Posts by Don

Quote from Cassius

Maybe Democritus' tone would seem different to us if we had more of his work, or maybe this was an area (like determinism) where Epicurus was modifying what Democritus had taught.

You're right. Either is a possibility.

Quote from Cassius

Was Democritus laughing because he was truly happy, or was his laughter cynical and to the effect that people are nothing but whirling windbags of atoms bouncing around with no more intelligence than billiard balls?

My take has always been that Democritus is laughing because he doesn't take himself too seriously, in the end we're all atoms and void. I think he can laugh about people who get caught up in the rat race (to use a modern metaphor) and take themselves too seriously. People - all things! - really are *ultimately* nothing more than "whirling windbags of atoms." That doesn't mean in any way that we don't enjoy our lives at the level we experience them! But chill out! Take a breath! Carpe diem - pluck the fruit of each moment.

PS. From Heraclitus 's Wikipedia article:

Weeping philosopher

In Lucian of Samosata's "Philosophies for Sale," Heraclitus is auctioned off as the "weeping philosopher" alongside Democritus, who is known as the "laughing philosopher" part of the weeping and laughing philosopher motif. This pairing, which may have originated with the Cynic philosopher Menippus, has been portrayed several times in renaissance art, where it generally references their reactions to the folly of mankind.[better source needed] Heraclitus also appears in Raphael's School of Athens.

Along with Democritus's quote, it is a fact that sweet, bitter, and color are emergent properties of the atoms. Even my mind is an emergent property of my atoms that have no mind of their own. Atoms have no taste, color, etc., but in their configurations, they give rise to the phenomena of the cosmos which I experience on a day to day basis.

I personally have no problem accepting that there are "two levels" of reality, of the physical universe. I don't live in the realm of atoms, but I know its there. The fact that my physical senses that I feel are in reality *ultimately* composed of atoms and void doesn't make them any less real *for me.* Being composed of atoms doesn't lessen the "meaning" of my life (whatever that means... I'm not overly fond of the "M word.")

This goes back to Democritus:

νόμωι (γάρ φησι) γλυκὺ καὶ νόμωι πικρόν, νόμωι θερμόν, νόμωι ψυχρόν, νόμωι χροιή, ἐτεῆι δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν (Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, 9; Sext. Emp. adv. math. VII 135)

Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948)[1], p. 92.

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void. (trans. Durant 1939)[2], Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60

Quote from Joshua

Pleasure is subversive.

Gimme that old time subversion! It's good enough for me!

Everybody sing along!!

Quote from Kalosyni

Don looking at the above Latin Dictionary entry for "voluptas" -- it occurs to me that delight sounds like a mental pleasure, and where as plain old "pleasure" is in the body.

I guess you could say it's all bodily in some ways since the mind resides in the body?

Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, vŏluptas

Okay, so this will be probably only minimally helpful, but I give below the Google Translate translation of On Nature, Book 11, from the French text in Les Epicureans.

You can find Hiram's commentary here:

Epicurus’ On Nature – Books XI-XIV | Society of Friends of Epicurus

And here is PHerc. 1042:

DCLP/Trismegistos 59756 = LDAB 860

:

ON NATURE, BOOK XI

[PHerc. 1042, supplemented by PHerc. 154: (26) Arrighetti]

[Frg. 3, 2: (26.17)]...would be encompassed¹ because of the density or scarcity of what envelops it, so as to give²...

[Column of location uncertain: (26.18)] possible to secure...firmly. For the current question, regarding exactly this thing, which is whether it is possible or completely impossible for it to happen…

86

Epicurus

Frg 1, 1: (26.19). and receive a swerve because of infinity, if at that [lac 1 mot] thousand times [lac. 25 lines approximately] (4 (26.20) to make visible the [lac. 1 word] of this one and also of this one, either sooner or later; so that the [lac. 1 word] corresponding to infinity at all…

Frg 6, 10 (26.21)] [whether infinite number of atoms] meet them, or else [atoms] of a non-infinite number. That non-infinite number of atoms meet them would be [lac. 1 word ], just like the fact that [infinite number of atoms] meet them, so that like substances possess [infinity] [lac. 2 columns approximately) (4:(26.22)] that one. But that Earth's gravity should not be feared as opposing its staying in the air, when [lac. 2 words] rare substance...

(Fig. 7, 1: (26.23)] things in our environment that have some ability to float on air and stay aloft and [lac. 30 lines or so] [2: (26.24)].. .[not this species] of angularity, but that which could belong to the primary substances [lac. 25 lines approximately] [3: (26.26)]...exerting a kind of flotation, but, as I have said before, as if the bounds and inviolable [lac. I words] provided them with some kind of protection [lac. 8 lines] drum...

[Frg. 8, 2: (26.27)] be such as to preserve what has formed as the drum section. Because some have conceived [the limits of the sky] as walls encircling the Earth, with a whirlpool like this [lac. 4 lines] movement of the stars above the head (lac. 3 lines] circular [lac. 10 lines] (3+ PHerc. 154, frg. 3, 1: (26.28)] [lac. I line] placing for this reason of all sides the circumferences before our eyes, as being analogical indices of the same [lac. I line] of the world [lac. 7 lines] and assuming that the Earth is in the middle of the [all] [lac. 15 lines] place [lac. 1 line] feet [lac. 2 lines] above the head [lac. 2 lines] say above lac. 20 lines] [4+ PHerc. 154, frg. 3.3 (26.30 -31)] in transferences, let's say, upwards; [and] what he recently had above his head, we would have, by virtue of the transference, [the impression of seeing him below] [ lac. y lines] of the Sun and the Moon] [lac. 2 lines] above [lac. 1 word] interval [lac. 25 lines] above the head [lac. 1 word] below the feet [lac. 20 ( + PHer, 154, fig. 3, 4 (26.32)] appearing to him below [under the] feet, he will not think that what he came to have, when he ascended above, to have under his feet, he had previously had above his head when he descended below. Thus, I say, because of the location of the Earth in the middle of the [lac. 1] center line [lac. 3 lines] protections [lat. 2 lines] cause the world to become round with the Earth in the middle, like (lac 2 words] the arrangement of the limbs [lac. 2 lines] do not reach [lac. 1 line] aporia [lac. 1 line] below (lat. 2 lines]. [6: (2633)] Arranging the walls in a circle in order to protect us against the whirlpool, in the belief that the whirlpool is in a position to whirl outside, they circularly rotate the stars above the heads of all men [lac. To lines] the causes...

[Fig. 9, 1: (26.34)] a firm perception concerning objective things could be acquired, when [lac. 1 line] such and such species of movement upwards or downwards [lac. 1 line] infinity [lac. 1 line] name [lac. 20 lines approximately] [2: (26.35)] of the Sun (lac. 2 words] transmitted visually becomes [lac. 25 lines] [2: (26.36)] [lac. I line] things [lac. 2 words] down [lac. 1 line] up [lac. 1 line] from the sphere we see [lac. 20 lines approximately] [3: (26.37)] lac. line] If we walk towards the place from which the Sun seemed to us] to rise, heading higher in continental zone, it seems to us to lie down where we had passed before, sometimes even when we have only moved a short distance in all. And, this time, we cannot blame it on the oblique movements. Why, after all, should you treat the estimate of the distance from here, or from there, or this from here, as a more reliable estimate of the distance from sunrises or sunsets? As a result, [Lac. 8 to 10 lines] [4 (26.38)] [they cannot hope to] form a (mental) model, nor deduce any solution on these matters.

For it seems to me that when they spend their time making a few of them - I mean their instruments and whirling themselves inside some other of those instruments. it is not surprising, considering not only the slavery which their doctrines impose on them, but also (as far as the appearances of the Sun are concerned) because of the indeterminates of its risings and its setting, that 'they cannot form a adequate mental model by means of their instruments, which produce no regularity. But their instruments are [lac. 8 to 10 lines)] [5 : (26.39) All that is left to them is pretense and forced argument, according to which the indications given by the instrument create an analogy which corresponds to what we see in the celestial regions. For someone who is in his right mind must, it seems to me, make a prior distinction: when he argues about the world and about what appears to us in the world, he is arguing about a certain image which comes from certain accidental properties of things, properties transmitted, through the medium of vision, to a process of thought or a process of memory permanently preserved by the soul itself, [communicating to it certain] quantities, qualities, [etc.] [lac. few lines] [6+ PHerc. 154, Fig. 25, 2: (26.40)] [So when, as I see, he happens to look at the thing objective and fails to distinguish between an utterance based on the object and another based on what is co perceived through the object, and that the objective thing does not give rise to multiple representations [of the world] in miniature, and even less of the world (itself), it is not surprising that he is embarrassed by the sunrises and sunsets, of which I have already spoken in connection with the Sun. For hoping, presumably, that each of the appearances [lac. about 10 lines]. [If] we do not want to attach to them the image of an inverted rising and setting, an image invented from the objective thing, we must form a mental conception of a movement of the Sun and the Moon. towards their rising and setting, and we must not say of the movement which always takes place in this way, nor of anything which moves in this way, that it occurs in the opposite direction according to the intrinsic nature of the something objective, and that, from some point of view other than our own, these things are ordered according to various different patterns. This, then, is the distinction we must make with regard to this subject.

(Frg 10, 1 + PHerc. 114, fg 21.3(26.41)] As for the props that support the Earth below, of which we say that the rare substance (lac. 4 lines] [2 + PHerc. 154 , Fig. 25, 4: (26.42) being limited by some interval, for thus the mind will understand the stability of the Earth more surely and more in harmony with sensible appearances.

89

As for the density it has below, it must be conceived in its continuity with that which it has above, so that these densities, which are good for providing a counter-support, maintain the appropriate analogical model for immobility. of the earth. For, on this account, we shall in no way be bothered by the rotation of the Sun, provided we bear in mind in how many ways each of these phenomena can be realized, and that in some cases their very equalities are the causes of the fact that they do not share [lac. 2 words] Earth [lake. 2 words] [+ PHerc. 154, fig. 26, 1: (26.43)] will need. For, being equidistant on all sides, they will not be able to weigh down in any direction. In fact, what belongs to it by virtue of the nature of the air, namely that, because it receives a similar pressure from all sides, it is on all sides equidistant from the circle which limits the world], as if he said that, being such, it rests at the center of the world (and it is not impossible either that it is such) - it is that, and not what produces that, which is the of its stability. For the pressure of the air, which is alike on all sides, has ensured equality as the strongest of the means by which, in assuring the [lac. I word] of the circle, [it caused] stable immobility [of the Earth under equal pressure... [4 + PHerc. 154, frg. 26, 2: (26.44]. it was more [convincing to say that this, namely equality, is causally responsible, rather than to say that it is the very fact of the immobility of the Earth at the center of the world which is the cause of [lac. 2 lines] being immobile; and they are sometimes in agreement with this, since they created the aerial stays because of the [lac. 2 words 307. These people there, even if by chance they have come to the correct conclusion, we should not consider them better than men who are in many matters, and in many matters completely, totally, many times better, and in some of them immeasurably ...

(Frg, 11, 1: (26.45)] For [these theories] have all perished, having been posited on the basis of their eccentric mode of connection [lac. a few lines].

ing the subject proposed at the beginning is enough for us. In what follows, in this book, therefore, what we have said concerning we will continue by providing some additional clarifications on these celestial phenomena.

And speaking of perception and be sure to check the links:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh?

Cna yuo raed tihs?

People

Vocabulary automaticity is the goal

Quote from Godfrey

What exactly are epibolai? And what is meant by "grasping" and "focusing the attention"?

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ε , ἐπιβολ-ή , ἐπιβολ-ή

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, διάνοια

so, the phrase is " 'epibole' of the 'dianoias' "

PS: btw I'm not answering the question or solving the problem... Just providing resources.

It's also important to remember we have more than "5" senses, including, at least:

1. Vision
2. Hearing
3. Smell
4. Taste
5. Touch
6. Balance (vestibular sense)
7. Temperature
8. Proprioception (body awareness)
9. Pain (nociception)

How many senses do we have? | Hopkins Press

See also

How many senses do humans have?

Your discussion of consciousness aware of itself brought to mind the capacity to be aware of watching your own thoughts. I can easily think "I need to stop thinking about lunch" and realize I need to stop thinking about lunch and redirect my thoughts to the task at hand. Noting one's thoughts as they come up in your mind is a common method of mindfulness meditation. So, knowing that we're thinking particular thoughts is a common occurrence.

I just want to make sure you're not talking about that when you talk about some "philosophical" idea of "consciousness only aware of itself."

I'm also curious of how you account for dreaming when the senses are not tuned to external stimuli. The sensations are not active. Only the faculty of the mind is active.

The "fourth leg" seems to me that it's simply the way the mind can be used as a "sense organ." I grasp smells with my nose, sights with my eyes, sounds with my ears, physical senses with me sense of touch, tastes with my tongue (and nose!), and ideas with my mind. I can't "see" language, as a concept, but I can grasp it with my mind.

That said, I could also see this "Fourth leg" as just a synonym for prolepsis or a "kind" off prolepsis. It seems to me that the 4 instead of 3 is maybe splitting hairs unnecessarily.

I found this from one of my posts from similar discussions last year looking at a Sedley paper:

Quote from Sedley

According to Diogenes Laertius (X 31), the Canon gave the three criteria as being sensations, προλεψεις, and feelings. Cicero's translation of this phrase shows that there is no significance; except perhaps a grammatical one, in Diogenes' omission of the article before προλεψεις. I mention this because Furley and Rist have deduced from it that προλεψεις were lumped together with sensations as constituting a single category. Its inclusion of προλεψεις as truth-criteria dates the Canon at any rate later than the Letter to Herodotus, according to the principle established above. It may well also be significant that the metaphor of κανων, meaning a truth-criterion, does not occur in the fragments of On Nature Books I-XV, or in the Letter to Herodotus, but is found frequently in the writings which we have already established to belong after 300 B.C.71

This should help dispel the mystification created by Diogenes Laertius' observation that the Epicureans add φανταστικαι επιβολαι της διάνοιας as truth-criteria, which has appeared to many to conflict with Epicurus' own acceptance of these 'image-making mental acts of concentration ' as virtual truth-criteria in the Letter to Herodotus 79 and in KD XXIV. If we assign an early date not only to the Letter to Herodotus but also to KD XXIV, the most satisfactory solution will be that when he came to develop the notion of προλεψεις in the following years he subsumed under it certain truth-criteria to which he had previously granted an independent validity. We have already observed that the 'fundamental meaning of a word ' became an element in the broader concept of προλεψεις ; and the same goes also for the φανταστικαι επιβολαι της διάνοιας , without which we could not visualise things at will, and consequently could have no generalised conceptions at all. Thus when he came to write the Canon he had downgraded φανταστικαι επιβολαι της διάνοιας in favour of προλεψεις. And if later Epicureans chose to upgrade them once more to the status of criteria, they had good authority in their master's early works for so doing. (p.16)

Sedley's paper is available on Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/resource/work/4310042

fwiw ...

Post

PD24 - Commentary and Translation of PD 24

Principal Doctrine 24 (PD 24) is one of the more convoluted doctrines with multiple phrases and conjunctions. I would like to provide some commentary and break the doctrine down into manageable words and phrases for everyone to get a more coherent understanding of what Epicurus was communicating. You may also want to take a look at this doctrine’s page on the Epicurus Wiki:

First the original text:

[…]

Now, let’s break it down before we put it all back together. I’ll provide a (mostly) literal…

Don

September 2, 2020 at 11:56 PM

Quote from Little Rocker

"The one who best contrived against a lack of confidence about external threats made those he was able kin, while those he was unable, he did not make aliens. Those with whom he was not able to do even this, he avoided and banished so far as it was advantageous to do so."

...

The 'with whom' gives away my decision to go with 'persons,' but basically, you would have reason to translate it either way. That said, the opening construction is loosely the same in KD 40, and it does seem pretty clear there he's talking about people.

Your mention of 40 reinforces my conviction that there really aren't "40 principal doctrines." That appears to me to have been imposed much later because the manuscripts do not appear to have been delineated like that. The Kyriai Doxai looks to me as is it was originally a prose work similar to the letters which means there wouldn't have been "hard and fast" demarcations between "doctrines" but rather paragraphs on different topics. Reading them individually as if in isolation has seemed the wrong approach - to me, at least - for awhile now.

PS...

Quote from Little Rocker

a steady diet of burnt toast

LOL! I must like burnt toast because I get a kick out of it. That said, I hear you!

Today's CBS Sunday Morning...

Good call, Todd , in returning to the source. Kicking myself for relying on translations

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, φῦλον

You are correct in seeing those as referring to humans of the (homophylos) same tribe etc and (allophylos) other tribes.

This probably circles back to those with whom you can make social agreements and those you can't.

Thanks!

Quote from Todd

I see PD39 as relating to the idea of justice as much as (or more so than) friendship. Based on the awkwardness of the translations, I doubt Epicurus even used the word for friendship there.

Yeah, I'm like a moth to a flame

You are correct. Epicurus did not use any word that specifically refers to "friendship" like philia φιλιά anywhere in that PD. The Saint-Andre translation is one of the more literal ones I've seen:

The person who has put together the best means for confidence about external threats is one who has become familiar with what is possible and at least not unfamiliar with what is not possible, but who has not mixed with things where even this could not be managed and who has driven away anything that is not advantageous.

Ὁ τὸ μὴ θαρροῦν ἀπὸ τῶν ἔξωθεν ἄριστα συστησάμενος οὗτος τὰ μὲν δυνατὰ ὁμόφυλα κατεσκευάσατο· τὰ δὲ μὴ δυνατὰ οὐκ ἀλλόφυλά γε· ὅσα δὲ μηδὲ τοῦτο δυνατὸς ἦν, ἀνεπίμικτος ἐγένετο, καὶ ἐξηρέσατο ὅσα τούτων λυσιτελῆ πράττειν.

For ones like this, I always encourage people to check out Eikadistes 's compilation of translations of the PDs in the File library here at EoicureanFriends.

PS: I wonder, as I read those translations compiled by Eikadistes , if those "external threats" refer in some way to the "external threats" to our inner tranquility. That confidence referred to in PD39 reminds me of Epicurus, Metrodorus, and Philodemus talking about the assurance we can have about pleasure arising from internal sources against the less confidence we can have about pleasure from sources outside ourselves. I may be stating the obvious, but it literally just hit me as I was reading through Eikadistes 's doc.

Quote from Little Rocker

But Cassius, surely it's more than simply my 'perspective' that Stoicism sucks! Isn't Stoicism, like, transcendentally bad?!

Yes! It is so refreshing to read that.

There *are* healthier ways of living than others, ways *more aligned* with "the way things are" than others.

Quote from Little Rocker

At least on their surface, KD 36-8 suggests that there's a 'basic grasp' of justice that sets the standard

I agree. That "standard" seems to me to be P31

"Natural justice is a covenant for mutual benefit, to not harm one another or be harmed."

I've also begun to understand the prolepsis of justice to be connected in some way to the inborn sense of fairness seen in research with babies and toddlers.

Ex:

Do Kids Have a Fundamental Sense of Fairness?

Experiments show that this quality often emerges by the age of 12 months

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Infants as young as 12 months expect resources to be divided equally between two characters in a scene. By preschool, children will protest getting less than peers, even paying to prevent the peer from getting more. As children get older, they are willing to punish those who have been unfair both when they are the victims of unfairness as well as when they witness someone else being treated unfairly.

Developmental differences in infants’ fairness expectations from 6 to 15 months of age

The present research investigated the developmental trajectory of infants’ fairness expectations from 6 to 15 months of age (N = 150). Findings revealed a…

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

A nascent sensitivity to fairness can be traced back to infancy. At 15 months of age, infants look longer at unfair distribution outcomes (i.e., a 3:1 distribution) compared to fair outcomes (i.e., a 2:2 distribution; Schmidt & Sommerville, 2011). This looking time preference suggests that infants expect resources to be distributed equally among recipients and they are able to identify a violation of this norm of equality.

A new study presents the first evidence that a basic sense of fairness and altruism appears in infancy. Babies as young as 15 months perceived the difference between equal and unequal distribution of food, and their awareness of equal rations was linked to their willingness to share a toy.