In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates’ second account of ‘false’ pleasure (41d-42c) outlines a form of illusion: pleasures that appear greater than they are. I argue that these pleasures are perceptual misrepresentations. I then show that they are the grounds for a methodological critique of hedonism. Socrates identifies hedonism as a judgment about the value of pleasure based on a perceptual misrepresentation of size, witnessed paradigmatically in the ‘greatest pleasures’.

Plato's Philebus contains an intricate difficulty. Plato seems to hold both (a) that all pleasures are processes of becoming, a crucial premise in the argument that no pleasure is good (53c?55c) and (b) that some pleasures contribute in their own right to the goodness of the best life (64c?67b). Since it seems also plausible that only things which are good can contribute to the goodness of the best life in their own right, Plato's view seems to be inconsistent. Interpreters usually (...) reject either (a) or (b). As Plato seems firmly committed to both (a) and (b), I propose a third way of dealing with the inconsistency. The apparent inconsistency highlights a vital contrast between what is independently good (good per se), what is dependently good (good through participating in what is independently good), and what is derivatively good (good through standing in a certain relation to dependent goods). I argue that while pleasure's being a process of becoming marks it out as derivatively good, some kinds of pleasure are also dependent goods in virtue of their objects ? irrespective of their being processes of becoming. (shrink)

It seems an odd claim that knowing could be itself of intrinsic worth. Knowledge appears heavily, perhaps entirely reliant for its worth on the value of the objects known and the value of the ends...

En este artículo trato de mostrar la diferencia entre el concepto de tò posón, la cantidad determinada o proporción matemática, válida en el terreno de las realidades cuantificables, y el concepto de tò métrion, la justa medida, válida en el terreno de las acciones humanas, no cuantificables. Argume..

Una de las cuestiones más discutidas en el debate contemporáneo sobre el Filebo de Platón, es sin duda la de la posibilidad de los placeres falsos. En el contexto de esta discusión ha sido el pasaje 36c-41b, referido en particular a la falsedad de los placeres de expectativa, el que ha suscitado la mayor controversia y una gran variedad de interpretaciones. Las distintas posiciones se distinguen según hagan uso del criterio de verdad “ontológico”, “epistemológico” o “moral” para la comprensión de (...) la falsedad de las expectativas. En este trabajo intento mostrar que una comprensión correcta de los placeres de expectativa debe considerar la interacción de los distintos criterios de verdad y no hacer uso exclusivamente de uno de éstos. Mientras que la verdad ontológica de los placeres sirve a la determinación del contenido de las expectativas, la verdad epistemológica y la verdad moral confluyen en el tipo de verdad específico de este tipo de placeres. Para explicar este concepto de verdad consideraré como modelo la “verdad práctica” de Aristóteles. (shrink)