Tactical Question for the Group Re Terminology In Discussing Reason and Logic

Quote from Elayne

Conclusions about absence of gods can't be accurately made from logic.

I agree with that, although I believe it should be stated as ".....cannot be accurately made from logic alone." I think that would be one reason why the Epicureans considered "anticipations" to be a kind of innate evidence which provides an evidentiary starting point for evaluation of the subject, so that the entire subject would not be grounded in abstract logic and speculation

Quote from Elayne

I put my confidence in my first-hand observations of nature, and in the complete absence of evidence for supernatural gods.

I think the part where we are not connecting is here. I agree that the root of the issue is first-hand observation, but I think Epicurus held that it is proper to infer conclusions from first-hand observation which we then treat as established principles and expect to be valid even in places where we have not seen any evidence (such as beyond reach of telescopes). Such a principle would be "the universe has no supernatural gods over it," or "nothing comes from or goes to nothing" treated not just as a sum of prior observations but as an established principle that can then be dealt with on an intellectual level as principles considered "proven" rather than in a category with those things which await further confirmation. That text reference to "awaiting further confirmation" I see as another indication that Epicurus held that observations must be converted to principles (to the category of "confirmed; no longer awaiting confirmation"), and those conclusions would then be a large part of the outlines he referenced in the opening of the letter to Herodotus to be used in daily processing of information.

Quote from Elayne

And whenever more detailed evidence is obtained, at the level too small or too far away to investigate without instruments, never has any researcher found any observations a god was needed to explain

Agreed, but as per the above, the conclusion that Epicurus reached from this observation was to place it in the category of knowledge which is not waiting further confirmation. We can call that category "first principles" or something else, but the category would be considered as established to the point of a fundamental of nature, not just "the sum of past observations."

Quote from Elayne

You seem to want explanations which appeal to those with less education or intelligence, whether those explanations are correct or not.

Well in response to this I will simply say that we still are not joining the issue other than that you seem to be considering words like "logic" and "reason" as in tension with having an open mind to incorporate future observations. I see this as the point being made by Epicurus when stating then wise men should be "dogmatists" and "not mere skeptics" and also as the point made by Lucretuis in considering the man who asserts that he knows nothing to be perverse or trifling or Lucian saying that an Epicurus would consider the deceit of Aristotle the Oracle Monger as a fraud, even though the did not know the precise way the fraud was being committed. We could also list here the statement by Lucretius that it would in fact be better to affirm an incorrect reason than to give up confidence in the senses; or really the entire "multivalent logic" approach where multiple possibilities are entertained where they are not contradicted by evidence. Each of these seem to me to affirm that Epicurus was suggesting that it is necessary to form our observations into principles which are then considered to be the building blocks by which we evaluate evidence and make our day to day decisions.

It seems to me that there is an issue here in how to consider whether anything is "established" in life to the point where it can be considered firm and unchallengeable within the philosophy. Thinking back to that statement of Epicurus, the point of the study of nature is not to become an encyclopedia of facts which ends with "and this is what has been discovered to this point and will be revised in our next edition" but to deduce a set of life operating principles by which we can confidently hope to live happily.

Quote from Elayne

You seem to want explanations which appeal to those with less education or intelligence, whether those explanations are correct or not. But a sturdy philosophy should not repel scientists who note inaccuracies or cling to conclusions that could result in less educated people feeling threatened by published reports about new observations.

This, combined with the nearby and ongoing discussion of the mind-blowing Parmenides assertions, reminds me that I have always identified with this attitude from Thomas Jefferson's letter to Peter Carr. And I have to agree with Jefferson - I would much rather live my life in community of ploughmen than a community of Parmenides fans, and I do think the issue is the "artificial" nature of the professors' rules. Which is not to say that the ploughman doesn't have rules of his own, but that he finds them located in things that are sensible to him. All of this hark's back to Joshua's video early in the thread about Lincoln basing his reasoning on eternal forms. It still seems to me that it is usually not flaws in the reasoning once started, but flaws in the starting point, that seem to be the issue:

Quote

Moral Philosophy. I think it lost time to attend lectures on this branch. He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his Nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality, and not the [beautiful], truth, &c., as fanciful writers have imagined. The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, & often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. In this branch, therefore, read good books, because they will encourage, as well as direct your feelings. The writings of Sterne, particularly, form the best course of morality that ever was written. Besides these, read the books mentioned in the enclosed paper; and, above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, &c. Consider every act of this kind, as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties & increase your worth.

Quote from Elayne

I do not think he would want to exclude intelligent scientists from his Garden.

I completely agree. Your next sentence that they might exclude themselves though seems more likely to be a problem, if Cicero was correct, and on this point I bet he was:

Quote from Elayne

If no one had ever made any further observations, then it would be understandable to take your position

The main point I would leave this with for now is that I think you and I are mainly having a terminology debate, but beneath the surface of that debate lies the deeper issues that are more clear when reviewing what Frances Wright wrote. It's not you who I have the big difference with as much as it is Frances Wright.and her "observation is everything" approach that is very explicitly stated here. She's representing that as as Epicurean philosophy and we need to decide whether she's right about that or not.

My tentative conclusion about Frances Wright is that her position on this issue was wrong, and that this is the reason, more than anything else, why she seems to have essentially dropped the subject of Epicurus for the rest of her life and devoted herself to pure local politics. I won't argue that her decision was wrong for her, because if she got the most enjoyment out of politics then it isn't appropriate for me to second-guess that, but I can easily see how her views led her to conclude that she had gotten all she was ever going to get out of Epicurus and to move on to something else.

I think the issues underlying this question are very important to the future growth of a real "Epicurean community" in the future. The reason I titled this thread as "tactical" is that I don't think we have been clear enough about a definite set of principles about "what it means to be an Epicurean." Most of the time the public discussion on Facebook and similar places has been focused on discussion of happiness and "pleasure as the goal" that everyone can interpret the way they want to. As a result the people we attract on Facebook or in local meetup efforts are often thinking we're just going to be attending some kind of self-help psychology group for the purpose of helping them de-stress in addition to their Yoga and/or their Prozac.

That is where I think we have to get over this current issue, because it is essentially the issue of dogmatism that has caused several divisions in our efforts in the past. The issue is somewhat like - "Can we say for sure that anything important is definitely "known" about the universe, about life after death, or the existence of gods?"

If we follow the Frances Wright line and say "everything is observation," that leaves those big-picture questions open, and many people will feel tricked. If we were to invite people to a meeting and then spent our time talking about eternity, infinity, atoms, nothing from nothing, and the like, then those people will feel like they are in the wrong place, as that is not at all what they came to hear. I would say maybe as much as 80% of the Facebook group, or more, fits that category.

So I think we have to start being more clear, and more "dogmatic" that Epicurus held to a certain set of principles that remain fundamentally valid. Sure I agree that many of the physics details need to be updated, but I am personally convinced that the large conclusions (eternality, infinity, absence of infinite divisibility, role of the senses and reason, life throughout the universe, responses to Platonic arguments against pleasure, responses to Parmenides on motion, etc.) are still very valid and at the very least worth talking about as reasonable solutions to these questions.

If you follow Frances Wright's reasoning, all of the physics and "answers to essential questions about the universe" are essentially out the window, and you do in fact become basically a self-help psychology group with just a different slant on pleasure and pain.

That's why I think the Frances Wright perspective has to be cleared up before we can move to a next level of engagement. We'll constantly run into the disappointment I mentioned if we don't. We've actually been pretty consistent over the last six months in holding regular Skype discussions, but until we reach some conclusions about the Frances Wright perspective, we wouldn't even be able to agree on topics for a conference.

Would the topics for a live conference be:

(1) the pleasure of music (2) the pleasure of smooth motion, (3) the pleasure of food, and (4) why pleasure is more important than logic and reason?

Or would the topics be:

(1) the universe was not created by a supernatural god but is eternal, (2) the universe is infinite in space so there is no room for a supernatural god, (3) matter cannot be divided forever, and the elemental particles are the source of stability and repeatability, (4) he who says he knows nothing is a trifler and perverse, and (5) Epicurean logic and reasoning are based on evidence from the components of the canon, which is why it is the best kind.
Frances Wright seems to have been one of the most brilliant writers on Epicurus in the last 500 years, yet in the end she dropped away from it, so I think there important lessons to be learned from this.

Quote from Elayne

No amount of evidence can relieve someone's anxiety, according to evidence, but therapy can be extremely helpful

This is the sentence I would use to discuss what I see as the only practical difference between our positions. I don't think that Epicurus would have devoted so much of his life to exploring and writing about nature if he did not think that evidence can and does relieve anxiety in some people, when processed into a reasonable system of thought such as he presented in his philosophy. I think the point where we are missing each other is that you are correctly pointing out that for some people, no amount of evidence presented to them is going to change their mind. Such people are for any of many possible reasons not oriented toward making up their minds based on evidence, and for them some type of therapy is the appropriate option. But I would contend that many others DO make up their minds based on evidence, and its to those that Epicurus and Lucretius primarily directed their work. They wouldn't have ignored those who aren't interested in evidence, but the great bulk of their work seems to me clearly directed to those who were interested in a reasoned and logical analysis of the great questions of life. And yes, I'll repeat that I don't think a "reasoned and logical analysis of the great questions of life" means what Plato and the Stoics meant in their version of what I would call "formal logic."

As a result it is entirely appropriate for some people to devote their lives to the study of nature and to take that information and develop a system of reasonable and logical thought like Epicurus did, and like Lucretius followed. The fact that others exist for whom no amount of gathering of evidence and system-building and reasoned presentation is going to make a difference is no reason at all not to engage in gathering of evidence and system-building and reasoned presentation for those who find such activities persuasive.

Quote from elli

The laconic answer by Epicurus that excludes all the dilemmas of "either or" by Aristotle is : "I say, BOTH of the above"!

I agree with Elli's laconic answer here -- BOTH approaches are legitimate and the Epicurean tent is big enough to contain them both. But I would strongly resist the idea that the ethics should or could reasonably be presented without the physics and the epistemology (the discussion of reason and logic and evidence that we are discussing now).

Quote from elli

Because if you want to give a credence to my experience of the symposia in Athens, that friends of Thessaloniki and Athens met in person once a year... The results of all the conferences and the symposia in public became a whole mess.

I continue to be fascinated by the situation among the Epicureans in Greece, and I am not satisfied that we should let that question go unexamined. In fact I think the answer there is very likely close to the subject that we are discussing. I think Elli is correct that closer personal contact would help alleviate any "mess" that might exist between disputing participants in Greece (or anywhere else), but I also don't think that the disputes are "only" a result of lack of personal contact. I think if people don't identify differences in approaches and bring out those differences for examination, then issues can never be resolved and progress made.

Even though this current debate may seem disconcerting I think it's among the most important we've ever had. We've been through debates before about whether "pleasure as the goal" should be kept front and center in presenting Epicurean philosophy, and we've seen people go separate ways because of disagreement about that. Rather than just have these debates go unresolved, it seems to me it's a lot better to explore in the open the reasons *why* the issues are important. That way even if people have to agree to disagree, then those of each position can continue to explore the implications of their positions, rather than leaving the different perspectives frozen perpetually. I think this discussion has been very useful for us all and I'm very glad we have had it.

Quote from Elayne

fact remains that you are telling people modern physics models somehow threaten our philosophy, and it's not true.

I am not seeing myself as disputing the part I quoted or any of the rest of what I quite there.

My view is that modern physics has a position on whether the universe is eternal and similar issues, and Epicurus had a position on those issues. Everyone can think about and decide for themselves what they want to believe and how much personal research they want to do, but they'll never even be able to consider Epicurus' position unless they know what it was and his reasons for holding them.

I certainly am not an expert in modern physics, and it's not appropriate for me to suggest to people that they should take a particular modern physics position either. I'm not qualified to say that a particular expert today is right, so I should not be in the business of endorsing one view over another, or saying that a particular expert has conclusively proved Epicurus wrong on the ultimate conclusions, even where there are many intermediate issues that clearly would appear to need revision.

Regardless of which side we take, there's no escaping the fact than in representing something to be Epicurean philosophy there 's a clearly documented position that Epicurus took on many of these issues. I don't think it was appropriate for Frances Wright to ascribe positions to Epicurus that conflicted with those he actually took, and I would not think it appropriate for someone to endorse a particular model unless they are themselves experts in the science. You're certainly a lot closer to that than I am, but even then, it's not a part of Epicurean philosophy to endorse the work of any particular scientists or to say that even a "consensus of scientists" deserves deference. For the very reasons you're saying, "science" changes over time and thus its conclusions change. We aren't in the business of being experts in science, we're in the business of finding a workable philosophy of life that allows us to live happily. Epicurus himself said that it would be better to follow the religionists than to give in to particular "scientists" of his day -- those that denied the possibility of "free will."

I note that while I was composing this Elli wrote another very good post about remembering important issues like friendships and feelings. I totally agree with that. I note that she closed with "Please do not leave it in laboratory conditions or in the hands of academics." I totally agree with that too, and that is why I do not think we should ever be in the business of placing our opinion on ultimate issues in the hands of "experts" who claim that they in their laboratories have access to ultimate truths that other people don't. I am very willing to believe that they have access to all sorts of detailed observations that others don't have, but I think every person has to reserve for himself or herself the ultimate responsibility for their ultimate conclusions about their place in the universe. And whether I think they "have to" or not -- that's the nature of things. Nature hasn't set up a system where we are all compelled to believe the same thing, or to find pleasure in the same things.

By no means do I live in fear of modern science, nor do I think that modern science threatens the significant conclusions of Epicurean philosophy. But I reserve to myself the ultimate right to decide whose opinions I am going to follow when issues are disputed, and I think Epicurus taught that as well. Epicurus resisted the idea that the scientific experts of his day should be the ultimate authority on issues where no direct evidence was possible, and I think the same approach is valid today. Many people are troubled by issues where we can never observe directly (life after death; was there an origin of everything; will there ever be an end to everything). Where we can only infer the unknown from the known there are always going to be competing theories, and everyone has to decide how to apply those theories to their own lives.

OK I have to apologize to everyone for being so distracted today that I have been delayed in responding more completely. As for myself, I continue to see this exchange as totally productive and a good-faith difference in perspective among friends. I do not doubt for a moment the good faith of everyone involved. I don't insist that my friends see everything the same way I do, nor do I let my friends insist that I see things their way.

I do, however, doubt the good faith of people like Lawrence Krauss, especially after watching his debate on something from nothing with Richard Dawkins. I believe that history has shown that scientists are every bit as open to errors of prejudice and bias and self-interest as anyone else, and I believe that nothing revolutionary has happened in human nature in the last 100 years to think that those errors of bias and prejudice and self-interest have been or ever can be eliminated.

Elli in referring to Epicurus I was mainly referring to those mathematicians whose mathematics was indeed in retrospect pretty good in calculating the size of the sun. It seems to me that Epicurus doubted them in large part because of what he perceived was their lack of good faith in arguing for conclusions beyond the scope of their facts. That remains a hazard today.

Here's my list of views that I personally hold but expect no one else to consider as evidence any more than they would consider the nonsense of any other dottering old fool. I've never suggested that anyone should take my point of view on anything, as a matter of fact. All I do is take the material I can find on Epicurus and interpret it in a way that seems the most persuasive to me. That's all I can do and of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. These are mine. In each of these I should probably add "And I do not believe that any evidence to the contrary is conclusive" -- but that get's tiresome. These are my conclusions at this point in my life:

• I do not believe that the universe as a whole was ever created at a single point in time.
• I do not believe that the universe as a whole will ever come to an end.
• I do not believe that the universe has a size limit.
• I do not believe that the things we see around us are infinitely divisible.
• I do not believe that the viewpoint that the universe is composed of solid bodies and void has entirely lost its usefulness.
• I do not believe that any enumeration of elemental particles would ever come to an end.
• I do not believe that from any realistic viewpoint that the elementary particles, no matter how we define them, are motionless.
• I do not believe that the universe as a whole has a center (or floor, walls, or ceiling, for that matter)
• I firmly believe that elemental parties have a capacity that is reasonably describable as being capable of swerving at no fixed time and no fixed place

To me, that leaves me in broad agreement with the fundamental assertions of Epicurean physics quite well.

So to compare this to the original list of twelve, the only one that my understanding that truly indisputable modern science would say needs revision would be eleven and perhaps nine.

PN 01 Matter is uncreatable.

PN 02 Matter is indestructible.

PN 03 The universe consists of solid bodies and void.

PN 04 Solid bodies are either compounds or simple.

PN 05 The multitude of atoms is infinite.

PN 06 The void is infinite in extent.

PN 07 The atoms are always in motion.

PN 08 The speed of atomic motion is uniform.

PN 09 Motion is linear in space, vibratory in compounds.

PN 10 Atoms are capable of swerving slightly at any point in space or time.

PN 11 Atoms are characterized by three qualities: weight, shape and size.

PN 12 The number of the different shapes is not infinite, merely innumerable.

Now of course I am not saying that modern science does not have lots of detail that can be applied to stating these more accurately or in ways that would significantly revise them. But I think each of these can be interpreted in a way that remains consistent with what I understand to be modern science.

Now is Lawrence Krauss and / or other people going to tell me that my views are obsolete and that I need to spend more time in physics classes.? Sure. And he'll go to his grave doing his best to make sense of the evidence in front of him, as I will to mine.

I know it's somewhat uncomfortable to talk about these issues so frankly, but my analysis is that it helps everyone to think about these issues and see where people stand. I never represent that I am a physicist, and I freely admit that many physicists don't seem to agree with these conclusions.

I do what I do because it is enjoyable and satisfying on many different levels, and as Epicurus said "In a philosophical discussion he who is defeated gains more, since he learns more."

And I say all this with a smile and is as good a humor as ever!

I should say more about Lawrence Krauss. I'm not accusing him of being a bad person either. My main observation there is that there seem to be people who actually revel in uncertainty and doubt, and in particular, in creating uncertainty and doubt in other people where it did not previously exist. Now that can certainly be a good thing, but some people seem to carry it to an extreme of seeking uncertainty and doubt as an end in itself, and I don't think that's something that Epicurus would approve of. And I get that sense about Lawrence Krauss in his desire to define "nothing" in away that is counter-intuitive to a traditional and logical interpretation of the word "nothing." Of course there's that pesky word "logical" again

Readiung from post 58 to 58 and looking for the connection, I think Elli has just given us an example of a swerve happening at macro level, or perhaps the discontinuity of matter? .