Epicurean Perceptual Content by A. Gavran Milos

Looks like a good find and important read. I had time to skim the first page or two but I was immediately struck that DeWitt's way of explaining the truth issue (honestly reported, like a witness in court who is honestly reporting but might be mistaken) doesn't seem to be Milos' approach. If you have read the full article, Godfrey, is my impression correct?

I see this is the conclusion. "Factive"?????? That doesn't sound very helpful to me.

Then there is the sentence that I underlined. If I read this correctly then he is basically taken the Bailey approach: we see things, we form concepts (pictures) of what we have seen, and those concepts/pictures become standards of truth for future analysis. That's not the view I tend to agree with, but I want to read and think about this in more detail. My problem has always been, and remains, that I think Epicurus held a standard of truth to be something that is perceptual and not challengeable in and of itself, in that we need to take every perception (taste, touch, sight, etc) as a given for what is being honestly reported by the faculty at that moment. A "belief" or a "concept," on the other hand, is by definition full of opinion, and can't be considered unchallengeable, can it? Or can it? I think another way of stating my concern relates to his last sentence. To me, the process of seeing things and forming pictures is obviously very important, but I don't consider it to be an "epistemological" tool as much as an "analytic" tool (or thinking tool or some other word that preserves the distinction that this tool contains opinion, while the other tools -the five senses - do not).

Quote from Godfrey

Perceptions are true and not describable by propositions, while beliefs are testable propositions and therefore not a criterion of truth.

Now I do think that is a very clear and useful statement.

Quote from Godfrey

An example he uses, with reservations, is that of a photograph

And that's an interesting example and gives something concrete to talk about. The photograph becomes something to which we can compare future observations ,but in and of itself the photograph is a limited representation and doesn't really contain any opinion about what is on the film. Sounds like a good article.

I noted you referred to the author as "he" a couple times. At the risk of being pedantic, the author is a woman: https://portal.uniri.hr/portfelj/933

Thanks for pointing that out! And a relatively young one too, which is good to see that younger people are still interested in Epicurus.

Looks like she wrote at least one more article on the topic that we ought to look at:

so it appears she is in Croatia - a very interesting area