 Remember, key to Epicureanism is the idea that we take natural science and materialistic science and empiricism and so forth, and we draw from that ethical conclusion. We use our empiricist and materialist science to remove fear of gods, fear of death, fear of pain, fear of having unfulfilled desires. Once we philosophically remove those sources of pain and anxiety, then happiness, prosperity, success in a word eudaimonia will follow and does follow. And we know that just like doctors know that following a certain treatment will relieve a certain disease. We've done it, we've had lots of successful students, just sign on the dotted line and everything will be fine. Now, so pleasure. Pleasure is the overall end, the most important concept in the whole system, so we need to talk about what pleasure is. Now, it's defined by two negative terms. Lack of pain in the body or apnea, so not suffering pain in your limbs or in your internal organs or that sort of thing, and lack of distress or anxiety or being upset in the mind or the soul. So, pleasure is those two things, is constituted by not having pain in the body and not having distress or anxiety in the mind. If bodily pains are removed and if anxiety and distress is removed, then you will naturally be in a condition of pleasure and joy, and you will enjoy life. What stops you from enjoying and having a pleasant life is that those, that natural state gets interrupted. That's the state you should be in, and you should have been in all along. But it's because confusions and so forth got introduced and you started pursuing other goals and thinking other things were important to your happiness. Or you started suffering from bodily pains that were outside of your control that you're just not as happy as you could be. And furthermore, the removal of this pain and distress constitutes the upper limited pleasure. That's the maximum highest pleasure one could ever get if all of those pains and anxieties could be removed. Once you removed all of that, what would happen is you would be in a state of joy and pleasure and then you could vary your experiences, and there would be some value to doing that, like not always eating chocolate ice cream but having vanilla ice cream every once in a while or pistachio ice cream. Yes, it's all enjoyable, but there is something about having some variation. Not that I ever turn chocolate down, just sometimes I like to have something else. So it is when you've actually got the highest state of happiness, these things aren't adding more and you're getting more and more happy. Like if you just ate more ice cream, you'd be even more happy. If one ice cream cone is good, then 50 or 100 must be good, right? No, there's no way to increase beyond a certain point. And that point is where pain and anxiety is totally removed. And so the final and ultimate goal, chosen for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else according to them, is pleasure. And correspondingly the thing we most avoid and that we're trying, and the greatest bad for us, is pain. Okay? So any question about the definition? There'll be further definitions and divisions of these things, yeah? All right, reframing from taking butter and also like enduring somewhat a little bit of a pain just to avoid a deeper pain. Is that sort of like the same concept that you mentioned right there with the 50 ice creams? So, yes. The reason we don't eat 50 ice creams even if we could is because it would actually cause more pain. So even if it was pleasant and sweet on our tongue on the 50th one, and that would be a kind of pleasure, and insofar as it's a pleasure, it would be a good thing, but it wouldn't nearly be worth the pain of the indigestion and not to mention other health problems, cholesterol problems or whatever that would come from eating that much ice cream. And, but by the way, those pains are the only reason not to do that. There's no moral reason why you shouldn't keep eating as much ice cream as you want. It's just that at some point it's not pleasant. And the same thing goes for pain. You should voluntarily undergo certain pains because it will help us avoid greater pains later. Okay? Like it's really painful to go to the dentist, okay? But if you don't, and you know, you don't get that root canal taken care of, then it's going to be much greater pain later. So it's not that you avoid any pain whatsoever, any pain, and you only go for whatever is just on the surface pleasant. You actually have to make a calculation about what's going to be the most pleasant overall. And really that comes down to what's going to be the least painful overall. Now notice that that is quite a bit different than aerostipin or serenaic treatment where really what you should do is, you know, oh god, you got to go to the dentist? Forget that. Let's just go to the bar instead. You know, that's going to be painful. Let's just, let's get some pleasurable experiences going here. Maybe masturbating will take care of that pain in your mouth, you know? And so they don't seem to have a means of making a kind of calculation, and whereas the Epicureans want to introduce the idea that you can do this. Okay, now, and so that's a powerful idea, but there are big, big problems with it as well, as we'll see. But that's quite right, that it's not take every pleasure immediately as it comes along. That's what we associate with aerostipin and hedonism. You see an opportunity for pleasure? Go for it. Like, what are you all doing sitting here right now? Doesn't that look fun to go ride a skateboard or something? That, and whereas this is no, no, you should really think about it. It's probably worth going through that very, very painful experience of being lectured at by Monty Johnson, because that's going to allow you to avoid a lot of pains later, like unemployment and failure in school and spad grades and things like that. Okay, so this is, this has got, this is a bit more complicated of a system, which has got certain advantages, but certain disadvantages as well. There's something about aerostipin and hedonism that this, that this doesn't capture. Okay, now here, here is the basic argument they give, insofar as they think one needs to give an argument. Every animal, as soon as it's born, automatically seeks pleasure and rejoices in it, and automatically shuns pain as the highest evil, and avoids it as much as possible. And this is pretty easy to demonstrate that small babies, animals, humans, that they like pleasant things and they don't like painful things, although don't experiment with the latter too much, that would be immoral. But you can demonstrate that children avoid pain, for example. And according to them, this is behavior that sort of reveals what nature is telling us we should be like. Okay, and it doesn't just reveal to it as like psychologists that study infant behavior, this is something we've experienced and we were already like when we were in that condition. What happened is we later got corrupted by other notions about what it would be good to do, and especially in our society denouncements of pleasure and claims that you should be doing other things and you should be seeking excellence and glory and ambition and success in other terms and things like that. But all of that came later before any of those artifices and corruptions were introduced. You knew what to do, which was go for pleasant things and avoid painful things. And this is just instinctual. Reasoned proof seems unnecessary and inappropriate here. This is something that's true that we just perceive by the senses. We don't have big debates about whether fire is hot or snow is white or honey is sweet. It's like if you don't believe me, taste it. See it's sweet and then we don't have an argument about it. It's something you just need to experience. So let's not have an argument about whether pleasure is good. You know pleasure is good. Everything you do is in pursuit of pleasure and basically always has been. And you can just feel that it's good. Okay? Yeah? This might be a little nifty, but when you were talking about... About what philosophy is all about, so I'd be glad to hear that. When you were talking about the ice cream, I started thinking about self-harm and eating disorders. And some people, when they have mental pain, they cause themselves physical pain in order to lessen their mental pain. So then if the point of pleasure is absence of bodily pain and mental pain, would causing yourself physical pain prioritize the mental happiness or if you're trying to cause yourself better mental happiness by causing yourself physical pain? Yes. So first of all, those actually create some really difficult problems for Epicureanism. So the case self-harm of like somebody cutting themselves to cause themselves pain and yet the psychological explanation seems to be that they're getting some kind of pleasure or relief from it. Okay? So that they're getting relief from anxiety or a mental pain. But how? Because it seems difficult to explain in a system why somebody would cause themselves pain, right? The system says nobody likes to do that. Everybody is repelled by pain. And that seems clear and that's what makes this that kind of pathology difficult for anyone to explain, for any psychological theory to explain, but especially them. And in general, masochism. So if it's really true that there are people who enjoy pain, that is they get pleasure out of what looks like pain, that's a huge difficulty for the system. It should be obvious what we want and what we pursue and what causes pleasure and what causes pain. It's supposed to be very clear, but if it's true that these people really enjoy pain, then it's a difficulty. But it might be that we need to re-describe what's happening is that they're not enjoying pain, but there's something about the whole setup in which the pain is created that is pleasant. For example, this is a power dynamic situation and that it's giving them some sort of mental pleasure to play a role or whatever in an S&M scenario or something. And then you would try to explain that as being a pursuit of some kind of pleasure. It looks like, in which case, you might be able to assimilate it to this theory, but greater problems might still follow from that. Now, Epicureans have a view about using mental pleasure to distract us from physical pain and that's supposed to be part of Epicurus' own biography towards the end of his life. He was suffering from extremely painful kidney stones and you might think this is really bad for your philosophy because your philosophy says pleasure is the whole point, bigger and massive amounts of pain. And he said, but I can, through doing philosophy with my friends and being visited by my friends and family and recollecting the pleasure that we had, outweighs that pain. Now, that's interesting to think that that could happen and there might be something to that. What's so interesting about the case that you mentioned with self-harm and that sort of thing is that it seems to be inflicting physical pain to relieve mental pain and that's sort of analogous but an entirely different phenomenon. So I think I have to say that those cases are very difficult for this and I think it's the kind of thing one could research in this class as to get further on, to try to figure out whether those things can be explained by a psychology of pleasure and pain or not and I'm not sure that Epicureanism can accommodate it. Because, as I was just saying, one thing they do is stress just how obvious it is that everyone likes ice cream, right? Or everyone likes people that don't must be sparing themselves some later kind of pain or of course it's possible for tastes to vary to some extent but not to a hugely, to a great extent. This all should be fairly clear. Now, so why again do some people avoid pleasure? They do it not because pleasure is pleasant but because they don't know how to pursue pleasure rationally and so bring on themselves great pain. So for example, why aren't we all doing heroin right now? It would be really pleasant, right? It would bring us some pleasure. Well, it's because we don't know how we could do that and keep maintaining the pleasure that comes from that and it would rather rapidly descend into something that was painful and because of the addiction and so forth and we would begin feeling more pain just not having it and it would give us less and less pleasure each time and the dependency on it and the expense and the time that it took to deal with it would all cause other problems that would be even more and more painful. So some people avoid pleasures that they could otherwise get and it's not again because there's anything wrong with the Epicurean argument that everybody likes pleasure but it's just that they're not clear how they could enjoy that pleasure and not have some other pain. Just as no one loves pain because it's painful and this is the point we were just calling into question but here's their view. People only enjoy pain because some other good ensues from it. Like the expression, no pain, no gain doesn't mean pain is a great thing. It means you should be willing to undergo pain in order to gain something else like physical health or fitness or strength or whatever that is ultimately more pleasant to have and nobody just loves getting surgery like dental surgery or something like that but they'll do it in order to avoid greater pains and so this brings us to a general principle of how we select pleasures and pains and the basic method is highlighted here. Reject those pleasures or forego those pleasures when this will produce greater pleasures later and select or endure pains, be willing to undergo them when this will enable you to avoid other worst pains and you can apply that principle in every case and it will allow you to decide whether you should indulge in that particular pleasure or not or whether you should accept that pain. I think that this is the best appeal to the human reason because the human reason can do this pleasure or it's good or it's not good. That's correct? So I mean this type of appeal to the human reason. Well, yes, but it's not even, it's barely appealing to me. It's more appealing to sensation. If it feels good, do it. Yes, you have to think of the longer term consequences and some things feel really good but result in a lot of pains later and some things are really, really painful right now but are going to allow you not to have a lot worse pain and so you have to use reason to make those calculations but the reason is being put in the service ultimately of a sensation or a feeling so it's not even, reason has an instrumental value here for getting a feeling. Not that I should have certain kinds of feelings or certain mental states so that I can reason but the whole point of reasoning is just so that you're in this state of removing, you can remove bodily pains and remove anxiety. Otherwise you don't need to reason. Once you remove those things and you're not anxious about stuff and you're not experiencing hunger, thirst, cold and other bodily pains, then you don't need to reason. You just kick back on the beach or whatever or hang out with friends at a party and then that's what life is about. You don't need then to go in, Plato would say no, then we would need to start figuring out geometrical problems and the theory of forms and all this stuff and Epicureans would say no, we'll just go to a birthday party instead. It is a very rational principle in fact deceptively simple in its structure. In fact it's fairly hard to figure that out. Do I get more net pleasure by suffering through this class or by skipping class and going and hanging out with my girlfriend or something? That might be hard to figure out actually. I might be making the wrong choice by showing up and teaching this class right now. I think I'm making the right choice but I don't get everything right. This is a very simple philosophy but its ramifications are very complex. It's hard to understand quite easily what pleasure and pain are. It's hard to understand what current pleasure is and what subsequent pain is. Yes, it's very difficult. That's why Aristotle said it's so difficult that just forget about happiness. Forget having some end beyond just immediate pleasure because that we know we can figure out. Whether anybody can actually figure out how to string it together to create overall happiness in life, who knows? We still don't of course know that. Look up psychological definitions of happiness. There's a thousand or ten thousand of them. Look at studies on what produces happiness. Go find me what actually produces happiness. If we scientifically had that all figured out we'd all just be doing that right now. We'd all just study that science and pursue that. There'd be no point in doing anything else. But there's great difficulties when you get into the details. But this is meant to simplify those difficulties as much as possible with still retaining an idea that there is something like an overall happiness of life. If you get any further reduced from this then you're in a condition like Aristipan, serenaic hedonism. Okay, now crucial, distinguish two kinds of pleasure. One, the one that is most obvious, the quick, sweet, agreeable stimulation of the senses. We're going to call this kinetic pleasure. For example, when I'm hungry and I eat, it's pleasant. When I'm thirsty and I drink water, then it's pleasant. Even better, if I'm thirsty and I drink beer, it's even better, right? When my hands are cold and I warm them up, that's very pleasant. Okay? And by the way, this is a general tip. If you want to have more pleasure for lunch or do it tonight for dinner, right? Everybody will be having dinner tonight. You want to enjoy it more, then become more hungry beforehand. Take exercise beforehand, work your hunger up, and then you will enjoy the food more. If you're not really hungry and you're just like, I've got to get this out of the way so I can get onto this to tennis practice or whatever, then you're not going to enjoy it as much. But if you become hungry, you're going to love it even more and you're going to get more pleasure out of it. And that's how these kinetic pleasures work. The more the thirstier you are, the more pleasant it is to drink, right? Sort of like the hornier you are, the more pleasant it is to have sex. The colder you are, the more pleasant it is to warm up. Now, that is categorically different from another kind of pleasure, which we're going to call static pleasure. And that is the pleasure that we naturally feel when all bodily pain and all mental anxiety is removed. And again, that's the maximum state of pleasure it's possible to be in. To be in a state, a pleasant state. Now I'm not just enjoying this drink because I was thirsty or enjoying this because I had a caffeine deprivation and now it's restoring my caffeine level, so I'm enjoying it. If I didn't have any of those deprivations, I wasn't thirsty, I wasn't hungry, I got everything I need, I'm exactly where I want to be, hanging out with my students, everything, the weather is as good as it could possibly be. Then I've got a state of pleasure. And the second one is the goal, is what the philosophy is aiming to produce. And the other kind of pleasure has a role in producing it because clearly, if I don't ever eat, then I'm going to become very hungry and that's going to be very painful, including starvation and things like that. But even just becoming too hungry, you don't enjoy life, it hurts the enjoyment of life. In a happy state, if one's hungry or thirsty or cold or and so on. Similarly, there are two kinds of pain. One, they say acute pain, sharp pain. They make a claim that it is necessarily of short duration.