Posts by Don

Quote from Twentier

Quote from Remus

This confirms, once again, that everything sounds better with a posh English accent.

Cellar door

Thanks, Eikadistes !

For anyone who doesn't get the reference:

Phonaesthetics - Wikipedia

When the topic of rights comes up, I turn to George Carlin and his "rights vs privileges"

For those who haven't heard it (language warning!):

Quote from Bryan

τὰ Συμβεβηκότα	Coniūncta	"Inseparable Characteristics"	"Properties"	Fundamental qualities, Inherent attributes
τὰ Συμπτώματα	Ēventa	"Separable Characteristics"	"Accidents" "Symptoms"	Potential qualities, Incidental attributes
This outline is specific to Epicurus. For example, Aristotle uses τὰ συμβεβηκότα, with the sense of τὰ συμπτώματα.

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So... Did I get that exactly opposite??

Quote from TauPhi

so-called accidents* - τά συμβεβηκότα

Just to be clear for anyone reading this, TauPhi 's footnote is exactly right:

Accident (philosophy) - Wikipedia

Quote

An accident (Greek συμβεβηκός), in metaphysics and philosophy, is a property that the entity or substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity. An accident does not affect its essence, according to many philosophers. It does not mean an "accident" as used in common speech, a chance incident, normally harmful.

Philosophically speaking then, as I understand, my having a beard is one of my accidents; my being a human is an attribute of mine.

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Bryan

We smell and see the film that comes from our meal, for example.

Ok now *there* is another potential issue. I thought that "images" are received directly by the mind, without going through the eyes, and that the "images" technically speaking are not visible or otherwise detectable by the five senses. Is that not the implication of the discussion in Book 4 of Lucretius, and the implication of what Cicero says to Cassius about the mind selecting images as involved in thinking of someone who is not present?

My understanding is that *all* our sensations are based on "images"/fields/eidola. The mental faculty simply picks up the finest, most subtle images. But all sensations are based on touch, from the sense of touch itself to vision touching the images emitted by objects, to the mental faculty touching the finest most subtle fields.

Of course, we now know that this isn't how our senses actually work. But Epicurus posited a completely material theory of sensation, so he gets kudos for that.

The one I seem to return to again and again is at the ending of On Nature, Book 28, where Epicurus has gone on for feet of a scroll, he says, "So let the words which we have prattled suffice for the present." and the verb there is specifically a form of ἀδολεσχέω “to talk idly, prate” so it seems to me that Epicurus is being self-effacing. I really like that.

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Α α, , ἀδι^κο-χρήματος , ἀδο-λεσχέω

Quote from Cassius

a luminary in the world of library science

LOL 🤣 Please... Don't.... Stop. But seriously, "luminary" is FAR too kind (read: hyperbole).

Quote from Cassius

in an adjoining state so there may be some rivalry involved

Friendly rivalry Even Ohio and Michigan get along and cooperate in the library world.

Quote from HollyGraves

circulation assistant

Hey! Y'all in Lending keep the materials flowing to the people and you're on the frontlines of public service. Kudos!

Crash Course Pods: The Universe

Dr. Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist, walks #1 New York Times bestselling author John Green through the history of the entire universe - including the…

crash-course-pods-the-universe.simplecast.com

A great limited series podcast on the *entire* history of the universe. Accessible and fascinating. I've been enjoying it greatly myself.

Quote

Dr. Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist, walks #1 New York Times bestselling author John Green through the history of the entire universe - including the parts that haven’t been written yet.

Welcome to the forum

Quote from Remus

"Pleasure Activist" is my new phrase of the day.

The West is a guilt-culture, although some have observed that the Internet is changing it into a shame based culture. If so, I wonder if shame is any healthier than guilt.

I noticed that "title" too

Agree with the guilt. Considering the difference between "guilty pleasure" vs "shameful pleasure" is telling.

Quote from Kalosyni

Not sure if this translator is useful, or has already been mentioned:

https://akhos.net/

It seems a little wonky and only gives individual words definition by definition one word at a time. I would recommend simply going straight to Wiktionary.com. I think that's just what akhos is doing, so just bypass the intermediary and go straight to Wiktionary which gives links to LSJ and other sources.

Quote from Cassius

This thread is for discussion of the list of twelve fundamentals such as suggested by DeWitt or Clay

Just to be clear, if anyone - DeWitt, Clay, Cassius, me, etc., - wants to assemble twelve "fundamentals" they're welcome to do it. There is zero fragmentary evidence for any definitive list of "twelve fundamentals" that Epicurus wrote and circulated. The only place this occurs - the ONLY place as far as I can find - is is the one in Diogenes Laertius (10.44): colour varies with the arrangement of the atoms he states in his "Twelve Rudiments". Δώδεκα στοιχειώσεσί ; further, that they are not of any and every size ; at any rate no atom has ever been seen by our sense.

I think any of us could go through the letter to Herodotus, or to Pythocles, or Lucretius, and pull out twelve random "fundamentals" in Epicurean physics... and it would be just as "authoritative" as the one DeWitt and Clay put together. We have no idea what was contained in Epicurus' "Twelve Rudiments" other than that he said:

1. color varies with the arrangement of the atoms
2. atoms aren't of any and every size
3. no atom has ever been seen by our senses

...according to Diogenes Laertius. And we don't know if those 3 were "rudiments/fundamentals" or if they were describing another fundamental or... anything.

This is a soapbox of mine that I insist on standing on every once in a while. Finis for now.

Quote from Little Rocker

' *Still* contentious in the schools in 1994.

Mine was in the early 1980s.

Quote from Little Rocker

"But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own-horses like horses, cattle like cattle."

I used that exact quote in an anti-Creationist editorial written for my high school newspaper after a creationist came to our school and presented during an assembly.

For German readers:

Gnosis Theon : Kleve, Knut : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

142 pages

archive.org

This is the work mentioned at the beginning in Farrington's chapter.

Knut Kleve - Wikipedia

For what it's worth, here's a section from The faith of Epicurus by Benjamin Farrington (1967)

The faith of Epicurus : Farrington, Benjamin, 1891- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xiii, 160 p. ; 22 cm

archive.org

Available to read with free account

Quote from Cassius

doesn't some kind of operation have to be "hard-coded" within us to get that process going from maybe as far back as the moment of conception?

Maybe our individual capacity, but I would say it goes further back than that since other animals have the same or similar capacity.

Seen online...