I guess it depends on one's definition of "predictable" in any given conversation.
In any given conversation with me you don't need to guess my definitions of words. I don't redefine words for my personal needs. I stick to 21st century English as it is generally accepted. That said, I am not a native speaker so I muddy the waters sometimes. When I do, it's because I haven't mastered the language properly not because I feel like vasring deemerorus adere offdac zxxcxcxcvggg.
Physics (modern physics) does seem to say we live in a deterministic universe due to physical laws. However, that doesn't mean we live in a fully predictable universe per chaos theory.
It also doesn't mean we DON'T live in a fully predictable universe. It only means we don't have sufficient knowledge and processing power to determine chaotic predictability with perfect accuracy. For this reason, whether we live in a deterministic universe under the illusion of free will or we truly have free will is indistinguishable to us - at least for now.
My (I hope, at least) thoughts Bryan 's post #21.
One of the tricks of "modern thought/education" is to make the student think they are coming up with the ideas themselves individually (and therefore hold those ideas more deeply) when in reality they really end up only believing and repeating what they have been told.
That's an interesting view. The first question that pops into my head is why would educators go to great lengths creating a system aimed at tricking people into becoming repeating mindless automatons? What is so beneficial in having sterile societies? And how any progress would be possible? When I was around 10 years old I was blown away when I discovered what my 1 Mhz Commodore 64 personal computer could do. Now I'm typing this text on a laptop with processing power 2000 times higher. That increase hasn't magically materialised by repetition and belief of the same old ideas.
I believe that having new thoughts is very rare -- people are considered smart when they can repeat what they hear -- and most people have to struggle for years to even be able to repeat what they hear!
I guess new groundbreaking, world-shattering thoughts are very rare but we all have so many thoughts each day that even if only a fraction of them can be considered 'new' to us, I'd argue the rarity of personal new thoughts. Today my niece thought to dip a sausage in a strawberry yogurt. Probably not a 'new' idea worldwide but it was new to her. She quickly realised it was a bad one.
Also, if people are considered smart solely for their ability to repeat, I would question the smartness of the 'considerators'.
Widely accepted, promoted, and permitted modern ideas are mostly just re-packaged judeo-christianty -- everybody is the same, non-physical forces exist, the universe has a beginning, etc, etc...
I don't think I know even one person who would claim that everybody is the same. I can clearly hear a ghost of my dead grandfather complaining that nobody pay any attention to him and I'm pretty sure the widely accepted view regarding the universe is: 'We don't know. We have some theories but we can't really tell.'
Given this, I like admit to myself that I am only a follower. But I am proud that I choose to follow someone who is an honest leader and not someone cynically manipulating the thought of the public in the same old and absurd ways.
I had pleasure talking to you more than once, Bryan . You're not just a follower. You think, you wonder and you say interesting things your honest leader didn't even have a chance to come up with. My point is, please reconsider if you're not a bit too harsh with the assessment of the world around you. The world is obviously not perfect since strawberry yogurt doesn't go well with sausages but the public contains a lot of individuals willing to dip stuff in other stuff until some good stuff emerges.
Don and Cassius. Thank you for comments. Posts like that make me smile. Thanks. I won't be commenting on most of the points you brought up because I simply have nothing to add as I find them really good. I'll focus on few things I want to add to, instead.
I don't think the "ideology" was concealed. I think the ideology - I'd say the teaching and tenets of the school - was completely on display, like a menu posted at the door of a restaurant. That's why people joined.
I would think the same but something doesn't add up when I look closely. Despite the school encouraged the study of nature, which is as 'scientific' approach as it possibly could be at the time, the same school attracted people with unscientific, pious, almost cult like behaviour towards Epicurus and his teachings putting him in a weird position of some kind of a saviour, god or something like that. I called it a concealed ideology as I suspect something I don't know, or understand, was going on behind the scenes. On top of that, what was completely on display, also leaves me scratching my head sometimes. (yes, I'm thinking 'the real gods' in intermundia, for example). Materialistic school with pious students? Eternal gods made of matter? I guess you can cook a duck and duck a cook at the same time but it's kinda weird 
I'm not trying to belittle Epicureanism in any way, I simply try to understand what ancient Epicureanism was really like. And I post my doubts here in hopes of getting stuff clarified. That's why I'm grateful for anyone willing to spend time discussing things like that with me.
I want to state explicitly that there's nothing wrong with charting one's own course, taking a cafeteria approach to a life philosophy (to stay with the metaphor). Choosing dishes that work for the person. I took that approach myself in the past. However, I feel that starting with an established philosophy or religion or lifestyle gets you further down the road. It's not necessarily nefarious to want to use the cookbook from someone who appears to know how to cook.
Absolutely agree. I am an eclectic (and an Epicurean friend at the same time) and it works for me. If someone chooses different approach, I can be only happy if their choice works for them. I'm not trying to prove my approach to be better. I don't think it to be better. What matters to me is that it's good for me and I share it with good intentions. Ultimately, it's none of my business if people use cookbooks on the nose or choose to spice their meals to their liking. It's their food, not mine.
It seems to me that one could make a personal commitment to "obey Epicurus, according to whom we/I have chosen to live..." And the Philodemus does use πειθαρχέω "obey one in authority." This doesn't mean "blind faith" to me. It seems to me that that gets at the ideas that "I believe Epicurus knew what he was talking about."
I'm thinking about this sentence for few minutes now and I can't see how obeying someone in authority is not 'blind faith'. To me, that's exactly it. If I give someone authority over my own life and obey them, that means I acknowledge someone else is better at living my life. And I hit yet another religion head-on at 100 miles an hour. The whole Philodemus' quote has a striking resemblance to: 'My god is better than your god'.
"I believe Epicurus knew what he was talking about." seems to me something entirely different. It means to me: 'Hey, this dude came up with something interesting that has potential to be beneficial in my life. Let's test it out and see if that's the case'.
Another thought came to my mind while typing all this. Maybe I am completely wrong about ancient Epicureanism. During my study of it all this piousness seems to be coming back notoriously and sticking like a chewing gum to a shoe. Maybe Epicureanism was not intended as a guide for people trying to come up with their own recipes for their lives. Maybe Epicureanism was designed as yet another concealed ideology for people who are perfectly fine with buying a cookbook and never stray from its content.
the senses report "truthfully" in the sense of "honestly"
"Honestly" might be confusing as it implies that the senses have a choice of being the good guys or the bad guys. Our senses are nothing more than very limited input devices and, withing their limits, all they do is provide our brains unbiased inputs for further processing. Our brains are the bad guys lying to us all the time.
I don't think I have seen one like this before -- interesting to think about how this was created.
This was created in your lying brain due to phenomenon called pareidolia.
Thanks Cassius. I didn't know about this letter. Until now I thought Lorenzo Valla's 'De Voluptate' was the first kind treatment of Epicurus after a millennium of silence (... or burning at the stake. It's always nice to have a choice.) but it looks like Mr. Raimondi was 2 years ahead.
For Usener's "Vol. Herc. 2, 10.201 fr. 44." however -- I dont know what the P.Herc. number is or have any access the primary text beyond what Usener gives.
It's Pap. Herc. 1111
It's not "Vol. Herc. 2, 10.201 fr. 44." but it's "VH2" and it stands for 'Herculanensium voluminum Collectio altera' volume 10 published in 1875. It's fragment XLIV in there. Unfortunately, archive.org has only volumes up to 8th so not sure if you can find it scanned anywhere else online.
Here you can find the transcription, at the very least:
Epicurus-Deperditorum librorum reliquiae
Search for 'Pap. Herc. 1111 fr. 44 VH2 X 201' on that page.
So far, I have not able to find the corresponding Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri number for the quote.
Have you tried here?
I don't know any Greek so I have no idea if you can find there what you are looking for, but P.Herc. 163 is there together with transcription, photos of the fragments, sketches and engravings.
Also, do we have any translations of Philodemus On Wealth?
This might interest you. Good stuff starts on page 37.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1671&context=etd
This is great. Thank you Bryan
I don't know that I have any significant additional thoughts to add to comments such as those of Tau Phi that he doesn't find Epicurean theology valuable
I started my previous post with a disclaimer to avoid exactly such misunderstandings. I do find Epicurean theology valuable and very much worth studying. I don't question its importance and I don't pretend it's not an integral part of the whole system. I study Epicurean gods as closely as any other area of the philosophy because I want to understand it the best I can.
I do question attempts to incorporate gods in our lives at all cost because it was an Epicurean thing to do two thousand years ago. Philosophy should make it easier for us to live our lives in a way our lives are worth living. It should not be a game of who can be the most Epicurean of us all.
I'm not trying to be a contrarian for the sake of it but no matter how hard I try I keep seeing problems with these:
1 - As inoculation against the idea that humans are alone in the universe, and that we therefore occupy some kind of special and supernatural focus of existence. For most ordinary people who think that we are alone in the universe, that's a prescription for a slippery slide toward all sorts of mysticism.
How come existence of gods in intermundia, outside of our universe and outside of our reach, can be an indication that we are or we are not alone in the universe? For me, introducing gods to our lives, even for the sake of emulation or as weapon against anthropocentrism, is a prescription for, and not against, mysticism.
2 - As important for understanding that while "pleasure is pleasure" from a conceptual point of view, there are important questions to be answered as to which pleasures to pursue in life. Contemplation of the nature of a truly blessed existence - one which even though "godlike" must act to sustain itself - is similar to Epicurus' views of reverence for men wiser than ourselves. It's an important aspect of our own drive to use our lives in the most pleasurable way, and not to settle for less than what we are capable of obtaining.
How can anyone contemplate the nature of a truly blessed existence if no one knows what a truly blessed existence is? Again, it's an exercise in futility. It's nothing more than: I want a truly blessed existence to be like x and y because I feel good making x and y a truly blessed existence. Gods are not needed for us to establish how to live our lives. We can do it with experience and course correction. I also don't see similarities between gods and wise men. Wise men lived their lives. They have something valuable to teach us because they are human and we can learn from their solutions to their problems as we face similar problems. With Epicurean gods we have nothing to relate to. They live in alien worlds, live alien lives, have alien values and alien experiences.
I'd like to offer some of my thoughts about few things you said in your last post Cassius.
Before I start, I should clarify that I'm all on board with studying Epicurean theology as any other aspect of Epicureanism for the sake of understanding the philosophy. I do, however, see few problems with taking everything Epicurean at face value just because Epicurus came up with it. And by 'it' in this case I mean 'emulating gods':
The point that even the gods require some form of activity to maintain their deathlessness would likely be a significant part of Epicurean theology, giving us another useful thing to consider as points of emulation. We too have to act properly to sustain our happiness just as they do - there's no supernatural state that "hands it to us free" for men or gods.
If even the gods must act properly to maintain their happiness, who are we to complain that we must do the same? We should emulate the gods not only in the result of being happy, but also in the process of getting there, with both gods and men acting property to perpetuate our happiness.
Epicurus had exactly the same access to knowledge about the nature of gods as we do now two millennia later. No access whatsoever. His description of gods is grounded in pure speculation and wishful thinking. He had no empirical evidence, direct or indirect, to support his claims about gods' deathlessness, blessedness or any other 'nesseses'. So what exactly are we supposed to be emulating? Because the way I see it, it looks like we are supposed to give gods qualities we want them to have and then emulate the qualities we've given them. This kind of approach is similar to: I believe chewing a chewing gum makes people happy. Therefore, from now on I'll be chewing as much chewing gum as humanly possible.
If even the gods must act properly to maintain their happiness, who are we to complain that we must do the same?
Well, I'm TauPhi and I'd like to complain that I must do the same because I don't know what 'the same' is. Since I have no way of establishing what 'the gods must act properly' is, would I be far off guessing that to act properly means sticking index fingers in strangers' ears every Tuesday?
I'm fully aware that my chewing gum and sticking fingers examples are absurd but giving gods serious qualities for emulation doesn't make anything less absurd.
Epicureanism is really close to my heart. There's a plethora of beneficial ideas in this philosophy that can be applied in our lives but there are also things demonstratively wrong, or worse, impossible to prove or disprove like Epicurean gods and trying to incorporate these ideas in our lives may not be such a good idea.
We should emulate the gods not only in the result of being happy, but also in the process of getting there, with both gods and men acting property to perpetuate our happiness.
There's no need to introduce a middleman in the form of gods. By trial and error we can establish things that make our lives worth living for ourselves. There's no need for shifting responsibility or seeking some form of reassurance in imaginary, better versions of ourselves. Instead of looking at fairy tale creatures, let's focus on studying our reality among people like us who also try to figure stuff out without an superpowers like immortality, indestructibility or other made up qualities.
Bryan One more thing I forgot to mention. When I was looking around for Usener's Glossarium I stumbled across this:
https://cal.byu.edu/macfarlane/herculaneumfriends/assets/Vergara_AFoH2019_ResearchReport.pdf
I think you mentioned you were working on 'On Nature' recently. Apparently, Claudio Vergara in 2019 tried to create Glossarium for 'On Nature'. I have no idea how far he got with it but there's a contact info at the bottom if you find his work interesting.
This may be difficult to find but I quickly checked ebay and there's one copy on sale right now for around $50 plus whatever shipping cost may be (the seller is from Italy).
I would argue that equating "being open to luxuries when they become available" to "waiting for them to drop in your lap without making effort to obtain them" is wrong. The latter should not be the action one takes based on the former observation. That's a direct route to stagnation and I don't think anyone who spent more than five minutes contemplating human nature would accept stagnation as a desirable goal. Epicurus clearly was a proponent of the opposite of stagnation. He tried to remove all the unreasonable human fears which cause stagnation so people at least have a reasonable chance at living their lives instead of simply existing.
To me, "whatever you have is good enough" is not a bad approach in itself. I would argue it's one of the hardest things for us humans to truly realise and appreciate. That approach has nothing to do with being on the rack smiling like an idiot. A wise person would steer his life towards a green field where he could lay in the grass and enjoy a good weather instead of dealing with 'on the rack situations'. And in those rare cases where being on the rack in unavoidable even to the wisest, a wise person would be there smiling knowing that the rack has to be good enough.
So I guess, the trick is to learn how to truly appreciate a glass of water, to learn how to prepare a delicious cup of tea if that's possible and when teleported on Tuesday morning to the middle of Sahara desert by whimsical aliens (who happen to fly by the Earth playing tricks on people) and inevitably dying out of thirst on Thursday evening - to smile, say 'oh, well' and show a middle finger to the sky laughing out loud knowing perfectly well that the aliens have absolutely no idea where they could stick that finger. Repeatedly.
I like your post DavidN and I'd like to add slightly different perspective for you all to consider.
Whether we live under the impression of free will in deterministic universe or live having free will in indeterministic universe ultimately is indistinguishable for us humans. To be able to experience determinism one would require computational power we humans simply don't possess. Due to our limitations even if the universe is perfectly determined from start to finish, we have no option to experience the universe this way. In other words, even if we are part of a complete information game we are only capable of playing the game as if it would be an incomplete information game.
My point is, there are aspects of our reality where existence of something or lack of it does not change our situation a bit. In deterministic universe we live like we have free will; in indeterministic universe we have free will. The outcome for humans is the same. I can illustrate my point with more examples of the same outcomes despite opposite realities. Epicurean gods exist but we cannot have interaction with them equals to epicurean gods do not exist. Multiverse is a thing but we have no access to any of its infinite universes equals to there's only one universe. John Smith got his innate intelligence tested and now he knows it equals to 83 of whatever-units-of-intelligence. And now what? He's 83. Cool. He can't do anything with this knowledge. He can't be smarter nor he can be dumber.
Thinking and talking about things like these is very pleasant and intellectually stimulating but I personally wouldn't organize my life around (in)determinism; (lack of)gods; (multi/uni)verse or my (in)ability to connect dots better than John Smith.
I was attracted to Epicurus for most of the reasons i defend in my thesis: I view him as a true philosopher in how he doesn't offer another grandiose system that may conduce happiness by unerring pursuit of a number of fixed precepts, but offers us a framework for us to find our own. Empowering perspective rather than the objective, innate feelings rather than logical reasoning and self-cultivation rather than adherence to a given morality.
This summary kills two stones with one bird. It makes a great introductory post on the forum and forecasts an enthralling thesis. Welcome Alexi.
During our most recent Wednesday Zoom call, we talked briefly about Usener's 'Epicurea'. I've done a little research on Hermann Usener since I was curious if I could find any translations of his 'Epicurea' (except the one here: http://www.attalus.org/translate/epicurus.html). Unfortunately, there seems to be nothing else available.
However, I came across something interesting that I wasn't aware of. Usener also wrote 'Glossarium Epicureum'. It's almost a 1000 pages long compilation of Epicurean vocabulary together with definitions, references and quoted passages. To good folks here, who like to go down the rabbit hole of ancient translation (and are versed in Greek and Latin), I imagine 'Glossarium Epicurum' could be as an attractive resource as Willy Wonka's factory to sugar addicted kids without parental supervision.
I thought I'd mention this in case someone finds it useful.
mind perceptions - phantastikai epibolai tes dianoias
first-hand sources:
- Letter to Herodotus [51]
- Principal Doctrine [24]
