Posts by Elayne

the closest term I can come up with besides prolepses is "innate mental senses"-- senses very similar to vision which are more like what in English we call feelings (here we restrict that to pain and pleasure, but I think you know what I mean)!

I have always noticed this, but it was hard to find people who understood what I was saying-- either because I am not explaining myself clearly or because my brain is doing things differently, lol. Always possible. Although I use a lot of words and concepts in communication, my internal experience is not very verbal or conceptual, and that might be unusual.

But when I read Epicurus, I had this sensation we were on the same page. And I was thrilled that he had figured this out before modern developmental and game theory research, just as he correctly predicted atoms and other phenomena.

I am trusting my senses-- in this case, my mental sensations-- on how things work, along with research that at least supports and doesn't contradict my senses.

I actually do, for myself, classify most of those virtues first as innate sensations, which occur with pleasure to the point they aren't separate, but still have a distinct... "flavor"?

When I think of courage, for instance, it's primarily a nonverbal _sensation_ in my chest. Yes, I can give story examples of courage, but how would I have come to assign a word to it to begin with and build a concept, if I did not start with this sensation of "feeling courageous", which I can recognize by empathy in actions of others?

I see these very fundamental biological sensations as the primary information, which do fuel more complex rational concepts but are mainly nonrational/experiential, and the degree to which they please us is what makes them virtues or not. And then the decision process for action, which is rational, is based on that hedonic calculus.

Organizing it this way is certainly my own philosophy, c/w personal experience-- and when I read Epicurus on it, I feel agreement with him. But it's possible his philosophy differs from my personal experience!

I see all of the agreement statements as _descriptions_ of what conditions trigger our innate sense of justice.

I can't imagine Epicurus defining justice two different ways-- a prolepsis AND a definition for what counts as justice and what doesn't.

This is the same way he treats pain and pleasure. He describes conditions that trigger them but those aren't the definition.

When I say our sense of justice is not rational, like seeing blue is not rational, it's not a criticism, just an observation. It's an interaction with reality.

But we always additionally use our reasoning to decide what to DO. Not what to feel or sense, because those things are determined by reality.

So you will see people arguing about what's unjust, and they are arguing over their subjective reactions, which leads nowhere. They can of course negotiate rules and agreements, which is a rational process. They can negotiate whether they ultimately have the same rules, based on mutual pleasure. But they should be aware of the types of actions that will trigger each other to sense injustice.

If justice were rational it would not be in the prolepses which are part of the Canon. None of the Canon is reason-based. It's how we know reality, not what we decide to do.

No, Cassius, I am not saying that at all! Injustice is definitely perceived by the people involved in the agreement, just like pain is perceived by the person struck. It's subjective, not objective. It's not "in the air"-- it's a sensation arising in the subject in response to a situation. You have experienced this sensation, right? I am making that assumption just like that you have experienced sugar as sweet.

Now of course, an outsider observer, because of empathy, where we vicariously feel pain or pleasure in response to that of others, could have the sense of injustice triggered also-- but only because of empathy. It doesn't arise as an objective assessment-- it's not a logical or rational function but more like a sense or pain/pleasure. It's slightly different from both of those while still being the same category of information, which is why I think Epicurus gave prolepses their own special place in the Canon. None of the Canon is rational. All those functions are subjective encounters with objective reality.

A lot of the confusion is arising in the world re justice is from trying to treat the sense of injustice like a rational function.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/baby-justice/

Todd and Cassius, great questions, thanks-- I do want to be clear. I was using harm to mean causing pain to the subject, the one experiencing the perceived injustice. I want to emphasize this is a subjective faculty, like vision-- we can observe general times when our sense of injustice would be triggered, but there will be no absolute rule. We can describe, not control or even recommend, when that sensation happens. So Cassius, that means whether a particular asymmetry triggers a sense of injustice depends on the person involved. I think asymmetry is required to trigger the sensation, but it doesn't always.

So Todd, I think the sense of asymmetry does tend not to get set off unless there's some kind of at least mildly painful consequence involved, yes-- but for me, there are still two aspects to the experience, the asymmetry and the pain, and they are not always in a direct proportion. I could detect a trivial asymmetry but a large pain, and in that case I wouldn't be experiencing a strong sense of injustice necessarily. Whereas if the asymmetry is large, and there's even a little pain, I'm usually going to experience a "hey, that's unjust", even if it's not enough pain to motivate me to address the situation. If there's a large asymmetry but zero pain, I won't sense injustice.

Envy is also based on asymmetry but doesn't always go along with a sense of injustice-- however, I have to say I'm saying this from my own experience. Envy is when I want something someone else has, but it doesn't mean I think they specifically harmed me by breaking some sort of agreement between us.

I linked above one example of research on innate recognition of asymmetry and the relationship to sense of justice. I've also observed this behavior as highly reliable in my own patients. When a particular human behavior emerges predictably at certain ages, it's more likely that it involves an innate faculty, which shows up as the nervous system matures, rather than as something an organism would have to learn from scratch each time. Sensing injustice is vital to survival-- like the sense of thirst-- so I can't think why it would be surprising for us to have many innate faculties, considering our complexity!

The "tit for tat" game theory computer models are predictive of when cooperative behavior between organisms will occur, to maximize their self-interest, so it would make sense if evolutionary pressures selected for the ability to sense injustice.

In my poem, Dido and Aeneas chose the pleasure of friendship, very Epicurean! And anti-fate to boot!

JJ, my poet friend, here's a poem I wrote a few years back on the subject! I would have made a different ending 😉 than Virgil did.

Dido Comes to Pickens County

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris—

Yes, I’m the one who named her first car

Dido, who turned Queen of Carthage

in twelfth grade Latin

back when I thought a woman

translating herself into fire

into the hexameters of a dead language

seemed pretty much the most

romantic gesture possible. Arma

virumque. Arms and a man—my father

said your hometown wasn’t in the World Book Atlas

so there, and maybe

you just wanted to drive off with Dido.

But your arms full of catfish and hoecake

your mouth full of whispered Dante

and Faulkner

cinched it anyway. Cano.

I sing to our children

who mostly love country—

the whippoorwill, any train at night

and sway in the backseat

Delia, Oh Delia

forgetting to argue.

Troiae qui primus

ab oris. Who exactly was it, who first

came from the shores of Troy? Not you

except in real life. No, it was

the Whirlibird King

Aragorn, Mr. Rochester, even Aeneas.

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris.

Dearest Be-mused Poet, you missed

an entire scene

in which it was only an effigy burning

only another effigy sailing away.

Dido and Aeneas. Listen and you’ll hear them

unmanned, unarmed, to hell

with fate, to hell with exile

out in the back forty

frying catfish and singing Johnny Cash,

whooping it up and laughing 'til they cry.

😂 nope!

It had a error 404 access denied--idk what that means. If it happens again I'll remember to get a screenshot

Oh yes! For a teenage girl, that was the pinnacle of romance, lol! I grew out of it though 😂

Right-- I don't think the career choice is the reason. This is down to specific people who have a stranglehold on teaching/study centers. The real reason I think it's important to see it as a specific human problem is that it can be changed. We can have Epicurus taught well in the ivory towers too. I don't believe they are invulnerable to change. The current regime can be toppled. I'd love to attract people who might take that on! And people everywhere else as well.

I meant that as a tongue in cheek "despite" lol! 😄

😂😂😂

Lol, this continues to be hard for me, although I now fully understand the absolute ridiculousness of the current academic position on Epicurus and that your criticism is applying to philosophy departments.

It pushes a button with me because the same words "ivory tower academics" have been used at me by physicians who commit malpractice by ordering useless tests and prescribing harmfully (eg, antibiotics for viral colds). Although I have a PhD as well as an MD, and I practiced on a med school faculty for many years, I also used the same science based medicine approach in private practice, and it works very well. Satisfied patients. We didn't have special model ivory tower patients, lol.

And despite having worked in academics, I figured out most of this philosophy on my own 😉.

When it comes to living, are any of us truly in an ivory tower?? I think not. We all face similar human issues.

My inclination is not to blame this turn of perspective on the choice of studying and teaching philosophy as a career but on specific individuals in the ivory tower who have gained power and are misleading folks badly. The "expert cascade" is a real thing. Eventually, the towers themselves need to be taken back from those wrongheaded people, so they can function effectively. Academic departments in every field can go south that same way, but they can also do a great job introducing students to thoughts they never learned at home. If it were not for universities, my parents might have remained Southern Baptists.

TLDR: We need DeWitts in the towers.

Has been a busy week for me, catching up, but I want to thank Elli also for that help with the translation, which makes so much more sense!

Clarity of language is important, and because the word "gods" in English currently means supernatural, in English I am an atheist: I do not believe in the supernatural. I was raised atheist, in Alabama, and in English the word is used accurately for that specific meaning. I'm not going to use a different term in ordinary contexts, or people will think I'm a supernaturalist. It would be poor communication.

However, in Greek, and in regards to Epicurean philosophy, and among people who understand my words, I am _not_ an atheist, because I know we've already taken the supernatural off the table. It seems entirely reasonable to suspect that in all of reality, there are likely beings which evolved to live pleasurably to such a high degree that they would amaze me if I saw them. And if I think about how such beings would conduct their lives with each other, it helps me continue to choose that life myself-- not as an abstraction but as a practical, achievable process. We must believe a pleasurable life is possible or there would be no point trying. In this sense, I am a believer.

Interesting! In my 3rd year of high school Latin, we translated The Aeneid, and I always got the part of Dido. I named my first car Dido. Fortunately my car did not ever burst into flames on a pyre!

For me, I recognize injustice as a sense of asymmetry, and there's evidence this is an innate faculty. If someone intentionally harms me and I did not harm them first-- and there is reason to suppose we have agreed to this non-harming somehow--even tacitly-- I will get that sense of "dirty pool." My range of asymmetry tends to be fairly broad, and after a friendship is established, I wouldn't get a sense of injustice except for prolonged, recurrent asymmetries that I felt my friend could have avoided.

The degree of pain an asymmetry causes is proportional to the degree of feeling I had for the other person (if we were close, a better word might be betrayal)-- and the direct effect of their action on my life, which is in addition to the asymmetry. For instance, if someone I knew robbed me of my money, there are two issues-- the asymmetry of their action towards me -- the injustice--AND the loss of funds. I tend to mainly feel pain from the action itself if I don't know the perpetrator, even if I also am aware of the injustice of someone harming me when I had not harmed them.

Every action in an agreement has an effect of pain or pleasure, since there is no 3rd feeling of neutral. It just isn't always enough asymmetry that we will be moved to bother with it, compared to other things we could be doing. If we get obsessed with trivial asymmetries, we will test the patience of our friends, lol!

A member of our group alerted us to this video, which makes a number of serious errors. I am posting it for the purposes of illustrating the differences between Epicurean Philosophy and some inaccurate modern popularizations.

First, as we've discussed several times in this group, ataraxia and aponia (absence of anxiety and absence of pain) are certainly integral to the feeling of pleasure-- however, these are not words to _substitute_ for pleasure, and they don't indicate some unusual or special kind of pleasure.

Think of it this way-- to put a chair in my living room, I must have an absence of empty floor space where the chair is. But I don't say "I put an absence of empty floor space in my living room"! That tells you nothing at all about what is there instead of empty space. I say "I have a chair", and then you will know what I mean.

In the same way, reduction of pain and anxiety is important to make room for pleasure, but a removal process doesn't describe pleasure.

That is why Epicurus used the word for pleasure-- because everyone knew what he meant. It wasn't an esoteric term, and it didn't mean some kind of rarified monk-like state.

Second, it is kind of hilarious how the video makers have misunderstood the movie Office Space. The scenes they show as representing Epicurean action are intended by the screenwriters as part of the long series of errors made by the lead character, Peter, and his friends. Action scenes, such as kicking a faulty piece of equipment, are presented by the video makers as representing static mental pleasure-- a bizarre decision.

Getting stuck in a miserable Dilbert cubicle is clearly not pleasurable, but the initial efforts to get out include theft (which Epicurus advised against due to the consequences of pain) and other heedless moves. It isn't until Peter realizes he has caused danger to his friends, the pain of which is not worth the potential gain, that the plot turns.

Instead of glorifying slacker culture, the movie takes it apart. We learn that Peter has already been doing nothing for most of his day, staring into space pretending to be busy. When he finally decides to get a job he enjoys, he is much more active than before, and he is engaged and smiling. He's enjoying working beside his neighbor. Overlooking the cliches about blue vs white collar work (one can be intellectually active too), it is clear Peter has decided to use his freedom to arrange his life for pleasure-- while his software engineer friends, in contrast, remain stuck.

Who represents the outcome of doing nothing? The arsonist, who gets the money and uses it to sit under an umbrella on the beach, still complaining constantly.

I would not call Peter an Epicurean model, although his final move was in that direction.

Beware of this type of misleading presentation of our philosophy. You will miss out on your possibility for a life of pleasure if you follow this neo-Epicurean path of aiming towards minimalism, doing nothing, and blandness. Instead, understand that your choices have consequences of pain or pleasure, and make those choices wisely. Aim for pleasure! What will you do _today_ to move towards your own pleasure?

Great to have you, Todd!

Love that! I first read LOTR when I was 10, and through my teens I read it several more times.

If I were a fiction writer, I'd write a "quest" book like that with the heroes as a band of Epicurean friends, fighting off Stoic trolls, etc.