Prolepsis / Anticipations As Epicurus' Answer to the MENO Problem

Quote from Cassius

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.

In terms of inductive (evidence-based – as opposed to purely deductive) logic, current evidence is indicative of the most fruitful lines of inquiry. Such inquiry may or may not be falsified by future evidence. I’m not sure that the ancients (including the Stoics) had yet grasped the difference between deductive and inductive logic – but I suspect that Epicurus had at least an inkling …

Quote from Cassius

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.

Hmmm... I don't know about this: "not 'wrong' at all"? Maybe in broad outline, as in physical processes were at work in the eidola theory, it was not wrong. I don't think calling eidola theory "incomplete" is even the way to express it. It's not like we've added to more details about the eidola and how they're produced. I would contend that we ignore details at our peril. The sound waves and chemical compounds and photons and particles and so on that lead to sensation are not eidola. Our minds are not impacted by subtle eidola, engraving channels in the subtle atoms of our psykhē.

I give credit to Epicurus for positing a step on the way to our incomplete but fuller understanding.

I give credit to Epicurus for staying firm on physical material processes of sensation.

I agree on all that and its importance in the evolution of understanding how things work.

So, if you're saying that the "high-level summary of the details" is that "sensation and consciousness is the result of knowable physical processes" then, okay, that's not wrong. But as to whether I'm going think of my thoughts as the result of eidola impacting my psykhē or whether they're electrical neural activity with input from other internal and external stimuli, I'm taking the latter.

Quote from Cassius

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.

I see that as so broad though that I ask "Could that just as easily correspond to Plato's flashlight/emission model of vision?"

Quote from Cassius

my reasoning her is based on the premise that we are looking to build Epicureans who can live happily

Agreed, but Epicurus also said "Hence, since such a course is of service to all who take up natural science, I, who devote to the subject my continuous energy and reap the calm enjoyment of a life like this, have prepared for you just such an epitome and manual of the doctrines as a whole." So, it seems to me he felt the broad outline was important to keep in mind at all times, but investigating how the world worked with "continuous energy" gives one the confidence to have "calm enjoyment of life."

Quote from Pacatus

I don’t think that one has to go to some supernatural/mystical “woo” to recognize that there are hard questions of consciousness – which is probably worth a thread of its own. For example: intentionality.

Just to be clear: I don't think answering the "how" consciousness is easy. It's a "hard problem." But I understand Chalmers as saying there's something"more" in addition to neurons and the brain and body to account for it. That's what I meant by woo. I come down on the late Daniel Dennett side (mostly) when it comes to looking for nonphysical mechanisms (ie, there's not any/it's all physical/material stuff). I fully admit I could be wrong about Chalmers, but that's the direction I saw him heading in in what I've seen or read.

Don

I admit I was not responding to Chalmers per se. Just to the notion that there are no such “hard questions” (or that they are readily answerable by our current understandings of neurobiology). For the rest, my post – and the example of intentionality – stands. (Do I need to reaffirm that I don't ascribe to any "supernaturalism"?)

Quote from Pacatus

Don

I admit I was not responding to Chalmers per se. Just to the notion that there are no such “hard questions” (or that they are readily answerable by our current understandings of neurobiology). For the rest, my post – and the example of intentionality – stands. (Do I need to reaffirm that I don't ascribe to any "supernaturalism"?)

Fully, completely, and totally agree there are some really difficult, hard questions to answer about how the world works! Zero argument there. Including, of course, in neuroscience. But like Alexander the Oraclemonger's snake god, I'm sure, in the end, there's a rational physical explanation for them... It just might take awhile longer to find the explanation to topics like intentionality, for example.

And you're officially on record for anti-supernaturalism Of that, I never doubted. and, mea culpa, if my post came off as combative. Certainly not my intention

I freely confess I haven't read Plato's Meno, but glancing at the ol' Wikipedia article, this made me LOL:

Quote from Meno article on WP

Meno's theme is also dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion: virtue can be taught. Likewise, while in Protagoras knowledge is uncompromisingly this-worldly, in Meno the theory of recollection points to a link between knowledge and eternal truths.

So can Plato be taken seriously if he comes to opposite opinions? I'm all for reconsidering opinions and beliefs in light of new evidence, but how can there be a "Meno problem" if even its author provides multiple answers?

Quote

Socrates rephrases the question, which has come to be the canonical statement of the paradox:

[A] man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire.

— translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1871

There's the old, I believe, Weinberger quote about:

• Known knowns
• Known unknowns
• Unknown unknowns

We can investigate "known unknowns" through prior experience. Unknown unknowns can eventually come to light as we experience more. We can investigate unfamiliar phenomena, test, observe, etc. via knowledge we have. "Meno" isn't really a problem unless one defines terms in such a way as to create a problem. Or so it seems to me.

PS. And when we "learn" something, we're not recollecting from a past life. We build on experience and knowledge that we've acquired or that we have a genetic predisposition for. Take language. Babies have an innate ability to make sounds, them to imitate sounds or communicative gestures (I always remember video of the baby with deaf parents inserting their hand, open close open close, "babbling" in sign language), then we learn how to formally put sounds and words and sentences together. That's just one example, but I believe at least an illustrative one.

One issue I see in this discussion is "What do you* mean by 'know'?"

* btw "You" in the general sense, not you specifically.

Quote from Cassius

The problem is that of coming to grips with whether it is ever possible to "know" anything

There are various senses of that word "know" so I would be curious to know (LOL) what word Plato used specifically. For example:

I know I'm alive

I know where I am

I know 2+2=4

I know the capital of the US is Washington DC

I know the universe was in a hot dense state at one point

And so on

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

– Walt Whitman

~ ~ ~

I think we can take the word “mystical” metaphorically here (or relating to feelings of awe, and not necessarily supernatural). I recall that Whitman was at least acquainted with Epicurean philosophy.

Not that scientific (and philosophical) inquiry and debate are not valuable (and sometimes pleasurable) – but that we, in the end, live in the day-to-day “real world”. Feeling pleasure in the “moist night air” and the starry expanse overhead. Where we make daily decisions about how we are to live: how to weave a life enriched by pleasure whilst minimizing pain and anxiety; how to celebrate simplicity; how best to love the ones we love; how to support our friends in troubled times; etc.

And that is, for me, where the meat and marrow of philosophy are.

And, yes, of course: “A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe, but suspects the truth of some mythical story. So that, without natural science, it is not possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed.” (PD 12)

And: “We must not pretend to study philosophy, but study it in reality, for it is not the appearance of health that we need, but real health.” (VS 54)

And: “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.” (U221)

~ ~ ~

And, Don : If I came off as defensive, mea culpa. Didn’t mean to.

Quote from Don

I know I'm alive

Just as an (hopefully not too distracting) aside: Wittgenstein argued that, in normal everyday discourse* (as opposed to academic philosophy) that “know” is, at best, superfluous. In the Philosophical Investigations, he imagines a passerby who overhears a discussion in which W’s interlocutor says: “I know that’s a tree!” (Note the emphasis.) W says to the puzzled passerby: “Don’t worry. This fellow isn’t crazy. We’re just talking philosophy.”

Imagine again the addition of emphasis: “I know I’m alive.” How could there be any doubt? The same with the other examples. If there were doubt, to what could you appeal?

And this is where I think the Meno Paradox becomes a sophistic misapplication of deductive syllogistic – hence my post about inductive versus deductive logic.

[W’s On Certainty was an extended exploration of this question, in response to G.E. Moore.]

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* Which W argued was adequate to most of our everyday communication, and that academic philosophy (epistemology) often confused what is apparent.

Cassius

You're right. And, in using that adjective, I was imputing some intention to obfuscate or sway with false logic. My bad.

Good point

For me, whether I'm technically correct or not, I've been using sophistry to mean someone, or an argument that, uses clever unnecessarily complex language to sound smarter and more erudite than they actually are. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bs."