Posts by Don

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  • EpicureaPoetica—Epicurean Themes in Poetry [Video Project]

    Excellent work, Joshua ! :thumbup::thumbup:

    I was completely ignorant of the poem and you appear to have begun to provide a solid explication.

    I listened to the "episode" on my walk this morning to see if I could follow along without the visuals. No problem! Your tone and cadence made it both enjoyable as well easy to follow.

    My only suggestions would be:

    You do jump right in. A little more context on who Lucretius was at the beginning might help those who are new to the poem and Epicurean philosophy. You do give excellent information as the episode goes on! If you post on a website, did you plan to give an intro to the episode in textual form? I think that might be enough to provide that context I'm talking about.

    I am sincerely looking forward to episode 2!! :)

  • Episode Twenty-Nine - The Earth As Allegorical Mother of All

    Just saw this article and seemed relevant here:

    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a…than-christians

    The two parts that stuck out:

    Quote

    As it turns out, “American ‘nones’ are as religious as—or even more religious than—Christians in several European countries, including France, Germany, and the U.K.”

    And

    Quote

    Consider the rise of “atheist churches,” which cater to Americans who have lost faith in supernatural deities but still crave community, enjoy singing with others, and want to think deeply about morality. It’s religion, minus all the God stuff. This is a phenomenon spreading across the country, from the Seattle Atheist Church to the North Texas Church of Freethought. The Oasis Network, which brings together non-believers to sing and learn every Sunday morning, has affiliates in nine U.S. cities.

    It made me wonder: What differentiates an "atheist church" from an Epicurean "garden" if the church-goers don't accept any supernatural causes? What do "we" offer as a distinct philosophy to secular "nones"?

    I have some ideas but I pose the question for discussion. I also thought our international friends might have thoughts.

  • Episode Twenty-Nine - The Earth As Allegorical Mother of All

    Solid episode, gentlemen, although Elayne leaves a hole in the conversation. Look forward to hearing her again.

    On the modern use of divine metaphors and analogies, I seem to remember Dr. Michio Kaku getting heat for using phrases like " the mind of God" and "Creation." He was obviously using them in poetic ways and not literally but some in the science community asserted you can't talk like that. They said I seem to remember that they think it misleads people. I think a little poetry is fine personally. (cough... Lucretius... cough)

  • References to Epicurus' Attitude Toward The "Place of the Sciences And Liberal Arts"

    "strikes me" :) Well done!

    1. Agreed.

    2. Partially agree. "Real to us" seems too subjective for everything. There are some things that are "real" or true for the individual but there is also an objective reality we all need to agree on. (We won't get into the ultimate nature of reality here! I'm just talking about the everyday real world in which we move around in here.)

    3. Agreed.

    4. Agreed. No God needed.

    5. Agreed. No need for Platonic Forms.

  • References to Epicurus' Attitude Toward The "Place of the Sciences And Liberal Arts"

    Some great points to consider, Godfrey and Cassius . Jumping off from your points, here is what I'm beginning to formulate about the prolepses:

    • The Canon has three parts and those need to be pre-rational and they react to incoming stimuli. As Godfrey said "the prolepses or feelings aren't activated without a stimulus." I would add, by definition, the Sensations as well.
    • It seems to me that it would make sense if the Sensations registered physical stimuli: light, sound, touch, taste, odors; the Prolepses "registered" abstract stimuli: justice (how do we sense fairness?), divinity (how do we sense awe?), language (how do we sense meaning?), etc. Okay, I need to flesh that out but later. But these are inborn faculties that need only honing in humans and are present in rudimentary form in animals. Then both these faculties feed into the Feelings to register pleasure or pain. Only afterward our memory and reasoning kick in to give us information about those concepts and sensations.
    • One question I'm rolling in my mind came with Godfrey saying: "seeing a beautiful sunset, burning your hand on the stove." I think these are two different circumstances. The latter is just the nociceptors directly registering pain. The Sensations register heat > Feeling of Pain > later reason kicks in (How bad did I burn myself? Will it scar? Do I need to go to the doctor?) The sunset seems to be registering something else. I think it can't be a simple registering of sight. I think it may be a Prolepsis but of what? Consider too the similar feeling when you're taking in a vast Vista (my go to is my first view across Yosemite Valley. Breath-taking awe is my only description). It's more than just registering the light coming into your eyes. I would contend there's a prolepsis of awe or something at work before the Feeling of pleasure kicks in.
    •   Godfrey also mentioned "So we determine a concept of justice not necessarily from a single use of the Canon but through multiple exposures to situations that involve justice and stimulate resultant feelings of pleasure or pain." I would say that we recognize fair and just actions from a *very* young age (from research I've seen) and even animals have a rudimentary prolepsis of justice. The prolepsis stimulates pleasurable feelings and so we are attracted to people and situations which are just. The multiple exposures simply reinforce our intuition and begin to acculturate us to our specific culture's laws and justice. When that culture's laws conflict with our prolepsis and they don't keep people from harming or being harmed, we see them as injustice. That intuition is the prolepsis, I believe.

    I need to think and read more but that gets thinking out there in summary for review.

  • References to Epicurus' Attitude Toward The "Place of the Sciences And Liberal Arts"

    Quote from Cassius

    Don, I wonder if you have the same concern about this as your earlier concern?

    Sort of. (Oh, that's helpful, right?) :)

    The more I read the current scholarship (and there seems to be a WIDE spectrum of thoughts) on prolepses, there definitely seems to be a language component. So, a "prolepsis of truth" seems to me to maybe simply be the faculty to recognize a true vs false statement in some way.

    My problem, consternation, uneasiness comes in when we have statements like:

    1. That is a round tower.
    2. God saved me from the accident.

    Those are not equivalent statements when it comes to determining their being true vs. false.

    (1) can be resolved from observation and doesn't really need a prolepsis of "truth" because our senses will resolve whether it's true.

    (2) cannot be resolved by observation. That statement is connected to somebody's internal/personal Truth (capital T) and, so, again I don't think it falls under a prolepsis because it would be innate. That seems more like a case of holding an empty or incorrect opinion.

    There also seems to be some scholarship that tries to make the prolepsis of the divine (That they are blessed, immortal, etc.) a special case, but I don't think - personally - that Epicurus would create a category - prolepsis - to cover only one case. And if the prolepsis about the gods is innate, I would *think* that all prolepses are innate and pre-rational, especially if they're part of the Canon and used in determining a correct version of reality.

  • References to Epicurus' Attitude Toward The "Place of the Sciences And Liberal Arts"

    Epicurean_Preconceptions.pdf

    I just found this article by Dr. Voula. It appears to have some good summaries of the current scholarship on the prolepses, and she gives her own take as well. I've only just begun reading, but a couple things jumped out so far including this list:

    Quote

    In the first place, an examination of early Epicurean texts intimates that the range of objects of which we have preconceptions includes: natural kinds, such as man, horse and cow; abstract entities, for instance justice, utility and truth; moral and psychological attitudes like responsibility and agency; and non-perceptible items, such as gods and atoms. Preconceptions of these objects always have an evidential basis. One acquires the preconception of cow through repeated clear impressions of cows, that of justice by perceiving many just acts, that of moral responsibility by being exposed to acts of praise and blame, and the prolēpsis of atoms as constantly moving by observing corpuscula dancing in the light. However, the evidence makes it reasonably clear that only some of our concepts are preconceptions formed in the aforementioned way, while all other concepts are formed by internal mental processes in which the mind plays a role. ‘All notions arise by means of confrontation, analogy, similarity and combination, with some contribution from reasoning as well’ (DL 10.32).

    The list is helpful, but I'm not sure I accept the conclusions. I find it interesting that she includes truth in the abstract concepts list! I'd like to know where that comes from in the texts to provide some context.

    Prolepses are also described elsewhere as being innate, and, if they're innate, that seems to mean they are inborn. So, Tsouna's contention that they require multiple experiences doesn't seem to line up with that idea of innateness.

    Onthe other hand, consider the acquiring of language by babies and toddlers (to look at the prolepses of language, e.g., cow, man, horse, etc.). My contention would be that as we are acquiring the words of our individual language (man, άνθρωπος, l'homme, etc.) we are attaching these to prolepses of the general meaning of man, car, house, tower, etc. These are NOT Platonic Forms but mental images we will immediately access when we again hear or read or imagine those concepts.

    But is this prolepses or simply memory? For me, the innateness and reflexive automatic pre-rational access of the prolepses would argue against this kind of formation of prolepses. I'm much more inclined to the instinctual, inborn faculties as being the prolepses.

    I'll have to study the texts and the scholarship more, but this is where my head is at right now.

  • References to Epicurus' Attitude Toward The "Place of the Sciences And Liberal Arts"

    Speaking of sweetness and bitterness.. and revisiting Clear & Vivid with Alan Alda... Here is an episode of that podcast that got me thinking of the prolepsis of sweet = good & bitter = bad. The guest talks about tiny worms that seek out sweet things and avoid bitter things. I think I can see the idea of the proto-prolepsis in the worm but I'm not sure if others would see the sensations or the reactions (pleasure/pain) or all three of the Canon working in concert. I believe this is in the first half of the episode if you get a chance to listen.

  • References to Epicurus' Attitude Toward The "Place of the Sciences And Liberal Arts"

    I suppose I may be weaseling my way out of providing more of my current understanding of Epicurean prolepses. I'll try to be brief but also put my opinions out there.

    First, I thought this article was interesting in drawing distinctions between Stoic and Epicurean prolepsis.

    Now, for me, prolepses are engaged at the instinctual level. Research has shown that animals and babies already have a sense of fairness and "justice" if you will. Check these links here, here, and here to start. And we know Epicurus looked to animals and children for confirmation of the basic tenets.

    So, my understanding is that prolepses could be thought of as instinctual or innate, inborn faculties that "grasp" more abstract phenomena like justice and our sensations grasp more concrete phenomena like sights, sounds, tactile sensations, etc.

    That's why I don't think we need a prolepsis of Truth. Something either agrees with our sensations or it doesn't. I don't think that's the same as recognizing whether something is just or not and hence needing a prolepsis.

  • References to Epicurus' Attitude Toward The "Place of the Sciences And Liberal Arts"

    Quote from Godfrey

    Wouldn't this be the prolepsis? In a universe of atoms and void there is no Truth, only truths.

    Thanks for that quote, Godfrey ! I would say no, that's not the prolepsis (or a prolepsis), but let me explain.

    This was actually the point I was originally trying to make. "The Truth" with a capital T and scare quotes doesn't exist. That seems to me to be a Platonic ideal that has no relation to the real world. I would agree with your quote in that the only things we have are true facts as ascertained by observation and evidence. That way, we don't get into arguments about my Truth vs your Truth. What do the observations say are true facts. Otherwise, we're arguing about internal mental constructs that may or may not be connected to things able to be perceived. If someone believes the existence of God is Truth, can that be observed? Can that be factually ascertained? No? Then it's not a true fact but empty opinion.

    I also don't think this recognition of a true fact rises to the level of a prolepsis. Either things correspond to observable phenomena as ascertained by our senses or extensions of our senses (e.g., telescopes, microscopes, instruments, etc.) or they don't. I know the prolepses are a hot topic and I won't go into my (current) understanding of them; but, in summary, I don't think we need to fall back on a prolepsis to determine if an observable fact is true or not. It either corresponds to our observations or it doesn't.

    I hope that fleshes out my understanding a little, but I remain open to to reading others takes on this!

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