  Socrates’ final argument moves in three broad steps. The first  establishes that pleasure and pain are not exhaustive contradictories but opposites, separated by a calm middle that is neither pain nor  pleasure. This may sometimes seem false. The removal of pain can seem to be pleasant, and the removal of a pleasure can seem to be painful. But Socrates argues that these appearances are deceptive. He  distinguishes between pleasures that fill a lack and thereby replace  a pain (these are not genuine pleasures) and those that do not fill a lack and thereby replace a pain (these are genuine pleasures). The  second step in the argument is to establish that most bodily  pleasures—and the most intense of these—fill a painful  lack and are not genuine pleasures. Finally, Socrates argues that the philosopher’s pleasures do not fill a painful lack and are genuine  pleasures. Contra the epicure’s assumption, the philosopher’s  pleasures are more substantial than pleasures of the flesh.