Episode 166 - The Lucretius Today Podcast Interviews Dr. David Glidden on "Epicurean Prolepsis"

Welcome to episode 166 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 too 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 for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.

Today we are very pleased to bring you a very special interview with Dr. David Glidden, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of California, Riverside.

Dr. Glidden has written numerous articles of interest to fans of Epicurus, including "Epicurean Prolepsis," in the 1985 Oxford Studies in Classical Philosophy, "Epicurean Thinking," and many others related to Epicurus which we encourage our listeners to seek out.

Epicurean Prolepsis (or anticipations, or preconceptions, or whatever you prefer as the best word for the topic) is one of the three legs of the Epicurean canon and one of the most difficult subjects for many people to understand as they study Epicurus.

We think you are really going to enjoy hearing Dr. Glidden's unique and challenging take on the subject, and we think it is going to prompt many of us to take a new look at what the standard commentators, even Diogenes Laertius himself, have had to say about the subject in the past. Dr. Glidden's approach promises to lead to a much deeper and rewarding understanding of many aspects of Epicurus that are often overlooked today.

We can't thank Dr. Glidden enough for his time in talking to us about his work, and we hope to be able to talk to him again in the future, so if you have questions or comments please be sure to post them in the thread below.

Now, let's talk with Dr. Glidden:

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RE: Dr. David Glidden's "Epicurean Prolepsis"

Here's another point of terminology: If some people are concerned that the word "recognition" in "pattern recognition" is too strongly evocative of Plato suggesting we remember true forms from before we were born, or that gods are writing in our minds, or that there are "essences" in the world that are their equivalent, those people might get the same result from calling this "pattern appreciation."

As I understand English, "appreciation" carries most of the same meaning in terms of being able…

Cassius

March 4, 2023 at 8:55 AM

Our Special Interview With Dr. David Glidden Is Now Available! Along with our interview of Dr. Emily Austin this interview is going to be one of our most important episodes ever, as Dr. Glidden helps us work through the topic of "Epicurean Prolepsis." Please listen and comment below!

Time to follow up on some of Dr. Glidden's references. If anyone can remember or knows of the Disneyland / "Wonderful World of Disney" cartoon or movie scene he referred to in the podcast, please post. I am aware of an older cartoon with a similar theme of small humans inside our head giving the orders (representing conceptual reason) but not the example of a man on a telephone processing inputs. This is a clip from Disney's "Reason and Emotion" which is applicable in itself, but if anyone can think of the actual reference please post.

Mark Twain's "What Is Man?" was mentioned several times:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of What is Man? and Other Essays, by Mark Twain

A mostly-audio version of this interview is being posted on Youtube here:

One of the key things that Dr. Glidden states several times is that he considers Prolepsis to be "non-cognitive." We probably should not take for granted what that term (non-cognitive)means, and when we discussed it in a recent zoom session it became clear that this needs explanation.

So if we consider Prolepsis to be non-cognitive, what does that mean and what is the implication?

Does it mean "without interpretation" in the same way the other legs of the canon provide data without opinion?

Once "words" start being involved, is that a bright line that we are no longer talking Prolepsis but a reasoning process? Dr. Glidden pointed out the difficulty in thinking about anything without using words. Does that mean that all "thought" is separate and apart from Prolepsis? I think he was cautioning us against presuming, for example as to justice, that a Prolepsis of justice has particular cognitive content. And same would probably go for Prolepsis of divinity.

Dr Glidden used a phrase to distinguish the consideration of an actual horse (he used three examples which I forget at the moment) from the *concept* of a horse. How can we explain that in more detail?

The implications of this are not just technical but very far-reaching in understanding how Epicurus was rejecting the arguments of Plato et al.

Not only do we need to see what the Stoics saw (how this threatens their conclusions) but we need to expand it to explain Epicurus' own conclusions.

Here I think is a useful analogy:

Many people come to Epicurus because they have read in a scientific article that Epicurus was the precursor of modern quantum theory with atomic particles "swerving." In fact "The Swerve" is the title of one of the most popular books on Epicurus in recent years.

But I would submit that if Epicurus were here today and we told him that he was primarily known for having predicted atomic swerve, he would be very displeased and probably rebuke us as not understanding him at all.

That's because as David Sedley points out in his "Epicurus' Refutation of Determinism," it is likely that the swerve was not a central part of Epicurean physics development at all. Instead, Epicurus deduced the swerve from observation of "free will" in more intelligent animals. As Lucretius explains, Epicurus based his confidence in the existence of the swerve on the necessarily of there being such a mechanism to free these higher animals from the billiard-ball chains of strict billiard-ball determinism. If I recall correctly, Sedley even says that the swerve likely played no necessary role in the formation of universes, so the idea of the swerve really should not be considered mainly for its significance in physics.

Instead, the swerve is the mechanism by which we have confidence that we are not entirely slaves of our circumstances, and that we have the ability to effect those circumstances and our futures, which is a necessary part of controlling our lives so as to live happily.

Likewise, prolepsis should not be seen primarily as a matter of technical interest. It is certainly validating that modern science is moving in the same direction, but if we start and stop at that analysis we totally miss the point Epicurus was driving at.

Absent the mechanism of prolepsis there is no means of explaining why Plato was wrong to assert that all knowledge comes from remembering ideal forms from prior lives. There is no way to establish that knowledge is not something that supernatural gods implant within us, or to establish that knowledge itself is totally impossible or impractical as the skeptics would argue. There must be a mechanism that explains how intelligent animals develop and use knowledge itself.

I recall Dr. Glidden warning us that "canon" does not tell us the "content" of truth - the canon (even prolepsis) is not a set of conclusions about the universe or anything else. Certainly that is the point made by Norman DeWitt that we should never confuse the "tools of precision" with "the stones of the wall" when we are building a wall. The "canon" is the measuring tool given by Nature against which we compare our thoughts and speculations to decide if they are consistent with reality and with our feelings of pleasure and pain. It is not truth itself, but it is the way we decide whether our opinions comport with the outside world.

Much of the controversy between Stoics and Epicureans in the ancient world was about the proper use of "logic" and whether through logic alone we can reach some higher plane of supernatural insight. Epicurus said that there is no such higher plane, and he told us to look to the guidance of nature for all that is possible to us. The faculties contained in the canon are what Nature gave us by which to test all our thoughts and decision-making.

That's why the orthodox commentators rejected Dr. Glidden's articles so forcefully. The ancient Platonists, the Ancient Stoics --- and their modern successors -- know that if you have confidence in the guidance of Nature to live successfully, then you don't need their speculative logic and their manipulations to stand in their way. Epicurus' work on the canon, significantly including his work on prolepsis - is the key to breaking free of the Platonic idealistic and absolutist chains.

We can all profit by focusing on "how" to pursue pleasure and happiness prudently, but if we skip over the "why" then we are missing Epicurus' real contribution to philosophy.

So as we discuss where Dr. Glidden's insights lead us I think we should keep the analogy of this with the swerve firmly in mind.

Quote from Godfrey

This further illustrates Dr. Glidden's point that prolepseis, unlike sensations, aren't always "true" as well as his thesis that Epicurus anticipated modern neuroscience in thinking about prolepseis.

On this point I am still thinking further, because I have a strong tendency to think that "true" and "false" are descriptions that apply only to evaluations or interpretations, rather than to the raw functioning of a faculty providing input to the process.

We might also be talking here about a matter which explains why there was a divergence from later Epicureans going from 3 to 4 categories of canonic elements.

I doubt that Epicurus considered any aspect of "grasping" something to be part of the canonic faculty. Recognizing a pattern as significant and deserving of attention seems to me to be one thing, while interpreting it - in any way at all, as a snake or a danger or anything - seems to be another thing, and the part where error can enter in.

And it looks to me that it was important to Epicurus to keep separate the part where error can enter from the part that we accept without question - else we have a feedback loop and lose the ability to distinguish between our opinion vs what Nature is relaying to us directly and precognitively.

Don what do you consider the word "cognition" to mean?

"The book argues that the structure and functioning of the human brain is actually quite simple, a basic unit of cognition repeated millions of times."

I think we probably ought to be clear on this word since we are using it so often. Is it an exact synonym of "thinking" or of "consciousness" or what ? The definitions I am reading are somewhat circular and I suspect we will continue to go round in sort of circles unless we make this point more clear.

If we are considering the canonicsl faculties to be pre-cognitive, what exactly does that mean.

Are we moving toward seeing a major line between Epicurus and the others where the others are saying that we cannot be sure of anything unless it is reduced to words and definitions, while Epicurus is saying that certainty or confidence comes not from definitions and syllogisms but from constant reference back to canonical observations (observations that include not only the 5 senses and feeling of pain and pleasure but observations recognized as observations because they are organized - patten-matched for repeatability - by the prolepsis mechanism)?

Because also if we are talking about patten matching I would surely think that "memory" (of those patterns?) is also involved.

Onenski thanks for the comment and I full agree that Nature is nonpurposive. I tend to use the "gave" in the sense of Epicurus's statement of being thankful to Nature in a more poetic than literal sense. The quote I refer to is

U469

Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, XVII.23: “Thanks be to blessed Nature because she has made what is necessary easy to supply, and what is not easy unnecessary.”

And I tend to agree with DeWitt's interpretation here:

Quote from Don

I really liked Dr. Glidden's "sensations are true*to their cause*."

Quote from Don

But sensations are just raw data. Light hitting our retinas. Vibrations in the air. Molecules on the breeze. And so on. Prolepseis allow the recognition of patterns to be pulled out of the chaos. A prolepsis is a particular pattern, initially vague then reinforced over time.

I agree with both of those, and I think that it is possible to use the same perspective that prolepsis is also "true to its cause." The eyes are not "perfect' in the sense of always being in total focus and always true to colors, (astigmatism). We take what the eyes report as we get it not because what the eyes report are perfect renderings, but because we have no other tool for vision.

I think the same can be said for non-cognitive prolepsis. The patterns being recognized are not being constructed cognitively, they actually do exist is nature in the sense of repeated similar constructions of atoms and void. On a larger scale it is not because we say "cat" that cats exist as a type. In the face example you cited, it is not because we say "face" that regularly in nature we find that animals have faces - nature does that in reality regardless of whether we recognize it.

I would think that the ability to pick up repeated examples of formations or configurations in reality is analogizable to what the eyes and ears are doing. Those repetitions exist regardless and prior to our thinking about them consciously and naming them, and that picking up or noticing of patterns happens prior to and without our interpretation of them.

Or at least I am thinking that that is what Dr. Glidden is saying about how they work and are pre-cognitive. That's why DeWitt cautions against confusion due to the multiple meanings of "true" and "False."

'true to their cause' implies to me much what DeWitt is saying - they are repeating how they are stimulated, without opinion or interpretation. But they are not "true" in the sense of *interpreting* how they are being stimulated. Using DeWitt's courtroom analogy, they are being reported "truly" in the sense of honestly repeating what they received, but they can easily be "false to the facts" if they are taken literally as explaining everything there is to know about the issue being witnessed. That's why we have to walk close to the tower and take multiple observations in order to see if it is square or round. And with prolepsis I would suggest the same - they might report to us a distorted (analogy to blurry or muffled) pattern at one moment while at another moment (presumably after some kind of closer examination) the pattern comes into sharper focus.

Again a possible analogy to optical character recognition - the computer is told the basic pattern of letters, but the document being input into the system at any one moment may be sharper or fuzzier depending on how good the "scan" is that the computer is trying to recognize. The pattern of the letters exists in nature (in the case of OCR because we tell it the pattern; in the case of the real world because in the nature of things there is regular behavior arising from properties of atoms and void) but the OCR engine sometimes fails to match the letter accurately because the document being scanned is blurry. The OCR engine is doing the best it can to recognize the letter, and it reports the closest match, but the pattern it reports can be "wrong" because the input is insufficiently focused. The OCR functioning is "true to its cause" but it is not "true to the fact" in that situation.

I see no problemwith considering the pattern matching to be sometimes sharp, sometimes blurry, just like data from eyes and ears. The pattern-matching is also "true to its cause" all the way through - it is our interpretation of the pattern in our minds where we commit error or confirm the pattern interpretation with accuracy.

Something like that would seem to me to be the logical way to express this, and would render it consistent with the other two legs of the "canon."