Posts by Elayne

Ah, ok Oscar-- this is actually my area, because of my career, both the MD and PhD in medicine. What you are talking about is levels of evidence, from anecdotal (lowest level) to highly replicated evidence from double blinded, controlled prospective trials, which attempt to remove confounders and determine if two events are definitely associated, then if the association is causal. The kind of thing I was addressing with Hiram in the links he gave for mindfulness.

However, this information was still obtained subjectively. We "know" it only because we have replicated it stringently-- it's not a different type of knowledge.

A baby who drops objects off the high chair over and over is doing the same thing. That's their rudimentary physics experimenting.

Reason is involved in processing the subjective data, for sure. But reason isn't objective either, because it doesn't bring _new_ data in. It's a tool to use when processing data. And it has its own glitches.

Oscar, I am confused. How do you propose we can have "knowledge" that isn't subjective? We know what is real through our subjective senses, feelings, and prolepses. Sometimes by comparing notes. No other way to know anything.

Although sense organs and instruments can malfunction, as in hallucinations, we use multiple senses and reconcile the information from all of them together-- plus we can talk to each other.

Oscar, I am confused. How do you propose we can have "knowledge" that isn't subjective? We know what is real through our subjective senses, feelings, and prolepses. Sometimes by comparing notes. No other way to know anything.

Although sense organs and instruments can malfunction, as in hallucinations, we use multiple senses and reconcile the information from all of them together-- plus we can talk to each other.

Oscar, the objective/ subjective issue-- yes, there is a reality independent of us-- _but_-- we can only perceive it subjectively, through our senses, feelings, and intuitions. We have no way of perceiving reality without filtering it through our subjectivity-- it's literally impossible. Even if you are using an instrument, you must still use your eyes, ears, or I guess Braille, touch, to obtain the readout.

This is really, really important to get a handle on for anyone studying this philosophy, because most philosophies consider what they call "objective" reality to be somehow better or more "real" than subjective. But all we can perceive is through subjective experience. Epicurus judged that to be real and sufficient evidence of how things are, and I do as well.

In some cases, as when we are doing science, we will obtain measurements which are highly replicated by different labs/ researchers, and we can rely on this data as likely accurate. However, that replication does not remove the fact that subjective perception was used.

Oscar, the objective/ subjective issue-- yes, there is a reality independent of us-- _but_-- we can only perceive it subjectively, through our senses, feelings, and intuitions. We have no way of perceiving reality without filtering it through our subjectivity-- it's literally impossible. Even if you are using an instrument, you must still use your eyes, ears, or I guess Braille, touch, to obtain the readout.

This is really, really important to get a handle on for anyone studying this philosophy, because most philosophies consider what they call "objective" reality to be somehow better or more "real" than subjective. But all we can perceive is through subjective experience. Epicurus judged that to be real and sufficient evidence of how things are, and I do as well.

In some cases, as when we are doing science, we will obtain measurements which are highly replicated by different labs/ researchers, and we can rely on this data as likely accurate. However, that replication does not remove the fact that subjective perception was used.

Antinatalist? My word. Those people are truly a hot mess. That's the most erudite thing I can come up with.

If I were designing a study to look at whether a specific mindfulness practice increases pleasure compared to something else a person could be doing in that same time (considering we are finite), I would compare it to asking one comparison group to do a personally pleasurable activity on the same schedule, and a control group who just rated their pleasure (that could cause them to change their routines, but control groups are impossible to rid of confounders in this type of project). And hey, maybe a group that did half the time mindfulness and half their fun activity.

I'd look at their pleasure/pain ratings during the activities and through the day, and for any ongoing effects. Best to do a long term study, at least a year, since these are practices people are being asked to do long term and some effects might take time.

My hypothesis would be that a personally chosen pleasurable activity will win over mindfulness. But like many scientists, I'm interested in any result, including the possibility mindfulness trumps fun for pleasure.

I agree, study is worth doing, and worth doing well. That is why I think it's so important to really read those studies carefully, just as you would read a historical document. Journalist accounts are often very inaccurate.

The full text of the anxiety article requires paid access, but it does say there was only a 4 day intervention. Since you cited it to me, I assume that means you read the paper-- can you tell me the study design?

Here is a review with a summary of the methodological issues with mindfulness research you might be interested in. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/…st_its_mind.pdf

Here is an analysis by Cochrane (reputable) on mindfulness in women with breast cancer. It appears to have a small and temporary effect on anxiety. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/30916…s%20mindfulness

A breast cancer patient might want to look at that but also consider the possibility of adverse effects mentioned above.

When you find the specific study by Diamond, let me know, if you want to. I read the Harris book and was not impressed, but if there is a specific study he mentions that you like, please send me the citation.

In general, if you are going to recommend specific practices to readers on a medical evidence basis, I think it's wisest to read the studies closely yourself. Relying on the opinion of an author about a study might get you in the weeds. I don't know about you, but I feel pain if I recommend an intervention and it makes things worse or delays more effective treatment.

I suspect mindfulness may have some uses, but before advising something like that, considering the time involved and possible adverse reactions, I would want to know the details of the research. I do this for prescriptions too.

Finally, our goal of pleasure would require a different study design assessing global pleasure during and after treatment. One pain might be lessened while adding a new one, and a well planned study could look for that.

I have looked at the pain study. This was 15 people--interestingly, it started with 18 and they removed 3, a whole 1/6th of their study population, one because of being too sensitive to the heat stimulus. So Idk what that means for people who are sensitive to pain from heat.

The researchers had them rate pain from a heat stimulus, then did MRI with that stimulus before and after 4 day's mindfulness training. They were instructed that this was secular, but there were no interviews to ask subjects whether they themselves felt it to be spiritual. That would affect whether this is a pious practice or something else.

There was no sham meditation control group. There was a within group control of rest vs active meditation, but that doesn't rule out expectations of effectiveness. Some studies like this try to look for subject bias/placebo effect by asking in advance whether the subject thinks the experimental condition will have an effect.

There was a 40% reduction in subjective pain, on average, although the raw data is not provided. Mainly they were looking for fMRI correlates in brain activity to pain responses before and after meditation.

I would say, again, small study. Hard to say what it means. In regards to practical use for pleasure, if this study holds up in replicated trials by other labs, it means that people not in pain who use mindfulness meditation are able to tolerate heat with less pain.

It doesn't address chronic pain, and responses to one noxious stimulus are not always generalized to others.

So think about that-- is it a good idea, for pleasure, to mess with your pain response, which in the case of heat protects you from painful tissue damage? I'd like to keep my pain function fully intact, unless I have otherwise untreatable chronic pain.

Finally, even for chronic pain, I'd want to compare side effects of long term use of various modalities, in order to do a full hedonic calculus.

Hiram, I'll give my impressions as I go. The chanting link you gave was to a daily mail article, interviewing a Dr. Alan Watkins, but I cannot find the study on Pubmed and wonder if unpublished. The Daily Mail says his study was 5 monks and showed decreased HR/BP during chanting.

If this was a study, 5 people is not enough to make any conclusion from. No control group of non-monks. No mention of their body position during chanting compared to the rest of the day. No mention of effects outside the chanting period, which would make health effects uncertain.

I'd like to see exploration of whether the person needs to have an associated spiritual attitude or whether they can just repeat any noise (in which case this isn't a "pious practice"), or whether singing in a nonchant way is any different. Or can you cuss? I find cussing pretty satisfying sometimes, lol.

For our purposes, we'd want to know about subjective pleasure, not just HR/BP.

My other concern is that this guy is associated with the Cardiac Coherence Institute, a successor to HeartMath, widely considered to be quackery by scientists.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/energy-medicin…-pseudoscience/

I'll say here that I would not have had the concern Cassius raised, because my background is in science and that language would be understood not as any sort of imposed rule but as consistent patterns of matter/energy behavior in defined conditions, which would be replicated whenever there weren't confounding factors.

I haven't thought of how a non-scientist would hear that phrase, but it's standard science language. However, it's certainly possible laypeople wouldn't understand it.

Hiram, one possibility would be to have the Tenets as headers with short summary explanations.

Cool, Hiram, I will look at some of those studies and give you my impression. I can't respond to a google search-- there aren't hours enough lol, but I'm happy to review the specific studies you listed if I can get access to the full text, and I enjoy that kind of thing.

I would say that an essential criterion for injustice is that it causes pain. I agree with Epicurus that you won't be having pleasure if behaving unjustly and vice versa. So if no pain happens, either from empathy or fear or reprisal, how can an action be unjust?

Those who had the action committed against them may still feel a sense of injustice through the prolepses, the intuitive pattern recognition of asymmetry. And that is how it is for _them_. There's no quality called justice inherent in the action. It's in the eye of the beholder.

Hiram, ok, if you are asserting that the science on pious practices is solid, please give me a study. I haven't seen one yet without gaping holes and confounding factors, but I'm happy to review your sources. Also, even if you found clear evidence that a religious practice had strong pleasure benefits, you'd need to repeat that research in materialists, because it might not generalize.

The mindfulness research, for instance, is a big mess. And there are increasing concerns about adverse effects in long term practitioners.

I'm always thrilled to have a conversation based on actual evidence-- we can work with that!

For most things I know of in medicine, any specific treatment has risks (pain or possible pain) and benefits (pleasure or possible pleasure), and it will also have a percentage who don't respond. The tetanus vaccine is near 100% effective but not much else. So a wise Epicurean would look at the stats, see if any precautions applied to them personally, and decide.

I have noticed that many of the controversies about Epicurean Philosophy seem to come down to decisions about how to read the words of each person who wrote about it.

This is not only in regards to reliability of documents (is an author correctly assigned? Was this a fragment removed from a context that would change it?) and translation issues but the reader’s own attitude towards the documents.

I am going to describe my own approach, and I'm interested in hearing how others here are doing it and why.

My rough outline of the process is:

1. The starting place is and was, before I ever knew about Epicurus, knowledge of current accepted physics, in which there is no place for the supernatural or ideal realms-- no position of absolute or objective observation. Physics therefore includes biology, so I'm including my knowledge of observed biological nature. My observations by studying nature led me to the same conclusions as Epicurus, including the goal of pleasure, the lack of absolute moral standards, and how we perceive reality subjectively. My understanding of the components of this subjective perception include the senses and instrumental extensions including supercolliders and such (adding more senses that were unknown in his time, such as sense of magnetic fields), feelings of pain and pleasure, and innate pattern recognitions. I see logic and reasoning as tools, not as contacts with reality.

2. I used this starting point to evaluate Epicurus. I had already evaluated and discarded several other philosophies and religions because they conflicted with reality. When I read the PDs, the VS, and the letters, I had an immediate flash of recognition that he understood the basic nature of reality. I did not find that the minor errors, such as his description of the sun, undid his basic approach of understanding reality is material and how we perceive it, because _all_ of the ethics derives from that platform. When he explains, for instance, that the stomach has a limit, and from this observation we know that desire is NOT insatiable, I knew I had “found my man”, because I had experienced satiation as a pleasure myself.

3. Once I decided Epicurus was credible, I was able to learn from him about how to organize my own philosophy into a solid structure. I also benefited from his specific observations on how pleasure can be obtained under various conditions, and from his example of living pleasurably and teaching his friends to do the same. I experience tremendous pleasure from knowing he existed and put his knowledge of reality to such pleasurable use. He set an example for me of how to live and how to stand firm against opponents of pleasure. He provided defenses against them that I had not thought of.

4. I evaluate every philosopher and researcher who writes about Epicurus in the same manner-- is what this person is saying c/w reality? If not, they are wrong and I disregard their conclusions. If so, perhaps they will say something that enhances my ability to gain pleasure, by their observations.

5. Although I haven't done this myself, there is a separate process of historical accuracy research. Comparing sources, for instance. However, if it turns out Epicurus did not understand reality and our perceptions of it accurately after all-- if it turns out that he recommended a state no one would actually experience as fully pleasurable, for instance-- then I would put him in the group of incorrect philosophers and stop calling myself an Epicurean.

This process differs substantially from a religious type of reading, where one would feel they had to read everything written about Epicurus by others to be an Epicurean, rather than evaluate his own writings first hand from personal experience. It also differs from a situation where one does not have their own philosophy based on reality but is inserting bits of idealism here and there and then cherry picks quotes to support their own idealism as Epicurean.

The primary basis for my philosophy is reality, and I would just call it “The Philosophy of Reality”-- it is reality I use to test everything else against. I assert that any person who is capable of understanding the nature of reality properly can come to the same basics of philosophy, even if they've never read Epicurus at all. This person should be able to read any writing from any source and say whether it agrees with reality or not. I would find such a person like-minded with me.

This type of likemindedness -- a shared agreement on the nature of reality-- is far more important to me than what someone calls themselves. I can recognize such people by what they say and also by how they read philosophy.

I call myself an Epicurean because I have adopted his specific way of organizing my own philosophy after finding it both accurate and useful, and because of my intense admiration for his insights and life.

In summary, if a person does not have a strong personal understanding of the basic nature of reality, they will never be able to develop a stable and accurate philosophy, and their chances of having a pleasurable life are reduced. They will read philosophy looking for authority figures or confirmation of idealism. They will find themselves pushed around by idealism and will thus likely make more choices against their own pleasurable life. A person completely ignorant of philosophy and idealism but with an intuitive grasp of pleasure would have a far better chance, but because idealism is rampant, used as a tool to control others, a strong philosophy of reality is critical as a self defense.

Yes, and I should say also that the specific social actions you endorse, Hiram, are often ones I agree with. As Cassius says, I just don't leap there by saying these are the things Epicurus would recognize for anyone in a given situation. Instead, humans have different preferences.

There could be Epicurean groups endorsing the opposite actions from yours, made of individuals who came to the same conclusions for their pleasure.

The way you frame it is as if your desired behaviors apply to all Epicureans, and that's not true.

I used to get frustrated when talking to people about policies we both wanted, like a certain piece of legislation, because they assumed I endorsed their reasons for it. "It causes the most pleasure for the most people", they'd say, "and that's why we want it." And I'd say "no, I want it, but not for that reason-- I hate utilitarianism-- it's cold and unfeeling. It leaves out who these others are." We could still agree to do it, but not on the reasons. This feels similar.

Hiram, the word "perfect" and "without flaws", applied to human behavior, conventionally uses the most common absolute moral standards, which are already idealist. It's baked into the words. If you ask a random person on the street what a person without flaws is like, they would use whatever absolute moral standards they'd been taught, such as "always honest", "altruistic", "always kind" "self-sufficient", etc. There would be some person to person variation, but those will be typical responses. I haven't done a formal study, but for decades I have asked parents of young children what kind of adults they hope to teach their children to be. It gives me insight that's useful when conflicts arise. It helps me remind them later and ask if they are demonstrating what they want to teach, in their own choices.

I would imagine that their "perfect person" would have these qualities completely. And those are the kinds of answers I get.

But that type of vision of a perfect person is a little different between people. It's also based on virtues. I have never heard a "perfect person" described as "someone who is always able to choose for their pleasure."

So that is why I asked what you mean by perfect. If you mean the usual, and if Philodemus does, it's abstract and idealistic. It's saying there's a definition we would all agree on which is based on some virtue.

So I ask again-- do you mean that typical definition? And if so, which virtues go into your own definition? Do you see how using virtues to define flawless is idealistic? If not, I am confused as to how to communicate. I am not obsessed with idealism. I just know how to recognize it, and I'm frankly baffled as to why it isn't obvious to you, so I keep re-explaining it.

I don't mean to get off track on schizophrenia-- but it's relevant because the disease attacks perceptions. Without accurate perceptions, we can't make wise decisions for pleasure!

Oscar, because my adult son has schizophrenia, I have a little bit of a different take on this. The most current research shows that schizophrenia is truly a neurologic condition. It may eventually even be possible to treat it as an immune disorder using medications designed for MS-- there's research with preliminary encouraging results.

So of course, they did do whatever they did. But if one day treatment can reliably remove the illness that caused the actions, it is possible they could be safely released. My son now that he consistently takes his medications is at no higher risk of harming someone than an average person. When psychotic and delusional, off medications, I had to have him committed, which is very hard to do.

Some of the work I have been doing is to implement evidence based commitment strategies-- outpatient commitment to f/u inpatient-- for people who have not committed a violent crime but are at risk of doing so. This is very effective at reducing violent acts. A major problem with schizophrenia is that the disease itself impairs reality testing and thus the person's ability to know they are sick is lost. They can think they are normal, so why take medicine? Commitment, if adhered to by the court and treatment team, provides that the person be re-committed to impatient care if they cannot manage to follow instructions outpatient.

For those who already have done violence, some need to be confined for life if we want to be safe, to protect our pleasure. However, I personally do not feel anger towards them, because now I really understand that the same person can be entirely different when sick and untreated.