Posts by TauPhi

Quote from shahabgh66

Here is the argument: From a neuroscientific outlook, when brain produces any of these six hormones of Endorphins, Dopamine, Oxytocin, Norepinephrine, Cortisol and Adrenaline, one feels pleasure.

So if someone is in a state of total inactivity, and thinks about nothing pleasurable or troubling and feels no pain in his body, the reward system of the brain is not working*. So it does not produce any hormones that create such effect which is generally known as pleasure.

I'm as much a biologist as I am a fridge but if none of the hormones and neurotransmitters are at work at any given time in one's body, wouldn't that be a strong indication that this individual is as alive as a dodo?

The site looks brilliant. Nice update. Couple of bugs I've noticed:

• 'Recent Threads' under 'Recent' drop down menu seems to be broken when not logged in (the formatting is way off). It looks ok when logged in.
• 'Activate light style' and 'Activate dark style' do exactly the opposite. You may want to switch the descriptions.

Quote from Don

It would certainly make for an interesting alternative history novel!

That instantly brings 'The Man in the High Castle' by Philip K. Dick to my mind. I can't recommend it enough. Nothing to do with Epicurus but what a mind blowing alternative history novel it is.

Quote from Cassius

But visualize the life of a blessed being helps us to work toward that ourselves, and thinking about what Epicurus would do or say if he were watching us also helps to improve our actions.

I agree with the Epicurus part but visualization of life of something that we know nothing about is like visualization of beer pong game on five dimensional table. Not doable, I'm afraid. But I don't want to start another god topic so I'll try to silence my naughty, heretic side instantly. Bad, bad TauPhi.

I might be completely wrong about it but if Epicurus had gone mainstream we would have shortly after seen Epicurean churches, popes, bibles, schisms, wars, burnings at the stakes in the name of mighty Epicurus and all 'the good stuff'. I don't think there ever has been an idea, no matter how beautiful, that when adopted by masses were not transformed over time into a big pile of stinking poo.

A parallel world that took a better turn 2000 years ago sounds great in theory but there were many turns over last two millennia caused by people that wanted to redo existing world into something better. 'Noble' attempts like that have one thing in common. They inevitably lead to genocide.

I realise I probably don't rate humanity too high and I sincerely hope I'm dead wrong in this case but I'm glad Epicurus was not proclaimed the saviour of humanity by and large and went down in history simply as a philosopher with beautiful ideas.

This is the depiction of Epicurus I like the most from the ones I've seen so far. It comes from a Polish book 'Lukrecjusz' by Kazimierz Lesniak published in 1985. There's something in the eyes that captures my attention and I think it's the closest visual representation of Epicurus to the one I have in my mind.

Quote from BrainToBeing

So, in summary, is this then the core issue of the Epicurean? If so, i guess I'm not an Epicurean.

Firstly, there's much more to Epicurean philosophy than that. Secondly, study existing texts before deciding if you see yourself as an Epicurean or not. I'm just one of many Internet people and nothing I say is in any way authoritative. Please keep in mind I'm not strictly an Epicurean myself. I'm here as this philosophy is close to my heart and I find exchanging ideas with people gathered in this community very beneficial. Lastly, by wise pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain I don't mean to get as much sex, drugs and rock'n'roll as possible. I mean life choices that make my life worth living for myself.

Quote from BrainToBeing

I deny pleasure where pursuing it would not be constructive (e.g. coffee and a glass of wine at dinner are my only drugs).

Can I ask why you chose to deny yourself such pleasures? Watching sunsets, staring at bonfires, listening to music and many other pleasures are not constructive and yet I don't know anyone who would willingly deny themselves such activities. And please don't take it as a personal attack. I'm genuinely curious as I have a feeling I might be misunderstanding what you're saying.

Quote from BrainToBeing

I voluntarily accept pain where it comes necessarily as a consequence of doing something constructive (e.g. vigorous exercise entails some pain).

I absolutely agree with this. I'm starting to suspect what you call 'something constructive' I call 'pleasure' and we might be on the same page of the same book just written in different language.

Anyway, welcome to the forum BrainToBeing and thank you for your contribution so far. I find it very interesting.

Quote from frank1syl

My main interest is practical. If mental pain is greater (impacts us more) than physical pain,

To make this statement true, we would need to discover a way to measure both types of pain. 'Greater' might not be fortunate adjective here. 'Different' would probably be better. Also, mental pains can lead to physical pains and vice versa.

Quote from frank1syl

then my focus ought to be on things entirely under my control (my free will), and secondarily, things I have some partial control over (chance?), and lastly, should not concern myself with things I can't control (destiny).

What you think you have in your control can easily stop being in your control. From practical point of view, Stoic dichotomy of control doesn't seem to be applicable to humans. It would be perfect for us if we were purely reasonable creatures. We're not. We're creatures that mostly feel and sometimes reason so having pleasure and pain as guidelines seems to be a better approach in life.

To illustrate my points, I'll give you a short story of Pious Peter that I created for this occasion. The story won't guarantee me next Nobel Prize in literature but I hope it can show you that one type of pain can lead to another and stuff in our heads is not so easily controllable if our reasoning is flawed (and it is way more often than we wish it was).

Pious Peter worries greatly that a god will not accept him in heaven (mental pain). This makes Peter stressed so he can't sleep well anymore (physical pain). He's constantly tired (physical pain). His ability to perform at work decreases exponentially (mental). He gets fired (mental). He worries even more (mental). He can't eat properly now (physical). His body is weaker and weaker (physical). His mind takes him to darker and darker places (mental). Pious Peter can't control what's supposed to be in his control anymore (mental). He reaches for alcohol and pills (mental and physical) and his downward spiral continues.

I'll stop here or the story gets too drastic but I hope you get my point.

Instead of thinking in fixed categories of greater/lesser; mental/physical; controllable/uncontrollable, in my opinion, it's much more beneficial to try to learn as much as possible about the nature of ourselves and our surroundings and figure out how to wisely pursue pleasures and avoid pains so we can feel that the overall balance is positive. This way we can enjoy our little game of life and, when times comes, leave the stage smiling.

Quote from Cassius

To repeat: additions, subtractions, clarifications, suggestions, etc., are welcome, especially as to citations to include under each bullet point. This will always be a "work in progress."

As I've mentioned above, I like this outline a lot so I'd like to contribute to it a little, if possible. This is kinda big but also kinda debatable. Whether it's worth including in the outline, I leave it to you Cassius.

It's about Canonics and possible forth criterion of truth. As it stands for now, and quite rightly, you describe Canonics as 'Knowledge Can Be Obtained Through the Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings.'

These three are well established:

sensations - aistheseis

anticipations - prolepseis

feelings - pathe

There is, however, possible forth criterion:

mind perceptions - phantastikai epibolai tes dianoias

It is mentioned both in Letter to Herodotus [51] and Principal Doctrine #24. Whether Epicurus treated this criterion as a fully-fledged, legitimate forth criterion is not clear. Some scholars say he did and it was added to the Canon later by him and some scholars believe Epicurus didn't treat this criterion on a par with the remaining three. We probably won't ever know for sure but since Epicurus himself talks about it, I think it is beneficial for everyone to be familiar with it.

It may be work in progress but it's already a brilliant outline. I spent some time today going through it and I'm seriously impressed. From now on if someone ever asks me what Epicurean philosophy is, they are getting link to this. Thanks for putting it together Cassius.

Quote from Don

Merit isn't always what sustains something. Sometimes it's who you know.

There is a good reason why The Holy Church of Sticking Pencils into Eyeballs doesn't exist. I'm sure at one point in human (and pencils) history someone tried to get salvation by such a creative usage of their pencils. That idea has no merit. An idea has to have some merit in order to get widespread and passed on. Connections help but even if you knew everyone in this world (and all the other possible worlds where pencils were invented) you wouldn't be able to become a Pencil Prophet. It's always merit (even if we personally don't agree with it). Who you know sometimes helps.

Quote from Cassius

If you'll check out the link starting at 7:23 you will see a fiveminute long dramatic reading of Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus. Seems to me that watching this is really good for helping it sink in how utterly anchored Stoicism is in a theistic world-view. In the Stoic framework Zeus gives orders to nature in every bit as sweeping way as any Abrahamic religion ever dreamed of. In my view it's only in this kind of framework that Stoicism makes any kind of sense at all -- and if you once reject the theistic base, the rest falls away quickly too.

I'm the last person on Earth willing to defend Stoicism but I don't think watching anything for five minutes is really good for anything. It's not fair to any school of philosophy to make quick judgements like that. After all, if someone wants to spend 5 minutes on Epicureanism and reaches for the most famous text on it, they get this:

Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,

Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars

Makest to teem the many-voyaged main

And fruitful lands- for all of living things

Through thee alone are evermore conceived [...]

My point is, it should take time and effort to get to the point of accepting something or rejecting it. Stoicism is not evil. It's just another school of thought. For us here, it's deeply flawed school of thought but it doesn't take anything from the fact it's most interesting to spend some time studying Stoicism. It has to have some merit to it. If it fell away quickly, it would have been forgotten long time ago.

This reminds me of a speech delivered by one of my favourite writers (and philosophers) - Douglas Adams. He explains perfectly why humans tend to think that everything was created for us and everything revolves around our a**es. In my opinion, Adams does even better job than Lucretius.

Quote from Don

We can't decide whether something is pleasurable or painful. It's immediate, pre-rational.

Am I missing something here? If this would be the case, we could throw Epicurean calculus out of a window, forget about any form of philosophy and jump from the nearest, highest building because flying sounds like something cool to do this Monday evening.

Quote from Joshua

Link to main timeline; https://time.graphics/line/852902

Thank you Joshua It looks brilliant.

Quote from Cassius

Please comment if you have suggestions

Cassius I don't see these people on any of the lists. I think these can be added to the table:

Leonteus of Lampsacus

Leonteus of Lampsacus - Wikipedia

Demetrius of Laconia

Demetrius Lacon - Wikipedia

Philonides of Laodicea

Philonides of Laodicea - Wikipedia

Powarkow only refers to A. F. Losiew and just mentions Hermann Diels in passing without any references. The A. F. Losiew's work in question in called 'Anticznaja fiłosofija istorii' published in Moscow in 1977. The title is a transliteration from Russian and it most likely means something like 'History of Ancient Philosophy'. It's probably another obscure work not available in English. Sorry, Don.

I did some digging, however, and this passage seems to be closely linked with Epicurus' doctrine of atomic minima (the elachista theory).

Epicurus talks about it in Letter to Herodotus (paragraphs 55 to 59). In p.59 he talks specifically about minimum magnitudes devoid of parts (ta elachista kai amere). I didn't pay much attention to this in the past but the way Powarkow talks about it hit me hard. It seems to be very important addition to/deviation from Democritus' work.

Lucretius also talks about this in Book I (599–634) and Book II (481–499).

I'm reading a rather obscure book on Epicurus by a Russian guy called Jan Powarkow. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there's no English translation of it. I came across this footnote and I was absolutely amazed by it. I didn't realise Greek Atomism was so advanced. I heard about 'atomos' but when I read about 'ameres' I told to myself: no way Greeks came up with this!

Anyway, I thought this fragment is interesting enough so I leave English translation for you:

[...] A. F. Losiew writes that traditionalists in the history of philosophy do not attribute any significance to the fact that Greek Atomism fundamentally distinguishes the terms atomos (indivisible) and ameres (not consisting of parts). S. J. Lurie quotes a number of fragments to document this distinction, but it should be emphasized that the most important of them were previously quoted by H. Diels.

In a nutshell: atomos differ from ameres in that despite their indivisibility, they consist of certain parts, while ameres no longer consist of any parts and they themselves constitute the boundary of division, being both indivisible lines, indivisible planes, and indivisible bodies and generally indivisible units. Of course, ameres constitute a kind of intellectual construction, almost immaterial. In any case, they have no weight and are conceived as if within the atoms themselves. [...]

Thank you for your post Godfrey. I'll try to clarify few things and explain in more detail where I suspect our points of view differ.

Firstly, this:

Quote from Godfrey

For something to be a pleasure, by definition it must be felt. With this in mind, a "background state" could easily be misconstrued (and typically is, outside of this forum) as a "neutral state", even though I don't think that's what you're saying TauPhi .

I am strongly opposed to the idea of a "neutral state". I agree with Epicurus that there are only two distinct states (pleasure and pain). Katastematic pleasure, in my understanding, has nothing to do with neutrality. Quite contrary, it's felt constantly throughout one's life and is sometimes disturbed by pain caused mainly (but not only) by fear which distorts our perception of life's experiences. So, in my mind, katestematic pleasure is synonymous to background noise to life or a will to live or healthy release of dopamine in our brains. It is close to @Don's metaphor of an ocean (if I read it as intended) or mine of a forest which I made sometime in the past. It's what makes us want to experience life.

Which brings me to your next observation. Here we definitely see things differently.

Quote from Godfrey

But, to me, this mustn't be considered simply background noise, and it still consists of intensity, location and duration.

"Background noise" might not be perfect description of katastematic pleasure but I hope my clarification above gives better picture of how I see this kind of pleasure. I treat it separately from every other pleasure (for me every other pleasure is kinetic) and I deprive katastematic pleasure of duration for a reason. The duration is there but the pleasure lasts exactly as long as our lives and ends with our death.

If katastematic pleasure would be fleeting and unstable and lasted only for some time, k/k division would make no sense and would be reduced to an absurd. I mean, how much time do we need to declare a pleasure long-lasting so it's katastematic and no longer kinetic? 15 minutes? Two days? 5 years? At this point we might as well start discussing which superhero is better, Superman or Spiderman?

As far as the remaining two descriptors are concerned (location and intensity), I have my reservations as well.

Location is simpler, so I start with this one. Katastematic pleasure, they way I understand it, is located in our minds. By that I mean our minds, if they are healthy, interpret our lives as a pleasurable phenomenon.

Intensity is the descriptor I have the most problems with. And it applies to both katastematic and kinetic pleasures. In my eyes, this descriptor is too vague to be considered a good descriptor of pleasure. Which pleasure is more intense? Eating strawberry ice cream or watching sunset at the seaside? There is innumerable variety of pleasure and all of it is unquantifiable. How can we say that one variety of pleasure is more intense than the other? Ice cream is 5 and sunset is 3?

Even if we consider only one variant of a pleasure, let's say watching sunset, and try to establish intensity levels we hit the wall quite quickly. Watching sunset for 2 seconds is less pleasurable than watching it for the whole minute? If yes, by a factor of what?

So, I say yes to variety of pleasures but I'm not too sure about intensity of pleasures.

Quote from Godfrey

(Think of times when your body feels really great or your mind is really clear. For me, these times are fleeting. If they're long lasting for you, tell me how you do it!)

I wish I could tell you how I do it but, unfortunately, I don't so I can't. And I hope I was clear about that katastematic pleasure is neither of these things, in my humble opinion. I treat both clarity of mind and healthy body as kinetic pleasures. No matter if they last a day or a year. (Well, a year in my case is just wishful thinking at this point. I'm too old for that kind of privilege.)

Here's my take on kinetic/katastematic pleasures. I don't give any guarantees whether this is a sound take but you can take my take as a takeaway and feed your thoughts with it, if you wish burninglights.

Katastematic pleasure is an embedded phenomenon in a sensory processing unit. In other words, everything that is alive, has senses and a brain (or the corresponding organ) capable of translating sensory inputs into experiences, is equipped with katastematic pleasure at birth. This pleasure is, simply put, background noise to life.

As such, katastematic pleasure has nothing to do with intensity, location and duration. These can be descriptors of kinetic pleasures. If one really wants to apply these descriptors to human katastematic pleasure, they would look something like this:

intensity: subjective and unquantifiable

location: somewhere between one's ears

duration: lifespan

If a person has difficulties recognizing this background noise as a pleasure, or worse mistakes it for pain, their quality of life suffers and their lives turn into never-ending battle against ghosts that are not on there.

Kinetic pleasures are everything else, including gratitude you were wondering about.

First of all, #196 is really, really good. Well done Cassius, Joshua and Kalosyni. I smiled to myself several times during the podcast. The pleasure issues you're discussing and the points you're making are top-notch.

I want to make a comment about these two excellent questions:

Quote from Cassius

When your mind is not being excited, but is operating at its normal speed and doing its normal things, is that something that can be well conveyed in English using the word "static"?

When your body is not being stimulated through massage or in any other ways that moves the senses from their standard state of good health and operation, can that condition be conveyed using the word word "static"?

"Normal speed of mind operation" and "standard state of good health and operation of the senses" seem to me as very good descriptive attempts at the act of living. And this is close to my understanding of katastematic pleasure. Here's the idea: The moment any life comes into existence is the moment katastematic pleasure arrives as well. Any being capable of experiencing pleasure has no choice but to experience katastematic pleasure. It's like air. It is air, in fact. It's a steady release of dopamine. It is the act of feeling. The act of living. It's with us always and it's only disrupted by pain. The pain in many shapes and forms. The fear of gods, death and spiders; kinetic pleasures going wrong; the pain of degrading body, weakening senses, loss of mind's sharpness. The pain is usually with us to some degree but katastematic pleasure is almost always stronger than our pain. That's the reason we choose to keep living. Also, we almost unanimously don't realise what we are equipped with since day one and, like Cicero, we are surprised that there isn't a third, neutral state between pleasure and pain.

Oh, and I forgot to answer the questions. I'd say: No. 'Static' doesn't appear to be sufficient in this situation.

When I come across random people who think that the world is collapsing and everything is worse and worse with every breath they take I generally smile politely and remove myself from their presence.

When someone I care about adopts this mindset I try to pull them out of the darkness they got themselves into the best I can. Not limited to but I tend to use some variations of these arguments:

- You think nowadays is horrible? Get any history book and read it until you find the chapter on how people peacefully lived for millennia among unicorns and rainbows without worries, wars and diseases.

- Don't read, watch nor listen to the news for some time. You're not getting news anyway. You're getting stories filtered by corporate interests and governmental propaganda spiced with greed, violence and mind tricks to capitalise on your attention.

- Do not isolate yourself. Force yourself, if you have to, and spend as much time as possible with people you love.

- Move. Exercise. Play sports. Get yourself physically tired so you don't have energy to waste on imagining the worst possible version of the world you can think of.

As far as religion goes, in moments like these I try to avoid the subject altogether. It's a near impossibility to convince people to change their deep rooted beliefs even when they think straight. When their minds are clouded with dark thoughts and mixed with a hope that calling Jesus at 1-800-Jesus-Save-Us-All is a solution, I smile politely and keep my mouth shut even if I care deeply for that person. That discussion can only do more harm than good.