Posts by Godfrey

Quote from Cassius

(I put that "desires that outrun the limits fixed by nature" in red not because it is related to the current topic, but because that seems to me to be a good choice of words to describe something we often struggle with as "neither natural nor necessary" or all sorts of other adjectives." Seems to me that the factor that unites them all is that they "outrun the limits fixed by nature.")

At first blush that sounds quite good, but I'm beginning to wonder if, to some, that might imply a limit that is the same for everybody. With all due respect to Diogenes, would a better phrasing be "desires that outrun the limits fixed by one's nature"?

Quote from Pacatus

With that said, meditation and contemplation might still be philosophically relevant – as is simply contemplating the beauties of nature, and feeling awe.

Anyway, I am trying to explore a third position between the options of real gods thoroughly removed from our everyday natural reality, and gods that are solely ideal mental fabrications.

One version of a third option is suggested by the two sentences in this quote, and relates to the hymn to Venus by Lucretius. It is to contemplate the life force or evolutionary forces and/or processes by which the universe has come to be in its current state, with us in it.

Does pleasure drive a seedling that grows roots and reaches for the light?

True piety is for a man to have the power

To contemplate the world with quiet mind.

Lucretius 5-1203 (Melville translation)

Quote from Cassius

That's probably a question a lot of people should think about.

Definitely! Some of the most rewarding experiences of my life have been some of the most "risky." A couple have even scared the wits out of me but, in retrospect, changed my life for the better.

In a similar vein, here's a list of some risky behaviors:

- driving a car, riding public transit

- asking someone out on a date for the first time

- applying for a job that you really want

- having sex

- getting married

- having a child

- going for a hike

- zip-lining   Martin

- trying a new food

- adopting a new philosophy

- swimming in the ocean

- skiing or snowboarding

- &c

This also leads to thinking about the "absence of pain" interpretation of EP....

Quote from Quiesco

I wonder why one should accept that Nature gives you only pleasure and pain to judge with.

Welcome, Quiesco !

The idea that pleasure and pain are the guides (or judges) comes from observation. This seems to be getting confirmation in current neuroscience, but maybe the best way to examine the idea is to pay close attention to your own functioning. To understand pleasure and use it for a guide, one must really understand pain as well. When I looked at my feelings at any given time, my initial thought would often be that I was in a neutral state. But by paying closer attention I would notice some discomfort or perhaps very subtle enjoyment. The term is a bit loaded, but one could say that a principle Epicurean practice is mindfulness of one's Feelings. I capitalize Feelings as they are one of the three faculties in EP from which we can measure reality.

Personally, I would restate "accept that Nature gives you only..." as "our biology is such that" we have three basic faculties of understanding: Sensations, Feelings and Prolepsis.

Quote from Quiesco

Of course fire is only hot because that is my sense experience, fire in principle just is, if it even really exists in the way that I experience it. My subjective experience is the only thing that is real to me and it does not have a self-evident good-bad dichotomy.

Exactly! This philosophy relies on understanding some science and following personal observations. And there is no universal god-bad dichotomy, there is only what we personally perceive. If you've not listened to the Lucretius Today podcast (you can access it on this site or various podcast apps), the latest episode or two have been discussing Epicurean physics and its ramifications. Basically, in a world in which everything is material and there is no omnipotent god or afterlife, Epicurus determined that the only thing that we can use to construct an ethical theory is our own faculties, which are called the Canon.

Quote from Quiesco

And from there it is of couse a question of what pleasure really is so I can live to it to the best of my abilities, which is what made me stumble upon Epicureanism.

Ah, that's the journey! It gets richer the farther one gets into it.

Brilliant article! Lots to chew on in there.

I may have read it some time ago, but I'm not sure. Sounds like a good one.

Well done discussing emergent properties: I kept wanting to raise my hand and say "what about emergent properties!?" That seems to be the bridge between atomic scale and everyday living scale, and I think that it goes beyond the leaf v stone example and applies more on the level of consciousness. Which might make the smaller, lighter atoms involved in the swerve the key bridge for Epicurus.

This idea also, in my mind, breaks any connection between determinism at the atomic level in that I see emergent properties as potentially unpredictable.

The book Atomic Habits, by James Clear, is a book on habits and not philosophy. But to some degree it addresses determinism by discussing that our habits are determined by our environment. However, a key idea of the book is that we can take control of our habits by modifying our environment.

Great podcast and I look forward to part 2!

Good outline and nice presentation!

In Step 3, #3, I would prefer "laws", not "law" of nature.

Re: the Homeric example of no pain for one day... typically that just makes the next day more painful, by contrast.

Kalosyni makes good points about the "advanced Epicurean" needing friends. A couple additional points:

- it's quite common for retirees to have a relatively pleasant life, with all of their material needs met, yet to suffer from extreme loneliness. To different degrees, we all need people.

- motion never ceases, nor does change. So even if an Epicurean reaches an "advanced" stage they are subject to change, and therefore from time to time may experience a desire for friendship.

- at the risk of being absolutist, I would venture that friendship falls into the category of natural and necessary desires. So an "advanced" Epicurean (say perhaps Epicurus), in attaining their advanced stage, would have a group of loyal, like minded friends to which they belong. This would be necessary for meeting the natural and necessary desires. To be otherwise, they might actually be a Cynic or a Stoic.

"Measuring" brings to mind the "measuring stick" (Canon). Is that more than coincidence? Is there a relation in the Greek, or is it just a quirk of the English?

It does seem to me that the faculties of the Canon are quite useful in judgments of the type being discussed.

Quote from Cassius

Would a pill that brings you "tranquility" at the cost of never experiencing "joy" be worth it?

That's pretty much the definition of what happens to one's feelings when one tries to dull the pain in one's life, isn't it? When you minimize your pain, over time, your pleasure goes with it.

Quote from Pacatus

(and I tend to react negatively that way – with a kind of emotional clutch – every time I hear the phrase “hedonic (or Epicurean) calculus” or the like; that’s just me personally,

Amen to that! It's not just you, Pacatus .

Quote from Cassius

I doubt that Epicurus considered any aspect of "grasping" something to be part of the canonic faculty. Recognizing a pattern as significant and deserving of attention seems to me to be one thing, while interpreting it - in any way at all, as a snake or a danger or anything - seems to be another thing, and the part where error can enter in.

And it looks to me that it was important to Epicurus to keep separate the part where error can enter from the part that we accept without question - else we have a feedback loop and lose the ability to distinguish between our opinion vs what Nature is relaying to us directly and precognitively.

Well said!

These three paragraphs from the Forte Labs article seem to me to be the most pertinent to this discussion:

"What the mind is doing when it “recognizes” an image is not matching it against a database of static images. There is no such database in the brain. Instead, it is reconstructing that image on the fly, drawing on many conceptual levels, mixing and matching thousands of patterns at many levels of abstraction to see which ones fit the electric signals coming in through the retina."

"Patterns triggered in the neocortex trigger other patterns. Partially complete patterns send signals down the conceptual hierarchy, fitting new lenses to the data. Completed patterns send signals up, fitting new data to the lenses. Some patterns refer to themselves recursively, giving us the ability to think about our thinking or to “go meta.” An element of a pattern can be a decision point for another pattern, creating conditional relationships. Many patterns are highly redundant, with PRs dedicated to linguistic, visual, auditory, and tactile versions of the same object, which is what allows us to recognize apples in many different contexts."

"Paradoxically, a conceptual hierarchy made up of massively parallel pattern recognizers would explain a lot about our subjective experience. The feeling that something is “on the tip of the tongue” could be pattern recognizers firing below the level they become conscious. The certainty of “I know it when I see it” could be combinations of PRs firing without a corresponding, higher-order word label. Our intuition acquires new depths when it isn’t limited to conscious patterns."

Dr. Glidden used, as I recall, two useful phrases to describe prolepsis: pattern recognition and prediction engine. Don brought up the example of the mind interpreting a stick in the forest as a snake, which illustrates the function well as I understand it. If the interpretation of a stick as a snake is a prolepsis, then it illustrates that 1) the mind's prediction is "non-cognitive," "pre-cognitive," "non-conscious," and 2) this prediction is then evaluated consciously. The conscious evaluation in the case of the stick involves gathering more data: after jumping back reflexively, looking again at the stick/snake to discover that it's a stick. This further illustrates Dr. Glidden's point that prolepseis, unlike sensations, aren't always "true" as well as his thesis that Epicurus anticipated modern neuroscience in thinking about prolepseis.

Logic becomes involved when the prolepsis involves language and to evaluate conscious thinking, but is of no use in understanding reality without input from the sensations. Prolepseis act directly on input from the sensations and stimulate the feelings. Logic may act indirectly on input from the sensations or can ignore any input. It also attempts to ignore the feelings. The idealists consider this a strength, but in reality it's a fatal flaw. Without utilizing material input, and without listening to the "gut" reactions of the feelings, logic is divorced from reality. Isn't "divorced from reality" generally considered "useless"?

The 2015 Disney movie Inside Out, about the emotions, also comes to mind.

The quotation that comes to mind is:

"Additionally, once the sage has become wise, they will no longer fall back into ignorance but can be exceedingly affected by the emotions (and will feel grief (119)) although this will not be a hindrance in their progress toward wisdom." (117) from Diogenes Laertius

Happy Twentieth!

Speaking of desires, I found this blog post to have some good insights on the subject:

Why wanting less doesn't always mean more joy - The Aesthetics of Joy by Ingrid Fetell Lee

We're often told that wanting less is the key to happiness, but suppressing our desires can lead us to shrink our lives, play small, and accept less than we…

aestheticsofjoy.com

There seems to be something in the air these days: people are discovering the benefits of the Epicurean life, some perhaps through studying Epicurus, and some perhaps by reasoning it out on their own. Not all are presenting a complete worldview as did Epicurus, but it does seem to be a trend that's heading in a good direction.

Quote from Don

I think they may misunderstand his position with the "extravagant desire as a surefire happiness-squisher."

They probably haven't read Living for Pleasure yet.... Although I quite like the use of the term "extravagant desires" in that book, this does point out the problem with that description. For now I would give these authors the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're using "extravagant" to describe unnecessary desires.

And yes, it's nice to see that they understand the difference between desires and pleasures