Posts by Godfrey

Quote from Don

When I say Anticipations are similar to "mental concepts" in modern neuroscience, I'm not talking about rational reasoning

Don I was going to make exactly that point. "Pre-rational concepts" are what I would consider to be the faculty as well as the "etchings."

I'm curious as to whether there is any functional equivalence between "pre-rational concepts" and "rational concepts" or if it's just confusing terminology. It seems as if they may be different levels of usage of the faculty, but I don't know if that's neurologically correct.

An illustration that comes to mind is of breathing: we breathe subconsciously to stay alive, but we can also consciously control our breathing.

Quote from Cassius

Ok Godfrey you started this. What would you say to Elli's Greek beavers who need training in building dams?

I would think that beavers would need to learn to build dams. But one of Don's links explains that they don't, so if that's correct then as good Epicureans that should be our basis for going forward.

Meanwhile, I got around to reading the links that I attached earlier. It turns out that one is pretty useless, but the other describes some of the history of this debate (although not specifically beavers). I've attached the paper from the second link here. Better minds than mine have wrestled with this for a long time!

So I guess the bottom line is "damned if I know!" (Sorry, I couldn't resist. )

Quote

Ha that article seems to imply they just want peace and quiet!

They're seeking absence of pain

So according to these videos there is some sort of predisposition to build and to sing. Would this be a "faculty?" A biological "sketch" and thus a DeWitty Anticipation? Would subsequent learned behavior still be an Anticipation? Is it appropriate to draw a line between the two or could both be considered Anticipations?

Actually it may be quite a rabbit hole!

Here are a couple of links that I found that look promising, but I haven't read them yet:

https://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles…%20Behavior.pdf

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/animal_instincts

Interesting video! In the terms of the video, the question that I'm asking is whether complex behaviors are actually innate. To me, the behaviors listed as simple are innate, biological, and would not involve an Anticipation.

Assume that you go to a bird's nest, take an egg, and rear the bird that hatches from the egg away from other birds. Once it is fully grown, if you release it will it fly south for the winter? Will it exhibit mating behavior appropriate to its species if it comes across a bird of the opposite sex? Will it wake up early to sing? These seem to me to be learned behaviors, but that's just theorizing on my part. Theoretically speaking, maybe the bird would seek warmth as a precursor to migrating, and have some awkward teenage sexual attraction to the other bird as a rudimentary mating behavior. Both of these not quite developed behaviors could be Anticipations in the sense of the "sketch" that DeWitt refers to. As to singing, there is probably a joy of making noise which may eventually lead to a song of sorts.

But do seeking warmth, having sex, and making noise really rate as Anticipations? They seem to be just simple biological functions of seeking pleasure; adding the specific behaviors of flying to San Juan Capistrano, doing a specific mating dance and singing a particular birdsong seem to me to be learned behaviors. If this is correct, then an Anticipation would be considered social and not innate.

Somebody has probably done experiments along these lines, which could provide useful observational evidence to work with. If I have a chance I'll try to track some down!

Cassius I've made an attempt to corelate the current science as presented in the Barrett book with my understanding with the Canon. You're quite right to point out some of the differences! Regarding affect, to me it's useful to think about if and/or how arousal relates to intensity (as I understand it, it's different); I'm also curious to what degree the Greek pathe might correspond to affect.

Regarding behaviors, Joshua had a good point last night about animals that are raised in captivity being unable to survive in the wild. Intuitively (meaning I'm totally guessing!) it seems to me that animal behaviors are driven by pleasure and pain (or affect) and by the faculty of pattern recognition, both interacting with the senses. I think that this is taking materialism to its logical conclusion, although observation would trump any purely logical conclusion and looking at animals seems like a good direction to pursue.

As to Vellius, that brings up the controversy of Cicero being such a tainted source and how much we can trust him. This is why I was interested in reading modern theories in the first place: to try to make up for the uncertainties in the ancient texts and see if that can shed any light on Epicurus' thinking. But as you say, they are two different things.

Just to get the ball rolling:

The only things hard-wired in this regard are the faculties of pattern recognition, sensation and affect: all "instinct" can be reduced to this.

Pattern recognition is one of the ways that we have been thinking about Anticipations and I think pretty much aligns with DeWitt. It both precedes and reacts to sensations, forming concepts and affecting behaviors from such an early age that it is commonly and mistakenly thought that there are ideas and behaviors that are innate.

Affect is defined as a faculty of registering pleasure/displeasure and the degree of arousal. This corresponds to the Feelings and is a guide to behaviors and to forming concepts. These behaviors and concepts are formed from a very early stage of development in each individual, often through social connections, and are not innate.

Quote from Don

Chomsky and others believe the structures of language and deep grammar are hardwired.

This goes to the question "what are the prolepseis?" This is actually where I've been going with this and maybe it belongs in another thread.

I interpret this quote as referring to a faculty of "pattern recognition" with which we learn language. In my quote in post #21 I was referring to Lucretius' description of the development of language (hopefully I'm remembering it correctly). Could it be that that process of developing language is another function of pattern recognition?

Here's the article to download.

Perhaps I'm digressing....

But we do draw conclusions about the unobservable by thinking about the observable

I think we agree that language developed over time and is not inborn but learned, possibly beginning in utero. So there wasn't a model for it. I'm suggesting that it's the same for the birds and the beavers.

This might, however, be a different issue from a specific instance of using a word or designing a building. In both of those cases the model is previous experience as well. So is it really a different issue?

So are nest-building birds or dam-building beavers beings or nature? What are their models?

Cassius just to be clear, are you saying that there is a difference between "arguing" the philosophy and living the philosophy?

Stallings: "For anyone who has been born desires to hold on tight To life – at least as long as he’s detained by sweet delight"

Melville: "A man once born must wish to stay in life So long as soothing pleasure keeps him there."

Leonard, 1916 (from Perseus): "Whosoever Hath been begotten wills perforce to stay In life, so long as fond delight detains"

Personally I prefer the implications of Stallings and Leonard in this case. I notice from the Smith excerpt, however, that the context of this line has quite a bit going on. I'll await the podcast discussion before going any further. All in due time!

Was this line in the podcast today?

Brown does seem to be the most accurate to the philosophy; as to the Latin, I have no idea. He also uses "should" in the first part of the sentence rather than "must" or "must needs." Should, to me, is the better choice (again, not knowing Latin).

What line is this? I'm curious how the more contemporary translators treat it.

Cassius affect and the affective circumplex (I keep thinking of cineplex ) are described in post #2. The affective circumplex is illustrated in the image in that post and is just a graph of valence (pleasure/displeasure) in one direction and arousal in the other direction. Maybe there's a simpler name for it like "affect graph," I've just been using the name from the book.

It seems like another useful way to represent and discuss pleasure, as we do from time to time

Digressing to post #31:

Quote from Cassius

Skepticism, nihilism, rationalism, idealism, and on and on are the primary philosophical opponents that we are playing against just as much as we're playing against schizophrenia or other "clinical" conditions. We aren't in the game solely to respond to clinical conditions that developed naturally, though we do want to respond to those too.

"Predictions," perhaps as a fine-tuning or an evolution of anticipations, provide both a response to other philosophies and a tool for working with clinical conditions. This is because of the information that we are able to modify our predictions (although it is a process and takes work) as a means toward increasing our pleasure. Also, as LFB takes pains to point out, there is no pure "rationality" as it is always affected by our affect.

Understanding the processes she describes in her book not only provides arguments against other philosophies, but because the processes do seem to have a relationship to the Canon then they also provide support for the Epicurean view of life.

The affective circumplex is something that can be evaluated as to whether it gives us a better understanding of pleasure and pain. That information is valuable to an Epicurean to the degree that it can be put into practice.

As to clinical conditions, I came across this short podcast:

https://shows.acast.com/one-thing-pain…lorimer-moseley

At about 7 plus minutes there is a description that sounded to me like a practical application of the Canon. Although that's my interpretation; the interviewee was discussing information from his scientific work and not anything about Epicurus. But that is exactly what, to me, is so interesting: we keep running across science that seems to correspond to EP. This doesn't make me want to become a scientist, but it does motivate me to try to understand ways to incorporate new information into my pursuit of Epicurean pleasure as the two seem to be mutually reinforcing.

Physics seems to me to be more of an intellectual exercise and perhaps not as useful for daily living. (Unless, of course one is a physicist Martin !) But neuroscience seems to have direct applications to daily living. One doesn't need to be a neuroscientist, but one can get value from reading up on it (to the point where it brings one more pleasure than pain )

Quote from Cassius

All we really need to do is to articulate in broad terms that there are mechanisms by which we can have confidence in living happily if we eject both skepticism and rationalism in favor of reliance on the faculties that Nature gave us.

The only thing that I would add to this is that if understanding the mechanism in more detail helps us to increase pleasure, then it is worthwhile to do so to the degree that it does so. I think that having a basic understanding of predictions and affect could be useful in that regard.

A quick post; today is pretty busy so it may be a while before I get back on....

In reacting to Don 's post, I think one of LFB's points is that sensations in a particular instance don't come first. A prediction comes first and the sensations serve as a reality check as you can see from the description of a prediction loop. So the sensations are "true" but they don’t seem to be primary.

Another thing that seems like it might be fruitful to discuss is affect and the affective circumplex.