Posts by Pacatus

I had recently read some claims that one of the reasons the ancients watered their wine was because of its high alcoholic content, compared with our (unfortified) wines today. This appears to be false. (My wife, who made wonderful, dry country wines, also said so. )

There has been mention on here before about Epicurus, as he was dying, drinking undiluted wine.

There may have been other reasons for watering wine, though, in addition to concerns of sobriety.

Wine throughout history: What were ancient wines really like?

www.wineinvestment.com

Was ancient wine more alcoholic than modern wine?

Because the ancient Greeks and Romans mixed their water with wine, it is often assumed that their wines were considerably more alcoholic than modern ones. Is…

www.badancient.com

Note: I do not water my wine; my wife sometimes does (and she imbibes infrequently).

“Even cases of drunk elephants have been observed. What motivates animals to consume a substance that can be harmful, pose a danger, or reduce their ability to handle predators? The study’s authors acknowledge that they are not entirely sure but dismiss the idea of accidental ingestion as the primary cause. Instead, the widespread presence of yeast and ethanol, coupled with genetic adaptations for metabolization, suggests more deliberate consumption. …

“‘On the cognitive side, ideas have been put forward that ethanol can trigger the endorphin and dopamine system, which leads to feelings of relaxation that could have benefits in terms of sociality,’ said Anna Bowland, the first author of the research.”

Drunk butterflies and inebriated elephants: Animals also consume alcohol

From non-human primates to beetles, dozens of species intentionally ingest ethanol, and even have special enzymes to metabolize it

english.elpais.com

(Italics mine.)

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In other words: pleasure. Sometimes pursued beyond healthy bounds – and, for us, individual tastes and tolerances (some people have none) need to be recognized and respected, as well as recognizing that drunkenness is always dangerous and debilitating.

And, of course: “No pleasure is a bad thing in itself: but the means which produce some pleasures [can] bring with them disturbances many times greater than the pleasures.” (PD08)

Bracketed addition mine, based on Don’s analysis and translation here: RE: Best Translation of PD08 To Feature At EpicureanFriends.com

Cassius

You're right. And, in using that adjective, I was imputing some intention to obfuscate or sway with false logic. My bad.

Quote from Don

I know I'm alive

Just as an (hopefully not too distracting) aside: Wittgenstein argued that, in normal everyday discourse* (as opposed to academic philosophy) that “know” is, at best, superfluous. In the Philosophical Investigations, he imagines a passerby who overhears a discussion in which W’s interlocutor says: “I know that’s a tree!” (Note the emphasis.) W says to the puzzled passerby: “Don’t worry. This fellow isn’t crazy. We’re just talking philosophy.”

Imagine again the addition of emphasis: “I know I’m alive.” How could there be any doubt? The same with the other examples. If there were doubt, to what could you appeal?

And this is where I think the Meno Paradox becomes a sophistic misapplication of deductive syllogistic – hence my post about inductive versus deductive logic.

[W’s On Certainty was an extended exploration of this question, in response to G.E. Moore.]

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* Which W argued was adequate to most of our everyday communication, and that academic philosophy (epistemology) often confused what is apparent.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

– Walt Whitman

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I think we can take the word “mystical” metaphorically here (or relating to feelings of awe, and not necessarily supernatural). I recall that Whitman was at least acquainted with Epicurean philosophy.

Not that scientific (and philosophical) inquiry and debate are not valuable (and sometimes pleasurable) – but that we, in the end, live in the day-to-day “real world”. Feeling pleasure in the “moist night air” and the starry expanse overhead. Where we make daily decisions about how we are to live: how to weave a life enriched by pleasure whilst minimizing pain and anxiety; how to celebrate simplicity; how best to love the ones we love; how to support our friends in troubled times; etc.

And that is, for me, where the meat and marrow of philosophy are.

And, yes, of course: “A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe, but suspects the truth of some mythical story. So that, without natural science, it is not possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed.” (PD 12)

And: “We must not pretend to study philosophy, but study it in reality, for it is not the appearance of health that we need, but real health.” (VS 54)

And: “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.” (U221)

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And, Don : If I came off as defensive, mea culpa. Didn’t mean to.

Don

I admit I was not responding to Chalmers per se. Just to the notion that there are no such “hard questions” (or that they are readily answerable by our current understandings of neurobiology). For the rest, my post – and the example of intentionality – stands. (Do I need to reaffirm that I don't ascribe to any "supernaturalism"?)

Quote from Cassius

The main problem posed by the Meno question is a logical one, and so I would say that it has to be met on logical grounds.

In terms of inductive (evidence-based – as opposed to purely deductive) logic, current evidence is indicative of the most fruitful lines of inquiry. Such inquiry may or may not be falsified by future evidence. I’m not sure that the ancients (including the Stoics) had yet grasped the difference between deductive and inductive logic – but I suspect that Epicurus had at least an inkling …

Don :

I don’t think that one has to go to some supernatural/mystical “woo” to recognize that there are hard questions of consciousness – which is probably worth a thread of its own. For example: intentionality. Whence my actual intention to write these words, with the notion that I am consciously attempting to convey some meaning? And this also goes to that fraught question of so-called “free will” (a phrase I have come to dislike, and for which I would offer alternatives such as “intentional – if constrained – agency”). Is such intentionality a kind of epiphenomenon? Or just an illusion?

That is probably all worth a thread of its own. And there have been extended discussions on here of “free will.”

But, as Cassius argues (I think), such questions are secondary (even if profoundly interesting) to how I can (as a layperson) draw on Epicurean philosophy to live my life. In that framework, I assume intentionality and agency because (to draw on Robert Parker’s Spenser detective character ) the alternative doesn't get me anywhere.

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Vatican Saying 9 comes to mind: “Necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity.”

“I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead. … There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.”

– Isaac Asimov

Happy Birthday, Kalosyni and Joshua!

Wouldn't appeal to some common prolepsis (on the question of gods’ existence) be subject to the ad populum fallacy?

Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

Here is a poetic rendition I did for myself sometime back:

No fear of gods, ghosts or fates;
nor death’s bare naught that awaits.

Simple pleasures come easy to gain;
a happy soul serves, travails to wane.

The last line is intended to reflect Epicurus' own tapping into memories and his friends whilst in great physical pain. But I still think that line might be improved upon (whilst retaining the rhyme ). Suggestions welcome.

{The transitive usage of "wane" is, I think, archaic.}

Happy Twentieth everyone!

I came upon this fable recently during some cursory browsing, and thought it might also be helpful for others …

A Fable

Once upon a time, a woman moved to a cave in the mountains to study with a guru. She wanted, she said, to learn everything there was to know. The guru supplied her with stacks of books and left her alone so she could study.

Every morning, the guru returned to the cave to monitor the woman's progress. In his hand, he carried a heavy wooden cane. Each morning, he asked her the same question: “Have you learned everything there is to know yet?" Each morning, her answer was the same. "No." she said, "I haven't." The guru would then strike her over the head with his cane.

This scenario repeated itself for months. One day the guru entered the cave, asked the same question, heard the same answer, and raised his cane to hit her in the same way, but the woman grabbed the cane from the guru, stopping his assault in midair.

Relieved to end the daily batterings but fearing reprisal, the woman looked up at the guru. To her surprise, the guru smiled. "Congratulations," he said, "you have graduated. You know now everything you need to know."

"How's that"? the woman asked.

"You have learned that you will never learn everything there is to know," he replied. "And you have learned how to stop the pain.”

– As told by Melody Beattie in Codependent No More

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Of course, no one here would condone or affirm such harsh “therapy” in reality (nor would Beattie). But, recognizing it as a fable, one might see where circumstances (and people) in one’s life have been that harsh: demanding what you could not deliver – and punishing you for your failures to measure up, or fit into the “proper” box. (And perhaps, sometimes we ourselves collaborated in that, because of what we were taught and didn’t know better.)

Till you see through the games, and learn how to stop the pain.

Seems to me that is what, at bottom, Epicurus was trying – with his gentler therapy – to impart. Then we can begin to live a simpler eudaimonic life in serenity and pleasure.

Quote from Patrikios

The writing is: “Epicurean Stability (eustatheia): A Philosophical Approach of Stress Management”, by Christos Yapijakis and George P. Chrousos, medical professionals teaching at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Thank you, Patrikios . I found a PDF version of that essay here: https://societyofepicurus.com/wp-content/upl…-Eustatheia.pdf

“As a practical matter it seems to me that Epicurus was right that it would be impossible for us to live happily if we did not organize our lives as if we are confident that we have some amount of free agency. … That has to be good enough and I judge it to be good enough - at least for me.”

– Cassius post #4 above.

Yes. And the fact that our agency / ability to choose may be constrained by circumstances or our own abilities at any given moment is no refutation.

Even under a regime of strict determination, that very regime, it seems to me, includes for us the near-universal perception that we have such agency – and the practical necessity that we behave accordingly in order to live happily.

I have always had the most difficulty with that final line of the tetrapharmakos. Not all pain is “easy” to bear – not for me, or likely anyone. The comments about context are, I think, on the mark. And the context, for me, is Epicurean practices (therapies) to alleviate that pain as much as possible – to make it bearable. Epicurus on his death bed provides an example. And that, I think, is the superiority of Epicurean philosophy (therapy) over the Cyrenaics: recognition that mental pleasures (e.g., focus on memories) can be called upon to alleviate physical pain. And that is something that I have been able to do.

“Hedonophobia is an excessive fear or aversion to obtaining pleasure. … Hedonophobics have a type of guilt about feeling pleasure or experiencing pleasurable sensations, due to a cultural background or training (either religious or cultural) that eschews pleasurable pursuits as frivolous or inappropriate. Oftentimes, social guilt is connected to having fun while others are suffering, and is common for those who feel undeserving or have self-worth issues to work through. Also, there is a sense that they should not be given pleasures due to their lack of performance in life, and because they have done things that are deemed ‘wrong’ or ‘undeserving.’"

://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonophobia#:~:text=Hedonophobia%20is%20formally%20defined%20as,is%20often%20a%20persistent%20malady.

Today is the first that I heard of such a thing (in some random reading).

But I have known at least one person (who came immediately to mind) who had a fairly strong and insistent version of this. She was a social activist (whom I knew from my own, lesser, participation in some of the same issues), who is a lay-member of a Roman Catholic Benedictine group.

Anyone else have any experience with this?

Happy Birthday, Cassius!

I’ve been muddling over this thought experiment since Kalosyni presented it. I think that the way it is presented – particularly the liberating vacation metaphor – cuts right to the bone in terms of how we make decisions today in the face of our impending (no matter our age or what we might expect) death and dissolution (including our memories). Maybe my age resonates with how I think about it.

Don ‘s dementia take is not so far off the mark I think, but I look at it the other way round from what I understood his perspective to be: suppose I were diagnosed with an early-stage but progressive dementia which is likely to be total at the end of a year (and I might not even recognize those friends, or what they are talking about).

I’m still “muddling” – especially since Kalosyni’s experiment is cast in Epicurean terms, rather than some radically presentist Cyrenaic frame. Let’s just say that, for me, it is seriously thought-provoking.

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And it reminds me of an old (1965 - 1968, when I was in high school ) TV series called "Run for Your Life," starring Ben Gazzara. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_for_Your_Life_(TV_series).