Episode 154 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 10 - The Canon, Reason, and Nature 01

I've never experienced psychedelics, but going by report I would analyze them under the rubric I outlined above. Only in this case, instead of the brain 'involuntarily adding a layer of interpretation', it cakes it on so thickly that the reported sensation is altered completely before the conscious mind has time to act upon it. Here's a thought experiment: suppose you had one optic nerve simultaneously grafted to two different brains. One brain is high, the other is clear--what does the clear brain see?

...I've been up since 5 pm.

I should add that the way the "square tower" issue is explained by some commentators, it does reduce to a tautology as you suggest--'sense organs sense'. But no inferences can be made from that, so I take it for granted that that wasn't it's proper application.

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The aim of this article is to show reasons for believing that the statement in the heading is false as usually understood

So far so good!

Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but if we agree that it is false as generally understood, what is the value of continuing to use it?

Need to read the article though...perhaps all will become clear.

I also need to read that article!

OK, so here is my summary of that article.

Epicurus said something like "all sensations are true."

He was arguing against skepticism, and he meant "real" (I would say, "actually experienced") as opposed to "factually correct".

That he didn't mean "factually correct" is abundantly clear from other things he said.

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As a philosopher he was engaged in the struggle for survival in a den of philosophers, many of them sceptics. Before them he maintained the doctrine that all sensations are true in the sense of real. In practice his attitude was thoroughly pragmatic, like that of the modern scientist. He looked upon sensations as possessing an infinite range of validity.

I also liked the following quote, because it's something I had been thinking myself, as a response to idea that reason cannot refute the senses.

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Far more deceptive...is the third prong of the argument: reason cannot refute the sensations because reason is dependent upon the sensations. This is true in one sense and false in another. The sense in which it is true is this: reason in the aggregate cannot refute sensation in the aggregate, because reason depends upon the senses for its data. The sense in which it is false is this: reason in the aggregate cannot refute the particular sensation.... In this sense, reason constantly refutes the sensations.

Quote from Cassius

Here is DeWitt's article focusing on the subject. I am having trouble getting the Greek word in the summary typed in - if any moderator has the ability to fix that in the description (where I have placed the ________) please do.

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Norman DeWitt - "Epicurus - All Sensations Are True"

DeWitt's interpretation of the "all sensations are true" controversy.

Cassius

December 29, 2022 at 12:23 PM

Here it is in plain text for you to copy:

αληθής

Also

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ἀληθ-ής

My take, from an ancient Epicurean perspective, would be that the senses receive the films of the images onto the sense organs as a die casts a piece of metal. The error arises when the mind interprets (almost immediately or simultaneously) the impression made by the die.

In case anyone else would find it useful, I've attached a dense, but relatively clear and informative piece of recent scholarship on Epicurean perception, truth, and illusion. It seems to me that the author (Hahmann) manages to both survey the puzzles and advance some of his own lines of interpretation.

Quote from Joshua

Since I've only focused on sensations in the chart I'm going to restrain myself to one thing right now--which is that I question whether error really does enter in that late in the process. I think there are numerous visual tests that demonstrate that the brain starts lying pretty much immediately upon receiving input. The retinal blind spot test is a good example. Rather than reporting two gaps in the visual field,

I see you've talked about observing a round tower vs a square tower at a distance. Now what about the sensations of pain or pleasure? These come in through ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin -- and these sense faculties always tell the truth regarding pain or pleasure.

Quote from Cassius

As I read all three the key point seems to be something like that every impression strikes us as "real" from the perspective that it is in fact an impression received by a sense faculty, but that each impression has to be evaluated before our minds can judge any inference from that impression to be "true" or "false" to the full external reality.

That seems reasonable to me, but I'll admit that I'm not sure I completely understood Hahmann.

Also, I found these two statements curious:

Quote from DeWitt

...Sextus Empiricus, who is almost unique among critics in exhibiting no prejudice against Epicurus.

Quote from Hahmann

...in the case of Sextus Empiricus, we are also dealing with a hostile source who uses Epicurean philosophy in order to reach his own skeptical conclusions

Is Hahmann out-DeWitting DeWitt?!?!

Yeah, I also get the sense that they largely agree, especially about the what Hahmann calls a 'coherence-based approach' to adjudicating conflicting sense impressions (for example, 'the stick looks bent, but feels straight'). They are certainly both aiming to explain why the view is perfectly normal, possibly right, definitely not insane.

What I appreciate about Hahmann is that his Greek is transliterated, and he is less prone to using it without translation. I also appreciate that he explores to what extent (if any) Epicurus' confidence in perception differs from Stoic and Aristotelian confidence in perception. They were all empiricists, so they all required some mechanism for addressing Plato's pesky 'bent stick' example. So basically, I think Hahmann fills out the picture a bit.

Quote from Todd

Is Hahmann out-DeWitting DeWitt?!?!

Ha! I'm only getting a sense of the meaning of 'DeWitting' from context, but perhaps this could be a case where the apparent tension can be resolved. Maybe DeWitt means to suggest that Sextus was never particularly hostile to Epicurus (as so many were), while Hahmann means to remind the reader that Sextus was a skeptic, so his chief aim was to convince people that dogmatists like Epicurus were suffering from a psychic illness. Sextus even occasionally cops to using weak, but effective arguments to get what he wants--curing people of dogmatism.

Quote from Little Rocker

Ha! I'm only getting a sense of the meaning of 'DeWitting' from context, but perhaps this could be a case where the apparent tension can be resolved. Maybe DeWitt means to suggest that Sextus was never particularly hostile to Epicurus (as so many were), while Hahmann means to remind the reader that Sextus was a skeptic

DeWitt makes much ado about suspecting non-Epicurean sources (particularly Cicero) of not being honest in presenting Epicurus' views. Probably rightly so.

I thought it was amusing that here we have a rare (possibly unique) case of DeWitt declaring a source to be unprejudiced, while another author is raising alarms.

And you're right, that those two statements are technically not contradictory.

Quote from Todd

I thought it was amusing that here we have a rare (possibly unique) case of DeWitt declaring a source to be unprejudiced, while another author is raising alarms.

Ah, yes, now I get it! I guess there's always the question of whether the person attempts to faithfully represent the view, but then cavalierly dismisses it on specious grounds or willfully mis-represents the view to make it easier to dismiss.

They do seem to agree that we should rely on Sextus for the definition of truth, which is where DeWitt so effusively praises Sextus.

Quote from Hahmann

But Sextus Empiricus gives us also the most explicit definition of truth in Epicurus.