Episode One Hundred Eighteen - Letter to Herodotus 07 - "Images" - There's More To Them Than Meets The Eye

Yes, that is the direction I would take too. All the rest is of significantly less confidence. And I bet if we had more texts we would see that element more clearly, just like Velleius talks about "quasi blood" and the rest. Probably a lot of it was just entertaining theorizing.

Quote from Don

If I remember correctly, somewhere else I remember something about if we think about something repeatedly, that makes our minds receptive to those images.

I also have to think that the Epicureans considered this when employing busts and rings and other images of Epicurus.

In fact it probably makes sense when we think about comparing "techniques" with Stoics and others that an Epicurean would pursue what is effectively "tuning the mind" by surrounding ourselves with images (artwork) of things that we find pleasing and/or motivational to us.

It's probably no coincidence that Epicurus said he found his greatest happiness in studying nature - he we surrounding himself with thoughts and observations about the way nature works.

That might be something to think about when considering the impact of modern television over the last 75 years broadcasting images into almost every home of a very different kind.

So Helen was not even in Troy during the war? But I presume Paris was?

For me, discussion of images always beings to mind the aphasia-hyperphasia continuum (some people have no mind's eye, some people have a vivid photorealistic one, and it is not an ability (fixed innate) but a skill (ie, it is flexible and can be trained) as well as the equally learnable skill to consciously create pseudohallucinations (to see the images of the mind's eye superimposed on-top of physical eye's images, as opposed to seeing them in a separate mental black-blank-canvas kind of space).

As I had describe regarding a previous episode (but after this one was recorded), it is entirely possible that ancient Greeks had their brains abilities developed so differently, that the resulting skills would seem unusual to us today. Considering the differences of average Western physical abilities versus those of children, adolescents and adults raised in Shaolin Kung-Fu monestaries, there is little reason to assume the mental skills of average modern Westerners would virtually identical to those raised in a similarly foreign environment than that of a Shaolin monestary – especially since it is known fact these skills exist and can be trained.

To illustrate once again the extent to which mental architecture and processing differs between subjects, it is entirely possible to train – rather than “train”, I should really say torture… – a child into developing dissociative skills to the extend that their perfectly healthy eyes will no longer evoke the pre-conscious electrical responses in the brain's visual center, rendering them blind for all intents and purposes: rather than their eyes seeing something, their minds becoming aware of it, but choosing to ignore it, their eyes see something, but the information does no reach their visual cortex, and they do not even subconsciously become aware of what their eyes saw. (Some can, later, regain their sight, because none of the nerves and infrastructure needed to see was ever actually damaged; it was just unplugged, disconnected, dissociated at the lowest level.)

To summarise, I think when discussing the images and idols, it might really be beneficial to keep in mind how different visualisation skills are between people, and how different the abilities of Average Jane Doe are compared to those of, say, East Asian monks, even though they arguably start from being the same quality babies Then, the idea the Ancient Greeks frequently had quite vivid and realistic images pop up effortlessly in their mind's eye, and they were simply looking for a reason for that, might no longer seem so absurd, and it would explain why this topic keeps being brought up alongside physical sight, using parallel vocabulary.

Now, if y'all won't mind, I'll be going to casually punch through five layers of solid bricks whilst standing on hot coal without feeling any discomfort

A less related example, but useful to make the point of just how different even simple, basic, and seemingly obvious things like shooting a bow and arrow were from how we think of them today, and how the evidence seems to have been there all along but nobody was ready to see it (until Lars Andersen entered the scene[1]).

I think it's really okay to think outside the box a bit more when it comes to these images appearing in the minds of Epicurus or Lucretius. In an environment were non-atomism is the prevailing conceptualisation of the world, closely connecting visual sight with visualisation really stands to reason, and is, in fact, much more reasonable than most people think, even according to modern science (cf what I said above, plus: the brain heavily auto-corrects according to what it expects to see, as our eyes themselves aren't actually all that good).

[1] If you like (watching) archery, he re-invented and perfected-by-practise even more tricks that for centuries were considered "exaggerated myths" and "impossible" during the nine years after the video I linked to was made.

Wow! 😮 I'm just astonished by that archery video! The bowmen must have been incredibly deadly.

Who needs a machine gun when you have skills like that.

Quote from kochiekoch

The bowmen must have been incredibly deadly.

Especially since there was no hiding from them.

Wow that IS a great archery video and I agree a very good parallel to what we need to do in "thinking outside the box" by looking again at the historical record!