Posts by Don

Quote from Godfrey

I think we agree that language developed over time and is not inborn but learned, possibly beginning in utero.

Chomsky and others believe the structures of language and deep grammar are hardwired.

Babies will also babble every known phoneme before weeding out the ones not needed for their culture's specific manifestation of language.

Much as I enjoy discussing the birds and beavers, I think we're over-generalizing Lucretius's analogy. I think he's really only just using the analogy of building a structure - without a blueprint/plan/exemplum you can't build the structure *if you're a human or god (the analog of a human)* Nature on the other hand has no need of a plan because the whole of the cosmos is unplanned. Atoms come together. Atoms come apart. Various things arise. Various things don't arise. There is no plan... But isn't it grand that we, birds, and beavers exist and that we can take pleasure in our and their existence.

Quote from Godfrey

So are nest-building birds or dam-building beavers beings or nature? What are their models?

Other beavers.

Oh, and other birds.. Or they may fall under Nature due to instinct. I think we're specifically talking about humans and gods.

A quick note on models around 40:00: A being who's going to build something - a desk, a house, a city, a universe - needs a plan, blueprint, 3-d model, etc. Nature needs no such plan or model.

Quote from Cassius

I am not willing to write off as impossible a theory that would be based on the mind (brain, presumably) being able to receive stimulation from outside which is not visible to the eyes, ears, etc.

Well, I'd begin by saying there's all kinds of things that stimulate our minds that are "not visible to the eyes, ears, etc." We can't see sounds. We can't see chemical molecules that we can taste. We can't see speech that implants concepts in our minds that can affect our actions. But these are all physical things in a material universe. That's the import of what Epicurus was expounding. There's no supernatural divine inspiration that affects our minds. It's all physical. That's for me the import of the eidola. At least in some respects.

Quote from Cassius

. I do think that there are references in the text which would justify holding that Epicurus held a conventional view that the mind can store information / pictures and retrieve it at will.

Can you think of references? Btw that's not confrontational just curious

In fact, that habituation to certain eidola - that engraving of channels - in our minds could very well be what prolepses in fact are. The exposure over and over again to certain eidola is what gives rise to our anticipations.

My understanding of the Epicurean mechanism of memory is that memories are not stored in the mind. Our minds are habituated to respond to certain "images" (I'm going to use the Greek eidola) streaming towards us from all over. Certain eidola engrave themselves deeper from more regular or more importance to us. These engraved "channels" allow us to receive those eidola easier, making it easier to let those eidola back into our minds. We perceive this as memory.

That's not how memory works, but we do not in fact "store" memories in our brain by "filing" them in specific neurons the way most people think we do. I know I thought it was something like that until recently.

When we try to remember something, our brains literally reconstruct and refire the neutral pathways that led to our experience of that event. When we "see" something "in our mind's eye", the neurons in our visual cortex literally fire as if we're "seeing" that event. If we can't get a song out of our head, neurons responsible for auditory sensations are recreating that sound. You can't point to a brain region and say "My fourth grade concert is stored here." But if you remember it, your brain reconstructs the event from various portions of them brain. I don't know how the mechanism starts, but that's how memories are relived.

And we know smelling something or hearing something can stir a memory. Hmmm... Maybe Epicurus was on to something

I believe this is where Sedley and those of the "idealist" persuasion pertaining to the Epicurean gods get their justification. I'm inclined to agree with them.

My understanding of this position is: We conceive of blessed and incorruptible beings as exemplars of "perfect" life forms. These ideas/images/concepts are what "sustain" the gods. Ergo, the gods have no existence apart from the images we assign to them. The gods are literally our attempt to imagine the highest most pleasurable existence.

Now, that being said, I'm still not clear how imagination works in an Epicurean context. Do we combine images and concepts that are extant in the world? If so, are the gods simply a combination of humans expanded to giant size and infused with our idea of a perfectly pleasurable existence?

The right answer is not easy to find.

Quote from Cassius

Yeah I thought about not using the "rabble" word but I couldn't remember the "hoi polloi"! Actually neither term fits my target, because I don't mean to say anything demeaning about those who innocently misconstrue. My focus is on the strictly philosophical debate i referenced earlier, in with "pleasure" is the more technical term and "living pleasurably" is the more colloquial description. (I was thinking there was a passage about "the crowd" but couldn't put my finger on it.)

I was just thinking that we need to be clear that saying the "goal is pleasure" doesn't mean we don't voluntarily choose pain if it means attaining the "goal of living pleasurably." And that's not Stoic, that's Epicurus.

The key phrase here seems to be:
retinebit blanda voluptas;

Retinebit is the verb translated as keep, etc, in the translations. Here are its connotations:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l…146&i=1#lexicon
o hold in check, keep within bounds, to restrain, check

Voluptas is simply they Latin for pleasure, ηδονή hēdonē. What kind of pleasure?
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l…146&i=1#lexicon
Blanda: Flattering, pleasant, agreeable, enticing, alluring, charming, seductive

So, as long as we are held in check, restrained, bound to this life by enticing, alluring pleasure. Or whatever paraphrase you want to use with those connotations.

When it comes to word choices, I highly recommend returning to the Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…%3a1999.02.0130

This allows you line by line access plus you can click a word and get taken directly to authoritative dictionaries.

Quote from Cassius

But Bailey's "hold" has almost a Buddhist sound to it and I would accordingly reject that implication as negative. I would probably add this to my personal list of examples from Bailey where his choice of words reflects poorly on his assessment of Epicurean philosophy.

Does pleasure "hold" us, or does it provide the very goal and reason for living? If Bailey agreed personally with the latter option I don't think he would have used the word "hold" - if he didn't like "engage" and wanted to follow Munro's direction then "keep" or even "sustain" would have been a better choice.

I would see hold here in your sense of keep, something that "holds you up" or "supports you." I don't see hold on this sense as having a negative restraint on you. Consider engage and "hold your attention."

Quote from Cassius

More seriously you are of course right, but the issue that takes precedence (at least in my mind, and in many circumstances) is that clarity and the benefit of ourselves and our friends trumps everything else, regardless of what the "rabble" choose to believe!

When you say rabble, I relish the fact that Epicurus literally uses όι πολλοί "hoi polloi" (the many, literally) to refer to the masses who misunderstand our hold false opinions.

More seriously (to borrow a phrase), I think it behooves all of us in all circumstances to be clear in our minds what we mean and to be clear in our presentation. I have no argument with those who say the goal is pleasure period, but I'm going to always read that as live pleasurably.

Quote from Cassius

Both perspectives are valid and should not be seen to be at war with each other, or that one needs to replace the other.

Point well taken. It just worries me at times that people (opponents primarily) may try to use the single word "pleasure" to mischaracterize the philosophy as Cyrenaic hedonism.

My first reaction is that tranquility/equilibrium ("neither pain in the body nor trouble in the mind") are defined specifically as pleasure by Epicurus.

I'm still of the general opinion that Epicurus's goal or telos is "living pleasurably" and not "pleasure" which sounds to me like we need to be titillated at all times.

I fully agree that the greatest good can't be imagined "without the joys of taste, of sex, of hearing, and without the pleasing motions caused by the sight of bodies and forms" but there's nothing inherently inconsistent with Epicurus's philosophy to wanting to have a calm mind and a pain free body.

Quote from Cassius

What I am not sure about, since I haven't gone as far into the details of LFB as you guys have, is whether the result increases confidence in resisting rationalism and idealism in thinking, or the reverse.

My first response to that is "Yes, it does resist those." My take on LFB is that her research shows that our bodies naturally inform us how to act. Our bodies want to be in equilibrium, to have our budgets in balance. We ignore that at our peril. Understanding that things that gives us pleasure are generally positive for our well-being and things that move our affective circumplex toward high arousal levels of displeasure are negative for it. With caveats, per LFB, that things like exercise may be unpleasant in the moment and make us run a deficit in our body budget but will pay benefits in the long run. And not automatically assigning emotions to our affective feelings but instead looking at the underlying physical characteristics can get us in touch with pleasure and displeasure in our lives.

https://www.academia.edu/resource/work/4310042

Of possible interest here is Sedley's paper on Epicurus's On Nature Book XXVIII on language which talks quite a bit about prolepses and how the mind works especially in relation to language.

Quote from Cassius

With the continual caveat that (1) Epicurus' philosophical perspective might not be the same at all as what modern science is looking at, and (2) we need to be constantly on guard as to the implications of any particular approach.

Agreed, but I don't think it's counter to the philosophy to try to incorporate our best understanding of nature. Epicurus and the founders didn't have access to the last 2000+ years of science, so the fact that we can even have this conversation comparing modern neuroscience with Epicurus's philosophy is mind-boggling to me!

Quote from Cassius

I believe DeWitt to be correct at least insofar as he is stressing that there is a human functioning process that Nature set up for us to use to determine what to consider to be "true," and that this biological process is not "abstract reason" or "abstract logic." That would be the takeaway of most any version of the whole "canon of truth" discussion.

From what I read, DeWitt is surmising there's a sequence but basically so intertwined it's hard to say which comes first. She's yes Barrett would not give logic a part in this. Godfrey is right to in saying: Past experience gives us the ability to build "concepts" (read Epicurean prolepses). Our senses are compared to these concepts/prolepses which affects our affective circumplex (read Epicurean pathē: pleasure/pain ηδονή/άλγος).

Oh, and I should be clear: Much of the time, I'm thinking out loud when I post so I'm not committed to any of my previous assertions.

Just to make things slightly more difficult for everyone

Quote from Godfrey

A quick post; today is pretty busy so it may be a while before I get back on....

In reacting to Don 's post, I think one of LFB's points is that sensations in a particular instance don't come first. A prediction comes first and the sensations serve as a reality check as you can see from the description of a prediction loop. So the sensations are "true" but they don’t seem to be primary.

Another thing that seems like it might be fruitful to discuss is affect and the affective circumplex.

Good point, Godfrey ! I appreciate and agree with your clarification there.