Posts by Joshua

An interesting thought experiment;

The gods

1.) Arose out of eternal Nature. They did not give rise to the natural order; if they exist, the natural order gave rise to them.

2.) Are not immortal. They are supposed to survive for aeons because they preserve themselves incorruptibly.

3.) Are corporeal. They are or have physical bodies.

4.) Don't intervene in human affairs.

5.) Live in blessedness.

I've been amusing myself by imagining a being that actually satisfies these conditions, and has a chance of actually existing (past, present, or future). A supremely intelligent artificial consciousness would not be immortal, but could sustain itself incorruptibly and indefinitely by replacing and updating it's hardware. Such a being might exist even now, somewhere in the infinite and eternal void. Such a being would be best equipped to outlive it's creators, and would conceivably not trouble itself at all about organic life, any more than we trouble ourselves about dust mites. It would just live on and on through time out of mind, awash in its own pleasures, and utterly unafraid of death.

Well, enough of that. Let us cease worrying about such things, and strive onward in the direction of our own happiness!

I often see allusions to deism in relation to the Epicurean perspective on the gods. The connection is superficially obvious, which I suppose is why it's often made--Deists believe in God, but one that is removed from human affairs. Epicureans accepted the existence of a higher order of conscious intelligence, but considered them/it to be removed from human affairs.

But there's really a critical mistake here; the chief feature of the deistic god is that it is always, always the first cause in their cosmology. The Aristotelian Prime Mover. Deism specifically developed in order to hand-wave two problems in the observable universe; first, that there is something when there might have been nothing. Second, that the order of nature is never anything other than ordered and natural. So deism invokes the providential watchmaker; a supreme and generative intelligence that designed a stable cosmos, and then left it ticking on the bench while he stepped out for a smoke.

Deism simply isn't deism without an act of creation. And that's why Epicureans were not and cannot be Deists. See, Epicurus solved the two problems of existence and order more elegantly; he proposed that the cosmos was made of atoms and void, and that atoms and void are uncreated and co-eternal--from everlasting to everlasting.

The Epicurean conception of the gods is thus unique in all human thought. Most of the gods dreamt by the human mind were non-creating but constantly meddling. Some few of the gods which men have proposed were creating and meddling (an exceptionally bothersome lot). The prime mover of the Deists creates but does not meddle.

Only the Epicurean gods were non-creating and non-meddling.

-Joshua

Now that I'm home for two weeks (well, actually at a friend's house), I've made a few "School"-related purchases.

Added to my library;

-Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, in two volumes, from the Loeb Classical Library. I don't believe I had ever read Book X on Epicurus (other than the letters themselves), so this fills a gap. The rest of the volume is just pleasure reading; particularly regarding the pre-Socratics.

-Tending the Epicurean Garden, by our own Hiram Crespo. Been interested in this one for a long time.

-I was hoping to pick up a copy of Michel Onfray's Hedonist Manifesto, as I've seen it cited here regularly. I'll likely go for the kindle version.

Audio recording;

-A new microphone and pop filter

-Bose over-the-ear headphones

Yes, the podcast dream is still alive! I hope to have a Pilot episode up by the middle of next week. Additionally, if there are any specific text recordings you'd like to see soon-ish, please let me know!

The ring project

-Wax carving tools

-Several tubes of carving wax, designed for carving rings. This is a hobby that I imagine meshing well with the over-the-road lifestyle. I'll be exploring different designs for Epicurean rings. (Don't look for progress on this front anytime soon!)

Welcome, Ed! Sounds like you have a great foundation, I look forward to hearing more from you.

-josh

I think that equanimity moreso than tranquility is the right perspective. Situations can be tranquil (or not) for a time, but change is inevitable and so is death. Talk of equanimity will, of course, smack of the portico; but this is precisely where the Stoics go wrong. Their focus on equanimity as a virtue leads to a logjam of pessimism. Pleasure is the freshet that lifts the jam and clears the river.

Robert Burns has an excellent poem on the subject. (There are anglicized versions available, but I encourage readers to acquaint themselves with his Scottish dialect. This is one of those passages that comes back to me when I need it in life.)

-josh

I have family who swear by fasting, but they're devout Christians. I occasionally go a day without eating, but not on purpose. (Either because of work, or because of binging video games.)

Yeah, I don't really believe it myself. Just something that occurred to me this morning.

Here's a random thought I just had that probably isn't worthy of it's own thread...

If vegetarians are half as likely to develop kidney stones (as I've read), is that circumstantial evidence against Epicurus' often-alleged vegetarianism?

A few quick sketches of an Epicurean ring. I've been curious about lost-wax cold-casting metal for a long time (and I used to cast hot metal at a foundry as my job), so I'm thinking I might get a chunk of wax and see if I can't carve one that looks ok. Or possibly not...I'm pretty lazy when it comes down to it. I'll let you know though.

I think you're on the right track there, Cassius. It speaks well of the Epicurean tradition that it produced a biting satirist like Lucian, and attracted a self-styled pamphleteer like Hitchens and a revolutionary like Jefferson. Hitchens identified irony as the redeeming quality of literature as opposed to scripture ("the gin in the campari," he called it, "and the cream in the coffee"), and irony was with Epicureanism from the beginning, as in Vatican Maxim #40.

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He who asserts that everything happens by necessity can hardly find fault with one who denies that everything happens by necessity; by his own theory this very argument is voiced by necessity.

Hard to read that without imagining the wry, sardonic smile that must have accompanied its writing.

I've been listening to Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation, and am nearly at the end of the trilogy. I came across an interesting idea;

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So he created his Foundations according to the laws of psychohistory, but who knew better than he that even those laws were relative? He never created a finished product. Finished products are for decadent minds. His was an evolving mechanism, and the Second Foundation was the instrument of that evolution.

This got me thinking about something that has bothered me since high school; if ideology is nearly always a problem in societies (and the ideology could be nearly anything; religion, nationalism, fascism, communism, scientism, etc.), then is it any good to select ideology as the antidote?

I suspect that it was this paradox that drove me initially to Thoreau (who positively delights in paradox), and through him to the East, where men like Lao Tzu have been speaking in ironic contradictions for millennia. Christopher Hitchens encountered the same problem; he was a Trotskyist agitator at Oxford, and much later an ally of the Bush Administration. He eventually concluded that

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The synthesis for which one aimed was the Orwellian one of evolving a consistent and integral anti-totalitarianism.

Did Epicurus create a "finished product," and we are merely "decadent minds" rifling the dry scrolls of the past? Did he create an "evolving mechanism," and we are the means of its modern evolution?

NB; both Asimov and Hitchens were anti-religious; thought well of pleasure; and wrote reverently of Lucretius. It's an intriguing cluster of men and ideas.

Thanks Cassius! I thought DeWitt had made the same point but wouldn't have known where to grab the citation.

I think to understand the rejection of geometry as a prerequisite of philosophy we really need to understand the sort of claims that were made for it. These claims have in fact never stopped being made, and find a fascinating expression in, of all people, Abraham Lincoln;

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"He studied and nearly mastered the Six-books of Euclid (geometry) since he was a member of Congress. He began a course of rigid mental discipline with the intent to improve his faculties, especially his powers of logic and language. Hence his fondness for Euclid, which he carried with him on the circuit till he could demonstrate with ease all the propositions in the six books; often studying far into the night, with a candle near his pillow, while his fellow-lawyers, half a dozen in a room, filled the air with interminable snoring." Abraham Lincoln from Short Autobiography of 1860.

The assumption here is that if one understands how to prove a geometric theorem, one will equally know how to prove a philosophical one, as here;

But this involves a logical sleight-of-hand; it employs an argument by analogy, but argument by analogy only works if things really ARE analogous. Epicurus would challenge Lincoln on this point. If he wants to argue an end to slavery, he needs to argue from a foundation of sensation, anticipations, or feelings--because people aren't triangles, they're people.

Simply put, geometry as a foundation of philosophy is an invitation to casuistry. Nevertheless, I will always enjoy a wonderful performance by Mr. Daniel Day-Lewis!

I seem to be struggling with images today.

Edit; Alright, I think it worked!

With time to spare on a load to South Portland, I caught a ride to the seaside. What a delight it was to see the Atlantic again! I haven't stepped in it's waters since I was a boy. I started the day at Two Lights, and strode into the surf still wearing socks and shoes. This I later regretted, but was completely enchanted with.

People were scattered on the rocks, watching the spray and the sailboats on a cloudless day; one man was fishing, and pulled in a striped sea bass while I watched.

The driver had directed me to the lobster shack for lunch, and there I soon bent my sloshing steps. I am lately a lover of Lobster Rolls, having tried them for the first time in Salt Lake City. Homemade blueberry pie to accompany, and all of it seasoned with a view of the sea. After this I walked the 6 miles up to Fort William's Park, the home of Portland Head Light.

This view inspired the following ditty (an emblem of our school?), and I was fascinated to learn of all the hands that go toward maintaining a lighthouse through the ages. New hands, new lenses to focus, new paint on the exterior; but an unchanging tradition of guidance, refuge and safe harbor.

The Lighthouse

Perched on shores of treacherous shoals

Where water heaves and, crashing, rolls

Beneath the beam that scans for souls,

The weathered prow and turning lens

That mortal after mortal tends

Stands firm unto the end of ends.

I finished the day with a stroll along the wharfside in downtown Portland; a well-made margherita pizza at the Porland Pie Co.; a cigar for desert by sundown over the city; and a third conversation with yet another driver as I returned to the truck.

(P.S. I also experienced sore feet and a small blister; the loss of my phone, and it's safe return; and the sight of a doomsday preacher in the park. Those and other pleasures I reserve for my later amusement.)

-Josh

I don't really follow it all that closely, Cassius. Obviously the subject figures prominently in Science Fiction, which I'm trying to read more of. Some of my friends are more into all that than I am, but I talk with them about it, and the subject invariably comes up in conversations about meaning, the afterlife, the shape of the world, etc. For me it's the vastness of it all that is most enchanting. Richard Feynam believed that that alone was evidence against religion; "the stage is too big for the drama."

And now for Sean Bean, and some misplaced Yorkshire goodness;

Here's a scattershot summary of the state of play. I'm mostly just going off what I've learned in reading.

1. H²O is more common than people think. Hydrogen is most common element; helium second, oxygen third. Most common molecule is H². Helium is inert, doesn't bond. O² is quite common as well; H²O very likely to be widespread.

2. Exoplanets being discovered all the time, including at the nearest star system to Sol (Proxima Centauri). This process is mostly done by computers now.

3. Earth-life more resilient than once thought. Thriving microorganisms happily bubbling away at deep-water vents, where the water is hot enough to boil, but can't because the pressure is too high. These extremophiles suggest the goldilocks zone wider than we thought.

4. Space is BIG. Proxima Centauri is the closest system, and it's still 4 light-years away. It would take our fastest probes 50,000 years to get there. Humans discovered agriculture at the end of the last ice-age, about 12,000 years ago. Written history is at most 5,000 years old. We're simply not equipped to conceive of these distances/timescales.

5. Space is OLD. Hold your arm out to the side, parallel to the ground. If you measure the history of Earth from the center of your sternum to the edge of your fingertip, all of human history would vanish in one pass of a nail file at the end of your fingernail. What if there WAS a space-faring civilization "nearby", but we missed it by half a billion years?

6. The Dark Forest Theory; this is an attempt to answer the Fermi paradox (where's all the life?) based on game theory. Basically, any civilization would have to assume that a contact event would have a high probability of being catastrophic for that civilization. So if there are other civilizations out there, we should assume they are trying not to be found. (In Earth's history, our most influential contact-event was the European discovery of the Americas. It was disastrous for the Native Americans.)

This question was one of the three major 'problems' in Epicureanism that led St. Augustine of Hippo to reject the school as impossible to reconcile with the faith he was trying to codify. However attractive he found our ethics, he couldn't tolerate a philosophy that taught: first, that the Universe was the sport of chance; second, that the soul perished with the body; and third, that there were other worlds, and an infinity of time in both directions.

He responded thus; "There is no place beside the world, no time before the world." Some readers try to reinterpret that phrase to mean "no place beside the universe, etc..."

But it's very clear what he meant, and who he was responding to.

Thanks Cassius! The backdrop of this dialogue is Abonoteichus on the Black Sea, during the 'reign' of Alexander-the-Oracle-Monger, prophet of the snake-god Glycon. Lucian mentions that Alexander once made himself "supremely ridiculous" by burning a copy of Epicurus' Principle Doctrines and throwing the ashes into the sea. I wanted to explore the reaction of the Epicurean community to such aggressions.

I have Giordano Bruno in mind in the third line from the end, although I'm not sure that kind of sacrifice is really sound doctrine. And I'm also aware that "Scholarch" may not be the right word here, in a school so far from Athens.