Posts by Joshua

One part of our conversation was particularly insightful on that point. Charles (to summarize) said that Epicurus' definition of justice as non-absolute and existing in mutual advantage by social convention was well above and beyond the operation of the anticipations. Steve replied that there was a considerable amount of cultural overlay, but that the prolepsis of justice might be operating underneath all that at a far more basic level. Steve's response seemed to me good, and the only way to reconcile the prolepsis of justice with what Epicurus says in the Principal Doctrines: as for example in this one;

32. Those animals which are incapable of making covenants with one another, to the end that they may neither inflict nor suffer harm, are without either justice or injustice. And those tribes which either could not or would not form mutual covenants to the same end are in like case.

To speak of chimpanzees and capuchins as forming covenants to protect their idea of fairness is bordering on the absurd, but the operation of fairness and compassion do seem to be present at some level. So I would, like Steve, try to draw a distinction between the mutual rational justice of the principal doctrines and the canonic pre-rational anticipation of justice, which might be present also in lower orders of animals.

What do we think of this as a start?

The attributes of agreements of justice:

• Rational
• Cultural
• Social
• Leading to stated or implied contractual behavior
  • With the expectation of reciprocity, without which the compact breaks down; more like a treaty between sovereign nations

The attributes of the anticipation of justice:

• Pre-rational
• Evolutionary
• Individual
• Leading to voluntary behavior
  • With no expectation of reciprocity: More like giving a gift; maybe you'll get one in return someday

Having now watched both of these videos, I have to say they're far better than any of my summaries might suggest!

Fernando brought up the work of Dr. Frans de Waal in the discussions on primates and the prolepsis of justice, which I wanted to start a thread about since we didn't get into it on the call.

Moral behavior in animals

What happens when two monkeys are paid unequally? Fairness, reciprocity, empathy, cooperation -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human…

www.ted.com

We've been talking about this recently and I haven't been properly crediting the source, so thank you Fernando!

Quote

I much prefer the designation that Athenaeus provides in Deipnosophistae (5:3), that we are ΠPOΦHTAΣ ATOMΩN, or, "Atom Prophets".

I like this, it reminds me of the Machine Priests from The Foundation Trilogy.

Show Notes:

Imperial Units of Measurement at Trafalgar Square

Research on the "newly-sighted"

Seeing a flat plane of indiscriminate shape and color:

At First Sight: Gaining Sight as an Adult

It's harder than you think.

www.psychologytoday.com

Recognizing human locomotion:

After a lifetime of blindness, newly sighted can immediately identify human locomotion

Researchers find blind patients who had very limited visual exposure to human bodily movement could immediately recognize human locomotion after the removal of…

news.mit.edu

It seems fitting here to remember that W. B. Yeats considered Lucretius' fourth book to contain "the greatest description of sexual intercourse ever written". He responded to it by writing that "the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul"--in other words, that, try as they might, lovers never can succeed in becoming two in one.

We do have this thread going, which is an excellent resource, and great for compiling this kind of information. I generally like to keep tidy formatting there and limited conversation, but Nate, your post would be a great addition.

Bottom of page 62 and top of page 63:

There remain the epithets "imposter" and "prostitute." For these it is the most plausible explanation that Epicurus discovered his teacher to be living a double life, preaching virtue, as all philosophers did, and at the same time practicing vice. Cicero informs us that most philosophers condoned the practice of homosexuality, and for once he agreed emphatically with Epicurus in condemning it as against Plato. The latter, as is well known, had essayed in his Symposium to sublimate this passion into a passion for knowledge. Epicurus also wrote a Symposium, in which he retorted: "Intercourse never was the cause of any good and it is fortunate if it does no harm." In the case of Nausiphanes there is another item of evidence from the pen of Epicurus: "As for my own opinion, I presume that the high-steppers (Platonists) will think me really a pupil of the 'lung-fish' and that I listened to his lectures in the company of certain lads who were stupid from the night's carousing. For he was both an immoral man and addicted to such practices as made it impossible for him to arrive at wisdom." The practices here referred to have been interpreted as the study of mathematics, but the mention of adolescent lads, of drinking, and of immorality make the true reference unmistakable to any reader conversant with the shadier side of student life among the Greeks.

Quote

I haven't been able to find any concrete source on this. Though there are some suggestions or allusions that perhaps he had some relation in one way or another with Pythocles, whether that's in bad faith or not is hard to say given the nature of Plutarch.

I think DeWitt infers from one of Epicurus' alleged insults against Plato or Aristotle that he was mocking them for pederasty. I'd have to find the citation, which DeWitt (from memory) implies rather than states directly. Presumably the kind of invective that gets thrown at every one at some time or other in antiquity, all though the insult passage in Laertius is confusing because the biographer himself seems to discredit every word of it.

DeWitt occasionally cannot help himself from making bricks by first making clay...

Quote

Dare I say that our philosophy departments need gardens?

One of the many reasons I love Friar Laurence from Romeo and Juliet;

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,

Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,

And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels

From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels.

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,

The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,

I must up-fill this osier cage of ours

With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.

The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;

What is her burying grave that is her womb,

And from her womb children of divers kind

We sucking on her natural bosom find:

Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some and yet all different.

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give,

Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;

And vice sometimes by action dignified.

Within the infant rind of this weak flower

Poison hath residence and medicine power:

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;

Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;

And where the worser is predominant,

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

I highlighted the parallel passages between that monologue and the fifth book of Lucretius in this thread. In a later passage he recommends to Romeo "Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy".

Thank you for advising me on the many dangers of the Ugni fruit! It sounds like you have far exceeded my meager knowledge on plants. And cheers on the myrtle: I've always wanted to grow a myrtle, since learning of the connection.

I think Greenblatt mentions that in The Swerve--as well as Montaigne's personal copy, discovered because of a marginal note, and a manuscript of the whole poem in Machiavelli's hand demonstrated by handwriting analysis.

Friendship has changed, and one of the symptoms of this is that modern readers can't quite come to terms with the language used between male friends in the preceding centuries. People nowadays will infer romance where there (probably) was none--as in the cases of Lincoln and Speed, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Alexander and Hephaestion, and so on.

You'll also enjoy this, from the Jesuit Review: "For us as readers, it helps to remember that friendship is, ultimately, a Christian concept. “A sweet friendship refreshes the soul,” says the Book of Proverbs (27:9)"

The 'true myrtle' or common myrtle, sacred to Aphrodite.

Onions were a staple vegetable, along with chickpeas which are universal around the Mediterranean. Leafy greens, whether cabbage or lettuce.

Wormwood was Lucretius' metaphor for the bitter medicine of philosophy as some see it.

I think the right answer is 'whatever you please'!

The root of one of my favorite words--usufructuary.

Quote from Edward Abbey

Within this vast perimeter, in the middle ground and foreground of the picture, a rather personal demesne, are the 33,000 acres of Arches National Monument of which I am now sole inhabitant, usufructuary, observer and custodian.

Turner was a phenomenal painter all around. By another hand I might call that a pastiche of classical harmonies, but his fingerprints are all over the middle and far distance, where light, color and blank space are used to suggest form rather than insist upon it. You're right to cite his Garden as one of the better ones.

One of the books I read while I was surveying was Measuring America by the Scottish historian Andro Linklater. Thomas Jefferson had an image in his mind for what land use would look like if put to the service of maximizing his democratic ideals. As you say--plowed under or built over now.

Yep. Notifications (not push notifications, just the red dot on the top right), unread posts (red dot top left), and heavy use of the "recent" tab. Also, the chat box that pops up from bottom right never fails to drive me to distraction. When I try to make it go away it gets bigger...when I do finally manage to close it I just go the notifications area and click on whatever chat I haven't read, and read it there. There's probably a way to disable that from my settings...

We're two days away from the anniversary of Giordano Bruno's death, so the question is a timely one. He was questioned for 7 years, given many opportunities to recant his positions, and remained defiant until the end--when two nails were driven through his lips in the shape of a cross in order to silence him at last.

On the base of his statue in the Campo de Fiori, a plaque reads that the statue itself is the product of "The century predicted by him". Thereby suggesting that he was willing to die because his mind belonged to a future that did not yet exist. In other cases, people have died willingly because their world was now a thing of the past, such as was the case at the end of the Roman Republic. The later pagan poet Palladus gives voice to that pain around the year 391 A.D.

Quote

Is it not true that we are dead, and living only in appearance,

We Hellenes, fallen on disaster,

Likening life to a dream, since we remain alive while

Our way of life is dead and gone?

Palladas, pagan poet, after the destruction of the Serapeon in Alexandria

A monastery and church were built on its ruins.

Quote

Keep us posted. Can't help seeing that cover and thinking of Prufrock: 'Do I dare to eat a peach?/ I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.'

And something about lobsters, though I can't remember what just now...

Quote

Does the faculty of Anticipations describe nothing more than concept-formation and the application of those concepts to new situations? Or - like i think most of us accept about the operation of pain-pleasure and even the 5 senses, the faculty of anticipations involves some kind of inborn predisposition of principles of operation which exist in us before any exposure to anything that causes the faculty of anticipations to generate any input to our minds.

It occurs to me that one reason for considering the anticipations to be involved in pattern recognition is that it obviates any need for "forms" or "essences". The categorization of oxen as oxen exists not as a separate type in an ideal state of things, but is simply something that forms in our minds.

I don't know that Epicurus would have taken this to Darwinian conclusions, though Lucretius hints at that, but it perfectly represents the folly of idealized unchanging forms. It is possible to prove genetically, for example, that whales (the purple cube) are descended from land dwelling ungulates of which oxen are one current class. The pink shape on the far left might represent a common ancestor of both. How does the Ideal Form of an Ox-like creature turn into the Ideal Form of a Whale-like creature? If the Forms are unchanging, as Plato suggests, then whence cometh the Form of the new-fangled whale?

Now that I think about, I wonder if the Principle Doctrines themselves were the "synoptic" overview of a longer and more detailed text, where he lays out the main points in the introductory material and then explicates each main point in more detail after. The surviving material by itself would make for a very short scroll--although it's possible that was the point.

I suppose the counterargument to that theory would by the Vatican Sayings, culled from many other works, where brevity was the whole point.