Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phronesis.
http://www.jstor.org
Pleasures:
False Anticipatory
Philebus36a 3-4i a 6
TERRY
PENNER
n the first section of this paper, I try to set out with a minimum of
complication the philosophical considerationswhich bear upon the
interpretation I offer in section II of Plato's account of false
anticipatory pleasures. In the case of the uses of the words for "belief",
"with"and "in",the orderof exposition reversesthe orderof discovery:
it was by noticing Plato's use of these words that I came to the
philosophical points I make about them in section I of the paper.
I am not here offering any general account of other kinds of false
pleasures considered by Plato.
I
Mr. Dybikowski's article (this issue) seems to me to fix on the important distinction for purposes of interpreting this passage, namely
that expressed by Williams in the following passage.'
b. I may be pleased at x, but say that I am pleased at y because
I falsely believe that x is y; but this does not matter, because
x's being y is no element in my pleasure. Thus, I may be pleased
by this picture as a picture, and say that I am pleased by this
Giorgione, when the picture is not a Giorgione.
c. More drastically, I may take pleasure in, or be pleased by,
I B. A. 0. Williams, "Pleasure and Belief", in Stuart Hampshire (Ed.), Philosophy of Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), esp. 235-236 with 230-231,
(reprinted from Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume
for 1959). See also Stuart Hampshire's two different ways of wanting the most
expensive picture in the gallery: if I want to buy that picture (which, as I think,
also happens to be the most expensive in the gallery) I am affected differently
by learning that it is not the most expensive picture in the gallery than if I
simply wish to buy whatever picture is the most expensive in the gallery.
Hampshire rather misleadingly speaks of the former desire as thought-independent, the latter as thought-dependent; for all the example shows is dependence or independence on one particular thought. The former desire may be
dependent on another thought of which the latter desire is independent. (S.
Hampshire, Freedom of the Individual (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 46ff.
166
&ve7rtL7rocaaav
(42 a 9), normally "fill up", but here apparently in the metaphorical use for "infect" which can also be seen at Apol. 32 c, Phd 67 a, Thucydides II. 51. That the falsity of a belief infects a pleasure is characteristic of false
pleasures of the anticipatory type, by contrast with the other two types (see
section III of this paper).
8 E.g. Williams, op. cit., J. Gosling, "False Pleasures: Philebus 35 c - 41 b",
Phronesis, 1959, Antony Kenny, "False Pleasures in the Philebus: A reply to
Mr. Gosling", Phronesis 1960, J. Gosling, "Father Kenny on False Pleasures",
Phronesis, 1961, I. Thalberg, "False Pleasures", Journal of Philosophy, 1962,
Terence Penelhum, "Pleasure and Falsity", in S. Hampshire (Ed.) Philosophy
of Mind, cited above, n. 1, (reprinted from AmericanPhilosophicalQuarterly, 1964).
Williams and Penelhum are not directing their attention to the exegesis of
Plato. David Gallop's "True and False Pleasures", Philosophical Quarterly,
1960, makes no use of the distinction these other interpreters have to a greater
or less degree had in mind.
167
168
169
a being pleased that, the points made in section I could as easily have been made
with the pleasure in (4) a being pleased that, e.g. being pleased that I am alive.
Or we could have had, adapting an example of Penehum's,
(4*) That beautiful girl coming is Miss Smith and I am pleased that that
beautiful girl is coming,
(6*) That beautiful girl coming is Miss Smith and Miss Smith is my only love
and I am pleased that my only love is coming.
There are different results in (4*) and (6*) if I become convinced that the
beautiful girl coming is Miss Jones.]
For some references to the literature on process-product ambiguities and a
treatment of an instance of this ambiguity (&vipycmL)which gives Aristotle some
trouble, see my "Verbs and the Identity of Actions" in G. Pitcher and 0. P.
Wood (Eds.), Ryle (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1970), esp. section III.
170
and confusion. In the next section I argue that even if Plato does not
notice the distinctions (a) and (b), in practice he observes them and
avoids fallacy and confusion on this point.
But if Plato neither notices the point about the "scope"of what the
pleasure is taken in, nor notices the distinctions (a) and (b), how are
we to suppose he did notice the Williams distinction as applied to
(4) and (6)? A glance at the examples in n. 6 will show us how. For
many of the verbs there have a feature which they share with such
verbs as "perceive", "believe", "think", namely that in at least some
cases they take as grammatical object a "that"-clause which tells us
what the person perceives, believes, thinks, or etc. Someone who
thinks of hope, fear, expectation and being-pleased-that as kinds of
perceiving, as kinds of "cognitive attitudes" to propositions, will be
able to notice Williams' distinction as applied to (4) and (6). For the
distinction between (4) and (6) is just that the proposition that I am
going to win the race is and is not respectively what the "cognitive
attitude" or "pleasure perceiving" is directed towards. It is in the
recognition of this analogy between beingpleasedthat and believingthat
that Plato exhibits his awareness of the Williams distinction. Thus,
just as if a thing believed is false the believing is said to be false ("He
believes falsely that..."), so if a future state of affairs will not occur,
the being pleased at it may be said to be false. This treatment of
pleasure as a kind of perceiving is, if the perceiving is a perceiving that
something is the case, a way of saying that "being pleased that..."
is a propositional attitude.7 Plato was the first person in the history of
7Evidence from elsewhere that Plato thought of pleasure (being pleased that)
as a kind of perceiving that something is the case is harder to come by than
evidence that Plato thought of pleasure as a kind of perceiving some object or
some aspect of an object. For the latter we can cite Tht. 156 b 2 - c 3:
mt dv o5v aEar5ae?t 'rm'o&8e
6a,pIaetq
6I6yovov,
xalt
64JeL
xxL
fueLq re xacl xxKuaeLs
0AV
Xp&'rcx
7vroCa7rCtX
aes
7rCvX'ro8O7r,
axoxcz
8A
6CoMUcT
171
admits
tz6 yaLv6.LcVOV
be put together with 36 a 4-7 to make it seem that the al&'acq here are
desirings or even pleasures. Again (iii) at 42 c 1-3, we get rather the picture of
a real future or present pleasure causing a false belief and the latter causing a
present (illusory) pleasure in (in[) something non-existent, namely the amount
of pleasure by which we over-estimate the real future or present pleasure.
But perhaps (iii) can be discounted on the grounds that c 1-3 is an afterthought
(oM' 5.... ). The fact is, it is not clear in the second type of false pleasure whether
it is socalled because of (i), (ii) or (iii). Plato's lack of explicitness here parallels
a lack of explicitness in the treatment of the first type of false pleasures at
40 b 6-7; but I propose in n. 12 what seems to me a clear solution to that
difficulty.]
But to show that Plato thinks of pleasure as a kind of perceiving is not to
show that he thinks of pleasure as a kind of perceiving that (or perhaps better,
a kind of perceptually taking it that). This latter is, however, what I think
emerges from the scribe and painter similes. The difference of the first type of
false pleasures from the second type - what Plato says is that while in the first
type the falsity of the belief "infects" the anticipatory pleasure, the "opposite"
occurs with the second type - is not clear. (For see alternatives (i), (ii) and (iii)
in the preceding paragraph). The only thing of which I feel confident is that in
the first type since the anticipated pleasure may not ever exist (40 c 8 - d 10),
we have merely the causal sequence {belief, anticipatory pleasure}, supposing
that non-existents cannot enter into causal sequences. On the other hand, in
the second type, we have either the causal sequence {real (present or future)
incorrectly estimated pleasure, incorrect belief or estimate) or the causal
sequence {real (present or future) incorrectly estimated pleasure, incorrect
belief or estimate as to the amount of pleasure one is or will be getting, illusory
pleasure in anticipating or having that amount by which one over-estimates
the pleasure}. ("Belief" in these formulae for causal sequences is of course used
in the sense of "believings"). It is clear that the causal sequence involved in the
first type of false pleasure is different from either of the two which might be
involved in the second type. As I implied at the beginning of the paragraph,
the difference seems to have something to do with the first type involving
non-existent states of affairs while the second type does not.
172
believed"(-rso
is "what
8ooc46{uevov)
173
Socrates now (37 e 10-11) gives Protarchus just the opening Protarchus needs to throw Socrates' argument off the track:
X0CLL)V gOLXevye '8ov' 7roXX&xL; o'u 0tm& U6Evj 40pq
WEDaOU;7av
XuX ?vac
yCrea'aL.
aOVhVoGCUT7V
ouelq
Xyoliev
i.e.,
(11) Whenever there is a pleasure and a false proposition which occur
simultaneously, there is a believing which is in the false proposition & the believing is false & the believing is with the
pleasure & the pleasure is not false.
Pleasure just occurs or fails to occur with or without simultaneous
beliefs, Protarchus is saying (cp. the more extreme view at 37 c 4-6
which Socrates considers worth refuting). In effect this is either to
deny that there is any relation corresponding to "y-ing in p" where
pleasure is concerned, or to say that all pleasure in a belief is simply
pleasure with (?tv: 37 e 10-11, 38 a 7) a believing.
There is no need to deny that Socrates would have accepted (11)
with the "Whenever..." altered to "Sometimes,when..." as an analysis of some cases of pleasure, e.g. that described in (4), enjoying
skating and believing that one will win the skating race one also
happens to be engaged in.'0 But the cases Socrates is interested in are
those which are like (6). He must therefore re-direct Protarchus'
9 In section I, I contrasted pleasure in a belief with pleasure that merely occurs
simultaneously with a belief. "With" here covers both "in" and "merely with".
10 Again (see n. 6), notice "pleasure" both for enjoying (in (4)) and for being
pleased that (in (6)).
174
KoM&ewv("believing")
ypMcyuuas,
dLxovoa
with vo-l-6v,
YV(OaT6v,
make Plato's
steering through the dangers of the ambiguity of in the Philebus even more
noteworthy. See also the paper cited in n. 6.
11 There is a difficulty as to just where Protarchus concedes that pleasures can
be false. It might seem that he does so at 40 b 8 - c 3. However, on any reading,
40 b 6-7
o6X0oV
xalc 'olq
7r&pCLk V
xxxots
XypmqjnLkvoL,
0oBaVC yc o'Ua&v*Tov
4cokl;
8i ocrt
7ou.
176
also shows why there is some plausibility to speaking of "false pleasures". For (I) if Plato were as clear as account (B) above (p. 10)
would make him, then the natural thing for him to say would be that
"product"-beliefs can be true or false, are interpersonal and don't
occur at any one particular time, while "process"beliefs are acquired
and lost at certain times, may be firm or hopeless or wishful (as in
"wishful thinking"), but cannot, strictly speaking, be true or false.
But by a natural extension (which Protarchus accepts: 36 d 1) we do
speak of people as "falsely believing" something, by analogy with "it
is a mistake to think that..."; so, Plato would say, we should make
the same extension for beingpleased that as we have done for believing
that. On the other hand, (II) if Plato were not as clear as account (B)
makes him, but rather, as account (C) would have it, was just exploring
the analogy between believing and being pleased which leads us to
is odd, for the 8ovlt... &k ypx ?&vxL
which are called false are not the pleasures
of anticipation which Socrates is (agreed on all hands to be) trying to show
false on some occasions, but the pleasures being anticipated, the pleasures
painted in the soul. I do not see how one can deny that for Plato there was a
distinction between these two pleasures given the way anticipatory pleasures
are set up (31 b - 32 c: the pictured pleasures - getting gold and many pleasuresmust undoubtedly have been meant to include bodily pleasures, which according
to Plato anticipatory pleasures cannot be). So I agree with Kenny (op. cit. 52)
that 40 b 6-7 must be elliptical for something like:
"And pictured pleasures are no less present to the evil, but [these pictures]
are false."
I suspect that the "false pleasures" mentioned at 40 c 1 and 40 c 4 (again
iBovat) are in the same way pleasures that appear in false pictures of the future,
and that it is those pleasures that are referred to by 'raio3a at 40 d 2. If this is
right, then false anticipatory pleasures (represented at 40 c 1, d 7-8 - though
not at a 12 - by yXopeLv)are not fully established in Protarchus' mind until
40 d 4 - e 1: the v'dra'rpoqpoq
Mis true-false which applies to 86E,aLalso applies
to pleasures and pains. It is this account of 40 b 6-7 that I have assumed earlier
in section II. It seems to me preferable both to that of Gosling [who has Plato
equating picturing a future pleasure with "enjoying that pleasure in anticipation" (1959, 52) and confusing (1961, 44) the having of pleasures (e.g. enjoying) with the pleasures had (e.g. the activity enjoyed) - which, it might
seem, ought to be one of the last hypotheses considered in view of 37 a 5-9]
and to that of Dybikowski [who has Socrates confusing the pleasure anticipated
with the pleasure of anticipating and thinking of the former as false, and Protarchus accepting what Socrates says because he confuses the picturing of the
future pleasure (which he has conceded is false) with the pleasure pictured].
The machinery of both these accounts of confusion in Plato seems to me
disproportionate.
177
178