Posts by Kalosyni

Quote from Don

Quote from Rolf

All in all, rather unsettling.

Took the words right out of my mouth ... so to speak (pun unintentionally intended now that I wrote that )

I also found it unsettling.

Coming up this next Monday evening, on Sept. 1st, at 8pm ET...

...Calling all new members (Level 2) who are interested in attending a meet and greet Zoom!

This meeting will also provide an opportunity to ask questions about the forum and Epicurean philosophy.

Level 2 members: please let us know here in this thread if you would like to attend (and we will get the link to you by private message).

Please note: the meeting will only take place if there are one or more new members who wish to attend, so if you are new and wish to attend then please RSVP.

***

For Level 3 members and above, please take note that you are welcome to attend (if the meeting is held) but the meeting will now be oriented toward new members. Level 3 members we hope to see you on Sunday or Wednesday Zooms.

We will do an update on the status of this meeting the day before (to let you know if the meeting will be happening).

This line from Horace:

Quote from Cassius

Unless the vessel be sweet, whatever you pour into it turns sour.

...reminds me of Lucretius:

Thread

The Vessel Analogy At The Opening of Lucretius Book Six

I'd like to ask for input on this question about the opening of book six of Lucretius involving the "vessel" analogy. The text is below, but here's the question:

It appears that Lucretius is separating out two aspects of the defects in the "jar" - (1) the jar is leaking and cannot be filled due to leaks caused by the holes, and (2) that the jar tainted all that it took in as with a foul odor.

As to (1) It seems to me that the leaks can be pretty well identified with the analogy of the Danaides,…

Cassius

September 13, 2023 at 7:06 PM

Another way to investigate all of this is to plug it into real life experiences.

It is all about personal subjective experiences, and determining how far you want to go with it (how deep you want to go into investigating your internal mental experiences and physical sensations).

For the sensation of taste, we have a limit which the stomach provides. We must honor the full stomach and not eat when pain arises. This is the natural limit of pleasure regarding taste. You can practice bringing the concept of "the limit of pleasure" into practical application by eating pizza! (Why ruin a good meal by eating so much that you feel pain for the next half hour or hour afterward.)

Lately I've been chewing sugar-free gum (cinnamon and also tropical fruit flavor). But I've decided that I will no longer buy anymore or chew it, because I find it brings up mental annoyance for me - because I don't feel a sense of completion and as soon as the flavor is gone I want to start over with new gum, or I feel a craving to eat something (but I need to watch my calorie intake these days due to a slower metabolism (not getting as much exercise these days).

As for the sensations of vision: beautiful shape/color ...this too can have a limit. I have discovered this limit when looking online at Pinterest AI images (too much becomes painful! )

Reflecting on that chart, and the implication that everything will soon go to "hell in a hand-basket"... I was thinking that as long as everyone maintains their employment and has money, and the money maintains its value, and there is enough food in the grocery stores, then everything goes okay. But if there ever comes a time with widespread unemployment, worthless money, and no food...then that is a big problem.

It often appears that discussions flow from an "either/or" standpoint. Recent discussion anti-natalist vs natalist had some aspects of an "either/or", but it seems that there have been other discussions with dichotomies (and do Cicero & Plutarch use this?)

Wikipedia says:

"A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when, in fact, there could be many." -- Source

Is there anything in the Letter to Pythocles that could be applied? Or what would Epicurus say?

Quote from Don

The philosophy doesn't take a pro or anti stance other than to value existence over non-existence and to evaluate whether to have children in light of acknowledgement of the pleasure and pain involved. It's a very subjective decision.

"Conditional natalism" - it wouldn't be good to bring a child into the world during war and famine. Also, women still do most of the childrearing tasks, so the lives of women with children are subject to massive time constraints - with little spare time to give to philosophy (unless there is enough finances to hire a nanny).

From the article that Godfrey posted (in post 27 above):

Quote

When one user asked it to produce a map of the U.S. with all the states labeled, GPT-5 extruded a fantasyland, including states such as Tonnessee, Mississipo and West Wigina. Another prompted the model for a list of the first 12 presidents, with names and pictures. It only came up with nine, including presidents Gearge Washington, John Quincy Adama and Thomason Jefferson.

Here is a really good video about AI music and the band "Velvet Sundown", and brings up various issues regarding AI music:

Eikadistes your post got me wondering and so I found this on a Wikipedia site:

Quote

Ancient Greece

Left: Reconstructed Blond Kouros's Head of the Acropolis, c. 480 BC.
Right: Ganymede, a Trojan youth, rolling a hoop, Attic vase c. 500 BC.

Most people in ancient Greece had dark hair and, as a result of this, the Greeks found blond hair immensely fascinating.^{[citation needed]} In the Homeric epics, Menelaus the king of the Spartans is, together with some other Achaean leaders, portrayed as blond.^[67] Other light-haired characters in the Homeric poems are Peleus, Achilles, Meleager, Agamede, and Rhadamanthys.^[67] The traces of hair color on Greek korai probably reflect the colors the artists saw in natural hair;^[68] these colors include a broad diversity of shades of blond, red and brown.^[68] The minority of statues with blond hair range from strawberry blond up to platinum blond.^[68]

Sappho of Lesbos (c. 630–570 BC) wrote that purple-colored wraps as headdress were good enough, except if the hair was blond: "...for the girl who has hair that is yellower than a torch [it is better to decorate it] with wreaths of flowers in bloom."^[69] Sappho's contemporary Alcman praised golden hair as one of the most desirable qualities of a beautiful woman,^{[citation needed]} describing in various poems "the girl with the yellow hair" and a girl "with the hair like purest gold".^[70]

In the fifth century BC, the sculptor Pheidias may have depicted the Greek goddess of wisdom Athena's hair using gold in his famous statue of Athena Parthenos, which was displayed inside the Parthenon.^[71] The Greeks thought of the Thracians who lived to the north as having reddish-blond hair.^[72] Because many Greek slaves were captured from Thrace, slaves were stereotyped as blond or red-headed.^[72] "Xanthias" (Ξανθίας), meaning "reddish blond", was a common name for slaves in ancient Greece^[72][73] and a slave by this name appears in many of the comedies of Aristophanes.^[73] Historian and Egyptologist Joann Fletcher asserts that the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great and members of the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Hellenistic Egypt had blond hair, such as Arsinoe II and Berenice II.^[74] Additionally, the ancient Greek lyric poet Bacchylides wrote of "the blonde daughters of the Lacedaemonians" (Spartans),^[75] while also noting the light hair of athletes at the Nemean Games.^[76]

Greek prostitutes frequently dyed their hair blond using saffron dyes or colored powders.^[77] Blond dye was highly expensive, took great effort to apply, and smelled repugnant,^[77] but none of these factors inhibited Greek prostitutes from dying their hair.^[77] As a result of this and the natural rarity of blond hair in the Mediterranean region, by the fourth century BC, blond hair was inextricably associated with prostitutes.^[77] The comic playwright Menander (c. 342/41–c. 290 BC) protests that "no chaste woman ought to make her hair yellow".^[77] At another point, he deplores blond hair dye as dangerous: "What can we women do wise or brilliant, who sit with hair dyed yellow, outraging the character of gentlewomen, causing the overthrow of houses, the ruin of nuptials, and accusations on the part of children?"

Display More

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blond

Perhaps then this, from the Wikipedia:

"The comic playwright Menander (c. 342/41–c. 290 BC) protests that "no chaste woman ought to make her hair yellow".^[77]

...so then she definitely looks like a hetaira.

...and I probably had to specifically ask the AI to make her hair blond.

As an artist who always struggled with drawing proper proportions, I've done lots of experimentation with AI art (but only with using free programs). It seems lately that I am not able to get as good results as I did in the past, so now I mainly have been doing collaging with Canva.

But just for fun, here is an AI picture from last year (the prompt that I likely used was something like: beautiful ancient Greek woman wearing white and reading scroll in a beautiful garden, but likely was much more detailed than that):

And would name this "Leontion in the Garden".

Quote from Don

Honestly, it would probably be more accurate for Alexa to be masquerading as an Epicurean student but actually to be listening to only report back EVERYTHING to its Stoic or Academic manufacturers so the info can be used against the Garden.

......

I just found this interesting article:

If any AI became 'misaligned' then the system would hide it just long enough to cause harm — controlling it is a fallacy

AI "alignment" is a buzzword, not a feasible safety goal.

www.livescience.com

Quote

Given the vast amounts of resources flowing into AI research and development, which is expected to exceed a quarter of a trillion dollars in 2025, why haven't developers been able to solve these problems? My recent peer-reviewed paper in AI & Society shows that AI alignment is a fool's errand: AI safety researchers are attempting the impossible.

And this article:

AI could soon think in ways we don't even understand — evading our efforts to keep it aligned — top AI scientists warn

Researchers at Google and OpenAI, among other companies, have warned that we may not be able to monitor AI's decision-making process for much longer.

www.livescience.com

And lots of other articles on AI at the livescience website.

I just found this recipe, but finding good and fresh sesame seeds in my neck of the woods might not be easy. (Could probably find them at a health food store, next time I go into a big city).

This seems like a celebratory type of food...perhaps something which could be served at a Twentieth feast:

Pasteli | Ancient Greek Honey Sesame Bar | Lemon & Olives | Exploring Greece and Beyond: Mediterranean Diet Tips & Recipes for Wellness, Nutrition, and Healthy Living

This classic Ancient Greek recipe is for what is know as the world's first energy bar. Made with sesame seeds and honey, give ancient greek pasteli a try

www.lemonandolives.com

Ingredients:

Quote

• 1 cup sesame seeds
• 1/3 cup pistachios optional, cut in halves
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 inch lemon peel
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/4 cup sugar optional

Happy Twentieth to all Epicurean philosophy readers, students, forum members, and advocates!

Quote from Matteng

Thanks, I often worry

that the topic sometimes fades into the background because rivals to Epicurean philosophy often define virtue as the highest good instead of Pleasure.

One must be careful not to create a false dichotomy like virtue vs. pleasure. In Epicureanism, virtue and pleasure grow together, but virtue gets its value from pleasure, not the other way around. Virtue is the greatest but instrumental good. Therefore, many people (as I used to) unconsciously believe that Stoics, for example, are generally more virtuous than Epicureans, which is nonsense. The path to pleasure/eudaimonia always leads via virtue. I see the biggest difference (virtue or pleasure as the core of eudaimonia/life goal) in that eudaimonia, the good self or inner spirit, is defined by the Stoics as "doing good" while Epicureans define it as "experiencing good."

Very well said Matteng

This section of the Letter to Menoeceus points toward choosing actions which are non-harming:

"He therefore thinks it better to be unfortunate in reasonable action than to prosper in unreason. For it is better in a man’s actions that what is well chosen (should fail, rather than that what is ill chosen) should be successful owing to chance."

Choosing actions which do not harm others will often (but not every single time) create the best outcome.

The phrase "contemplative life" is Christian Catholic, which sounds different than saying "a life of contemplation".

For Epicurus, contemplate/meditate would have meant to think about, study, and apply philosophy.

This is somewhat applicable, and sheds some light on what is being refered to in the closing paragraph of the Letter to Menoeceus, a life of contemplation is like living like the gods (of course, minus the Aristotilian emphasis on virtues).

Epicurus would have surely written about this from his own perspective, but so much of his writings were lost.

"AFTER THE ASCENT: PLATO
ON BECOMING LIKE GOD" -- JOHN M. ARMSTRONG

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=0385716796962ba73a5a32453511cd201d6ff973

From the opening paragraph:

Quote

Platonic dialogues indicate that humans should strive to
become like god. Until recent work by Julia Annas and David Sedley, this had gone largely unnoticed in contemporary Plato scholarship.1 In this article I explore the idea further by arguing that Plato’s
later conception of god made a difference to how he conceived of becoming like god. In particular, I argue that Plato’s identification of god with νο#ς or intelligence in the Timaeus, Philebus, and Laws
influences his conception of assimilation to god. Rather than fleeing from the sensible world, becoming like this god commits one to improving it. In the Laws especially, following god requires an effort to unify the city under intelligent law and to educate the citizens in virtue. Plato’s otherworldliness is therefore tempered by—of all things—his theology.

Ever since ancient Platonists such as Eudorus, Philo, and Alcinous, Plato’s notion of ‘becoming like god’ (/μο'ωσις θε-.) or ‘following god’ (1κ3λουθος θε-.) has been understood to be a flight from this world to a higher one.2 This is due partly to the ancients’ heavy reliance on this Theaetetus passage: But bad things cannot be destroyed, Theodorus, for there must always be something opposed to the good. Nor can they gain a place among gods. Rather, by necessity they haunt mortal nature and this place here. That’s why one must try to flee from here to there as quickly as possible. Fleeing is becoming like god so far as one can, and to become like god is to become just and pious with wisdom. (176 a 5–b 2)

This shows that there was already the idea of becoming like the gods before Epicurus, but Epicurus has his very different methodology, as we see in the Letter to Menoeceus - and which says "living like a god among men". And this also does bring up a necessity for Epicureans to understand what is meant by "gods".

This thread does bring up the opportunity for a "compare and contrast":

Quote from Eoghan Gardiner

Acknowledgment of Life's Uncertainties:

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12: "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time."

From the Letter to Menoeceus:

"He thinks that with us lies the chief power in determining events, some of which happen by necessity, and some by chance, and some are within our control; for while necessity cannot be called to account, he sees that chance is inconstant, but that which is in our control is subject to no master, and to it are naturally attached praise and blame."

Quote from Eikadistes

I'm organizing some data here

That looks like something which could be a jumping-board for comparing and contrasting, since some of these ideas are very much permeating our modern times.

Quote from Cassius

I remember that DeWitt discussed Ecclesiastes relatively at length

I am surprised to hear that DeWitt made connections between Epicureanism and Ecclesiastes. In my mind there are some very opposite sentiments. Ecclesiastes has a tone of "existential depression"...which then leads to this:

Quote

17 I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.

(Yes it is true...I have not read DeWitt cover to cover).