Posts by Cassius

As an incentive to read it, and not as a spoiler, I think I can suggest that the following is going to strike a lot of people as one of the more memorable passages of the article:

Quote from David Glidden, page 213

We can and do recognize a man on a horse leading a dog, without first having among ourselves agreed upon conceptions of what it is to be a man or a horse or a dog. And dogs and horses can do this too. We humans can also recognize war when we see one or poverty or justice, because we are familiar with such symptoms among ourselves. What we care to think about such human conditions, Epicurus suggests, is altogether a different matter. But can we so rigorously distinguish how things look from what we think about them? The empiric physicians, and the methodists too for that matter, thought we could, and they built their practice of medicine around the difference. Indeed, the ‘general symptoms’ recognized by the methodists are strikingly similar to Epicurean prolépsis, in that both concern persistent conditions varying widely from place to place, without always indicating the same hidden causes. The empirics even thought we could perceive symptoms and their antecedent causes without having to speculate about the hidden mechanism: we could just see that a puncture wound in the heart caused the death of the patient.

A significant part of this article is devoted to drawing an analogy between anticipations and the ancient views of empirical medicine. This is an entirely new subject to me but I am very impressed that there are clear analogies, even though Dr Glidden says there are problems with the analogy too.

So before this thread is over we will likely have to deal with this issue of the ancient empirical view of medicine vs what I gather he is saying a more "conceptual" view of medicine.

This is really interesting stuff and the implications it has for why "logic" was not a part of the canon of truth are pretty clear too.

Thanks to Don's hard work and to the generosity of Dr. Glidden himself, we have obtained a copy of Dr. Glidden's 1985 paper "Epicurean Prolepsis."

As many of you know we have been discussing Anticipations in our two most recent podcast episodes, and Dr. Glidden came to our attention through a shorter work which we found very interesting. Dr. Glidden developed that shorter work into the longer article which was published in 1985 in the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy.

While we decide the best place to host it, (it's 8MB and maybe not here at the forum) here is a link where you can download it. Please let us know in the thread if you have an issues with the link, and let's have discussion of the article here.

If the controversy over CHATGPT reminds everyone that "Question Authority" is *always* a good idea - at least when you are an adult - then it's a good thing. Seems to me that society at large has grown far too complacent in accepting whatever is thrown at it as the "truth," and most people need a healthy additional dose of skepticism.

Man! They found a way to deal with the bubble problem? I am going to have to get a new one!

Quote from Don

I think it is extremely dangerous to consult "answers" from AI chatbots, no matter how sophisticated, to questions like this.

No doubt, but it's also inevitable that millions (billions?) of people are soon going to be doing exactly that, so we'll need to want to explore this - just as you are doing - so we can figure out the best response.

Yep the sound of running water does it for them, but it does nothing for me when I hear it!

I don't know if I agree with myself from one day to the next, much less two years ago. This time we are probably bringing our best efforts to the task so I am hopeful we will make some progress, especially when we compare to Dr. Glidden's analysis.

That would make "dams as to beavers" as parallel to "universes as to gods".

Beavers can build dams only because they were born with anticipations as to dam-building - meaning that over eons of time through trial and error prior iterations of "beavers" built prior dams.

In the case of gods, if the universe had not always existed, no earlier gods could ever have existed to form earlier universes. The universe necessarily precedes both gods and beavers.

The fact that beavers make dams now, and that humans can (or may in the future) shape something like new worlds from existing ones, can never establish that there was a "first" dam or first world that was created from nothing. There had to be a universe first, and then nature "experimenting" over time, to get us to where we are now and to where wherever we may get in the future.

Only by asserting without evidence an omnipotent and eternal god, which is against all human experience and observation and therefore anticipation, do you get past that problem. And that assertion is totally illegitimate - a false opinion made false by its lack of evidence to support it.

You know I think I can precisely point out my problem with Diogenes Laertius down almost to a single word -

Diogenes Laertius:

"By preconception they mean a sort of apprehension or a right opinion or notion, or universal idea stored in the mind; that is, a recollection of an external object often presented, e.g. Such and such a thing is a man: for no sooner is the word “man” uttered than we think of his shape by an act of preconception, in which the senses take the lead. Thus, the object primarily denoted by every term is then plain and clear. And we should never have started an investigation, unless we had known what it was that we were in search of."

All he would have had to do would be to change one word - from "recollection" (which evokes a specific ideal form like Plato, or something that the individual has himself seen in his own living experience) to "recognition," which could evoke reference only to a "pattern." Because I can see the etchings of a "pattern" as something that can be transmitted by DNA across generations, just like beavers can transmit dam-building or others can transmit nest-building. Those are things that an individual can feel disposed to perform himself for the first time, even when he has never before seen an instance in his own personal experience.

I think beavers and damn-building are at least as good for an example of the physiological process than monkeys and celery. Both work and involve anticipations, but dam building strikes me as something where pleasure and pain are more remote and thus the pattern transmission across generations (to recognize dam building as a significant behavior) stands out more starkly on its own.

A critic may argue that what the monkeys are picking up with celery and grapes can be explained in terms of immediate pleasure and pain, but it is hard for me to see how beavers can see immediate pleasure or pain in looking ahead to the distant results of cutting down trees and damming creeks when the reward is far away. Something has to be born in them (at birth) that has originated gradually over many prior generations, but which will unfold over time in each new generation into a recognition of a pattern of dam-building.

A beaver does not "recall" it's first dam, but it "recognizes" that dam-building can be done and it is a good pattern for it to follow.

And it is interesting to me too that both Diogenes of Oinoanda and Diogenes Laertius have a passage that says something to the effect that "no one would ever seek what he cannot find."

I see that as a hint that anticipations are what put us "on the hunt" for something in the first place.

Diogenes of Oinoanda Fragment 5 -

"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?"

Diogenes Laertius:

"By preconception they mean a sort of apprehension or a right opinion or notion, or universal idea stored in the mind; that is, a recollection of an external object often presented, e.g. Such and such a thing is a man: for no sooner is the word “man” uttered than we think of his shape by an act of preconception, in which the senses take the lead. Thus, the object primarily denoted by every term is then plain and clear. And we should never have started an investigation, unless we had known what it was that we were in search of."

And we could probably fit also within this observation the assertion by Lucretius that the gods could not have created the universe because they would have had no pattern for something that had not previously existed i.e., previously existed at least as an anticipation in their minds.

Might as well throw in a comment:

My current view is close to the way Joshua describes Steve's position:

That an "anticipation" of justice is closer to a snapshot in which the observer is noticing only that two or more individuals are acting in relationship so as to effect each other in some way that we are not evaluating (at that anticipatory level) but which our minds automatically pull forward out of the background as a significant relationship.

At this level the mind isn't evaluating it as pleasing or displeasing or just or unjust, but simply as a significant relationship.

I would say that it is the rational mind which decides to call the relationship "just" or "unjust" and that that decision takes into account the faculty of pleasure and pain which heavily influences which of the two we decide to label it (with the label / choice of words applied by the rational mind).

So I would say that the function of anticipations in relationship to justice (or to divinity or to any other abstract idea) would be that it picks out of the background of otherwise apparently chaotic data some relationship that we otherwise would not recognize as significant at all.

And therefore I would say that higher animals are born with somewhat the same ability as humans to detect relationships and feel pleasure and pain about them, with the main difference that their minds do not process the relationships into words.

So I would say that 32 implies that higher animals do have the ability to form agreements among themselves that we would call just and unjust while lower animals (or like men, those that simply choose not to) do not fall with a label of just or unjust.

That would make "justice" a category of relationships in which anticipations give us a power of recognition while "just" and "unjust" are evaluations of particular situations made in the mind after input from pleasure/pain. Same would go with "divinity" as a category of relationships while "blessed" and "incorruptible" are evaluations.

The category would be the pattern which anticipations allows us to recognize while the stage of having evaluated its desirability or nondesirability would mean that the mind has weighed in and factored in pleasure and pain.

If "justice" is a virtue - as I think it is - then I think we have to consider that like any other virtue sometimes we might choose to be "unjust" in order to arrive at greater pleasure or less pain later. And if we did so we would probably consider our action to be just.

So the final labelling of just and unjust seems to me necessarily something that involves rational processing rather than something at the automatic level. But that the entire question presents itself to us as an issue only because we have a faculty of observing anticipations within the category of "justice."

That makes anticipations a faculty of categorization or pattern recognition as we have been describing, without which we would not even be discussing a particular "issue" in the first place.

Thank you very much for all this work Kalosyni. It is my understanding that the forum software will adjust and fix any links that might change, so we should not have any disruption.

The search engine is always available, but what we want in addition to that is a structure that makes sense where people can find things without too much hunting.

That's the purpose of both the "Key Discussions" box and also the "Board List" that appears at the top of the main forum list page to point to subforums and threads of special interest. Unfortunately both of these "box" lists have to be kept manually updated, so if anyone finds that any links in them are out of date please let us know.

Youtube video of reconstructed face of Epicurus:

No I was not aware that was out! Thank you!

Welcome @Agrios !

Note: In order to minimize spam registrations, all new registrants must respond in this thread to this welcome message within 72 hours of its posting, or their account is subject to deletion. All that is required is a "Hello!" but of course we hope you will introduce yourself -- tell us a little about yourself and what prompted your interest in Epicureanism -- and/or post a question.

This forum is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. Please remember that all posting here is subject to our Community Standards / Rules of the Forum our Not Neo-Epicurean, But Epicurean and our Posting Policy statements and associated posts.

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All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from other viewpoints, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit by our community of happy living through the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

One way you can be most assured of your time here being productive is to tell us a little about yourself and personal your background in reading Epicurean texts. It would also be helpful if you could tell us how you found this forum, and any particular areas of interest that you have which would help us make sure that your questions and thoughts are addressed.

In that regard we have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.

1. "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt
2. The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.
3. "On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"
4. "Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky
5. The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."
6. Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
7. Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
8. The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
9. A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
10. Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus
11. Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
12. "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.

It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.

And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.

(If you have any questions regarding the usage of the forum or finding info, please post any questions in this thread).

Welcome to the forum!

So are there subtle connotations to the word "kepos"? I have never taken the time to pursue it.

Welcome to Episode 164 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

We're now in the process of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book "Epicurus and His Philosophy."

Sensations

Epicurus Not An Empiricist

Anticipations

The Account of Laertius

The Element of Anticipation

Evidences From Specific Context

Later Evidences

Feelings

This week we complete Chapter 8 by addressing the topic of "Feelings."

Given the difficulty of the subject (Anticipations) and that we had the full podcast team involved (including Don), I think we will probably end up considering Podcast 163 on Anticipations to be one of our better episodes too:

Thread

Episode 163 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 17 - Chapter 8 - Sensations, Anticipations, And Feelings 04

Welcome to Episode 163 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread…

Cassius

February 21, 2023 at 3:49 PM

Episode 163 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week we continue in Chapter 8 of the DeWitt Book and continue also with our discussion of anticipations. This week Joshua is back and Don joins us as well and so we bring the full strength of our podcasting team to the topic