Posts by Cassius

From Elli -

Guys It took me a whole year and something to LEARN my two little boys to not shit on their napkins-pampers. It took me a whole year and something to learn them WORDS AND WHAT THE WORDS DENOTE ! Epicurus DOES NOT addressed to little children. Epicurus adressed to mature guys and speaks about pre-concepts/images that are in the brain and derived from concepts based on words :

First of all, guys, we must grasp the CONCEPTS attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning. For this purpose it is essential that the first MENTAL IMAGE associated with EACH WORD should be regarded, and that there should be NO NEED OF EXPLANATION, if we are really to have a STANDARD to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference. And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the MIND or of ANY ONE OF THE INSTRUMENTS OF JUDGEMENT, and likewise in accord with the FEELINGS existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen..

And every image which we obtain by an act of apprehension on the part of the mind or of the sense-organs, whether of shape or of properties, this image is the shape or the properties of the concrete object, and is produced by the constant repetition of the image or the impression it has left. Now falsehood and error always lie in the addition of opinion with regard to what is waiting to be confirmed or not contradicted, and then is not confirmed or is contradicted. For the similarity between the things which exist, which we call real and the images received as a likeness of things and produced either in sleep or through some other acts of apprehension on the part of the mind or the other instruments of judgment, could never be, unless there were some effluences of this nature actually brought into contact with our senses. And error would not exist unless another kind of movement too were produced inside ourselves, closely linked to the apprehension of images, but differing from it; and it is owing to this, supposing it is not confirmed, or is contradicted, that falsehood arises; but if it is confirmed or not contradicted, it is true. Therefore we must do

our best to keep this doctrine in mind, in order that on the one hand the standards of judgment dependent on the clear visions may not be undermined, and on the other error may not be as firmly established as truth and so throw all into confusion.

Moreover, we must suppose that human nature too was TAUGHT and constrained to do many things of every kind merely by circumstances; and that later on REASONING elaborated what had been suggested by nature and made further inventions, in some matters quickly, in others slowly, at some epochs and times making great advances, and lesser again at others. And so NAMES too were not at first deliberately GIVEN TO THINGS, but men’s natures according to their different nationalities had their own peculiar feelings and received their peculiar impressions, and so each in their own way emitted air formed into shape by each of these feelings and impressions, according to the differences made in the different nations by the places of their abode as well. And then later on by common consent in each nationality SPECIAL NAMES were deliberately given in order to make their MEANINGS OR CONCEPTS less ambiguous to one another and more BRIEFLY DEMONSTRATED. And sometimes those who were acquainted with them brought in things hitherto unknown and introduced sounds for them, on some occasions being naturally constrained to utter them, and on others choosing them by REASONING in accordance with the prevailing mode of FORMATION, and thus making their MEANING-CONCEPT CLEAR.

Cassius to Elli -

Elli I am sorry I will be driving most of the rest of the day, so my responses will be delayed but this is what I would like to talk about: Given what you wrote, what is your interpretation of this passage from Diogenes Laertius? What is the difference between the position taken by Epicurus himself and that of "the Epicureans"?

"Thus in The Canon Epicurus says that the tests of truth are the sensations and anticipations and the feelings; the Epicureans add to these the intuitive apprehensions of the mind."

And also what is your interpretation of this passage from the Epicurean speaker Velleius in "on the nature of the gods"?

"For Epicurus alone first founded the idea of the existence of the Gods on the impression which Nature herself hath made on the minds of all men. For what nation, what people are there, who have not, without any learning, a natural idea, or prenotion, of a Deity? Epicurus calls this anticipation; that is, an antecedent conception of the fact in the mind, without which nothing can be understood, inquired after, or discoursed on. This is the force and advantage of the reasoning we receive from that celestial volume of Epicurus concerning The Rule and Judgment of Things.”

“Here, then, you see the foundation of this question clearly laid. Since it is the constant and universal opinion of mankind, independent of education, custom, or law, that there are Gods, it must necessarily follow that this knowledge is implanted in our minds, or, rather, innate in us. That opinion respecting which there is a general agreement in universal Nature must infallibly be true."

Elli's comment on that last summary:

Cassius wrote : Glancing back at the state of the summary of the canon, my current thought is that it is no so important to take a detailed position on how anticipations operate, and the main thing is noting (as I think we do) that preconceptions are an innate faculty for the forming of conceptions. The question of *how* conceptions are formed can be left to another day so long as the general statement doesn't imply that reason is used to form them.

<<the preconceptions are an innate faculty for the forming of conceptions>>.

I do not agree Cassius, with the procedure, because is not started like this ! First are the concepts based on words and then they become pre-concepts.

i.e. The concepts have been formed with the words and the faculty of speech and are based on words and with this way they exist inside the brain as pre-concepts =images, and the brain draws them very quickly and spontaneously when we speak or we see or we feel something around us.

1. example : we watch the Discovery channel and we ask : What is this animal that has a body with white and black stripes and eating grass ? Someone who know what is zebra would answer zebra. Someone who does not know what is zebra would say that is seems to be like a horse. Both they are right, because they see an animal, and this is the main concept of the word animal. But the accurate one is the first who said zebra. Since he learned the word what is the animal zebra, he knows the name of the animal zebra, and has this pre-concept with an image in his brain. And that is because his mother and father read him books with pictures with animals or they went to the zoo to watch the animals and they gave him all the names of the animals For complicated concepts e.g. for "justice" the child learned with experiences based on words with discussions and actions inside his home, after in school, after in the society and so on, but all have been formed with the words and the faculty of speech that is based on senses and calculation pleasure and pain. And all are as pre-concepts/images inside the brain. The brain remembers the most of the experiences and has the capacity to store, to add, to remove, but nothing is not removed totally. There is not a total format in the brain while we are alive because we have been formed the preconcepts-images already.

2. example : The preconcept /image based on the concept of the word "home " ! One has formed a pre-concept inside his the brain based on the experience of a palace, another one of an apartment, another one of detached house, another one of a hut, and the Diogenis the cynic of his pot. But all they think and speak for the same thing-concept based on the word "home", and all they have the pre-concept/image about a shelter to not be cold.

IMO this is the procedure, and if it won't be like this the world and the reality will be chaotic.

Glancing back at the state of the summary of the canon, my current thought is that it is no so important to take a detailed position on how anticipations operate, and the main thing is noting (as I think we do) that preconceptions are an innate faculty for the forming of conceptions. The question of *how* conceptions are formed can be left to another day so long as the general statement doesn't imply that reason is used to form them.

However I think the current version needs a brief passage added to emphasize the role of pain and pleasure. The point of emphasis in Torquatus is that Nature herself is the judge of what is and is not contrary to Nature, and that the only faculty given us by Nature to judge that which is desirable and undesirable in itself is the faculty of pleasure and pain.

As long as we emphasize like Torquatus that pleasure is the only faculty given us for knowing what is desirable in itself,. then we cut off any implication that anticipations or cognitive reasoning could be used to justify a different or superior goal to that of living pleasurably.

Here's the section from Torquatus:

“This he sets out to prove as follows: Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, and at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict. Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to be avoided. These facts, he thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that fire is hot, snow is white, honey is sweet. None of these things need be proved by elaborate argument -- it is enough merely to draw attention to them. For there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a thing and a mere notice or reminder. The former is the method for discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.”

“Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains. It follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature. What does Nature perceive or what does she judge of, beside pleasure and pain, to guide her actions of desire and of avoidance?”

“Some members of our school however would refine upon this doctrine. These say that it is not enough for the judgment of good and evil to rest with the senses. The facts that pleasure is in and for itself desirable and pain in and for itself to be avoided can also be grasped by the intellect and the reason. Accordingly, they declare that the perception that the one is to be sought after and the other avoided is a natural and innate idea of the mind. Others again, with whom I agree, observing that a great many philosophers advance a vast array of reasons to prove why pleasure should not be counted as a good nor pain as an evil, consider that we had better not be too confident of our case. In their view, it requires elaborate and reasoned argument, and abstruse theoretical discussion of the nature of pleasure and pain.

____________________

Here's an effort to emphasize the role of pleasure and to generalize on anticipations

Canon: the Standard of Truth

*********************

The entire system of Epicurean philosophy is based on the study of nature. Taken together, our connections with nature are referred to as the Canon of Truth, which is the "measure" or "test" of those opinions which we hold to be true. Epicurus identified three categories of human faculties which comprise the way in which we measure truth: (1) the "five senses" (the faculties by which we perceive sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell), (2) the "anticipations" (a mental faculty by which we process abstractions), and (3) the "feelings" (the faculty by which we perceive pleasure and pain). In setting out his Canon, Epicurus was reacting against the Skeptics, who denied that it was possible for humans to have clear knowledge about the world around us, and the Platonists, who held that logic is the pathway to a divine and absolute truth that governs all humanity at all times and all places.

While other schools deny that truth is knowable by ordinary humans, we reject that view and hold that humans can have confidence in their conclusions by referring to the proper standard for establishing something as true. This is the role of the Epicurean Canon of Truth - by it we recognize that our natural faculties are the fundamental touchstone on which we make judgments as to what is and is not true. The Canon is sometimes compared to a tripod, because its three legs provide a steady foundation on which we make all judgments about what is true and what is false.

It is important to see that the faculties of the Canon are *pre-cognitive.* The faculties of the Canon report to us their perceptions, and it is up to our minds to organize this raw data into opinions that we can consider to be true or false. Each natural faculty has unique jurisdiction over its particular aspect of nature; each is a direct contact with reality that reports to us raw and unprocessed information. Only eyes can see. Only ears can hear. Only the faculty of pleasure and pain can inform us what to choose and what to avoid. Only the faculty of anticipations can allow us to form and work with concepts in a way consistent with human nature. In this role as witnesses, the faculties of the canon work together to provide data. On the foundation of that data our minds then weigh and balance this information, comparing data from multiple observations and under varying conditions, and from the resulting data we assemble those observations into conclusions. Through this process of gathering data and testing our opinions against that data, we are enabled by Nature to have confidence that our judgments are consistent with reality.

The Epicurean Canon has many profound implications. Among the most important is that the Canon establishes Nature, and not "Reason," as the ultimate standard and authority for truth. Nature herself is the judge of what is and is not contrary to Nature, and the only faculty given us by Nature to judge that which is desirable and undesirable in itself is the faculty of pleasure and pain. Thus wisdom through true reasoning is the process of properly processing the information provided by the Canon to achieve pleasurable living. Reason is used in the service of pleasurable living to decide when to forgo certain pleasures or to choose certain pains, but always toward the single goal of living pleasurably. Abstractions and opinions about ethical issues are not direct contacts with reality, and in order to be considered to be true must always be tested against Nature's goal for life - living pleasurably.

Another profound implication is that the Canon emancipates us from arbitrary authorities. A famous example of this was the Epicurean defiance of conventional notions of the role of women and slaves, who were treated as intellectual equals in the Garden of Epicurus. In their search for truth the Epicureans do not look to priests, to mediators, to divine revelation, or to experts in logic, but to the faculties provided by Nature. Thus Epicureans study how these faculties operate, how the data they provide can sometimes be distorted, and how those distortions can be corrected. Only by grounding all our opinions and our choices in the data provided by the Canon of Truth can we live happily and in accordance with nature.

The classic one in regard to gods is from the letter to Menoeceus. This is Bailey, and he uses the word "conceptions" but that prejudges the issue; other translators use preconceptions or anticipations: "The things which I used unceasingly to commend to you, these do and practice, considering them to be the first principles of the good life. First of all believe that god is a being immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a god is engraved on men’s minds, and do not assign to him anything alien to his immortality or ill-suited to his blessedness: but believe about him everything that can uphold his blessedness and immortality. For gods there are, since the knowledge of them is by clear vision. 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 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. For men being accustomed always to their own virtues welcome those like themselves, but regard all that is not of their nature as alien."

EXAMPLE TWO

Example 2 is from the letter to Herodotus as to time. Here again is Bailey, prejudging and using the word conception again:

Moreover, you must firmly grasp this point as well; we must not look for time, as we do for all other things which we look for in an object, by referring them to the general conceptions which we perceive in our own minds, but we must take the direct intuition, in accordance with which we speak of “a long time” or “a short time,” and examine it, applying our intuition to time as we do to other things. Neither must we search for expressions as likely to be better, but employ just those which are in common use about it.

Nor again must we predicate of time anything else as having the same essential nature as this special perception, as some people do, but we must turn our thoughts particularly to that only with which we associate this peculiar perception and by which we measure it. For indeed this requires no demonstration, but only reflection, to show that it is with days and nights and their divisions that we associate it and likewise also with internal feelings or absence of feeling, and with movements and states of rest; in connection with these last again we think of this very perception as a peculiar kind of accident, and in virtue of this we call it time.

EXAMPLE THREE

The third is in relation to justice - from Dewitt

Also check this page for the placement of preconception: http://wiki.epicurism.info/Principal_Doctrine_38/

A post by Elli:

<<But first of all, Herodotus, before we begin the investigation of our opinions, we must firmly grasp the concepts that are attached to our words (Epicurus greek sentence is "τα υποτεταγμένα τοις φθόγγοις"), so that we can refer to them as we proceed. Unless we have a firm grasp of the meaning of each word, we leave everything uncertain, and we go on to infinity using empty words that are devoid of meaning. Thus it is essential that we rely on the first mental image associated with each word, without need of explanation, if we are to have a firm standard to which to refer as we proceed in our study>>.

According to the scientific findings :

Prolepsis= anticipations, as a creterion of truth in the Canon, are not the instincts. Instincts for humans is the neurotransmitter of dopamine that stimulates a desire to satisfy the instinctive needs (natural and necessary i.e. food, water and making sex).

Prolepsis =anticipations are based on the ability of the human speech.

Humans after they born they can learn and using words. The first language with words is taught by our parents' language. Then we learn and other languages.

Words are connected with concepts based on images of the reality.

Humans can think, can have imagination, abstract imagination, and making many calculations. As well as humans dream to imagine (vision) themselves in the future. Prudence as an ability of human is a practical reasoning based on experiences with actions for making right calculations among pleasure and pain, to achieve the goal of pleasure and when any pleasure is fulfilled, also <<eudaimonia>> is achieved too, as said by Epicurus. When we do actions based on prudence, is injected to the body the hormone endorphin which is synonym with the word "eudaimonia"and makariotita = "bliss-blissful". As endorphin is natural and is injected by natural activities is also balanced with the right doses in the body.

Because in the opposite if someone takes narcotics, he stimulates the dopamine connected with a desire to gain a goal of pleasure, but the endorphin as a chemical substitute i.e. heroin, morphine etc. is not natural and it is not injected in the body with the balanced doses, and the goal of eudaimonia is not gained.

Thus the body after the lack of heroin has pains and the person goes to an endless circle to gain a pleasure that is not the balanced one..

Human being confuses a desire (dopamine) as he wants to gain a pleasure. But meanwhile there is not a right calculation (not prudence) among pleasure and pain, thus, the consequence is not beneficial and is painful.

The doctors give serotonin (a chemical substitute as the dopamine) to the persons that suffers from depression. Those persons that suffers of lack of serotonine have not any desire to fulfill any goal.

When there is a huge pain in the body usually in the diseases of cancer opiates and morphine are the chemical substitute of endorphin. Thus, Epicurus was right to define that the pleasure is synonym with the words aponia, ataraxia and eudaimonia.

Doctrine 3. The limit of quantity in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful. Wherever pleasure is present, as long as it is there, there is neither pain of body nor of mind, nor of both at once.

Fg 2. Lack of mental disturbance and lack of bodily pain are static pleasures (means eudaimonia), whereas revelry and rejoicing are active pleasures involving movement.

Fg 423 What brings unsurpassed pleasure is the removal of a great pain; and this is the nature of the good, if you apply your mind rightly and then stand firm and do not stroll about chattering emptily.

____________


Hiram:

But if prolepsis is linked to human soeech as you say, how does that connect with the Letter to Herodotus when towards the end it refers to our ability ro conceive of time as prolepsis? I have linked this before to the circadian rhythms which are biological, and therefore instincts.

Elli:

\Hiram where does Epicurus say to conceive the time as prolepsis ?? Here is the passage from Herodotus letter : <<Moreover, you must firmly grasp this point as well; we must not look for time, as we do for all other things which we look for in an object, by referring them to the general conceptions which we perceive in our own minds, but we must take the direct intuition, in accordance with which we speak of “a long time” or “a short time,” and examine it, applying our intuition to time as we do to other things. Neither must we search for expressions as likely to be better, but employ just those which are in common use about it.

Nor again must we predicate of time anything else as having the same essential nature as this special perception, as some people do, but we must turn our thoughts particularly to that only with which we associate this peculiar perception and by which we measure it. For indeed this requires no demonstration, but only reflection, to show that it is with days and nights and their divisions that we associate it and likewise also with internal feelings or absence of feeling, and with movements and states of rest; in connection with these last again we think of this very perception as a peculiar kind of accident, and in virtue of this we call it time>>.

Comments by another poster:

See Schneider's great MA thesis on perception for a field survey that includes Bailey, DeWitt, and other commentators, https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%…zXrEiq6ZNn3s7g-

Look at this criticism: "As later scholars note, Bailey's rich interpretation of the role played by the apprehension (epiboles) of the senses and the mind goes beyond well the evidence."

And for those who really want to dive into the details, here is an extended discussion (note: by Bailey!) of "present impressions of the mind." The cites I have mentioned here from Bailey give a good overview of the majority/non-Dewitt position on this topic. https://archive.org/stream/Epicuru…e/n257/mode/2up

The following notes were from a discussion in 2017 among several of our core members. The discussion was prompted when we were talking about trying to come to a summary position on the nature of anticipations, which proved to be something we had to defer. The discussion was also in part influenced by the Voula Tsouna article "Epicurean Preconceptions."

To illustrate the anti-DeWitt position, I am going to post separately in the files section the chapter from Bailey's "Greek Atomists and Epicurus" on Canonics, which includes Anticipations.

I always cite Bailey with hesitation because I frequently find his interpretations unconvincing, and he is clearly not sympathetic to Epicurus or try to interpret Epicurus in a favorable light. He is in my view the opposite of DeWitt. So while I strongly trust DeWitt due to his lifetime of work and research in support of Epicurus, it is possible that DeWitt gets certain interpretations wrong. And while I strongly distrust Bailey, due to his constant stated disagreement with and deprecation of Epicurus' views, it is possible that he gets particular interpretations correct. Here is the Bailey / Majority view of anticipations:

"According to Epicurean psychology the act of perception in the sense-organ stirs the particles of 'soul' in its neighbourhood and they communicate the movement to other soul-particles and so on till the movement reaches the mind (which is situated in the breast), and there creates a representation of the sense-image. The mind then by a spontaneous movement, akin to the act of attention on the part of the senses, compares the new image with previously existing general conceptions and pronounces that 'this is, or is not, so-and-so'. Just as without cognition mere sensation is valueless, so the individual image is without significance apart from the general concept: apart from the general concept no one can inquire or feel doubt or even hold an opinion, no, nor refute one’.' So far Epicurus’ position does not seem to be peculiar: the acceptance of cognition as a necessary element in perception, and the admission of the impossibility of classication or even recognition without general conceptions are practically universal. It is necessary to ask how Epicurus conceived his general concepts, what was their origin and what their validity.

To return for a moment to psychology, the ‘mind-image’ aroused by the movements of the soul-particles started in their turn by the sensational motions of the sense-organs, does not immediately perish, but remains stored up in the mind, and may be, as it were, ‘called up’ for subsequent contemplation. Thus an act of memory is the momentary attention of the mind to an ‘image’ so preserved in itself, and a mental comparison is the apprehension by the mind of two or more such images side by side. But this is not all, for when as the result of many individual perceptions of objects of the same class, a series of similar images, is, as it were, heaped one upon another in the mind, the result is a kind of ‘composite photograph’ of the genus or species: the dissimilarities of the individual images have disappeared, and that which is common to all is retained in what is in fact a ‘general concept’. The combined ‘images’ of many horses, seen in sense-perception, has created in the mind the ‘general concept’ of ‘horse’.

To this ‘general concept’ Epicurus gives the name of ‘anticipation': it is that which we have permanently in our mind to enable us to anticipate the general appearance of anything for which we are looking or wish to create, and to identify and distinguish the individual images of sense-perception when they are presented to us. ‘Anticipations’ then take their place as the second criterion of truth. They owe their validity to the fact that, although they are not themselves directly sensations, they are immediately built up of sensations: our ‘anticipation’ of horse is simply the aggregate--or perhaps one should rather say the average-—of a number of individual sensations of horses. The 'anticipation' is not itself 'true' for it does not correspond to or issue from any one external existence, but it is a 'clear vision' and as such a test of truth: that which is the common element in a number of 'images' of 'horse' must itself constitute a clear general 'image' of 'horse', and to it may be referred as a certain test the subsequent 'images' presented to us in sense-perception.

This account of the 'anticipations' is not to be found explicitly stated in any Epicurean source, but it is generally adopted by modern writers, and is strongly supported by such testimony as is available.....

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And here is Bailey stating the inevitable result of holding that anticipations are "concepts" - "the concepts are themselves infallible as tests of truth just as are individual sensations." So the concept of "capitalism" or "socialism" is just as infallible as a test of truth as your seeing and touching and tasting an ice cream cone and finding it pleasurable (???)

Godfrey I thought I just saw you post again on anticipations but now I don't see it.... (something about kudos on the forum and then being in the weeds on preconceptions - maybe I misread it.)

I know that several of us had a long conversation about this article when it came out, but I can't find it. If anyone has notes in addition to Hiram, please post.

File

Epicurean Preconceptions - Tsouna

Epicurean Preconceptions

Cassius

April 13, 2019 at 11:14 PM

Yes it is fascinating stuff.

Also - in the last year or two there was a major article written on preconceptions by Voula Tsouna. If I recall, she takes the "mainstream" position, but also if I recall correctly she cites much material from David Sedley which is more sympathetic to the intuition/DeWitt position.

File

Epicurean Preconceptions - Tsouna

Epicurean Preconceptions

Cassius

April 13, 2019 at 11:14 PM

It has been several years since I read this but I see Hiram wrote down some of his notes here: My notes - Tsouna's Prolepsis Essay

I have also found some notes from a discussion between several of us on this topic and have placed that in this subforum.

This weekend I finished a review by audiobook of Cicero's "Academic Questions / Tusculun Disputations." I know in my own case, reinforced by the material at Epicurus.net, I have always focused on "On Ends" for key Epicurean passages. Reviewing these other works reminds me that although there is not a long narrative like Torquatus gives in On Ends, there is a tremendous amount of interesting information in other parts of Cicero.

As I type this, the part that jumps out at me is that while I continue to believe that the influence of Abrahamic religions has been one of the most negative influences on the Western world, it seems clear that most, if not all, of the same pernicious influences were inherent in mainstream Greek philosophy of the Socratic / Platonic / Aristotelian / Stoic type, which Cicero seems to have correctly regarded as essentially similar in fundamental nature -- all focuses on a master creator in an essentially monotheistic view. Cicero was right to treat Epicurus as a black sheep among the Greek philosophers, and it's a travesty that modern commentators equate him with the Stoics.

Cicero seems to me to be maybe the best source material for really understanding how fundamental a revolution Epicurus was promoting. Cicero treated with hostility, but considered Epicurus as a major rival, if not quite on par with the Socratic mainstream. Since the others largely agreed with each other, Cicero was was constantly comparing and contrasting the mainstream view of virtue, fate, divinity, epistemology, etc., against the Epicurean view.

There's a tremendous amount of good information to be dug out of his works beyond On Ends and On The Nature of the Gods. I am going to devote as much time as I can to working through that and posting quotes that we don't normally discuss here. The text I am working from is the link below:

https://archive.org/details/academicquestio00cice/page/n5

Godfrey I think DeWitt would say in reference to the letter to Herodotus that the issue of forming words with precise meanings, and using those for reference, is a really important and useful thing to do (as he says in the letter). The issue is whether (1) what he is talking about there are preconceptions/anticipations, or simply the kind of conceptual reasoning that everyone acknowledges to exist and to be important, and (2) how that process relates to something going on as an automatic perceptual process, which (arguably) is more what anticipations would be.

I remain convinced of DeWitt's position because i think (1) that anything that involves "opinion" (and I think conceptual reasoning clearly does) must not be part of the canon, and (2) to read the process of forming words as being canonical, i think it would be necessary to conclude that the formation of words (assigning particular observations to particular words/concepts) is an automatic perceptual process, but I think the existence of different words for the same thing in different languages is strong evidence that we are not all guided to come up with the same words for the same concepts.

Welcome @myrna ! When you get a chance please introduce yourself and tell us about your background in Epicurus.

After a couple of heated arguments today (with relatives!) about the existence of supernatural gods, I need to go back and compile a list of the Epicurean texts which say things to to effect that unless you totally dismiss fables from your mind you can't be truly happy. In other words, "I don't know" isn't good enough. I found a couple below, but I know that there are some in Lucretius on which I can't put my finger, and probably other sources as well. I think I specifically remember parts of Lucretius to the effect that learning a little science can even make things worse unless you dismiss the idea of religious fables. I will eventually find these myself, but it might be a good exercise to talk about, and maybe others will think of cites that I have missed. Please post any more that fit this same theme:

PD12. A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe but suspects the truth of some mythical story. So that without natural science it is not possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed.

Letter to Pythocles: "Unless this be done, the whole study of celestial phenomena will be in vain, as indeed it has proved to be with some who did not lay hold of a possible method, but fell into the folly of supposing that these events happen in one single way only and of rejecting all the others which are possible, suffering themselves to be carried into the realm of the unintelligible, and being unable to take a comprehensive view of the facts which must be taken as clues to the rest.

"All this, Pythocles, you should keep in mind; for then you will escape a long way from myth, and you will be able to view in their connexion the instances which are similar to these. But above all give yourself up to the study of first principles and of infinity and of kindred subjects, and further of the standards and of the feelings and of the end for which we choose between them. For to study these subjects together will easily enable you to understand the causes of the particular phenomena. And those who have not fully accepted this, in proportion as they have not done so, will be ill acquainted with these very subjects, nor have they secured the end for which they ought to be studied."

Lucretius:

Just wanted to post a quick note to thank the regulars for checking in so frequently. We're now having close to ten people check in daily, and that's the best we have had since the forum started.

If anyone has any suggestions or issues with use of the forum please post and we'll try to address them. We recently had a few comments about unreadable text when pasting from Microsoft Word or another word processor. That doesn't happen if you compose in a plain text editor, but if you find that it happens to you, just highlight the text, click the paintbrush icon (labeled font color) and click the "Remove Color" option at the bottom.

Thanks again for your time and conversation here!

Elli you will be interested in this screenshot:

I see that anyone is invited to participate at the rate of 60 pounds per year --

(1) Even before reading the article I am immediately suspicious of efforts to combine Epicurus and the stoa BUT

(2) I immediately am very pleased to hear about postings on Epicuro.org being translated into English! Great news!

(3) Now after checking out the page it seems to be very general, with not much in the way of detailed comment. And it looks perhaps most focused on the influence of the ancient languages.