What If Anything Has Changed About Human Nature In the Last 2000 Years?

‘Truth is a pathless land. There is no guide, no law, no tradition which will lead you to it but your own constant and intelligent awareness.’ J. Krishnamurti

There are other scientists (e.g. physicist and nobel prize winner Weinberger) who think that science is progressing toward Truth. I am not among them. Even if that Truth existed, we would not know whether we have found it. Older theories of physics have rather been abandoned than refuted in all possible variants. E.g., the theories around "phlogiston" and the "ether" appear to be wrong but only from the perspective of the more fruitful theories which have replaced them. It appears unlikely, but further advanced theories might revive one of them.

The only criticism of Cicero in "On Ends" which was substantial at his time and not just a strawman argument was:
"Epicurus says the atoms swerve without a cause, — yet this is the capital offence in a natural philosopher, to speak of something taking place uncaused."
This objection was shattered when physicists came up with quantum indeterminacy. There is a strong analogy between Epicurus' swerve and quantum indeterminacy. The swerve is the most spectacular anticipation of modern physics by Epicurus. However, if in another twist, the hard determinists among today's physicists find a way the measure their pilot waves or other means of saving determinism, this would again take a dramatic turn. At no point along this line of development could we be sure that we found the "Truth".

The maybe most spectacular example of multiple twists in the development of physical theories is the cosmological constant: Epicurus and Einstein both assumed that the universe is essentially static. When Einstein applied his general theory of relativity to cosmology, he needed to arbitrarily introduce the cosmological constant into the equation to obtain a static universe. A few years later, the expansion of the universe was discovered. As a consequence, Einstein himself declared the introduction of that constant as his biggest stupidity ("Eselei"). Subsequent models of cosmology typically did not use the cosmological constant, i.e. set it to 0. A few decades ago, the accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered. As a consequence, the cosmological constant reappeared as a necessary ingredient but with the opposite sign expected by Einstein.
However, there is Milgrom's theory, which does away with the apparent expansion, big bang, dark matter and dark energy and returns to the static universe. The catch is that it is only an ad-hoc theory. However, if eventually experiments confirm that the law of gravity is actually of the form assumed by Milgrom, his theory would become fashionable.
Again, at no point along this line of development could we be sure that we found the "Truth".

Anything more on Truth than "the way things are" according to our best models requires a considerable leap of faith and has an unknown date of expiry.

BraintoBeing I apologize for not being able to follow this thread more closely - I have been traveling on business and extremely short of time. Here's a place where I will hop back in:

Quote from BrainToBeing

Therefore, I'm smart enough to know I don't know everything and cannot exclude the possibility of God. In my journey I simply leave the issue as undecided.

...And if that position works for you, and you feel no stress or strain in your life by "leaving the issue as undecided," then I say more power to you!

And while I expect that Epicurus would likely tell you something similar (that what doesn't bother you is of no concern), the project Epicurus was on as a philosophical and moral reformer was that of developing a full "worldview" that could be of help to those people Lucretius described as "hearts in darkness" or Diogenes of Oinoanda described as "lost sheep." I would wager that you as a science professional have developed knowledge and capabilities that only a very small fraction of the world has ever or will ever duplicate, and Epicurus was addressing his philosophy to those ordinary people for whom these questions of life after death and supernatural gods are of great immediate concern. Epicurus' position, with which I would agree, is that it is necessary to deal forthrightly with those critical issues and not remain in "doubt" (which is itself a pain) on these subjects. There has been and probably will always be a continuing tension between a philosophical approach to questions of epistemology vs a "clinical" approach where someone is comfortable taking the position "this is all I know" and stopping. Observation alone is not going to get someone past that question of how to deal with what cannot be observed. There's lots of good material out there on the debates between philosophers and scientists, and in the end the bigger questions of life that people must act upon are in the realm of philosophy, which (when you are a part of the Epicurean school) leads to the rejection of radical skepticism as a tenable position.

I haven't been able to read this thread closely enough to tell where you are on those issues other than to observe that you are dedicated scientist, and in the end "science" is not the same as "philosophy." I'm not sure I can adequately define the difference, but maybe that is something that needs to be addressed in this conversation.

Quote from BrainToBeing

This is, of course, unfair at a number of levels.

BrainToBeing : First, I sincerely didn't mean any offense. My only purpose for that simile was to compare what you seemed to be doing in taking one word ("capital-T Truth") and equating it with something at a much more basic level. Likewise, I see some scientists who want to thread the needle, so to speak, wanting to be able to use the word God while referring to a more basic level of knowledge and/or practice.

On the other points, your using "objective truth" and "opinion versus objective accuracy" and "objective data" and so on is entirely consistent with an Epicurean approach. It is possible for there to be all of those things without there being some kind of transcendent, capital-T, universal Truth...unless you want to assign, semantically, the capital-T Truth word to "the way things are" in an effort to find out what is "objectively" true in a given situation. Epicurus, and even more so Lucretius and Philodemus, advocate for acquiring observation and evidence and not taking things at face value or assigning some supernatural cause to them. This seems to align with your wanting to diagnose your patients true needs against their profession of 10/10 pain in an effort to acquire opiates.

And, let me state explicitly, that the opioid epidemic was and continues to be a tragedy, especially in some rural communities from which I came and where I grew up. But a search for some universal Truth isn't going to make that better. The tragedy has to be addressed on a myriad of levels: personal, familial, societal, and governmental. As such, that topic probably falls outside the purview of this forum; however, as others have said, Epicurus's philosophy is a philosophy of personal responsibility, deep friendship, the support of a social contract that should have participants doing no harm and not being harmed, and the rejection of supernatural causes and the inefficacy of prayer for divine intercession (although Epicurus did say that "it is better to follow the stories of the gods" than to be fraught with the anxiety of hard determinism). You can apply those aspects of Epicurean philosophy as seems appropriate to that real-world situation.

Quote from BrainToBeing

Anticipating your possible question (prolepsis)

Actually, that's not how the word prolepsis or, in Engish, "anticipation" is used in the Epicurean philosophical sense unless you were using it in a humorous way. Prolepsis is somewhat of an enigmatic word and the texts are woefully few in explaining how Epicurus and the early Epicureans used the term. Speaking for myself, the canonic faculty of the prolepseis (plural of prolepsis), seems to be a faculty of pattern recognition that sorts through all the sensory data flooding into us and is able to pick out meaningful patterns. That faculty can then apply those patterns to sense data in the future, and, over time, then builds up a "library" of patterns against which to make sense of the world. That's one reason I find the work of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and others in seeing the brain as a prediction machine intriguing, as it seems to align (imperfectly but pretty well) with this idea of the Epicurean prolepseis.

As far as the gods, Epicurus famously asserted "Gods exist," but what he actually meant by that statement continues to be argued among those of us on the forum and in academic circles. What is without question is that Epicurus did not think the gods - in whatever way he meant that word - took no notice of us and did not grant favors or inflict punishment. That said, the Epicureans - especially Lucretius - had no problem whatsoever in imagining other life forms, mortal like us, inhabiting other worlds. Lucian of Samosata, who was at the very least sympathetic to Epicureanism, wrote arguably the first sci-fi story, A True Story, where there is space travel, life on other planets, etc. The use of the word "true" in light of the other topics on this thread is interesting in that Lucian says his is the only "true" story because he tells everyone at the outset that he's making it up, unlike the old myths that attempt to say what they're writing actually happened.

A True Story - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Quote from BrainToBeing

If that is not how the word is used here in EpicureanFriends then I'm happy to hear an alternative definition.

Ah! Thanks for that clarification. That helps to show where you're coming from on using that. So, yes, there is an English word "prolepsis" as defined by Merriam-Webster as
: ANTICIPATION: such as
a: the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished
b: the application of an adjective to a noun in anticipation of the result of the action of the verb (as in "while yon slow oxen turn the furrowed plain")
And the English word's etymology is from Greek prolēpsis, "from prolambanein to take beforehand, from pro- before + lambanein to take.

However, Prolēpsis within Epicurean philosophy is used to refer to a specific faculty of the mind/body. Epicurus chose it to refer to this epistemological faculty from the words available to him and gave it a specific connotation within his philosophy. It's been variously translated into English as anticipation, preconception, and some other terms. Using it with its modern English definition within English vocabulary is going to cause a little confusion in an Epicurean philosophy forum, hence my going off on the prolepsis tangent in that prior post. It appears there may have been confusion on both our parts on the use of that word. Mea culpa.

Quote from BrainToBeing

Does that sound right? If so, I really like and respect that use of the word: a deep form of recognition that implies intimate knowledge of a thing.

I suppose that could work. I've never heard it put quite that way, but that's the general idea. Thoughts from others on this point are encouraged!

Just as 'epibole' (ἡ ἐπιβολή) is 'focus,' the meaning of 'prolepsis' (ἡ πρόληψις) is simply 'a mental image.' It is the image that comes to mind when you think of something. Similar to external objects, the level of detail depends on your focus and the extent of your exposure / repeated viewings.

Yes a mental image of a pencil is a prolepsis. You will not have a prolepsis of a pencil unless you have had some contact with it (even if it is just a description or a simple drawing), but the clarity increases with increased exposure. I think we can wave away Cicero's description as "innate or inborn 'thoughts'" insitae vel potius inatae 'cogitiones'. Even the Latin could mean that the 'thoughts' were "implanted in or grew up" with the mind (as Bailey points out).

Bryan 's comments are spot on.

Even more complexity comes in when one considers that Epicurus said that we have a prolepsis of justice and a prolepsis of the gods. I reconcile this with the idea that humans appear to have an innate faculty or propensity for fairness and an innate sense of awe or wonder. Both these come from research done with very young infants and toddlers, and, in the case of fairness, non-human species. Those may not have been what Epicurus necessarily had in mind, but for me it reconciles Epicurus's intuition and modern scientific research.

That, along with the idea of an innate faculty of pattern recognition to create those "mental images" that Bryan mentions, is how I reconcile Cicero's "insitae vel potius inatae cogitiones." To me the Lewis & Short definition of "implanted by nature, inborn, innate, natural" can be reconciled with an inborn faculty or propensity, but I would agree that the mental images are reinforced and strengthened by subsequent exposure to them. In some ways, it's like a child calling every animal a "dog" until they realize "dog" refers to a specific kind of animal after repeated experiences of "dog" in their environment.

The concept of the prolepsis is still very much a work-in-progress for me.

This is my dilemma and something I'm still working through. When you say:

Quote from Bryan

It is the image that comes to mind when you think of something

Which comes first? Did the "image" arise in the mind after you "think" of something, or did you think of something and then the image arises in the mind? Or is it simultaneous? It seems there had to be a sequence, even if almost unimaginably rapid.

I fully agree that we are not born with innate images of dogs, pencils, towers, cows, etc. But it seems to me we are born with some natural ability to make sense of the world by detecting patterns in the world, at first rudimentary patterns, especially faces. Even an innate sense of what constitutes fairness or awe. The youngest of infants seem to be able to have their fascination captured by some phenomena. They'll stare at novel stimuli longer than ones they're accustomed to. Repeated exposure refines and expands those rudimentary inborn and evolutionarily developed abilities and "prolepseis." One's native language begins to label those patterns, but the patterns exist independently of language.

This is where I find the thesis of the mind as a prediction engine so fascinating. According to research, we couldn't survive if we only reacted to stimuli after receiving sense data. The snake would have already bitten us if we waited for it to strike before jumping away. We would already have fallen off the cliff if we waited until our foot felt nothing under it. Our minds - our brains inside our skulls - are constantly constructing the external world from previous sensory data and predicting the next most likely scenario. It fine tunes as data flows in, correcting the prediction, keeping us alive. The more accurate the prediction, the more accurate our prolepseis if you will, the better flow we have through the world.

This is just one of the ways I find the intersection of Epicurus's philosophy and modern science so intriguing and fascinating. The fact that I can even compare modern research with two-millennia-old theories of mind blows my mind.

I'll just add for now that our pattern recognition can be overactive:

Pareidolia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This can also extend to seeing agency in purely physical phenomena, such as assigning divine agency to storms or earthquakes... And the "creation" of the universe.

Quote from Don

Which comes first? Did the "image" arise in the mind after you "think" of something, or did you think of something and then the image arises in the mind?

I should not have said 'think' but maintained the use of 'focus.' Thank you for the correction! It seems that this is the very reason Epicurus used 'focus' (ἡ ἐπιβολή) instead of a word for thinking (ὁ λογισμός, ὁ λόγος, ἡ νόησις, ἡ γνῶσις, ἡ δόξα, etc).

Epicurus was pointing to the pre-rational image that strikes us. If we choose to 'think' of something, we must first mentally 'focus' on it.

Quote from BrainToBeing

"God the Father" However, what if all of it is a form of prolepsis.

People have a natural mental image of the gods, but this natural sense can be quickly obfuscated by culture/opinion. Epicurus lived in a world where depictions of gods were as common as seeing a statue of Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. The gods in ancient Greece were extremely reified by the culture.

We now have the opposite problem. We come from many generations of people who suffered under the idea (from Judaism, and present in Protestantism) that god cannot be pictured and should not be imagined.

If images of friendship and thinking about 'the characteristics of friendship' were considered for thousands years to be a serious mental transgression, we would eventually expect some people to come to the conclusion that friendship is not real.

Just because, from one viewpoint, some clouds are obfuscating a distant tower does not mean the tower does not exist.

A pencil is worthy to be called a pencil if its fundamental characteristics (συμβεβηκότα) are of a pencil. Just like 'justice,' we cannot deny the existence of the word or category of 'god' so then we must take that label, look around the universe, and put the label on something that exists and is worthy of the label.

Quote from BrainToBeing

However, if the tower is never visible....

Similarly, a small percentage of people argue that 'justice' is non-existent, often because they expect to observe some ethereal, immutable concept they can label as 'justice.' Their search for a transcendent, all-encompassing form of justice is futile, as it simply does not exist. In seeking such an unrealistic ideal, they inadvertently set an impossible standard for what justice should be, leading them to erroneously conclude that justice itself is a fallacy. However, most people reject the notion that justice does not exist, because they have a reflexive image of justice in their minds.

Nevertheless, the ability to recognize justice is contingent on our willingness to look for it. Also, if we seek a form of justice that exists without reference to specific physical interactions, we are doomed to never find it. Justice, in reality, must be grounded in specific, physical contexts.

Thank you for the conversation.