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  1. EpicureanFriends - Home of Classical Epicurean Philosophy
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  4. Anticipations / Preconceptions / Prolepsis
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Prolepsis of the gods

  • Rolf
  • June 25, 2025 at 5:07 AM
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  • DaveT
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    • June 28, 2025 at 11:59 AM
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    Quote from Rolf

    Actually, could somebody take a crack at explaining fundamentally what prolepsis is? Is it innate knowledge that we’re born it? I’m more confused than I thought! ?(

    Rolf I’ve been doing (undoubtedly) superficial research on the internet to get this topic more firmly in my mind. How does this approach sound to make Prolepsis more concrete (ish) by comparing the major schools of the ancient era?
    Prolepsis within Epicurus’ thought is the acquisition of knowledge, the process that comes from experience through the senses, and truth can be determined from repeated experience and thinking about what we know.

    Prolepsis within Plato’s (stoic)thought is the acquisition of knowledge from innate sources, divine eternal universal truths.

    Prolepsis within Skeptic (Phyrro) thought is that you can’t trust either of the above for definitive acquisition of knowledge since you can’t prove either is true.

    Dave Tamanini

    Harrisburg, PA, USA

  • DaveT
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    • July 2, 2025 at 5:12 PM
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    Rolf I hope I'm not abusing a topic, but I committed myself to reading DeWitt. DeWitt is hard reading for me, because he is constantly on both the offense and the defense.

    Anyway, FYI if you choose to read more, in his chapter: VIII SENSATIONS, ANTICIPATIONS, AND FEELINGS, he gets into a discussion of Prolepsis at p. 143 under the topic of Anticipations of Epicurus' thought.

    Dave Tamanini

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    • July 2, 2025 at 8:42 PM
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    Quote from Rolf

    Actually, could somebody take a crack at explaining fundamentally what prolepsis is? Is it innate knowledge that we’re born it? I’m more confused than I thought! ?(

    I can provide a few instances that might help orient the idea. (And not that I have a full grasp – it's a slippery concept for us all – but these are the examples I found in the available works).

    Diogénēs provides us with the following definition (per my swing at translating).

    Quote

    33 But they call the [next criterion] “Preconception“50 as if a comprehension, or a right opinion, or notion, or universal thought stored in her, that is, memory of the appearances repeatedly [received] from abroad, like [the form of a] Human, such is one example; for once it [appears], the clear [form of a] Human attaches to [the] preconception, and the imprint of the sensations is preceding [it]. Then, each name primarily follows [what] is visible, since we could not have sought the investigation if we had not first perceived it, just as [we] have further established a horse is [this] or [a] cow [is that]. For one must perceive before the preconception the [physical] form of [a] horse and of [a] cow. One should not at all have named something, not before one experienced the [physical] impression related to the preconception. But the preconceptions are manifest [to the mind], and because of prior [experience] the conjectural things are contingent upon sensible [stimuli] to [which] we say they are referring, as when we have confirmed if [a] Human is there. 34But they also call the preconception [an] opinion [that] they affirm [to be] either true or false; for indeed, to be true, [it] must corroborate or not contradict; but if not corroborating or contradicting, [it] happens to be false. Hence, this has introduced [the need to practice] waiting [for confirmation]; for example, a [soldier] had waited [to make a judgment] and had advanced near a watchtower, and [having advanced] near, it had become known what sort [of watchtower] it appears [to be].

    One takeaway here is that, of considerations, a prolḗpsis is a true consideration, and, further, a consideration the directly corresponds with a real, demonstrable thing, or type of thing. Truth is a true belief about reality, so the prolḗpsis of gods is having the right opinion about theology.

    Epíkouros gives us an example of a true belief versus a false belief:

    In the Epistle to Menoikeus, in a discussion on theology, the ΠΡΟΛEΨΣEΙΣ or προλήψεις (prolḗpseis) are contrasted against ΥΠΟΛEΨΣEΙΣ or ὑπολήψεις (hypolḗpseis). Whereas the prolḗpseis are formed in the mind "before", so hypolḗpseis are formed "after" (123). The prolḗpsis of a god is a being who is blessed and incorruptible. The hypolḗpseis of a god is a being who is corrective, punitive, meddling, and generally troublesome. The prolḗpsis in this case is just the basic definition of "a god", whereas the hypolḗpsis incorporates another, unrelated prolḗpsis (like the prolḗpsis of the atmospheric phenomena of static discharge) to create a fantastical narrative that deviates from this fundamental definition (like Zeus smites the wicked with thunderbolts or rewards the faithful by not obliterating them). Hypolḗpseis are false assumptions, directly contrasted against reliable prolḗpseis.

    From this, I take away that the prolḗpsis of the gods corresponds with the notion that a god is a perfectly happy being, whereas a mortal is an animal that dies, and a horse is a hooved quadraped. In this sense, it can be helpfully contextualized as part of the process of a naming schema. All disconnected cultures of peoples have a words for "warmth" and "baby" and "milk" and "hair", "light", "dark", and, as the cross-cultural exchange triggered by Alexander demonstrated to Hellenic Greece, apparently, as is evident to anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists, "gods".

    In the Epistle to Herodotos, the Hegemon contrasts the prolḗpseis of objects perceived by us against the "concept of Time", which is not described as a thing like a "horse", or "man", or "god", nor a category of things like an "animal", or "mortal", or "immortal", nor even expressed as a quality of a real thing, like "having hooves", or "respirating", or "being perfectly happy", but is rather just a kind of relative, measuring stick, an "accident of accidents" (172). We casually throw around the word time to actually mean something like any relative, human measurement against periodically-rotating, nearby objects, albeit the annual revolution around the Sun, or the frequency of a Cesium-133 atom. Here, Time is a bit of a contrast against a classical, Epicurean preconception.

    Mentioned elsewhere, in the final few Doctrines, Epíkouros identifies "justice" as a prolḗpsis, which, itself, is neither a real thing (like a "man" and "horse"), but more of a category (like "vertebrates") but as applies to situations and events, as a pact to neither harm nor be harmed. The preconception is realized during any periods where pacts are being honored between different parties. Here, there's not a Golden Triforce you can pocket called "justice", but there are examples of the "justice" that is evident within "just actions", so, this is another, kind of categorical preconception.

    That's how I read it. These are the main instances I found where "preconception" is used.

  • sanantoniogarden
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    • July 2, 2025 at 9:03 PM
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    An analogy (imperfect at best) I use to describe prolepsis, which should be familiar to most these days, are the cameras on our phones. Say that your mind is like a camera constantly taking pictures of various things. Take a picture of a big tree, little tree, wide tree, narrow tree. Eventually the photo album on your phone will suggest a file simply called "trees" or "sunsets" because it has recognized (pattern recognition) the similarities between various individual pictures (sensations) and organized them into an album (prolepsis). Now an analogy which would apply to gods might be something like taking a picture of a ball, a bat, a base, manicured grass, chalk lines, and a foul pole, eventually suggesting a new file called "baseball". However abstract concepts like gods and the game of baseball would require a language to flesh out, I feel. Once again imperfect at best but maybe helpful to some.

    Be safe.

  • Cassius July 3, 2025 at 7:31 AM

    Moved the thread from forum Canonics - General Discussion to forum Anticipations / Preconceptions / Prolepsis.
  • TauPhi
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    • July 3, 2025 at 11:03 AM
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    I really like your photo album analogy, sanantoniogarden . This part especially highlights my own struggles with prolepsis:

    Quote from sanantoniogarden

    Now an analogy which would apply to gods might be something like taking a picture of a ball, a bat, a base, manicured grass, chalk lines, and a foul pole, eventually suggesting a new file called "baseball". However abstract concepts like gods and the game of baseball would require a language to flesh out, I feel. Once again imperfect at best but maybe helpful to some.

    There are several problems I struggle to resolve. "Baseball" file creation based on the series of photos requires reasoning ie. we can create complex concepts consciously (some of them correctly, some of them incorrectly) by processing input data using our minds (language included). Epicurus realised that human reasoning is far from perfect and reasoning introduces probability of error. That's why senses, prolepsis and feelings can only be considered canonical if they are cut off from reasoning. Otherwise, any kind of knowledge would be impossible due to constant errors (which is exactly what Epicurus tried to overcome and come up with a way to explain that knowledge - at least subjective one - is possible to humans).

    Another problem that creeps in is the theory of eidolas (images) that every material object is supposed to emit. Epicurus claimed that our prolepsis of gods comes from eidolas that reach our mind directly and these images are put in our photo album under 'gods' file. (To be clear, I am still impressed with the eidola theory. To come up with something like that in ancient times is ridiculously impressive. Below I'm only highlighting the impossibility of prolepsis of gods derived from this theory. I'm not trying to be smart criticizing ancient atomists from the modern perspective).

    These two problems lead to serious aporia in my mind:
    1) Prolepsis is a canonical faculty, knowledge is possible but prolepsis of gods is logically impossible (we know now that eidolas is a failed theory and images of gods do not reach human minds travelling from intermundia). That means Epicurus blundered with his description of gods being incorruptible and blessed. He had no input data to form prolepsis of gods and make any claims about gods, whatsoever.
    2) Prolepsis is a form of reasoning and cannot be considered canonical faculty or knowledge is impossible. That means Epicurus blundered with his description of canon or applied pure reasoning in his description of gods. Whether his reasoning is correct or incorrect remains forever undetermined as knowledge is impossible in this case and everything goes.

    I hope someone can help me out with this because, for the love of god, when I put prolepsis, epistemology and gods in the epicurean equation, I can't solve it no matter how hard I try. Anyway, thanks sanantoniogarden for your post. It made me think, reason and use language (probably incorrectly on all fronts but, hey, I'm only human).

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    Cassius
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    • July 3, 2025 at 11:22 AM
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    • #46

    Bryan will likely do better than me but I would say:

    Quote from TauPhi

    1) Prolepsis is a canonical faculty, knowledge is possible but prolepsis of gods is logically impossible (we know now that eidolas is a failed theory and images of gods do not reach human minds travelling from intermundia). That means Epicurus blundered with his description of gods being incorruptible and blessed. He had no input data to form prolepsis of gods and make any claims about gods, whatsoever.

    I think according to your own reasoning, with which I agree, saying "prolepsis of gods" is improper. Eyes don't see gods or trees or birds or any other "object" either. Once you assign a word or name to what you are talking about you are selectively choosing from the inputs of the eye to the brain, and I would say the same applies to "gods." What we seem to be revolving around is seeing proplepsis as a form of automatic selectivity among the inputs provided by the sensations and feelings, by which the brain then in a separate step takes that selected raw data and then assembles the patterns into concepts and attaches names to them.

    Quote from TauPhi

    2) Prolepsis is a form of reasoning and cannot be considered canonical faculty or knowledge is impossible. That means Epicurus blundered with his description of canon or applied pure reasoning in his description of gods. Whether his reasoning is correct or incorrect remains forever undetermined as knowledge is impossible in this case and everything goes.

    Same point as above. I would not see prolepsis as a form of "reasoning." Regardless of whether you pursue the "real" or "ideal" view of gods, the prolepsis that Velleius is talking about need not be anything more than the selective pattern-recognition of "blessed/happy" and "deathlessness." After those patterns are realized as applicable to life here, other observations about living beings here, that nature never makes a single thing of a kind, that the universe is eternal and filled with life, etc, would be enough to extend the concept through conceptual reasoning to conclude that such beings do in fact exist somewhere in the universe.

    So in both cases I think your original point of reasoning - that prolepsis must be pre-rational and is never a "conclusion"- is the way forward. That original point just needs to be followed to its logical conclusion so that we rigorously separate the faculty of prolepsis from including "conclusions" or "ideas" of any kind.

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    • July 3, 2025 at 11:26 AM
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    Quote from sanantoniogarden

    An analogy (imperfect at best) I use to describe prolepsis, which should be familiar to most these days, are the cameras on our phones. Say that your mind is like a camera constantly taking pictures of various things.

    I agree this is useful. Like a camera, the eyes and other senses are continuously receiving stimulation and input. Something in our brains has to decide what inputs to pay attention to and to assemble into relevant connections before we start rationally evaluating them. We don't constantly state to ourselves in words what our senses are receiving. We act on and assemble relationships between data automatically, and then process those into words when appropriate.

  • Bryan
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    • July 3, 2025 at 12:08 PM
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    Quote from Cassius

    What we seem to be revolving around is seeing proplepsis as a form of automatic selectivity among the inputs provided by the sensations and feelings, by which the brain then in a separate step takes that selected raw data

    Yes, if someone shows you a diseased rat in a cage and says, "This is a god!" -- the immediate, automatic rejection you feel comes from the fact that it does not match your prolēpsis (i.e., mental sense / anticipation) of what a god is.

    Only after that initial sensation can you begin reasoning out why you automatically think a sick rat in a cage is not a god.

  • TauPhi
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    • July 3, 2025 at 12:09 PM
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    Quote from Cassius

    So in both cases I think your original point of reasoning - that prolepsis must be pre-rational and is never a "conclusion"- is the way forward. That original point just needs to be followed to its logical conclusion so that we rigorously separate the faculty of prolepsis from including "conclusions" or "ideas" of any kind.


    Thanks Cassius That's exactly where I struggle with regarding epicurean prolepsis of gods and I can't find any arguments that would justify Epicurus' claims. When you say this:

    Quote from Cassius

    Regardless of whether you pursue the "real" or "ideal" view of gods, the prolepsis that Velleius is talking about need not be anything more than the selective pattern-recognition of "blessed/happy" and "deathlessness." After those patterns are realized as applicable to life here, other observations about living beings here, that nature never makes a single thing of a kind, that the universe is eternal and filled with life, etc, would be enough to extend the concept through conceptual reasoning to conclude that such beings do in fact exist somewhere in the universe.


    I instantaneously say: There are no patterns for blessedness and deathlessness in nature that living beings are exposed to. These are concepts, ideas or conclusions humans can reason out but these concepts are not of proleptic nature. They are creations of reason ie. we have patterns for death and reasoning powers to comprehend the concept of the opposite. That's why we can comprehend deathlessness. Not because we are exposed to it but because we can create this complex concept (correctly or incorrectly) in our minds by the power of our minds and not by any criteria of truth. And that brings me back to square one.

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    • July 3, 2025 at 12:31 PM
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    Quote from TauPhi

    2) Prolepsis is a form of reasoning and cannot be considered canonical faculty or knowledge is impossible. That means Epicurus blundered with his description of canon or applied pure reasoning in his description of gods. Whether his reasoning is correct or incorrect remains forever undetermined as knowledge is impossible in this case and everything goes.

    I would consider prolḗpseis to just be raw, pre-interpretive mental data, like sensations are just physical data, and feelings are just emotional data, all of which are produced prior to evaluation or reflection. We digest all of this data when we exercise various applications of the mind, like imagining, supposing, entertaining, fantasizing, considering, exploring, believing, or formulating (which can all produce false results), and then there is acknowledging the raw data, just witnessing, or observing, or recalling, which is just recognizing the objects of experiences that are self-evident.

    It's like lying to ourselves: we just can't. It catches up to us, because reality doesn't go away.

    In that regard, I think of the mind like the moon, and prolḗpseis are like impact craters that deepen over time. The mind is physically bombarded with hard impulses, and they leave marks in the form of memories. As humans, the shape of our craters are comparable – the "yellow" crater looks yellow on everyone's personal moon, and the "dog" crater looks like a dog. The craters for "mortals" looks the same, and "animals" (they're all breathing and making babies), and it would follow then that the basic crater of "divinity" largely looks the same to everyone (they're perfectly happy).

    I think we all have an idea (just as people) of what a category of beings that are perfectly happy would be like (we all seem to share that notion), and that notion is perfectly natural, so it's just being received from environmental stimuli and physical experiences, because its shared.

    Epíkouros explains that we're not physically observing the visible particles of the gods, like lights and colors, but rather, we receive knowledge of the gods by the means of subtle particles that only interface with the mental organ, comparable to the way we receive knowledge of justice. Justice has no color, nor a shape, nor a sound, nor a language; it is only expressed by particular examples. The gods are the same way. We have a basic definition of "a god" we can apply to various candidates for divinity. For example, Jews propose that the divine is YHWH. Fair enough. That's a proposition we can evaluate for truthfulness, and we can do so because we have a firm grasp of what the definition of a real god (who doesn't cause trouble), and that is our ruler to test for truth (literally, those basic understandings are part of the canon, meaning "ruler"). YHWH causes trouble, therefore, YHWH is not a real god. At best, YHWH (if real) is a meddlesome extra-terrestrial, or, more likely, a misconception, caused by mixing the notion of god with the notion of a moody human. Christians maintain, like Aristotle, that God created the universe. Diogénēs the Epicurean wonders, Why? Was he bored? Was he lonely? From where does he inherit his artistic creativity? That "God" sounds more like a human sculptor or a chemist than it does a principle of Goodness. We'll find false gods in anything supposed to have created us, evaluates us, and anything that interferes with our history. People throw around their conceptions of "God" all the time, and we know, for a fact, they are nonsense, because all of those conceptions contradict the basic notion of a happy being. Jesus literally bleeds for us (so they say). I can do that, and I am most definitely not a god. And you can't be both mortal and immortal, or else the meanings of words just dissolve into confusion.

    In general, the prolḗpseis are grasped by the applications of the mind (like contemplation and reflection) in the same way that contemplation and reflection also grasp ideas like "Middle Earth" and "lightsabers" (which are only real as fantasy), but the difference is that all of these other mental objects are generated by the faculties of reason, whereas prolḗpseis are like fish captured by a mental net: the mind captures what nature gives it; our myths are made, not captured.

    We talk a lot about what the gods are in this forum, and, I believe, most of the candidates we have proposed tend to contradict the raw definition of divinity that Epíkouros provides. We like the idea that they might just be mental conceptions that only exist in the human mind, made of mental particles, and that, perhaps, they were first recognized by early hominids in dream-states (either nocturnal dreams or perhaps self-induced visions). We also like to consider that the gods are some kind of laughing, talking, respirating space ghosts (I'm sort of joking). Honestly, we're not sure, but, we can be sure that it is irrational for any hypothetical "god" to act "ungodly", because, without a doubt, we know, for a fact, what the definition of a "god" is, regardless of which one.

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    • July 3, 2025 at 12:46 PM
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    "I can't find any arguments that would justify Epicurus' claims..."


    To what claims are you referring? I see no claim other than that a god is a totally happy and totally deathless being. And I see examples of some things that are happier than others, and some things that love longer than others, all around me.

    Now you may object to happy and death as being concepts, but those concepts arise from real particular examples whether I label them or not.

    I would see prolepsis as an ability or disposition to pick out similars from among randomness.

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    • July 3, 2025 at 1:30 PM
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    I think it's very relevant to point out that Velleius pretty clearly divides the core attributes of blessedness and imlerishability from any other speculations, diving that from what the mind strives for further:


    Quote

    We have then a preconception of such a nature that we believe the gods to be blessed and immortal. For nature, which bestowed upon us an idea of the gods themselves, also engraved on our minds the belief that they are eternal and blessed. If this is so, the famous maxim of Epicurus truthfully enunciates that "that which is blessed and eternal can neither know trouble itself nor cause trouble to another, and accordingly cannot feel either anger or favor, since all such things belong only to the weak."

    If we sought to attain nothing else beside piety in worshiping the gods and freedom from superstition, what has been said had sufficed; since the exalted nature of the gods, being both eternal and supremely blessed, would receive man's pious worship (for what is highest commands the reverence that is its due); and furthermore all fear of the divine power or divine anger would have been banished (since it is understood that anger and favor alike are excluded from the nature of a being at once blessed and immortal, and that these being eliminated we are menaced by no fears in regard to the powers above). But the mind strives to strengthen this belief by trying to discover the form of god, the mode of his activity, and the operation of his intelligence.


    And later on he says:

    XVIII. With regard to his form, we are directed partly by nature and partly by reason

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    • July 3, 2025 at 5:41 PM
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    Do our learned friends here take issue with the following discussion by DeWitt? Please be specific and explain why the below is inapposite to this thread.

    I ask because the posts discussed earlier are overwhelming me. The following comments and quotations in DeWitt seem to respond to the original query in this thread.

    “EVIDENCES FROM SPECIFIC CONTEXT
    In the extant texts of Epicurus the term prolepsis occurs four times
    in a specific context. The first has reference to the divine nature and the
    second and third to justice; the fourth applies to the concept of time.” P.146 DeWitt

    “The discussion of the divine nature is found in the letter to the
    youthful Menoeceus.44
    It is there declared "that the pronouncements
    of the multitude concerning the gods are not anticipations (prolepseis)
    but false assumptions."” p.146

    “The second and third examples of the term prolepsis are found in
    Authorized Doctrines 37 and 38; the topic is justice. Just as in the case
    of the divine nature, the first requisite is to discern the essential attribute
    or attributes. It is Nature that furnishes the norm and implants in men
    the embryonic notion or prolepsis of justice in advance of all experience.
    Hence it is called "the justice of Nature," as in Doctrine 31: "The justice
    of Nature is a covenant of advantage to the end that men shall not injure
    one another nor be injured." Setting aside the idea of the covenant,
    which is a separate topic,...” p.147

    Dave Tamanini

    Harrisburg, PA, USA

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    • July 3, 2025 at 7:47 PM
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    Yes Dave those are several of the most key references to prolepsis in the major texts. I would say that any good interpretation of prolepsis needs to be reconcilable with them. I don't find that DeWitt's choice of words is always the best, in that he sometimes comes close to calling them innate "ideas," but his list of the examples there is as I understand it correct.

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