Posts by Godfrey

Listening to the Ted talk, I noticed she spoke a lot about predictions. It seems like these may correspond to prolepses, and it's also interesting to note that these predictions respond not just to sensations but also to pleasure and pain. If I'm understanding this correctly Epicurean sensations are external stimuli, Epicurean feelings are internal stimuli, and predictions which she speaks of are how we process both external and internal stimuli. This processing then results in such things as emotions, thoughts, opinions, actions, etc. How we work with these emotions, thoughts, opinions, actions then adds to our experiential storehouse, which in turn affects our future predictions. Am I getting that right???

Oh I just found all her videos (including these) on her multimedia page.

I might be missing something but I don't see a link to the Ted talk. Is this it? talk? https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_fel…hem?language=en

Also there's this really short youtube video:

I haven't watched these yet but the subject sounds fascinating.

First, I enjoyed the discussion on death in the podcast: several good points brought up.

Second, I don't recall that the attached paper deals specifically with the Tetrapharmakos, but it is a study of some of the controversies surrounding epitomizing Epicurean philosophy in ancient times and may be of some interest.

I just sent her a request for the full text of the preconceptions paper through Researchgate. If I get a positive response I'll post the paper in a new thread. Meanwhile I'll probably get lots of emails from Researchgate suggesting other papers, at least if they're similar to Academia. Might be a good source of information though: I noticed that they have a paper on Epicurus' concept of the void by Brad Inwood.

Don thanks for pointing out that the author is a woman. Erroneous assumption on my part.

Yes "factive" isn't very clear.

As I understand the paper he makes a clear distinction between perceptions and beliefs. Perceptions are true and not describable by propositions, while beliefs are testable propositions and therefore not a criterion of truth.

An example he uses, with reservations, is that of a photograph. Perceptions can be compared to a photograph in that they pick up the information, but they don't store it as a photograph does. He also discusses that eidola include not just information about an object but also available information about the context of the object. This is one reason that they are true, but information regarding a specific object of perception needs to be verified through numerous instances of perception.

I found the attached paper to be quite thought provoking, particularly regarding the eidola. The paper focuses on the senses, which the author refers to as perceptions. It's a discussion on the Epicurean assertion that all sensations are true, and the author addresses this partly through examining the eidola.

Reading about the eidola in this way gave me an opportunity to ruminate on them as a proto-scientific attempt to understand perception via atomic theory. Epicurus covered a lot of ground with them (from objects, to dreams, to visions) and it's interesting to think about how these functions in early atomic theory apply to the science of perception today.

There's more to the paper than that; definitely worth perusing.

I'm not sure if I was clear in my post as I was in a turkey coma.... I disagree with how the authors interpret EP, and part of their interpretation is "absence of pain." We've discussed that extensively here on the forum and I for one agree that "absence of pain" is neither a valid nor actionable interpretation of pleasure as the goal of life. What I find interesting in the paper, although I haven't finished reading it, is that the last half or so invalidates "absence of pain" as an actionable goal. Or at least that's how I'm reading it so far. So the last half or so actually supports the position that we've come to here regarding pleasure v the absence of pain.

I've only read up through section 5.4, but find it quite interesting in that the authors interpret the goal of EP as absence of pain and then show (beginning in 5.4) that modern research invalidates absence of pain as a valid goal. Apparently modern research has validated many of the positions that we tend to take here.

Quote

Pain relief and the escape from expected pain leads to positive affect (e.g. Frijda, 1988; Lazarus, 1991), but continuous absence of pain does not necessarily lead to happy tranquillity, but can also be boring. Headey and Wearing (1992) describe the fact that a significant minority of people have low levels of psychological distress and are unhappy at the same time. Csikszentmihaly (1999) states that happiness results from optimal functioning that can be found between boredom and anxiety. These findings contradict Epicurus’ notion of happiness as mere absence of pain. Epicurus’ happiness advice does not cater for exhilarating aspects of a business man’s life that involves risks and losses but also makes one live to the full and be happy on balance. He also did not think of anhedonia, the inability to experience emotion, that is characteristic of people with a depressive disorder. This condition is often more difficult to bear than emotional pain itself. Happiness is definitely something other than the mere absence of all pain (Bergsma, 1995).

Headey and Wearing (1992, pp. 4–8) also notice that some people are happy despite the fact that they experience high levels of psychological distress. People often perceive life as both quite satisfying and quite stressful. This goes against Epicurus’ idea that happiness can be equated with absence of pain. Still, the combination of high distress with happiness can be reconciled with Epicurus’ philosophy, because of his idea that we can learn to tolerate pain.

The independence of positive and negative affect has two consequences for Epicurus’ position. His notion that avoiding pain is sufficient for establishing a good quality of life may be too conservative. The second consequence is that he neglected the role of positive affect. We start with a discussion of his ideas to avoid pain.

So while I'm not convinced by the authors' interpretation of EP, I'm looking forward to continuing to read how they invalidate the absence of pain interpretation.

Thanks for posting this, Brett!

Where is it that the Epicurean gods are described as being in human form and speaking Greek? Is that in Cicero? Lucretius? I wonder how that relates to this discussion....

I haven't yet read the full Sedley piece so I might be repeating something in there or in Jackson. But for the full context of this and similar discussions we've got to keep in mind that Epicurus was considering a very specific notion of gods, which of course was the Greek idea. I think that that's part of the difficulty in that it's very tempting for people today to intermingle a variety of conceptions of gods and god and "spirituality" with the Greek conception of gods. Similarly with the physics: part of the beauty of Epicurean physics is how relevant they are to today's physics. This can beguile us into conflating our ideas with his. Taken together this makes for a very tangled web: modern notions of physics can confuse Epicurean notions of gods, and vice versa.

Regarding the prolepses, I've no problem with a prolepsis of justice (fairness?) as it does seem to be something seen in children and some animals. Plus the PDs are quite specific on how to work with that prolepsis. A prolepsis of the gods is more difficult to sort out: is this prolepsis supposed to be the same in all cultures?

Thanks for those, Don.

Quote

It's not my personal experience of “the Other”...

Susan would you be comfortable elaborating on this? I'm wondering if that could be helpful in defining what exactly we're discussing.

This essay of interest popped up in my feed:

https://www.academia.edu/28618657/Nothi…%A1ximo_de_Tiro

From the conclusion:

Quote

Maximus undertakes, in an Academic stance, the defence of Epicurus by letting him speak on his own behalf in an oration carefully fleshed out with a good deal of Epicurean doctrines; by means of this figure he states the case for the “other” side of the debate regarding pleasure, a fundamental one to those who want to be initiated in philosophy. Besides, at the centre of the oration, Socrates himself appears compulsively in pursuit of beauty, nonetheless able to unite pleasure and virtue. Furthermore, the source for this hedonistic Socrates were those dialogues in which he involved himself in dialectical enquiries with handsome youths for the sake of education. All things considered, Maximus has given Epicurus his due, to the point of making of Socrates an Epicurean of sorts, someone from whom much can be learnt.

I had never heard of Maximus, but apparently he devoted a few orations to pleasure. His orations can be purchased on Amazon for a modest $900 . Is anyone familiar with him?

The blessed and incorruptible being has no troubles itself nor causes trouble for others; therefore it does not experience feelings of anger or indebtedness, for such feelings signify weakness.

(A combination of several translations based on discussion here: Blessed and Imperishable?)

As an addendum, I was about to start a thread on PD1 and gratitude. In researching, I found this thread and it seems that not only is my question answered here but that it also ties up a loose end in the thread.

From Don in the initial post:

Quote

Being affected by anger as a sickness or weakness makes sense, but why would being affected by gratitude be a sign of weakness? One conjecture would be that it would show a lack of self-reliance / αυτάρκεια.

The word "gratitude" seems problematic as, to me, one who is blessed would experience a general sense of gratitude. Denying gratitude seems quite un-Epicurean! The wiki translation in post #15 gets to a more accurate sense of the doctrine in my opinion: "indebtedness," or "favors" as they translate it in their first pass.

That was probably me... I posted on it here: Thoughts on Reverence, Awe, and Epicurean Piety. I don't remember the details of the article although I do remember that it really got me thinking about the subject.

From the article that Susan linked to in #18:

Quote

But we know that young babies are also busy little scientists scanning, analyzing, and making sense of their environment.

This could explain babies' sustained rapt attention.

Regarding awe, as they say at least once in every TV show, "it's complicated." Feelings and emotions are slippery terms, which is why "reactions" might be a good translation of pathe (Don, did you suggest that?) There is definitely a reactive element to emotions: what you feel (there's that word ) right away in response to sensations. I'd say that the pathe are the reactive parts of emotions, and that they are felt as either pleasure or pain. A particular emotion can be either painful or pleasant. So emotions and pathe are intertwined in some way it seems, but putting it into words gets confusing.

Quote

I keep going back to those experiments with infants and toddlers on fair play, "justice", etc. We humans seem too have an innate sense of justice and fair play as well as awe and amazement. That's where my analysis of the prolepses starts.

Don, that is a good place to start. Taking the viewpoint of prolepses as a "faculty that disposes us organize what we perceive..." then justice and fair play seem to be a way of connecting our sensations with our feelings. An infant sees someone do something and then feels good, this is "organized" as a perception of justice.

Awe seems more complex I think.... Is it a strong emotion? This brings up two points: aren't emotions "components" of pleasure and pain? Also emotions can diminish over time (one can get jaded to what once caused a strong reaction) but it seems like prolepses tend to sharpen over time.

Quote

...I would probably use words like a "faculty" that "disposes us to organize what we perceive" in ways that are helpful to our forming of mental images that we then store in our memories and use as operators for further analysis.

Cassius, that's a good description to me, if we could just find a nice, concise way of saying that! But as you say it is just a start. That's one reason that I think that grappling with the gods (as it were) is a fruitful exercise.