Prolepsis / Anticipations As Epicurus' Answer to the MENO Problem

We definitely need to keep working on making prolepsis / anticipations understandable to normal people of ordinary education. In reading a 2023 work which Matteng brought to our attention, I want to highlight the following passage passage to the effect that both Epicureans and Stoics looked to (their own) view of PROLEPSIS as the answer to "the Meno Problem."

We haven't yet gotten to the Epicurean sections of Cicero's Academica, but that's on the horizon for our podcast. By the time we get there we are going to want to have developed our understanding of what the Meno problem is, and how Epicurus addressed it using the concept of prolepsis / anticipations.

In his 2023 article The Elaboration of Prolepsis Between Epicurus and the Stoics, Jean-Baptiste Gourinat states:

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In both schools, preconception is also a preliminary tool for research, discussion and intelligence, as explicitly said for Epicurus by Diog. Laert. X 33 and Cic. DND I 43. 83 Similar views are attributed to the Stoics by Cicero in Acad. II 21 and Acad. I 42, which was seen as a parallel answer to what was coined as the Meno problem:

That the problem advanced in the Meno, namely whether search and discovery are possible (εἰ οἷόν τε ζητεῖν καὶ εὑρίσκειν), leads to a real impasse. For we do not, on the one hand, try to find out things we know –a futile proceeding– nor, on the other, things we do not know, since even if we come across them we do not recognize them: they might be anything. The Peripatetics introduced the conception of “potential intuition” but the origin of our difficulty was actual knowing and not knowing. Even if we grant the existence of a potential intuition, the difficulty remains unchanged. How does this intuition operate? It must be either on what it knows or on what it does not know. The Stoics make the “natural conceptions” responsible (οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς τὰς φυσικὰς ἐννοίας αἰτιῶνται). If these are potential, we shall use the same argument as against the Peripatetics; and if they are actual, why do we search for what we know? And if we use them as a starting-point for a search for other things that we do not know, how do we search for what we do not know? The Epicureans introduce “preconceptions”(οἱ δὲ Ἐπικούρειοι τὰς προλήψεις); if they mean these to be “articulated” (διηρθρωμένας), search is unnecessary; if “unarticulated”(ἀδιαρθρώτους), how do we extend our search beyond our preconceptions, to look for something of which we do not possess a preconception? (Plutarch, fr. 215f Sandbach = Extracts from the Chaeronean)

Footnote 83 is: " See also Sextus Emp. AM I 57 and XI 21: “according to the wise Epicurus, it is not possible to inquire (ζητεῖν) nor to come to an impasse (ἀπορεῖν) without a preconception”.

This post needs to be the beginning of an extensive discussion of what "The Meno Problem" was to Plato, the presumptions that underlay Plato's view of the issue, and how Epicurus addressed the problem with his innovative use of the term "prolepsis." Getting a grip on the original problem should go a long way toward understanding how Epicurus was using the term prolepsis and what he expected us to understand about it. This isn't rocket science - the problem posed by Plato appears to be relatively straightforward, and the answer given by Epicurus should be equally straightforward.

Gourinat continues this way:

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So Epicureans and Stoics seem to have resorted to “natural conceptions” or “preconceptions” as a solution to the Meno problem, 84 alternative to the Platonic doctrine of the reminiscence, and even to the actualization of potential knowledge in the Peripatetic school. Zeno’s criticism of Plato’s theory of ideas was famous, 85 and he could hardly have adopted one of its corollaries: recollection. It is striking that both Epicurus and the Stoics seem to have borrowed something from some empiricist passages of Plato: the wax analogy in the Theaetetus in the case of the Stoics and the book simile in the Philebus in the case of the Epicureans. In the Theatetus, however, Plato explicitly argues that the wax simile is not a suffi cient expla nation, since these empiricist views cannot explain intellectual errors, especially in the case of mathematics. Th us, the Hellenistic philosophers needed to account for the origins of our knowledge in cases where empirical concept-formation was not a sufficient explanation. According to Plutarch, Chrysippus as well as Epicurus also needed to explain what we start from, when we want to pursue an enquiry: without a preconception of something, we cannot search for it since we would not even know what we are looking for.

I suspect that all of us are not going to find ourselves in full agreement with the way that Gourinat ultimately unwinds the issues, because (as Gourinat says himself) he sees contradictions in Epicurus' view of prolepsis as a criteria of truth. But regardless of that it's clear that we need to go back and reconstruct the question and the possible answers.

In this context I will close the post with Diogenes of Oinoanda's Fragment 5 (Martin Ferguson Smith), which I think is related. We need to ask not only "Who will choose to seek what he can never find?" but also "Who will choose to seek, or who can understand, something of which he has no prior notion whatsoever?"

Fr. 5
[Others do not] explicitly [stigmatise] natural science as unnecessary, being ashamed to acknowledge [this], but use another means of discarding it. For, when they assert that things are inapprehensible, what else are they saying than that there is no need for us to pursue natural science? After all, who will choose to seek what he can never find? Now Aristotle and those who hold the same Peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable, because things are continually in flux and, on account of the rapidity of the flux, evade our apprehension. We on the other hand acknowledge their flux, but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing [is] at no time apprehensible by sense-perception. And indeed [in no way would the upholders of] the view under discussion have been able to say (and this is just what they do [maintain] that [at one time] this is [white] and this black, while [at another time] neither this is [white nor] that black, [if] they had not had [previous] knowledge of the nature of both white and black.

Some background on Meno's Paradox

A Puzzle about Definitions

• Socrates has told us he knows how to reject faulty definitions. But how does he know when he has succeeded in finding the right definition? Meno raises an objection to the entire definitional search in the form of (what has been called) “Meno’s Paradox,” or “The Paradox of Inquiry” (Meno 80d-e).

  The argument can be shown to be sophistical, but Plato took it very seriously. This is obvious, since his response to it is to grant its central claim: that you can’t come to know something that you didn’t already know. That is, that inquiry never produces new knowledge, but only recapitulates things already known. This leads to the famous Doctrine of Recollection.

An Objection to Inquiry

The argument known as “Meno’s Paradox” can be reformulated as follows:

1. If you know what you’re looking for, inquiry is unnecessary.
2. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, inquiry is impossible.

3. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

   An implicit premise: Either you know what you’re looking for or you don’t know what you’re looking for.

And this is a logical truth. Or is it? Only if “you know what you’re looking for” is used unambiguously in both disjuncts.

So far this video by Matthew Lampert is the best I have found setting forth Meno's issue. There is also a Greg Sadler video on this one, and I will link it below, but I don't consider it as good as the first one. I'll keep looking for a better video that sets out the basic issue.

Matthew Lampert: if you only watch one video, watch this one:

Greg Sadler:

I agree it's sophistry, but it does raise deep questions about "what's the starting point for how you are sure you know anything." Plato and the rest apparently took it very seriously, and I guess I can understand why they did, and therefore why Epicurus and the rest had to treat it later on.

Presumably this is also where the Academy descended later into rank skepticism, because they didn't have a better answer to this than "recollection," which very few accept. Apparently that's why both Stoics and Epicureans proposed similar but different solutions.

Also, I see that lots of the Youtube videos spend a lot of time talking about the specific example of "virtue," as if there's something unique about virtue, and that wastes a lot of time. The real issue applies to knowing *anything*, and whether what you think is the truth about something is the full trial, the partial truth, or what. It's the old question about what is "truth?" Do we know truth by example, by definition, or by what "test of truth?"

We need a clear and concise presentation of the problem Plato thought had been identified (and apparently this didn't start with him) and then how prolepsis helped Epicurus respond to the perceived dilemma, along the lines of the article referenced in the first, without falling into skepticism himself.

I just rewatched the Matthew Lampert video above, and I was impressed all over again. He does a very good job explaining how the real issue is what it means to "know" something without getting sidetracked on other issues.

I see that the Matthew Lampert video posted above is the second of two videos he did discussing Plato's Meno. This first video gives you the background and makes the excellent point that the dialogue is not really about virtue at all (which is the way people generally talk about it), but is about knowledge. He makes the point that "virtue" is just a particularly hard subject, so that makes it a good test case for how we know about anything. Plato could just as easily have talked about "the gods," rather than virtue, and made the same point. In fact, that's what I think Hume decided to do in his "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion."

I recommend this one as well, in case anyone is concern that "Meno" is mainly about virtue rather than knowledge.

These are two very good videos. Good clear style, graphics, presentation, etc. Unfortunately I don't see that he has done any on Epicurus.

And note that at the very end he points that were Plato/Socrates is really going is to praise "dialectic" as the way to get to the truth all questions. That's something again where Epicurus would beg to disagree, and thus we come full circle to Epicurus' "canon" as the test of truth rather than "dialectic."

In this context, it's hard to ignore that this quote from Aetius doesn't point in the same direction as other references which indicates that "images" are the driving force behind Epicurus' view of the ultimate source of prolepsis:

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Aetius Placata 4.8 On Sensation and Sense-Objects

§10 Leucippus Democritus Epicurus (say) that sensation and thought arise from images that approach from outside, for neither of these can occur to anyone without the image falling upon him.

And it therefore seems to me that an argument could be made that Epicurus is saying, not just in regard to gods but in regard to anything else, that it is the impact of images on the mind that give rise to the origin of prolepsis and therefore much of thinking. Were it not for the need to go beyond the visible images that are received by the eyes, and to incorporate Epicurus' view of non-visible images received directly by the mind, it might not even be very controversial to accept that this is still a correct view by the majority of empiricists today. This would be combined with the Cyclops example discussed in the Gourinat article (I will need to find a part of that to quote) as an example of how humans see things and extend their qualities (such as size in the case of Cyclops).

Part of the Cyclops references, this in a quote from Sextus Empiricus

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(Sextus Emp. AM IX 45-46)
The origin of the thought that god exists came from appearances in dreams, or from the phenomena of the world, but the thought that god is everlasting and imperishable and perfect in happiness arose through a process of transition from humans. For just as we acquired the thought of a Cyclops, who was not “like a corn-eating man, but rather a peak well-wooded High on the mountain-tops, when it loometh apart from its fellows” 50 by enlarging the common human being in imagination, so too having started to think of a happy human being, blessed with all the goods, then having intensified these, they thought of god as their highest point. (46) And again, having formed the impression of a long-lived human, the ancients increased their time-span to infinity by combining the past and future with the present; and then, having thus arrived at the notion of eternity, they said that god was eternal too.

If I recall correctly near the end of the article Gourinat extends this in regard to the gods in a way favorable to the Stoic "argument from design," which I think Epicurus would have rejected and would not be the best reading

I think that's right, but all of that fits in the context of answering how it is we can know something without a pre-existing example or definition. .

I see that as a very good summary of the mechanics, with the significance that it all adds up to the replacement for "recollection" theory and the skepticism into which the Aristotelians and Academics fell - and still fall.

As far as making it understandable to larger numbers, the framework is that this Platonic attitude of seeing this as an unsolvable problem is why the world is so overwhelmingly skeptic. Epicurus was working on a rational clear explanation of how confidence in knowledge is possible.

It remains today to explain this in persuasive terms so that the campaign against skepticism and the implications that go with it (radical empiricism / nihilism) can resume.

Apparently there aren't many or any academic writers who accept this as a valid response to Plato. So even though changing their minds isn't our concern, the general attitude that this isn't an important part of Epicurean philosophy is a problem to be addressed. People don't care much about Plato anymore, but radical skepticism is a huge problem. Many people have been persuaded by radical skepticism they we never be sure of anything.

Also, I think we can consider that concepts like "good," or "the good" or "the highest good" or "pleasure" (when viewed as a concept) or " the highest pleasure," or "gods" are, like virtue, good examples of the issue.

Determining what these things at the start of our quest is not an easy thing. People disagree on what those words mean, and it is exactly the definition of them that we don't have as a test. How will we know we are correct when we assert that "x" or "definition X" of the highest good is correct? Same with "absence of pain." If we knew we wouldn't have to ask, and if we don't know then how do we know when we have arrived at the correct definition?

One way to do it is to use our experience of "images" we have received in the past as the basis for extending out a definition. We can suggest formulations such as "a god is a living being blessed and imperishable" or "pleasure is the absence of pain," because these are reaonable extensions of more limited past experiences. Once extended as a formulation, we can then test those extensions logically against more actual experiences to confirm or contradict that formulation as a workable definition. But where did the proposed definition come from in the first place? From "extending out" descriptions of actual experiences received as images, either in our own past after birth or encoded in rudimentary fashion genetically before birth from past generations.

Experiencing men six feet tall and living 60 years allows us to conceive of the possibility of men 60 feet tall and living 600 years, even if we have never seen such ourselves. We have seen some men spend more of their time living pleasurably than others, so we can conceive of living beings who spend *all* their time living pleasurably.

But we cannot even conceive of anything coming from nothing because we have logically concluded based on much experience that this is not possible at all. And we cannot logically conceive of a totally happy being finding itself in a situation where its total happiness is interrupted by getting mad at enemies or feeling any lack to be filled by "rewarding" friends.

It's not necessarily supernatural to live 100 years or 600 years, but it would be supernatural to create anything from nothing, or to create the universe as a whole from scratch, or for the universe to have an end in space, or for a spirit to exist apart from a living body.

I presume Epicurus would point to prolepsis and your explanation of a sequence in which it would work as a much better approach than "recollection of knowledge from before birth" or "it's impossible to know anything so let's admit we know nothing," or "let's talk about it using the dialectical method."

Appealing to Prolepsis along the lines you describe (plus making clear that "images" are not limited to "visible images") gives us an approach that allows us to be confident of basic conclusions where evidence is strong. It also gives us a workable test to determine when evidence is insufficient, requiring us to "wait" before being confident a single opinion is true.

As Lucretius wrote, even the gods could not conceive of creating a universe if they had never previously received an image of a universe, therefore the gods could not predate and be the creator of the universe. But even we as humans can conceive of terraforming Mars, because that idea is a reasonable extension of images we have in fact received in human experience reshaping things here on Earth.

I don't think we have any major disagreement Don but as to this:

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saying that we do not sense things through the impact of eidola on our sense organs. Our bodies - all bodies - are not casting off "films of atoms" that travel through space. Yes, our eyes interact with photons. Our noses interact with molecules in the air. Our tongues interact with chemicals. And so on. Is it interesting to understand how Epicurus was reacting to his contemporaries' philosophical ideas? Sure. No argument there. However, Epicurus called his students to study nature and "how things work" in the materials world. On that track, I think it behooves Epicureans living in the 21st century to understand how sensations and the brain work to their best of our ability in the here and now as well.

As I see it, the important issue is whether the mind and the sense work through material / bodily means or through some other means. We aren't a biochemistry group, and it would be as unproductive for us to get into the details of biochemistry as it would be to get into the latest discussions of particle physics. Epicurus' general approach remains perfectly valid: the things we are talking about are happening as as result of the movement of physical "real" things of some kind, and are neither the result of supernatural forces nor are they essentially unsolvable (such as moving too fast for any apprehension, as referenced by Diogenes of Oinoanda). The task of philosophy is to get a reasonable understanding of the big picture, and the final details are best left either to others who want to spend the time exploring that, or simply to the theory of multiple explanations, in which so long as we have one or more reasonable non-supernatural theories, then we can dismiss the worst of the problems (gods, fate, zero regularity) and get on with living our lives as best we can.

To get too far into the details of whether a photon constitutes a particle or not isn't going to contribute much to that, although I am all in favor of reading about it in the appropriate place. I've always enjoyed reading science magazine and hearing the theories.

The real problem is that the majority of people who get exposed to philosophy are polluted with these false major theories, and they need to be provided responsive and persuasive theories that point the way to what is true. Whether the data that we receive through perceiving particles is encoded in "shape" (by means of film like the skin of a snake) or otherwise, the real issue is whether the data comes to us through the particles and our senses receive it and our minds interpret it, or not.

Yes you're probably right to say that the Meno paradox is sophistry. But simply saying that it is sophistry doesn't persuade the legions of normal people outside this group who need to be provided both an explanation as to why it is sophistry and an alternative that makes sense from an Epicurean point of view. There are reams of videos out there today further causing confusion on these issues, and it will be necessary for people who want more "Epicurean Friends" in their real world lives to go out an explain that the Meno problem does have one or more reasonable solutions.

Another aspect of this issue of focusing on what is most important is as explained in Asimov's article "The Relativity of Wrong". The full article explains the point in detail and gives example after example to show how Asimov is correct, but this excerpt is probably the most concise statement of the Asimov's ultimate position:

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The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proven to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about out modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." The implication was that I was very foolish because I knew a great deal.

Alas, none of this was new to me. (There is very little that is new to me; I wish my corresponders would realize this.) This particular thesis was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who specialized in irritating me. He also told me that all theories are proven wrong in time.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

Our problem is that the view of the "young specialist in English" is the predominant position among "educated" people today. They are not certain of anything other than that it is impossible to be certain of anything - that they are certain of. And as Azimov is echoing Epicurus in saying, that is the most nonsensical position of all. Yes we should adopt the latest terminology whenever the audience is looking to hear views on the latest terminology, but what the vastly larger audience needs to hear is Epicurus' explanation of how knowledge is possible. For that an approximation of the physical details is what is called for, not an explanation of how the science is constantly changing which plays into the "young specialist in English's" position.

We routinely say that the earth is a "sphere" even though technically it's not. Whether we can call photons or sounds "particles" or "images" or "waves" is something that we can explain when the context calls for it, and when we want to talk about the latest details. But the big picture is that vision and the other senses, and the processing of the mind itself, work though "material means" rather than through supernatural or incomprehensible means. That point needs to be hit on in new ways that don't require us to go to Scientific American for the best ways to discuss them, and as far as I can see we can profitably talk about both "atoms" and "images" today even though those words have been replaced in strictly scientific jargon.

The real tragedy would be if someone who is otherwise motivated to produce responsive youtube videos or general interest articles explaining the benefits of the Epicurean perspective decided not to do so because they were concerned that "atoms" and "images" are the equivalent of saying that the world is flat. No one in this thread would urge that, but we're writing these threads not only for ourselves but for readers we don't even know, and that's why I belabor this point. By all means explain the differences between atoms and images and modern terminology, but don't let that interfere with the basic point that of all the philosophers in western civilization it was Epicurus who first pointed the way to a rational system of knowledge-buiiding.

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BUT we also need to understand why it was wrong, how it was wrong,

Along the lines of the Asimov quote that Pacatus listed, I would not admit that Epicurus was "wrong" at all. Incomplete as to details, yes, but that does not make the overall theory "wrong." We don't need the details nearly as often as we need the overall outline. When necessary we will correct the outline, but, again per the Asimov quote, it is not the latest formulation of the details that is all that matters. The higher level outline, so long as it can be interpreted as a high-level summary of the details, is the place we normally live our lives.

In philosophy it's going to be the conceptual framework, the broader outline, that matters, not the details of implementation. I would leave the details to those who want to follow the day to day revisions of the science, and I would teach people the overall correctness of the logical basis and the factual outlines (the nature worlds through particles and material means) of Epicurus's approach. The final details of implementation will always be revised, and in the meantime we have to have a firm conceptual framework to live our lives. The conceptual framework of particles striking our senses, and then the body processing them in natural logical ways toward conclusions we can be confident about, is the key.

But again, my reasoning her is based on the premise that we are looking to build Epicureans who can live happily, not the latest particle physicists or neurosurgeons. If and when they think they have found something supernatural, then we would need to take special notice of that (and refute them), but as to the day to day advancement of their individual techniques those aren't really relevant to most human beings. I don't mean to be overly presumptuous in saying this and of course some people will want to devote themselves to being physicists and neurosurgeons, but they will confront the problem Polyaenus ran into -- and they will want to reflect on whether they are pursuing science for the sake of science alone, and in doing so, failing to live the best life that would be possible to them if they would listen to philosophy.

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I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted;

The main problem posed by the Meno question is a logical one, and so I would say that it has to be met on logical grounds.