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This book is about the “theory of constructed emotion,” which is based in experiments and research. My goal in reading the book was to explore whether current neuroscience can add any clarity to the prolepseis, as there is so little remaining text concerning them. What I found is that it actually is relevant to the entire Canon. Though the subject of the book is emotions, it also covers sensations and feelings as well as what I think we can interpret as prolepseis. Note that although the author …

Affect is the general sense of feeling that you experience throughout each day. It is not emotion but a combination of valence (pleasant/unpleasant) and arousal (calm/agitation). An affective circumplex describes the relationship between valence and arousal. The horizontal axis represents valence, the vertical axis represents arousal. Distance from the intersection of the two axes represents intensity: So arousal does not correspond to intensity, distance from the intersection of the two axes do…

What does this mean for the pursuit of pleasure? LFB explains that this information can be used to design a “recipe for living,” by working with your body budget and your concepts. People with a balanced body budget are apt to have better health, sharper mental abilities for longer, and a more meaningful and fulfilling life. (To me this sounds very Epicurean: pleasure equates to health, displeasure [or pain] to disease.) Some ingredients of the recipe: - Keep your body budget in good shape. “...…

An extra tidbit pertinent to discussions on the forums" Essentialism vs Construction “The belief in essences is called essentialism.” Similar to Platonic Forms, idealism, etc, and integral to the classical view. LFB explores this in terms of emotions, Darwin, and natural selection, but I am taking the liberty of applying it to philosophy. Why is essentialism so persistent? - It’s intuitive and easy to believe. - It’s difficult to disprove: since essences are unobservable, one can always believe …

1. Yes 2. My pleasure! 3. So am I

The most confusing issue seems to be the word "concepts." When LFB writes "concepts" in the brain she is referring to what we would call "preconceptions." (Quote) However I think when she refers to culture, concepts can also come from "conceptual thinking" that is shared among people and passed down to subsequent generations. So she's using the same word in different ways and it becomes our task to translate it into proper Epicurean verbiage. We do have rational "conceptualizing," but she points…

LFB is closer to Elayne's term "pattern recognition" as the only thing innate; she calls it "statistical learning." (Quote) I'm only looking at the neuroscientific view now as it's fresh in my mind. I'll need to step away for a bit before I conceptualize more about concepts.

Oops, another cross post!

A quick post; today is pretty busy so it may be a while before I get back on.... In reacting to Don 's post, I think one of LFB's points is that sensations in a particular instance don't come first. A prediction comes first and the sensations serve as a reality check as you can see from the description of a prediction loop. So the sensations are "true" but they don’t seem to be primary. Another thing that seems like it might be fruitful to discuss is affect and the affective circumplex.

(Quote from Cassius) The only thing that I would add to this is that if understanding the mechanism in more detail helps us to increase pleasure, then it is worthwhile to do so to the degree that it does so. I think that having a basic understanding of predictions and affect could be useful in that regard.

Digressing to post #31: (Quote from Cassius) "Predictions," perhaps as a fine-tuning or an evolution of anticipations, provide both a response to other philosophies and a tool for working with clinical conditions. This is because of the information that we are able to modify our predictions (although it is a process and takes work) as a means toward increasing our pleasure. Also, as LFB takes pains to point out, there is no pure "rationality" as it is always affected by our affect. Understanding…

Cassius affect and the affective circumplex (I keep thinking of cineplex ) are described in post #2. The affective circumplex is illustrated in the image in that post and is just a graph of valence (pleasure/displeasure) in one direction and arousal in the other direction. Maybe there's a simpler name for it like "affect graph," I've just been using the name from the book. It seems like another useful way to represent and discuss pleasure, as we do from time to time

Cassius just to be clear, are you saying that there is a difference between "arguing" the philosophy and living the philosophy?