Posts by Godfrey

Can anybody recommend some material on the Greek gods? I'm a little familiar with the stories of anger, chicanery and such. It would be Interesting to have references to peruse that deal with such things as:

- stories of the Greek gods

- Greek gods versus Greek myths: are the myths just stories of the gods?

- the place of the gods in Greek culture, especially during Epicurus's time

It might be helpful to see more specifically what the general thinking was that Epicurus was responding to. If so, maybe this subforum is a good place to gather references.

A good read is Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. Historical fiction about the building of a cathedral and the intrigue and effort involved.

The gods notwithstanding, it's a terrible shame to lose an architectural and artistic treasure of such magnitude. I compare it to a loss on a lesser magnitude of the Glasgow School of Art a few years ago.

A truly pleasurable memory of mine is wandering into Notre Dame as the organist began playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. The light, the music reverberating: spectacular and sublime. An incredible achievement of mankind.

Not to defend religion, but many cultural artifacts of the world would not exist without religious fervor of various types. I try to appreciate the artifacts while being cognizant of the pros and cons of the processes of their creation.

My last two posts were #17 and #19. That sounds like #17.

Thanks for posting all this information, it's a great resource!

I was curious while reading the letter to Herodotus if he was discussing rhetoric, or perhaps clear thinking. But it's the placement in the letter that seems to connect it with the canon.

The timing of your reading of Cicero is fortuitous: after reading DeWitt I downloaded a Cicero compilation so I can work my way through On Ends, The Gods and Tusculan Questions. Part of DeWitt's case (as you know) is that Cicero had a better grasp of the ideas than Laertius, even though Laertius was more sympathetic to the philosophy. I'd also never realized that Laertius lived after Cicero.

The pleasure comes at the same time as the learning, so I'm going to take my time with this!

Quote from Cassius

Godfrey the argument appears in several locations in DeWitt's book, but primarily starting page 142. When you get a chance to look at this material I'll be very interested in your reaction.

Cassius, I've been reading up and feel much more informed on the prolepsis issues now. DeWitt presents a concrete and comprehensive case for his view, although when I read the letter to Herodotus I tend to interpret it more in line with the "mainstream" view. Apparently my "multiple modalities" questions are the 3 v 4 faculties problem, and I've got nothing to add to that. I've got to live with these ideas for longer; for the time being my head is spinning!

The one thing that I'm now convinced of is that Platonic ideals are incorporeal and eternal, and the Epicurean canon is firmly biologically based. So even if innate ideas/ anticipations/ preconceptions/ prolepseis are considered universal to mankind, they aren't Platonic as long as they remain in the body/mind.

The discussion on The Anticipations thread is excellent, BTW.

Good cite! Time for a deep dive into this intriguing topic.

Cassius, I frankly can't remember if I've read DeWitt's take on the anticipations or not, but I'm going to read (or re-read) it in the next few days. When I was putting together an outline I was getting hung up on the anticipations and it was suggested that I return to them later, as I recall. Which I'm doing now

Your description of DeWitt's theory is in line with my anticipations and seems to align with Asmis as well, as I understand her paper.

Now thinking out loud (digitally speaking): what if we compare justice and cows? They're two common examples that are used, along with the round/square tower.

Justice: I think we all agree that there is an innate sense of justice, perhaps an intuition. However each individual's sense of justice evolves over time, or I propose that it should in a properly functioning adult. An adult's sense of justice should be substantially more complex and possibly different than a two year old's. How does this happen? Through a continuous process of adjustment based on input from the senses and the feelings and adjustment of the initial concept. As an aside, it's possible that the end point of a person's concept of justice, after various permutations, will be the same as it was when they were two, but with more nuance. (Regarding familiar/unfamiliar, those, too change based on sensory input. Unfamiliar becomes familiar... likewise safety/danger....)

Cows: I can't imagine that we're born with a sense of what a cow is. (Didn't someone say to Plato, "when I see a horse I don't see horseness, I see a horse"?) We see a cow or a picture of a cow, or we hear "moo" or someone describes a cow to us. Then when we encounter a creature that might be a cow, we compare the information from our senses to what we have learned about a cow. If they match, perhaps we have a feeling of pleasure and our idea of a cow is reinforced.

I'll call justice and cows two different "modalities", for lack of a better word. But they each get measured through the canon in a similar fashion.

Call justice an inner intuition, call a cow an external presentation. If a person regards all anticipations as inner intuitions, then a cow must be an example of "cowness". Likewise if everything is a external presentation, there is no innate sense of justice but only a learned concept. So as I now understand it, there are probably multiple modalities of anticipations, similar to multiple modalities of the senses. At the very least "inner" and "outer".

Is it the case that the arguments using cows and such were all presented to promote one point of view and the arguments using justice were all presented to promote another viewpoint? I'm not clear enough on who said what to parse that.

From my reading of the paper "Epicurus' Scientific Method" I'm understanding a different take on the canon where the anticipations, senses and feelings are not separate, but interconnected. You have a preconception, which is verified by the senses. From there action is guided by pleasure/pain.

This doesn't mean that anticipations/senses/feelings are never separate, but to me it describes the canon as a measuring process involving all three components. To follow this reasoning, the anticipations almost equate to hypotheses. I think that that's going too far, but something that bothers me about anticipations as I've previously understood them is that they seem disturbingly close to Platonic ideals.

I like that interpretation of PD 23! I've understood it as a poke at the Skeptics, but this is a very practical reading of it.

On the last point regarding the condemnation of suicide, it seems like he's confusing the Epicureans with the Stoics.

Epicurus' VS 38 He is a little man in all respects who has many good reasons for quitting life.

The Isonomia book that Rivelle linked to in the "Epicurus, Ionia and India" thread discusses the Athenians v the Ionians in terms of idealism v materialism. Apparently the intelligent design v natural selection debate has been around since at least 500 BC! I found the parts of the book dealing with philosophy to be a very interesting read.

This is all new to me and extremely interesting. Epicurus' Scientific Method seems hard to find, but there's an earlier paper by Asmis which looks like her student work which led to the book and can be downloaded at

https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp/157/

The beginning of her paper discusses Epicurus' Canon and seems to me to be a useful presentation of the subject. I've had particular difficulty grasping the Anticipations, largely I think because I haven't properly connected the Sensations, Feelings and Anticipations. She describes very clearly how the three are interdependent and used to measure each other in the process of inquiry. I find this quite illuminating, at least if I'm understanding it correctly

Another daily practice is reading. At the very least, after breakfast I'll read and chew on one of the Principal Doctrines or Vatican Sayings. Typically I'll read more than just that: currently I'm working through the Melville translation of Lucretius which is quite fun. I first read a prose version as an overview, but having done that the poetry is quite enjoyable.

Elayne, thanks for posting that. This is an interesting thread for the daily nuts and bolts and I'm quite interested to read what other people do.

As to my daily practice, it is very much a work in progress but here is the general idea:

For years, I've kept my weekly planning and to-do lists organized (in a fashion) by categories such as finance, health and fitness, social, work on so on. I recently gave it an "Epicurean" makeover by slightly reorganizing the categories and also grouping the categories by "natural/necessary" and "natural/ not necessary". I don't have a group for not natural/not necessary. Some categories only changed in name, while other categories got split up and still others eliminated.

For instance "finance" is now "autarky", which is natural/necessary. "Health and fitness" is now "freedom from disease" (natural/necessary) and "fitness" (natural/not necessary). "Spiritual" has become "Practical wisdom" (natural/necessary). This illustrates the general idea, and of course everyone would have different ideas as to their categories and what falls in to natural and necessary or not necessary. In applying this to my entire planning process I found that the end result is a major simplification from what it was originally, and that it now clearly prioritizes and aligns my planning and activities with my philosophy.

On a micro level, I've been working with an "Epicurean" mindfulness practice. I spent several years practicing Zen informally so this kind of comes naturally for me. The minor difference is that as I'm going about my mindfulness I focus on pleasant sensations, whereas in the past what normally has come up for me is unpleasant sensations, blockages, etc. I'm still aware of those, but just go further to notice the pleasantness. Interestingly, it's always there somewhere.

Not sure if it belongs here, but this article popped up in my feed:

https://www.businessinsider.com/exercise-makes…y---4.0-styling

An interesting point that they make in the study is that too much exercise decreases happiness. A great example of natural and necessary approaching unnecessary and/or unnatural.

Thanks for both of these posts!

I'm a big fan of dark chocolate and seafood (although not together). Yet as a newcomer to EP I find that it's sometimes a struggle to reconcile the pursuit of pleasure with the big picture of life. That is both the beauty and the challenge of EP, and it makes for a truly rewarding philosophy.

Are there other translations of the Letter to Menoeceus available that use "incorruptible" instead of "immortal"? I found one that uses "indestructible", but DeWitt seems to be the only one using incorruptible. The implications of "incorruptible" are very appealing!

Can our Greek friends provide any insight on this point?

Oscar Nice article! Natural light has been demonstrated in many studies to be a key component of effective learning spaces. And not just learning spaces, but any kind of habitable space. As organisms we are biologically intertwined with the sun to the point that natural light is definitely natural and necessary.

Many of the best architects speak of their work as sculpting light. One of my old favorites is the Finn, Alvar Aalto, who went to great lengths to pull the dim northern light into his buildings. Calatrava's work is quite different and works with bright southern light. Gothic cathedrals were all about the desire to suffuse space with spiritual light. You're definitely on to something!

Cassius, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is a short story. You can buy it for $1.99 online or download a free PDF that pops up in a Google search. I read it in a collection of LeGuin's short fiction titled The Unreal and the Real. She was a Taoist, which sometimes comes out in her fiction.

I was going to make the point that you finished with, Cassius. Who determines the greatest happiness?

If I take the approach that I as an individual will act to maximize happiness for the most people, how can I do that? "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", and as you mentioned above, Daniel, (I'm quoting from memory so correct me if I'm wrong) an action can be immoral even if the intention was moral.

I believe the Epicurean answer to the greatest happiness for the greatest number is to get more people to follow Epicureanism

It looks like you've already answered your question about moral responsibility. I'd like to add that it appears to me, on the basis of this discussion, that Utilitarianism is an attempt to "improve" upon Epicureanism by adding to it. As an Epicurean, to me the additions seek to bring together ideas which do not belong together. I had thought that there would be more in common between the two philosophies but they actually seem quite divergent.

Regarding the greatest good for the greatest number, there's a rather famous short story by Ursula LeGuin that I recommend reading. It's titled " The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and I believe you can find a free copy online. It's an interesting take on the idea.