Posts by Cassius

Next week's podcast changes the subject only a little - in addition to the atoms not having any of these qualities like color, the point is made that most certainly the atoms can't think on their own.

That means we are still on the subject of how their are no Platonic/Aristotelian absolutes or essences arising in the atoms, so if you guys have suggestions on things to include or ways to elaborate on that point, don't hesitate to ake suggestions!

I need to confirm the start and end points but I am expecting this to be the core of it:

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Now farther, those beings we see indued with sense, you must needs own are produced from insensible seeds; nor is there anything we perceive by common experience, which refutes or opposes this opinion. Everything rather leads us on, and compels us to believe that animals, I say, proceed from principles that are void of sense; for we observe living worms come into being from stinking dung, when the earth, moistened by unseasonable showers, grows putrid and rotten.

Besides, beings of all kinds undergo continual changes; the waters, the leaves, and the sweet grass turn themselves into beasts; the beasts convert their nature into human bodies; and the bodies of wild beasts and birds increase and grow strong by these bodies of ours. Nature therefore changes all sorts of food into living bodies; and hence she forms the senses of all creatures, much after the same manner as she quickens dry wood into fire, and sets everything in a blaze. You see now it is of the utmost importance in what order these first seeds are ranged, and, when mingled together, what motions they give, and receive among themselves.

But tell me, what is it that lays a force upon your mind? What moves you? What drives you into another opinion, that you should not believe a thing sensible can be formed from insensible seeds? Perhaps you observe that stones, and wood, and earth, when mingled together, can produce no creature indued with sense; but you will do well to remember, upon this occasion, that I did not say things sensible, or sense, could instantly proceed from all seeds in general, which go to the production of beings, but that it was of great consequence of what size the seeds are that created a being of sense, with what figures, motions, order, and position they are distinguished. Nothing of which we observe in wood, or clods of Earth. Yet these, when they are made rotten by moisture, produce worms, because the particles of matter, being changed from their former course by some new cause, are so united and disposed, that living creatures are formed, and creep into being.

Besides, those who contend that a sensible being may be raised from sensible seeds, (and this you are taught by some philosophers), must needs allow those seeds to be soft; for all sense is joined to bowels, nerves, and veins, all which, we know, are soft, and consequently liable to change and dissolution.

Thanks for the comments! Good to know you guys think we're pretty much in the zone where we should be. As to Godfrey's comments:

Quote from Godfrey

...in ancient Greece everyone was speculating beyond the evidenceWhich just reinforces the point that the methods of inference are perhaps more important than the actual conclusions reached.

Yes I think this is very important. This is the root of the difference between Epicurus and the others. When we go beyond what is directly in front of us, WHAT METHOD do we use in order to take positions, if they can be taken at all?

I think there are some pluses and minuses about the way we are approaching Lucretius "cold," and this is an area I want to improve. It's easy to get stuck in the weeds and not realize or emphasize the full implications of where we are in the process. The rejection of reliance on "reason" and the insistence on giving credit to the "faculties" is just huge and should not be lost sight of.

Quote from Godfrey

But during the podcast I kept thinking of the implications of this in terms of our fractured society and the plethora of "alternative facts" circulating.

You're stating it in terms of "alternative facts" and that may or may not be the best perspective. What comes to mind are these cliches about "your feelings don't change my facts" and the many variations about that. I think the direction this takes us is that for better or worse, and no matter how we wish it might be otherwise, different people have different feelings about things, and those subjective feelings are as important a part of our human reality as those things which we consider to be more "objective." I agree this has profound implications for society.

Bur for now rather than carry it straight to the social implications, I think there are many more practical day to day implications that we need to bring out.

Anyone had a chance to listen to this one yet? Given our current discussion where we are talking about the details of PD 24 I think the material we discuss from Delacy about what is considered to be true based on analogy only (rather than direct observation) is pretty relevant.

Quote from Don

It's not the senses themselves that are confused but ourselves being confused about what our sensations are telling us due to our groundless beliefs.

Yes i agree with your conclusion, but I'll pick nits and smile and say that "throw your other sensations into confusion...." could be improved because the "senses" are never confused, are they?

I do like the phrase "present reality" - I think it's a premise that's what real to us is what comes to us from the senses, so calling that 'reality' is a good reminder.

As far as "throwing other sensations into confusion" that seems less than optimum, because I doubt Epicurus would say that the senses can ever be confused - it's our opinion about them and what they say that can be confused.

"rejecting altogether the criterion" may be less than optimum too as the reference to what "criterion" is supposed to mean seems lacking.

I'm looking forward to what you think about the last phrases.

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If you reject any sensation absolutely, and you do not distinguish between an opinion that awaits confirmation and a present reality (whether of sensation, feeling, or perception), you will also throw your other sensations into confusion with your groundless belief, and in doing so will be rejecting altogether the criterion. But if, when assessing opinions, you affirm as true everything that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error; for you will be preserving complete uncertainty in every judgement between right and wrong opinion.

i think its always one of the best approaches to compare different translations so thanks for those variations. I tend to think Saint Andre is going off the beam in this one but even when we think a version is less accurate it helps to discuss where and why we disagree.

In evaluating that PD24 I think it's critical that we consider the DeLacy categories we've been discussing recently, because it seems likely that what we are discussing is not just an issue of "true vs false." We have to consider the "multivalent" aspect that several possibilities can be considered "true" at one time, even if they are not the same, and that leads us to a deeper definition of what 'true' should be considered to mean. We need to start out with the understanding that there are many things that we will never be able to judge directly, but which we need to form conclusions about based on analogy, so we need a complete understanding of what "truth" means in that circumstance. I think that Epicurus is probably considering that aspect in this wording and that is why it seems needlessly complicated. The reason its not easy to reduce it to simpler form is that we have to be careful not to oversimplify into our own more superficial definitions of "true" and "false."

I ran out of time earlier to play with this but I will do that now:

As for that translation above from PD24, I would like to blame Bailey for it, but I have rarely if ever seen one by anyone else that makes for clear reading either.

Like Joshua said, the point in the end is not really so difficult but the wording is labyrinthine:

24. If you reject any single sensation, and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion, as to the appearance awaiting confirmation, and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling, or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you will confound all other sensations, as well, with the same groundless opinion, so that you will reject every standard of judgment. And if among the mental images created by your opinion you affirm both that which awaits confirmation, and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what is right and what is wrong.

We probably ought to work on a paraphrase!

Camotero it's great that you are giving thought to where to start. Given the Epicurean emphasis on being up front and frank and not "hiding the ball" like they accused Socrates of doing, no matter what you choose to emphasize you're in the role of leader and it's not necessarily a problem that you're asking them to repeat things that they don't fully understand. On the other hand if they don't understand it at all there's not much point in it. I keep thinking that perhaps the most fruitful path to explore is epistemological issues kind of like in the pattern that Jefferson was thinking (in what I quoted above).

Perhaps even, after unwinding it to make it much more simple and repeatable, the point here:

24. If you reject any single sensation, and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion, as to the appearance awaiting confirmation, and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling, or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you will confound all other sensations, as well, with the same groundless opinion, so that you will reject every standard of judgment. And if among the mental images created by your opinion you affirm both that which awaits confirmation, and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what is right and what is wrong.

’ I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.

Yes I think that the material I cited has lots of good stuff in it, but it would need to be reworded for use with a young child. I think you are right especially about PD5 and the wise/honor/just issue being dangerously Platonic-sounding for someone who doesn't yet understand that those terms are relative/subjective rather than being absolute.

It might be that one of more of the Vatican Sayings is more easily employable. I've always thought that some kind of wording of 47 might be good:

47. I have anticipated thee, Fortune, and I have closed off every one of your devious entrances. And we will not give ourselves up as captives, to thee or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who cling to it maundering, we will leave from life singing aloud a glorious triumph-song on how nicely we lived.

But I think depending on how long you feel like is workable, pretty much anything needs to be reworded for simplification.

That's a great question. Here are some first off the cuff thoughts.

One thing that immediately comes to mind and was apparently memorized would be perhaps the first five or so principal doctrines.

Another would be an excerpt from one of the opening sections of the six books of Lucretius. Of these:

1. Maybe most obvious would be from book one, and for this purpose, pure "ring," I have always preferred the Humphries version:
   1. When human life, all too conspicuous,
      Lay foully groveling on earth, weighed down
      By grim Religion looming from the skies,
      Horribly threatening mortal men, a man,
      A Greek, first raised his mortal eyes
      Bravely against this menace. No report
      Of gods, no lightning-flash, no thunder-peal
      Made this man cower, but drove him all the more
      With passionate manliness of mind and will
      To be the first to spring the tight-barred gates
      Of Nature's hold asunder. So his force,
      His vital force of mind, a conqueror
      Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world
      Explored the vast immensities of space
      With wit and wisdom, and came back to us
      Triumphant, bringing news of what can be
      And what cannot, limits and boundaries,
      The borderline, the bench mark, set forever.
      Religion, so, is trampled underfoot,
      And by his victory we reach the stars.
2. These sections from Torquatus in "On Ends" have potential to be edited into something usable
   
   1. The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain; he will know that death means complete unconsciousness, and that pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement.
   2. The great disturbing factor in a man's life is ignorance of good and evil; mistaken ideas about these frequently rob us of our greatest pleasures, and torment us with the most cruel pain of mind. Hence we need the aid of Wisdom, to rid us of our fears and appetites, to root out all our errors and prejudices, and to serve as our infallible guide to the attainment of pleasure. Wisdom alone can banish sorrow from our hearts and protect its front alarm and apprehension; put yourself to school with her, and you may live in peace, and quench the glowing flames of desire. For the desires are incapable of satisfaction; they ruin not individuals only but whole families, nay often shake the very foundations of the state. It is they that are the source of hatred, quarreling, and strife, of sedition and of war. Nor do they only flaunt themselves abroad, or turn their blind onslaughts solely against others; even when prisoned within the heart they quarrel and fall out among themselves; and this cannot but render the whole of life embittered. Hence only the Wise Man, who prunes away all the rank growth of vanity and error, can possibly live untroubled by sorrow and by fear, content within the bounds that nature has set.
   3. Here is indeed a royal road to happiness—open, simple, and direct! For clearly man can have no greater good than complete freedom from pain and sorrow coupled with the enjoyment of the highest bodily and mental pleasures. Notice then how the theory embraces every possible enhancement of life, every aid to the attainment of that Chief Good which is our object. Epicurus, the man whom you denounce as a voluptuary, cries aloud that no one can live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly, and no one wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly. For a city rent by faction cannot prosper, nor a house whose masters are at strife; much less then can a mind divided against itself and filled with inward discord taste any particle of pure and liberal pleasure. But one who is perpetually swayed by conflicting and incompatible counsels and desires can know no peace or calm.
   4. On the other hand, without a full understanding of the world of nature it is impossible to maintain the truth of our sense-perceptions. Further, every mental presentation has its origin in sensation: so that no certain knowledge will be possible, unless all sensations are true, as the theory of Epicurus teaches that they are. Those who deny the validity of sensation and say that nothing can be perceived, having excluded the evidence of the senses, are unable even to expound their own argument. Besides, by abolishing knowledge and science they abolish all possibility of rational life and action. Thus Natural Philosophy supplies courage to face the fear of death; resolution to resist the terrors of religion; peace of mind, for it removes all ignorance of the mysteries of nature; self-control, for it explains the nature of the desires and distinguishes their different kinds; and, as I showed just now, the Canon or Criterion of Knowledge, which Epicurus also established, gives a method of discerning truth from falsehood.
   5. If then the doctrine I have set forth is clearer and more luminous than daylight itself; if it is derived entirely from Nature's source; if my whole discourse relies throughout for confirmation on the unbiased and unimpeachable evidence of the senses; if lisping infants, nay even dumb animals, prompted by Nature's teaching, almost find voice to proclaim that there is no welfare but pleasure, no hardship but pain—and their judgment in these matters is neither sophisticated nor biased—ought we not to feel the greatest gratitude to him who caught this utterance of Nature's voice, and grasped its import so firmly and so fully that he has guided all sane-minded men into the paths of peace and happiness, calmness and repose? You are pleased to think him uneducated. The reason is that he refused to consider any education worth the name that did not help to school us in happiness. Was he to spend his time, as you encourage Triarius and me to do, in perusing poets, who give us nothing solid and useful, but merely childish amusement? Was he to occupy himself like Plato with music and geometry, arithmetic and astronomy, which starting from false premises cannot be true, and which moreover if they were true would contribute nothing to make our lives pleasanter and therefore better? Was he, I say, to study arts like these, and neglect the master art, so difficult and correspondingly so fruitful, the art of living? No! Epicurus was not uneducated: the real philistines are those who ask us to go on studying till old age the subjects that we ought to be ashamed not to have learnt in boyhood.
3. There are probably sections from Frances Wright that ring almost as poetry;
   1. I will have to think of appropriate sections and add them here
      
4. And this from Thomas Jefferfson's letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820:
   
   ‘I feel: therefore I exist.’ I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it’s creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise.

Episode 33 of the Lucretius Today Podcast Is Now Available: More on the Implications of the Colorless Atoms. Be sure to let us know if you have any comments or questions, and subscribe using Itunes or any podcast aggregator.

Quote from Don

Do we hold the ancients' reasoning from their evidence to our standard of knowledge? Or do we approach them on their terms and limits?

We know there are not "hooked atoms" and "smooth atoms" but do we applaud them for using their available observations (e.g., fishhooks in a box) and extrapolating a natural explanation of nature, free of supernatural and divine intervention?

I do not see these as contradictory. The evidence hopefully improves with technology, but the analysis process - the rules that constitute how to apply the observations as standards of proof - ought to be (in my mind, anyway) - exactly the same.

I think what you are hearing in recent podcasts is our working toward a way to better articulate this -- and we have quite a way to go yet, I think.

That's why I am personally not nearly as concerned with the specifics of their conclusions as I am HOW they reached those conclusions. So far, I am very comfortable that their "process" is valid, even where they may reach conclusions we today think are "wrong" because we have evidence not available to them

I personally even hesitate to use the word "wrong" to describe this situation.

Good link on necessary and sufficient. The words can seem obvious, but that's a good reminder that ALL of the necessary conditions must be present in order to reach the "sufficient" level. But in common discussion, even "sufficient" implies that something more is needed, so you have to be conscious of whether that is true or not and the basis on which you're making the conclusion.

I am about 50% of the way through editing Episode 33, which is a discussion directly relevant to these issues, and I definitely hope to have it up in the next 12 hours. As you'll see we struggled through many of these same issues and though I don't think we resolved anything permanently I think you'll find it helpful.

If I am following you correctly then I definitely agree that "necessary" and "sufficient" are very relevant terms. However I think where this goes is that simply using those terms does not really advance the ball to the ultimate conclusion, which is understanding when we can confidently apply those terms, and why we are confident in applying them in a particular situation. Ultimately in every case we have a conceptual issue of what happens at the limit of our ability to observe directly. Is it proper to conclude that 'seeing is believing' is the appropriate standard of considering something to be true? At what point are we confident in going further to make a confident statement about something that we can and probably never will observe directly.

Here's something else that is relevant, a jibe from Cicero, in his "On the Nature of the Gods." This is a jibe, but it is easy to see how an Epicurean might appear to be overly confident to a skeptic. I think what we're looking for here is first an understanding of the ancient Epicurean position on when to be confident and when not to be, and then we have to decide for ourselves which we are "confident" to adopt:

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Hereupon Velleius began, in the confident manner (I need not say) that is customary with Epicureans, afraid of nothing so much as lest he should appear to have doubts about anything. One would have supposed he had just come down from the assembly of the gods in the intermundane spaces of Epicurus! “I am not going to expound to you doctrines that are mere baseless figments of the imagination, such as the artisan deity and world-builder of Plato's Timaeus, or that old hag of a fortuneteller the Pronoia (which, we may render ‘Providence’) of the Stoics; nor yet a world endowed with a mind and senses of its own, a spherical, rotatory god of burning fire; these are the marvels and monstrosities of philosophers who do not reason but dream.

We just finished recording Episode 33 and I think we had a very interesting discussion that will help us advance our thinking on these topics. I will work to edit and post this asap so we can keep the flow going.

At risk of cluttering up this thread I want to copy/paste here a set of clips from Delacy's commentary to On Methods of Inference that I posted here. I think what we are debating here involves the category of knowledge in the Epicurean scheme that Delacy refers to under his heading 2b, which DeLacy says "is important because it involves validity of the doctrine of atoms and void."

Below is the clip, and I think what we are wrestling with are our opinions of the validity of the terminology and how we should express our confidence in things we may conclude to be true using this standard:

________ (clipped from the other thread on Syllogistic and Canonical Reasoning____________

I think these three pages pretty well sum up what DeLacy sees as the three categories into which Epicureans divided things (I am using DeLacy's numbering so that is why it appears out of order):

1 - Things we can validate directly through the senses because they are nearby. (Position here should not be controversial, but contradicts Plato.)

2 a - Things which can never be known due to our own limitations, such as whether the number of stars is odd or even - there is no test of truth for these - they can never be known.

2 c - Things we may have to wait to validate through the senses, but ultimately we can get enough data to validate them through the senses. (Position here more aggressive but should not be controversial, still contradicts Plato.)

2 b - Things which by nature we can never get so close as to validate by the senses (the atoms, the far reaches of space). In this category things are considered true when there is some evidence from them and no evidence to the contrary. Multiple things can be considered true / possible. Choosing from among them, that only one is true, is improper absent sufficient evidence to do so, in which case you are in category 2c rather than 2b. (Position on this category is the most controversial; contradicts Plato)

The list of the categories:

The test of truth for category 2a of Delacy List - Opinions about things immediately before us are validated directly against the object itself:

The test of truth for category 2c of Delacy list - Opinions about things that can eventually be validated directly by the senses are validated when we get that information :

The test of truth for things in category 2 b, those things which the senses can never examine closely enough to validate. This is the most challenging category and constitutes the Epicurean canonical reasoning on ultimate issues rather than syllogistic reasoning which arguably does not rely on sensory evidence.

This episode is going to continue on the topic of colorless atoms, with many of the same underlying issues, so here is a link to a post by Don on the same subject in the Episode 32 thread. We can continue the discussion there or here in this thread for Episode 33.