Prolepsis of the gods

There's also the prolepsis of justice which doesn't physically exist but "we know it when we *see* it." That one, I've taken to be akin to the innate sense of fairness exhibited by various animals, ex.

I will write more in response to Rolf''s question but my first comment would be that I think most of us agree that a prolepsis comes before any opinion or conclusion. So anytime the statement is something like "sharing food is fair" that is a conclusion and not a prolepsis.

If prolepsis is a PRE-conception, I would describe it more as "the ability to recognize that an issue is involved." The monkeys recognize that there is an unequal distribution of food in this example, but that in itself does not tell us or them what a "fair" distribution of food would be.

Lucretius argues that the gods could not have created the universe because it makes no sense that the gods had any inkling of the possibility of any kind of universe at all until there was first a universe of a kind to serve as an example from which they could recognize a pattern.

Further, the principal doctrines make clear that even "justice" is a very fluid concept, and that what appears to be just at one moment can be unjust at the next if circumstances change -- and that includes compacts not to harm or be harmed, which not all are even willing or able to make in the first place. We can recognize that justice as an issue exists, but we don't know what is just or unjust with evaluating in our reasoning minds particular contextual facts.

So the reason prolepsis is not an "objective morality" - I would say - is that prolepsis has no "objective" content (opinion, conclusion) within it. To say that the monkeys have prolepsis of justice does not mean that Nature gives them a correct conclusion as to whether they are getting a fair or just amount of food.

Maybe an even better example would be lower organisms - all the way down to single cell amoeba. We would not expect - and do not associate in our minds - the actions of amoeba in competing for food to be just or unjust. We do not expect that amoeba have any appreciation at all for such issues, and for amoeba no justice or injustice exists.

Somewhere up the line of advancement living things become capable of "thinking," and at some point they begin to appreciate that there is an issue or question involved in their relationships to other living beings. Somewhere in that range they begin to have "prolepsis of justice" which allows them to even begin considering that their relationships with other living beings might be divided into categories of relationships, and they begin to consider whether one type of relationship is more productive for them than another type of relationship. At that point they begin to consider some things "just" and other things "unjust" - but those are just words that we assign to the concept. I would say that you are long past the "prolepsis" stage at that point.

But if the "prolepsis" of justice or gods did not exist, we would never begin considering or discussing those concepts in the first place.

It's much better in my view to start analyzing prolepsis from the point of view of philosophy and the Meno problem than it is to start with some particular clinical phenomena (like monkeys or beavers) and try to analyze the issue in terms of specific animals or their conclusions. Otherwise you just transfer to the monkeys the same question we ask about ourselves: "Where does the whole idea of "justice" come from in the first place?"

I think most here agree that we don't have a prolepsis of atoms.

I would also say myself that your question is why DeWitt argues that Diogenes Laertius' description of prolepsis (examples as to humans and oxen) is at best incomplete and at worst just wrong as a description of prolepsis. And as you know DeWitt concludes that Cicero's understanding of the issue as expressed through Velleius (as something that exists BEFORE an individual's first exposure to an example) is much more accurate.

Our process of concluding that atoms exist is outlined at length by Lucretius in Book One. We come to the conclusion that atoms exist through deductive reasoning about things that we do see exist. I would say that is just how we come to the concept of humans and oxen as well. Our senses (trustworthy as without opinion, just like prolepsis) tell us that bodies in general exist. It is our minds that have to use reasoning to deduce the categories from atom to human and everything in between into which we place those bodies and assign names to them. As to the assignment of names that too arises from nature in the trial and error experience of men, and there is no god-given assignment of classes or names to them.

As to gods (divinity) or justice however, the two best-documented examples in the major surviving texts, those are more in the nature of abstractions of which we never touch or "see" or smell or hear examples directly. That is why deductive reasoning alone does not work for gods and justice. Did we not have some kind of faculty for recognizing the patterns involved, our five senses would never recognize that these relationships / abstractions exist.

Quote from Cassius

But if the "prolepsis" of justice or gods did not exist, we would never begin considering or discussing those concepts in the first place.

In similar fashion we could argue that if prolepsis of unicorns did not exist, we would never be able to talk about unicorns. Unicorns, justice and gods are complex concepts that we understand by the act of reasoning. Pre-concepts are simple patterns - building blocks which are used by the act of reasoning to create complex concepts. Prolepsis of gods or prolepsis of justice is an oxymoron. It's like saying simplicity of complexity.

We can talk about unicorns easily because we combine plethora of patterns we can merge by the act of thinking to understand unicorns as a concept. In similar fashion we can easily talk about 'duocorns', 'tricorns' or 'quadrocorns'. No-one reading this post has ever heard about such creatures but everyone can easily imagine these because everyone has developed sufficient amount of patterns to be able to comprehend such complex concepts. The same process applies to justice and gods.

Rolf, TauPhi's post is a useful example of how on an issue like this where there is fragmentary or even conflicting evidence with which to work, different people are going to come to different conclusions, and each person in the end has to reach their own conclusion pending discovery of more texts.

I gather Tau Phi is saying that the same process that applies to unicorns applies to gods and justice. I would disagree. I would argue that a unicorn is an example of a concept/idea that arises from combining examples of horses with examples of horned animals, and that thus something very different is involved in abstractions such as justice or divinity.

This is why I argue the starting point for analysis should be the alleged paradox of Meno and the assertions of Plato.

Could we say that prolepsis is an inborn ability that is required for reasoning - prolepsis is the ability to have pattern recognition. Because of prolepsis, the monkeys (in post 2 video above) know the difference between cucumbers and grapes. Then what happens next...they must be applying some level of reasoning - they remember that in the past they observed a repeated pattern of sharing out the same thing and they came to expect that to happen...but when it didn't happen it felt "wrong" to them.

If they had always each received something different from their first earliest experience, then perhaps they would have been conditioned to accept the difference.

So perhaps the experiment is flawed.

Quote from Kalosyni

Could we say that prolepsis is an inborn ability that is required for reasoning - prolepsis is the ability to have pattern recognition.

I think that's a pretty logical conclusion. Calling it "ability to have pattern recognition" does not presume that the mind already has in it the particular patterns that are to be recognized. The problem comes when we begin to think (and there is a great temptation to do so) that some particular pattern is inborn within us at birth.

I think most of us agree that we are not a "blank slate," but describing what it is that IS inborn is hard to do. Lucretius gives examples of how different animals have different temperaments, and that's somewhere in the ballpark, but there might not be much better way than to just call it "the ability to have pattern recognition."

To repeat, this is an area where we should welcome back and forth discussion and debate and exploration of options from anyone who's looked into the issues at all.

3-288

Moreover the mind possesses that heat, which it dons when it boils with rage, and the fire flashes more keenly from the eyes. Much cold breath too it has, which goes along with fear, and starts a shuddering in the limbs and stirs the whole frame. And it has too that condition of air lulled to rest, which comes to pass when the breast is calm and the face unruffled. But those creatures have more of heat, whose fiery heart and passionate mind easily boils up in anger. Foremost in this class is the fierce force of lions, who often as they groan break their hearts with roaring, and cannot contain in their breast the billows of their wrath. But the cold heart of deer is more full of wind, and more quickly it rouses the chilly breath in its flesh, which makes a shuddering motion start in the limbs. But the nature of oxen draws its life rather from calm air, nor ever is the smoking torch of anger set to it to rouse it overmuch, drenching it with the shadow of murky mist, nor is it pierced and frozen by the chill shafts of fear: it has its place midway between the two, the deer and the raging lions.

3-307

So is it with the race of men. However much training gives some of them an equal culture, yet it leaves those first traces of the nature of the mind of each. Nor must we think that such maladies can be plucked out by the roots, but that one man will more swiftly fall into bitter anger, another be a little sooner assailed by fear, while a third will take some things more gently than is right. And in many other things it must needs be that the diverse natures of men differ, and the habits that follow thereon; but I cannot now set forth the secret causes of these, nor discover names for all the shapes of the first atoms, whence arises this variety in things. One thing herein I see that I can affirm, that so small are the traces of these natures left, which reason could not dispel for us, that nothing hinders us from living a life worthy of the gods.