Posts by Cassius

Quote from Don

It seems to me that "universals" is simply a high falutin' way of recognizing patterns across disparate individual entities, physical or abstract. To me, that sounds like the faculty of prolepsis and not some complicated philosophical construct.

Yes I agree that's the basic point, stated in a very friendly way.

Stated more pointedly, there's a huge "life or death" divide between (1) the desire to look for universals in other worlds of ideal forms or divine aspects of this world, and (2) the desire to look for the best way of life in natural processes that are open to any normal human being with no requirement of priest or expert to explain it to you.

In my view an awful lot of the division between Epicurus and the other schools comes down to exactly this. Epicurus' opponents identified exactly this issue very early on, and they have treated him and his philosophy in a very unfriendly way for 2000+ years as a result.

As long as the discussion stays within the guard rails of "being happy" or "finding pleasure through simplicity," it's all fun and games and smiles.

Go much deeper than that, however, in discussion of Epicurus with an intellectual activist, and you'll find out what that activist really cares about, and it's not how best to balance pleasure and pain. That's why all this is so important.

Rolf also on the sorites issue, see this extended discussion of it by Cicero from Academic Quetions:

Thread

Sorites Argument Referenced in Cicero's Academic Questions

Going through Cicero's "Academic Questions" today I came across the following reference to the "Sorites" Argument. There is a lot of interesting material in AQ, and some good reference to Epicurus, but surrounded by a lot of gobbledygook. This is an example of good information:

https://handbook.epicureanfriends.com/Library/Text-C…icQuestions/#xv

[…]

Cassius

March 18, 2025 at 4:47 PM

Today's topic (if we get to it after disussing recent issues of interest on the forum) will be:

Classical Epicurean Philosophy - Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

He Who Says "Nothing Can Be Known" Knows Nothing

Skeptics hold that nothing in life can be known with confidence. The Skeptics of Epicurus' time argued, primarily due to their contention that the senses cannot be trusted, that we can never be certain of anything, and at most some things are "probable." Even something as obvious as the expectation that if you jump off a canyon wall you will fall to your death is not certain to such philosophers, it is merely "probable."

Epicurus saw that this confidence-destroying doctrine suffers much the same flaw as Determinism - it is self-contradictory nonsense. Anyone who is ridiculous and absurd enough to advocate that "nothing can be known" is taking you for a fool, because he expecting you to accept that he knows that "nothing can be known." Epicurus held that that such arguments should not be taken seriously, any more than you should seriously accept the argument from a living person that it would be better never to have been born.

Lucretius spoke for Epicurus in writing: " Again, if any one thinks that nothing is known, he knows not whether that can be known either, since he admits that he knows nothing. Against him then I will refrain from joining issue, who plants himself with his head in the place of his feet. And yet were I to grant that he knows this too, yet I would ask this one question; since he has never before seen any truth in things, whence does he know what is knowing, and not knowing each in turn, what thing has begotten the concept of the true and the false, what thing has proved that the doubtful differs from the certain? [Book 4:469]

Find out more in our Canonics Forum, our Wiki, and our Discussion Guide. Listen to our special Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 262 devoted to this topic.

Glad to see i am not the only one who is not super familiar with Bertrand Russell. I know he is extremely well known, but the impression I have of his views is not at all totally favorable - I gather he was much more inclined to skepticism than was Epicurus.

However, he's a major figure, like Will Durant (with whom I was confronted recently) and so it's good to know where to find major points from influential people that are relevant to Epicurus.

Quote from Pacatus

(Bertrand Russell notwithstanding).

Pacatus what are you referring to there? I know Russell is a major figure but I am not familiar with the details of his works.

Quote from Rolf

The comparison between the “heap of sand” analogy and “absence of pain” is interesting. Would you mind explaining it a bit more?

The central issue is what is the sorites paradox/syllogism in the first place. Some of this is contained in DeWitt's reference quoted here.

But contrary to the view that the point is that the sorites method of argument is an absurd request for an arithmetical rule on things that everyone understands, I would say that the point is somewhat different.

Words like "heap" and "good" are useful even though they have no mathematical precision, but it needs to be understood that these words lack not only mathematical precision but any intrinsic meaning of their own absent reference to the individual items that are being described in summary.

Epicurus is arguing that "pleasure" as a concept has no meaning apart from the individual instances of pleasure which are contained within the summary term. Of course the concept is very useful as a way to communicate ideas, but Plato and the others are asserting that there is an absolute realm of ideas where there is a "perfect" or "form" of pleasure, and that pleasures are pleasures because they somehow mystically partake in this form or idea.

"Absence of pain" is something similar - it is a concept and not an individual experience. The individual experiences are two - pleasure and pain. Denominating something as "absence of pain" is useful, but in this paradigm "absence of pain" means exactly the same thing as "pleasure" because there are only two possibilities. But not only does "absence of pain" as a concept mean nothing in itself, the rest of the chain is to observe that "pleasure" as a concept means nothing in itself apart from individual instances of feelings of pleasure. The search for "absence of pain" means nothing more or less than the search for "pleasure," and both of those words in quotes mean nothing more than real feelings of real beings at particular times and places.

I would argue that as a concept the word "pleasure" is useful to describe the goal of life, because you need to describe the goal of life in words different from or "virtue" or "piety" or "nothingness" depending on whether you're talking to a Stoic or an Abrahamist or a Buddhist/Hindu. But using the word "pleasure" in that conceptual way is not a full description of a particular experience by a particular person at a particular lime and place. For that you need words like "sex" or "drugs" or "rocknroll" or "resting" or eating or drinking or sleeping or reading philosophy or even simply reflecting on your good memories or expectations.

Likewise you could say exactly the same thing as said in that last paragraph about "absence of pain," since in a system of only two options, absence of pain always means pleasure. But there's another important use for the term "absence of pain" -- to refer to period of time when ALL of the experiences that a person is feeling are pleasurable and not painful. "Total" absence of pain would mean that in that time period you're looking at there are only specific pleasures, and no specific pains, and thus that circumstance cannot be improved. Yes "total absence of pain" is a very broad concept, but it is a concept that describes "the limit of pleasure" -- it provides a description of a situation that cannot be improved, and if you are interested in philosophical arguments (not everyone is) then you want the term "absence of pain" so you can have a definite description of a condition that fulfills the requirements of the logicians. They argue as did Plato and Seneca that in general philosophical terms, something that can be made better cannot by definition qualify as THE good or THE goal of life.

A life in which pain is absent is a term that gave the Epicureans in the past, and us today, a logical description of "the best life" to which we all should aim. We won't succeed in eliminating all pain from our lives any more than Epicurus did. But it's important for those of us who want to have a clear idea of the goal that Epicurus was talking about. And it's important to be clear about the goal not only so we can live better ourselves, but so that we can prevent the Stoics and Buddhists from trying to turn Epicurean philosophy into a tool of their own mistaken ideas.

Yes I agree that atomism was identified as the threat to be destroyed, but not so much just because it wasn't water, or fire, but because atoms weren't as easy to make DIVINE. The stoics had no problem reconciling fire with divinity. I suppose you could say (as many do now) that god(s) created the atoms, but it sounds like the religionists identified atoms as more of a threat, even though Democritus himself was a strict determinist, which would have made his views more religious-compatible.

Maybe adding on the swerve made Epicurus more of a potent threat than Democritean atomism.

Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus 45 (Bailey)

These brief sayings, if all these points are borne in mind, afford a sufficient outline for our understanding of the nature of existing things. Furthermore, there are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours. For the atoms being infinite in number, as was proved already, are borne on far out into space. For those atoms, which are of such nature that a world could be created out of them or made by them, have not been used up either on one world or on a limited number of worlds, nor again on all the worlds which are alike, or on those which are different from these. So that there nowhere exists an obstacle to the infinite number of the worlds.

Lucretius Book 2-1023 (Life On Other Worlds; Nature Never Makes A Single Thing of A Kind)

Now turn your mind, I pray, to a true reasoning. For a truth wondrously new is struggling to fall upon your ears, and a new face of things to reveal itself. Yet neither is anything so easy, but that at first it is more difficult to believe, and likewise nothing is so great or so marvelous but that little by little all decrease their wonder at it. First of all the bright clear color of the sky, and all it holds within it, the stars that wander here and there, and the moon and the sheen of the sun with its brilliant light; all these, if now they had come to being for the first time for mortals, if all unforeseen they were in a moment placed before their eyes, what story could be told more marvelous than these things, or what that the nations would less dare to believe beforehand? Nothing, I trow: so worthy of wonder would this sight have been. Yet think how no one now, wearied with satiety of seeing, deigns to gaze up at the shining quarters of the sky! Wherefore cease to spew out reason from your mind, struck with terror at mere newness, but rather with eager judgement weigh things, and, if you see them true, lift your hands and yield, or, if it is false, gird yourself to battle.

For our mind now seeks to reason, since the sum of space is boundless out beyond the walls of this world, what there is far out there, whither the spirit desires always to look forward, and whither the unfettered projection of our mind flies on unchecked.

2-1048
First of all, we find that in every direction everywhere, and on either side, above and below, through all the universe, there is no limit, as I have shown, and indeed the truth cries out for itself and the nature of the deep shines clear. Now in no way must we think it likely, since towards every side is infinite empty space, and seeds in unnumbered numbers in the deep universe fly about in many ways driven on in everlasting motion, that this one world and sky was brought to birth, but that beyond it all those bodies of matter do naught; above all, since this world was so made by nature, as the seeds of things themselves of their own accord, jostling from time to time, were driven together in many ways, rashly, idly, and in vain, and at last those united, which, suddenly cast together, might become ever and anon the beginnings of great things, of earth and sea and sky, and the race of living things. Wherefore, again and again, you must needs confess that there are here and there other gatherings of matter, such as is this, which the ether holds in its greedy grip.

2-1067
Moreover, when there is much matter ready to hand, when space is there, and no thing, no cause delays, things must, we may be sure, be carried on and completed. As it is, if there is so great a store of seeds as the whole life of living things could not number, and if the same force and nature abides which could throw together the seeds of things, each into their place in like manner as they are thrown together here, it must needs be that you confess that there are other worlds in other regions, and diverse races of men and tribes of wild beasts.

2-1077
This there is too that in the universe there is nothing single, nothing born unique and growing unique and alone, but it is always of some tribe, and there are many things in the same race. First of all turn your mind to living creatures; you will find that in this wise is begotten the race of wild beasts that haunts the mountains, in this wise the stock of men, in this wise again the dumb herds of scaly fishes, and all the bodies of flying fowls. Wherefore you must confess in the same way that sky and earth and sun, moon, sea, and all else that exists, are not unique, but rather of number numberless; inasmuch as the deep-fixed boundary-stone of life awaits these as surely, and they are just as much of a body that has birth, as every race which is here on earth, abounding in things after its kind.

Isonomia

Cicero - On The Nature of The Gods - Book 1 (Yonge)

XIX. These discoveries of Epicurus are so acute in themselves and so subtly expressed that not everyone would be capable of appreciating them. Still I may rely on your intelligence, and make my exposition briefer than the subject demands. Epicurus then, as he not merely discerns abstruse and recondite things with his mind's eye, but handles them as tangible realities, teaches that the substance and nature of the gods is such that, in the first place, it is perceived not by the senses but by the mind, and not materially or individually, like the solid objects which Epicurus in virtue of their substantiality entitles steremnia; but by our perceiving images owing to their similarity and succession, because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams towards the gods, our mind with the keenest feelings of pleasure fixes its gaze on these images, and so attains an understanding of the nature of a being both blessed and eternal.

Moreover there is the supremely potent principle of infinity, which claims the closest and most careful study; we must understand that it has the following property, that in the sum of things everything has its exact match and counterpart. This property is termed by Epicurus isonomia, or the principle of uniform distribution. From this principle it follows that if the whole number of mortals be so many, there must exist no less a number of immortals, and if the causes of destruction are beyond count, the causes of conservation also are bound to be infinite.

You Stoics are also fond of asking us, Balbus, what is the mode of life of the gods and how they pass their days. The answer is, their life is the happiest conceivable, and the one most bountifully furnished with all good things. God is entirely inactive and free from all ties of occupation; he toils not neither does he labor, but he takes delight in his own wisdom and virtue, and knows with absolute certainty that he will always enjoy pleasures at once consummate and and everlasting.

In Chapter 16 of A Few Days In Athens Frances Wright goes on and on about "imagination," but here is one passage where she focuses on it:

Quote

“The ascertaining the nature of existences, the order of occurrences, and the consequences of human actions constituting, therefore, the whole of knowledge, what is there to prevent each and all of us from extending our discoveries to the full limits prescribed by the nature of our facilities and duration of our existence? What nobler employment can we invent? What pleasure so pure, so little liable to disappointment? What is there to hold us back? What is there not to spur us forward? Does our ignorance start from the very simplicity of knowledge? Do we fear to open our eyes lest we should see the light? Does the very truth we seek alarm us in its attainment? — How is it that, placed in this world as on a theatre of observation, surrounded by wonders and endowed with faculties wherewith to scan these wonders, we know so little of what is, and imagine so much of what is not? Other animals, to whom man accounts himself superior, exercise the faculties they possess, trust their testimony, follow the impulses of their nature, and enjoy the happiness of which they are capable. Man alone, the most gifted of all known existences, doubts the evidence of his superior senses, perverts the nature and uses of his multiplied faculties, controls his most innocent, as well as his noblest impulses, and to poison all the sources of his happiness. To what are we to trace this fatal error, this cruel self-martyrdom, this perversion of things from their natural bent? In the over-development of one faculty and neglect of another, we must seek the cause. In the imagination, that source of our most beautiful pleasures when under the control of judgment, we find the source of our worst afflictions.”

Unfortunately Frances Wright is not going to give us much more help on these issues, because her book barely touches on atomism or physics of any kind -- a problem I attribute to her being much more of a skeptic than Epicurus himself, and therefore she was unwilling to argue for any clear method for how to distinguish true from false when only circumstantial evidence is available. if this book is any indication, Wright didn't seem to care at all about humanity's place in the universe as a whole, and I would say that that is a large part of why an otherwise very intelligent book seems to have made almost no impact in her time or afterwards.

In regard to the sorites issue, I would say that this section of Chapter 15 of Frances Wright's "A Few Days In Athens" is and addresses the same issue:

Quote

“What is in a substance cannot be separate from it. And is not all matter a compound of qualities? Hardness, extension, form, color, motion, rest — take away all these, and where is matter? To conceive of mind independent of matter, is as if we should conceive of color independent of a substance colored: What is form, if not a body of a particular shape? What is thought, if not something which thinks? Destroy the substance, and you destroy its properties; and so equally — destroy the properties, and you destroy the substance. To suppose the possibility of retaining the one, without the other, is an evident absurdity.”

“The error of conceiving a quality in the abstract often offended me in the Lyceum,” returned the youth, “but I never considered the error as extending to mind and life, any more than to vice and virtue.”

I would say that Epicurus' question as reported by CIcero in Part 3 of Tusculan Disputations is making a similar point:

Quote

Why, Epicurus, do we use any evasions, and not allow in our own words the same feeling to be pleasure, which you are used to boast of with such assurance? Are these your words or not? This is what you say in that book which contains all the doctrine of your school; for I will perform, on this occasion, the office of a translator, lest any one should imagine that I am inventing anything. Thus you speak: “Nor can I form any notion of the chief good, abstracted from those pleasures which are perceived by taste, or from what depends on hearing music, or abstracted from ideas raised by external objects visible to the eye, or by agreeable motions, or from those other pleasures which are perceived by the whole man by means of any of his senses; nor can it possibly be said that the pleasures of the mind are excited only by what is good; for I have perceived men's minds to be pleased with the hopes of enjoying those things which I mentioned above, and with the idea that it should enjoy them without any interruption from pain.” And these are his exact words, so that any one may understand what were the pleasures with which Epicurus was acquainted. Then he speaks thus, a little lower down: “I have often inquired of those who have been called wise men, what would be the remaining good if they should exclude from consideration all these pleasures, unless they meant to give us nothing but words? I could never learn anything from them; and unless they choose that all virtue and wisdom should vanish and come to nothing, they must say with me, that the only road to happiness lies through those pleasures which I mentioned above.”

I would presume that what this means is that abstractions such as "color" or "good" do not have an independent existence apart from the things that we are describing as colored or good. Nor do "happiness" or "pleasure" as concepts have any independent meaning apart from individual instances of real people experiencing real feelings.

On the other hand, words such as "color" and "good" are useful, and so everyone - including Epicurus - uses them. When we use them, it is important to understand that concepts have usefulness given by assignment of the human mind, but that these concepts are not created by supernatural forces or the reflection of ideal forms, and those who assert that these concepts have independent existence are wrong and asserting ideas that have dangerous implications.

If concepts do not original from gods or ideal forms, then we still have to answer the question of how to identify them and use them properly.

It's not generally considered to be necessary to see every cow that ever existed in order to form a useful concept of a cow.

These issues are going to bleed over into all sorts of other questions about when to form opinions as to concepts. We've discussed many times that Epicurus never saw or touched an atom and yet was convinced that they exist. That's the "down" direction, but the same analysis is going to be at work in the "up" direction, and I would expect Epicurus to be willing to reach conclusions about things that he cannot see or touch in the "up" direction just as he was in the "down" direction. The conclusions are going to need to be based on rational extrapolation from evidence, and not pure imagination ("it exists because I can imagine it") but rational extrapolations are not going to be limited to those things that have already been observed.

Quote from TauPhi

An attempt at answering such questions is pointless.

We'll just have to disagree on that. Understanding the reasoning behind the paradox, and pointing out a resolution is as essential as understanding the error of arguing that motion is impossible. Epicurus himself employed it to illustrate the problems with those who assert that the good has some metaphysical explanation.

Again, we always have to keep in mind that there is a difference between (1) understanding Epicurus' position and (2) deciding whether we agree with it.

I'll include myself in this, and so far I don't think many of us have approached even an approximate understanding of phase one on either the heap paradox or the isonomy issue.

Quote from TauPhi

. It's just a reformulation of how many grains of sand make a heap

And that is why having a position on how to resolve the heap paradox is so important.

Have you proposed an answer to that?

And I am not trying to rewrite your statement by focusing on whether a thing has previously been observed. That is a possible position some may and do take as a proposed solution, and the fact what it strikes many of us as obviously wrong is at least a starting point towards a better solution.

If I recall correctly from "on signs" the term that becomes relevant is "conceivability."

If I recall correctly, Frances Wright focuses on imagination as a problem in her book, but I do not recall that she offers a persuasive answer as to what is reasonable projection vs what gets labeled "imagination" as a way of dismissing ideas without explanation.

I would say this is the issue that has to be addressed and there are probably clues in Philodemus' On Signs. This is definitely one of the topics under discussion there.

Clearly just because something can be imagined does not make it possible, which I presume is the problem with Joshua's example

In regard to whether 10% is reasonable, and how many more % can be added and stay within reason, that is the question.

And the dividing line cannot reasonably be "whether I have seen it before."

Quote from TauPhi

I exist. If I live in boundless and eternal universe, it's predictable and expectable that there are infinite number of TauPhies-like creatures inhabiting the universe. This is a possibility inspired by reason.

I exist. If I live in boundless and eternal universe, it's predictable and expectable that there are infinite number of SuperTauPhies that are stronger than Superman, older than Methuselah and wiser than Solomon. This is a possibility inspired by dreams.

I think that the real question is what is the dividing line between "TauPhies-like creatures" in the first paragraph and the examples in the second. What is it about the examples in the second paragraph that justifies labeling them as "dreams" versus simply "Tau-Phi-like creatures which are 10% stronger or 10% longer-lived" than the example we have here and now?

And of course to throw things into the pot there is Philodemus' "On Signs" / "On Methods of Inference" which is also dealing directly on the Epicurean view of when it is and is not appropriate to draw inferences.

Philodemus: On methods of inference: a study in ancient empiricism : Philodemus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/uf.jsp?st=UF001032148&ix=nu&I=0&V=D

archive.org

Quote from Joshua

You may have to rewrite that last clause for me....

It was getting late when i finally finished editing that post last night. The basic point i was attempting to make is that atomism is at heart both anti-supernatural and anti-chaotic, in that it is the atoms and their properties that leads us to conclude there are no supernatural forces, but also gives the regularity to what we generally see (all things are not chaotic).

So it is generally possible to make rational predictions based on the principles of atomism even though there are no supernatural forces of necessity.

I expect this thread is going to take a lot of time and a lot of input from others before I am personally ready to take a firm position.

As usual for what we do here at the forum there are two core but separate questions:

(1)what did Epicurus actually say?

(2) do we agree with it?

We can't be sure about (2) before we have a grasp of (1).

I also recall that one of the analogies or issues you have quoted before is something to do with the ability to infer or predict all the possibilities of various oceans from knowing the characteristics of s a single drop of water. Do you recall the source for that one?

Lots to think about!

Should we conclude that after a thing has happened once, that in an infinite and eternal universe it will happen an infinite number of times, but that it is impossible and in fact improper to predict with any confidence after huge numbers of monkeys are born that there will ever be any more intelligent beings born anywhere in the universe?

Frances Wright might well say that yes that would be improper, but regardless of what we think of the logic, I tend to think that Epicurus' views of life on other worlds in fact goes in the other direction.

Hitchens would certainly be right that there are no guarantees in any individual circumstance, but to conclude that the forces which produced similar but many varying results many times before will never operate in such a way seems to me less defensible a conclusion. There is no necessity either way in a particular circumstance, but is not a process with has been observed to be in operation limited by nature rather than by necessity (?). Meaning that what we would expect should be grounded in study of nature, and not by a position that since we have not seen it, it is not possible? So in predictions we can use progression or variation in what we have seen to form rational expectations as to what is possible, always knowing that the "supernatural" is the limit, without prejudging what is natural? Once again I would see a role for pattern recognition and rational distinction between what is possible by nature and what is not.

Lots of questions.

The statements by Velleius as to isonomy, with some before and after context, from Book One:

Quote from Cicero - On Nature of The Gods - Book One

XIX. These discoveries of Epicurus are so acute in themselves and so subtly expressed that not everyone would be capable of appreciating them. Still I may rely on your intelligence, and make my exposition briefer than the subject demands. Epicurus then, as he not merely discerns abstruse and recondite things with his mind's eye, but handles them as tangible realities, teaches that the substance and nature of the gods is such that, in the first place, it is perceived not by the senses but by the mind, and not materially or individually, like the solid objects which Epicurus in virtue of their substantiality entitles steremnia; but by our perceiving images owing to their similarity and succession, because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams towards the gods, our mind with the keenest feelings of pleasure fixes its gaze on these images, and so attains an understanding of the nature of a being both blessed and eternal.

Moreover there is the supremely potent principle of infinity, which claims the closest and most careful study; we must understand that it has the following property, that in the sum of things everything has its exact match and counterpart. This property is termed by Epicurus isonomia, or the principle of uniform distribution. From this principle it follows that if the whole number of mortals be so many, there must exist no less a number of immortals, and if the causes of destruction are beyond count, the causes of conservation also are bound to be infinite.

You Stoics are also fond of asking us, Balbus, what is the mode of life of the gods and how they pass their days. The answer is, their life is the happiest conceivable, and the one most bountifully furnished with all good things. God is entirely inactive and free from all ties of occupation; he toils not neither does he labor, but he takes delight in his own wisdom and virtue, and knows with absolute certainty that he will always enjoy pleasures at once consummate and and everlasting.

Definitely I had that passage about eyes etc not being born to use them in mind when I wrote the first post.

Do you reach any preliminary conclusions after citing that material? No doubt we are in agreement that there is no purpose in the mind of nature (nature has no mind) to create differences between things that are born.

And yet there are differences in things which are born, and our minds assign gradations to them, and the differences do in fact exist regardless of what we think of them.

Were the gradations in differences predictable once the process started, even though nature did not have conscious intent to create them?

Was it predictable from the existence of monkeys that humans would arise?

If so, is that not an Epicurean theory of gradation / isonomy arising from nature totally naturally and without divine design?

No doubt there are lots of ways to ask these questions.

Is it predictable and expectable that given that there are humans on earth who live to be 100 years old, that there are beings on other worlds who live to be 1000 years old?