On 1/13/2017 at 5:04 PM, Eiuol said:
I recall some saint, I forget who, that thought torture was good for the receiver, so pain in itself was good.
You don’t happen to mean saint epistemologue, do you? 
On 1/13/2017 at 5:04 PM, Eiuol said:
I would say that neither pain nor pleasure are good or bad stimuli. Red isn’t a bad stimuli, purple isn’t a good stimuli.
I agree that neither red nor purple are “good” or “bad” (until we specify some context; if I want a red house, red paint is good for the job, and purple paint not so much); and neither any situation which involves either pain or pleasure. Sans context, sans a specific valuer in a specific situation, we cannot say that X pleasurable action is good (e.g. eating a slice, or ten, of cheesecake) or X painful action is bad (getting a tooth drilled).
But there is an abstract sense in which pleasure is good and pain is bad – and this is fundamentally and profoundly different from red and purple. It is the point of this thread, in a certain sense, to examine this difference – and its further implication for ethics (if any).
This is to say, the existence of red and purple cannot provoke man to a conception of “value”; but pleasure and pain can. Pleasure and pain, in this abstracted sense, are what what allow us to conceive of the universe (and all the facts therein) in terms of value. It is pleasure and pain which both give rise to and animate our understanding of value.
On 1/13/2017 at 5:04 PM, Eiuol said:
A child may find that pleasure is nice, therefore good, but as an adult, the child needs to grasp “good for what?” Then pain/pleasure ceases to be an essential. It becomes possible that a pain IS good, or that a pleasure IS bad. Stimuli provide information but lack a value.
You continue to discuss this in a manner that I believe both hides important information and (consequently) lends itself to confusion.
It is not that “a pain IS good,” but that a situation, or choice, or value, or action – one that might involve pain – is good. Going to the dentist, under normal conditions, is good. It’s painful, but good. Yet the pain, in itself, is not good. And the reason why I continue to insist on preserving this distinction can be shown by the example I’d raised to demonstrate it: given two dentists providing the same services, one with pain and one without, it would be reasonable to select the dentist without pain.
(All else need not strictly be equal, either. Suppose the painless dentist cost slightly more? Yet it might still be worth the money to go pain-free.)
There is a question as to whether pain/pleasure “ceases to be an essential.” I have not made my full argument for that yet – I’m not there all the way there yet, myself, though I believe that the concept of “maximizing experience” points the way. But the first step is to recognize that pain and pleasure remain a feature of ethical reasoning. Pleasure – pleasure itself – is a motivating factor, apart from whatever pleasure’s role might be in terms of “fuel” or “survival.” That’s like what you were talking about with respect to “mere pleasures,” although I believe that “mere” undersells the vital role that pleasure has in our experience of reality.
And further, if it were true that “stimuli provide information but lack a value” – if that were utterly true with respect to pain and pleasure, then we should never have any concept of value at all. Then they would be like red and purple. But if you want to appreciate the actual role of pain and pleasure in life, and in this thread, then you first have to look at the reality of it. And the reality is that pain and pleasure are not mere stimuli. They are charged with respect to value, of their nature.
@ Nerian and KorbenDallas, I hope to address your comments soon(ish).