Sense and Sensibility: the Theaetetus and the Philebus on False Pleasure

IPS 2025

Olga Alieva

May 5, 2025

1.1. Introduction: False Pleasures in Context

• Key Question: How can pleasures be “false”?
  
• 20th-Century Debate:
  • Critiques of Cartesian “infallible mental states” (Ryle, Williams, Kenny).
    
  • Plato’s Philebus as a precursor to modern critiques of privileged access.
    
• Socrates’ Innovation:
  • Pleasures as propositional attitudes with intentional structure.
    
  • Falsity arises from erroneous beliefs (doxai) about future states.

1.2. Two Interpretations of False Pleasure

1. Old School (Mistaken Content):
   • Falsity = Failed prediction (e.g., expecting pleasure that never occurs).
2. New School (Mistaken Value):
   • Falsity = Misjudging what is truly good (ethical error).
     

• Shared Premise:
  • Pleasures have propositional content.
    
• Critique:
  • Overemphasis on correspondence vs. Plato’s ontological truth.

2. Chronology: Philebus vs. Theaetetus

• Stylistic Differences:
  • Theaetetus (closer to Republic) vs. Philebus (closer to Laws).
    
• Scholarly Consensus:
  • Philebus reflects Plato’s later dissatisfaction with earlier models (e.g., replenishment theory).
    
• Challenges to Chronology:
  • Stylometry limitations (possible revisions).
    
  • Thematic parallels suggest cross-dialogue relevance.

3. Protarchus: A Spontaneous Protagorean?

• Protagorean Influence:
  • Pleasures as infallible αἰσθήσεις (perceptions).
    
  • But Protarchus admits beliefs can be false (Philebus 36d).
    
• Key Distinction:
  • Flux applies to physical phenomena, not ethical concepts.
    
• Plato’s Critique:

But when it’s a question of each person’s present experience (πάθος), from which there come to be his perceptions (αἱ αἰσθήσεις) ad the judgements (αἱ <…> δόξαι) which conform to them—well, it’s harder to refute these latter and show they’re not true (ὡς οὐκ ἀληθεῖς). And perhaps (ἴσως) I am talking nonsense when I say that. Because it may be (εἰ ἔτυχον) that they’re impossible to refute. Perhaps (τάχα ἂν) the people who claim that they’re quite clear, and that they’re instances of knowledge, are saying things which are: and perhaps Theaetetus here wasn’t far off the mark when he laid it down that perception and knowledge are the same thing (179c-d; tr. by McDowell).

4. Two Readings of Protagoras’ Theory

• Reading A (Conservative):
  • Plato accepts Protagorean/Heraclitean flux for the sensible world.
    
  • Pleasures lack truth-aptness (not knowledge).
    
• Reading B (Revisionist):
  • Flux is not total; minimal stability allows empirical judgments.
    
  • Pleasures can be “true” in a weaker (subjective) sense.
    
• Implications for False Pleasure:
  • Reading A: Pleasures are non-cognitive (no truth/falsity).
    
  • Reading B: Pleasures can err if misaligned with reality.

“If all things change, every answer is equally correct.” (Theaetetus 183a)

5. Pleasures and Αἰσθήσεις (Perceptions)

• Interconnection:
  • Pleasures follow (ἐπόμεναι) perceptions/beliefs (Philebus 38b).
    
  • Not mere bodily motions but soul-body interactions (Philebus 34a).
    
• Scribe-Painter Metaphor:
  • Αἰσθήσεις = “registered” by the soul’s scribe.
    
  • Anticipatory pleasures = “painted” mental images (Philebus 39a–40b).
    
• Plato’s Goal:
  • Show pleasures are not infallible.

“Pleasure is not perception but appearance.” (Delcomminette 2003)

6. Correspondence Thesis (CT) Critique

• CT Claim:
  • Pleasure is “true” if it corresponds to actual states/events.
    
• Problems:
  1. Flux undermines stable comparanda (Philebus 43a).
     
  2. Restorations (pleasure’s source) are only felt through pleasure.
     
  3. Indeterminacy of ἄπειρον (Philebus 27e).
     
• Outcome:
  • CT fails; truth cannot hinge on mirroring reality.

7. Harmony Restored

• Musical Analogy:
  • Ἀρμονία = attunement of opposites via ratios (Philebus 25e).
    
  • True pleasures “accompany virtue” (Philebus 63e).
    
• Supervenience:
  • Tuning follows an instrument (Phd. 93a: οὐκ ἄρα ἡγεῖσθαί γε προσήκει ἁρμονίαν τούτων ἐξ ὧν ἂν συντεθῇ, ἀλλ’ ἕπεσθαι).
  • Pleasure covaries with psychic harmony, not physical states.
    
• Ethical Harmony:
  • False pleasures = dissonant “jumble” (Philebus 64e).

8. Preliminary Conclusion

• Key Insight:
  • Falsity of pleasure ≠ propositional error but failure to harmonize.
    
• Rejection of CT:
  • Flux and indeterminacy make correspondence impossible.
    
• Path Forward:
  • Ground truth in structural role within the good life.

9. Fine-Tuning the Good Life

• Structuring Indeterminacy:
  • Soul imposes πέρας (limits) via λόγος (Philebus 25a).
    
  • Analogous to dividing speech into letters (Philebus 16c).
    
• True Pleasure Criteria:
  • Συνοικεῖν (cohabit) with intelligence (Philebus 63c).
    
  • Συμφωνία (harmony) with virtue.

10. Divine Method: Structuring Indeterminacy

• Theuth’s Analogy:
  • Divide φωνή (speech) into στοιχεῖα (letters).
    
  • Indeterminate → structured via “divine method” (Philebus 16c).
    
• Application to Pleasure:
  • True pleasures = stable “elements” in life’s “syllables.”
    
  • False pleasures = not really “phonemes”.

11. Sense and Sensibility

• Final Synthesis:
  • Sensibility (flux) + Sense (λογισμός) → True Pleasure.
    
  • Pleasure’s truth = functional role in life’s harmony.

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