Posts by Cassius

Also on the topic of "take-aways" I think it's useful to review these couple of paragraphs from DeWitt. As I read it, it's possible that he is right or possible he is wrong about the way he is interpreting the functioning of the anticipations. However I think in his diagnosis of what Epicurus was trying to do, he is almost certainly correct.

If we (Epicurus) want to defeat both rationalism and skepticism, we have to be able to articulate a totally natural (non-abstract-logic-based) process which allows us to have confidence in the conclusions we reach based on our observations. This process cannot rely on abstract logic, or else abstract logic takes over like the proverbial camel with nose under the tent, so it has to be ejected entirely except as a supplemental factor. Likewise we can't let observation alone rule the day, without drawing any conclusions, but that would effectively amount to skepticism and establish the rule that we can never have confidence in anything.

So to some extent this is an issue that is probably like the free agency and the swerve. As with the swerve, we may not be able to describe the mechanism of consciousness with certainty, nor should we really think that we need to (since such a task would be as impossible as asking to view the entire universe in order to see if it has an end). All we really need to do is to articulate in broad terms that there are mechanisms by which we can have confidence in living happily if we eject both skepticism and rationalism in favor of reliance on the faculties that Nature gave us.

Quote from Don

Oh, and I should be clear: Much of the time, I'm thinking out loud when I post so I'm not committed to any of my previous assertions.

Just to make things slightly more difficult for everyone

LOL! Probably that should be a caveat to at least 3/4 of what most everyone (including me!) posts here on the forum!

On the "sequence" issue I think this is probably the key section of DeWitt's view on that question:

With the continual caveat that (1) Epicurus' philosophical perspective might not be the same at all as what modern science is looking at, and (2) we need to be constantly on guard as to the implications of any particular approach.

I believe DeWitt to be correct at least insofar as he is stressing that there is a human functioning process that Nature set up for us to use to determine what to consider to be "true," and that this biological process is not "abstract reason" or "abstract logic." That would be the takeaway of most any version of the whole "canon of truth" discussion.

At this point I don't know what LFB's takeways would be. I did finish listen to the podcast today however, and I agree that we would expect her takeaways to be similar.

Quote from Don

-Sensations

-Pain/Pleasure

-Prolepses

My understanding is that this order is meaningful and now even more so in light of LFB's research (and, I should include, from others):

- the sensations include all of our sensory input

- This input then impacts our "feeling" of pain or pleasure, or as LFB states, pleasure/displeasure.

-and our minds use this to compare our past experience to our current situation.

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This is a point that I think deserves discussion over time. Have you seen a commentator assert that the "order is meaningful," or do you have other reasons for making that deduction? I believe if I recall correctly that DeWitt asserts that they basically go hand in hand, rather than sequentially. I see why it would be tempting to order them in the way that you have, as that would coincide with an order of processing if "prolepses" are equated with "concepts," but again that is probably the ultimate question.

At this point in my thinking I would interpret this aspect differently, and suggest that the three legs of the canon are not in fact the steps by which concepts are formed, but are the "checks" against which concepts are judged for accuracy. Probably as an example I would suggest that "concepts" can be made up out of whole cloth, with no input whatsoever from the legs of the canon, such as "let A=B" then "let B=D" therefore "A+B = A+D" or whatever you'd want to construct from pure words. Those would be (I think) conceptual constructs formed separately and apart from experience of any kind.

So in fact i would think that considering prolepses to be the equivalent of concepts and considering them to be the result of sensations and feelings, rather than a separate category of experience, would produce a dramatically different result than considering prolepses to be an experience or measurer of its own.

Quote from Don

But it seems to me that there is probably a faculty we're born with but individual prolepses have to come from experience in utero, early in life, or even later. To say we're born with prolepses seems to me to fall into the realm of Plato

In regard to that, I would say that is where it is essential to distguish the faculty from the perceptions it generates.

We are born with eyes, yet not with visions of trees. The mechanism of eyesight, however, is innate.

Presumably if prolepses are an equal leg of the canon, rather than concepts formed after experience, then the "faculty of prolepses" would be innate.

Yes and I want to repeat that I do not mean my comments to derail discussion of details of the LFB book. My main point is that to the extent we devote time to analyzing it under the category of anticipations it would be best if we make clear what view of anticipations we're talking about as we discuss her observations.

I'm not sure how to categorize the two competing alternatives, but they generally fall under something like (1) "anticipations as product of an innate faculty predating experience" vs (2) "anticipations as product of conceptual reasoning based on experience."

With one part of the issue being that those who advocate (2) either ignore (1) or contend that (1) does not exist.

I have no clue yet as to where to fit LBF into that paradigm. Presumably the answer to that comes from determining whether LBF believes that there are innate dispositions predating experience, or whether all mental processing occurs after, and based exclusively on, experience. Also, I really don't know if LBF has a position on what "truth" means.

Quote from Godfrey

LFB is closer to Elayne's term "pattern recognition" as the only thing innate; she calls it "statistical learning."

Also:

I think "pattern recognition" is a very useful term. I would also think "pattern detector" would be good.

Continuing to think again about the words, in "canon of truth" I think we are referring to "canon" in the sense of "measuring device" or "ruler" or "yardstick." The measuring device does nothing but measure, it contains no data about the thing being measured.

We also need to examine "truth" but for now maybe what we're talking about is a conclusion which allows us to make accurate predictions about future repeatable observations (or something like that). We need to rule out "truth" in a divine or universally absolute perspective sense, since our physics would tell us that no god or intelligent being exists which could form such a perspective to which we could compare our own.

In addition to "pattern" I would think we are also talking about "relationships" or "connections."

Using these words, if they prove to be accurate after we examine the texts and what we really think is going on, the faculty of anticipations might be describable variously as:

"pattern detector"

"pattern measuring device"

"connection detector"

"connection measuring device"

"relationship detector"

"relationship measuring device"

I think all these terms would probably be useful in varying degrees to indicate an innate faculty which we have at birth, prior to any experience in the real world, which provides a tool (measuring device) in the field of patterns/connections/relationships just like the eyes provide a measuring tool for light, and the ears for sound, etc.

No doubt Don will sort all of this out for us when he wakes up in a couple of hours! (Except for the fact that this might be a part of the DeWitt book that he didn't finish, so he might have to have more time to check those references. )

"This barrage of sensory input was not random: it had some structure. Regularities. Your little brain began computing probabilities of which sights, sounds, smells, touches, tastes, and interoceptive sensations go together and which don’t.”

I would see in that sentence the issue of two phenoma:

(1) the sensory input was not random because the sense faculties received and presented their findings in ways influenced by their functional makeup (ears hearing only at certain frequencies, eyes seeing only at certain wavelengths, etc) DeWitt would say that there is in fact an anticipatory faculty as well which is active in helping organize according to the nature of the anticipatory function.

(2) the part as to "your little brain began processing" would be the separate second step of conceptual reasoning - taking the observations and forming them into concepts and then applying those concepts to new observations. DeWitt probably would say that the "which go together and which don't" isn't entirely observational, but that "go together" is at least partly what the anticipatory function recognizes by pre-birth etching. Cats and dogs can observe lots of things that we do, but they never make connections that we as humans do because our minds are wired to see things "go together" that theirs never will, regardless of how much they see and observe.

No amount of additional observation will ever move a cat or a dog to a human level of processing of abstract ideas because the initial wiring to make those connections is simply not "etched" there from the beginning. As I read between the lines it is this etching which Dewitt aserts Epicurus held to be the faculty of anticipation, with "an anticipation" being a connection drawn that would not and could not have been drawn without that pre-existent etching. Which is not to say that the connection drawn will be any more accurate to the full facts than a single perception of an eye or an ear, but is to say that the connection would not come to our attention to consider as a criteria of the "truth" of our eventual opinions if we did not have and exercise the faculty.

And further, it is to say that the existence of this faculty amounts to something that Nature has provided in order to make available to us these very connections, just like Nature provides eyes that see and ears that hear. And would not the implication of that observation be that to ignore the results of the anticipatory faculty would be as unwise (or as contrary to Nature) as would be ignoring the perceptions of the eyes or the ears?

Yes I agree - the "faculty of pattern recognition" is something that would appear to exist at birth, prior to ANY experience with a thing under consideration. To that extent, the existence of such an innate faculty, and how it would unfold over a lifetime, is where DeWitt is going but which Bailey et al exclude.

DeWitt is saying I think that there is affirmative input that results from the way pattern recognition faculty works, just like there is input from the way the eyes work or the ears work, regardless of what the eyes are seeing or the ears are hearing.

One of the issues here is that we can dig deeply into the details of LFB's analysis, conclude that what she is saying does (or does not) make sense, and yet that conclusion may not necessarily move us one iota closer to having addressed the Velleius / PRE-conception material. If in fact DeWitt is right to allege that Velleius points to something that is going on before all experience of the thing under consideration, then all the analysis in the world about the processing of experiences will never address or illuminate the "innate process" analysis.

Animals through instinct do things regularly that they have never observed themselves or observed their parents do, even though there is much that they do that is indeed influenced by their parents and their own experience. BOTH phenomena can be going on without one ruling out the other, meaning that there are two separate phenomena.

The position of DeWitt/Velleius in no way rules out the process of learning from experiences, so from the Velleius perspective there are two separate phenomena. But the position of Bailey and others is to refuse to acknowledge even the possible existence of their being two separate phenomena, so they collapse all the issues into one single phenomena.

Regardless of whether DeWitt/Velleius are correct from a physiologcal / brain function point of view, it makes sense to me to suspect that from a philosophical point of view Epicurus would not want "concepts formed through experience" anywhere near his "canon of truth." Otherwise Epicurus built a feedback loop of "opinion" right into the "canon" which he was apparently erecting for the purpose of avoiding the influence of opinion. You would never be able to say that your canon was your unbiased measuring stick, because your measuring stick incorporated your opinion. Or at least that reasoning is what I think impels someone of DeWitt's persuasion to his conclusion.

Godfrey we crossposted again!

This quote from you I think highlights the issue. Your first sentence is the contention of Bailey and others, and that is NOT the contention of DeWitt. Dewitt argues based on his references that anticipations are in fact "innate" and programmed from birth, not by "early in life" experiences that we have forgotten. Whether one agrees with Dewitt or not, it's important to address what Velleius was saying about etching and so forth and wrestle with the question of "innateness" - referencing PRIOR to experience and PRE-the type of concept -formation based on experience. If you were Bailey, you would say "concept-formation based on experience is the only process we have!" DeWitt would differ, and say that Velleius is clearly stating something that comes BEFORE any experience at all. I think before we can finish our analysis we have to wrestle with Velleius and DeWitt's other references.

Quote from Godfrey

Something like "the gods" or "justice," as I understand this, is a preconception not because it is innate but because we are exposed to it so early in life that we don't remember ever not knowing it. But that brings up the point that a sense of fairness is often observed in very young children: is this a preconception of justice? I would posit that it is an example of a prediction loop involved in the process of keeping the child's body budget balanced.

For ease of reference here is the section on anticipations from DeWitt If someone needs the rest and doesn't have it, let me know. This doesn't necessary help with understanding LFB's points at all, but it will help with the higher-level issue of whether the mechanisms she is talking about are the same category of phenomena as what Epicurus was talking about, or a separate category of phenomena.

As I see it, the crux of the issue is in this paragraph as circled - are we talking about something that is truly prior to any experience with instances of a thing (DeWitt's position focusing on Velleius) or or we talking about the manipulation of concepts after experience with one of more instances of a thing (the majority modern commentator view). Again, whichever position you take doesnt necessarily mean that LFB is right or wrong, because they could be talking about entirely separate things.

Sorry Godfrey when you posted I had not finished my item three -- it is finished now!

1 - Godfrey those last quotes about essentialism are from LFB?

2. - Thank you for all the effort in those posts!

3. - I am going to have to reflect for a while on what you wrote, but as usual I have this starting point:

It looks to me like we are going to run into the usual danger here: Are we talking about "concepts" and "conceptual thinking" or are we talking about "preconcepts"?

In other words, in the broader discussion everyone seems to agree that there is such a thing as "conceptual thinking." Whether we call that "logic" or some form of "abstract reasoning" or whatever, there is a human proceses wherein we define terms (eg "capitalism" or "communism") and then we use those terms as markers by which to evaluate the objects of our concern at a particular moment. I would argue that this covers as well the examples of Diogenes Laertius, in that we form a concept of a cow, and use that to judge new animals that we see, and we form a concept of Socrates, and use that to determine if the person we meet is in fact Socrates. These examples are "conceptual reasoning" and no one - surely not Epicurus - would deny that they exist.

But is this process of conceptual reasoning the same thing that is referred to as "PRECONCEPTIONS" or "ANTICIPATIONS" in Epicurean theory? I tend to think that it is NOT the same thing, and that we are talking about two distinct mechanisms and products of that mechanism.

It does not seem likely to me that Epicurus would have held that CONCEPTIONS (the product of definition and logical analysis) would be considered to be a criteria of truth, for the reason that the process of logical reasoning and definition which forms conceptions is inherently a matter of "opinion" and not something that occurs by nature WITHOUT opinion, which appears to be a criteria of something being considered a part of the canon of truth.

So in our discussion I think we need to be careful to be clear that the part of the canon of truth that we would like to examine is the "preconceptions / anticipations" and that these are not simply the mind's definition of a certain number of objects to which it has been exposed in the past.

Everyone is of course free to agree or disagree with the comments I have made here, but I think for maximum clarity we ought to be evaluating modern research in light of this distinction so that we can be sure we are talking about the canon of truth vs something very different.

Well it would probably be worth some of us doing it at some point, since this is such as recurring issue, and that's why I posted it so we could add to the "database." But I totally agree that we have a lot more important things to do.

I think maybe the most important use for something like this is to be able to cite it as an example of what this slippery slope leads to, because it takes a while before you see the end game.

A LOT of people get exposed to this paradigm as their first exposure to Epicurus:

(1) Epicurus said the goal of life is pleasure, but

(2) Epicurus redefined pleasure as absence of pain.

(3) That redefinition really doesn't make sense, so there must be some brilliant insight behind it we'd better go looking for.

(4) The brilliant insight is alleged to be that there is a really important difference between katastematic/kinetic pleasure. (And at this step it's really more effective for the proponent to leave katastematic/kinetic untranslated, rather than call it static/active, because the Greek words are much sexier, and the mystery makes the assertion much easier to swallow.)

(5) Calling the ultimate good a "resting" pleasure ("katastematic"! "ataraxia"! ) sort of brings back the discussion into the realm of the intelligible, because even though these words are very ambiguous in themselves, and they contradict everyday conceptions of what pleasure is all about, "everyone knows" the major Greek philosophers were into "reason" and "thinking" and "the mind" rather than coarse and ignoble things like having fun and being active and experiencing joy and delight.

(6) So we arrive at the point intended by these proponents: Epicurus was really ahead of his time, and he was advocating asceticism, but his word-play needed to be straightened out by the Stoics, who identified that the kind of resting pleasure that we all need is the contemplation of virtue and the divine fire, in and of itself, and for no reward other than itself.

(7) And thus we see that Epicurus blends nicely into the mainstream of Greek thought, and we can put his books safely back on the shelf, content that we fully understand everything of significance Epicurus had to say.

[I hope my sarcasm or feeble attempt at humor in these steps is apparent, but just in case I'll add this note to make it clear. This analysis flies in the face of what I believe Epicurean philosophy to be all about, and it serves as a tremendous obstacle to the wider understanding and acceptance of Epicurean philosophy. I am 100% convinced that if the ancients had understood Epicurus to have been teaching this kind of analysis, Epicurean philosophy would never have seen widespread adoption, and the name of Epicurus would have been lost to history a long time ago.]

It's hard for me to get past that first sentence. The "most dominant terms in Epicurus' theory of the pleasures"?

You can read the authentic Epicurean texts over and over again without coming across those words, and yet they are "the most dominant terms"?

Yes, they do dominate modern discussion, but that is because of the need for something like them to rescue the nonsense that arises when you ignore everything else that Epicurus said in order to elevate the "absence of pain" passage in the letter into a paradigm of asceticism that the Stoics would have blushed to assert.

It is amazing how much turns on how one chooses to interpret that one section of the letter to Menoeceus.

I haven't had time to read this article by Yosef Liebersohn, and I am not sure if or when I will, but this abstract that came across my email just reminded me for the 500th time of this issue. I'll skip over the fact that the author suggests that kinetic and katastematic are "the most dominant terms in Epicurus' theory of the pleasures (despite the fact that this comes from Cicero and Diogenes Laertius and isn't a significant factor at all in Epicurus' or Lucretius' work, as explained by Boris Nikolsky).

What's significant to me is that I have to hand it to this writer for creativity in taking the katastematic/kinetic argument that modern commentators love to discuss to what may be its logical extreme conclusion.

Once you identify "katastematic pleasure" as the ultimate goal that makes life worth living, it's easy and enticing to conclude that this "resting" or "static" type of pleasure is what is "necessary" in life, and that kinetic pleasure ("joy and delight" in Diogenes Laertius) is "unnecessary."

People who take this approach have always seemed to me to be intent on draining every last aspect of "joy and delight" out of Epicurean philosophy. Possibly this writer shows the most creative way to do that. So if you're of the persuasion to drain joy and delight out of Epicurean philosophy, by all means pursue the katastematic/kinetic distinction that leads to this form of analysis.

My own suggestion is - "Don't!"

Oh yes, you're right. I was focused on the issue of whether there is a "rule" that all things that come together from constituent atoms must eventually come apart, but yes I see how it is appropriate to consider the recombination as part of the same issue.

Uh-oh I have lost track. Did we discuss the re-arrangement of atoms in this episode, or are you thinking about earlier episodes? Are are you thinking of the "trinity" part of our discussion? i do think that the color palette example is helpful in explaining how atoms can combine into different results.