Posts by Don

DeWitt posits that the early Christian monastic communities were patterned after the Epicurean Gardens in the ancient world.

I was just listening to a Bart Ehrman podcast and he brought up the Essenes in relation to a topic.

Essenes - Wikipedia

I'm not sure if DeWitt mentions them, but they were a Jewish ascetic community set off from others founded in the 2nd c. BCE.

It seems more likely to me that this would have been a model for early Christians than the Gardens, although I suppose there could have been a conflation of the two groups.

Thoughts?

Joshua 's video and Cassius 's "glass full/empty" metaphor are spot on. This is something I can never wrap my brain around. Why insist it's either/or?? By definition, if one side of the seesaw goes down, the other side goes up. By pursuing pleasure, we are, by definition, avoiding pain. As we reduce pain, we increase pleasure. "The feelings - pleasure and pain - are two." It's all a matter of focus or perspective, and sometimes one focus is helpful. Other times, the other focus is helpful.

Quote from Cassius

we never set "avoiding pain" as the primary overriding purpose of life.

For the record, I agree.

Quote from Cassius

No matter how much we think that the choice for the other person is "better," it's ultimately up to them what they choose to do.

Definitely. But that doesn't preclude the teacher from saying, "Told ya. Now, let's review what happened and how to avoid those consequences in the future."

Epicurus was not above evaluating other's choices and offering what one ought not do. He explicitly said "Therefore, whenever we say repeatedly that 'pleasure is the τέλος,' we do not say the pleasure of those who are prodigal like those who are ignorant, those who don't agree with us, or those who believe wrongly; but we mean that which neither pains the body nor troubles the mind. For it is not an endless string of drinking parties and festivals, and not taking advantage of slaves and women, nor does an extravagant table of fish and other things bring forth a sweet life but self-controlled reasoning and examining the cause of every choice and rejection and driving out the greatest number of opinions that take hold of the mind and bring confusion and trouble."

The whole idea of Epicurean teachers using frank speech to correct the actions of students and to guide them in a better direction is well documented.

Quote from Cassius

there is no magic formula by which we can say that one persons view of pleasure is absolutely preferable over another person's view of pleasure. We're all entitled to our own choices, and we reap the rewards or pay the price accordingly.

While there's no "magic formula" and each person is responsible for the consequences of their choices, that doesn't imply there aren't better courses of actions or more preferable choices to make.

Epicurus could say each person chooses their own pleasure, but he was not above saying that this or that choice would not end well and guiding someone to make a "better" choice.

I'm fascinated by how rapidly the physics (motion) turns into an ethics issue (pleasure). A good demonstration of how they're inextricably linked.

Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Not sure how much it helps, but it's a start.

Quote from PaulO

I doubt I'll be much of a contributor

That was my initial intention 3 years ago. We encourage questions and whatever level of participation you feel comfortable with.

Welcome aboard!

Quote from waterholic

I still have LOTS to read

LOL! Welcome to the club

Welcome!

Welcome, Goblin!

Your mention of IDRlabs encouraged me to look it up online. Here's what I can up with in the philosopher test.

Here's the text below the image:

Epicurus: Epicurus advised his followers to live simple lives. For example, their food and drink consisted mainly of bread and water, with cheese as a rare indulgence. Having been much misunderstood by posterity, Epicurus actually counseled that intense pleasures were to be avoided because they were often followed by pain – either from overindulgence or from losing access to the pleasures again. Likewise, Epicurus held that stronger and more uncommon pleasures would, at the same time, make common and less potent pleasures less pleasant, thereby robbing the man who indulges in the rarefied pleasures of the opportunity to enjoy a simple, quiet life.

***

Not the best description of the philosophy, but hey at least he was in the list! Plus, I may have gamed a few questions to get the answer I wanted.

Quote from Cassius

Democritus' statement as worded is easy to understand as nihilistic - as saying that nothing exists unless we agree it exists other than atoms and void.

For me, it doesn't read that way. I've always taken it as a bare statement of fact. To try and imbue existence - let's get personal, your existence or mine - with some transcendent or ultimate meaning is, by definition, a meaningless endeavor. We're ALL, at the core, temporary patterns of atoms in the void. But not JUST atoms and void. We do have a real life and interact with real things in a real cosmos at the macro level of everyday existence. We don't experience ourselves as atoms and void, but we should keep that thought at the back of our minds, especially when we hear "God has a plan for me" or "The Universe is showing me a path." We give our lives meaning, and we can experience a pleasurable existence. But that doesn't mean we aren't, at our foundation, atoms moving in the void (or whatever modern paraphrase one wants to use).

I was going to go back and quote and respond directly, but this thread has grown. So, I'll just add my two drachmas worth. Those is my understanding after talking with Dr Glidden:

I really liked Dr. Glidden's "sensations are true*to their cause*." That is the best, succinct explanation of "all sensations are true" that I've heard. It makes perfect sense. Epicurus was "dogmatic" in the sense that we can make statements about the world, we can take a stand. Why? Because our senses are reacting to real things in the world. Our sensations are the result of our bodies being impacted by real things external to us. Those things impact our senses. Our sensations are true to their causes *out there in the real world external to us.*

But sensations are just raw data. Light hitting our retinas. Vibrations in the air. Molecules on the breeze. And so on. Prolepseis allow the recognition of patterns to be pulled out of the chaos. A prolepsis is a particular pattern, initially vague then reinforced over time. It's important to repeat that Forte Lab blog: "What the mind is doing when it “recognizes” an image is not matching it against a database of static images." Don't ask me to explain yet! Still trying to understand. But they important point is that prolepseis involve neither discursive thought nor conceptual thinking. It's quick, and gets quicker as we mature. But we recognize faces, for example, well before we "know" what a face is. And I think our pattern recognition faculty can be seen to work automatically when we see how it can be short circuited with the snake/stick example or the fact of Pareidolia:

Pareidolia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

We see faces everywhere!!! We can't help ourselves.

I'll leave it there for reactions.

This is your brain detecting patterns: It is different from other kinds of learning, study shows

Detecting patterns is an important part of how humans learn and make decisions. Now, researchers have seen what is happening in people's brains as they first…

www.sciencedaily.com

Maybe pertinent...

A Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind - Forte Labs

In 2006, inventor Ray Kurzweil released the book The Singularity Is Near (Amazon Affiliate Link), with a bold prediction that by the year 2049 we'd enter

fortelabs.com

The best source I've found for transcriptions and images of papyri is:

PN Search

For example...

I looked up the titles of the papyri numbers (p.herc.#) elsewhere.

Oh that link is cool!!

FYI:

P.Herc. 89 = Philodemus, On God's.

P.Herc. 118 = Philodemus, On Epicurus.

P.Herc. 1005= Philodemus, To... (This is the one with the Tetrapharmakos in)

P.Herc. 1044 = Life of Philonides of Laodicea

Fu Manchu