M. Dango's personal outline

    Epicurean philosophy has been an intriguing topic for me to read on so far. I have admittedly found it a little unsettling in that I've yet to come across anything in particular I strongly disagree with or find objectionable?

    On the nature of the universe:

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    Men need not be concerned about "gods" - supernatural beings do not exist, and any higher beings which are "perfect" are not concerned with men. Therefore it is false to believe that gods favor and reward their friends and disfavor and punish their enemies. Therefore it is foolish to ask the gods to do things for us that we can do for ourselves.

    I don't really concern myself much with religion or gods/deities. My own prior conclusion has been that that any gods, if they do exist, are benign. I cannot sense their presence, and "that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."

    I don't want to delve too deeply into the physics just yet, I do agree on the point that nature has no gods over her.

    On the nature of knowledge:

    The topic of epistemology fascinates me and there is a lot to take in on Epicurean Canonics! There are the three primary components of sensations, anticipations, and feelings, which form the basis of how we gain knowledge.

    The input we get from our senses is what informs us of reality. While our sensations inform us, we can make erroneous judgements, but those judgements do not make the sensations false. (I may have later questions regarding phantom pain and the body transfer illusion).

    Anticipation/prolepsis I think I get, but am unsure if I am phrasing correctly when I put into my own words. Its the accumulation of past experiences which shapes and refines our ability to interpret the outcome of future experiences.

    There are ultimately two feelings, pleasure and pain, with pleasure including the absence of pain.

    On the nature of how to live:

    Pleasure is the guide to life, and happiness is the goal. We can choose things which are painful which will lead to greater pleasure, and we can have pleasures which outweigh unavoidable pain.

    Quote from m.dango

    (I may have later questions regarding phantom pain and the body transfer illusion).

    This to me is decently easy to explain. With these experiments it doesn't actually cause a true sharp pain but we instead just feel fear and all of the discomfort that fear brings out of the false belief that our hand has been struck and injured. Same sort of deal with how people can become afraid because they think the Gods are angry at them or that we see a sleep paralysis demon in our sleep and think we're being held down. Sensation is "true" but it can cause the false opinion that lead to fear.

    Thank you for highlighting that quote wbernsys - I missed it when I first read the post.

    Since those two terms seem to be of interest i would appreciate m.dangoexplaining briefly what those terms mean and why they come up here so as to make the thread most useful for other readers.

    Not a problem!

    Phantom pain is a phenomenon where a person feels pain in a limb which has been amputated/removed. The reason it came to mind is that it is described as a sensation, and my initial thought was if it could be considered a sensation which is not true, but maybe it would not be classed as a sensation here? Maybe worth its own thread if it would make for interesting discussion.


    The body transfer illusion is where the brain creates an experience of another body or limb being their own. Perhaps this potentially falls into the category of anticipation rather than sensation?

    Quote from m.dango

    Maybe worth its own thread if it would make for interesting discussion.


    The body transfer illusion is where the brain creates an experience of another body or limb being their own. Perhaps this potentially falls into the category of anticipation rather than sensation?

    m.dango ,

    Thanks for your elaboration. I agree this could be a deeper discussion.

    My basic biology understanding is that our brain holds a “body map” somewhere in our somatosensory cortex.

    A summary from ClaudeAI opens an interesting discussion on senses & perception.

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    What the quote [from m.dango] is really pointing to is that body ownership is a construction, not a given. The brain doesn’t have direct access to physical reality — it runs a predictive model, and that model can be fooled when multisensory signals are manipulated coherently. The illusion works because the brain follows a simple rule: if visual and tactile input are temporally correlated and spatially plausible, update the body map to include that object.

    Does this mean the senses are not wrong, but the brain can be easily fooled?

    Patrikios