selection it is not one where it's excluded by natural selection -- at least if we look at the facts of animal behavior.

But we can go further than noting facts. His notion that natural selection would select for sexual behavior and desire, even if it were tied to genes, wouldn't lead to the conclusions he draws. Homosexuality could be a recessive trait, in the same way red hair is, and so even if -- though it is false -- sexuality were inherited due to natural selection, we already have the theoretical knowledge of traits being passed down which allows for deviations of expression -- if you have four kids, one of them genetically homosexual, then the other three who are heterosexual will still carry the homosexual genes. This knowledge predates even Darwin.

Given how incredibly false this paper is I'd suggest there's another reason for it. I think the real point of the paper is revealed in its suggestions:

I regard these matters as prolegomena to such policy issues as the rights of homosexuals, the
rights of those desiring not to associate with homosexuals, and legislation concerning homosexuality,
issues which I shall not discuss systematically here. — Levin

In particular "the rights of those desiring not to associate with homosexuals" -- the point of the paper is to give credence to the idea that persons who wish to use their freedom of association to not include homosexuals, and claim this is a rational position to hold. The claim to nature has, for its own end, the legal form as its sight, or at the very least the social power of exclusion for those judged abnormal and probably unhappy.

The paper was published in April of 1984. Given all the obviously erroneous inferences -- from sources which predate the publication -- my guess is Levin is responding to the AIDS crisis. I'm tempted to call this a perversion of philosophy because it's using the tools of philosophy to fashion a justification to exclude gay people in the midst of a health crisis that actually effects everyone, but was erroneously associated with -- and even desired for, among those who thought homosexuality its own perversion -- gay people.

But then there's another side to philosophy which isn't the demonstration of knowledge, but the demonstration of ignorance -- as I'm using the paper here.

****

Further steps on this path would be to follow up with the philosophy of John Corvino, and to go over -- one by one -- the various fallacious inferences people make about homosexuality in an effort to find some general pattern in the thinking rather than pointing out the obvious bigotry. But I thought this enough to at least put a post up. Thanks for the suggestion.

Would it be right to call Epicurus a psychologist? — Leontiskos

I think so. Though there's more to the philosophy as well, he certainly has a psychology. In some ways he's obviously a psychologist as we'd think of the term, but then in others he's less so because he's more of a religious leader than just a working professional, and he has an entire world of thought outside of the psychology that, at the same time, gets along with the psychology. So he's something of a mixture between a psychologist, a religious leader, a scientist, and a philosopher. The psychology fits within an entire worldview, though yes the practice of Epicurean philosophy relies upon a psychology.

I would be interested to know if Epicurus was responding to particular philosophers or schools or ideas. That seems like a fruitful avenue for investigation. — Leontiskos

Textually the easier school to contrast them to is the Stoics, because Cicero's On the Ends is that topic in dialogue form, albeit far after when these were first written. It contains the sorts of back-and-forth you'd expect to see between competing schools of thought.

Still, I can't help but see how much the Epicurean theory of the soul contrasts with the Aristotelian one. And he was very much a person of "the next generation" but still was alive at the time of Aristotle (just looking up dates on the 'net, the garden founded in 306, some odd 16 years after Aristotle's death), and one of the most common ways philosophers engage with one another is to disagree and disprove prior philosophers. Furthermore Aristotle was critical of Democritus' atomic theory, and Epicurus goes on to develop that theory further so we have another point within his philosophy that marks a definite contrast.

But I admit that while these are plausible reasons for the reading I'd have to go to a library and begin digging through literature to dis/confirm the thought, or find the contours of history where that's a better or worse way to read with respect to the history -- still, I hope the ideas serve as enough of a contrast here.

I’ve always struggled to understand the appeal for mind altering substances. Whenever I tried it, it just felt like a dream where I wasn’t fully in control of my thoughts, and I never liked it. Why do humans want to escape their mind and avoid reality? How is it an advantage?
Even when reality triggers negative feelings, it’s more efficient to be sober and think about a solution rather than choosing denial by getting drunk, so why do 99% of humans long for that state at least once in their life? Why haven’t we evolved out of this? — Skalidris

One thing about evolution is that it doesn't care about some sort of idealized end-goal -- insofar that the species manages to reproduce well enough that the next generation also reproduces well enough that the next iteration will do the same then the demands of evolution are met. And we see that alcohol consumption is very common among each generation so we shouldn't expect evolution to have an effect on this behavior.

Alcohol consumption is common throughout social organisms, so I'd suggest you've got it the wrong way about -- the interesting thing is that these rituals are actually quite common, and so you've got to ask "What is this doing for the social organism?" -- or is it doing anything at all, or is it just a free-rider that happens to come along because it's not a detriment?

One thing drinking rituals do is help stabilize social organisms in light of hierarchies that demand we act in certain ways that will become exhausting, or at least this is a function of these rituals in our culture. We work hard all day and find it hard to stop working hard when the job is finished, so a drink helps one to stop working hard for a moment. What you find unattractive, losing control of ones' thoughts, is the actual attraction.

Also, the practical reality of regulating alcohol makes it a messy business for social hierarchies to police even if it wants to -- all you need is sugar and water, and what's in the air will take care of the rest if you want to ferment some alcohol. So there's the other side where there are people who will easily make a profit off of the desire for alcohol even if you make it illegal and try to sanitize humanity towards sobriety given how easy it is to produce at home.

I voted for '1' as the closest fit. I'm not too sure about the "epiphenomenal" part, though. I think all causes are physical and I think consciousness both evolved and is causal (or at least the neuronal processes associated with consciousness are). — Janus

At least to my understanding, and forgive me if I'm overexplaining:

The difference here would be that the neuronal processes associated with consciousness are causal, but the actual feeliness of the world is not. That's epiphenomenalism: experience is a real, but an after-affect of the causal network. Else, the feeliness is in some sense causal upon the neuronal processes -- so that what we feel will effect neurons in some capacity that's functionally measurable. So if an experience of a movie then has effects upon the neuronal activity at some later point, rather than the movie encoding itself into the neurons in some "deep"* way and then that pattern re-emerging due to this deeper pattern and thus we have a memory of a movie (but the causal pattern is at the level of neurons rather than experience), then we'd infer epiphenomenalism is not the case with respect to this particular experience-event. But if our experiences are in some way only coming from the neuronal events, and that feeliness never effects neurons, then we'd be epiphenomenalists.

(I should say the reason I think the question unanswerable at this time -- we simply don't know enough about consciousness to even start making headway on its relationship to natural selection. It could very well be a conceptual mistake, which is my favored approach to the problem of consciousness, or even a phenotypic accident that's in no way related to natural selection)

*deep meaning, something other than what we presently measure

Heh. I voted for that as the closest option, but more because of annoying meta-beliefs. I have a perspective on the world, I experience the world, maybe we could call this first-person experience -- but relating the problem of consciousness to the theory of evolution is such a large question that I'd rather judge "no relationship exists" than take on the other four on option. I'd have voted "I don't know", if that option existed.

Suppose I define a desire as "identification with a personal judgement of an imagined future", I think this suggests that a perverse desire is one that is either incompatible with the desires of others, or that is incompatible with reality(they amount to the same thing, because others are always part of reality). The former case demands a meta judgement of 'our' desires that is the province of ethics, and that means that perversity can be personal or social.

If I want of you, that which is incompatible with your desires, then a social judgement can be made as to which of our desires is perverse. But the case of global warming is the paradigm of collective social desires incompatible with reality:— to have an energy rich and wasteful economy, and a stable and productive environment. The personal equivalent would be things like wanting to be a concert pianist, but not wanting to practice for several hours every day, or wanting to give up an addiction but not wanting to go through any withdrawal process.

The perversity of pornography is the perversity of advertising, that it deliberately sets out to stimulate desires that it cannot fulfil. The sexual desires of the innocent adolescent (as was), are incoherent urges towards an unclear and unimaginable intimacy. Porn provides cartoon images of a fabricated unreal intimacy that is never mutual, because it is only an image; but the unreal image attaches to the primitive urge and thus develops a perverse desire that can never be fulfilled in reality, but becomes an unsatisfying addiction. Fast food and beauty products work in a similar way. This is the building up of desire, as unreachable because unrealistic images. Compare this with the job of the architect, planner, or engineer which is to make images of realisable ideas, that might be desired. — unenlightened

No objections here. The stimulation of desires that cannot be satisfied such that you keep coming back for more -- a deeper, more intense, more exciting whatever that leaves you wanting an even deeper, even more intense, even more exciting whatever is a great way to make money off of the innocent. You're giving a good list of examples and I believe I can get along with your definition of desire and its perversion.

I can say two places where I think controversy will arise though: "Identification-with", in a description, and the judgment of compatibility with reality, which actually gets at something similar to the appeal to nature (since appeals to our own nature are themselves appeals to what we are in reality). But even so I think this makes sense -- I'm not seeing any obvious contradictions here between this and what I've said so far.

Okay, I definitely agree that it gets more complicated when claims about human nature meet the moral sphere. Maybe I haven't been properly contextualizing the "nature" idea within the context of your thread on perversions. But I do think we have both agreed that perversions presuppose natures, and Epicurus is very much situated within that ancient nature-paradigm. — Leontiskos

We've agreed that perversion in general presupposes nature -- or at least that I can't think of another way of talking about perversion in general. And, yes, I still include the appeal to nature because that's what Epicurus does, and it's from this ancient nature-paradigm. But I wanted to explain why I prefer to avoid explanations from a things nature (not that it's forbidden, only preferable to avoid to the extent possible)

Fair enough. But to be precise, I don't think there is anything strange or controversial about the idea that a shark has a nature (a determinate form). — Leontiskos

I'd say that this is precisely what is controversial about interpreting Darwin in philosphical terms: creatures don't have an innate, fixed nature that makes them what they are, and in fact they are always morphing and changing and responding to the environment they find themselves within. The reduction of life to mechanism rather than teleology is a very strange and controversial, but rariefied, thought in the background for me.

Still, I'd say that it's a different sort of controversy from:

The controversy only arises when it comes to human nature and moral claims. I don't think we should throw out the idea that sharks have a determinate form because of that controversy.

So while I've gone some way to explain why hesitancy with respect to the justification by appeal to a things nature, I think we agree that these are two different controversies -- one deals with how to describe sharks and the other deals with how we should judge ourselves and others.

I think that's a good description of the problem. :up: — Leontiskos

Cool. :)

Right, there is a disagreement about human nature occurring here. Granted, Aristotle does not think that flourishing is impossible for a slave, but rather that they flourish in a different and inferior way. For Epicurus the goal of life is (more or less) equally accessible to all. In our modern day we would prefer Epicurus to Aristotle on the basis of egalitarianism, yet Epicurus' own account is presumably not based on a desire for egalitarianism. Presumably egalitarianism is just a happy accident of the theory which he sees to be true on independent grounds. — Leontiskos

Oh, certainly -- I don't want to contend that egalitarianism is the goal of Epicurus' philosophy at all (for one, note how his allowance of masters already offends our egalitarian notions that we're all special in our own way). Here my comparison is to ideas, and so there's historical work I'd need to do to further up this point, but at least with respect to the ideas: notice how the art of philosophy is not for the slave in Aristotle. It's for the master who will take care of the slave so that the slavish souls flourish within the social order. But for Epicurus even the philosopher is only a doctor, rather than at the height of the social ladder influencing the leaders of tomorrow such that society is good. Epicurus takes on the slavish souls and turns them into master souls, thereby directly countering Aristotle's theory that there are slavish souls by nature.

So, yes, Epicurus is more attractive to me due to various aesthetic attachments on my part. But in saying that Epicurus is responding to Aristotle I hope that there is something more substantive to that assertion than the mere things I find pretty. It's in the ideas that I mean (though there'd be more historical work that needs to be done if I were to make a factual demonstration between the person's Aristotle and Epicurus, or the institutions that competed for students)

You keep saying interesting incomprehensible things: Explain yourself! — unenlightened

Sorry about that. There's a thought I want to put down and it's raw enough that I'm not aware of all the holes in my thinking, or where I'm making an assumption or where I'm simply wrong. I appreciate your goading. And in truth I was wrong to use "...the usual way", because upon thinking through I'm not so certain that there's anything usual -- but the short summary of what I have in mind is the underlying assumption that we know what we're talking about when it comes to what is good.

As a meta-theory [anti-realism] forces the ethicist to evaluate ethics on something other than the usual.
— Moliere

What is the usual, and what is the other? I can guess on behalf of the realist that their usual basis for judging an ethical theory is whether or not it is true, absolutely or approximately.

When we know what we're talking about and we disagree we explain our beliefs and use cases to demonstrate why we believe what we believe is true. So in that manner I wish to use a case to demonstrate that we don't know what we're talking about when it comes to what is good.

Kant's moral theory and the axe murderer is a good case for what I mean: we have the Categorical Imperative, but we demonstrate that the CI is false because it forces one to tell the truth to the axe murderer. In response others have tried to modify the theory to a point that Kant had to come out and say you tell the truth to the axe murderer. So here's two interpretations of the exact same moral philosophy that derived from Kant's CI which allowed for lying in some circumstances and Kant's interpretation of the CI which doesn't. In this light people will say the act of lying/truth-telling to an axe murderer is the counter-example which demonstrates that one or the other theory is true or false and so you choose a normative theory on this basis, or they'll agree with Kant. (also worth noting that the form of the argument is the same when debating deontology vs. consequentialism, or other comparisons of normative theories on the basis of their truth)

The argument seems to consist in whether or not a moral theory can tell what action is the right one for all possible circumstances, much like we treat hypothetical scientific statements. For it to get off the ground we presume that we already know what is true with respect to the good; it's the theory which we judge to be true or false based on whether it accords with some examples which we judge by that basis of knowledge, which is whatever our intuitions are on what's right and wrong. The normative theory is supposed to make what is implicitly already known to everyone explicitly stated in philosophical terms. Then the process is one of generating examples that provide plausible reductios of the explicit to what is already known to be wrong. (side note: and note how easy this example could be dismissed by pointing out that Benjamin Constant was simply wrong, and Kant was right, so here we have an example of mundane human frailty to understand the moral Truth) 

For the anti-realist I think we have to find any other thing which is valuable about a system of ethical thought, but most importantly, an anti-realist will want to know what all normative theories would have one do in spite of them telling one to do different things. But the reason for this knowledge is not to demonstrate how one's version of right and wrong is true and the other's is false for this or that reason: having deontic inclinations doesn't mean reading Hume like some kind of scout from an enemy camp looking for points of entry because there's no hill, Truth, to die upon. Rather than there being a truth which justifies the explicit, the explicit is valued for itself as revealing a way people make these decisions in spite of the lack of a truth. What is it that Kant's CI values, other than truth? Individual choice, for one -- but also individual choice, writ large. How is it that a society is supposed to arise out of a large group of individuals who are each following their own maxims? Only if the individual maxims are harmonizable over the whole social sphere could that be possible, and so it is the foundation of his ethic -- individuals may choose between harmonizable maxims, and over time they'll come to choose the same harmonizable maxims (without the aid of his philosophy -- he's pretty explicit that he believes that the common man already knows what's good, and this is just a philosopher's toy). And that is the Kingdom of Ends, at least as I understand the theory. But for purposes of my demonstration I want to say I view these as attractive features of his moral philosophy, but not really true. Similarly the consequentialist has attractive features, such as its appeal to the sentiments and its caring about what our ethical beliefs result in. But on the whole I find it difficult to explain how the seemingly brightest minds of a society disagree on something so basic unless there was no truth to be found in the first place; then it makes perfect sense why such brilliant people would disagree on the matter. And given their habit to frame things in terms of truth the appeal to moral truth is understandable as just another habit of philosophers who like to frame things like this.

And if that's the case then it seems quite reasonable to believe that we know nothing when it comes to ethical matters. Does that mean we ought to throw out these claims to truth, then? Well, no and we do not know -- that'd be an ought, right? So maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't -- but either way, we are at least acting from ignorance, and "the usual way" seems to assume that we're not.  

But why? — Leontiskos

That is a thread-worthy question.

"Nature" is one of those concepts like "Freedom" -- it seems to explain a lot, but then it seems to explain a lot for a lot of people who disagree on what it is that it's explaining, and what it even means for us to explain something by reference to its nature. A lot of times we can get by with stipulation when it comes to the ambiguity of concepts, but "nature", like "freedom", does so much work in philosophy that even stipulation doesn't ward off confusion, miscommunication, and frustration.

I think that to judge that sharks need not have fins is to judge falsely. Fins are part of what a shark is; they are part of its nature. I think that if someone says a finless shark is just as much a shark as a normal shark, then they have very poor judgment, haha. — Leontiskos

I could get on board with this, just so long as the nature of a shark is not conceived merely as a matter of our own invention. It is discovery, not just invention, and it then follows that we can be wrong in our judgment about what constitutes a shark's nature. — Leontiskos

I'd say that to judgethe judgment that a shark needs to have fins is true or false is relative to a system of judgment about what a shark ought to be.

Nature, in the ancient world, is prior to the is-ought distinction or the naturalistic fallacy. It's interesting for this very reason, but it's also ambiguous. The appeal to nature is, I think, basically an ethical appeal -- or at least aesthetic. And further I'd say that there are no true ethical statements. "The shark ought to have fins" is false with respect to a judgment on its truth, though with respect to a system of beliefs about what ought to be we could judge it true -- but not in the same way that we judge "Sharks have fins" to be true.

This gets more contentious when it comes to things like human nature. Epicurus' appeal is to human nature, but I'd say that the appeal to human nature is a kind of fib that allows the game of ethical justification to get started. It's important to us, it's just not truth-apt.

Any appeal to nature will bring up these sorts of thoughts for me. There's a sense in which the appeal to nature is just to beg the question with respect to a tradition and disagreement over it is just disagreement over what beliefs we like others to have and enact. But in the ancient world this wasn't as explicit and so you get interesting uses that are not easy to untangle. So, if I can help it, I like to avoid using concepts like that which both lend themselves to confusion, and lend themselves to simply begging the question with a different phrase. (another reason to insist that the Epicurean is dogmatic on the ends of human beings being to live in a state of ataraxia)

But in that light, and with respect to Epicurean desire ...

****

The perversion of desire is this "building up" of desire. I'm not sure how else to say it, but the desire for food differs from the desire to eat a particular kind of food in a particular kind of way and to feel disappointment for not being able to eat that kind of food even though you have access to food, it's just boring. There's nothing wrong with variety, the wrong is in allowing your desires -- which "naturally" lead to an ataraxic life -- to lead you to an anxious life. Desires push and pull the organism towards its natural ends but the human desires are such that they can become greater than what an organism wants, and become what a human imagination wants and thereby become unsatisfiable.

Another highlight on the appeal to nature: I hope this shows how much Epicurus is responding to the Aristotelian conception of human nature, especially with respect to the ethical. Rather than biological creatures which can only become ethical at the height of the social ladder where every possible human capacity can be experienced and pursued and perfected you have every human creature which can live a tranquil life regardless of the place they find themselves within the city-state. Rather than greatness within a social role such that ethics isn't really what the many can pursue you have tranquility, a state of mind, which anyone can pursue. If the appeal to nature is alethic then which of these is true? For Aristotle you had slavish souls and master souls, but for Epicurus you had the master who performed the cure such that you became equal in his eyes.

I always figured Hegel's commitment to the state had to do with the lack of any extra state powers during his era. He is still living in the shadow of Westphalia and the apocalyptic conflagration that killed a significantly larger share of the German population than both World Wars combined. The state was elevated out of fear of the return to religious wars. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Makes sense to me. And also makes sense of Marx's agreement with Hegel, the notion of the "civilizing" tendency of the nation-state, and of capitalism.

Although I have to say I think part of the attraction of the state, from the professional philosopher's perspective, is that thought seems to rule. The philosopher teaches, the concepts spread, and the social form takes on the conceptual boundaries the philosopher taught. In a way it's a power fantasy.

But if Hegel had seen the failures of the state system in the World Wars, and moreover on climate change, global inequality, ocean acidification, recalcitrant multinational mega corps, and mass migration, I think he'd come around on the idea of things like the UN, EU, AU, etc. There is a tension in his philosophy. He wants to allow particularism, but then doesn't wholeheartedly embrace federalism because he wants the state to be an organic unity. I think this is a dynamic that plays out on many levels, individual vs society, region vs whole state, state vs union of states. Most philosophers focus on the individual vs society, I think Hegel is correct to also put emphasis on this higher level, even if he fails to totally resolve the issues.

I always took his point to be: "we are only fully free to explore our particularity in the organic, stable, harmonized whole," so in the end the two do support each other more than they contradict one another. — Count Timothy von Icarus

First I'd say that updates or rethinking of Hegel is always interesting and worthwhile. Perhaps he would have changed his stance. And regardless anyone whose a Hegelian now doesn't need to agree with him in every particular. Sublation gives a wide range of possible -- not just interpretations -- but extensions of his philosophy. That's why Marxists, Liberals, and Fascists can claim him! (The fascist I have in mind -- I'm assuming you're familiar with particular authors of the other two categories -- is the ghost writer for Mussolini's What is Fascism?)

Perhaps, in rejection of what I've said, there could be an anarchist interpretation of Hegel. My instinct there is that anarchists tend to hate big system philosophers, so it'd be a rare person :D. but possible. After all, if everything has a time and a place, and if the telos just is anarchy -- sort of like Marx imagined communism -- then maybe you could make it work.

The most natural reading of Hegel, for myself, is that he's a liberal, though. Just like Kant. In a way he provides the philosophy for the existence of organizations like the UN, in the same light as Kant's Perpetual Peace. It's the rational order over the entire human world that he desires. Perhaps the better perversion to suggest, sans-politics, would be irrationalism.

I think a perversion is a kind of privation, and a privation is an absence of that which is due. What is due depends on a thing's nature. So for example, a shark with a missing fin has a privation, but a man with a missing fin has only an absence. Without some notion of what should be, we cannot distinguish privation from absence, and "nature" supplies this notion.

But that a perversion is a kind of privation does not tell us overly much. There is still something unique about the special variety of privation that is a perversion. — Leontiskos

Heh. I can get along with this, but I'm anxious about relying on the concept of nature. When speaking of perversion in general I can't think of a way without the concept, but I'd relativize it to a system of evaluation, an articulated ethic. A shark missing a fin is only a privation with respect to some way of conceiving the shark. Else, it's an absence. It depends upon how we judge sharks.

Or perhaps the same thing: "Nature" supplies the notion, but we are the ones who fill out what "nature" consists of. "we" being the judgers.

Yes, it is perverse to use a hammer as a weapon. But perhaps it would be even more perverse to strangle someone with a stethoscope, for then that which was fashioned to cause health is being used to cause death. I think perversion is something like that. — Leontiskos

That's perfect! Not only using something for which it's not intended, like the hammer, but using it in a way that's in conflict with its intent. Also I'm finding thinking in terms of tools a little easier than the general account. Rather than dealing with the concept "by nature" the tool can be seen as having an intent. Like in the stethoscope example rather than saving lives the person is taking a life, which strikes me as an almost perfect inversion of the intent. Interestingly this inversion is not of the form of negation, like "A v ~A", but the concepts of saving a life and killing a life are semantically opposed: you can't do both at the same time.

I want to re-think Epicurean desire on this line, but I didn't have the time today. But I felt I owed you a post.

This, in turn, has me asking the general: What is perversion?

Of course it will be relative to the examples we're considering, so it's worth noting that answering the question isn't the same as answering "What is fire?" -- there is no object, perversion, which we are defining, but rather this is an aspect of the seer, the judger, the value-er. The comparison of values above should demonstrate this as even the object which becomes perverted changes depending upon the ethics.

But I see something common: perversion is when something becomes what it ought not be, but that it can be (I want to not say: "due to its nature", but that phrase gets at what I mean). Perversion requires a duality of the un-perverted to define it. It has to be either avoidable, or overcome-able, or at least defined by another value that marks the perversion. But it also has to be tied, in some sense, to the object of perversion. A human being in a dream turning into the Eiffel Tower is absurd, but not perverted. A human being becomes perverted because they are able to be perverted due to being a human being, having a duality which is at least contrary (here meaning that it's contradictory to both want and not want the same thing, but contrary if you go back and forth between them -- you both want and not want, but can only act on one or the other want at one time). In a similar way we might say the hammer becomes perverted when it's used as a weapon; that's certainly a possibility within its capacities, but the intent of the hammer is to hammer nails or pull nails out.

I want to drop "nature" in the account, but I'm thinking that what is natural -- what the seer sees as the natural place of the object of perversion -- is what helps understand perversion in this very general sense. (upon getting closer to an actual perversion, such as the examples I've worked through, we could probably drop "nature" in some cases, but in general that seems to be the only idea that works)


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The certainty of Goodness, that we are The Good Ones, is the target of my thinking. It's not just disagreement that brings me to believe in our ignorance of the ethical -- that would be preferable to the total silence on the ethical, the absolute lack of interest in ethical thinking due to our moral certitude. But this is just a way of thinking, and not a truth. I want to emphasize that again because I think it's the most natural philosophical plank in a dialogical ethic, and a dialogic ethic should be easy to see as preferable if we take Levinas' philosophy as a good.

But for me, and this is where I think I differ most significantly from Levinas (who reads to me as a moral realist): There is no truth to be proven, no fact to justify our actions, no tablet which gives us an excuse to forego thinking ethically. But I'd like to point out that this is actually better for a dialogical perspective because that means speaking with one another on what is right and wrong, and not simply arguing for the convictions we already hold and pursue.

One of the advantages of moral anti-realism is that you can say to yourself from the outset that none of these are true, and so the comparison must consist in something other than establishing which of them is true. As a meta-theory it forces the ethicist to evaluate ethics on something other than the usual.

So, four moral viewpoints to think through in contradistinction to one another: Epicurean, Nietzschean, Hegelian, and Christian. Interestingly they all value freedom, the difference there is in what freedom consists of. Before I meant to simply extend Epicurus' theory of desire, but now I'm thinking a good place for comparison to begin with is what each philosophy -- at least as we might render it here (I certainly don't think I have the one and only true reading) -- is what is perversion for each.

I believe I've covered Epicurean perversion.

Nietzschean perversion is nihilism. The last man -- nihilistic, socialistic, fulfilling simple desires and obtaining good sleep -- is the ultimate perversion of value; it's the attachment to value without struggle, without the pain that makes one stronger and more able. It's using value to satisfy the human being rather than treating value as an end unto itself which must be created.

What's funny about Nietzsche in our culture now is that I think we sort of live in a world of Nietzscheans who strive to create new things for others -- on the daily there's another table breaker proving that up is down and down is up and this novel approach is better than the bad old ways. The only thing that takes away from it being truly Nietzschean is that it's ultimately just for money, and so Nietzsche would of course hate it -- the ubermensch creates values for the sake of the values in the light of nihilism, to overcome nihilism, to overcome himself (and it is a himself in Nietzsche -- the feminine, throughout his philosophy, is also a kind of perversion that needs a whip). A modern Nietzschean would say to this:
“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.” -- and I think they'd be right. Nietzsche's moral order is on the whole unachievable by us humans. It requires the over-humans, the more-than-creatures to create values. Something like a Christ.

Christian perversion -- what isn't perverted in Christianity? The entire world is a perversion; some interpret that in a more literal sense, and some don't, but either way the world as it is -- before it has attained the Kingdom of God -- is the most perverted thing. Everything from the beginning of humanity is fallen, and it's only through the death of a God willingly taking on the sins of the world, offering a path of grace that a human being can rise above this perversion.

Hegelian perversion -- so I'd like to think -- is anarchy. Hegel's a funny ethical philosopher because he encompasses all values into a teleological order. So what could possibly be perverted, when everything has a time and a place? I put forward anarchy because I believe Hegel's vision of absolute freedom is the nation-state across the world. This would explain why there are Marxists, Liberals, and Fascists who all claim homage to Hegel: they all are politically dedicated to the nation-state. And the past, within Hegel, can be understood as slowly building towards the international order of states -- the maximum freedom -- but the modern anarchist is a perversion because they are against the telic order. On the whole I think perversion can be understood in each of the political traditions along this way: Marxists, Liberals, and Fascists each see one another as a perversion of their tradition, of the way a state ought to be structured. But for Hegel this is exactly what you'd predict and you'd be looking for the next sublation in the order of thought. But the anarchist sees no sublation, no telic order, no end. The anarchist simply doesn't want teleology or a state or a party. The anarchist demands freedom from teleology.

In listing these perversions what I'm noticing is that even the subject of perversion changes between them. For Epicurus it's desires which become perverted, at least as I'm arguing and rendering the philosophy here. For Nietzsche it's values which become perverted such that nihilism holds. For Christianity the subject of perversion is all of existence, which includes the human soul. And for Hegelian perversion it's the order and expression of the ideas in the social form which becomes perverted -- everything has a time and place, but all roads lead to Absolute Freedom.

Thank you for your response. You are correct that Lacan’s desire is incompatible with the Epicurean’s... I will not take sides here; I see this discussion as an opportunity to enhance my understanding — Number2018

Then we're in agreement on the opportunities this discussion has. :) Comparing and contrasting would help me in my understanding too.

There is no simple dichotomy for me, with a groundless desire as a lack from one side and a possibility of tranquillity and fulfillment from another. Both perspectives assume
an ahistorical, universalist nature of desire. Yet, for Lacan, any concrete desire co-exists and co-relates with the symbolic order and the primordial pre-conscious and unconscious settings (the mirror stage, etc.). He offers an elaborated modification of Freud’s theory of psychics so that an ultimate lack and ceaseless desire becomes one of the primary human conditions.

Hrrm... groundless desire isn't just a lack, though. It's the basis of this building up of desire. For example what begins as the fear of death becomes the desire for security becomes satisfied only by obtaining enough things to fulfill your security such that you are immortal -- this is a groundless desire. Groundless desire is impossible to fulfill for the kind of creature you are, and when we continue to pursue groundless desires they can have this sort of anxiety spiral due to them being unfulfillable in principle.

There are some desires that are fairly universal like this, like the fear of death, which I think gives the Epicurean account some measure of relevance in spite of historical change. I certainly don't think that one has faded, even if we are time-bound.

It's because there are desires people have which are not universal, though, that it's important -- in the Epicurean tradition -- to attend to your desires as they can also form these anxiety spirals. So I wouldn't read Epicurus as being entirely ahistorical, either. His belief in human nature strikes me as ahistorical, but there's also a practice that people attend to whereby they assess their desires which are not universal, but still arise, in order to pursue the ones which lead to a more tranquil life.

Certainly, we cannot clearly define human nature that stands independently from a concrete social situation. Even hunger and pain in certain circumstances can be experienced as satisfactory and positive. — Number2018

This is why I emphasize the dogmatic element in the philosophy: that which is satisfactory or positive and yet increases anxiety is an evil. Yet the fourth line in the four-part cure states "Pain is easy to endure", so pain is not an evil either. Hunger and pain are simple desires which can be easily satisfied, the one from eating, the other from waiting. And while you feel pain now it will go, and you'll even feel it again, and it will go away again. It's the anxiety about hunger and pain which is the evil, not the hunger and pain. And if you pursue hunger and pain to experience satisfaction, then as long as you are not anxious in that pursuit this is merely a natural but unnecessary desire.

Our emotional sphere is penetrated with social forces in such a manner that even the most intimate feelings cannot be separated from collective affective impacts. To state the opposite, one should assert the exceptionality of the chosen ethical and theoretical perspective. Paradigmatic examples of the Sadomasochistic desire as an exemplary perversion and the achievement of the state of tranquillity in an ashram or Enlightenment in a Buddhist monastery show the decisive role of a particular social constellation.

I think the Epicurean theory gets along here, as well. Epicurus formed communities so that he could intentionally work on the most intimate feelings of others so that they could live what he believed to be better lives. His theory of human nature is ahistorical, but it includes human sociality. A person had to be removed from the social milieu in order to cure them.

On the other hand, Baudrillard, Deleuze, and Guattari contend that the lack becomes the desire’s ultimate feature exclusively under the historical conditions of a capitalist society.

Care to say more on this?

The only interest I have in Epicurus is how I might adapt some of his ideas for myself. I am naturally inclined to many similar approaches - I am a minimalist. I have no interest in luxury. I have never chased ambition or status. I am mostly indifferent to food. This is I believe my authentic orientation. I can't speak for anyone else and, since I am not a very social person, the idea of any kind of an Epicurean community fills me with horror. — Tom Storm

Yeah I'm sure I'd not get along very well with the program either. Though I've lived in some intentional communities I did get along with, but they weren't dogmatic like the Epicurean community is (at least as I understand it and render it here).

I emphasize the dogmatic nature because I think it's the best way of seeing how the ideas are different, and thereby making them valuable as a distinct set of values. Our modern sensibilities would question tranquility from the outset, asking after another justification (or, what amounts to the same thing, demanding that we end our justification in freedom and authenticity of the individual), and it's this listless journey towards the already assumed ultimate foundation that I'm guarding against, while also wanting to maintain fidelity to the philosophy (since that's what makes understanding a philosophy valuable; it's that it's different and off the path we'd think of that gives it its value, at least to me).

On the whole I'd say that your interest is the right kind of interest to have. I don't think it makes sense to re-create these communities, for instance. But the ideas had a different life due to the communities, and it's that which I wish to preserve in thinking from them.

I hear you, but I think authenticity, being who you are, is a better path towards happiness than trying to live up to impossible standards, or following some else's plans for your life. There are of course limits to how far authenticity can take you. But anything can be made to look bad if taken to an extreme example. There big problem with authenticity is how do you determine who you really are? Therein lies the challenge. — Tom Storm

Here's where the dogmatic ideas can help, I think. There's a sense in which asking yourself who you really authentically are never produces an answer. I could really be either this or that. We come to embody conflicting desires. And if desire is how we normally decide, then the only choice between desires is through another desire -- conceptually what the dogmatic belief towards tranquility does is give a person who is floundering something to hold steady. After all it's not really the authentically healthy enlightened self-knowers which are asking things like "Who am I really?" (not that there are such beings), but people who are asking for some kind of answer. People like everyone, just to be clear on how many people I believe are authentically healthy enlightened self-knowers ;), but you hopefully see the point. Sometimes we are confident in who we are and have no problem. And sometimes we flounder, and so go back to the familiar answers.

Without community I think that this conceptual dogma is where we can start to get some cross-over between the ancient, dogmatic, monastic lifestyle where a master corrects a pupil, and the self-directed ethics of the modern world. In truth we'd always be free to let go of the dogma of tranquility. Why not? But, then, part of me says: I don't want to.

This might go some way to answering your objection here un:

Is this not a direct contradiction? As the therapist proverbially says, "the lightbulb has to want to change." — unenlightened

The lightbulb has to want to change, yes, but frequently the lightbulb wants to change and not to change, or to live a tranquil and simple life as well as an exciting and luxurious life. We frequently find ourselves in contradiction. If we simply don't want to change then, in a sense, we're already a step ahead because we are in unity with our desires. That's surely less anxiety-inducing than having desires which conflict, and so I think it'd follow that from an Epicurean perspective it's better to be in unity with luxurious desires which are satisfied than to be in conflict between luxurious and simple desires. There are people who want both danger and safety, and it's to them that the cure can speak to. I think what would eventually tip the scales in favor of the Epicurean ethic is fortune and fortune alone -- eventually the life of satisfying luxurious desires will come to anxiety if the person who pursues them was actually attached to them such that they were actually groundless, and their groundlessness becomes apparent in light of the inability to satisfy those desires.

But then this points out how different this way of thinking is. It's not even the luxurious desires which are evil but anxiety that springs from treating them as if they are needs when they are natural but unnecessary desires. A theoretical life which satisfied a set of luxurious desires as easily as a set of simple desires wouldn't really be an evil. It's because human life is subject to fortune, where we will have periods where we won't be able to satisfy our natural but necessary unnecessary desires, that the Epicurean advise to building a soul that's fine with the simple things in life gains its worth.

But, anyways, I thought this would go some way to addressing your charge of contradiction: we have contradictory desires, and so accepting oneself as a process for choosing which desire isn't contradictory on the part of the Epicurean, but on the part of the person who seeks a cure.

Attempting a relevant generalization here: The difference between this and Christian ethics might be that the Epicurean acknowledges a pupil's desires as a creature and then modify them such that they are more tranquil, whereas the Christian which emphasizes love acknowledges that human beings are fallen creatures, and its our capacity to love one another which overcomes this creatureliness.

(It seems a bit of a simplification, because there are other ways I could put it which emphasizes sameness, such as that right living leads to a tranquil life. It's interesting to me how different and the same these philosophies frequently are)

Is this not a direct contradiction? As the therapist proverbially says, "the lightbulb has to want to change."

But honestly, I don't understand much of what you are saying. I'd better be quiet. — unenlightened

I'm appreciating your contributions, and I thank you for having patience with my babblings. Bringing up Christian virtues in relation to Enlightenment virtues as did, and bringing that in relation to a reading of Nietzschean ethics has given me a good set of points to differentiate this from other ethical approaches.

It's perfect because Nietzsche, of all value systems, pretty squarely sits against Christian virtues -- at least in the regular, as-read way (there are Christian Nietzscheans, but they're like me: an odd bunch thinking through ethical problems).

So I'll gladly take the blame for a lack of understanding. I'm definitely groping in the dark here, and could use any feedback.

We can't make people take up 'better' or choices. I also don't see who is 'giving' anyone else freedom. People make their choices, the end. If they arrive at a personal understanding that they can do better and be more authentic, then great. But authenticity can't be mandated. — Tom Storm

On authenticity I agree. That obviously, almost by definition, cannot be mandated or forced. But to make sense of the perspective:

The Epicurean community is somewhat like a monastic community. It has its own set of rules and a social hierarchy. The relationship between master and student is very much a relationship between a doctor and a patient, so authority is presumed from the outset. It's a dogmatic philosophy: it's not the expression of the self or the finding of your authentic individuality which brings about happiness, but rather living in accord with your human nature. And the master of a community would be the one who intercedes, or doesn't, on the day-to-day life. Unlike a therapist-patient who goes on to live their own individual lives with sessions to figure out just what's what, the monastic community is always living together and that provides more than enough opportunity for the master to intercede.

That is, Epicurus kind of did have the power to make people make better choices, but just like a lot of the philosophical communities from back then it has a cult-like feeling to it in today's world. While I agree that you and I cannot make people take up better choices -- for one it makes me uncomfortable to even think in those terms, so I'd be pretty bad at it to begin with (but a drill sergeant, now... they'd be good at it, just towards different ends than a tranquil life) -- we can at least see that the conceptual value to the philosophy is not in authenticity, as we tend to believe is best. I'm giving leeway because I sincerely don't believe in as fixed a human nature as the Epicurean philosophy seems to, and so I believe people have to find these things for themselves. But it's not authenticity that brings about happiness (after all, we could authentically desire to be immortal, and pursue that, and it would cause anxiety because it's a groundless desire), but the pruning of desire such that one can be happy. (though authenticity does seem to be a thing we hold onto, so it relates.)


How does that sit with you?

That question suggests, (rightly I think) that perversion is in the seer more than the seen. That is, the first perversion is the cleaving of the individual such that they can stand in judgement of their own desires. And from that judgement comes the repression and then the projection onto the world of whatever is seen to be perverse. Perversion is the buck that is always passed and never stops. It is the human condition. The epicurean is naturally a connoisseur of perversion. Too much would be gross, but a little spice in your girls (or boys) ... — unenlightened

I think you're right to point out the Epicurean is a natural connoisseur of perversion. How else would Epicurus be able to identify perverted desire without being a connoisseur of desire and its possibilities? And I think you're right that it's the seer which identifies rather than it being an intrinsic property of desire (except in the extreme cases, like hunger or the desire to be immortal, which I'd say require a particularly motivated seer to see as anything but what they are).

Could this be read as another point that differentiates it from the moralities of self-transformation? The ethical sage is wise in the ways of perversion and so is able to not just live their own life, but even provide the cure to others such that they can live that life too. But that knowledge is not one of purity, or of changing oneself from a fallen to a blessed state. Rather it's accepting oneself as what one is and modifying desires to attain the desired desire of tranquility. So to continue with the desire of sexuality masturbation would actually be what a person needs to satisfy sexuality, and because it's easier to attain that than having a sexual partner there's no need to pine after something more exciting and pursue it to the point that you cannot have it. Rather it's better to masturbate and be satisfied with that if you cannot attain a sexual partner without causing anxiety for your life. If you can, of course, then that's a natural and unnecessary desire because masturbation is always right there -- but insofar that you don't build your life around satisfying your sexuality with a particular kind of person in a particular kind of way such that you make your desires subject to fortune then there's nothing wrong there. It's not the particular action which is right or wrong, but rather all the desires around action and the state of mind we obtain by living a certain way. (and also this should go some way to demonstrating how this ethic really is an ethic against love as a central motivation -- it's not a universal love of others, or the love of an individual, which brings about a good life. Those are things which are nice, but not necessary, for a good life)

I'm not sure it's right to put this as a 2nd order desire because I don't think it's that rationalist. There's something deeply irrational to the appeal to human nature, at least in relation to our notions of the autonomous self making choices. The perversion of the individual standing in relation to their own judgments like they can judge them as separate from the self -- I don't think that Epicurean philosophy makes this mistake. It speaks of ordering desires for a particular kind of life, but it's always bringing it back to the kind of creatures we are. And the kinds of desires we have, before the cure, naturally lead to anxiety.

Now if there is truly no human nature then the philosophy is a bit of a fib. If one believes that the Christian way of life will transform people to be better than they are born to be -- or any variation on that theme, which is common enough (It's the warped wood theory of human nature combined with a notion of a cure for the soul) -- then the Epicurean philosophy is anathema as well. In fact I think this could go some way to explaining how it became so unpopular. Stoicism, with its emphasis on the life of the mind, could be married to Christianity, but Epicureanism -- with its emphasis on the human life here and now -- brings about more conceptual tensions.

Well... anyways, those are the thoughts that come to mind. This is very much an area where I'm exploring without answer.

I believe instead that the ethical dilemma we face is not that of recognition vs reification, self-transcendence vs self-interest, the arbitrary conservative thrust of the lure of the familiar vs the compassionate embrace of otherness. When we seem to fail to recognize and maintain the other‘s autonomy this is not a retreat into self but, on the contrary, an experiencing of otherness which is too other to be intelligible. For Gallagher justice is maintaining the autonomy of the other, as if one first glimpses this autonomy and then decides not to honor it. But the other's autonomy can only exist for me to the extent that I can integrate it intelligibly within my way of life, which is itself the ongoing production of a collaborative community. The failure to coordinate harmoniously among competing realtional intelligibilites results in the appearance of injustice, as though there were an intention on the part of one of the parties not to recognize an aspect of the other.

However, it is not autonomous content that we strive to maximize, but intelligible process, and intelligibility is ontologically prior to the actions of an autonomous subject who recognizes or fails to recognize others. When there is disagreement between the victim and the alleged perpetrator about whether an injustice has indeed been committed, who determines, and how is it determined, that someone is closing off another's affordance space and eliminating their autonomy? If it is intelligible ways of going on that are being protected, then from the vantage of the ‘perpetrator', what is being excluded, closed off and eliminated is not a particular content (the other's affordances) , in the service of reifying one's own autonomy. On the contrary, the aim is to exclude from a system of practices that which would render it nonsensical and deprive it of coherent meaning. In other words, from the vantage of the so-called perpetrator, the practices of exclusion and elimination are in the service of rendering justice by preventing the degradation of meaningful autonomy in general.

As Ken Gergen(1995) states:

“... groups whose actions are coordinated around given constructions of reality risk their traditions by exposing them to the ravages of the outliers. That is, from their perspective, efforts must be made to protect the boundaries of understanding, to prevent the signifiers from escaping into the free-standing environment where meaning is decried or dissipated. In this sense, unfair or exclusionary practices are not frequently so from the standpoint of the actors. Rather, they may seem altogether fair, just and essential to sustain valued ideals against the infidels at the gates.” — Joshs

Good and interesting stuff. There's a sense of Levinas where I can see it as being as unrealistic as the Epicurean mode of life, and then there's a sense in which I think its phenomenology expresses the beginnings of ethical desire very well. So a reading up against this is just what I need for thinking through what I've often found to be a kind of terminus without answer. To put it in plainer terms I think what Levinas gets at is the conceptual limit of ethics -- that it cannot be defined in terms of an intelligible order built by ones' self alone. I'm not sure I'd say that Otherness is a warm embrace in that, but rather that this recognition of alterity is the beginnings of ethical thought. After all, if we were really all the same inside then couldn't the philosopher, at least theoretically, build an ethical system from afar while observing human nature through history, psychology, anthropology, and so forth? But if we're not, then we actually need to listen to one another to get there.

In the Elements of Philosophy of Right Hegel rejects the idea of freedom simply being the proper prioritization of the passions and ranking of actions, which I think you see in Aristotle and Epicurus to some extent. This is at best a partial freedom because it is still always going to be determined from without to a great extent. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So there's interesting points of consonance and dissonance that I perceive here between Hegel and ancient ethics, at least as we're talking about those two things here. Autarky, in particular, is a goal of Epicurean philosophy -- which gets along with notions of freedom. Further the notion of the invulnerable man gets along with the notion of absolute freedom you present.

What's funny, though, is that both Aristotle and Epicurus rely upon notions of human nature in order to make their case. In a way you could say that this is not determined from without, but from within -- but this is where I see a strong difference in the approaches. The enlightenment-era philosophers will speak in terms of will -- and so first and second order desires make sense -- but the ancient philosophers will speak in terms of nature.

These could be read in harmony if we chose to find some way to speak of the social freedom you speak of in terms of human nature, but obviously they don't need to be read in harmony. And what you say here points out a good point of tension: living in accord with your nature is seen as the highest freedom in Epicurus. You obviously can't will yourself to not be what you are, or at least if you do so you'll cause yourself unnecessary anxiety. But then the Enlightenment-inspired notions of desire speak of a willing subject rather than a species-being which you can live in accord with. (though if we're to be technically correct it's worth noting here that both are a kind of fib that isn't really true or false, but rather is the meaningful background upon which ethical justification is built)

Now above, Paul talks of being "dead in sin," but this is not a biological death. It's a death of personhood that is restored by Christ, the Logos. In a more symbolic reading of how the Logos quells sin and "casts out the Legion within," we approach the more rationalist formulation in Hegel, although we lose something as well.

I've read a lot of Hegel and I think Wallace is spot on in many respects. The idea is that we become free by going "inwards and upwards" ala Saint Augustine is stronger in Plato though. There is a reaching beyond proximate causes that make us their effects, towards self-determination. And to the extent that we transcend our boundaries, reaching out in rationality and dissolving love, we are free.

But then descriptions of Hegel or Plato as pantheists are completely wrong, as are descriptions of them as "anthrotheists." The point is that we are only deified to the extent we are self-determining, free, and we are only free to the extent we transcend, and we only transcend to the extent that we are intellectually determined by rationality and emotionally determined by an open love.

And this seems actually closer to more orthodox religion, Rumi, Saint Paul, etc. than many forms of "philosophical religion." It's the same sort of transcendent attitude you see in "God is love," "God is in us," "living through the will of God," "Christ living in us/us living in Christ," which is smattered across Saint John, Saint Paul, and even to a degree Saint Peter's writing.

Absolute transcendence is crucial for the fullest sort of freedom because to have something that is outside one's self is crucially to be defined by that thing. But if one transcends all boundaries then there can be full self-determination. And I think you see a bit of this intuition in Shankara too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I quote here because I believe you're demonstrating the difference here strongly. Autarky is the ability to be self-sufficient as the human being that you are, but absolute freedom, absolute transcendence is this ethical goal to be beyond what one is. It's an ethics of self-transformation rather than an ethics of being-at-home, or something like that. (obviously these are terms of art here)

A woman's desire to bear and raise a child. I don't know of a male philosopher who looks at this seriously: yet it's how the species continues, the heart of the matter. Pleasure/pain cannot account for these desires, or so it seems to me. There is something marvellous involved: the embrace of pain and confinement to enable something else; the desire to create another, to recognise and love that other and to find fulfilment in both the caring for that other, and the eventual letting go of control. — mcdoodle

In terms of the division here I'd put that in the natural and unnecessary desires -- it's natural to want children, but one doesn't need children in order to live a tranquil life (or, it's a groundless desire to want to bare a child if you're unable -- you can still raise children, but the desire to bare a child will never be satisfied). Though I'll go half-way here and agree that Epicurean desire doesn't make sense of the desire for children, which do not bring about a tranquil life, but do bring about fulfillment for some people. I think this point can be generalized, even -- often times people find dangerous, painful, irrational, etc. desires satisfactory, and that satisfaction is not the satisfaction of tranquility. The Epicurean ethic would simply say these desires are allowable insofar that you don't pursue them to the point that they cannot be satisfied (or, perhaps, this is an interpretation of the ethic with respect to this desire)

Sado-masochism. In s/m behaviour a high degree of pain may be the greatest pleasure. And the ethical approaches to such behaviour involve, as the Count outlines in another context, the second order desire: How shall we enact our desires, that will involve being hurt or hurting, in a way that acknowledges and indeed privileges the other? After all, the enactment of such desires on a first order basis would be no more than narcissism, and cruelty. — mcdoodle

Here's where I think Epicurus' theory of desire shines -- it's not a theory of desire which is built along pain/pleasure alone; it has a tri-partite structure to help sort out which pleasures one ought to pursue. Sadomasochism is a desire some people find fulfilling, but do they find it tranquil? I'd say that depends on the individual. It could bring about tranquility, but it could also be a perverse desire in the technical sense where you can achieve tranquility through modifying desire rather than pursuing s/m -- but if you don't have that choice, if you're "anchored" lets say to sadomasochism, then surely pushing against yourself would also cause anxiety -- and the desire to not be s/m could be the real cause of anxiety, when a person may be able to satisfy that desire without an anxious circle of desiring-to-not building up into a release that itself becomes the object of desire.

So to classify the example: I think sadomasochism would fit within the category of natural and unnecessary desires, and could be either a perverted desire in the sense that it becomes groundless, or it could just be a quirky desire that's natural in the sense that it belongs to the person as they are, and unnecessary in that it's not needed to continue life and ought be foregone if it brings about anxiety.

What I believe myself to be adding is a kind of sub-category to the natural and unnecessary desires: there are the ones which are not perverted (can be satisfied) and there are the ones that are perveted (cannot be satisfied). While I think the always groundless desires (like the desire for immortality) probably do hold for all people, it's this middle category in-between the necessary/natural and the always groundless desires where most of our psychological wonderings sit. This is the place where we cause our own problems and pains through the very things we believe will relieve those pains, but excising the desire is a more certain way, at least, of attaining the general ataraxic temperament.

I start off taking an analytic approach to these questions, but it seems to me Levinas' explorations of our encounters with the other offer great insights into how we can resolve the analytic problems that arise. — mcdoodle

Here we agree. It's so good. Unfortunately I find it hard to express because of its phenomenological form of expression. It's like it gets at a truth that I find hard to express in any other way.

For Lacan, desire is never fully satisfied. Any material or ‘natural’ need requires articulation and recognition demanded from another. After transferrence onto the general form, desire bears on something other than the satisfaction it can bring. The particularity of a need assumes an irresolvable lack that transcends the given situation and generates a ceaseless sense of incompleteness. Lacan entirely transforms the perspective on transgression and perversion. — Number2018

First I'm pretty much taking your word on Lacan here. I've read people influenced by him but never took that plunge. With that being said I'd say the natural and necessary desires would stand out in Lacan's theory of desire, which are re-occurring due to the nature of life but satisfiable. But I suspect that Lacan would take these facts of hunger and thirst and say that due to their reoccurrence they are never fully satisfied. Or, perhaps, just that we have reoccurring desires is enough to generate a ceaseless sense of incompleteness.

In which case I think it'd be safe to say that Lacan's desire runs orthogonally to Epicurean desire. If desire is never satisfiable, if there's is always a lack and a sense of incompleteness, then the Epicurean cure is a fraud. You'd be making the desire for desire itself a groundless desire which cannot be satisfied.

But this is where I think the appeal to nature -- even though it's fallacious! -- is actually a strength. Running along with the philosophy as I did with Sadomaoschistic desire: Surely if the goal is tranquility then building up desires about desire would result in anxiety if our desires about desire lead us to desire things which cannot be satisfied. But if you, instead, come to live with your own nature -- in this case a ceaseless sense of incompleteness due to the nature of desire as a lack -- you can come to see that it's just a little bit of pain, and that pain isn't all that bad to deal with after all. The pain will come again, and so will go away, and the pleasure will fade away, but will come about again.

I can’t speak to perversion and desire. But I am confident that most people don’t know what they want and their active pursuits and ostensible meaning are derived through goals provided by enculturation and marketing. The person who has reflected and worked to transcend these has a better shot at happiness. I suspect this is close to Epicurus. — Tom Storm

For Epicurus there's a definitive cure, and so he takes it upon himself to do the enculturation and marketing so that people will have the right wants. It's probably the thing that makes his philosophy the most obscure and strange from our way of thinking today -- we'd say a person has to come to that conclusion on their own, Epicurus would say that this is like giving a person with a broken bone the opportunity to learn how to set a bone; it might happen, and those who figure it out probably do feel good about figuring it out, but it's a cruelty if you see things as he does. (I've never been able to take that extra step, so I don't quite see things like that. But I can articulate the viewpoint)

Basically if we're confident that most people don't know what they want, and we know a set of wants which produce happiness, then why bother giving people the freedom to hurt themselves when it's ignorance which is the culprit of their misery?
 

Life is perverse. It consumes itself in renewing itself. Mind would like to rise above life, but does so only in self-denial - aka love. — unenlightened

Is the consumption of life to preserve life a perversion, or can you see it as a natural flow which can become perverted? At least, I'd like to suggest that love isn't the only way out of the conundrum of desire (but still one of the ways); Epicurus doesn't point to a path of love which transcends life, but rather a mode of desire where we live with the flow of contraries which are interdependent upon one another. It's more like a pruned nature for the purpose of living happily -- and the perversion is the recognition of human desires tendency to want more than what makes a person happy, by their own nature.

Yeah... I agree.

No! Not even close. I've been nervous to express myself because I feel like I'm in this in-between place: not directly involved in the conflict, but I know enough about the conflict that I know my country is involved. My sympathy comes from having met a guy who was born in Gaza. He lived in Wichita but would return to Gaza to visit family. One time he took me to a conference on the conflict with a group of Palestinian peace activists. That's where most of my knowledge of the history comes from -- these were peace activists in the US because they recognized how the US is involved in their struggle, and they did it through speaking about the history and talking about solutions, in spite of our darker impulses.