Posts by Godfrey

This is from DL Book 1, Mensch translation:

24 And some, including the poet Choerilus, say he was the first to declare that souls are immortal. He was the first to discover the course of the sun from solstice to solstice, and the first, according to some, to say that the size of the sun is one seven hundred and twentieth part of the solar circle, <and that the size of the moon is the same fraction of the lunar circle.> He was the first to call the last day of the month the thirtieth, and the first, as some say, to reason about nature.

25 Aristotle and Hippias say that he attributed souls even to inanimate objects, arguing from the magnet and from amber.

Unfortunately I can't find ψυχή in any Greek version online but it's likely due to my ignorance   Don do you have a Greek to English comparison to verify that that's the word?

"Soul" in this sense almost sounds like "life force." I wonder if the concept has evolved over time?

Me neither, I just happened to be reading that!

From Richard McKirahan's Philosophy Before Socrates:

"Aristotle reports that Thales believed magnets possess soul because they move iron, and infers that he judged the soul to be a thing that causes motion.18 [Aristotle, On the Soul 1.2 405a19 = DK 11A22] Thales also held that amber (which has magnetic properties when rubbed or heated) possesses soul.19 [Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 1.24 = DK 11A1]

It is hard to know what to make of these statements. The idea that the soul is the principle of life was widespread in Greek thought. The presence of soul makes a thing alive; when a living thing dies, it no longer has a soul. Thus, Aristotle held that plants and animals possess souls. He held further that motion is characteristic of life, especially in his broad sense of “motion,” which includes growth and changes in quality—“motions” which even plants possess. Thus, the presence of soul, and therefore of life, implies motion.

Thales attributes soul to things not normally thought to be alive. Is he proposing a version of hylozoism, the view that matter has life, so that life is found in all things whatever? Also, since magnets and amber cause other things to move, is Thales’ point that the notion of soul should be extended to include things that themselves are motionless but make other things move?"

This showed up in my feed and may be of interest in the near future. It's a (very) brief examination of the end of Book 6, in an historical context. I don’t remember Sedley's conclusions and whether or not this reinforces his point of view but I'll toss this into the mix. BTW I didn’t see him referenced anywhere in this paper.

"Supreme power and great wealth may, to some degree, protect us from other men; but security in general depends upon peace of mind and social detachment." PD14, Epicurus Wiki

Quote from Don

Is it me or do the "two coexistent aspects" sound somewhat like the arousal axis on the circumplex?

Don I think I need some translations but to my way of thinking regarding Nikolsky's quote in #28, tranquility and painlessness correspond to places on the the arousal axis and the valence axis, respectively. And as you say it seems like the passive aspect and the active aspect could correspond to the arousal axis. I'm not sure about that though; the circumplex and kinetic/katastematic are two completely different models and it's probably a stretch to equate them too closely.

As to the lack of a neutral state, I think that it has practical significance in visualizing and understanding pleasure in addition to logical arguments. Understanding the interaction of degrees of pleasure and arousal is useful in finding guidance from your feelings. As LFB explains, our feelings are often influenced by things we don't expect. The more we understand and notice about our feelings, including whether or not we have a neutral state, the better we can use them for guidance.

Getting back to the original post in this thread, I believe the Dopamine Nation author stated that there is a neutral state of dopamine (arousal, production, reaction?). I may be way off base, but I think that this corresponds to one axis in the circumplex model. Regardless, it seems to be another contemporary neuroscientific approach to pleasure and it might be interesting to compare this to the circumplex

That's an excellent question! Apparently it's not as I've been interpreting it. I've been thinking of the circle as a limit, but some googling reveals:

Circumplex: a circular depiction of the similarities among multiple variables. (APA Dictionary of Psychology)

The circumplex model focuses on determining how traits and emotions are structurally similar, and its underlying assumption is that a relatively seamless circular odering, or circumplex, is an economical description of the relations among traits and emotions. (from an introduction to an out of print book on circumplexes)

So I think that anything being mapped would occur on the circle and not within it. This is actually even more interesting because the intersection of the axes could be considered a neutral state, but if all states in this model must occur on the circle itself then there is no neutral state.

Perhaps someone else is more familiar with this idea?

More on the affective circumplex (pleasure graph?):

It doesn't rank pleasures such as mental v visual or chocolate ice cream v pistachio.

"Absence of pain" (or absence of unpleasantness) would be anywhere on or to the right of the arousal axis. So it's not a mystical state, it's a range of "pleasures" including elation, gratification and serenity at any given time.

Correcting my previous post, maximum pleasure would be any point on the circle to the right of the arousal axis. So maximum pleasure might involve being very calm, but it might also involve being totally stoked, man. Or anywhere on the right side of the circle in between.

Quote from Cassius

Godfrey so you are saying she sums pleasure and pain together to get a "net result" number which she then charts?

No, what she calls pleasantness and unpleasantness are represented by opposite directions on an axis of hedonic valence (+ and -). This axis is intersected by an axis of arousal, with intensity of calm in one direction and intensity of agitation in the other direction. I don't think she's trying to describe pleasure and pain; she's trying to illustrate what her data is showing her regarding what she calls "affect".

Epicurus didn't have access to today's neuroscience. He was working with observations and against Platonic abstractions. LFB's work is among the latest neuroscience so I find it extremely interesting and potentially useful that her conclusions in many ways seem to correspond with Epicurus' conclusions. Her "affective circumplex" is a modern model which is devoid of Platonic distraction. As an initial observation, I interpret "affect" as similar to "the faculty of feelings". As such, what might be considered maximum pleasure would be a point on the "pleasant" side of the hedonic valence axis and intersecting the circumscribing circle. This would represent maximum pleasantness with neither too much agitation or too much calm.

Since this thread began with a modern science topic, it might be pertinent to mention Lisa Feldman Barrett. As I understand it she seems to consider "affect" to be a type of guiding faculty. She pictures affect as a combination of pleasant/unpleasant along, say, an x axis, and calmness/agitation along, say, a y axis. One's affect at a given moment would be described by a point somewhere in the two dimensional space defined by these two axes.

I find this conception useful because it illustrates 1) that "pleasure" isn't the endpoint of an arrow or the center of a target but a combination of factors including pleasantness and arousal. And 2) calmness combined with unpleasantness would be considered lethargy (or something similar). When people speak of "without pain" or "without disturbance" and interpret those as pleasure, I think it helps to look at this 2D model to understand more of the nuance involved.

So LFB, as I recall, refers to positive or negative affect as a neurological guide which we might be able to equate to pleasure or pain. Although hers isn't the language of Epicurus, I find it a helpful way to understand pleasure as the guide/goal.

Cassius I think you've elucidated the subject better than either Sedley or the DeLaceys. You might have a future in this

Oops we cross posted. My post #9 is referring to post #6.

I assume that they're the same thing. The original title is unclear, DeLacey discusses this on pages 10-11.

Quote from Cassius

Godfrey are your references from chapter two quotes, or your own summaries?

Some of these direct quotes but most are my paraphrases. Also I've included definitions from other sources to try to make sense of the DeLacey commentary. This is all out of my wheelhouse and the terminology is new to me; these notes are literally my attempt to read and make sense of this material. Hopefully it's of some value but it's definitely not "gospel!"

I agree that a lot more information is needed to make the subject clear. This material is dense and extremely confusing for a novice such as myself. As you point out Cassius it's difficult to understand what is meant by "signs," and that seems to be the most basic idea involved! Hopefully the additional papers will bring some clarity.

Quote from Martin

We don't consider maps necessary to our being able day-to-day to navigate in reality because we have internalized them and use them intuitively without realizing it.

Similarly, we have internalized "syllogistic" logic such that we use it in our day-to-day thinking when fully awake without realizing it.

No

Although one might argue that this is a chicken or egg conundrum, I think it's not and I have to disagree with this statement. A map is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional environment. We navigate a 3D environment by noting markers and our subconscious forms connections between these. I recall conversations between an architect, a geologist and a botanist. The architect navigated by noticing buildings, the geologist by noticing rock formations, and the botanist by noticing plants. Each was oblivious to the markers of the others. None of these systems of markers have anything to do with internalizing a map as commonly defined; a map is constructed by visualizing the markers in space and transferring them to paper.

Similarly, I see syllogistic logic as an attempt to represent ways of thinking, not as the way in which we think. Some of the greatest technical and creative innovations have occurred after a person has put aside a problem and allowed it to "bubble" in the subconscious mind. To say that this person is subconsciously performing syllogistic logic is such a stretch as to be ridiculous, in my opinion.

Thinking that a map precedes navigation or that syllogistic logic precedes thinking is similar to thinking that mathematics preceded matter. All of these are tools to try to help us understand the world.

Having said all of that, I do agree that we can and do internalize maps and/or logic and/or mathematics. But these are just instances of using the tools provided, and people use them to greater or lesser degrees depending on the way their minds work.

syllogism (noun):

- an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn (whether validly or not) from two given or assumed propositions (premises), each of which shares a term with the conclusion, and shares a common or middle term not present in the conclusion (e.g., all dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore all dogs have four legs ).

- deductive reasoning as distinct from induction. "this school of epistemology is highly advanced in syllogism and logical reasoning"

(from Oxford Languages online)

[EDIT BY CASSIUS: Here is a link to theDeLacey Translation including the DeLacy Appendix which gives a lot of background on the epistemology issues.]

(Note: these are my personal notes. Not all of these notes are from the book; some are from Google to help me further understand the basic ideas, and some are my"notes to self".)

Signs: what you see or what you think about

"All instruction is either about things or about signs; but things are learnt by means of signs. I now use the word “thing” in a strict sense, to signify that which is never employed as a sign of anything else: for example, wood, stone, cattle, and other things of that kind. Not, however, the wood which we read Moses cast into the bitter waters to make them sweet, nor the stone which Jacob used as a pillow, nor the ram which Abraham offered up instead of his son; for these, though they are things, are also signs of other things. There are signs of another kind, those which are never employed except as signs: for example, words. No one uses words except as signs of something else; and hence may be understood what I call signs: those things, to wit, which are used to indicate something else. Accordingly, every sign is also a thing; for what is not a thing is nothing at all. Every thing, however, is not also a sign. And so, in regard to this distinction between things and signs, I shall, when I speak of things, speak in such a way that even if some of them may be used as signs also, that will not interfere with the division of the subject according to which I am to discuss things first and signs afterwards. But we must carefully remember that what we have now to consider about things is what they are in themselves, not what other things they are signs of. AUGUSTINE, De Doctrina 1.2." From the Heidlblog

Chapter 2, Introduction to Philodemus On Methods of Inference

Per the Stoics:

- Common sign: exists whether the unperceived object that it signifies exists or not. Therefore not a reliable basis of inference.

- Particular sign: exists only when the unperceived object that it signifies exists. If the existence of the object signified is denied, then the existence of the sign must be denied as well. These provide the only reliable grounds for inference and are established through the purely formal test of contraposition.

- Contraposition: inference from a logically equivalent contrapositive.

- Contrapositive: "if not-B then not-A" is the contrapositive of "if A then B."

Per the Epicureans:

- The relation between sign and thing signified is learned only through perception, through the method of induction or analogy. We infer the nature of unperceived objects by analogy with the objects in our own experience.

- Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations; aims at developing a theory.

- Deductive reasoning works from general to specific; aims at testing a theory.

- If a constant connection between objects is not first established by perception, contraposition is impossible.

- Epicureans use inductive reasoning, and agree that common signs are not a valid basis of inference.

- Inconceivability, not logical necessity, is a criterion of a particular sign and is based on past experience. An inference from signs is valid if it is inconceivable that the sign exists when the thing signified does not. (page14) (Hmmm. What are some examples of this? )

- The four empirical criteria of truth: perception, anticipation, mental perception and feeling. Mental perception is defended and used in reference to knowledge of the gods.

Quote from Camotero

The last line quoted above is a testament to how reason is not to be disregarded, isn't it? Perhaps this is the type of true reason that we won't be able yo get by without?

If this reason isn't logic, or formal logic, could we agree that it could be "critical thinking"?

This seems to be a key distinction! Logic that is used to win arguments may lead to victory but not necessarily truth. Epicurus placed high value on wisdom and/or prudence, which I think can be equated to critical thinking. Reasoning of this sort has the goal of living well, not necessarily winning arguments.

Of course this begs the question: "how do you define prudence or critical thinking?" Film at 11

To expose my ignorance, one question that I have as I begin to work my way through DeLacey: how do "signs" fit into this discussion? It seems that words are signs; what about "first mental images," concepts... what else can be considered a sign? Do the Stoics have a different idea of what constitutes a sign than the Epicureans do? Just defining the language with which to discuss logic and methods of inference is confusing!

I stumbled upon this quote online, though I'm not sure if it's helpful:

Quote

"All instruction is either about things or about signs; but things are learnt by means of signs. I now use the word “thing” in a strict sense, to signify that which is never employed as a sign of anything else: for example, wood, stone, cattle, and other things of that kind. Not, however, the wood which we read Moses cast into the bitter waters to make them sweet, nor the stone which Jacob used as a pillow, nor the ram which Abraham offered up instead of his son; for these, though they are things, are also signs of other things. There are signs of another kind, those which are never employed except as signs: for example, words. No one uses words except as signs of something else; and hence may be understood what I call signs: those things, to wit, which are used to indicate something else. Accordingly, every sign is also a thing; for what is not a thing is nothing at all. Every thing, however, is not also a sign. And so, in regard to this distinction between things and signs, I shall, when I speak of things, speak in such a way that even if some of them may be used as signs also, that will not interfere with the division of the subject according to which I am to discuss things first and signs afterwards. But we must carefully remember that what we have now to consider about things is what they are in themselves, not what other things they are signs of. AUGUSTINE, De Doctrina 1.2." From the Heidlblog

Despite the anachronism it seems that this is what Epicurus was struggling against