Posts by Godfrey

It's been a while and I don't recall the details of the Santayana essay. What's interesting to me in this discussion is the connection between excellent scholarship in some aspects of the essay combined with the total dismissal of Epicurus in other parts. It seems as though one devoted to excelling in scholarship just can't comprehend or stomach the ultimate simplicity and obviousness of Epicurus' insights.

Of course part of Epicurus' project was to show the futility of over-reliance on the intellect. So the intellectual probably feels compelled to demean and discredit Epicurus. The tragedy, to me, is how over the millennia those who make a fancy argument can blind so many to basic truths.

Yes I made it through the whole thing. I kept expecting it to get better but it never did.

I'd suggest bailing on reading it and wait for what Joshua has to say. I imagine he'll be able to discover some nuance in the piece, at least more than I could!

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...his depiction of Epicurus won't win him any friends here.

That would be me. I read this essay a few months ago and was extremely put off by it. That being said, I'm interested to hear your take on it Joshua.

This made me quite happy!

Looking again at my statement, it's actually circular in that the pursuit of something is guided by the experience of that thing. I think it's better stated as "the pursuit of desire fulfillment is guided by the experience of pleasure," and this could be an extremely critical point.

It's important to separate the faculty from the action, and if I'm not mistaken this is exactly what Epicurus is doing when read carefully. I've tended to conflate pleasure and desire. However he ranks desires (not pleasures) into the categories of natural and necessary, natural and not necessary, and vain. Pleasure itself (the faculty) is uniformly good. (I'm writing without referring to the texts so I could be putting words in his mouth, but this separation is how I've been thinking about the philosophy lately. I'm not sure if the Greek backs this up or not . Or maybe it's obvious and I'm just a tad dull. )

The natural state that I'm referring to is the smooth and integrated functioning of the sensations, prolepses and feelings. So it would be the experience of pleasure functioning in a way as to be a proper guide for the pursuit of pleasure.

Quote from Cassius

Or is it useful or not useful to state a general rule?

To me the default and the general rule is the natural state. Beyond that, as with many things, I don't think it's useful to state as a general rule. However for me, personally, and probably for most of us in the forum, there is a great deal of baggage (cultural and/or otherwise) in the way of returning to this state and EP is the most valid philosophy for doing so. But there is no way to objectively determine whether or not a person is living in the natural state. I could think of a few acquaintances that seem to be, but if I asked them they may disabuse me of that idea! The opposite goes for the scientist in question: there's no way to judge the fullness of his cup.

Quote from Don

I would ask What is the totality of their life? How are they living it? Are they just? Are they making decisions to bring sustained pleasure to their whole life? The moment-by-moment experience of pleasure while researching or contemplating their scientific pursuit is not the goal. It is living a sustained pleasurable life.

So these questions from Don are the questions we need to ask of ourselves, discuss, and promote. But it seems pointless to try to ascertain how frequently the natural state is retained or under what conditions.

Quote from Cassius

In addition to looking at it "practically" I think there is a natural tendency ("anticipation"??) to be drawn to thinking about questions like "divinity.". (" Are we alone in the universe? Are there higher beings?) And so I think it is natural to need a framework for dealing with those issues.

I totally agree with this. In fact our scientist is likely getting pleasure from dealing with these very questions, which relates to PD 10. So I guess my point is that we can't tell and shouldn't assume from someone's lifestyle whether or not they are living a life of pleasure, or how close they may be to the natural state.

Just finished listening; great discussion!

To me, Martin said it most accurately and concisely: "it's natural." Epicurus didn't invent the Canon, he observed and articulated it. It's a natural process involving pleasure. As long as nothing is interfering with this process then no philosophy is necessary. But when wrong thinking, fears, religion and such interfere with the process, then correct philosophy is the medicine to get back on track.

So, at least for now, I'm with Elayne and Martin. Don's points are well taken however and bring the discussion to the fullness of pleasure. If the scientist has arranged his life to maximize pleasure then there's no reason to change. But if his marriage is a shambles, he's living on the streets, he's an alcoholic, etc, then he probably could use a philosophical intervention. In the latter case his cup of pleasure is full of muddy water.

Well produced; the images worked nicely with the audio. And well stated. 👍👍

I'm not.

For this particular presentation I think it's helpful to have text and images. Often I'm not a fan of that, but for what you're doing I liked being able to read the text as you read or referred to it. Same with viewing the painting.

There is a podcast that I follow (typically one hour + in length) which streams on Google Podcasts as well as YouTube; in that case I listen to the audio stream and only rarely watch the video if there's something specific that I want to see. In your case I think the visuals are pretty integral. Having a purely audio stream might make it easier to access (in the car, for example) but as long as the length is around ten minutes I for one would watch the video.

Enjoyed it Joshua! I'm actually not familiar with the poem, so this is a great introduction. Looking forward to the next one. 👍👍

Quote from Don

What differentiates an "atheist church" from an Epicurean "garden" if the church-goers don't accept any supernatural causes? What do "we" offer as a distinct philosophy to secular "nones"?

We have the philosophy but not the community. I've no experience with atheist churches, so for me a question would be "what do they offer?"

Of interest is the community and morality offered by any church, atheist or theist or deist or whatever. I think that to some degree these are as important as the theology, both to unite the congregation and to separate them from outsiders. Note all of the people born into a given church who disregard the supernatural but still follow the morality established, supposedly, by that supernatural. There is also the "advantage" of being able to follow a pre-established morality and so not having to engage with difficult questions to the degree, perhaps, of somebody following a relative morality. In an atheist church there is the danger of settling upon an absolute morality; a garden avoids that. But I think that, throughout time, community and morality are at least important as the supernatural for the allure of churches, and at least as divisive in terms of an overall culture or "us" v "them."

Don makes a great analysis of sunsets and burns. Sunsets, vistas, contemplating the universe; so many things do seem to stimulate a prolepsis of awe/wonder/mystery/connectedness. I'll even go out on a limb and say that this could be what some people (not me!) have referred to as "the god shaped hole" in their hearts. Which maybe leads back to "images."

Don I think we're saying the same thing about justice. I was attempting to differentiate between the concept and the prolepsis, but you've described it more clearly.

I guess I've absorbed more of DeWitt than I was aware of! It's been a while but I've read the sections on the Canon a couple of times though I don't consciously remember them. That's one reason why I'm not a lawyer!

Regarding the "images," to me there are two topics involved. Don rightly mentioned above that all three faculties aren't activated without a stimulus. To clarify my original point that he was responding to, my thinking is that the prolepses and feelings aren't activated without an internal stimulus. The sensations, it would seem, are reacting to external stimuli. They then transmit an internal stimulus to the prolepses or feelings.

The images are described as external particles stimulating the faculties. I'm not sure that I buy that and that is one topic of discussion. The other topic is our modern understanding of thoughts and dreams. On the subject of the Canon, I would describe these as internal stimuli that can then tickle the prolepses and feelings.

A further question that I periodically ponder is whether or not the three legs as conceived by Epicurus function together as a process, interact randomly, or both.

I keep leaning toward the notion that they function together as a process, but I may be bringing that to it from my personal bias. The way that I envision the process working is that the prolepses work on a "gut" level to route a received sensation to either a pleasure or pain receptor. If neither feeling is involved, then there's no prolepsis. So we determine a concept of justice not necessarily from a single use of the Canon but through multiple exposures to situations that involve justice and stimulate resultant feelings of pleasure or pain. The concept of justice is a mental construct (not Canonical). The prolepsis of justice is the "intuition" that gives us pleasure or pain from the situation involving justice or injustice.

Now there are situations that lead to feelings with, seemingly, no prolepsis involved: seeing a beautiful sunset, burning your hand on the stove. And there are situations that don't stimulate feelings (recognizing an ox as an ox) and so, by this line of reasoning, don't involve a prolepsis. But in thinking of it in terms of a process, the prolepses or feelings aren't activated without a stimulus. Which maybe after all is just a long winded way of saying that a prolepsis is not a concept, although more specifically I'm trying to ascertain if the Canon is considered to be an integrated process.

What if we zoom out a bit, then zoom back in. This is an off the cuff expression of my current understanding so I'm kind of going to ramble a bit.... The Canon is a three legged tool with which to measure the veracity of observations and/or arguments. One leg, the sensations, provides input. One leg, the feelings, responds to input (sensations, thoughts, etc) and also provides guidance for action. As to the leg of prolepses... it seems that this can be a bridge between the two other legs. Is it also an internal source of input, or, like feelings, is it strictly another response mechanism? As a response mechanism it would be an innate faculty, but subject to "training" over time.

I need to give this a lot more thought, but where I'm going is asking what the function of each leg is, how or if they work together, and whether or not this can help to define a prolepsis. Part of the difficulty in answering this is that there seems to be a wide variety of ways that the Canon can function.

Also, there are five or more sensations which interact with each other. The feelings have an inverse relationship as described by the Full Cup model. Is there something analogous in the workings of the prolepses? I often think of them as a bridge between the other two legs but I'm not sure that that's entirely accurate.

I'm not sure if this is useful or not but I figured I'd put it out there....

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So whether we have "prolepsis of truth" very possibly should always be stated to convey that we are talking about having a prolepsis of the truth of a particular situation.

Yes, that's very important!

Again to compare truth with justice, I think that it's also the case that a prolepsis of justice applies to a particular situation. Thinking about it, a prolepsis, being part of the Canon is a faculty to evaluate a particular situation. Similarly for sensations and feelings.

We can apply well developed concepts to the evaluation of specific situations, but a prolepsis is a more fundamental, gut level, lizard brain tool for evaluating. A different faculty from the use of reason. Which accidentally asks the question "is reason a faculty?" Maybe there's a better word that's specific to "abilities" outside of the Canon.

Absolutely it's not an absolute!

To further compare truth and justice as prolepseis: in order to provide further understanding of the prolepsis of justice, Epicurus provides 10 Principal Doctrines. In order to provide further understanding of (the prolepsis of?) truth, he provides the Canon.

That of course doesn't mean that truth is definitely a prolepsis, but it does seem to me to be an analogous situation.

Now I understand better what you wrote previously, Don. Thanks for elaborating!

Regarding prolepseis and what was discussed in the podcast: if I understood her correctly, Elayne was comparing truth with, say, sweetness, as something that doesn't need definition. To me that's not correct, and I would consider it to be a prolepsis. Just as everyone can have a different idea as to what is just, so everyone can have a different idea as to what is true. But the prolepsis, at least as I understand it, is the germ of the idea. Little children have a general sense of what is fair and just, and they also have a general sense of truth. This is different from knowledge of specific concepts of truth and justice, which are only developed with time, experience and input from the senses and feelings. A child can see something and through their feelings, mediated by their prolepseis, have a sense as to whether that something is just, true or whatnot. This precedes conceptualizing about "what is truth" and the like.

At least that's how I currently understand it!