Do We Truly Know What's Best For Us? Socrates Says No.

An Exploration of Socrates' Powerful Weighing Analogy

We make a variety of decisions on a daily basis.

As we make these decisions however, do we truly know what’s in our best interest? Many of us, myself included, think that we know what’s ‘good’ for us, but as this post will go on to illustrate, this isn’t always the case. In today’s post, with a little help from Socrates, we’ll be exploring how the vast majority of us are actually unable to effectively measure ‘pleasure’ against ‘pain’ or ‘good’ against ‘bad’. Let’s dive in.

The platonic dialogue that we’ll be discussing today had a profound impact on how I define what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for me. On a personal level, it highlighted the fact that many of the things that I consider to be ‘pleasurable’ are actually forms of pain in disguise. You’ll understand why in a second.

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Before we get too deep into today’s post, I want to provide some context on Protagoras, which is the text that features Socrates’ weighing analogy.

Protagoras

Protagoras is a dialogue which was written by Plato in 380 BCE. The dialogue is fairly long and covers a variety of topics. Within the text, Socrates engages in a philosophical discussion and debate with Protagoras, who was a renowned sophist and philosopher. Protagoras was sort of like a philosophical Taylor Swift at the time - his debate with Socrates took place in front of a crowd of 21 people, and the only reason Socrates was there in the first place was because one of his friends really wanted to go see Protagoras and dragged him along. Within the dialogue, Socrates touches on a variety of topics, including the teachability of virtue, the philosophical integrity and authenticity of sophists, and more. The topic that we’ll be focusing on today is the weighing of pleasure against pain, and more specifically, how most of us are terrible at it.

Near the end of the dialogue, Socrates and Protagoras begin discussing the topic of pleasure and pain. Socrates asks Protagoras why people harm themselves by overindulging in ‘pleasures’, and Protagoras responds with the following; people do so because they get ‘overtaken’ by the pleasure itself.

Pretty standard and straightforward answer, right? Not for Socrates.

Socrates proceeds to challenge Protagoras’ answer and highlights the fact that the idea of ‘overindulging in pleasures’ and being ‘overtaken by pleasure’ doesn’t actually make sense. He brings attention to the fact that if something creates more pain than pleasure, it can’t actually be called a ‘pleasure’ in the first place.

For example, imagine a restaurant that isn’t profitable. Although it might be ‘making money’ on a daily basis by selling food, if its costs don’t outweigh it’s profit in the long-term, we can’t refer to it as a business that ‘makes money’. Socrates would say that weighing pleasure against pain is no different. Everyone would probably agree with the statement that ‘pleasure is better than pain’, but as he goes on to illustrate, we fail to use this form of reasoning when we make a variety of decisions on a daily basis.

Socrates remarks that many of the things we consider to be ‘pleasurable’ are only ‘pleasurable’ in the short-term, and are actually ‘painful’ in the long-term. Overall, when we weigh the net-positive against the net-negative, the negative outweighs the positive in many cases. In other words, many things we hold to be ‘pleasures’ are actually pain disguised by pleasure.

Allow me to use unhealthy food as an example; when we eat food that’s bad for us, it often tastes quite good and is ‘pleasurable’ in the short-term. Hence, many of us refer to these sorts of things as ‘guilty pleasures’.

I understand this dichotomy all too well - I love my fast food.

The thing that makes junk food bad isn’t its effects in the short-term - it’s what it does to us in the long run that gives it the ‘junk’ label. In the long-term, unhealthy food negatively affects our health. If the pleasure in this case is a burger ‘tasting good’ multiple times a week, but the pain is the inevitable threat of heart disease or other health issues, Socrates would argue that junk food shouldn't even be referred to a ‘pleasure’ in the first place, since it brings about more pain than pleasure when you actually weigh it out (similar to a unprofitable business).

“For if someone were to say: ‘But Socrates, the immediate pleasure is very much different from the pleasant and the painful at a later time,’ I would reply, ‘They are not different in any other way than by pleasure and pain, for there is no other way that they could differ. Weighing is a good analogy; you put the pleasures together and the pains together, both the near and the remote, on the balance scale, and then say which of the two is more.” - Socrates in Protagoras, 356a-b

Interestingly enough, the opposite of this is also true. Many things which we consider to be ‘painful’ are actually pleasures disguised by pain. Many things may appear as painful in the short-term, but actually provide more pleasure in the long-term. For example, when someone is trying to get into shape, those initial few gym sessions probably aren’t a walk in the park. However, in the long-term, going to the gym provides people with an immense amount of pleasure, both through good health and the activity itself, among a variety of other positive things. This gym example is the exact opposite of my junk food example above; pain in the short-term, but more pleasure in the long-term.

Therefore many genuinely painful things are often disguised by short-term pleasures, and many genuinely pleasurable things are disguised by short-term pain. This is precisely why Socrates states that we should all work on getting better at weighing pleasure against pain.

Socrates goes on to respond to Protagoras by stating that people ‘overindulge in pleasures’ not because the things that they’re doing are genuinely pleasurable, but rather, because they lack the ability to truly measure pleasure against pain. For Socrates, it’s not that we’re ‘overtaken’ by too much pleasure, it’s the opposite; we’re ignorant to the fact that it’s not even pleasure in the first place.

“So this is what “being overcome by pleasure” is — ignorance in the highest degree, and it is this which Protagoras and Prodicus and Hippias claim to cure. But you, thinking it to be something other than ignorance, do not go to sophists yourselves, nor do you send your children to them for instruction, believing as you do that we are dealing with something unteachable.” - Socrates in Protagoras, 357e

Within Protagoras, Socrates uses weighing as an analogy to illustrate his ideas.

He states that when something is far away, it looks smaller to us. Similarly, when something is near, it looks big. Distance can affect our perception of the size of things, as it can make big things look small and vice versa.

Similarly; short-term pleasures can blind us to long-term pain looming on the horizon.

Just like an object in the distance that looks small but could perhaps actually be big, pain that is ‘far away’ or in the distant future can appear somehow less painful or ‘smaller’ to us. This is a mistake, as just because pain is in the future and not immediate, it doesn’t somehow make it less painful. Additionally, short-term pleasures that are ‘nearby’ (or immediate), similar to objects that are close, can be magnified and appear larger than they actually are.

Socrates goes on to state that if our “well-being” depended on choosing larger things accurately, and avoiding small things, wouldn’t we opt to use the “art of measurement” rather than the “power of appearance”? Think of it this way - say you’re on a game show, and in order to win a prize, you have to accurately guess the size of different objects whilst standing in an open field. As a rational and logical being, you’d know that distance can affect how we see things. You’d know that small things can be made big, and big things can be made small, based on how far away they are to you. Socrates is essentially saying that in order to win this game, you’d probably rely on the ‘art of measurement’, which is essentially trying to figure out the true measurement of the object, rather than relying on the ‘power of appearance’, which is simply basing your answers off of how they appear to you. Now, swap the term ‘game show’ for your literal well-being in life - Socrates states that our lives would be significantly better if we all knew how to properly use the art of measurement.

“If then our well-being depended upon this, doing and choosing larger things, avoiding and not doing the small ones, what would we see as our salvation in life? Would it be the art of measurement or the power of appearance? While the power of appearance often makes us wander all over the place in confusion, often changing our minds about the same things and regretting our actions and choices with respect to things large and small, the art of measurement in contrast, would make the appearances lose their power by showing us the truth, would give us peace of mind firmly rooted in the truth and would save our life.” - Socrates in Protagoras, 356d-e

Socrates wraps up by remarking that no one ‘willingly’ goes towards ‘the bad’. What he means by this, is that none of us intentionally want to inflict pain upon ourselves or do bad things. If we could pull up a “pleasure vs. pain” measurement app on our phones before every decision, which would tell us if the pain outweighs the pleasure within the decision at hand, we would always choose the action that provides the most good.

“Now, no one goes willingly toward the bad or what he believes to be bad; neither it is in human nature, so it seems, to want to go toward what one believes to be bad instead of to the good. And when he is forced to choose between one of two bad things, no one will choose the greater if he is able to choose the lesser.” - Socrates in Protagoras 358d

Socrates goes on to later mention that this ‘art of measurement’ can be taught. This is why he refers to our inability to measure pleasure against pain as ‘ignorance’ (something which is actively in our control) rather than us being ‘overtaken’ by pleasure as Protagoras’ view was (something that isn’t in our control). All in all, this ability to measure pain is something that everyone can get better at, and something that everyone can also benefit from.

Socrates’ remarks in Protagoras, although written over 2000 years ago, still hold relevance today. In my opinion, it feels as though a plethora of issues which currently plague our world can be attributed to the human flaw of being unable to measure pleasure against pain, or in other words, identify what’s truly ‘good’ for us and what’s truly ‘bad’.

Take the following issues for example;

• The destruction and pollution of the environment

• The rise in unhealthy lifestyles and the health crisis plaguing a variety of countries

• Financial issues, both at a personal and national level

• And a variety of other things

I am aware that there’s a variety of variables which affect each of these issues, but couldn’t it be argued that when you boil it all down, a portion of these issues could be mitigated by getting better at our “is this truly pleasure or is this truly pain” calculation? I’m not speaking from a superior point of view - I’m guilty of choosing short-term pleasure over long-term pain on a weekly basis - but I think that talking about this stuff and being aware of it is a step in the right direction. As to why we choose pain over pleasure, and why we can’t properly measure these things, remains a mystery. I truly don’t know why we do this.

With this being said, I think we have to at least try to improve. Think of the immense amount of progress, in terms of ethics, general philosophy, technology, culture, and everything else, that humanity has made in the brief time that we’ve been on this planet. If we can accomplish all of that, then surely we can become better at mitigating our gravitation towards pains disguised as pleasures. How we start teaching ourselves this skill varies on an individual to individual basis, but for those of you reading (and myself included), being aware is a great first step. From there, all we can do is try to find strategies that work for us. Personally, I find that conducting miniature thought-experiments, including imagining the possible long-term pain that may arise if this short-term pleasure becomes a habit (or reflecting upon if it already has become one), has been working for me.

Perhaps this is just another point that illustrates the need for philosophy to be taught within schools? I’m not sure, and I know that I could quickly turn this point into a post in and of itself, so I digress.

All in all, the topic of today’s post is one of my favourite themes within the platonic dialogue Protagoras, and I hope a few of you found it interesting as well. Thanks to Socrates, I now find myself thinking twice when I want to order a Big Mac or when I feel the urge to make a large, impulsive purchase, and ultimately, whenever I’m in a situation where I’m not really considering the long-term impacts of my decision at hand. I hope a few of you reading this are able to interpret and use today’s post in whichever way benefits you the most (no pun intended).

See you next week.

“And since it is measurement, it must definitely be an art, and knowledge.” - Socrates in Protagoras, 357b

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