Posts by Cassius

Probably bears repeating that I don't think it's too productive to get too far into the weeds on these issues without looking back at the big picture.

It seems to me that the big picture is that Epicurus is saying that Nature equips us with faculties through which we can make sense of what is going on around us, and that those faculties operate naturally and are not divine or prophetic or inherently deceptive in nature. Using those faculties we can make sense of many things within the flux and we don't have to throw up our hands and give in to radical skepticism. We also don't have to worry that there is some divine or ideal or true world to which we can get access only through revelation or esoteric logical maneuvering.

As far as the details of what those faculties are and how they operate, some of that is obvious (that the senses are honest but don't constitute truth in themselves - we have to evaluate the data to decide what we think is true) and some of it is less obvious (that the mind can be influenced by things other than the 5 classic senses - which is where the images apparently come in as a proposed explanation).

I certainly think there can be lots of varying positions and disagreements about how to get into the details of how these faculties operate, and that's largely a matter of advancing scientific knowledge that we gain through better technology. But the bigger picture that all this is natural simply gets clarified in details by the advancing technology, it doesn't get reversed or called into serious question.

One reason for my concern would be that if we are focusing on "images" as the topic of the discussion, then why not just consider the receipt of images, as Lucretius does in Book IV, along with the other phenomena of the senses like seeing, hearing, etc.? It's not like Epicurus said (as far as we know) that there are only 5 senses. Lucretius talks about those 5 in the same chapter as he discusses images, so if someone wanted to focus on the information derived from images directly by the mind, I don't see why that would would not constitute just an extension of the "sense" leg, rather than an entirely separate fourth leg.

Other than the point about not giving dreams prophetic properties, which would certainly be correct, something bothers me about most of the other formulations there.

While I understand the point that we should consider them as events that are real in our minds, I just don't see clarity in considering dreams criteria of truth.

Quote from Todd

To someone who sees atomism as leading to nihilism or despair, I'd say they're forgetting the part about relying on the senses

Or they are letting the Platonists convince them that the senses are ultimately untrustworthy and inferior to pure reason or revelation which the Platonists have successfully done to most of the world.

Quote from Todd

In reading the texts you quoted yesterday, I just don't see how this is any kind of key takeaway. I couldn't even see where it was explicitly stated. Implied, OK...but does that qualify it to be a fundamental principle?

I think I see why it is tempting to include a summary statement about the level of bodies with their emergent properties being just as "real" as the level of atoms and void. I see that myself as a hugely important point to make as the way to understand atomism that does not lead to nihilism/despair. But I am not sure it is really a principle of physics as much as it is a point of epistemology and maybe even ethics, so I agree that it's not really a physics principle.

And I am not sure that there is much evidence that this was an issue that the ancient Epicureans were concerned about -- the whole subject may be something that modern philosophies and perspectives have made it necessary to address.

But I am not sure about that, and maybe we will find more ancient Epicurean texts some day that bring out this point more clearly. And maybe there are more already that aren't known to me.

To me this is much the same issue as Paul complaining about his flock being slaves to the "weak and beggarly elements." Maybe the whole question is so implicit in any discussion of atomism that we'd see that Epicurus himself addressed it if we had more texts.

Todd in your item 4 "this idea" is a reference to point 3, or to something else. I agree with all your points but wanted to be sure I understood this one.

It's certainly important to understand the issue of perspective, and it's pretty direct to illustrate the issue according to size. That works well.

I wonder if there is any other category of concern that we are seeing when we consider these formulations to be Platonic and therefore objectionable.

Is it a full statement of the issue to boil it down to "if there's another level of reality, then our level of reality is therefore less important (sort of a slippery slope to a nihilistic "our reality doesn't matter" perspective)?

If you see what I am asking, I am saying I think that what I have described (probably poorly) is probably the major issue. I am wondering if there are any other or related issues involved other than this?

Yes did Emily list examples on that one?

Quote from Don

My take has always been that Democritus is laughing because he doesn't take himself too seriously, in the end we're all atoms and void. I think he can laugh about people who get caught up in the rat race (to use a modern metaphor) and take themselves too seriously. People - all things! - really are *ultimately* nothing more than "whirling windbags of atoms." That doesn't mean in any way that we don't enjoy our lives at the level we experience them! But chill out! Take a breath! Carpe diem - pluck the fruit of each moment.

Yep the issue is that we have to both not take ourselves and our lives *too* seriously, while at the same time avoiding the pitfall of not taking ourselves and our lives seriously enough. Sort of like the perspective required in:

VS63. Frugality too has a limit, and the man who disregards it is like him who errs through excess.

To me this relates to the ongoing "metaphor" discussion in a nearby thread. In the end it might not be possible for many people to keep that proper balance between "not-too-serious" and "not-serious-enough" using purely intellectual analysis. Getting the result right seems to require metaphors/art/literature/music/etc to allow people to get an emotional grip on the situation in addition to an intellectual grip. And of course "health" is required too.

Thanks for the reminder of that Democritus quote, which Joshua cites regularly on the podcast. I don't know whether Democritus intended this in the original, or whether it is just an artifact of the translation, but it looks like the distinction between one level being real and another level being unreal goes back to Democritus himself. Did he know or intend that this formulation be taken to imply ethically that our world lacks "reality" such that we should view it as a mirage or illusion, or was it purely a scientific observation? Epicurus makes much the same observation, but by stressing that the senses are able to comprehend things (such as Diogenes of Oinoanda says about the flux) the resulting tone seems different.

Maybe Democritus' tone would seem different to us if we had more of his work, or maybe this was an area (like determinism) where Epicurus was modifying what Democritus had taught. Was Democritus laughing because he was truly happy, or was his laughter cynical and to the effect that people are nothing but whirling windbags of atoms bouncing around with no more intelligence than billiard balls?

Yep I agree, and yet this is the way everyone seems to want to address the issue, so we have to find a way to deal with the point convincingly. Maybe, as Kalosyni might say, even "metaphorically!"

And Todd also I realized in looking for the quotes that there are really lots of other observations in the book, and even in Book 4 where images are discussed, that could be used to bolster this argument, but which don't explicitly say "Two levels of reality." It's a good question as to how best to bring this out.

I would also site the Diogenes of Oinoanda point in support of this. The flux exists at the atomic level, but we can apprehend the result at our level:

Fr. 5

[Others do not] explicitly [stigmatise] natural science as unnecessary, being ashamed to acknowledge [this], but use another means of discarding it. For, when they assert that things are inapprehensible, what else are they saying than that there is no need for us to pursue natural science? After all, who will choose to seek what he can never find?

Now Aristotle and those who hold the same Peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable, because things are continually in flux and, on account of the rapidity of the flux, evade our apprehension. We on the other hand acknowledge their flux, but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing [is] at no time apprehensible by sense-perception. And indeed [in no way would the upholders of] the view under discussion have been able to say (and this is just what they do [maintain] that [at one time] this is [white] and this black, while [at another time] neither this is [white nor] that black, [if] they had not had [previous] knowledge of the nature of both white and black.

Similar discussion in the letter to Herodotus:

[54] Moreover, we must suppose that the atoms do not possess any of the qualities belonging to perceptible things, except shape, weight, and size, and all that necessarily goes with shape. For every quality changes; but the atoms do not change at all, since there must needs be something which remains solid and indissoluble at the dissolution of compounds, which can cause changes; not changes into the nonexistent or from the non-existent, but changes effected by the shifting of position of some particles, and by the addition or departure of others. For this reason it is essential that the bodies which shift their position should be imperishable and should not possess the nature of what changes, but parts and configuration of their own. For thus much must needs remain constant.

[55] For even in things perceptible to us which change their shape by the withdrawal of matter it is seen that shape remains to them, whereas the qualities do not remain in the changing object, in the way in which shape is left behind, but are lost from the entire body. Now these particles which are left behind are sufficient to cause the differences in compound bodies, since it is essential that some things should be left behind and not be destroyed into the non-existent.

Moreover, we must not either suppose that every size exists among the atoms, in order that the evidence of phenomena may not contradict us, but we must suppose that there are some variations of size. For if this be the case, we can give a better account of what occurs in our feelings and sensations.

[56] But the existence of atoms of every size is not required to explain the differences of qualities in things, and at the same time some atoms would be bound to come within our ken and be visible; but this is never seen to be the case, nor is it possible to imagine how an atom could become visible.

Todd I think most commentators generally look to the parts I am going to cite below for the proposition that the atoms and void are eternal and unchanging (which is one level of reality) while the bodies that we see and touch and feel are emergent properties and our level of reality. Maybe you would not refer to this as "levels of reality" but I would say that it's reasonable to refer to it that way.

Lucretius Book One:

[430] Besides these there is nothing which you could say is parted from all body and sundered from void, which could be discovered, as it were a third nature in the list. For whatever shall exist, must needs be something in itself; and if it suffer touch, however small and light, it will increase the count of body by a bulk great or maybe small, if it exists at all, and be added to its sum. But if it is not to be touched, inasmuch as it cannot on any side check anything from wandering through it and passing on its way, in truth it will be that which we call empty void. Or again, whatsoever exists by itself, will either do something or suffer itself while other things act upon it, or it will be such that things may exist and go on in it. But nothing can do or suffer without body, nor afford room again, unless it be void and empty space. And so besides void and bodies no third nature by itself can be left in the list of things, which might either at any time fall within the purview of our senses, or be grasped by any one through reasoning of the mind.

[449] For all things that have a name, you will find either properties linked to these two things or you will see them to be their accidents. That is a property which in no case can be sundered or separated without the fatal disunion of the thing, as is weight to rocks, heat to fire, moisture to water, touch to all bodies, intangibility to the void. On the other hand, slavery, poverty, riches, liberty, war, concord, and other things by whose coming and going the nature of things abides untouched, these we are used, as is natural, to call accidents. Even so time exists not by itself, but from actual things comes a feeling, what was brought to a close in time past, then what is present now, and further what is going to be hereafter. And it must be avowed that no man feels time by itself apart from the motion or quiet rest of things.

[464] Then again, when men say that ‘the rape of Tyndarus’s daughter’, or ‘the vanquishing of the Trojan tribes in war’ are things, beware that they do not perchance constrain us to avow that these things exist in themselves, just because the past ages have carried off beyond recall those races of men, of whom, in truth, these were the accidents. For firstly, we might well say that whatsoever has happened is an accident in one case of the countries, in another even of the regions of space. Or again, if there had been no substance of things nor place and space, in which all things are carried on, never would the flame of love have been fired by the beauty of Tyndaris, nor swelling deep in the Phrygian heart of Alexander have kindled the burning battles of savage war, nor unknown of the Trojans would the timber horse have set Pergama aflame at dead of night, when the sons of the Greeks issued from its womb. So that you may see clearly that all events from first to last do not exist, and are not by themselves like body, nor can they be spoken of in the same way as the being of the void, but rather so that you might justly call them the accidents of body and place, in which they are carried on, one and all.

Todd I think this is a fair implication of what is stated in the letter to Herodotus and in Book One of Lucretius, but I too question whether it is sufficient to address the ultimate issue that concerns us. I think the point Epicurus wanted to drive home is that while both levels are "real," our level of reality is no less real than the atomic level. Our reality comes through the senses, without which we have death, and that is what is important to us and why we don't give in to Platonic arguments about a "true world" beyond our senses, as if ours is inferior and we should long to be somewhere else.

If you're not familiar with the Book One discussion of the Trojan war and properties and qualities, you will want to look that up.

Quote from Joshua

Delight is a gray area. Pleasure is subversive.

Yep "delightful" sounds like a tea party description of ice cream. "Pleasure" sounds like you are going to a movie rated PG - or worse!

I presume we are seeing a little roughness in the Greek to English translation, but aside from that what do you make of the list Nate? The "confirmed" and "cannot be confirmed" by the senses, but harder to tell about the "valid / invalid" labeling.

An illustrator of the multiple philosophical paths problem would do well to follow what amounts to Lucian's ultimate point:

Lycinus. At least your chagrin will be considerably lessened by the thought that you are not alone in your disappointment; practically all who pursue philosophy do no more than disquiet themselves in vain. Who could conceivably go through all the stages I have rehearsed? You admit the impossibility yourself. As to your present mood, it is that of the man who cries and curses his luck because he cannot climb the sky, or plunge into the depths of the sea at Sicily and come up at Cyprus, or soar on wings and fly within the day from Greece to India; what is responsible for his discontent is his basing of hopes on a dream-vision or his own wild fancy, without ever asking whether his aspirations were realizable or consistent with humanity. You too, my friend, have been having a long and marvelous dream; and now reason has stuck a pin into you and startled you out of your sleep; your eyes are only half open yet, you are reluctant to shake off a sleep which has shown you such fair visions, and so you scold. It is just the condition of the day-dreamer; he is rolling in gold, digging up treasure, sitting on his throne, or somehow at the summit of bliss; for dame How-I-wish is a lavish facile Goddess, that will never turn a deaf ear to her votary, though he have a mind to fly, or change statures with Colossus, or strike a gold- reef; well, in the middle of all this, in comes his servant with some every-day question, wanting to know where he is to get bread, or what he shall say to the landlord, tired of waiting for his rent; and then he flies into a temper, as though the intrusive questioner had robbed him of all his bliss, and is ready to bite the poor fellow's nose off.

As you love me, do not treat me like that. I see you digging up treasure, spreading your wings, nursing extravagant ideas, indulging impossible hopes; and I love you too well to leave you to the company of a life-long dream—a pleasant one, if you will, but yet a dream; I beseech you to get up and take to some every-day business, such as may direct the rest of your life's course by common sense. Your acts and your thoughts up to now have been no more than Centaurs, Chimeras, Gorgons, or what else is figured by dreams and poets and painters, chartered libertines all, who reek not of what has been or may be. Yet the common folk believe them, bewitched by tale and picture just because they are strange and monstrous.

I fancy you hearing from some teller of tales how there is a certain lady of perfect beauty, beyond the Graces themselves or the Heavenly Aphrodite, and then, without ever an inquiry whether his tale is true, and such a person to be found on earth, falling straight in love with her, like Medea in the story enamored of a dream-Jason. And what most drew you on to love, you and the others who worship the same phantom, was, if I am not mistaken, the consistent way in which the inventor of the lady added to his picture, when once he had got your ear. That was the only thing you all looked to, with that he turned you about as he would, having got his first hold upon you, averring that he was leading you the straight way to your beloved. After the first step, you see, all was easy; none of you ever looked round when he came to the entrance, and inquired whether it was the right one, or whether he had accidentally taken the wrong; no, you all followed in your predecessors' footsteps, like sheep after the bell-wether, whereas the right thing was to decide at the entrance whether you should go in.

Perhaps an illustration will make my meaning clearer: when one of those audacious poets affirms that there was once a three-headed and six-handed man, if you accept that quietly without questioning its possibility, he will proceed to fill in the picture consistently—six eyes and ears, three voices talking at once, three mouths eating, and thirty fingers instead of our poor ten all told; if he has to fight, three of his hands will have a buckler, wicker targe, or shield apiece, while of the other three one swings an axe, another hurls a spear, and the third wields a sword. It is too late to carp at these details, when they come; they are consistent with the beginning; it was about that that the question ought to have been raised whether it was to be accepted and passed as true. Once grant that, and the rest comes flooding in, irresistible, hardly now susceptible of doubt, because it is consistent and accordant with your initial admissions. That is just your case; your love-yearning would not allow you to look into the facts at each entrance, and so you are dragged on by consistency; it never occurs to you that a thing may be self- consistent and yet false; if a man says twice five is seven, and you take his word for it without checking the sum, he will naturally deduce that four times five is fourteen, and so on ad libitum. This is the way that weird geometry proceeds: it sets before beginners certain strange assumptions, and insists on their granting the existence of inconceivable things, such as points having no parts, lines without breadth, and so on, builds on these rotten foundations a superstructure equally rotten, and pretends to go on to a demonstration which is true, though it starts from premises which are false.

Just so you, when you have granted the principles of any school, believe in the deductions from them, and take their consistency, false as it is, for a guarantee of truth. Then with some of you, hope travels through, and you die before you have seen the truth and detected your deceivers, while the rest, disillusioned too late, will not turn back for shame: what, confess at their years that they have been abused with toys all this time? so they hold on desperately, putting the best face upon it and making all the converts they can, to have the consolation of good company in their deception; they are well aware that to speak out is to sacrifice the respect and superiority and honor they are accustomed to; so they will not do it if it may be helped, knowing the height from which they will fall to the common level. Just a few are found with the courage to say they were deluded, and warn other aspirants. Meeting such a one, call him a good man, a true and an honest; nay, call him philosopher, if you will; to my mind, the name is his or no one's; the rest either have no knowledge of the truth, though they think they have, or else have knowledge and hide it, shamefaced cowards clinging to reputation.

Focused like a laser on this very point is one of the very best of Lucian's dialogs: HERMOTIMUS - Or, The Rival Philosophies

Lycinus. So you have not solved my puzzle; I know just as little as before which traveler to trust; I find that each of them, as well as his guide, has tried one only, which he now recommends and will have to be the only one leading to the city. Whether he tells the truth I have no means of knowing; that he has attained some end, and seen some city, I may perhaps allow; but whether he saw the right one, or whether, Corinth being the real goal, he got to Babylon and thought he had seen Corinth—that is still undecided; for surely every one who has seen a city has not seen Corinth, unless Corinth is the only city there is. But my greatest difficulty of all is the absolute certainty that the true road is one; for Corinth is one, and the other roads lead anywhere but to Corinth, though there may be people deluded enough to suppose that the North road and the South road lead equally to Corinth.

Hermotimus. But that is absurd, Lycinus; they go opposite ways, you see.

Lycinus. Then, my dear good man, this choice of roads and guides is quite a serious matter; we can by no means just follow our noses; we shall be discovering that we are well on the way to Babylon or Bactria instead of to Corinth. Nor is it advisable to toss up, either, on the chance that we may hit upon the right way if we start upon any one at a venture. That is no impossibility; it may have come off once and again in a cycle; but I cannot think we ought to gamble recklessly with such high stakes, nor commit our hopes to a frail craft, like the wise men who went to sea in a bowl; we should have no fair complaint against Fortune, if her arrow or dart did not precisely hit the centre; the odds are ten thousand to one against her; just so the archer in Homer—Teucer, I suppose it was—when he meant to hit the dove, only cut the string, which held it; of course it is infinitely more likely that the point of the arrow will find its billet in one of the numberless other places, than just in that particular central one. And as to the perils of blundering into one of the wrong roads instead of the right one, misled by a belief in the discretion of Fortune, here is an illustration:—it is no easy matter to turn back and get safe into port when you have once cast loose your moorings and committed yourself to the breeze; you are at the mercy of the sea, frightened, sick and sorry with your tossing about, most likely. Your mistake was at the beginning: before leaving, you should have gone up to some high point, and observed whether the wind was in the right quarter, and of the right strength for a crossing to Corinth, not neglecting, by the way, to secure the very best pilot obtainable, and a seaworthy craft equal to so high a sea.

Quote from Kalosyni

So would this be considered a much more clear (and modern) understanding of what Epicurus was beginning to present, by his looking to nature? When we use science correctly, is it a much more complex system compared to Epicurean philosophy? Maybe it might be good to have a table to graphically show similiarities between Epicureanism and modern science.

It might be more complex, but that wouldn't necessarily make it more useful. Joshua was referring to this issue recently too in referring to the letter to Pythocles.

Quote from Letter to Pythocles

[87] For we must not conduct scientific investigation by means of empty assumptions and arbitrary principles, but follow the lead of phenomena: for our life has not now any place for irrational belief and groundless imaginings, but we must live free from trouble. Now all goes on without disturbance as far as regards each of those things which may be explained in several ways so as to harmonize with what we perceive, when one admits, as we are bound to do, probable theories about them. But when one accepts one theory and rejects another which harmonizes as well with the phenomenon, it is obvious that he altogether leaves the path of scientific inquiry and has recourse to myth. Now we can obtain indications of what happens above from some of the phenomena on earth: for we can observe how they come to pass, though we cannot observe the phenomena in the sky: for they may be produced in several ways.

And again I think a paraphrase Diogenes of Oinoanda helps make the point:

If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «SCIENCE» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while SCIENCE, which is inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end.

You could put most any tool in that paragraph, and no matter how attached we are to the tool, we need to realize that it is just a tool and not an end in itself.