Posts by Cassius

Yes that is helpful, thank you!

Because it's not limited to "gods" I think it's worth spelling out the reasoning issue. As I see it:

1. Cotta is alleging that Epicurus said that in order to understand something, you have to have seen a prior example and understood the prior example. Implicitly the point is "you have to have examined it here on earth in your own experience and understood it before you can apply the generalization to a new example."

2. Cotta alleges that there is nothing like the sun, moon, or stars here on earth, so Epicurus has had no examples to examine.

3. Cotta alleges that since Epicurus had no examples, and under Epicurus's rules that we require examples on which to reason, we cannot make any reliable statements about the sun moon or stars. But Cotta knows that Epicurus DOES claim to know that the sun and stars and planets are not gods.

4. Cotta says this position that the suns and stars and planets are not gods is contradictory. Since Epicurus has had no examples of suns or moons or planet to examine, Epicurus (allegedly under his own rules) should not be making any representations about the sun and stars and planets at all. Cotta thinks he has Epicurus in a trap, so he says "Epicurus if you are willing without evidence reach the conclusion that sun stars and planets are not gods, why don't you go ahead and admit without evidence the sun stars and planets are gods, and that gods can exist in other than human form?"

So I see Cotta as trying to take advantage of the argument that we also see in Lucretius, where Lucretius says "the gods could not have made the universe because they had no pattern to go by." It was apparently understood that the Epicureans argued regularly that you must have a pattern from experience in order to understand something and work with it.

Any skeptic who thinks that Epicureans demand examples before they believe in something will attack any Epicurean position on the sun moon and stars by saying : "Under your own theory of reasoning, you can't say anything at all about something unless you have seen a prior example of it, so you shouldn't be talking at all about the sun moon or stars."

And that sounds like a reasonable argument against someone who is alleging you can only reason based on analogy from sensory experience. But it's not a persuasive argument against Epicurus, because the Epicurus' position is not that you reason based ONLY on past experience, your reason can also be based on reasonable inferences from circumstantial evidence. In that way it is permissible to make conclusions about things you haven't seen, because you can infer new possibilities that you haven't seen based on other examples of what we have seen.

This is how the difference plays out in court:

If a judge in court only allows "direct evidence," then he will allow into evidence a witness who says "I saw Tom Jones strangle Sally Smith in the jail cell."

If a court allows only direct evidence, the judge will EXCLUDE the testimony of a witness who says: "I saw Tom Jones and Sally Smith alone in the jail cell, and then I left, and ten minutes later I came back and Sally Smith was dead with red marks around her neck, and no one had disturbed the lock on the cell."

The latter testimony is not "direct" evidence" but "circumstantial evidence." Circumstantial evidence is controversial and has to be treated carefully. But our legal system has decided that it is reasonable to ally juries to consider circumstantial evidence in court, because sometimes direct evidence is not available but circumstantial evidence is very strong.

The answer to Cotta is that Epicurean philosophy doesn't require direct evidence all the time, such as in the case of the existence of atoms or what happens to self-consciousness after death. Epicurean philosophy allows inference based on circumstantial evidence, and it considers the conclusions of persuasive amounts of circumstantial evidence to be as worthy of reliance, even in life-and-death decisionmaking, as evidence from that which has been observed directly.

Therefore I see it as essential to point out that Cotta's is wrong to allege that Epicurus requires direct evidence to support decisionmaking. After that, we also need to take the next step of discussing the proper use of circumstantial evidence, so we can explain how he's misrepresenting Epicurus, because that's not obvious to everyone.

And it's also worth pointing out another inconsistency in Cotta:

Why, Cotta, if you are a skeptic and don't think anything is knowable, do you agree with Velleius that gods are happy, and gods have virtue, and gods use reason? Where do you come by that knowledge?

In fact we need to ask that question of both Cotta and Epicurus in order to understand the big picture of how their reasoning differs. If we just stop and say "this topic is about gods and I don't care about gods" then we will cut ourselves off from major aspects of how Epicurean reasoning works on everything, not just gods.

Quote from Bryan

Yes, Cicero is forgetting that, per Epicurus, a consideration is true -- both "if it is not contradicted " by evidence as well as "if it is affirmed." (51c)

Thanks Bryan. Also: We have PD24 for a similar point:

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PD24. If you reject any single sensation, and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion, as to the appearance awaiting confirmation, and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling, or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you will confound all other sensations, as well, with the same groundless opinion, so that you will reject every standard of judgment. And if among the mental images created by your opinion you affirm both that which awaits confirmation, and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what is right and what is wrong.

But I'd like to make clear from our existing quotes something to the effect that the opinion, in order to be suggested in the first place, must pass an initial threshold of being based on some kind of existing evidence. In other words it isn't sufficient to say "I can imagine an omnipotent god....."

I'd like to see what we can do to come up with a pithy statement of the ultimate point. Something first has to get the opinion started as reasonable based on existing evidence.

What's the best way to take something like "Reasoning about the nature of the imperceptible must be based on and consistent with the nature of the perceptible" and modify it to a form in which you would teach a child?

Quote from Eric

I'm sure that's true. Could you elaborate what you mean?

Well mostly what I was referring to is just the way people typically "slow down" or develop chonic disease conditions with age. I'm personally at the point now (over 60!) that I just don't have the energy to do the things I used to do in whole range of areas. That makes diet and exercise even more important over time, I guess!

Outstanding post Nate thank you. Very well worded on a whole series of key points on religion and morality and death.

I don't necessarily want to derail this thread with another discussion with fine points on "the gods," but is it your view at this point that you do not think Epicurus held the gods to have any physical existence whatsoever ("....though, those deities are simply inspiring mental objects") or am I misreading your intent there?

Not sure how we could work it, but maybe we need a "My Current Thoughts On _____" section of the forum or in our user profiles to have a way to keep track of evolving thoughts. But that's another topic too. Maybe someone will have a suggestion on how we could implement such a thing. I know my own opinions on difficult topics is subject to change so that might be helpful. The other alternative that we already follow to avoid thread derailment is that if a series of posts goes too far off from the main point, we move those to a new thread. So your choice as to whether to respond on that point here, somewhere else, or not at all.

But back on topic and my main point here is - that was an excellent post!

Today I've set up a page to keep track of a list of articles or materials that would be particularly helpful to have, but which don't currently exist (at least in the forum we need it at the forum for general reference).

I have seeded the list with three articles, one each for physics, canonics, and ethics, but I would like to expand it to include a wider list that we can keep pinned as a list of suggestions that we'd like to see people write about.

I suspect we have a considerable number of participants and even lurkers who occasionally have time on their hands, and this list would provide food for thought about how they might assist us in preparing general-interest materials about Epicurean topics.

Please feel free to add topics to this discussion thread, and we can incorporate them into a master ongoing list, to which we will link from the front page of the forum.

167

No doubt there are some pithy quotes in "On Signs" that are directly relevant to this discussion.

Here's our discussion of two articles on knowledge and signs by David Sedley

And here's a transcript of the text of the DeLacey edition of Philodemus.

I would say that this issue of evidence - based reasoning is what is being referred to very near the beginning of Lucretius' poem, and its position here as one of Epicurus' great accomplishments reflects its importance. Epicurus points to the method for unraveling "what can be, and what cannot - in what way each thing has its power limited - its deep-set boundary mark"

Quote from Lucretius Book One

[62] When the life of man lay foul to see and grovelling upon the earth, crushed by the weight of religion, which showed her face from the realms of heaven, lowering upon mortals with dreadful mien, ’twas a man of Greece who dared first to raise his mortal eyes to meet her, and first to stand forth to meet her: him neither the stories of the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor the sky with its revengeful roar, but all the more spurred the eager daring of his mind to yearn to be the first to burst through the close-set bolts upon the doors of nature. And so it was that the lively force of his mind won its way, and he passed on far beyond the fiery walls of the world, and in mind and spirit traversed the boundless whole; whence in victory he brings us tidings what can come to be and what cannot, yea and in what way each thing has its power limited, and its deepset boundary-stone. And so religion in revenge is cast beneath men’s feet and trampled, and victory raises us to heaven.

1. Don - The first upload was deleted. it may show up twice but only the first is usable.

2. Joshua - Let me check. I don't rememember anything egregiously off.

Lucretius Today Episode 246 is now available: "Examining Epicurean Evidence-Based Reasoning" Transcript

Here's a prior thread on the letter to Marcella: We've discussed this before as the source of the "vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal...." and that the letter is not represented to be a direct quote from Epicurus. I've come around to a somewhat more favorable opinion of it lately, but there's no doubt in my mind that it is mashup of Stoic and Epicurean and may simply Porphyry's own views, so in my view it has to be taken with caution. I agree with your reservations on this part Kalosyni. I think that a close reading of *exactly* what it is saying largely rescues it from sounding Stoic, and for that reason it's useful for discussion. But a too-superficial reading of it can definitely be made to sound like a recommendation to being indifferent to pleasure and pain, which I don't think is accurate Epicureanism.

Thread

Porphyry - Letter to Marcella -"Vain Is the Word of the Philosopher..."

I was talking to @EricR this morning and trying to remember the source of this quote. In tracking it down it seems to come from Porphyry's letter to Marcella -- but do we really know this is attributable to Epicurus? Usener seems to think so, but why? Anyone recall?

U221

Porphyry, Letter to Marcella, 31, [p. 209, 23 Nauck]: 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,…

Cassius

June 12, 2023 at 11:34 AM

Second thread, same general reservations:

Thread

Article on the "Letter to Marcella" by Porphyry

Thanks to Takis Panagiatopolis of the Athens Garden for this link:

http://www.epicuros.gr/pages/en/Tempe…us_Porphyry.pdf

! It seems clear that this writer was referencing Epicurean ideas while also combining them with elements that are absolutely irreconcilable. It is interesting to reflect on which are which.

"27. So then, first you must grasp the law of Nature and from it ascend to the divine law which also established the law of Nature."

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/345/

…

Cassius

April 17, 2019 at 6:40 AM

See also in particular this part for discussion that Porphyry seems to be recommending abstinence from food and sex:

Post

RE: Article on the "Letter to Marcella" by Porphyry

Weren't we talking recently somewhere about someone recently interested in this letter to Marcella? I still to this day have not spent much time with it, but it seems to me very dangerous to consider this an Epicurean work as it seems to have lots of unEpicurean thought mixed into it.

It would take almost a line-by-line analysis to go through it but I see this as an example which appears to me directly UNEpicurean, because if the gods have decided to give up food and sex for themselves, then…

Cassius

January 31, 2020 at 2:45 PM

I think a lot of people miss why this is so important.

The point is that the other philosophers, typified by Plato with his cave, allege that the senses "lie" to you and that they are therefore unreliable sources of information about how to live. If the senses lie, then you need to look for some other faculties that you *can* rely on to replace them.

If you're Plato, you come up with geometry or dialectic or some other way of symbolic "logic." If you're more into straight religion you come up with some kind of prayer or divine revelation. No doubt there are other substitutes as well but (1) rationalism/logic and (2) mysticism are the big ones.

Epicurus rejects both of those and says that we rely on the senses that nature gave us, and we don't have to invent imaginary substitutes. He further points out that in addition to the five senses, there are two other categories of natural faculties (1 - the feelings of pleasure and pain, and 2 - the "prolepsis") which are also natural mechanisms that report "truly" without their own opinions. That's why these three categories are "canonical" - they don't give us any opinions of their own about what to do, but they are natural "straight edges" or "rulers" that we can reliably use to test our own individual contexts. They operate naturally, so when held up to situation after situation they give us reliable data that we can then act upon. No need for divine revelation or circular rationalism.

Quote from Kalosyni

This gave me some difficulty in the past, so I want to see if I can finally get it. Can we say that the senses are the mechanics of how the mind collects "data"? Then just like a microscope may have a scratch on the lense, the eye could have a defect which slightly alters the incoming data?

Yes. The microscope does not "tell" the doctor or scientist what he is looking at - the microscope simply collects and magnifies light and passes it on to the eyepiece. It's up to the observer to make an accurate assessment of what he sees.

If a lense has a scratch, then the light transmitted to the eyepiece is affected to greater or lesser degree by the scratch. But that doesn't affect the "truthfulness" of the microscrope, because at no time is the microscope "telling" anyone anything.

We're separating the "collection of data" from the "assessment of data." The collection isn't "true" or "false" - the collection function simply is what it is.

That's why it is possible to say that the senses always report "accurately" or "truthfully" -- they are not injecting their own "opinion" about what they are displaying. They aren't reaching any conclusions at all. The observer has to account for any scratches on a lens the same way you account for the lens being out of focus, or not having enough light to see what you're looking at.

It's "opinions" that are right or wrong or accurate or inaccurate.

So it's essential, if you're going to make any sense of Epicurean canonics at all, to "get the point" that tools like the eyes or ears are never "accurate" or "inaccurate" in the way that they report. They report what they report, and it's the interpretation of the data in the mind that is accurate or inaccurate.

"Accurate" or "inaccurate" applies to saying that the tower at a distance is round or square. When someone says "all senses are true" or "all sensations are true," they aren't talking about the conclusion about whether the tower is square or round. They are saying that the senses report "truly" in the sense of "honestly without any added opinion of their own."

Quote from Eric

Perceptions and interpretations can be false on all stages of processing as can be demonstrated via experienceable examples such as optical illusions (initial processing) or delusions (later processing).

This would be another comment similar to Godfrey's as to shades of meaning, but most of the time I don't think we see "perceptions" and "interpretations" linked as similar concepts that can be right or wrong. I generally see "perceptions" as used to refer to individual "sights" or "sounds" rather than the labeling of them. At any rate, it's important to be clear that the senses are not right or wrong themselves, it is the interpretations we draw from the senses that can be right or wrong.

From the article:

"Despite periodic re-examination of the concept, tired light has not been supported by observational tests and remains a fringe topic in astrophysics.^[4]"

Article on same topic: "Shamir study supports century-old tired light theory, challenging big bang"

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Shamir_study_supports_century_old_tired_light_theory_challenging_big_bang_999.html

A Special Happy Birthday to Bryan! Thank you for all you do for the forum, not the least of which is your work on Usener's Epicurea!

Happy Birthday to Bryan! Learn more about Bryan and say happy birthday on Bryan's timeline: Bryan

Yes I agree with Don. That's the key passage, mainly on the topic that we should organize our lives so that we are as little affected by negative chance as possible, because there are things which are not in our control (where lightning will strike) that are essentially to us matters of chance, but to which we can minimize our exposure.

I think there may be others directed against the idea that there is a "force" in the universe that dispenses favorable or unfavorable luck, along the lines of a "goddess of fortune," which would also be ruled out by Epicurean philosophy.

Good point Kochie!

Yep I am jesting. I'm not aware of any good arguments that we pick up ideas through blood transfusions