Posts by Little Rocker

Thanks! This exchange is really helpful.

Quote from Cassius

It seems we ultimately need to take a position on whether the "canonical" status of prolepsis tells us that something is "true or real" in terms of fully-formed correct opinions, or simply "true or real" in the sense of honestly reported to us by the faculty of perception.

It seems so. I currently lean towards the former, but I can see that confining oneself to the latter has its advantages.

Quote from Don

So, if I understand correctly, you're positing a mental capacity/faculty/process/function that leads to or produces something we can call a "prolepsis."

Right. Or at least, that's my current thought.

Quote from Don

But that doesn't move us along from Epicurus's "content" of the prolepsis of the gods being "blessed and uncorrupted", does it?

I guess it still seems to me that 'blessed' and 'indestructible' are essential features of the prolepsis of 'gods' for Epicurus. 'The many,' too, think the gods are blessed and indestructible. They just go off the rails when they try to put meat on the bones of 'blessed.'

I definitely think we have a 'proleptic' capacity or capacities that produce prolepseis, but I just tend to think the prolepseis themselves (the products of the capacity) have conceptual content and structure. And I guess one place I'm seeing Epicurus suggest that is in the plural of prolepseis and 'pronouncments':

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'For the pronouncements of the many about the gods are not basic grasps (prolepseis) but false suppositions.'

οὐ γὰρ προλήψεις εἰσίν ἀλλ’ ὑπολήψεις ψευδεῖς αἱ τῶν πολλῶν ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀποφάσεις.

It strikes me that Epicurus is at least suggesting that his own 'pronouncements' about the gods *are* prolepseis. But maybe I'm just tired.

Quote from Cassius

Under this perspective it would be wrong to ever consider "a prolepsis" to be an idea or a conclusion of any kind. That's where i think we implement Epicurus' observation that the opinions of the hoi polloi about the gods are not true, and are indeed false, even though they are about a subject in which prolepsis is involved. The prolepsis would dispose us to evaluate the subject and consider it important, but the prolepsis would not provide the correct conclusion -- conclusions occur only in the mind.

I can see the benefits of your approach, but I wonder whether Epicurus builds a bit more content into the prolepsis than that. It seems to me like the prolepsis for the gods in Letter to Menoeceus 123-4 is that 1) they exist and that 2) they are 'blessed and indestructible,' which offers at least some kind of skeletal conceptual structure.

And then it might be that the way 'the many'/hoi polloi go wrong is in their understanding of what 'blessed and indestructible' entail. But I admit that the more I look at this sentence, the more my eyes cross:

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'For the pronouncements of the many about the gods are not basic grasps but false suppositions.'

οὐ γὰρ προλήψεις εἰσίν ἀλλ’ ὑπολήψεις ψευδεῖς αἱ τῶν πολλῶν ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀποφάσεις.

On one reading, Epicurus might think *his* pronouncements about the gods are 'basic grasps' (prolepseis), which would give the prolepsis *a lot* of argumentative content. On another reading, he's just offering 'true suppositions' about a 'basic grasp' he shares with the many, who instead offer 'false suppositions' about that prolepsis.

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Wisdom (Phronêsis) – One’s ability to employ the Dichotomy of Control and to identify and separate what they control from what they do not.

I'm with Don--. In the spirit of fairness to the Stoics, even they don't deserve this kind of misunderstanding. Someone can just as well know what they do and do not control and be spectacularly wicked.

Quote from Cassius

Epicurus may have expanded the existing term "prolepsis" to cover not just the recognition of physical objects like men or horses or oxes as a result of having seen examples of them over time (which is the example Diogenes Laertius gives, and everyone agrees with as a process that definitely happens), but to include identification of abstractions such as justice or divinity which require considerably more organizing in the mind because they aren't physical objects that can be touched or seen or heard or smelled or tasted (which is a process with which other philosophers - especially blank slate philosophers - would disagree).

Quote from Bryan

The physical basis for justice is simply the fact that life is a potential characteristic [sýmptōma] of matter -- and justice is a potential characteristic of life.

I've been trying to work through some of these ideas lately, and I've run into perennial problems because people often talk past each other when they use terms like 'empiricism' and 'innate.' So perhaps the two of you can help. The question of whether Epicurus countenances anything as 'innate' comes up most often with the gods, but it seems like DeWitt, for example, also thinks justice is 'innate.' He thinks these fall under 'Anticipations,' and I confess I still haven't quite sorted through his textual evidence with 'Anticipations' (TBD).

Anyway, I've been wondering what it would even mean for Epicurus to consider something 'innate,' since the Platonic 'innate'--a pre-birth experience of abstract objects that we vaguely remember as we go about our daily life--is off the table. So is 'innate' in the sense of 'put in our nature by a creator.' So the chief option would be that it's part of our biological nature/cognitive architecture to categorize the world in a particular way or arrive at a particular conclusion in light of experience. We would be pre-disposed to eventually conclude, 'there must be gods,' or 'justice must be about entering agreements to avoid harm.' And if that were the case, then Epicurus need not think we have pre-existing 'experience' or 'impressions' of these things. We are not 'blank slates,' but instead beings who approach and process the world with a shared apparatus for discernment. And as a result, we arrive at a wide variety of shared conclusions.

Atoms strike me as different, but maybe they're not? After all, if we think, 'there's substance and motion,' then atoms are a highly effective explanation of how there can be both, and motion and substance certainly seem proleptic, if atoms do not. But does 'arguing for' atoms make Epicurus no longer an empiricist? I tend to think you can remain happily an empiricist and posit underlying explanations for what you observe all the time, so long as you consider them hypotheses.

I suppose I want to think that Epicurus is a dyed-in-the-wool empiricist (even though he posits atoms that he can't see by means of deduction) and might very well think some things are 'innate,' at least in the sense of resulting form use of the standard operating equipment. Does that sound roughly in the vicinity of reasonable?

Quote from Kalosyni

And perhaps everything is refered back to it's over-all affect: do whatever you want if it does not cause you undue physical pain and mental distress (and also keeping to that which is just and prudent concerning others).

Yeah, that's the way I think about it--'harmless pleasures' are permitted, when the harm you must avoid concerns others. It seems to me that 'harmless' can include risk and some measure of pain for oneself, so long as it promises or even just might provide an especially exquisite pleasure.

Quote from Kalosyni

And what would the astronauts ponder in such a situation...would they think well at least this will hopefully build on the future knowledge for the space program (as a benefit for future humanity, so that their death was not in vain) or perhaps they too could say to themselves "I've had a good run".

I suppose probably both, but I guess the reason I prefer 'I've had a good run' is that you can say it even if everything fails--if nothing is learned, if no one remembers you did it. It's like the pleasure of the activity is enough without success. That sometimes strikes me as one of the coolest things about Epicurus--pleasure isn't required to produce anything to justify itself. And if you think it does have to produce something, then the pleasure might lose a touch of its luster.

Quote from Kalosyni

Perhaps time to look into wilderness gun use for self-defense against wild animals? (or could you have on hand a stun gun as a last resort?)...just thinking about what kind of options to increase safety amongst wolves and bears.

Ha, yes! I do carry bear spray with me everywhere I go, which is actually more effective than a gun (and a lot lighter than any gun that would take out a bear). That wolf definitely was not interested in me. The most important thing was not getting run over!

Quote from Cassius

What was stated instead, is that if you *think* about life correctly (correctly meaning that there are no supernatural gods, platonic "good," or life after death), then you see that "life" allows you to participate in an unlimited number of mental and physical activities which are rewarding in all sorts of ways. With this attitude toward life it is much easier to experience all sorts of agreeable mental and physical activities.

I think this is entirely correct, and that's why I think the ascetic interpretation of Epicureanism goes almost as far astray as the 'sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll' interpretation. That's also why, at least if you ask me this morning, I think Epicurus would not be opposed to going to the moon if that's your particular desire. (Maybe that's in part because an hour ago I watched a black wolf chase a deer up a river in the wilderness and thought, for not the first time this week, 'I could get killed doing this' at the same time as I thought, 'this is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.')

To me, once you believe that pleasure is good and that you shouldn't feel ashamed of enjoying your life, and once you free yourself from the idea that death is the worst thing that can happen, some risks for the most sublime and memorable pleasures of life actually become worth it.

I make this joke sometimes that sort of unnerves my friends, which is that if I die, I can at least say 'I've had a good run.' I tend to think Epicurus thinks we choose our pleasures for ourselves (within certain constraints, of course), and he's more interested in clearing our heads of the impediments to pursuing and enjoying the pleasures that give us that feeling of living life largely as we please. And the most significant impediments to doing that are shame, fear, ignorance, limitless desires, and superstition. But maybe I've now come too close to the sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll interpretation.

Quote from Cassius

And if I were an Epicurus or a Diogenes of Oinoanda seeking to etch "in stone" a summary of my message to all future generations, and to point out why virtually everyone else has things upside down, I'd find at least as much reason to come at this from a "grand philosophical point" perspective as I would from a "here's my personal observation, your mileage may vary" perspective.

I think I've gotten a bit turned around here because you and Don have a history and I feel slow on the uptake today. Cassius, can you perhaps restate the 'grand philosophical point'?

Quote from Don

I'm using "psychological hedonism" as an expedient shorthand for "pleasure is the guide, goal, and end of all our actions."

From my perspective...

People are dutiful, because it ultimately brings them pleasure.

People are pious because it ultimately brings them pleasure.

Continually asking "Why do you do that?" will, if the person is honest, ultimately result in the answer "Because it makes me feel good." Otherwise, I believe people are fooling themselves... Sometimes quite effectively and thoroughly, but fooling themselves nonetheless.

Yes, and I think Epicurus *is* a psychological hedonist of the sort you articulate here. I just find myself sympathetic to what I take to be Cassius' point that arguing about the empirical truth of psychological hedonism might not be the best dialectical strategy for convincing people to be Epicureans. I admit that I feel like I've reached a point where every time I hear a passionate argument about altruism I cry a little on the inside, even though I recognize that the possibility of altruism really matters to a lot of people. I think I've just lost sight of why it does.

Quote from Cassius

I interpret your view of PD10 as focusing on the "but it won't work because it is not possible part." Yes in practical terms that is true, but stopping there does not advance the philosophical argument.

I don't want to be Pollyanna here, but it seems you can both have this point--pleasure is pleasure, and all of it is good in itself--but only some strategies for pursuing it consistently bring about and sustain the most desirable state. As in the Letter to Menoeceus, all pleasures are good, but only some are choiceworthy. And it's true that a pleasure that is not choiceworthy in one context (participating in politics) can become choiceworthy in another (participate or die/break trust). So what counts as choiceworthy varies--it might very well be that in some contexts, flying to the moon on a whim and a prayer is choiceworthy.

Yet I think I'm with Don on PD 10, at least when coupled with PD 11. They have a remarkably similar structure, and they both seem to suggest that the people in question are not studying some important variety of natural science (the kind that, among other things, dissolves fears of death and of heavenly phenomena and also sets limits on our desires). I can't see Epicurus considering natural science negotiable.

These are some half-baked thoughts, but I agree with Cassius that the worry about psychological hedonism is that it seems nearly unfalsifiable, and it's not going to convince the person who insists they act for reasons other than pleasure/advantage. If the point is convincing others, then asserting psychological hedonism is almost tantamount to begging the question, even if it turns out to be empirically correct.

I wonder sometimes whether the root question is whether people think duty and virtue should make them miserable or whether they hope to be pleased, or at least satisfied, to be a dutiful and virtuous person. And if they say, 'I want to be the sort of person for whom doing my duty makes me miserable,' then I would find that strange.

I've never quite known what to do with Epicurus' insistence that virtuous people will experience the greatest pleasure and that people who experience the greatest pleasure must be virtuous. But I'm not entirely sure it's all that different than the Stoic view that the virtuous person will enjoy their virtue. So in my mind, people might insist they are motivated by duty, and for all I know they are in their own cognitive economy, but it would be/should be a grave disappointment to them if that motivation did not terminate in some fashion in a sense of satisfaction with themselves. And I tend to think, as an Epicurean, and as reflected in the word 'terminate,' that people actually infer backwards from 'what will give me the feeling about myself and my aims that I want' to 'duty' or 'virtue.' Which means that the final aim is the feeling, and I'm with Don--it seems reasonable to call that feeling (at least a kind of) pleasure. And virtue is the instrument, not the aim.

Sorry to blunder into this late and quite possibly confuse things further, but here's a quote from the original Pigliucci piece:

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Evolutionarily speaking, for instance, pain is there to alert us to injuries that, if unattended, could cause long-term disability or death. Pleasure is there to entice us to do things we otherwise might not do, like engaging in the biologically all-important activities of courtship and sex (which are otherwise expensive in terms of time and resources). Put this way, it is clear what the only ultimate goods that nature set for us (and for all living organisms) are: survival and reproduction.

I'm taking this to be at least one of the reasons the naturalistic fallacy occurred to Onenski because Pigliucci is offering what might appear to be a textbook case.

So maybe another example would capture the relevant worry: Imagine an evolutionary biologist says, ‘Men are naturally prone to infidelity because it’s not evolutionarily advantageous for them to be monogamous. Men are just cheaters, and that's a good thing from the perspective of survival and reproduction, which are the ends nature sets for us. So we should just expect men to cheat.’ That leaves a person who contends that men should aim for fidelity two options--show that cheating is not actually adaptive (i.e. challenge the scientist's empirical claim) or decide that what is good for us/right for us is not governed by what is evolutionarily advantageous.

I'm very sympathetic to the idea that the Cynics don't have a philosophy or 'clear doctrine' in the sense of a system of commitments that hang together as a defensible whole. And I don't disagree that Cynicism can come across as little more than a series of colorful anecdotes. But I guess I'm sympathetic to the people who think we can ascribe some somewhat distinctive commitments to them--that virtue is often best cultivated by hard work of the physical sort rather than book-learning; that living an authentic life means being willing to reject and openly mock most of the pretenses of polite society; and that the fewer possessions the better.

Fret not, Don , my sad emoji was in jest. I'm just over here humming my favorite triumph-song, "Eye of the Tiger.'

Quote from Bryan

Given that all our ideas are necessarily built only from impressions of the outside world, I do not understand how the idealist interpretation is tenable. We need impressions from external physical objects to form our thoughts.

This is not something I have fixed views on, and apologies if I'm rehashing something already well-traveled, but Sedley has argued that Cicero has it right in the Nature of the Gods 1.43-5 that for Epicurus, our grasp of the gods is innate. As I understand it, Sedley thinks it's a natural outgrowth of another thing Epicurus considers innate--our desire for pleasure. Or at least that's how I'm reading this passage:

'The question then arises how we come to have this innate predisposition, given that, in Epicurean eyes, it cannot have been hardwired into us by any divine creator. The answer should be as follows. According to Epicurus all animals have, by nature and without divine design, an innate desire to maximize their own pleasure, and for human beings that maximization is identifiable with a life of blessed tranquillity, untainted by the fear of death. The gods, correctly understood in accordance with the basic prolepsis as blessed and altogether free from the fear of death, are an ideal model of just such a life. Each of us has an innate propensity to imagine – and in particular to dream of – the being we would ideally like to become. By doing so, we are ipso facto giving a concrete realization to the prolepsis of god. Hence our innate predisposition to form this prolepsis is likely to amount to our natural tendency to form a graphic picture of our own equally innate moral agenda. And the guaranteed truth of the prolepsis may well be identifiable with the truth of our intuitive underlying conception of the best life.'

Quote from Kalosyni

Two possibilities:

-- The writings explaining this have been lost.

-- Epicurus may have allowed multiple ways to "consider the gods" as long as you foremost believed that they do not intervene or interact with humans.

I think the first is definitely right and the second also seems right to me. We don't have what he wrote about this question, but he wrote something for sure. And my hunch is that his theological project was primarily negative (i.e. aimed at removing false beliefs about the gods rather than at developing a worked-out theology). It could very well be that his positive theology was something like--believe whatever you want about the gods so long as it is consistent with all the other stuff we accept.

I'll have to think more about Captain Kirk, but it seems to me that if Epicurus himself (or let's just say 'the sage') thought we have every reason to use scientific innovation to diminish pain and increase pleasure, then emulating the attitudes and efforts of the sage would again suit the aspirational purpose.

To tie those two thoughts together, and if I'm understanding Kalosyni roughly correctly--we need to eliminate false beliefs about the gods, but it remains unclear whether the gods themselves play an essential role that can't be fulfilled by thinking of the best way to live as a human being. There's a paper on 'Epicurean Immortality' I once read that I'm going track down and revisit.

Quote from Don

My understanding of the "idealist" position is that each person can have their own conception of the best blessed life possible, and that is *their* "god." That, to me, is part of the significance of those singular "god"'s in Menoikeus. That kind of "god" is deathless because you can't kill an idea.

I guess like Don I'm more sympathetic to the 'idealist camp,' though I do tend to think the conception is probably shared rather than particular (or at least *more* shared than particular).

I suppose what puzzles me about the idea that we should aim to be like the gods is that it might seem perfectly sufficient to aim to be like the *sage.* If, for example, the sage expresses gratitude, but the gods do not (KD 1), then shouldn't I want to be like the sage because I am human?

Maybe a non-charitable take would go something like:

Plato knows a lot about laws, so if the mice eat Plato, then there will be no laws.

Epicurus knows a lot about delicacies, so if the mice eat Epicurus, there will be no delicacies (only a bunch of people desperate for corn). As in, something like scarcity.

The idea being, I suppose, that a mouse's dietary choices are an omen presaging a social decline of sort.

Donkeys are amazing! And they also avoid politics!

This is great, Don! I tracked down a passage I seemed to remember from an article by Diskin Clay to the effect that Memmius probably purchased Epicurus' house in town, the one in Melite. Which means Epicurus owned *two* pieces of property, one of them, as Pactatus notes, suitable for renovation into a larger villa:

"Years after his philosophical stay in Athens Cicero wrote (in 51 BC) to Gaius Memmius (the addressee of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura) on behalf of Patro, then the head of the Epicurean school in Athens who had followed Phaedrus. Cicero’s purpose was to dissuade Memmius from pulling down the ruins of Epicurus’ house in Melite within the city walls. He sent a copy of this letter to Atticus to reinforce his plea. Epicurus’ house and small garden near the Hill of the Nymphs were in ruins by the time Cicero wrote to Memmius and Atticus, but the school and Patro’s feelings of reverence and duty to Epicurus and his fellow Epicureans in Athens is evident from Cicero’s letter to Memmius."

Not so weird, really: "Washington’s Birthday was the first federal holiday to honor an individual's birth date. In 1885, Congress designated February 22 as a holiday for all federal workers. Nearly a century later, in 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Law changed the date to the third Monday in February. The position of the holiday between the birthdays of Washington and Abraham Lincoln gave rise to the popular name of Presidents Day." --National Archives