Posts by Cassius

This thread comes to mind because Joshua recently took a stab at a diagram of Epicurean epistemology that he prepared on Draw.io. The picture below is just an excerpt to liven up this post, but the full current product is available here:

Joshua obviously put a lot of work into this, but it's a huge project, and a lot of the benefit will come from annotating what the branches and boxes are intended to illustrate.

I am going to pin this thread to the Canonics section, and I will try to work on a variation myself. There should be a variety of technologies that would help us, so don't feel obligated to stick with Draw.io . I think there are probably free and collaborative "mind map" alternatives that would do the job as well, so we are very open to proposals on how this might be accomplished.

I haven't had time to study Joshua's first draft, but I feel sure that a large part of the difficulty is going to be to try to somehow illustrate "core" aspects of what Epicurus was suggesting, which would apply to most every question to be considered by the mind, while also separately showing that there are "non-core" circumstantial inputs that need to be shown in order to see the big picture. I am not at all sure what format makes best sense to use to show that. A tree, starting with roots and growing up to a trunk with branches? Or is it best to use sort of a time line view as Joshua has done, or some other format entirely?

Such a diagram would always end up being very conceptual, but might well help us think about the issues that are involved.

It also strikes me that what we are talking about is not entirely different from Artificial Intelligence models, and there are very likely all sorts of new web technologies being developed to assist with that. Maybe some kind of Epicurean Canonical AI-bot is also something to consider.

All suggestion are welcome!

I don't know anything about this person or his book but I just saw this on Twitter:

[ADMIN EDIT - This thread was split off from here: RE: "Epicurean Philosophy: An Introduction from the 'Garden of Athens'" edited by Christos Yapijakis Possibly the topic name needs further adjustment, and I see we don't really have a forum dedicated to "human body" issues. We can set one up if needed. The topic is really something more like "Modern Research that might link to Epicurean Views of Images and other influences on the mind.]

Probably way off topic but this just caught my eye. Probably reflective of how we need to be flexible in keeping open to undiscovered - but natural - ways that thoughts can be influenced by physical changes:

Personality changes following heart transplantation: The role of cellular memory

Personality changes following heart transplantation, which have been reported for decades, include accounts of recipients acquiring the personality ch…

www.sciencedirect.com

History is complicated and I am sure the Stoics would howl at that. And the Sedley article on the Ethics of Brutus and Cassius implies that the Stoics were not the most consistent of fighters (Brutus was not primarily a Stoic and apparently there were not many Stoics helping B & C against Caesar).

But at the very least I think it is safe to say philosophically that when you think you have a divine sanction, or a categorical imperative that everyone should follow the same rules all the time and everywhere, then you have a strong tendency to plant seeds that will likely grow into a major conflict that will violate all sorts of otherwise ethical norms.

From Don's link:

Also, I was trying to think of examples of phenomena that might not seem crazy to entertain.

It's not just in movies, but how many times have we "felt" that someone out of our vision was looking at us. Maybe I've seen too many war movies where the explorers say "We're being watched" but I do from personal experience think that there are times we "feel" something going on which is not strictly a matter of hearing rustling leaves or catching glimpses of things out of the corner of our eyes. I need to read back up the thread to see the list Don gave, but I don't think it is likely a good bet to draw a bright line at "five" or "six" or "ten" or whatever. The big issue is whatever there is is going to be natural, and in order to believe it it's going to require repetition and some kind of concrete demonstration of its reality.

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.