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

I have gotten the feeling that you have been under the weather for longer than usual so I hope you feel better soon. The issue of prolepsis will still be there after you recover!

In an uncharacteristic bout of self-discipline, we stayed with the plan today and limited ourselves to finishing up on Marcus Aurelius and then reviewing basic Epicurean canonics theory before digging too far into Velleius' proleptic argument for the Epicurean view of gods.

Editing on the podcast is going well so it will be released possibly as soon as Monday night, but certainly no later than Tuesday. That will give us, one more week before memorializing in Podcast form next Sunday our attempt at unwinding the full argument.

At the end of this episode (to be released soon) Joshua makes the recommendation that it would be helpful to review our interview with Dr. David Glidden in our prior Episode 166.

I agree with that recommendation, and I have been listening to it again myself. I think Dr. Glidden's approach has a lot of merit, and his viewpoint of prolepsis as being related to processing of patterns, and being pre-conceptual, largely goes against the platonic and stoic-influenced orthodoxy, and shares a lot of commonality with what i think a lot of us here are thinking.

I have a slight caution, however, to anyone who might be listening to the episode for the first time. You'll find that Dr. Glidden has a very strong Buddhist streak, so it should not be presumed that every aspect of what Dr. Glidden says is something with which all of us at EpicureanFriends would agree with. Those aspects of his commentary should be self-evident, and just like with all guests and all statements made on the podcast, people can accept or reject those as they like.

It's the 'materialist' nature of his analysis of Epicurus' view of prolepsis which is the focus of the discussion, and in that aspect I think his comments are uniformly helpful. Perhaps at some point we can get Dr. Glidden back on the show because he's a delightful and intelligent man, and his views on prolepsis are useful for thinking "outside the box" on prolepsis.

If anyone gets a chance to listen to Dr. Glidden again, I suggest listening closely to the way the phrases the "pattern" facility. To be fair to Dr. Glidden, we're asking him about papers he wrote 30 years ago, so i wouldn't expect him to be ultra-precise in his wording.

For example, I think a lot of us like the idea of "patterns" being involved. But is a prolepsis actually 'recognizing" a pattern, or "detecting" that a "shape" is involved, or exactly what?

For example in the the "stick" vs "snake" example that Don asks about - By the time we get to discussing "sticks" and "snakes" are we already past prolepsis and at the "conceptual" level?

I think Dr. Glidden is saying in significant part that the "anticipation' aspect involved is the "matching" or some other "processing" of "patterns," such that as with animals there is an "intuitive leap" that preserves the safety of the organism by guesswork at what the pattern or shape is going to reveal before it is fully recognized, and thus that helps preserve us from walking on snakes and the like, before we can consciously identify the words stick or snake or dynamite stick or anything else.

So the "anticipatory / matching / guesswork / intuitive" aspect of a process is probably at least partly involved.

By asking this question I am trying to continue to focus on identifying a word or a description of what it is that prolepses are processing: "For example in the the "stick" vs "snake" example that Don asks about - By the time we get to discussing "sticks" and "snakes" are we already past prolepsis and at the "conceptual" level?"

I think most of us agree that prolepses are working (1) before concepts are involved, and (2) somewhat "jumping ahead" so as to match and create reactions before conscious conceptual thought takes place.

I can see the likelihood of more than one source of these "patterns" - (1)conscious consideration of images as we grow up, as is the example of oxen used by Laertius, and also (2) "inborn" detection of certain patterns which accounts for how animals and babies and similar living being develop (or are born with) a pattern/shape-detection ability before they are exposed to any patterns/shapes in the first place. (As to item 2, I think we have to consider instinct such as bird migration (?) and beaver dam-building (?) in that discussion.)

This current episode will not likely include, but i will be sure next week's episode includes, discussion of Lucretius 5:181, which I see as important light on this question, as mentioned in post 40 above

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.

Episode 234 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week we deal with Marcus Aurelius' views of fate and the gods, and we discuss the canonical basis for the Epicurean view of divinity.

One more cite - this is the Lucretius1743 edition, in the 100's

Nor are you to believe that the sacred mansions of the gods are placed in any parts of this world of ours, for the nature of the gods is so subtle, and at so remote a distance from our senses, that it can scarce be apprehended by the mind. Since therefore it cannot be touched or felt by our hands, it can touch nothing that it is the object of our senses, for nothing has a power to touch that is incapable of being touched itself. For this reason the abodes of the gods must be far different from ours; they must be subtle, and answerable to their own nature. But the truth of this I shall more fully prove in another place.

Quote from Little Rocker

But then a complete perception of an object would involve a faculty of intellect, right, not only sensory organs?

From my point of view, a "complete perception" of an object would be more a function of repeated observations, from different perspectives, at different distances,using all of the faculties of perception, but there is where I would draw the line, and as far as the process of drawing those observations into an opinion that is right or wrong, that part i would classify as "intellectual" and therefore no longer "perception."

Quote from Little Rocker

So if there is a 'criterion' of horse, then it seems to me that it must depend on thought and memory. And I admit that I think that if Epicurus doesn't think that, then I'm not sure his view is plausible.

This is the point in the conversation where I go with DeWitt, who argues that in regard to concrete objects to which we are exposed over time we will indeed form a concept (mental picture) of a horse, and then use that concept in the future to apply the same "word" to new instances of four-legged animals when we see them, to form an opinion as to whether those animals or are or not horses. This is what Laertius hammers home, but in my view this is describing what is done *after* the five senses and feelings and anticipations have relayed their input to the mind. DeWitt's position seems to me to be that Laertius is confusing the process of "working with" proleptic input with the more important issue of "forming" proleptic input, and that the process of forming proleptic input to the mind is completely pre-rational, pre-conceptual, and actually is present as a faculty and in operation *before* we ever see our first horse, just as the eyes are operational and functional before we ever use them to see (and then in the mind) to classify anything at all.

Quote from Little Rocker

It seems to me that Epicurus thinks opinions can be true or false, and not all opinions are about sensations. Sensations don't have to confirm an opinion for the opinion to count as true.

As to "not all opinions are about sensations" I would agree with that. We can definitely have opinions about opinions (adding layers upon layers there). And I would say that there is prolectic involvement in the assembling of opinions about opinions. But that proleptic invoilvement would not involve telling us which opinions are true, but would function more on the order of recognizing in the first place that arithmetic has some relationship to calculus about which to take notice.

In discussing today the issue of what Lucretius means about the gods not having a pattern by which to create the universe, it seemed to me that Lucretius should not be interpreted so much as taking the position that gods cannot create planets and the like from existing materials (I would expect Epicurus to take the position that they can in fact do things that we will be capable of one day). Rather, it seems to me that the emphasis is on that no one, gods or human, can do anything without their minds having the disposition to assemble experiences into more complicated constructs (the anthropomorphizing Don mentioned earlier today being an example). I would therefore see the example as implying that both gods and men must rely on Nature to provide the disposition and ability for a mind to construct abstractions, but the faculty of prolepsis is not any single abstraction which is formed, but the *capability* to form abstractions in the first place.

I would say that the meaning is more likely to be that were it not for the faculty of anticipations, the raw data presented by (1) the five senses (2) the feelings of pain and pleasure, and (3) previous anticipations would never be assembled into any abstractions whatsoever. To me, that distinction keeps the focus on prolepsis being a pre-rational, pre-cognitive faculty, and yet still gives it an important place in the formation and use of concepts.

For those who are reading along here and don't have ready access to DeWitt's text, here is how he introduces the subject in his Chapter 8. i don't agree that Lucretius has no help to offer, but much of the rest seems useful:

Quote

The innate capacity to distinguish colors is an anticipation of experience no less than the innate capacity to distinguish between justice and injustice. The difference is that the color-sense is part of the individual's preconditioning for life in his physical environment and emerges in early childhood, while the sense of justice is part of the preconditioning for life in the social environment and emerges later, developing in pace with experience, instruction, and reflection. How the Anticipation functions as a criterion may be seen in the case of the gods: it is impossible to think of them as in need of anything, for example, because according to the idea universal among men their happiness is perfect.

Unfortunately the traditional accounts of the Anticipations have gone far astray. Three excellent reasons can be cited for these aberrations: first, in the graded textbooks of Epicurus the topic was reserved for advanced students and entirely omitted from both the Little and the Big Epitome; consequently Lucretius has no help to offer; second, already in antiquity the concepts of such abstract things as justice had become confused with the general concepts of such concrete things as horses and oxen; third, modern scholars have become victims of the confusion of the ancients and on their own account have committed the error of merging the Anticipations with the Sensations.

It is highly probable that Epicurus allowed even to certain animals, especially elephants, the possession of these embryonic anticipations of social virtues. The tendency of the day was to have recourse to the study of irrational creatures in order to learn the teachings of Nature. It should be recalled too that not only was Epicurus very eager to have information of Pyrrho, who had been in India, but also that the writings of Alexander's associates, Aristobulus, Nearchus, and Onesicritus concerning India were available in his youth, and the same is true of the description of India by Megasthenes of the time of Seleucus. The elder Pliny, who quotes three of the above writers, ascribed to elephants "a sort of divination of justice," ³¹ an excellent equivalent of the Epicurean Anticipation. Pliny also ascribes to elephants the possession of pride, honesty, prudence, equity, and even religion.³² All of these fall squarely into the category of abstract notions, where the Anticipations belong.

The term prolepsis was correctly rendered by Cicero as anticipatio or praenotio ³³ and less precisely, though intelligently, by the elder Pliny as divinatio. It is wrongly rendered as "concept" by those who confuse the general concept of such a thing as an ox with the abstract idea of justice. One scholar prefers "preconception," but perhaps "preconcept" would be preferable. It seems most advantageous, however, to adhere to "Anticipation" because this is the meaning of the Greek word prolepsis.

Two explicit accounts of the term have fortunately survived from antiquity, the first from Cicero and the second from Diogenes Laertius. Unfortunately there is virtual unanimity among modern scholars that the authority of Cicero is to be rejected and that of Laertius accepted. This would mean that the word of a stodgy compiler weighs more with us than that of the gifted Cicero. It means also that we, who possess about seventy pages of the text of Epicurus, are in a better position to form a judgment than Cicero himself, who knew all the outstanding Epicureans of his time, whether Greek or Roman, and enjoyed access to all the original texts.