We're lucky to have On Piety, but Obbink's reconstruction of the text is speculative at best in some areas of the papyrus. Even the parts of the papyrus that are more complete often provide citations without much context. Obbink et al are more than happy to provide commentary, but much of that appears speculative. However, all that said, I need to dig deeper into Obbink's translation and commentary. One paragraph that caught my eye this morning was:
Fascinating stuff!
Do we have notions of "atoms" impressed on our minds even though we have never seen them?
As we know, atoms are not visible in any way because, unlike every other object, atoms cannot give off images. Atoms do not flow off of the bodies of other atoms, but atoms do flow off every other object.
Do we have notions of "justice" impressed on our minds even though justice is an abstract concept which cannot be seen in bodily form?
The physical basis for justice is simply the fact that life is a potential characteristic [sýmptōma] of matter -- and justice is a potential characteristic of life.
Epicurus may have expanded the existing term "prolepsis" to cover not just the recognition of physical objects like men or horses or oxes as a result of having seen examples of them over time (which is the example Diogenes Laertius gives, and everyone agrees with as a process that definitely happens), but to include identification of abstractions such as justice or divinity which require considerably more organizing in the mind because they aren't physical objects that can be touched or seen or heard or smelled or tasted (which is a process with which other philosophers - especially blank slate philosophers - would disagree).
The physical basis for justice is simply the fact that life is a potential characteristic [sýmptōma] of matter -- and justice is a potential characteristic of life.
I've been trying to work through some of these ideas lately, and I've run into perennial problems because people often talk past each other when they use terms like 'empiricism' and 'innate.' So perhaps the two of you can help. The question of whether Epicurus countenances anything as 'innate' comes up most often with the gods, but it seems like DeWitt, for example, also thinks justice is 'innate.' He thinks these fall under 'Anticipations,' and I confess I still haven't quite sorted through his textual evidence with 'Anticipations' (TBD).
Anyway, I've been wondering what it would even mean for Epicurus to consider something 'innate,' since the Platonic 'innate'--a pre-birth experience of abstract objects that we vaguely remember as we go about our daily life--is off the table. So is 'innate' in the sense of 'put in our nature by a creator.' So the chief option would be that it's part of our biological nature/cognitive architecture to categorize the world in a particular way or arrive at a particular conclusion in light of experience. We would be pre-disposed to eventually conclude, 'there must be gods,' or 'justice must be about entering agreements to avoid harm.' And if that were the case, then Epicurus need not think we have pre-existing 'experience' or 'impressions' of these things. We are not 'blank slates,' but instead beings who approach and process the world with a shared apparatus for discernment. And as a result, we arrive at a wide variety of shared conclusions.
Atoms strike me as different, but maybe they're not? After all, if we think, 'there's substance and motion,' then atoms are a highly effective explanation of how there can be both, and motion and substance certainly seem proleptic, if atoms do not. But does 'arguing for' atoms make Epicurus no longer an empiricist? I tend to think you can remain happily an empiricist and posit underlying explanations for what you observe all the time, so long as you consider them hypotheses.
I suppose I want to think that Epicurus is a dyed-in-the-wool empiricist (even though he posits atoms that he can't see by means of deduction) and might very well think some things are 'innate,' at least in the sense of resulting form use of the standard operating equipment. Does that sound roughly in the vicinity of reasonable?
Thank you all for this great discussion!
So the chief option would be that it's part of our biological nature/cognitive architecture to categorize the world in a particular way or arrive at a particular conclusion in light of experience.
Yes, I agree. Just as we have an innate ability to see (but we have to actually look and see things to use that ability) -- similarly we have an innate ability to anticipate (but we have to actually anticipate [mentally focus] to use that ability). As Long says, "any explanation of Epicurus as an intuitionist is on quite the wrong track."
We are born with the ability to mentally focus on gods in the same way we are born with the ability to visually focus on dogs. By focusing we get a clear view, and correspondence of clear views shows us the true nature of an object.
[D.L. 10.38b] And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions, whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen.
I tend to think you can remain happily an empiricist and posit underlying explanations for what you observe all the time, so long as you consider them hypotheses.
The atoms are in a different class because the atoms do not give off images. One of the features of Epicurus' empiricism is that (as Long says) "Judgments about non-evident objects are true if they are consistent with clear sense-impressions."
Thus we have a positive use of the non-contradiction principle: Epicurus does not make the presupposition that atoms exist -- it is the absence of any other conceivable theory for phenomena which justifies the general inference about the existence of atoms.
So the chief option would be that it's part of our biological nature/cognitive architecture to categorize the world in a particular way or arrive at a particular conclusion in light of experience. We would be pre-disposed to eventually conclude, 'there must be gods,' or 'justice must be about entering agreements to avoid harm.'
Since Bryan quoted that I would suggest some possible tweaking, along the lines of:
So the chief option would be that it's part of our biological nature/cognitive architecture to categorize the world in a particular way, and thereby we are disposed to form conclusions about those categories in the light of experience. We would be pre-disposed more to something like sensing that, 'the subject of the best form of existence is important enough to us to become alert to under a particular name such as 'divinity,'" or 'the subject of our relationships with others is important enough to become alert to under a particular name such as "justice."
That sounds more to me like a "faculty" (which is what i gather "prolepsis" or "anticipations" must be, in order to be one of the three legs of the canon as a means of perception. Given its equivalence to the five senses or the feelings of pain and pleasure, we have to accept the workings of prolepsis as part of our makeup, and constructed "honestly" like pleasure and pain and the five senses, which do not inject their own opinions. The workings of the prolepsis faculty would then become "perceptions" combined in our minds with all other perceptions of the other faculties, and there processed to eventually form ideas.
So specific conclusions such as "there must be gods" or "it is good to enter into agreements with my particular neighbors to avoid harm" would to me be outside of the prolepsis process. Those would be "conclusions" that are part of the functioning of the mind, which turns all the inputs into ideas. So if we keep the focus on the view that it's in the mind that errors can happen, then we recognize the possibility of error in subjects where prolepsis is involved. We can make the mistake of concluding that "the gods must be supernatural," or "as Hatfield I should treat all my neighbors the same, even if they are McCoys and are dying to kill me," because even though those involve divinity and justice, prolepsis doesn't deliver to us "conclusions" or "ideas" but just the disposition to recognize the issues and process them in the mind -- where right or wrong conclusions get made.
Under this perspective it would be wrong to ever consider "a prolepsis" to be an idea or a conclusion of any kind. That's where i think we implement Epicurus' observation that the opinions of the hoi polloi about the gods are not true, and are indeed false, even though they are about a subject in which prolepsis is involved. The prolepsis would dispose us to evaluate the subject and consider it important, but the prolepsis would not provide the correct conclusion -- conclusions occur only in the mind.
The input provided by the faculty of prolepis would never be any more right or wrong than the input from your eye or your ear is right or wrong - it is what it is, and has to be taken as canonical, but it's not an idea or a conclusion. it's the tool we use to make contact with reality and then from that form ideas and conclusions in our mind. But the distinction between the two is sharp, and it's the same distinction I think Jackson Barwis makes so well in pointing out the flaw in Locke's empiricism.
"When we are told that benevolence is pleasing; that malevolence is painful; we are not convinced of these truths by reasoning, nor by forming them into propositions: but by an appeal to the innate internal affections of our souls: and if on such an appeal, we could not feel within the sentiment of benevolence, and the peculiar pleasure attending it; and that of malevolence and its concomitant pain, not all the reasoning in the world could ever make us sensible of them, or enable us to understand their nature."
In analogy to eyes enabling us to see light and ears enabling us to hear sound, I would paraphrase Barwis and see prolepsis as the human faculty that "makes us sensible to [divinity and justice] and enables us to understand their nature -- without which we would neither be sensible to or have the capacity to form any understanding about them.
And this is the point in the argument of analogizing prolepsis to a "sense" where I quote Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787:
Moral Philosophy. I think it lost time to attend lectures on this branch. He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his Nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality, and not the [beautiful], truth, &c., as fanciful writers have imagined. The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, & often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. In this branch, therefore, read good books, because they will encourage, as well as direct your feelings. .....
Under this perspective it would be wrong to ever consider "a prolepsis" to be an idea or a conclusion of any kind. That's where i think we implement Epicurus' observation that the opinions of the hoi polloi about the gods are not true, and are indeed false, even though they are about a subject in which prolepsis is involved. The prolepsis would dispose us to evaluate the subject and consider it important, but the prolepsis would not provide the correct conclusion -- conclusions occur only in the mind.
I can see the benefits of your approach, but I wonder whether Epicurus builds a bit more content into the prolepsis than that. It seems to me like the prolepsis for the gods in Letter to Menoeceus 123-4 is that 1) they exist and that 2) they are 'blessed and indestructible,' which offers at least some kind of skeletal conceptual structure.
And then it might be that the way 'the many'/hoi polloi go wrong is in their understanding of what 'blessed and indestructible' entail. But I admit that the more I look at this sentence, the more my eyes cross:
'For the pronouncements of the many about the gods are not basic grasps but false suppositions.'
οὐ γὰρ προλήψεις εἰσίν ἀλλ’ ὑπολήψεις ψευδεῖς αἱ τῶν πολλῶν ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀποφάσεις.
On one reading, Epicurus might think *his* pronouncements about the gods are 'basic grasps' (prolepseis), which would give the prolepsis *a lot* of argumentative content. On another reading, he's just offering 'true suppositions' about a 'basic grasp' he shares with the many, who instead offer 'false suppositions' about that prolepsis.
It seems to me like the prolepsis for the gods in Letter to Menoeceus 123-4 is that 1) they exist and that 2) they are 'blessed and indestructible,' which offers at least some kind of skeletal conceptual structure.
My best thought at the moment is that the prolepsis "faculty" (and I think that's the major point, it's got to be a faculty like seeing through the eyes) has to be keep separate and apart from ideas, just like we keep the eyes and ears separate and apart from ideas. Otherwise it won't report "honestly," and won't have that canonical status, because it will be reaching its own conclusions.
So "the gods are blessed and imperishable" seems to me to necessarily be a a conclusion of the mind, which rules it out from being considered a prolepsis itself. But it's a conclusion which would not exist but for faculty of being able to recognize the relationships involved in being blessed vs not blessed, or deathless vs not deathless.
And I would also think that the prolepsis faculty does not function independently of the mind any more than the eyes function independently of the mind. If we take the position that we aren't born with these ideas about gods, then the mind has available to it not only the relationship organizing function, but also the past experiences of the five senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain on what we observe here on earth. And I would include there the issues of isonomia and deductions that life exists throughout the universe and that the universe is boundless and eternal. All of those would have to be brought together in the mind to conclude that divinity means total blessedness and deathlessness, and again the point may be that we would *not* bring all those things together for consideration at all if not for prolepsis disposing us to evaluate the possibilities.
So I'd see the two fundamentals of deathlessness and blessedness as hard to rank as "anticipations" in themselves. It seems to me they fit better from Epicurus' perspective as "correct conclusions," which are based on and consistent with all the data from all three of the canonical faculties. In contrast, the ideas that gods are arbitrary and capricious are false conclusions, contrary to our experiences, even though the people who reach that conclusion are also basing their opinions on the same canonical faculties. If that's the case then the prolepsis aspect would be a necessary part of the starting point for analysis, but not the end point of the conclusion that "gods are blessed and imperishable."
No doubt this is a very speculative subject for us to discuss, but maybe in conclusion I'd say that the main point I can't get past in fitting everything together is that if the prolepsis is indeed part of the canon, which it appears to be, then it *cannot* have any "fully-formed-idea" content to it. If it did, it wouldn't be parallel to the five senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain, both of which exist at birth and are in full operation at birth before we open our eyes and see our first sight or hear our first sound.
I can see the benefits of your approach, but I wonder whether Epicurus builds a bit more content into the prolepsis than that. It seems to me like the prolepsis for the gods in Letter to Menoeceus 123-4 is that 1) they exist and that 2) they are 'blessed and indestructible,' which offers at least some kind of skeletal conceptual structure.
I don't think what you're describing as 'the prolepsis for the gods' above is the Epicurean prolepsis. It's already active reasoning based on prolepsis. I'll try to explain it the best I can (while simultaneously pretending I know what I'm talking about, which might not be the case).
The criteria of truth (sensations, anticipations and feelings) are all automatic and passive - independent of our will. Our mind, having active ability to reason, can take these passive criteria and work out more and more general properties of things (even if those things can be only indirectly reasoned about - like the gods above). That's why Cassius' explanation that the prolepsis can't provide any conclusions seems to be correct. Conclusions of any nature are the result of active reasoning of the mind.
I hope I got this right but I probably should have gone back and refresh my knowledge on Epicurean induction first. No guarantees, but maybe that can help a bit.
I would agree with Cassius that the prolepseis have to be (to be part of the Canon) pre-rational and provide "building materials" (best phrase I can do right now) for concepts but not concepts themselves. Prolepsis, it seems to me, is a faculty of the mind like sight is for the eyes, taste is for the tongue, hearing is for the ears, etc... Yes, we know they all flow into the brain now, but Epicurus didn't seem to divide up the senses that way.
I've entertained on this forum that the prolepsis of the gods is our innate faculty to feel awe. This also seems at least *partially* substantiated by the use of σέβομαι "to feel awe or fear before a god". For example:
and
Of course, that "faculty" of a prolepsis doesn't help as much when deciding Epicurus's "blessed and incorruptible" vs the mistaken notions specifically the hoi polloi had (LOL... I just like calling them that to keep the original.. better than "the many" or "the crowds".. I'm assuming the Romans would have used "the mob.").
As for the letter to Menoikeus, I think 124 has to be read in the full context, along with 123:
The gods do not exist in the way that the 'hoi polloi' believe them to, because they do not perceive what maintains the gods. One is not impious who does not take up the gods of the hoi polloi; but the one who attributes the beliefs of the hoi polloi to the gods.For what they believe are not prolepses but rather the judgements of the hoi polloi concerning the gods which are false, hasty assumptions. So, they believe the greatest evils are brought to the wicked from the gods as well as the greatest aid to the good, because the hoi polloi are believing that the gods accept those who resemble themselves who are similar through all excellences and goodness; all those not of their sort are strange and alien.
So, the hoi polloi's first big mistake is that "they don't perceive what maintains the gods." Plus. their fundamental "false, hasty assumptions" are that the gods bestow favors and punishments. The "gods of the hoi polloi" are the ones that demand sacrifice to keep them on your good side. There's every reason to reject those "gods" because all that is assigning false attributes to the gods, like jealousy, anger, beneficence (to humans), etc. All that has nothing to do with Epicurus's inborn faculty of perceiving the gods' nature. It seems to me that the ONLY things Epicurus is willing to assign to the gods, per Menoikeus's letter, are that they are "blessed" (makarios) and they are "uncorrupted, not liable to corruption or decay, imperishable" (aphthartos).
I've entertained on this forum that the prolepsis of the gods is our innate faculty to feel awe.
Do you see "awe" as a sort of appreciation of a relationship that makes it fit as a prolepsis, or does it fit as a prolepsis for some other reason?
I ask that in context of trying to identify what characteristics divinity and justice might have in common with awe that could explain why divinity and justice are the primary examples of where Epicurus thought prolepsis was involved.
Is there anything else to suggest beyond building materials to identify what type of building materials? If eyes are processing light and ears are processing sound, what are prolepses processing? Do you see "relationship" useful as a term to describe at least in part what prolepses are perceiving?
If what we are talking about is some aspect of concept formation, what else comes before fully-formed concepts that might partially justify the term PRE-conceptions?
There would seem to be something involved in selecting similarities between particulars before some subset of particulars are then by judgment assembled into fully-formed concepts. I think we are all mostly agreeing that only then at the duly formed stage do we then evaluate something as in some way either right or wrong.
I ask that in context of trying to identify what characteristics divinity and justice might have in common with awe that could explain why divinity and justice are the primary examples of where Epicurus thought prolepsis was involved.
I see (well, that's a strong word... I sometimes surmise) that the prolepsis of divinity is connected some way with our innate sense of awe; I see justice connected with our innate sense of fairness (as demonstrated by experiments with human children and other primates). For example: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1220806110
If eyes are processing light and ears are processing sound, what are prolepses processing?
The subtle eidolon/films only able to be picked up by the mind?
It still seems to me that prolepseis are the minds ability to discern patterns - a faculty of pattern recognition - from the cacophony of incoming sensations and to make sense of the senses. We're bombarded by sensations - literally swimming in an abundance of sensations. The prolepseis are the mind's ability to "make sense" of that and pick out.. "Oh, that's significant. I've sensed that pattern before. It must be important because it's repeating. It stands out from the background 'noise'." Same way for visual senses, et al. Same way for the mental sense. It seems to me that Epicurus treats the mind similar to the way he does the other sensation-sensing faculties of the body. The mind just picks up on the most subtle of eidola incoming.
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, πρό-ληψις
"preconception, mental picture or scheme into which experience is fitted" This would fit the idea of "pattern-recognition."
I *think* Bryan had a good list of all the -lepsis words (pro-, hypo-, etc.) and his interpretation of them.
I definitely think we have a 'proleptic' capacity or capacities that produce prolepseis, but I just tend to think the prolepseis themselves (the products of the capacity) have conceptual content and structure. And I guess one place I'm seeing Epicurus suggest that is in the plural of prolepseis and 'pronouncments':
'For the pronouncements of the many about the gods are not basic grasps (prolepseis) but false suppositions.'
οὐ γὰρ προλήψεις εἰσίν ἀλλ’ ὑπολήψεις ψευδεῖς αἱ τῶν πολλῶν ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀποφάσεις.
It strikes me that Epicurus is at least suggesting that his own 'pronouncements' about the gods *are* prolepseis. But maybe I'm just tired.
You raise some solid points, Little Rocker . I especially find intriguing that statement: a "a 'proleptic' capacity or capacities that produce prolepseis". So, if I understand correctly, you're positing a mental capacity/faculty/process/function that leads to or produces something we can call a "prolepsis." And, since the texts use the plural, there has to be some significance to including it with sensations and feelings (pleasure and pain). For example:
Now in The Canon, Epicurus affirms that our sensations (plural: τὰς αἰσθήσεις) and preconceptions (plural: προλήψεις) and our feelings (plural: τὰ πάθη) are the standards of truth ; the Epicureans generally make perceptions of mental presentations (τὰς φανταστικὰς ἐπιβολὰς τῆς διανοίας) to be also standards.
The interesting thing (per LSJ) about "sensations" αἰσθήσεις is that it can not only refer to "physical sensations through what we think of as the sense-organs (eyes, ears, nose, etc.) but "also of the mind, perception, knowledge of a thing." The citations are to Plutarch, so maybe that's a later connotation? Although LSJ also references Plato in Philebus (emphasis added):
Socrates: When a man receives from sight or some other sense (αἰσθήσεως) the opinions (δοξαζόμενα doxazomena) and utterances of the moment and afterwards beholds in his own mind the images of those opinions and utterances.
So, the sensations of "the opinions and utterances" received "from sight or some other sense" give rise (according to Plato) to sustainable mental images that we can hold, discuss, etc. in our minds. The prolepsis, as defined by LSJ, are "mental picture or scheme into which experience is fitted." So, the sensations come pouring in, and, are then fit into "mental pictures or schemes" to make sense of them. I'm getting the image of one of those old-time coin sorters that you could put coins into, they'd roll down a little ramp, and then fall into the correct sized slot: pennies (smallest) first, then dimes, etc. The "proleptic" faculty would be like the sorting machine... and the prolepseis would be the tubes into which the coins fell, depending on their size.
But that doesn't move us along from Epicurus's "content" of the prolepsis of the gods being "blessed and uncorrupted", does it?
Long & Sedley in The Hellenistic Philosophers (login with free account to view the link) cite the Letter to Herodotus as showing that prolepseis are necessary to get at the underlying meaning of words. The citation doesn't use the word prolepsis but I can see where they get that it's being discussed:
"In the first place, Herodotus, you must understand what it is that words denote, in order that by reference to this we may be in a position to test opinions, inquiries, or problems, so that our proofs may not run on untested ad infinitum, nor the terms we use be empty of meaning. [38] For the primary signification of every term employed must be clearly seen, and ought to need no proving58; this being necessary, if we are to have something to which the point at issue or the problem or the opinion before us can be referred.
It seems to me that the faculty of the prolepsis is what it is that provides us the ability to "understand what it is that words denote," and ,by reference to this, we can test opinions, etc. I also like that Epicurus literally says that the "primary signification" of every term but be "clearly seen" (φθόγγον βλέπεσθαι)... like that coin dropping into its proper slot.
So, what's the point of these early morning musings? The prolepsis (to me, as of 7:21 am on a Tuesday 
) seems to imply both a mechanism of the mind as well as a reference to making sense of sense perceptions. It involves both the sorting of sensations as well as the slots into which the sensations fits in their respective patterns.
Plato, Philebus, section 39b
Socrates: When a man receives from sight or some other sense (αἰσθήσεως) the opinions (δοξαζόμενα doxazomena) and utterances of the moment and afterwards beholds in his own mind the images of those opinions and utterances.
As another physics experiment to complement Don's, and one which the ancients I gather would have been familiar, I'd consider another possible analogy.
It seems Epicurus and Democritus thought that non-visible images could be received by natural mechanical means over a distance. Of course they didn't have tuned radios, but they did presumably observe how their musical instruments worked, such as tuning forks:
(There are lots of questionable videos about ancient science on youtube but I'll not link to those here.)
It seems we ultimately need to take a position on whether the "canonical" status of prolepsis tells us that something is "true or real" in terms of fully-formed correct opinions, or simply "true or real" in the sense of honestly reported to us by the faculty of perception.
By analogy the tuning fork isn't conveying any opinions, it's just "mechanically", due to its makeup, resonating in response to a particular frequency of vibration emanating from somewhere else. That might constitute a "true and real" perception received at a distance through non-visible means, and one that doesn't require bringing in supernaturalism as the explanation. In their discussions such as the one Don cited about how the mind retains images received through experience,it's possible that when they seem to be taliking about a faculty of prolepsis as being "etched" in the mind at birth then maybe thinking about tuning forks could provide at least a partial analogy.
Thanks! This exchange is really helpful.
It seems we ultimately need to take a position on whether the "canonical" status of prolepsis tells us that something is "true or real" in terms of fully-formed correct opinions, or simply "true or real" in the sense of honestly reported to us by the faculty of perception.
It seems so. I currently lean towards the former, but I can see that confining oneself to the latter has its advantages.
So, if I understand correctly, you're positing a mental capacity/faculty/process/function that leads to or produces something we can call a "prolepsis."
Right. Or at least, that's my current thought.
But that doesn't move us along from Epicurus's "content" of the prolepsis of the gods being "blessed and uncorrupted", does it?
I guess it still seems to me that 'blessed' and 'indestructible' are essential features of the prolepsis of 'gods' for Epicurus. 'The many,' too, think the gods are blessed and indestructible. They just go off the rails when they try to put meat on the bones of 'blessed.'
