Posts by Cassius

I think you're on the right track to say that there are all sorts of types of pleasures, and some occur with the removal of pain, and some occur when we shift our attention from one pleasure to another.

As I understand it a classic example of a pleasure that is not a removal of pain or want is that of smelling a rose. The smell does not necessarily remove a pain, and we weren't "in lack of a good smell" before smelling it. Our attention turned from one pleasure to another without any removal or displacement of any sort of pain.

Again I think we generously acknowledge that there are all sorts of pleasures, without ever flipping all this on it's head by saying that the goal is "absence of pain." The goal is technically only "absence of pain" from a very very limited perspective - when we are talking about the total quantity of human experience and we're observing that we want the totality of experience to be pleasure(s) with as little pain(s) as possible (preferably, but perhaps not practically for a human, zero).

Here's my extended reply, and I am glad that Jordan restated his assertion that "the greatest pleasure is painlessness" because that's exactly the rhetorical form I reject most emphatically. He posted that while I was preparing this:

Let me rearrange and edit some of the comments that Jordan and I have had in private conversation about this. Jordan's view is that Sherman says that the total absence of pain is the absolute most pleasure you could possibly feel, and hence the importance of removing pain. You pointed out that if the idea that painlessness is the greatest amount of pleasure you can feel sounds counter-intuitive, then, in Sherman's words, that's a failure of imagination

My view of all of this is that rather than failure of imagination, dwelling on "absence of pain" as a complete definition of the best life amounts to giving in to a stoic suppression of emotion" argument.

If "pleasure" is the guide of life, as Epicurus clearly held, why not state that forcefully and clearly and not leave it for imagination? Why dance around the issue?

But let me be clear, I think Epicurus DID state that forcefully and clearly, and that the error is in those who want to seize onto a limited part of the discussion and elevate that limited aspect into the full and complete goal, which it was never intended to be.

Epicurus said that clarify is essential, so I think the manner of speaking is very important, especially when a crusade against "pleasure as the goal" is exactly what Stoics and Platonists and Religionists do every time they mention Epicurus.

So why talk incessantly in the enemies' terms? Why try to assuage our enemies' concerns and sensibilities at the expense of clarity, while our own lives and the lives of those we value is so short?

Again, I don't think Epicurus was guilty of lack of clarity. What Epicurus was "guilty" of, if anything, was failing to anticipate that people in the ages after him would totally forget the context in which he worked, and ignore the fact that in Epicurus' day, there were important arguments made by prior philosophers against holding pleasure to be the guide of life which demanded to be addressed.

Jordan you state at the beginning of your article that "...I’m interested in Epicureanism as a practical philosophy for modern living – a kind of secular replacement for my lost religion." I very much agree that that is a good goal, and because it is a good goal, not just for you but for a very wide number of people, the replacement needs to worded in terms that are clear, and focused on the true motivating principle. It's not practical or efficient for most people to set their sights around things that are less than the very most important. That very most important question is most frequently discussed as "What is THE goal of human life?" That question demands to be answered first and most clearly, rather than chasing tangents which might be helpful to deflect opposing arguments, but nevertheless remain tangential to the central issue of what we should in fact focus our attention on pursuing.

And in setting out that goal, in answering that question about what is THE goal of human life, giving the answer as "painlessness" is just about the most DE-motivating and DE-pressing answer that I can imagine. And in case it's not clear why it's demotivating and depressing to practical people, practical people know that the only way to reach true painlessness is through suicide - since "death" is the only guarantee we have for the end of pain. Now I know that you object to that formulation, and we'll have to agree to disagree, but I am comfortable that reasonable people who aren't tripped up by word games realize that the only practical way to completely avoid pain is to end our lives, and that's not a reasonable formulation of why life is worth living.

It certainly sounds like from the record that Epicurus faced this same question of identifying the central goal, and that he came up with "Pleasure" as the answer. I think it's safe to say that that's why Torquatus is recorded to have said: "We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil."

You seem to advocate that our primary aim in life should be to eliminate pain, because you think that that is the way to bring about the greatest pleasure. I do not agree at all that Epicurus saw that as his message. I think he saw his message as "pleasure" as that word is ordinarily understood, to be achieved as he recommended through associating with friends, through all the pleasurable activities of food and dance and music and art and all the innumerable pleasing activities that are part of life, including all aspects of the study of nature, and the intelligent application of physics, epistemology, and ethics.

I think Epicurus also gained great pleasure from the combating of error in the world around him, and that's in large part why we have the Principle Doctrines organized as they are, rather than as a set of positive instructions on how to prepare food, and manage property, and make love, and all the other assorted ways to gain pleasures. Epicurus was a fighter, and a teacher, and a doctor, so he chose in the list of Principle Doctrines to combat false ideas by giving easy-to-remember antidotes. He addressed the false views of gods in PD1 and gave the answer that gods by nature do not cause troubles. He addressed the false ideas about death through PD2, by giving the answer that all troubles come through sensation, and death is the end of sensation and therefore of all troubles. And he addressed the false ideas of the Platonists who contended that pleasure cannot be the goal of life, because it has no limit, in PD3, by pointing out that the logical limit of pleasure is when ALL of our life's experiences are full of pleasures rather than of pains. There's nothing mystical or counter-intuitive in PD3, or in the letter to Menoeceus in the parts you are thinking of, because all they do is establish that pleasure has a limit and therefore pleasure can logically qualify as the goal of life. In my view, people who take your position are mistaking a logical argument for an ultimate practical expression of how to spend your time. You don't do that in regard to PD1 about gods or PD2 about death, and you shouldn't do it in regard to PD3 about pleasure either.

The great weight of the records of Epicurus's teachings all revolve around a very common-sense viewpoint that Pleasure is to be pursued and pain to be avoided. That's why Torquatus' summary quoted above is the best and clearest statement of the positive goal.

You've said to me in the past that "the way to ultimate pleasure is the removal of pain." It seems to me that I've seen those kind of formulations regularly in writings about Epicurus on the internet, and that sounds like it's advocating some painlessness as some special kind of pleasure, which I don't see at all. That's the subject of Elayne's article referring to "Fancy Pleasure" here on Epicureanfiends. As I see it, pleasure means pleasure as ordinary people understand it, and Epicurus' references to painlessness are nothing more than references to ordinary pleasures unaccompanied by any mixture of pain.

I think you'll likely conclude that we're really talking just terminology or semantics, but I think it is a huge hurdle to convince a normal and reasonable person that "painlessness" is an acceptable definition of the goal of life. Moreover, I don't think there's any reason to even consider trying to do that, because the goal is easily describable in ordinary words, as did Torquatus: " 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?"

That's why I strongly resist embracing the terminology of "absence of pain" or "painlessness" as anything other than in a very limited technical context, suitable for discussing logical arguments with well-educated philosophy students, but absolutely unsuitable as a practical guide for living. To me, when you set off with your goal defined as avoiding something, you'll never intelligently find your way to where you want to be, which is a life spent with the maximum number of pleasures while experiencing the least number of avoidable pains consistent with the attainment of those pleasures.

Again, the way most people in my experience function best is to positively identify what their goal is, and go after that goal. By nature and by consequence they end up avoiding the other things which are not their goal, and thereby they arrive at their life of pleasure with minimum pain. If they simply blind themselves to positive goal-setting and say simply "I want to avoid pain" then in my view they will never necessarily end up anywhere. Were they rigorously logical they would choose death as the most effective way to avoid pain, just as Epicurus suggested in his letter to Menoeceus, but that's more of a joke to healthy people than a serious hazard, because setting "avoiding pain" as a logical goal simply makes no sense to normal people.

But on that point, "avoiding pain" is not a joke to people who are hurting with any of the numerous kinds of depression that are so common today. It's relatively easy for us to joke and say that "painlessness" is our goal, because we who (we hope) are relatively healthy can wink and nod and realize that what we are saying has no practical content, and go on about our way pursuing pleasure rather than worrying about pain hiding under every bed. But we get lots of people interested in Epicurus who come to us in less-than-optimum mental condition, and if they hear that "painlessness" is the goal of life, then such people are apt to take that argument in exactly the wrong kind of direction to make matters worse for them.

In the end, I cannot shake the feeling that "painlessness" is a negative way of looking at things, while "pleasure" is the positive perspective, and in my experience it is essential to identify the positive goal as the starting point of all progress.

Now in closing I want to address one more aspect of this. Over the last couple of months in going through the Lucretius podcasts, I more convinced than ever that the "absence of pain" formulation was purely a logical construct being used against the anti-pleasure argument we've discussed before that appears in Philebus and other sources. Going through Lucretius, I've seen it observed that Lucretius(Epicurus) might have gone further than they should have with the evidence available to them, on issues like eternality and infinity especially.

Be that as it may and regardless of our modern view of eternality and infinity, I think Epicurus clearly knew what he was doing, even with the limits of his information, and he nevertheless thought it important to stake out a strong logical position against the arguments raised by the Platonists and other theists. That's why I am more convinced than ever that this "absence of pain" argument was exactly the same thing - it was a logical reply to the allegation that pleasure cannot be the goal because it has no limit.

I now see this as very much like the arguments on eternality and infinity. I personally continue to think that the Epicurean arguments on infinity and eternality remain compelling, but I agree that they aren't so important to many people today, because today, depending on our education, many of us don't think that gods created the universe or rule over us every day. That's why I think the path forward is not to get caught up in the logical arguments that were necessary to defeat Plato, except in those moments when we choose to engage in logical fencing and we choose to respond to Plato. If and when we are confronted with a Platonist asserting that pleasure is not the goal because Pleasure has no limit, we can answer: "the limit of pleasure is the absence of pain." Full stop - we have no need to take that argument any further into unsustainable discussions of "tranquility" or "painlessness is the ultimate pleasure" that contravene common sense definitions of pleasure and pain in ordinary human experience.

And to conclude, I don't think there's any evidence that Epicurus himself took those arguments any further to the extremes argued today. Epicurus uses the argument in the letter to Menoeceus and in the Principle Doctrines, but the rest of the textual record shows that Epicurus was writing and teaching on practical ways to pursue pleasurable living as non-philosophers understand that goal. That's the reason that Epicurus said so many other good things about ordinary pleasure that appear contradictory to the stoic interpretation of Pleasure, and that's why Diogenes Laertius recorded that Epicurus endorsed both pleasures of "action" and of "rest." These views weren't contradictory to him because he kept the normal definitions always in view, and he was discussing "limit of pleasure" only for the specific purpose of addressing and refuting the Platonic argument. The best interpretation that gives effect to ALL of what Epicurus is recorded to have said is that Epicurus was both a logical fencer AND a practical ethicist at the same time - and that's what we have to be too in order to understand him.

I am confident that Epicurus would say that if it takes a degree in philosophy to make common sense out of what he taught, then he failed miserably in his teaching career. I think the opposite is the case, however. I think it takes a degree in philosophy to twist Epicurean teaching into something that ordinary people can't recognize, and it's time to throw that counter-intuitive interpretation out the window.

In the example of the last day comment it does strike me that the shade of meaning is pretty close, but it definitely helps to point out the use of different words. We tend to put a lot of weight on small subtleties and we really need to be careful about that. Especially in Lucretius it seems like they often stated things in multiple ways for clarity, so that could be another factor in the use of different words too.

Thank you guys for those additional cites!

I was working today and needing to find the references to "continuous" pleasure and had a hard time finding them. Here are a couple:

USENER 116

Plutarch, Against Colotes, 17, p. 1117A: Such is ... the man who, in in the letter to Anaxarchus can pen such words as these: “But I, for my part, summon you to sustained pleasures and not to empty virtues, which fill us with vain expectations that destroy peace of mind.”

CICERO's ON ENDS

XII. 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.

At the moment he seems more inclined to engage me privately for a while so I am not sure he will post back. If he doesn't post publicly, I'll post some edited versions of our discussion either here or somewhere else.

I consider this article linked and attached here to worth reading as a step in the right direction - but one for which many more steps are needed. It's another effort to wrestle with the "absence of pain" issue, and I think it ends up much closer to the right place than most do, but I would go much further. Here is an edited version of my comments to the blogger, which I think are best placed here before the article is linked:

The article is an analysis of work by Toby Sherman, who writes (and these are not the words of the writer of the blog) "“This is because kinetic pleasures gain their value from their ability to reduce our sum of pain.” Put another way, kinetic pleasure is “remedial” and takes its “value…in the removal of what is bad.”"

I would call this almost "offensive" to me -- or better stated it just shows the kind of attitude that I have no sympathy with. Kinetic pleasures do not "gain their value from their ability to reduce our sum of pain." All pleasure is desirable in and of itself, and not for consequences relating to displacing of pain. PLEASURE is the motivating force of life, darn it, not running from pain! And I am not sure there is any bridge-building possible or desirable between people who see the world based purely on running from pain. For the thousandth time, if you really want to eliminate pain from life, there is one sure method for achieving that! The holding of "running from pain" as the meaning of life is the true "stoic" mentality, it seems to me, and I believe that the proper response to that is to recoil from it like recoiling at a snake - and then be prepared to strike back at it and eliminate it from your mind as a legitimate perspective on life.

And for Sherman to say that that it is possible to construct a "plausible" interpretation of Epicurus' views. How ridiculous - Epicurus' views of pleasure - when read as a whole and not through the modern commentators - are very clear for anyone who doesn't have that stoic run-from-pain mindset!

Of course I know there are many people who are exactly that way, and I feel very sorry for them, but we cannot allow them to monopolize Epicurus and keep "the truth" away from people who have a normal and healthy view of life, who not only need it just as much, but have the capability of understanding it and using it.

It looks like Sherman gets around to the Gosling and Taylor common sense understanding of the issue as a "full tank of positive pleasures of all kind" but it's painful to go through all the apologizing and stoicizing first.

Here's a clip:

My problem here is that the objection does not just "fail" -- it is absurd, ridiculous, offensive, and numerous other action adjectives, and it should be treated as such. I would perhaps make a small exception for the example of a doctor in a hospital full of homicidal maniacs who take such a position, and for such a doctor it might be be suicide to enlighten them as to their mania. And so such a doctor might well hold his tongue or even agree with the maniacs to their face in order to escape from them. Which, come to think of it, is an approximately accurate description of most of the academic world today, so maybe I should cut Sherman some slack.

"The Stoic account (and, of course, the Epicurean) places the control of desire at the centre of happiness." << I would not say that is accurate as to Epicureans. Yes desires are to be understood and pursued intelligently, but not "at the center" or as a goal in itself, as the Stoics seem to do. And the type of control and other aspects of the "control" issue are hugely different.

"Sherman says that any example which tries to prove that pleasure can be increased beyond perfect painlessness can be argued to show that the person experiencing said pleasure has yet to reach perfect Epicurean contentment." <<< My issue with that passage is that "contentment" is very misleading in the current age. It sounds like in most ears as the equivalent of sleep - doing absolutely nothing - and if you're working on making this into a practical philosophy, you probably should avoid a word that has so much negative baggage and inaccuracy. As long as we focus on tranquility and contentment and words like that, we'll never capture the core direction.

I think the whole issue at stake here is answered in this from On Ends:

"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.**"

The "will not admit of further improvement" is the full and complete answer to the problem that Sherman will never solve by calling this state "contentment."

THIS is the sentence that people need to focus on and embrace: " 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?"

OK with that intro, here is the article, with a copy attached here too: http://www.themodernepicurean.com/2020/09/06/epi…d-and-defended/

Wagner struggles with the issues of pleasure and pain in his Tannhauseur, and he makes the hero waiver back and forth, but some of the excerpts when he is praising pleasure and great poetry, especially when combined with his music. In this 30 minute clip I capture some of the most important of the pleasure/pain discussion. I've cued this to a short song outburst that is one of the best:

After the post I have cued, the second scene in this clip is also excellent. In the song contest, the hero sings in praise of what is at least a loosely Epicurean view of love/pleasure against what is very specifically a stoic/platonic view of love/pleasure. That begins at the point where two platonic lover sings a short statement, rebuked strongly by the hero, who is at this point pretty much channeling Epicurus, at 14:38. In both cases you'll hear a little bit of crosstalk that is less than inspiring, but if you give it just a few minutes in both scenes you will see exactly what I am talking about. In these excerpts, especially the singing contest, it appears to me that Wagner is showing that he knows **exactly** what the issues are between Epicurean and non-Epicurean views of pleasure. He seemingly takes the side of the Platonic/religionists in the end, but I think I have read, and I think myself, that his argument in favor of the Epicurean side is much more convincing. And if you wade through the whole of the play, the religionists don't come off so great either, and "god" seems to bless the hero despite his supposedly unpardonable flirtations with Venus.

Great approach, Charles - and that reminds me of something else, and I cannot believe that a search here does not pull it up....

Quote from Godfrey

Going back to the expensive car example: you may desire an expensive car because all your friends have one, or because James Bond has one, or because you think your clients expect you to drive one, or any number of other reasons. The resulting desire is, to me, much different from a pleasure/pain.

And the specifics of your example play right into Don's point about natural and necessary desires not being "intrinsic." The things that we decide on as some urgent discretionary need are totally contextual, and because they are totally contextual, we can deduce that there is nothing in their nature that makes them the way they are.

I say that because when I finish posting the recording of today's episode I think that's one of the points being made. One of the arguments that atoms do not have sense of their own is that some people are wise and others are foolish, and maybe the same person is both wise and foolish at different times. That makes it pretty darn hard to believe that people are made of wise or foolish atoms. All of the discussion of color and other qualities that change with context are relevant or at least analogous to this discussion. Whether an expensive car is a luxury or a necessary is totally dependent on the totality of the surrounding context, not a function of some "essence" within the atoms that make up the automobile.

Quote from Don

I would agree that desire and feeling or reaction or "internal sensation" (that's my personal least favorite translation incidentally) are closely connected.

That is an example of why I have come to count on Bailey as almost always coming up with my "least favorite" translation. It is as if he instinctively senses where there is an important issue and picks words that are least appropriate. The only thing good that I have to say about "internal sensation" is that it might be perceptive in linking feelings and sensations in at least the way they function, if not in every way similar. Considering feelings to be sensations helps mentally connect them also with the "all sensations are 'true'" viewpoint.

I am thinking that a "desire" is something closer to a "concept" in being the result of a conscious thought process where someone is picking among alternative courses of action as the one to pursue. Clearly that's a different issue than "feeling" which is as you said above more of a "reaction."

And yes I agree this is a key quote for this analysis:

Quote from Don

That echoes Epicurus's statement: Ask of each desire (epithumia): What happens if it is fulfilled and what if it's not? (VS 71)

Well we are together that desire must be a different thing than feeling, but what does that mean? It appears we are not together on something, but what is the something on which we are not together? The definition of desire?

My starting point would be that the two are very closely connected even if not the same - why would you desire anything but for the feeling (of pleasure or avoidance of pain) that it gives you?

And as to pathe, which I agree is key, what about this from Diogenes Laertius. Don it is my understanding that pathe is the same word used in both these passages, although Bailey calls it "feelings" in one place and "internal sensations" in the other. Is that not the case?

At any rate, I think the point at the moment is:

It appears we are not together on something, but what is the something on which we are not together? The definition of what it means "to desire" as a thought process?

Godfrey your observation is why I think maybe the essential word is "feeling" even more so than desire. I doubt you can truly have a "desire" without a feeling, so maybe they are equivalent, but I think the real war is between rationalism and theism vs feeling as the ultimate division between the Epicureans and the two major camps of anti Epicureans.

I was looking over this thread again and I keep coming back to Thomas Jefferson here:

Quote from Cassius

‘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.

Seems to me that he must have given a lot of thought to exactly the question Camotero is asking - that of coming up with a pithy summary to serve in his words as his habitual anodyne - ("I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne...")

Seems to me that he did a pretty good job of summing up the essentials of Epicurean physics, or maybe we should think of if as a perspective on physics, a combination of physics and epistemology, which he's correct to observe is the basis on which everything else rests.

Over time others can and will do better, and do it in more modern and elegant phrasing, but I do think this general direction is the right one. When you're questioning everything about your life, or when you're just trying to dig back to "what should my starting point be?" it seems to me this is pretty darn close.

And i gather that this is why Dewitt referred to the mind as a "supersensory organ"

Well I am not sure I can go much further! I think we're seeing that Epicurus's response to issues of "skepticism" and "knowledge"" was to focus on what those words meant and define as clearly as possible what it means to be "true" and "real" -- with the result that the rigorous conclusion is that "truth" for is what is or could be revealed to us through the canonical faculties. Asking for more than that --- asking for "certainty" -- implies a standard of proof that is impossible for a human being and is not even relevant to a human being in any way.

Within that kind of framework, what is "true" is what can be ascertained through the canonical faculties, and nothing else is or can be "true" or "real" to us.

As DeWitt says, Epicurus needed a standard of truth in the realm of relationships or abstractions - we need to go back and get his exact words - but I think that the problem arises when we say that the anticipations are standards of truth in the realm of "ideas." IDEAS are fully-formed concepts, and fully-formed concepts necessarily involved opinion and serve themselves as canonical "truth." Fully-formed ideas / concepts are highly useful and much to be appreciated, but they can never in themselves be considered "universal truths" that rise to the level of them always being true and real to individual humans.

Don in my mind this is where I always fall back to a passage from the 1770's book that I quote from by Jackson Barwis, his book against John Locke's argument against "innate ideas." Barwise defended not innate "ideas" but innate "principles of thinking." The book was entitled "Dialogue on Innate Principles." In that book (primarily chapter one of that book) Barwis argues that there is a huge distinction between innate IDEAS vs innate PRINCIPLES. Barwis argues that Locke and others are wrong to assert that there are innate *ideas*, but that there certainly are innate *principles of functioning* that go into ideas.

Here is the important section. Underlining is my emphasis Barwis is talking about innate "moral" principles here, but I think the point applies more widely to the issue of how "principles" are different from "ideas." I think the faculty of anticipations is dealing with the "principles' as discussed below, not with "ideas." We are not born with innate ideas, but we are born with a faculty that processes information in certain ways (according to certain principles):

---------------------

When I take a general view of the arguments adduced by Mr. Locke against innate moral principles; and when I see what he produces, as the most indisputable innate principles, “if any be so," I am inclined to think there must have been some very great mistake as to the true nature of the things in question: for he lays down certain propositions, (no matter whether moral or scientific, so they be but true) and then proves that such propositions, considered merely as propositions, formed by our rational faculty, after due consideration of things, as all true propositions must be, are not innate. Nothing more obvious! But surely those whom he opposes, must, or ought to have meant, (though I cannot say I have read their arguments, nor do I mean to answer for anyone but myself) not that the propositions themselves were innate, but, that the conscious internal sentiments, on which such moral propositions are founded, were innate.

He looked on me, interrogatively. I said it might be so, and that I saw a great difference in those things.

Or perhaps, continued he, the mistake may have arisen from following too closely the mode, in which it is necessary to proceed, in order to acquire a knowledge of certain sciences, as in geometry: that is, by laying down some clear and self-evident axioms, or rational propositions. But even here it should be remembered that, in the natures of things, there were principles which had existence anterior to the formation of these axioms or propositions, and on which they are founded, and on which they depend for their existence: as, extension and solidity.

-- I gave an assenting inclination of the head.

I cannot, therefore, conceive, added he, that what we ought to understand by innate moral principles, can by any means, when fairly explained, be imagined to bear any similitude to such propositions as Mr. Locke advances as bidding fairest to be innate, nor to any other propositions. That is, I cannot conceive that our innate moral principles, our natural sentiments, or internal conscious feelings, (name them how you please) which we derive, and which result, from our very nature as creatures morally relative, are at all like unto any propositions whatever.

Who can discover any similitude to any conscious sentiment of the soul in these strangely irrelative propositions: "Whatever is, is."
"It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be?"

– Nobody. –

The innate principles of the soul, continued he, cannot, any more than those of the body, be propositions. They must be in us antecedently to all our reasonings about them, or they could never be in us at all: for we cannot, by reasoning, create any thing, the principles of which did not exist antecedently. We can, indeed, describe our innate sentiments and perceptions to each other; we can reason, and we can make propositions about them; but our reasonings neither are, nor can create in us, moral principles. They exist prior to, and independently of, all reasoning, and all propositions about them.

When we are told that benevolence is pleasing; that malevolence is painful; we are not convinced of these truths by reasoning, nor by forming them into propositions: but by an appeal to the innate internal affections of our souls: and if on such an appeal, we could not feel within the sentiment of benevolence, and the peculiar pleasure attending it; and that of malevolence and its concomitant pain; not all the reasoning in the world could ever make us sensible of them, or enable us to understand their nature.

...

Even in the abstracted sciences of arithmetic and geometry, reason can create no principles in the natures of the things treated of. It can lay down axioms, and draw up propositions concerning numbers, extension, and solidity; but numbers, extension, and solidity, existed prior to any reasoning about them.

And here I must observe that the assent or dissent that we give to propositions in these sciences, which are but little interesting to our nature, is drawn from a source widely different from that which we give to moral propositions. Thus, when we are told that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and see the demonstration; we say simply, true. That they are equal to three right angles; false. These things being irrelative to morals, they move no conscious sentiment, and do therefore only receive our bare assent or dissent as a mere object of sense; in the same manner as when we say a thing is, or is not, black or white, or round or square; we use our eyes, and are satisfied. But the truth or falsehood of moral propositions must be judged of by another measure; through a more interesting medium: we must apply to our internal sense; our divine monitor and guide within; through which the just and unjust, the right and wrong, the moral beauty and deformity of human minds, and of human actions, can only be perceived. And this internal sense must most undoubtedly be innate, as we have already shown; it could not otherwise have existence in us; we not being able, by reasoning, or by any other means, to give ourselves any new sense, or to create, in our nature, any principle at all. I therefore think Mr. Locke, in speaking of innate moral principles, ought, at least, to have made a difference between propositions relative to morals, and those which have no such relation.

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If you get interested in the entire argument, it is here:.

So the argument that I would make is that there must be some kind of innate mechanism that assembles mental pictures, and that did this mechanism not exist, we would never experience mental pictures in the first place. This mental picture mechanism functions "innately" - pre-rationally, and it can function in ways that we conclude are not "true to all the facts."

An example of that would be in Epicurus's letter to Menoeceus: "But they are not such as the many believe them to be: for indeed they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be. And the impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many. For the statements of the many about the gods are not [pre]conceptions derived from sensation, but false suppositions, according to which the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked and the greatest blessings (the good) by the gift of the gods." (This is the Bailey version, and he insists on using "concepts." I inserted the [pre] because everyone else uses anticipations or prolepsis here rather than "concepts." This is why I am so unhappy with Bailey much of the time.)

Quote from Don

Are the epibolē and prolepses two facets of the same faculty? I believe we've discussed elsewhere on the forum the innate nature of the prolepses. The phrase phantastikē epibolē occurs in DL X.50 and 51

I would say almost certainly yes, they are two facets or descriptions of the same faculty. I agree with your comment that this listing of three almost certainly is intended to be a listing of the three legs of the canon. That is why I think there's so much work to do in understanding exactly what "an anticipation" really is. I think an anticipation/prolepsis/mental presentation/mental picture canNOT be a "concept" as we understand the term in logical reasoning, for example as with the concept of "capitalism" or the concept of "socialism" or whatever. Something that is "defined" in terms of "words" necessarily entails opinions about what to include, and therefore cannot be "canonical" or constitute a "mental picture" which is canonical.

But on the other hand a certain number of mental images probably constitutes at least part of the input that is eventually used to form a "concept." So what I am thinking is that these are parallel: the faculty of anticipations must be something like "sight." Sight is a faculty whereby the eyes assemble and process light. The anticipations would be parallel in that the "faculty of anticipations" assembles and processes mental pictures without thinking about them. But no single mental picture is a "concept" any more than a single photon or processing of light is a "sight." Cameras produce images but don't "think" about them. Our brains/minds presumably assemble all these things (input from eyes, ears, feelings, anticipations, etc) through pre-rational processes, and that "pre-rationality" is the essence of what I would think Epicurus would insist is required for a faculty to be described as canonical. If opinion is involved in producing something, then the result cannot be "trusted" or given the same level of authority as any of the three canonical faculties. If we do elevate a concept formed by reasoning to canonical status, then we have a feedback loop, and we have erased the distinction between the canonical faculties and opinions.

Error comes in opinion and the assembling and uses of opinions (the rational process). Whatever anticipations are, I firmly think that Epicurus saw them as "pre-rational," and that would fit a faculty that "automatically" assembles individual mental pictures just like the eyes and the ears assemble light and sounds without "thinking" about them.

What are our takeaways from this?

I would say first and most easily obvious he is saying that we should pay attention to all our faculties and the information that they provide to us (presumably because they are reported honestly and in this sense are "true"). That's probably pretty noncontroversial, except maybe if someone pursues the non-Epicurean reasoning that the senses are never to be trusted and should simply be ignored in favor of pure dialectical reasoning.

The deeper parts include:

(1) That the data from the "mental presentations' / anticipations" and also the feelings of pleasure and pain are entitled to equal consideration with the data from the five senses.

(2) That we should "wait" and hold open as at least potentially "true" all theories which have support from some date from some combination of the three faculties, and

(3) That we should be careful not to select from among the unrefuted possibilities any favorite or pet theory to hold as the only "true" possibility so long as other possibilities remain viable.

All of this is also presumably the foundation of affirming that "truth" comes to us through these three faculties and not from any other way which is NOT based on these three faculties (i.e. divine revelation, totally abstract logic / rationalism)

I would say one of the most continuously difficult parts is that of separating (1) instances of data provided by the "mental presentations/anticipations" from (2) conceptual reasoning, in which concepts are formed after a lot of thought and deliberation and reasoning. I continue to think that if we were to equate "mental presentations/anticipations" with "concepts" we would be confusing two distinct things (the process vs the result) into a single thing (the concept which the result of thinking) and we'd have a feedback loop which would introduce rationalism into the canon and would be why that Epicurus himself only had THREE legs, but the "other Epicureans (in my view mistakenly) came up with four.

Great work Don! Thanks for preparing that!

Yes I think that is an EXCELLENT analogy. I'm trying to generalize the observation so as to get the most meaning out of it possible. Maybe every math / geometry class from grade school on up ought to start on day one with.

"No matter how enthralled you get with this subject, remember: MATH CAN HELP US DESCRIBE REALITY, BUT MATH ITSELF IS NOT REALITY!"

(probably a better way to phrase that but you get the idea)