Meta-ancient-philosophy

Someone wrote to ask me for some things to read about the current state of the discipline of ancient philosophy. This is not easy. Other than Barnes' 'Bagpipe music', which might well put anyone off the whole business, I could think of the following:

J. Annas, 'Ancient philosophy for the twenty-first century', in B. Leiter ed. The future for philosophy (OUP, 2004), 25-43

H. Lesser, 'The history of ancient philosophy', in O. Leaman ed. The future of philosophy: towards the twenty-first century (Routledge, 1998), 14-24

And not much else. To be honest, I am not sure this is the best place to start thinking about the discipline. Much better just to get on and read some ancient philosophy (start with some Plato and work backwards and forwards from there) with some helpful guides. The Cambridge Companions are often a good place to begin (I would say that...) and there are some other interesting single-authored works like this one.

Any other suggestions?

False pains

I’m re-reading some of Fred Feldman’s Pleasure and the good life (Oxford, 2004).

In chapter 5 Feldman is wondering about the sort of objection you might raise against hedonism on the grounds that it may not be able to account for our intuitive dislike of ‘false pleasures’ (pp.109-14). ‘False pleasures’ here, roughly speaking, are those that are predicated on some false belief or taken in some false object. Imagine someone who falsely believes that he is well-respected; he might take pleasure in this belief. But we might be uncomfortable if hedonism cannot distinguish between the value of this pleasure and the value in a similar pleasure taken in a similar true belief. Feldman then tries to offer a hedonism that does respect this difference in value.

There are some interesting questions to raise about this, but the specific point that interested me today is the following comment (p.111):

In order to state this modified version of the theory, we will need to say something about pain, too. Shall we say that pain taken in true objects differs in intrinsic value from similar pain taken in false objects? I am puzzled by an apparent disanalogy between pleasure and pain here. On the one hand, I can readily sense the attractiveness of adjusting the value of pleasures for truth. Pleasure taken in things that are true does seem somehow better than equal pleasure taken in things that are false... But on the other hand, I cannot readily see the corresponding attractiveness of a similar adjustment of the value of pain for truth.

The thought is this: the pain caused to a person by the false belief that he is thought an idiot by his colleagues is not distinguishable in value from the pain caused a similar but true belief. We may want our pleasures to be true rather than false. Do we want our pains to be false rather than true? It depends why we want true rather than false pleasures.

If what makes a true pleasure better is some thought about being right or about the intrinsic value of knowledge then I suppose we might indeed prefer true pleasures to false pleasures but then also I think we should also prefer true pains to false pains. I should like, if I am pained, to be pained justifiably, truthfully, at some true object, and so on.

On the other hand, if what makes a true pleasure better than a false one is some lingering concern that the false pleasure is, by being false, less reliable or that it might easily be dissipated then I would answer differently. The examples that are used to generate a preference for true pleasures tend to stipulate that the person taking false pleasure ‘would be miserable’ if the falsehood were revealed. Even when it is stipulated that the person does not suspect and does not ever discover the falsehood, the lingering suspicion of this counterfactual may be doing a lot of work on our assessment of the example. And if so, then I think I can see a case for preferring false pains to true pains since we will say that the person imagined ‘would be happy’ if the falsehood were revealed. And again, the lingering suspicion of this counterfactual is that the false pain – like the false pleasure – may be dissipated by the discovery of the truth. And just as I might prefer my pleasures not to be subject to such contingencies, I might well prefer that my pains are.

Harming the innocent

I have started this season taking our elder daughter (nearly 8) to watch Cambridge United. We went on Saturday to watch them lose 2-1 and go out of the FA Cup. She then got home to find out her favourites - Natalie and Vincent - were kicked out of Strictly Come Dancing. Not great all round. Not even the Abbey Stadium bacon rolls could cheer her up at the end after the Us had huffed and puffed around the York City goal for the last five minutes trying for the draw.

You can see the 'highlights' below. They miss out the bit where the York fans unfurl huge banners in the away end and are greeted by some predictable but funny comments from the Newmarket Road massive. (That's another thing: she has broadened her vocabulary quite a bit since we've been going, even sitting in the 'Family Stand'). And they also miss out the York keeper scrambling to keep the ball out as he's bundled over the line in the last minutes. Good angle on the delightful Brodie's miss, though...




Am I harming her by introducing her to the net (geddit?) disappointment that is supporting our local team? Yes, there are good times. (We've seen them win 7-0 this year. I think that might have given her a false impression of what it's generally like.) ButI know she has already been mocked by some kids in her class who have decided that something a bit more Premier League is clearly the way to go. I know I can pretend that she is gaining the joy of supporting the local side, being able to go to the matches more or less every Saturday they are at home, feeling part of a community and all that. But wouldn't it also be nice if the team she supported won something every now and then? Since I first went the Us have slid from what would now be League 1 (the glory days... I can't claim to have witnessed the thrills and spills of the John Beck era, but I did like Lionel Pérez's highlights...) to the Blue Square Premier and I can't see them getting out of there for a good while yet. She already has her favourite player, but the chances are he'll move on in the next transfer window.

So I can't shake the suspicion that I might be doing something bad by taking her along. Yes, I think I can make the case that in the long run this is a good, character-building, sort of thing for her and I do really enjoy our Saturday afternoons, but she hasn't (I admit) really chosen to support the Us. And I suppose she will at some point decide it's all a bit daft and tell me I can go on my own from now on. But will the damage have been done by then? She'll have seen us allow the visitors a two goal head-start and throw a lead more than enough times. Then again, at least she's not paying nearly twenty pounds for the privilege...

Da-da-da daaaa daaaa, da-da-da daaaa da!

Cyrenaic psychic pleasures

I was asked by someone who read my previous post what the Cyrenaics thought a purely psychic pleasure might be. Good question. They seem to think, for example, that many of what we might have assumed are simple perceptual pleasures – the pleasure of listening to some music – also involve a degree of cognition sine the affective pathos is changed according to the thought whether the person singing is simply performing a lament, say, or is genuinely grieving.

DL 2.90

λέγουσι δὲ μηδὲ κατὰ ψιλὴν τὴν ὅρασιν ἢ τὴν ἀκοὴν γίνεσθαι ἡδονάς. τῶν γοῦν μιμουμένων θρήνους ἡδέως ἀκούομεν, τῶν δὲ κατ' ἀλήθειαν ἀηδῶς. μέσας τε καταστάσεις ὠνόμαζον ἀηδονίαν καὶ ἀπονίαν. πολὺ μέντοι τῶν ψυχικῶν τὰς σωματικὰς ἀμείνους εἶναι, καὶ τὰς ὀχλήσεις χείρους τὰς σωματικάς. ὅθεν καὶ ταύταις κολάζεσθαι μᾶλλον τοὺς ἁμαρτάνοντας. χαλεπώτερον γὰρ τὸ πονεῖν, οἰκειότερον δὲ τὸ ἥδεσθαι ὑπελάμβανον.

Again they hold that pleasure is not derived from sight or from hearing alone. At all events, we listen with pleasure to imitation of mourning, while the reality causes pain. They gave the names of absence of pleasure and absence of pain to the intermediate conditions. However, they insist that bodily pleasures are far better than mental pleasures, and bodily pains far worse than mental pains, and that this is the reason why offenders are punished with the former. For they assumed pain to be more repellent, pleasure more congenial. (Hicks)

They also say – as here – that ‘bodily’ pleasures are better than psychic ones and bodily pains worse than psychic ones.

I suppose that at DL 2.90 the point is to draw out yet another contrast with Epicureanism (hence the polemical adoption of ataraxia and aponia for the intermediate state). It's probably easiest to think what mere 'psychic' pleasures and pains would be, presumably those that respond to no perceptual (or proprioceptual) stimulus such as the pleasures and pains of thinking about some future or past event.

DL 2.89 adds the following:

οὐ πάσας μέντοι τὰς ψυχικὰς ἡδονὰς καὶ ἀλγηδόνας ἐπὶ σωματικαῖς ἡδοναῖς καὶ ἀλγηδόσι γίνεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ ψιλῇ τῇ τῆς πατρίδος εὐημερίᾳ ὥσπερ τῇ ἰδίᾳ χαρὰν ἐγγίνεσθαι.

Not all mental pleasures and pains, however, are derived from bodily counter-parts. For instance, we take disinterested delight in the prosperity of our own country, which is as real as our delight in our own prosperity. (Hicks)

An example of (weak) psychic pleasure that has no dependence on bodily pleasure is, apparently: 'disinterested delight in the prosperity of one's homeland'. The crucial term is ψιλός ‘bare’ in both DL 2.89 and 90: many pleasures involve both the body and the soul but it is possible to identify pleasures that are stripped of bodily or perceptual involvement and it is wrong to think of many perceptual pleasures as being entirely stripped of any psychic influence.

These purely psychic pleasures are too weak, the Cyrenaics insist, to counter present bodily distress (which is what the Epicureans claimed they could do). The pleasures that matter are bodily – this is the telos (2.87) – and although these can it seems be affected by one's cognitive grip on what's going on I don't see any reason why we should be suspicious of calling the pleasure from perceiving some beautiful statue a bodily pleasure.

We know too little about Cyrenaic natural philosophy to be sure what they thought the soul was. Is it something physical? The soul does engage in motions, it seems, but then Plato can talk that way too. I suspect the Cyrenaics simply had no natural philosophy to speak of (though Theodorus seems to have had some things to say about theology) . That would seem to be consistent with the general epistemological stance.

Tractatus Logico-televisicus

By the excellent Craig Brown. You can read all of it here. It was performed with proper Wittgensteinian accent here.

My favourite bits:

2 Television contains the possibility of all situations.
2.1 It is evident that the world of television, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it.
2.2 Though it is hard to see what.
2.3 People in the real world share many properties with people on television.
2.4 Not including Robert Kilroy-Silk.
2.5 If Robert Kilroy-Silk exists, he exists only on television.
2.6 Robert Kilroy-Silk is no longer on television.
2.7 Robert Kilroy-Silk does not exist.
2.8 He has been switched off. He cannot now be switched back on, other than in repeat.
2.9 It would be a sort of accident if it turned out that in future old episodes of Kilroy! were celebrated as classics and sold in boxed sets on DVD. Just as we are quite unable to imagine spatial objects outside space, or temporal objects outside time, so, too, we cannot imagine repeats of Kilroy! ever being viewed again.

...

6.4 In order to perceive the outer limit to television, we must sit all the way through Celebrity Fat Club.
Twice.

...

8.1 What we cannot view, we must flick through in silence.

Cyrenaics, art, and pleasure

I've at last managed to get back to thinking about Cyrenaic hedonism. In fact, I have two Cyrenaic projects on the go: (i) a paper on the Cyrenaics in Plutarch's Adversus Colotem for a conference in Lyon in the spring and (ii) a chapter on Cyrenaics for a Companion to Ancient Philosophy (and, yes, I know we need more of them like we need more branches of Tesco, but I thought the Cyrenaics would be an interesting topic to do).

Anyway, I wondered in the summer about this bit of doxography from Diogenes Laertius 2.90:

λέγουσι δὲ μηδὲ κατὰ ψιλὴν τὴν ὅρασιν ἢ τὴν ἀκοὴν γίνεσθαι ἡδονάς. τῶν γοῦν μιμουμένων θρήνους ἡδέως ἀκούομεν, τῶν δὲ κατ' ἀλήθειαν ἀηδῶς.

They say that pleasures do not arise from mere sight or hearing alone. At any rate, we listen with pleasure to those imitating a lament but without pleasure to those who are doing it in truth.

The idea seems to be as follows: proof that pleasure is not generated by mere perceptual experience alone is provided by the fact that two identically sounding performances of a song of lament can produce different hedonic results. We might enjoy listening to someone merely performing a song of mourning, that is: someone who is not in fact themselves in mourning. But we do not take pleasure in listening to someone singing who is genuinely in mourning.

I've now found a related report in Plutarch, who seems to have been quite well informed about the details of Cyrenaic hedonism. This is QC V 674A-B (SSR IV A 206):

ἀνθρώπους μὲν γὰρ ἀποθνήσκοντας καὶ νοσοῦντας ἀνιαρῶς ὁρῶμεν• τὸν δὲ γεγραμμένον Φιλοκτήτην καὶ τὴν πεπλασμένην Ἰοκάστην, ἧς φασιν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον ἀργύρου τι συμμῖξαι τὸν τεχνίτην, ὅπως ἐκλείποντος ἀνθρώπου καὶ μαραινομένου λάβῃ περιφάνειαν ὁ χαλκός, <ἰδόντες> ἡδόμεθα καὶ θαυμάζομεν. τοῦτο δ’’ εἶπον, ‘ἄνδρες Ἐπικούρειοι, καὶ τεκμήριόν ἐστι μέγα τοῖς Κυρηναϊκοῖς πρὸς ὑμᾶς τοῦ μὴ περὶ τὴν ὄψιν εἶναι μηδὲ περὶ τὴν (B.) ἀκοὴν ἀλλὰ περὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἡμῶν τὸ ἡδόμενον ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀκούσμασι καὶ θεάμασιν. ἀλεκτορὶς γὰρ βοῶσα συνεχῶς καὶ κορώνη λυπηρὸν ἄκουσμα καὶ ἀηδές ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ μιμούμενος ἀλεκτορίδα βοῶσαν καὶ κορώνην εὐφραίνει• καὶ φθισικοὺς μὲν ὁρῶντες δυσχεραίνομεν, ἀνδριάντας δὲ καὶ (5) γραφὰς φθισικῶν ἡδέως θεώμεθα τῷ τὴν διάνοιαν ὑπὸ τῶν μιμημάτων ἄγεσθαι [καὶ] κατὰ τὸ οἰκεῖον.

Here’s a translation, stolen from this site, with the odd modification.

It is unpleasant to see a sick man, or one at his last gasp; yet with pleasure we can look upon the picture of Philoctetes, or the statue of Jocasta, in whose face it is commonly said that the workmen mixed silver, so that the brass might depict the face and color of one ready to faint and expire. And this, said I, the Cyrenaics may use as a strong argument against you Epicureans, that all the sense of pleasure which arises from the working of any object on the ear or eye is not in those organs, but in the intellect itself. Thus the continual cackling of a hen or cawing of a crow is very ungrateful and disturbing; yet he that imitates those noises well pleases the hearers. Thus to behold a consumptive man is no delightful spectacle; yet with pleasure we can view the pictures and statues of such persons, because the very imitating has something in it very agreeable to the mind, which allures and captivates its faculties.

This whole section has the title: Why We Take Delight in Hearing Those that Represent the Passions of Men Angry or Sorrowful, and Yet Cannot Without Concern Behold Those Who are Really So Affected? It’s interesting in itself for the questions it raises about aesthetic pleasure taken in depictions of suffering but I am particularly interested in the signs here of a perceived debate between the Epicureans and the Cyrenaics. The Cyrenaics, it seems, were of the opinion that the pleasure is generated not in the sense organs but in the soul (here Plutarch uses dianoia but there is no reason, I think, to assume that this was original Cyrenaic terminology and rather more reason to think it is Plutarch’s own Platonist vocabulary). And if that is what they wanted to show then this is rather a good argument: two phenomenologically identical experiences (e.g. hearing (i) a crow and (ii) someone imitating the call of a crow) may reasonably cause different hedonic responses because of a person’s understanding of the situation. It is possible to appreciate the skill of the imitator – or a sculptor – and take pleasure in the creation even though it depicts something which would be an the cause of discomfort or even distress if perceived directly.