Posts by Don

https://www.academia.edu/resource/work/4310042

Of possible interest here is Sedley's paper on Epicurus's On Nature Book XXVIII on language which talks quite a bit about prolepses and how the mind works especially in relation to language.

Quote from Cassius

With the continual caveat that (1) Epicurus' philosophical perspective might not be the same at all as what modern science is looking at, and (2) we need to be constantly on guard as to the implications of any particular approach.

Agreed, but I don't think it's counter to the philosophy to try to incorporate our best understanding of nature. Epicurus and the founders didn't have access to the last 2000+ years of science, so the fact that we can even have this conversation comparing modern neuroscience with Epicurus's philosophy is mind-boggling to me!

Quote from Cassius

I believe DeWitt to be correct at least insofar as he is stressing that there is a human functioning process that Nature set up for us to use to determine what to consider to be "true," and that this biological process is not "abstract reason" or "abstract logic." That would be the takeaway of most any version of the whole "canon of truth" discussion.

From what I read, DeWitt is surmising there's a sequence but basically so intertwined it's hard to say which comes first. She's yes Barrett would not give logic a part in this. Godfrey is right to in saying: Past experience gives us the ability to build "concepts" (read Epicurean prolepses). Our senses are compared to these concepts/prolepses which affects our affective circumplex (read Epicurean pathē: pleasure/pain ηδονή/άλγος).

Oh, and I should be clear: Much of the time, I'm thinking out loud when I post so I'm not committed to any of my previous assertions.

Just to make things slightly more difficult for everyone

Quote from Godfrey

A quick post; today is pretty busy so it may be a while before I get back on....

In reacting to Don 's post, I think one of LFB's points is that sensations in a particular instance don't come first. A prediction comes first and the sensations serve as a reality check as you can see from the description of a prediction loop. So the sensations are "true" but they don’t seem to be primary.

Another thing that seems like it might be fruitful to discuss is affect and the affective circumplex.

Good point, Godfrey ! I appreciate and agree with your clarification there.

First, let me say that I have nothing to add to Godfrey 's excellent summary other than to encourage people to read LFB's book and explore her research.

Here's my take on the prolepses relation to LFB:

The Canon has the following:

-Sensations

-Pain/Pleasure

-Prolepses

My understanding is that this order is meaningful and now even more so in light of LFB's research (and, I should include, from others):

- the sensations include all of our sensory input

- This input then impacts our "feeling" of pain or pleasure, or as LFB states, pleasure/displeasure.

-and our minds use this to compare our past experience to our current situation. These are our predictions based on our "prolepses."

I'm still not entirely convinced that Cicero is a reliable narrator.

The "inborn" vs "early experience" paradigm of the prolepses is an important one and I'll not resolve it here. But it seems to me that there is probably a faculty we're born with but individual prolepses have to come from experience in utero, early in life, or even later. To say we're born with prolepses seems to me to fall into the realm of Plato. Epicurus vociferously argued against his philosophy.

My take was that LFB's "concepts" come very close to describing Epicurus's prolepses.

I think her pleasure/displeasure axis is maybe a better description of "feelings" since Epicurus's άλγος can be translated as "pain" but encompasses "pain (of either mind or body), sorrow, trouble, grief, distress, woe" That's the word he usually uses that's translated "pain."

So, there are my initial thoughts for this thread. Look forward to continuing this conversation!

Paian Anax! Y'all have been busy!

Well done, Godfrey , on your summary of LFB's book!

It's going to take me awhile to read all this, but a great start to the discussion.

I was going to read it and respond point by point but life's too short.

I'm not impressed.

I started to read the paper but come across phrases like "necessary pain" and a rather free translation of the key line in the Menoikeus Letter. The author translates it as "freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind". The word freedom does not appear. The line literally reads "neither pain in the body nor trouble in the mind". It may or may not be significant, but their free interpretation leaves me unimpressed.

We talked about bodies dissolving into their constituent atoms and the atoms getting reused for other bodies. Briefly, but it came up this episode.

I had a thought this morning following up on our conversation about atoms/seeds being rearranged into new forms.

I'd like to offer the analogy of colors represented by binary code with 1=atom 0=void

http://markfairchild.org/WhyIsColor/Questions/4-5.html

Rearrange the atoms "in" the void, you get a different color.

This is an analogy (or is it a metaphor?) so don't take it literally, but it's it helpful as such?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_…nce?wprov=sfla1

Here's the Wikipedia article on our favorite cliche from this week's episode.

Just FYI: his username is capitalized AdamSandvoid... I'm assuming a pun on Adam Sandler.

If suggesta brain research thread in Canonics with subthreads on Barrett, Hoffman, etc. or individual topics.

Just blue skying it here.

Quote from Cassius

. Is the topic: "Lisa Feldman Barrett on the Operation of the Emotions"?

I think it's deeper than that. The emotions are only one aspect of her research and not even the one that seems to resonate the most with Epicurus's Philosophy. I see much stronger analogies with her talk about sensations and "concepts".. The emotions are along for the ride from my perspective here. That seems to be her most provocative topic for a lay audience.

I think Godfrey was planning to weigh in again as well.

From seeing that other video I posted recently and its references, we might want a broader thread to include Barrett's research and Hoffman's etc. Maybe something like Parallels between modern brain research and Epicurean philosophy? Need to wordsmith that.

Quote from Cassius

Don am I correct to think what we are developing here is detail on the relationship between feelings and emotions and that this thread needs to go under the Canonics category, probably under pleasure and pain? Let me know what you think and we can move it so more findable in the future.

Yes, I'd say Canonics definitely. I'm not sure about the "relationship between feelings and emotions" though. Hmmm. The thing that hit me first I think was the sensations and anticipations parallels. Maybe Godfrey has some insights.

Quote from Cassius

Looking for a place to out comments on Barrett's podcast at Ten Percent Happier. For now I'll put it here:

54:15. "Scientists don't agree in how to define emotion."

56:06 "You don't have a sensor for feeling uncomfortable ....or unpleasant.". These are constructed by the brain.

5628 When you see red that's a feeling of redness. That comes from the brain modeling the state of your body.

I need to go back for the context but here's some initial reactions:

54:15. I agree with her. Take a look at just the Wikipedia article on Emotion or Emotion classification. This again brings up my unease about using the word "feelings" to translate pathe in the sense of Pleasure/Pain

56:06. I don't think "feeling uncomfortable... Or unpleasant" are the same as pain as your nociceptors reacting to stimuli. Including "feeling" in that automatically implies something constructed by your brain. More context needed here for me.

56:28. I agree here too. Your cones intercepting electromagnetic radiation at a frequency of 625 to 740 nanometers doesn't mean RED. We give meaning to that wavelength within our culture. Other cultures may categorize that differently.

Done!

btw... I'm not advocating some Skeptical path here. I believe our senses are our only way to interact with the world. *But* I also think it's much more complex than simply "looking" or "touching" *and* I think that Epicurus may even have had some glimpse of this complexity with [the prolepses + pleasure/pain + sensations] = his Canon. Those "anticipations" seem to me more and more like these mental constructions that let us make sense of the world that Barrett, and now Hoffman and others mentioned in that first video talk about. And pleasure/pain seem to me to exactly coincide with Barrett's "affect" (pleasure/displeasure and level of "arousal").

I find this all fascinating and find the parallels with a 2000+ year old philosophy even more fascinating!

Matt Your comments highlight exactly the points I'm trying to wrap my brain around. It seems to me that Epicurus is making the distinction you're looking at but taking the opposite tack:

He seems to consistently use βλάπτειν (blaptein) to convey "harm" but that seems to be not wilfully http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…8:entry=bla/ptw

That word appears to be the opposite of αδικέω literally "not act unjustly" or to do wrong http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l…ptw&i=1#lexicon

Epicurus seems to be trying to take the motivation out of it from my reading. That's why he has to define "justice" as "not doing harm and not being harmed" regardless of the motivation of the actor.

Still struggling... Open to ideas!