Twentieth Skype Call (10-20-2020)

For the last several months some of our most regular participants have tried to take the time to speak to each other via Skype to say hello on the twentieth. This month (October) we had Elayne, @Susan Hill , Charles , Martin , Joshua and myself, and we barely missed Godfrey and Don due to illness.

Thanks very much to everyone who was able to join, and we hope you'll be able to participate next month as well. Anyone who is a regular in the forum who would like to participate, just let us know in this thread and we'll see about adding you to the call. It's great to be able to type to each other as we do here on the forum, but even better to be able to hear each others' voices. Let's do this as often as possible, Thanks again!

Yes Joshua and one variation I picked up on Susan's question would be:

Would the gods themselves have anticipations? I think Susan asked whether they would have anticipations "of us" and that is a good question too, but both would be related.

To date we have really not tried to organize the calls or implement the organization very strongly when we're on the line, and that's probably good for some purposes and not good for others.

Since we've only had a couple of these so far, and only recently started putting together agendas, probably it makes sense for us to work to improve the structure so that people know what to expect.

At the same time, we probably ought to have "free-for-all" sessions with our core people with next to no organization at all, and have those on a regular basis (more than once a month) just like we talk with friends locally.

Quote from Susan Hill

I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop myself from wanting to have a coherent and cohesive Epicurean theology. Perhaps this could be my “pet project”, but I will have to count on you lot to reign me in if I start to deviate from doctrinal Epicureanism, or just get way too speculative.

I think it is important to try and address these questions, however. There was a schism in modern Stoic circles into “Modern Stoicism” and “Traditional Stoicism” because the former was purely secular in its orientation. Many feel that their happiness/ pleasure depends in large part on feeling in some way connected to something larger than themselves. Personally, I can give up prayer and providence, salvation and satori, but I think it is Reverence, I cannot do without.

I think this is probably clear already but bears repeating so there is no confusion. At least from my point of view, it is clear to me that different people are going to place different priorities on these "theological" issues, and we ought not consider that either position (A. it's extremely relevant, or B. it's not relevant at all) is invalid. if someone "feels" that concern about these issues is causing them pain, then that pain or anxiety has to be dealt with.

it's possible to hear regular echos in our podcasts that all of us are in sort of different camps on how much this concerns them, with probably Elayne closest to what I now think is the "Frances Wright" position that such issues don't merit much concern, and that at all costs we should refrain from taking positions on them because we don't have enough information to do so.

My general commentary when one of these issues has come up on the podcast is that I think it depends on one's individual circumstances, and a lot depends on the type of people you are surrounded with constantly. In my own circumstance I am surrounded by people who think it is as natural to think about god and life after death and hell and all that as it is to talk about what they are having for dinner. I've come to dismiss most of that, but mainly because I have thought through the issue and think that Epicurus' position makes good sense to me personally. In fact that is why I am still firmly in the camp that thinks that the "nothing comes from nothing, nothing goes to nothing" observation remains key, because that's where I draw the line on acceptable proof. I do not claim to know enough to be able to contradict the quantum physicists who seem to want to dispute the continuing validity of that in the quantum world, but I am convinced that regardless of the "truth" of their assertions as to the quantum world, we as humans live in the "everyday reality" world, and in the "everyday reality" world the standard of proof as to whether there are gods is whether gods create things from nothing, or destroy things to nothing, in OUR world.

So personally I agree that the Epicurean "theology" is of very important continuing validity and usefulness. Almost certainly the great majority of people I know in real life will never change their views on life after death and those issues, but I am absolutely certain (no "almost") that the only way to get through to any of those people who in fact have an open mind, or who are disposed to talk about those things, is to provide them a coherent understandable argument about why it is not reasonable to believe in the supernatural. The Lawrence Krauss physicists are in my experience an obstacle to that goal, while the Epicurean "nothing from nothing" argument retains immediate verifiability for those who are willing to be practical and trust their own senses.

So whether the term is "reverence" or something else, I personally see this as one of the branches of Epicurean philosophy that fully deserves attention from those who are interested in it. (In fact I am not really aware of any branch that doesn't deserve attention!).

The way forward on that is as Susan indicates - not to try to convince people who aren't interested in Epicurean theology that they SHOULD be interested in it, but to specialize as our interests take us in particular direction. Where I have personally drawn the line in the past, and where I would continue to draw it, is with those who make a point of dismissing Epicurus's sincerity out of hand and saying that the ONLY reason he took the positions he did was to protect himself from the blasphemy laws and the hemlock of Socrates. I think that's a totally condescending argument that, if accepted by anyone studying Epicurus, would totally undercut his credibility as a sincere teacher. And in that respect "reverence" is clearly an issue, because I don't think you can have respect for someone's positions while simultaneously thinking that one of their most prominent positions was taken just so he could reside in Athens and have a good time with his friends, rather than go somewhere where he could say exactly what he wanted to say.

I know a lot of people who I think would make decisions based on personal comfort like that, but I don't read Epicurus as having been one of them. Had he thought that being in Athens restricted him from saying what he really wanted to say, he would have continued his travels until he arrived somewhere he had the freedom to write and speak exactly as he wanted.

Quote from Godfrey

. Cicero’s rendering appears to interpret it as previous knowledge of objects before their images have impacted on the senses, in other words a knowledge which predates sense-experience."

Godfrey if I am remembering DeWitt correctly, DeWitt agrees with this observation, and with Cicero, and concludes that anticipates are NOT just the result of images we receive after birth, but are instead a result of "encoding" in our human makeup. I am thinking that this corresponds mostly with DNA and/or instinct in animals, which no one seriously argues arises from them having pre-existing souls.

So again trying to summarize what i understand the positions to be, the standard commentators (Bailey and all contemporary commentators) focus on the Laertius model, of anticipations arising solely from multiple observations. DeWitt and maybe a few others (Sedley?) focus on this Velleius passage as evidence that the true nature of anticipations is from this "etching" or "encoding" rather than from images after birth.

Now my personal take on this is that Dewitt and Cicero are correct, but that the conclusion is not that "fully-formed ideas" are encoded into our brains, but rather "dispositions" that end up contributing to ideas once we come into contact with real-world experiences. I agree with those who rule out the view that "fully formed ideas" exist at birth, but that does not mean that the brain doesn't include coding that tends us in certain directions, like a computer operating system embodies certain capacities, but doesn't do much useful work until we program it after we put it to use.

Now (and this is a less-well-formed view of mine) I also think there is an analogy here in ALL of the three legs of the canon that unites them -- that all of them (the senses, feelings, and anticipations) operate the way they do because they have "encoding" or "mechanisms" that govern their operation. They eyes see light of a certain wavelength, and the hears hear things in certain ranges, because of the nature of the way that they operate. I feel sure that we can extend that observation from the way eyes and ears work to the way that our sense of pleasure and pain works, and (whatever anticipations really are) they much have a pathway or mechanism of their own that governs their operation.

That pathway/mechanism/disposition would be a large part of a "faculty of anticipations" while the individual anticipations themselves correspond to things which are produced by the faculty in operation. We see things because of the way our eyes work, we hear things because of the way the ears work, we feel pleasures or pains because of the way the feelings work, and we form "anticipations" because of the way our "faculty of antipations work.

And you all the while have to keep in mind than a single "anticipation" might be no more true to the full fact than a single glimpse of a bird might be to it actually being a falcon, or a single hearing of a tone might be to realizing that we're hearing a Beethoven symphony. So it is wrong to think that "every anticipation is itself true" any more than we would expect one sensation of sight or sound or touch to reveal to us everything about the object being observed.

Epicurus never said that anticipations are fully-formed correct impressions about anything, and in fact he specifically said that the anticipations of most people about the nature of the gods are incorrect.

Thinking about the fact that anticipations can be false to the full facts is to me one evidence that the Diogenes Laertius formulation is incomplete at best, because he talks as if anticipations are gold standards (he implies that the concept of an ox we form after seeing them is in fact a good summary of an ox which is reliable for use forever after). When the better view is probably that "an anticipation" is no more or less trustworthy than "a sight" or "a touch" or "a sound" that our other faculties pick up during operation. The real trick in determining what is "true" is that we assemble enough multiple clear observations that we have confidence that we have a full grasp of the thing being observed.

I think this comment now may be slightly off topic, but when you talk about reading "Cicero" I want to strongly endorse reading the full "On Ends" which I think demolishes Stoicism far better than it succeeds in attacking Epicurus. I've read through the full set of four or five chapters of On Ends a couple of times now and I am very impressed with how well it summarizes and compares the leading schools of the time.

Other than for the Velleius section I can't remember that I have read the full "On the Nature of the Gods."

I'm convinced that there's a boatload of good material waiting to be found for anyone who reads through the works of Cicero, but there's so much of it, it would take us having a "Cicero specialist" to sort it all out. That's another assignment for someone when we have enough people to specialize and attack different areas.

Quote from Godfrey

Aristotle also had things to say; do you know roughly where Aristotle's thoughts on this can be found?

Unfortunately no, I don't have a good fix on that. I know that several times in the past I tried looking, primarily in "Prior Analytics," but I never got very far.

I agree with the comment that ""Reading Aristotle is a bit like eating dried hay."

Quote from Susan Hill

I suppose it begs the question - what sort of exposure can we have that would allow us to develop this sense? What would be the nature of “multiple clear observations” in this case?

I wish I knew the answer to that! Best speculation needs to be grounded probably in the Velleius section I paste below. it seems clear that they DID talk about perceiving "images," so that can't be ruled out.

But I personally would bootstrap into this argument the observations that are cited below about eternality and infinity, and the isonomia / no single thing of a kind premise. These don't tell us what gods look like, but they are part of the overall puzzle of what we "observe" that gives us confidence all along the way in the chain of reasoning.

I can hear Frances Wright screaming against this sentence as too speculative: "But if the human figure surpasses the form of all other living beings, and god is a living being, god must possess the shape which is the most beautiful of all; and since it is agreed that the gods are supremely happy, and no one can be happy without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without reason, and reason is only found in the human shape, it follows that the gods possess the form of man. Yet their form is not corporeal, but only resembles bodily substance; it does not contain blood, but the semblance of blood."

But clearly that's what they were doing -- chain reasoning as DeWitt calls it - and I suspect that they considered the things that we observe here, which we do observe correctly, as evidence of the deductions which we don't perceive directly. Some people are going to rule that kind of reasoning out of court and say it is meaningless, but that's something I think is one of the most potentially helpful aspects of the philosophy -- it challenges us to think about whether "seeing is believing" is required, or exactly what is required, in order to take a position on something like this.

Obviously there is the advice to "wait" when we don't have enough information to be sure about something, but life doesn't allow us to "wait" about everything, and it seems to me to be pretty clear that Epicurus was saying that if the issue is important enough, then we have to go forward and take a position on those issues that *require* us to take a position.

Lots of people (skeptics particularly) will say NO WAY! You're WAY over the line in drawing those conclusions!" So the issue of "where we draw the line" becomes the focus. If you take the position like Epicurus did that we should rigorously seek to live happily as the overriding goal, then I think you're going to draw that line differently than you would if you're a professor at Cambridge and surrounded by skeptics, or a farmer in Saudi Arabia surrounded by religious radicals ready to cut your head off at the slightest hint of blasphemy.

Unfortunately, that means adding to your reading list another book - Philodemus' "On Methods of Inference" and especially the Delacy commentary at the back.

Godfrey , that Delacy Commentary is probably the place I would go if I had time today to try to track down where Aristotle made his points, because Delacy treats that as the background leading up to Epicurus.

I sometimes think that De Lacy intro to the epistemological issues to be one of the best summaries I have read anywhere. He doesn't treat "anticipations" in the same way Dewitt does, but he devotes a lot of attention to epistemological issues that I don't see presented that clearly anyway else.

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“If we sought to attain nothing else beside piety in worshiping the gods and freedom from superstition, what has been said had sufficed; since the exalted nature of the gods, being both eternal and supremely blessed, would receive man's pious worship (for what is highest commands the reverence that is its due); and furthermore all fear of the divine Power or divine anger would have been banished (since it is understood that anger and favor alike are excluded from the nature of a being at once blessed and immortal, and that these being eliminated we are menaced by no fears in regard to the powers above). But the mind strives to strengthen this belief by trying to discover the form of god, the mode of his activity, and the operation of his intelligence.

“For the divine form we have the hints of nature supplemented by the teachings of reason. From nature all men of all races derive the notion of gods as having human shape and none other; for in what other shape do they ever appear to anyone, awake or asleep? But not to make primary concepts the sole test of all things, reason itself delivers the pronouncement. For it seems appropriate that a being who is the most exalted, whether by reason of his happiness or of his eternity, should also be the most beautiful; but what disposition of the limbs, what cast of features, what shape or outline can be more beautiful than the human form? You Stoics at least, Lucilius, (for my friend Cotta says one thing at one time and another at another) are wont to portray the skill of the divine creator by enlarging on beauty as well as the utility of design displayed in all parts of the human figure. But if the human figure surpasses the form of all other living beings, and god is a living being, god must possess the shape which is the most beautiful of all; and since it is agreed that the gods are supremely happy, and no one can be happy without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without reason, and reason is only found in the human shape, it follows that the gods possess the form of man. Yet their form is not corporeal, but only resembles bodily substance; it does not contain blood, but the semblance of blood.

“These discoveries of Epicurus are so acute in themselves and so subtly expressed that not everyone would be capable of appreciating them. Still I may rely on your intelligence, and make my exposition briefer than the subject demands. Epicurus then, as he not merely discerns abstruse and recondite things with his mind's eye, but handles them as tangible realities, teaches that the substance and nature of the gods is such that, in the first place, it is perceived not by the senses but by the mind, and not materially or individually, like the solid objects which Epicurus in virtue of their substantiality entitles steremnia; but by our perceiving images owing to their similarity and succession, because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams towards the gods, our mind with the keenest feelings of pleasure fixes its gaze on these images, and so attains an understanding of the nature of a being both blessed and eternal.

“Moreover there is the supremely potent principle of infinity, which claims the closest and most careful study; we must understand that it has in the sum of things everything has its exact match and counterpart. This property is termed by Epicurus isonomia, or the principle of uniform distribution. From this principle it follows that if the whole number of mortals be so many, there must exist no less a number of immortals, and if the causes of destruction are beyond count, the causes of conservation also are bound to be infinite.