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Welcome to Episode 162 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread f…

This episode will be recorded on 2/19 and it is going to be one of our most challenging, so all readers please feel free to make comments or suggestions on your latest thoughts on "anticipations." We'll obviously steer our discussion but the DeWitt text, but we'll also try to include at the very least the article by Voula Tsouna focusing on her and David Sedley's views on the topic. Link: epicureanfriends.com/wcf/fileb…an-preconceptions-tsouna/

Another thing I want to mention in preparation for this episode is a question we touched on at the end of 161 - the relationship of Epicurus to "empiricism" and the focus in empiricism on "experience." One of the important issues in controversy as to anticipations is to the extent to which anticipations exist or operate "prior to experience." Let me through out a description that may or may not be accurate: in the DIogenes Laertius example of anticipations, multiple experiences of observing oxen…

Great point Joshua. I am not sure which or if any of the commentators use the term "pattern recognition" but that is definitely one of the labels that we want to discuss. A faculty of "recognizing patterns or relationships between objects that does not derive from ideal forms or from internal essences, but from analogies which we are genetically disposed to recognize arising from evolution over the ages" -- but hopefully less wordy. And this is the place also we need to discuss intuition/intuiti…

Several of us talked last night that we really need to develop a list of alternative theories so we can be sure to cover them when we record this session. I have started such a list below - please feel free to make suggestions. I intend to at least include the major quotes under each source, but I have not had time to get started. Once this is fleshed out we will be able to post it somewhere it is regularly findable: Notes Re Anticipations / Preconceptions / Prolepsis Alternative Sources: Diogen…

Unfortunately Joshua was not able to join us for this episode, so it is shorter than usual and will serve mainly as a short introduction to the topic. We'll grapple with it in much more detail when Joshua is able to rejoin us, which will hopefully be our next episode. Editing should be complete and the episode released by mid-week.

Episode 162 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week we continue in Chapter 8 of the DeWitt Book and begin our discussion of anticipations. Unfortunately Joshua is not with us this week so we go slow and set the stage for more detailed discussion next week - and we hope to have Don join us next week as well. spreaker.com/episode/52802088