Posts by Cassius

The beginning sections of the text are not preserved, and therefore we don't have the opening explanation for what the work is about in order to serve as a guideline for what follows.

Perhaps even worse, the work includes lots of repetition of positions that Philodemus is arguing *against*, so it's necessary to know beforehand which side of the argument Philodemus is taking so that you know if he's talking about his side, or that of the (largely stoic) enemy.

And perhaps even worst of all, the Epicurean arguments are so unknown to us that it takes considerable explanation to understand the Epicurean side of things before getting started.

So for that reason I strongly recommend reading the introductory material, and the appendix, before reading the text itself. Of course that means we're relying on DeLacey, and we have to be careful about that too, but it's better than starting at the beginning and reading pages and pages of dense material and only finding out afterward that you've started in a section giving the Stoic argument and that Philodemus himself doesn't agree with anything that you've just read.

Here are some links to the sections to read first. Every one of these contains valuable information that will help tremendously if you read it before reading the text.

• Forward
• Chapter 1 - Life and Work of Philodemus
• Chapter 2 - Introduction to "On Methods of Inference"
  
• Appendix 1 - Sources of Epicurean Empiricism
• Appendix 2 - Development of Epicurean Logic and Methodology
• Appendix 3 - Logical Controversies of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics

Of course when we're referring to Cicero we're referring to "Cicero's reporting of the Epicurean view" because Cicero himself wasn't advocating any of this.

If we didn't have Cicero's reports we'd still have the letter to Menoeceus talking about anticipations of the gods, and Lucretius talking about the "images" we receive of thelr lives of blessedness, and Epicurus himself talking about life in the rest of the universe and (I think? the gods in the intermundia - isn't that in the letters too?).

In my view what the fragments on isonomia give is a linkage to how they apparently extended their methods of reasoning in order to speculate further about the life of the gods. But what's also not clear is which came first and which is primary -- the "anticipations/images" argument for the gods, or the "physics/isonomia/no single thing of a kind" argument for the gods.

My best guess is that they developed alongside each other and were seen as mutually reinforcing, rather than one relying on the other.

But again if we can find a way to do it, it will really help if we can pull out DeLacey's appendix and then get into "Methods of Inference" so we can see how they grappled with the issue of reaching conclusions about things about which we can never get direct sense-based evidence.

Maps may be one of the best analogies, in addition to the compass.

Maps can obviously be very useful, and maps can be useful at many levels of detail. Sometimes great detail helps, sometimes it is best to take to 30000 foot view, but they all need to be consistent with the facts.

On the other hand no matter how detailed the map never becomes the terrain itself.

I think DeWitt talks about this in terms of the telescoping levels of outline, with Epicurus' 40 doctrines perhaps the highest view, then the letters, then I think there was another summary level that Lucretius used or else he was using the full 38? Books of On. Nature.

Regardless the telescoping view analogy seems very valid, and explicitly what Epicurus referenced as outlining jn the letter to Herodotus.

Possibly the on / off switch, because that's a good analogy to stop and go, but I'm not sure that goes far enough.

The whole analogy of humans / living things to robots is probably both useful and dangerous at the same time, but then again that seems to be the whole situation with logic itself, so we've got to get used to that and be comfortable articulating the good and bad of it. I think that's pretty much "got to be" the approach Epicurus took.

We can't label "all abstractions are bad" - that would be ridiculous, but at the same time have to be just as firm that "the map isn't the territory itself."

Cliches can be tiring but I think assembling a list of them would probably help us talk about the subject and explain it more clearly.

I haven't had a chance to read this so I have no comment on the content yet but it certainly at the very least seems to bring together some worthwhile quotes.

Nietzsche's Epicurean Irritability

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche favourably compares the Epicureans’ “subtle irritability” to the impassivity of the Stoics. He claims that this irritability—a…

www.academia.edu

I think the senses leg of the canon well fits the "computer peripherals" analogy, and the anticipations leg fit the "operating system" analogy. It's less clear to me where the pleasure /pain fits, possibly as part of the operating system but perhaps more the "applications program" or the electricity or something analogous to the purpose for which the computer and operating system were constructed.

In real life all these three operate very closely together too so it's not like they are entirely separate from each other and this is another area I think DeWitt's ideas are good.

I think we're most all in agreement that we are not born with fully formed ideas. Aristotle and Locke assert that if we aren't born knowing ideas we are essentially s "blank slate" and that's going way too far.

I think the better analogy is that while we agree we aren't born with fully formed ideas, we aren't born as nothing more than a pure white piece of paper. We're actually built with a superior version of a computer operating system (think Windows or Linux or Mac) that when operated can process data in amazing ways, but only on the basis of the ultimate programming of the system (dogs and cats and humans and grasshoppers are programmed differently). We aren't born with a stored database of knowledge, but we are born with an operating system and a series of peripherals (the senses), using the data from which a database can be constructed after conception and early development.

Yes I think it's probably true that a faculty of anticipations is involved in the assembly of pretty much all thought, in the sense that we would not recognize the subject as significant to us at all if we didn't have such a wiring to recognize it. The continuing hazard is to think that a particular idea is preprogrammed rather than simply "wiring" that if we choose to use it and if it is functioning correctly (we're not sick or insane) will allow us to be conscious of something to think about and eventually firm ideas in. And that's why I still like preconceptions as a word to emphasize the PRE part.

When I think anticipation I can't help thinking of Carly Simon!

I am in agreement with some of the last several posts and not in agreement with some, but I think mainly the answer to concern that this is Platonic is that it appears to me we have ample justification for projecting higher and lower forms of life based on what we see here on earth, so I think that is fully sufficient ties the full theory to reality and observation. Based on observing worms and below all the way up to humans and elephants and so many others, it seems to me very empirically reasonable to extend the attributes we do see to a wider scope of varieties that would exist if there are an infinite number of Earth's in the universe.

I absolutely see that as rigorously empiriical and not Platonic, and I feel sure that they would have argued that NOT to take that position would be a Platonic rejection of the variety we see here.

I think that a lot of what is missing here is that we have never undertaken a study of the "epicurean reasoning" theory and the best place to focus on that is probably Philodemus' "Methods of Inference" material.

So we need to figure how to devote some time to that.

The entire philosophy is ultimately based on things we cannot see or touch or sense (atoms) so we have to get comfortable with "true reason" and I don't think we're there yet.

And that's not unexpected because so little attention is paid to it. DeWitt can maybe get carried away but I think many of his points are highly insightful and one of them is (to my reading) that DeWitt was both an "empiricist" *and* a master logician and that these are not necessarily in conflict if you understand and apply those correctly.

Well supernatural intervention is ruled out from the basic physics and is extrapolated by extension to the universe as a whole as a fundamental to which there can be no violation, so that's what rules out supernatural no matter how far out you get.

Now as to beings who have superior technology to us that is of course possible and even probable -- but it's never "supernatural."

This is the Dewitt section - I forgot this was so long!

You asked Joshua but if you'll pardon my making a comment:

Quote from camotero

Or other universes similar to our own?

That's why it's always necessary to be clear in terminology. As for me I refuse to depart from the traditional terminology, and for me "universe" will always mean "everything that exists." Others may way to talk about multiverses and multiple universes but I'm too old for that

Quote from camotero

Why is isonomia important to us? How is it useful? How does it helps us understand nature better?

And my answer to that, from what I believe was probably Epicurus' perspective, is that many people would conclude (if they believed that this earth was the only inhabited place in the universe) that that would mean there is something "special" about us, leading directly to a likely conclusion of divine action to explain that "specialness". Taking the position that life is naturally occurring means it's likely to naturally occur in an infinite number of places (given the view that the universe is infinite in size) so those views go hand in hand.

And to the extent we're talking about isonomia as a spectrum of complexity from extremely primitive to something we would call "godlike" that also provides a general overview to why humans should not be considered to be the highest form of life in the universe, and leads us to think about what is higher, which is something that seems to be an important part of Epicurean philosophy and helps explain why we should not, in fact, generally be satisfied with living in a cave on bread and water.

I don't keep track of that myself but I think we've talked about that in the past so some here very well might.

Quote from camotero

I don't think it's needed to explain why or how it works to confirm it does work

It seems we run into that issue regularly with these "logic" questions. "Logic" isn't the ultimate answer to life and cannot provide complete explanations so we have to understand that. For better or for worse, however, some people cannot avoid getting embroiled in logic problems, and if they do they need to be pointed clearly to the way out, lest they give up and ruin philosophy for 2000 as did the namesake of the dialogue "Philebus."

michelepinto looks like you had some T-Shirts! What does this say?

Continuing the "battle" theme of the scene from Book One, another one that comes to mind to me would be this phrase from the opening of Book Six, in which I can see Epicurus directing a defense of a fort or castle pointing out the gates from which to charge against the enemy:

Quote

And so with his discourse of truthful words he purged the heart and set a limit to its desire and fear, and set forth what is the highest good, towards which we all strive, and pointed out the path, whereby along a narrow track we may strain on towards it in a straight course; he showed what there is of ill in the affairs of mortals everywhere, coming to being and flying abroad in diverse forms, be it by the chance or the force of nature, because nature had so brought it to pass; he showed from what gates it is meet to sally out against each ill, and he proved that ’tis in vain for the most part that the race of men set tossing in their hearts the gloomy billows of care....

What others come to mind?

Yes Godfrey their big hit was Hair, but maybe even more so their trademark song was "The Rain, The Park, and Other Things," which had a very mid-sixties / San Francisco sound that you of all people (being from California) would recognize. Also "Indian Lake" and the theme from the TV show "Love American Style" was sung by them too.

I want to note that in honor of Don's comment, I supplemented the name of this podcast with his reference to the Queen song.

To further solidify my own reputation as a connoisseur of fine music, I want to give credit to the source that led me to find today (too late for this podcast) a reference to what Don reads in this episode as "the prodigious weight of the clouds" referenced by Lucretius in line 173:

Quote from Cassius

Nor must you think this false because the clouds, to us that stand below, seem rather broad than deep, or raised on heaps; for see how the winds will whirl along the air these rolling clouds, raised mountain-high; and on the mountain-tops the clouds, observe, are higher some than others, and piled on heaps; and, when the winds are still, the higher row will press the lower down. Then you may judge of their prodigious weight, and view their hollow caverns, formed as it were in hanging rocks, where in a tempest the rough winds are shut, and scorn to be confined, and roar with horrid noise, like savage beasts within their dens chained down

Here's a US Geological Survey link that testifies to that prodigious weight, which I have to admit I find amazing: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/…_center_objects

... Which indicates that clouds can weigh as much as 551 tons!

What exotic musical interest led me to this discovery?

None other than Paul COWSILL talking about the amazing weight of clouds on the Cowsill Podcast, episode 22.

Some of you may think it's sad that I am getting meteorological tips from the Cowsills, but the really sad thing is that most of you reading this are too young to have ever heard of the Cowsills!

Here is the video of Christos Yapijakis, leader of the Athens Epicureans, proving that he is fluent in at least three languages (including Italian, and we already know he is fluent in Greek and English). That's very impressive in itself and that's three more languages than I am fluent in! If anyone has a clue as to what he is saying please comment below.

Episode Eighty-Four of Lucretius Today is now available. In this episode we will read approximately Latin lines 173 through 335 as we continue to open Book Six and discuss meteorological issues such as thunder and lightning. Now let's join Don reading today's text.