Episode 234 - Cicero's OTNOTG - 09 - Dealing With Marcus Aurelius And The Canonical Basis For the Epicurean View Of Divinity

Quote from Don

My understanding is that *all* our sensations are based on "images"/fields/eidola. The mental faculty simply picks up the finest, most subtle images. But all sensations are based on touch, from the sense of touch itself to vision touching the images emitted by objects, to the mental faculty touching the finest most subtle fields.

As to "all sensations are based on touch," I would agree, that contact between atoms is the way all of them work - no "action at a distance" without touch.

But I think we ought to dig further, presumably into book 4 of Lucretius, to clarify whether smell or touch or taste, for example, are based on "images."

The long discussion of images begins in section 26 of Book 4. I would say that Epicurus seems to be making a distinction about about our ability to perceive the retained "shapes" of the groups of atoms that stream off the surface of things, and that this retained shape would not necessarily be the same as seeing, hearing tasting etc. For example the reference below to perceiving them in sleep are presumably not involving the eyes because our eyes are closed when asleep?

But the references do seem to be dealt with as a group so it's going to be difficult to pull it apart. Some of this might apply to mirages and some might not, and then there's the separate discussion (somewhere else) about how images are involved before we walk or take other actions.

[26] But since I have taught of what manner are the beginnings of all things, and how, differing in their diverse forms, of their own accord they fly on, spurred by everlasting motion; and in what way each several thing can be created from them; and since I have taught what was the nature of the mind, and whereof composed it grew in due order with the body, and in what way rent asunder it passed back into its first-beginnings: now I will begin to tell you what exceeding nearly concerns this theme, that there are what we call idols of things; which, like films stripped from the outermost body of things, fly forward and backward through the air; and they too when they meet us in waking hours affright our minds, yea, and in sleep too, when we often gaze on wondrous shapes, and the idols of those who have lost the light of day, which in awful wise have often roused us, as we lay languid, from our sleep; lest by chance we should think that souls escape from Acheron, or that shades fly abroad among the living, or that something of us can be left after death, when body alike and the nature of mind have perished and parted asunder into their several first-beginnings. I say then that likenesses of things and their shapes are given off by things from the outermost body of things, which may be called, as it were, films or even rind, because the image bears an appearance and form like to that, whatever it be, from whose body it appears to be shed, ere it wanders abroad. That we may learn from this, however dull be our wits.

In regard to Don's notable beard, this is why I prefer how the 1743 edition translates Lucretius' "eventum" as "event" rather than accident.

Yes the philosophers seem to prefer to use the word, "accident," but in English parlance "accident" implies "fortuitousness" or "chance" in a way that should not be presumed.

It would probably raise the eyebrows of the normal person to think that it is an "accident" that Don has a beard worthy of Epicurus. It's much more appropriate to say that Don's beard is an "event" of Don's life, which conveys that it is an event that has occurred after much deliberate thought, rather than as an "accident" that Don lost his access to his razors through no input of his own.

Yes it is true that Don's beard could be removed from him without Don losing his identity, and that's what makes his beard an "event." But Don's beard surely should not be thought of to arise "by accident" any more than other emergent properties of bodies arise by "accident." Indeed, it's exactly the point of Epicurean physics - that emergent properties do not arise by the intention of gods, but neither do they arise "randomly" or by "chance" or "accident." Most things in the universe arise from the "laws of nature" that arise repeatedly, reliably, and predictably from the movement of the atoms through the void.

For those who find this topic interesting, we explored it further with the Latin from Lucretius in this thread:

Post

RE: Time in Epicurus, Lucretius, and Aristotle

[…]

Yes that is exactly the point.

In the mechanical aspects of the universe, things are not "accidental/fortuitous" in the sense that the exact same combinations of the same atoms in the same way at the same places will accidentally/fortuitously produce different results - they produce repeatable and reliable results, and that is why we see the regularity in the universe. The word "accident" can imply that the result could be otherwise for unknowable factors, and I would say that that is why…

Cassius

September 6, 2023 at 9:42 AM

1 - Great research work Bryan - thank you!

2 - (This is a poorly-thought-out comment but I will make it anyway) Consistent with that research and other things that we've discussed, it seems to me that LR's suggestion here:

Quote from Little Rocker

Would that mean something like, the gods' properties of being 'immortal and indestructible' are definitional, but that the gods having the property of 'living being' is one of τὰ Συμβεβηκότα?

... might be plausible as I can see "being a living being" as being more important than "deathlessness." We could not conceive of a god not being a "living being," but we could conceive of particular a god voluntarily giving up its immortality, because a particular god might choose for some reason to stop acting to maintain its deathlessness. Is it not possible to imagine that a god too might choose to leave the theatre when for some reason (hard to describe) the play ceased to please it? At the very least, it would not make sense to deprive a god of the free will to make such a decision.

Edit - My eyes have trouble following the Greek so I'll just refer to separable and inseparable. So to restate what I wrote, I can see "being a living being" as being inseparable from godhood. If you aren't living you can't be a god. But I can see "incorruptibility' as being separable from godhood, because I can imagine a god choosing to exit the theatre, and actually I can't imagine depriving a god of such a power. I find it conceivable to say that a god who chose to exit the theatre was still, while he existed, a god, and I can't imagine "trapping" a god into a situation where he could not choose to stop existing.

Lining the two sources up like that is a reminder of DeWitt's view that the reference to "the Epicureans generally" adding a fourth criteria was arguably a mistake. The way you've translated that "focus of the mind" reference would appear to indicate that there's no reason to split the term into two, and that it's best to think of there being only three categories, with the third being something like "the faculty that is involved in the focusing of the mind" as what Epicurus originally set forth.

As we get close to recording I definitely want to be sure we go over citations as to what the Epicureans meant by "true" or "real." Including what Bryan just quoted, several are:

Diogenes Laertius [31] Logic they reject as misleading. For they say it is sufficient for physicists to be guided by what things say of themselves. Thus in The Canon Epicurus says that the tests of truth are the sensations and concepts and the feelings; the Epicureans add to these the intuitive apprehensions of the mind. And this he says himself too in the summary addressed to Herodotus and in the Principal Doctrines. For, he says, all sensation is irrational and does not admit of memory; for it is not set in motion by itself, nor when it is set in motion by something else, can it add to it or take from it. [32] Nor is there anything which can refute the sensations. For a similar sensation cannot refute a similar because it is equivalent in validity, nor a dissimilar a dissimilar, for the objects of which they are the criteria are not the same; nor again can reason, for all reason is dependent upon sensations; nor can one sensation refute another, for we attend to them all alike. Again, the fact of apperception confirms the truth of the sensations. And seeing and hearing are as much facts as feeling pain. From this it follows that as regards the imperceptible we must draw inferences from phenomena. For all thoughts have their origin in sensations by means of coincidence and analogy and similarity and combination, reasoning too contributing something. And the visions of the insane and those in dreams are true, for they cause movement, and that which does not exist cannot cause movement.

U244

Sextus Empiricus, _Against the Logicians_ II (_Against the Dogmatists,_ II).9: Epicurus said that all sensibles were true and real. For there is no difference between saying that something is true and that it is real. And that is why, in giving a formalization of the true and the _false_, he says, “that which is such as it is said to be, is true” and “that which is not such as it is said to be, is false.”

Letter to Herodotus [51]: For the similarity between the things which exist, which we call real, and the images received as a likeness of things and produced either in sleep or through some other acts of apprehension on the part of the mind or the other instruments of judgment, could never be, unless there were some effluences of this nature actually brought into contact with our senses. And error would not exist unless another kind of movement too were produced inside ourselves, closely linked to the apprehension of images, but differing from it; and it is owing to this, supposing it is not confirmed, or is contradicted, that falsehood arises; but if it is confirmed or not contradicted, it is true.

Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, I.7.22: Turn next to the second division of philosophy, the department of Method and of Dialectic, which its termed Logikē. Of the whole armor of Logic your founder, as it seems to me, is absolutely destitute. He does away with Definition; he has no doctrine of Division or Partition; he gives no rules for Deduction or Syllogistic Inference, and imparts no method for resolving Dilemmas or for detecting Fallacies of Equivocation. The Criteria of reality he places in sensation; once let the senses accept as true something that is false, and every possible criterion of truth and falsehood seems to him to be immediately destroyed. {lacuna} He lays the very greatest stress upon that which, as he declares, Nature herself decrees and sanctions, that is: the feelings of pleasure and pain. These he maintains lie at the root of every act of choice and of avoidance.

U247 Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, I (Against the Dogmatists, I) 203: Epicurus says that there are two things which are linked to each other, presentation and opinion, and that of these presentation (which he also calls 'clear fact') is always true. For just as the primary feelings, i.e., pleasure and pain, come to be from certain productive factors and in accordance with productive factors themselves (for example, pleasure comes to be from pleasant things and pain from painful things, and what causes pleasure can never fail to be pleasant, nor can what produces pain not be painful; but rather, it is necessary that what gives pleasure should be pleasant and that what gives pain should, in its nature, be painful), likewise, in the case of presentations, which are feelings within us, what causes each of them is presented in every respect and unqualifiedly, and since it is presented it cannot help but exist in truth just as it is presented […lacuna…] that it is productive of presentation. And one must reason similarly for the individual senses. For what is visible not only is presented as visible but also is such as it is presented; and what is audible is not only presented as audible, but also is like that in truth; and similarly for the rest. Therefore, it turns out that all presentations are true. And reasonably so. For if, the Epicureans say, a presentation is true if it comes from an existing object and in accordance with the existing object, and if every presentation arises from the object presented and in accordance with the presented object itself, then necessarily every presentation is true.

Peter Konstans very helpfully collected some cites for us on this point here:

Post

RE: Pros and Cons Of Considering Epicurean Philosophy To Be A "Religion"

I recommend reading the academic book

Pleasure, Mind, and Soul, Selected Papers in Ancient Philosophy by C. C. W. Taylor

The second chapter examines the Epicurean thesis that all perceptions are true, arguing that what it means is that every instance of sensory presentation (widely construed, to include dreams, hallucinations, and imagination as well as perception proper) consists in the stimulation of a sense-organ by a real object, which is represented in that perception exactly as it is in…

Peter Konstans

March 25, 2024 at 4:13 AM

I agree with Don's post and analogize to pattern recognition, and also suggest that we can go further based on other citations.

In addition to the Centaur analogy, but I am convinced we also have to take into account what Lucretius said in Book 5 as to why the gods could not have created the universe:

Quote

[181] Further, how was there first implanted in the gods a pattern for the begetting of things, yea, and the concept of man, so that they might know and see in their mind what they wished to do, or in what way was the power of the first-beginnings ever learnt, or what they could do when they shifted their order one with the other, if nature did not herself give a model of creation? For so many first-beginnings of things in many ways, driven on by blows from time everlasting until now, and moved by their own weight, have been wont to be borne on, and to unite in every way, and essay everything that they might create, meeting one with another, that it is no wonder if they have fallen also into such arrangements, and have passed into such movements, as those whereby this present sum of things is carried on, ever and again replenished.

Seems to me that Lucretius is arguing that the gods could not have created the universe because (if they pre-existed the universe) then they would never have been exposed to any "pattern" that gave them the idea of a universe.

And that sounds like a very good argument to me that remains valid today.

Carrying the point forward, where do these "patterns" come from? It isn't sufficient to say that they are "etched" into us at birth, or for us to just say that this is precursor to genetic encoding and that that answers our concerns. How did that "etching" come about? Did the gods etch us, as the Stoics would probably argue? Or did it just "randomly" happen, which I think is equally untenable?

It looks to me like Epicurus would have said that in an eternal universe, nothing can be said to come absolutely "first." Instead, what has always eternally been happening is the flow of atoms through void.

From that perspective the sequence would be more like:

Atoms have always flowed through void naturally, combining into bodies, from which emergent properties and qualities have arisen. There was never a "first body."

As bodies grow they give off from their surfaces flows of atoms, which flows are in the shape of their surfaces. These flows of atoms in the shape of their surfaces are images.

The images are constantly flowing through the universe, some images combining with each other in ways that do not reflect their true origins (such as images of centaurs). Other images largely or fully retain fidelity to their original source, and thereby conveying to us sensations of concrete objects which we can be confident have independent existence external to us.

The atoms have always combined into bodies, and so this flow of images has also always existed. Simultaneously, along with these filmy flows, more solid bodies have combined into living beings. These living beings have thus always been exposed to the flows of images. Over time, individual species of living beings develop, as a result of their continued impact with flows of atoms, an ability to think, and over time the repeated exposure to light and dark and eventually trees and stars become exposure to trees and universes and more abstract relationships, one of which abstract relationships becomes identified as "divinity."

So to say simply that "prolepsis is the faculty that allows us to recognize the shapes or forms of the images that strike us" (which is pretty close to saying that it is "pattern recognition") is helpful. But the rest of the story seems to me how they are tied to the flow of images, which arise from the atoms themselves turning into bodies and in turn giving off images, thus eliminating any concern about divine origin of the whole process from start to finish. The "flow of images" would explain both the origin of the proleptic faculty and how it sharpens over time.

And it seems to me that "flows of images" remains a valid way to look at the situation, even though we don't think exactly in those terms today. We don't talk about "atoms" in quite the same way either, but the word continues to be useful, and the word "images" can be useful too if we are careful about what it means.