Posts by Cassius

Given my own personal background, I tend to imagine gods looking like their appearance in Greek or Roman statues, perhaps updated to fit the science fiction depictions of superior beings that I've also been exposed to over the years. Various "Star Trek" episodes tend to come to mind in my case, particularly "Errand of Mercy" which seems almost as if it was written to address this question. In that episode the god-like examples were portrayed as old men, however, and I don't necessarily see the "old" part as appropriate. (This picture will refresh the memory of those who have seen it.)

To keep it consistent with the views that the Epicureans talked about, I would see a group of beings like that living with absolutely no burdensome work to perform, but still active in an Olympus-like environment, dealing with each other absolutely happily and with no conflicts, and never growing older or subject to disease or death.

I agree with Twentier's first post that as a practical matter it would take a path of technological progression to reach that stage, and that most of the way along that path there would be "work" involved to maintain the machinery to keep the environment safe. And if there is an indeed an issue that the gods are deathless but have not been eternally immortal, then there would be some kind of activity that they are involved in which would maintain them in their state of happiness and security, even though they would not consider that maintenance to be "work."

But in imagining gods of any appearance whatsoever, the core requirement is to see them as totally blessed and imperishable so that they are in no way interested in our human activities, so it's hard to imagine what kind of activities they would find most fruitful to them. So long as that core requirement is maintained, I would expect that we're right in the middle of one of those exercises where "multiple possibilities" have to be entertained, meaning that we have to be satisfied thinking of options but not choosing only one as the only possible godlike way to spend your time. It's easy to understand the point that each person or being is going to have their own history of exposures to different people and depictions and that they will develop their own mental pictures of such beings.

The difference in mental depictions however does not mean that real beings that fit the general descriptions don't actually exist. I have in my mind right now a picture of an average Englishman or average German or average Russian, and just because my mental depictions don't exactly match what I would see if I actually went to England or Germany or Russia, that discrepancy does not mean that Englishmen and Germans and Russians don't actually exist.

The exercise involved in thinking about how such an existence might operate is probably the most beneficial aspect of the exercise, as a means of seeing how we might incrementally adjust our own experience to come as close to that "superior" way of life as we possibly can. It's a way of visually thinking about the question: "How might I reorganize my life to live better given my own circumstances."

Twentiers thread on this is here:

Thread

Give Us an Example of God!

How do you anticipate the gods that are compatible with Epicurean theology?

• I personally imagine a sort of transhumanist depiction of the gods: behold! Human evolution has become re-directed through intentional engineering of bio-mechanical extensions that have cured disease and prevented aging. We live in space stations that are removed from solar radiation and rely upon self-reliant forms of power for energy. Our location in space is deep enough that the expansion of space will forever thicken

…

Eikadistes

July 7, 2024 at 7:29 PM

Yep, it seems likely that flowing water triggers the immediate action. By why is the reaction "build a dam" rather than "run away" like most other animals would do when "triggered" by something with which it is not familiar? It seems to me the deeper we look the more certain it is going to be that a significant amount of this is "instinct." Would a baby spider separated from its kind never build a web? I would think it would -- maybe not as good a web, but still a web.

I would find it helpful to pin down Richard Dawkins' views on this, since I generally consider him to be a source of credible and well thought out positions:

The Extended Phenotype - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Dawkins proposes there are three forms of extended phenotype. The first is the capacity of animals to modify their environment using architectural constructions, for which Dawkins provides as examples caddis houses and beaver dams.

Edit: I've never heard of a "caddis house."

Caddisflies are best known for the portable cases created by their larvae. About thirty families of caddisfly, members of the suborder Integripalpia, adopt this stratagem. These larvae eat detritus, largely decaying vegetable material, and the dead leaf fragments on which they feed tend to accumulate in hollows, in slow-moving sections of streams and behind stones and tree roots. The cases provide protection to the larvae as they make their way between these resources.^[25]

The case is a tubular structure made of silk, secreted from salivary glands near the mouth of the larva, and is started soon after the egg hatches. Various reinforcements may be incorporated into its structure, the nature of the materials and design depending on the larva's genetic makeup; this means that caddisfly larvae can be recognised by their cases down to family, and even genus level. The materials used include grains of sand, larger fragments of rock, bark, sticks, leaves, seeds and mollusc shells. These are neatly arranged and stuck onto the outer surface of the silken tube. As the larva grows, more material is added at the front, and the larva can turn round in the tube and trim the rear end so that it does not drag along the substrate.^[25]

Caddisfly cases are open at both ends, the larvae drawing oxygenated water through the posterior end, over their gills, and pumping it out of the wider, anterior end. The larvae move around inside the tubes and this helps maintain the water current; the lower the oxygen content of the water, the more active the larvae need to be. This mechanism enable caddisfly larvae to live in waters too low in oxygen content to support stonefly and mayfly larvae.^[22]

I see references to someone named Lars Wilson studying this, but the references look questionable:

Running water is sound of spring for beavers | Juneau Empire - Alaska's Capital City Online Newspaper

And this one is not in English:

Observations and Experiments on the Ethology of the European Beaver "(castor Fiber L)"

books.google.com

The University of Chicago article ends as written below, and its overall tone and content appears to me to reinforce the position of something like: "Beavers *are* born with innate dispositions to build dams, but the more exposure they have to their groups while growing up the better they build."

At this moment I would say that of the three cites above, the University of Chicago article appears most persuasive, while the other two articles are more "fluffy." However even the University of Chicago article is more of a "history of science" approach than a "this is what was found in laboratory tests under controlled conditions" approach. It would be highly desirable to find instances of the latter.

The Contemporary Resolution:

Three basic positions have been taken on animal instinct. From Descartes through the early work of Lorenz, instincts were understood to be constituted by chains of reflexes that respond to certain environmental releasers. James Watson, B. F. Skinner, Z. Y. Kuo, and other behaviorists in the first part of the twentieth century rather attempted to account for apparently fixed patterns of behavior by appeals to subtle modes of conditioning. The later Lorenz and evolutionary biologists like Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) established the third and most recent conception of instinct, one that recognized the role of genetically determined, species-specific information as well as the environmental conditions required for the implementation of the information. Mayr epitomized this recognition in his proposal that two kinds of programs governed animal behavior, a more closed program and a more open program (Mayr 1974). Closed programs were those in which the releasing mechanisms were controlled by the genome of the species, such as mate recognition and display in many animals. For instance, fertile female Drosophila of one species, if reared in isolation and placed among males of several species that displayed to her, would unerringly receive only the male of her own species. However, freshly hatched graylag goose chicks would follow any object of the right size, if exposed to the moving object (e.g., Lorenz’s head while swimming) during a critical period in the young gosling’s life. The chicks rapidly learned the stimulus that released the fixed behavior of following. In some species of bird, a chick raised with chicks of a different species would imprint on the foster species and attempt to mate with its members. These cases of imprinting represent a more open program. The mechanisms of instinct, therefore, differ depending on the species of animal and the relative open or closed character of the program. Most behavior biologists today recognize these different instances of instinctual modes of behavior and have thus revitalized the instinct concept.

Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018, Jennifer Vonk and Todd Shackelford
Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior
10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1064-1

Instinct
Robert J. Richards
Departments of History, Philosophy, and Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Don's previous suggested threads:

https://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/Instinct--Encyclopedia%20of%20Animal%20Behavior.pdf

Animal Instincts: Not What You Think They Are

Marc Bekoff explains how many different animal species show grief, friendship, gratitude, wonder, and a range of other emotions.

greatergood.berkeley.edu

The Sound of Running Water Puts Beavers in the Mood to Build

This one weird trick can help you exploit a beaver's natural instincts.

www.mentalfloss.com

Note also: The article on "the sound of running water puts beavers in the mood to build" might also be an example of how outside influences trigger resulting behaviors, as seems to be a part of the "image" theory.

In the discussion of prolepsis, I - for one - regularly throw around the supposed "example" that beavers are born with the innate disposition to build dams, and that this is not "learned" after birth from their parents. The assertion would imply that while this behavior may be amplified from watching others after birth, it is not primarily dependent on observation after birth, and that baby beavers separated from older beavers at birth would still build dams.

Pretty obviously the truth or falsity of this assertion bears on the issue of exactly what kind of behaviors are transmitted genetically over generations, and plays into the whole "blank slate" controversy. If beavers are born with certain types of behaviors being innate, then it's not much of a leap to consider that humans are too.

There are probably lots of other significant examples, but Beavers really stand out as dramatic examples which capture the imagination. It therefore probably makes good sense to focus on them as a litmus test example - if beavers can be established to have this disposition programmed into them before any personal exposure of any kind to prior dam-building, then I would think most all the other alleged examples of genetic dispositions in the natural world will be correspondingly easy to accept - or harder to accept if innate beaver dam-building is a myth.

We've discussed this in the forum on the past, primarily in the thread I will link below. Some links were produced, primarily by Don if I recall correctly, but i don't recall that we found any kind of "gold standard" article from a respected publication or source that really nailed down the question with persuasiveness. And I also know that some people dispute the contention that beavers are "born" with this behavior programmed in them, and they consider the assertion to be totally false.

Thus this thread is born. Every time we discuss anticipations/prolepsis we come around eventually to dealing with this question of what in fact we are able to observe in nature as to whether "patterned" behavior is totally learned after birth, or is partially encoded in our genetics. The title of this thread will hopefully make it more findable on the future when we need these sources. So as time goes by, I would appreciate it if those of us who are interested in this question could use this thread to collect the best links which bear on it, positively or negatively. If this is true, let's embrace it, if it's false, let's blow it out of the water.

Post

RE: Is There A Relationship Between "Anticipations" and "Instinct"?

(Since I am suggesting we always ought to be planning our seminar presentations)

[…]

On the symbolism of pigs/hogs I think there is some material which help explain the reference. We surely know it it existed from the Boscoreale cup and the Horace reference. I think there is a church father comment also referencing it in which hogs are cited as pursuing pleasure singlemindedly.

Numerous animals would work for the others but any that are known for their instinctive behavior, beavers and their…

Cassius

April 23, 2021 at 5:23 AM

Quote from Twentier

Or is this just his response to Plato's belief in innate ideas that precede birth and have a more fundamental reality than death.

Twentier while I don't think this is *all* there is to it, I do think this is a major part. The whole question of how the mind works is too fundamental to leave to the possibility of supernatural influence. Living things are pretty clearly not just a "blank slate," and if you are going to tackle explaining chaos and how the universe was not created but eternal, you have to come up with an explanation of how thought also arises from the atoms.

Plato and everyone else decided to default to the supernatural. Epicurus refused to do that and instead came up with a theory in which everything - including thought - stems from flows of atoms. I think the answer to unwinding this lies more in following a chain of reasoning which begins with moving atoms and then inch by inch assembles into arms and legs and eyes and brains and thought. Everything has to stem from flows of atoms; beavers have to have imprinted upon them at birth - naturally - the disposition to build dams. Flows of atoms from place to place are the only way to solve the action-at-a-distance problem without defaulting to the supernatural.

I think Epicurus was 100% serious about his ideas of divinity. There has to be a natural process by which pleasure arises from flows of atoms, and everything more complicated builds on that over time. And the reason I agree with you that this is so important is that you just can't leave these kind of things without a natural explanation or -- we see what the priests have managed to do even after Epicurus came along. The same nihilism which bothers so many people today is going to attack anyone who doesn't ultimately come to grips with whether there's something otherworldly and more than our existence, or whether our existence and happiness needs no outside justification.

And in the end I don't see what Epicurus proposed as absurd at all. Everything - including every living thing - is constantly bombarded from all sides with atoms flowing from all directions, and those atoms *do* both influence us, as they are also influenced by where they came from. They come to us and induce reactions on our part - reactions through the five senses, and for all we know reactions directly on our body like the sun causes us to make Vitamin D. And those influences impact all parts of us - including our minds - and our brains wire themselves over time in response to these patterns. As our brains wire themselves we find ourselves in tune with certain patterns that have struck us in the past, and our genetics find ways to transmit over generations dispositions to respond analogously in the future.

Also, as we've been discussing lately, our minds form patterns of behavior as to pleasure and pain that allow us to think about what a "higher" life would be like if we never faced pain or death. We can imagine and benefit from considering what that life would look like - everyone needs a goal and vision of how they would like to live. In parallel with that aspirational aspect, we can think about how in an infinite and eternal universe that is filled with planets like Earth there are bound to be beings that have reached that level. And our consideration of that level of performance constitutes a goal for ourselves mentally and conceptually, just like all pleasure constitutes a goal for us.

I'm far from saying that this kind of explanation solves all the issues, but I think that it's a very reasonable approach and one that continues to have a lot more validity than most any I can name. And It sure beats giving in to the priests or to suicidal nihilism.

More:

XLI. But they are free from pain. Is that sufficient for beings who are supposed to enjoy all good things and the most supreme felicity? The Deity, they say, is constantly meditating on his own happiness, for he has no other idea which can possibly occupy his mind. Consider a little; reflect what a figure the Deity would make if he were to be idly thinking of nothing through all eternity but “It is very well with me, and I am happy;” nor do I see why this happy Deity should not fear being destroyed, since, without any intermission, he is driven and agitated by an everlasting incursion of atoms, and since images are constantly floating off from him. Your Deity, therefore, is neither happy nor eternal.

You guys are much better with the text than I am, and i have read many times that the earlier section seems to have the images going the wrong way, but when you look at the rest of what is said in attacking Velleius, it sure looks like a case can be made that everyone understood the images to be coming *from* the gods, and the "to" must be some kind of transcription error.

(Of course given the nature of the theory, it IS true that we ourselves are giving off images too, which the gods would be able to observe (if they were so inclined) just like we apparently are argued to perceive theirs. But I wouldn't expect that our paying attention to the idea of gods in any way "focuses" the images streaming off of us to go in the direction of the intermundia.)

Joshua and I will get to all of this over time, but it's apparent that there is a lot more in OTNOTG in regard to images that is relevant to prolepsis, even if we have to reverse engineer it from Cotta's criticisms:

XXXIX. The whole affair, Velleius, is ridiculous. You do not impose images on our eyes only, but on our minds. Such is the privilege which you have assumed of talking nonsense with impunity. But there is, you say, a transition of images flowing on in great crowds in such a way that out of many some one at least must be perceived! I should be ashamed of my incapacity to understand this if you, who assert it, could comprehend it yourselves; for how do you prove that these images are continued in uninterrupted motion? Or, if uninterrupted, still how do you prove them to be eternal? There is a constant supply, you say, of innumerable atoms. But must they, for that reason, be all eternal? To elude this, you have recourse to equilibration (for so, with your leave, I will call your Ἰσονομία), and say that as there is a sort of nature mortal, so there must also be a sort which is immortal. By the same rule, as there are men mortal, there are men immortal; and as some arise from the earth, some must arise from the water also; and as there are causes which destroy, there must likewise be causes which preserve. Be it as you say; but let those causes preserve which have existence themselves. I cannot conceive these your Gods to have any. But how does all this face of things arise from atomic corpuscles? Were there any such atoms (as there are not), they might perhaps impel one another, and be jumbled together in their motion; but they could never be able to impart form, or figure, or color, or animation, so that you by no means demonstrate the immortality of your Deity.

An additional fly in the ointment is that in reading ahead to a section where Velleius is being attacked, it seems that I remember seeing another reference to these images and the gods, and that in the second reference the preposition goes the other way.

Of course I don't have the cite on the tip of my tongue and without it this comment is useless, but I will see what I can do, and Joshua and I can look for it as we go further in OTNOTG.

Edit - it might be this from later in Book One, but I may remember something even more definite. Plus this is Yonge and I may be remembering Rackham:

XXXVII. “They have nothing to do,” your teacher says. Epicurus truly, like indolent boys, thinks nothing preferable to idleness; yet those very boys, when they have a holiday, entertain themselves in some sportive exercise. But we are to suppose the Deity in such an inactive state that if he should move we may justly fear he would be no longer happy. This doctrine divests the Gods of motion and operation; besides, it encourages men to be lazy, as they are by this taught to believe that the least labor is incompatible even with divine felicity.

But let it be as you would have it, that the Deity is in the form and image of a man. Where is his abode? Where is his habitation? Where is the place where he is to be found? What is his course of life? And what is it that constitutes the happiness which you assert that he enjoys? For it seems necessary that a being who is to be happy must use and enjoy what belongs to him. And with regard to place, even those natures which are inanimate have each their proper stations assigned to them: so that the earth is the lowest; then water is next above the earth; the air is above the water; and fire has the highest situation of all allotted to it. Some creatures inhabit the earth, some the water, and some, of an amphibious nature, live in both. There are some, also, which are thought to be born in fire, and which often appear fluttering in burning furnaces.

In the first place, therefore, I ask you, Where is the habitation of your Deity? Secondly, What motive is it that stirs him from his place, supposing he ever moves? And, lastly, since it is peculiar to animated beings to have an inclination to something that is agreeable to their several natures, what is it that the Deity affects, and to what purpose does he exert the motion of his mind and reason? In short, how is he happy? how eternal? Whichever of these points you touch upon, I am afraid you will come lamely off. For there is never a proper end to reasoning which proceeds on a false foundation; for you asserted likewise that the form of the Deity is perceptible by the mind, but not by sense; that it is neither solid, nor invariable in number; that it is to be discerned by similitude and transition, and that a constant supply of images is perpetually flowing on from innumerable atoms, on which our minds are intent; so that we from that conclude that divine nature to be happy and everlasting.

Edit TWO == same implication of direction from the gods:

XXXVIII. What, in the name of those Deities concerning whom we are now disputing, is the meaning of all this? For if they exist only in thought, and have no solidity nor substance, what difference can there be between thinking of a Hippocentaur and thinking of a Deity? Other philosophers call every such conformation of the mind a vain motion; but you term it “the approach and entrance of images into the mind.” Thus, when I imagine that I behold T. Gracchus haranguing the people in the Capitol, and collecting their suffrages concerning M. Octavius, I call that a vain motion of the mind: but you affirm that the images of Gracchus and Octavius are present, which are only conveyed to my mind when they have arrived at the Capitol. The case is the same, you say, in regard to the Deity, with the frequent representation of which the mind is so affected that from thence it may be clearly understood that the Gods are happy and eternal.

There are not many books like "Living For Pleasure" which I personally would recommend. Haris Dimitriadis' "Epicurus and the Pleasant LIfe" probably would be next on a list geared to your specifications. You might also like Catherine Wilson's How To Be An Epicurean.

The recommended reading list in our FAQ is geared toward helping people read the works of the ancient Epicureans directly, as that is a far more accurate way to find out what Epicurus really taught:

Can You Suggest A Reading List For Learning About Epicurus? - Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

Less in line with your specifiication to be short would be:

1 - Norman DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy, which is the best "textbook" treatment of Epicurean Philosophy

2 - A Few Days in Athens - which conveys Epicurean philosophy in Fiction form but is probably the most true-to-form original work on Epicurus written since the ancient world. You can read that online here: AFewDaysInAthens.com

That is a good video UnpaidLandlord thank you! The video producer seems to know the topic and I expect he is largely expressing it well. On that basis if we conclude that the essence of Camus' advice is to take a radical "WHO CARES?" position, then I have to affirm my earlier disposition that this Camus is about as much a reverse-Epicurean as you can get.

Sounds like the producer is correct that Camus is more like a "Stoic on Steroids" in expanding "indifference" to a whole new level of nihilistic glory. Camus might object to nihilism, but I hear no praise of pleasure or any other justification for going through what pain does exist in life.

In the apparent emphasis on "freedom" as an end in itself, rather than because freedom brings pleasure, I see nothing good at the end of that tunnel at all. Sounds like just another arbitrary "virtue" being elevated without regard as to its foundation or why we should do so.

This video also does a better job of contrasting Camus against Nietzsche. In my mind the issues the producer brings out are to the credit of Nietzsche and demerit of Camus.

What I am hearing is reminding me also of why i have never been a fan of "modern atheism" for example of the Sam Harris type. Pointing out the erroneous nature of supernatural gods is all well and good, but to live happily we have to replace that void with something to organize our lives. Epicurus shows how pleasure and pain fill that role, but I don't see how Camus is doing anything but destroying, and failing to replace it with anything. As Epicurus said, there are indeed worse things than conventional religion. Epicurus put his finger on hard determinism as an example of something worse, but I would not be surprised if he would put radical "Who cares?-ism" at or near that same rank.

All this is why I see it is as so important to embrace a positive and understandable worldview, like Epicurus taught, rather than just act the bull in a china shop running around destroying without ever providing a reasonable basis for hoping to succeed in living a happy life. No one I am aware of comes close to Epicurus in that regard.

I am pretty sure the video I watched was this one - although for some reason as I listen to it tonight the voice seems a little different than I remember. But the video background appears clearly the same, so this much be it. Seemed pretty evenhanded as best I could tell:

I watched a Youtube video on Camus tonight and i get the impression that interpretation of him is all over the board, all the way from existentialism, which he apparently strenuously denied, to there not being a dimes worth of difference between Camus and Nietzsche. It all seems to hinge on exactly who or what is being labeled as "absurd," and why, and that's where the lack of clarity is so glaring, much like the ambiguity of the legacy of Democritus leaves everyone wondering whether he was laughing "with" humanity or "at" humanity. I tend to think after brief exposure that Camus doesn't deserve to be considered to be on the "nihilist" team, but it also does not seem likely to me that his work could be interpreted so broadly if there were not some smoldering coals that create the smoke that surrounds him. I am thinking (so far) that there is probably a lot to learn from taking apart his views, but probably not much to be gained by holding up any system that he created as a model to emulate.

Yep this is a very practical exercise and I have always found it very clarifying in the handful of times i have done it. Great advice Godfrey. When we compile lists of "things every Epicurean should do" this has to be on them.

Yes that Warren passage does resonate with me, and reminds me of my currrent favorite David Sedley quote, which also fits the conversation:

34 DAVID SEDLEY - EPICURUS' REJECTION OF DETERMINISM:

Epicurus’ response to this is perhaps the least appreciated aspect of his thought. It was to reject reductionist atomism. Almost uniquely among Greek philosophers he arrived at what is nowadays the unreflective assumption of almost anyone with a smattering of science, that there are truths at the microscopic level of elementary particles, and further very different truths at the phenomenal level; that the former must be capable of explaining the latter; but that neither level of description has a monopoly of truth. (The truth that sugar is sweet is not straightforwardly reducible to the truth that it has such and such a molecular structure, even though the latter truth may be required in order to explain the former). By establishing that cognitive scepticism, the direct outcome of reductionist atomism, is self-refuting and untenable in practice, Epicurus justifies his non-reductionist alternative, according to which sensations are true and there are therefore bona fide truths at the phenomenal level accessible through them. T

We will also want to consider Jeffrey Fish's "Not All Politicians are Sisyphus," as well as the Boeri book "Theory and Practice in Epicurean Political Philosophy" released last year. From the Fish article, which suggests that we reconsider the standard interpretation of Lucretius' reference to Sisyphus:

I don't think we can unwind all this without getting back to exactly what it was that Sisyphus is alleged to have done to be set up for the punishment which now defines his whole life.

Sisyphus - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

It's hard for me to see as all bad a figure who tricked Hades into ENDING death on earth at least for a while. And whose sin seems to consist significantly in not yielding to the orders of the gods.....