Evaluative illusion in plato's protagoras

Abstract

In the Protagoras, Socrates argues that what appears to be akrasia is, in fact, the result of a hedonic illusion: proximate pleasures appear greater than distant ones. On the face of it, his account is puzzling: why should proximate pleasures appear greater than distant ones? Certain interpreters argue that Socrates must be assuming the existence of non-rational desires that cause proximate pleasures to appear inflated. This paper argues that positing non-rational desires fails to explain the hedonic error. However, careful consideration of Socrates' treatment of appearances reveals that he is not without resources to explain the illusion. The paper argues that in the Protagoras, appearances are imagistic mental representations that appear true but tend to be false. It suggests that proximate pleasures produce inflated hedonic predictions because we represent them more vividly than distant ones, which yields greater anticipatory pleasure, causing us to overestimate their magnitude.