Posts by Don

ADMIN NOTE: This conversation was split off from a thread devoted to discussion of Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 311. The title of the thread was added to indicate the content of the thead and was not originally associated with this first post.

I have to say that the word "happy" does not make me happy in these contexts. The connotations of "happy" in English - effervescent, transitory, fleeting - really don't convey what Epicurus wrote. I also know Cassius doesn't like using Greek words, and I can respect why. Saying "eudaimonia" doesn't really mean anything to many people. It can also be used to try to obfuscate and to give a woowoo mystical feeling to an otherwise ordinary word, ordinary to Epicurus and the ancient Greeks. Like using nirvana or samsara in a Buddhist context.

It's clunky, but I much prefer something like "subjective well-being."

Another potential paper to add to the mix:

Epicurus on the Fear of Death and the Relative Value of Lives

Epicurus argued that death is no misfortune, because when a person dies, he no longer has sensation, and sensation is a necessary condition of value for a…

www.academia.edu

Quote from Kalosyni

It would seem that if you "feel okay with" the concept of death, then the process of dying should theoretically not cause as much anxiety.

Excellent point Kalosyni, and you actually gave voice to something similar rolling around in my head.

(Caveat: I'm still getting around to reading Dr. Austin's paper)

TauPhi gave the four "fears of death" from the paper:

(1) the fear of being dead;
(2) the fear that one will die, that one’s life is going to end;
(3) the fear of premature death; and
(4) the fear of the process of dying.

I would agree that Epicurus directly attacked (and won against, from my perspective):

• (1) - no sensation/no existence/no thing
• (2) - Epicurus emphasized that we and every other compound thing is transient, mortal, and will eventually dissolve. There is nothing to fear from the FACT that our life will end. It feeds directly into (1). The 2nd line of the tetrapharmakos is literally something like "There is no need for the suspicion of something awful happening when we die. 'When we are dead' is a nonsensical/irrational statement because we will not BE after we die."
• (3) - In the greater scheme of things, there really is no such thing as "premature" death. We die when we die. That is NOT to say we don't feel grief - biting, gnawing, indescribable, screaming grief - if someone dies young or "before their time." But who's to say what one's "time" is? There are things that happen by chance, things that happen by necessity, and things we have control over. The time of our death (unless under controlled circumstances) is up to chance by and large.

To get even more granular, there seem to several sub-divisions of (4). If one has a terminal diagnosis (as in the clip Kalosyniplayed), we can decide if we want to go through months of chemotherapy or to live out our lives, with pain managed, and live as fully as possible before dying. Do we "rage against the dying of the light" or do we "go with the flow"? I'm not going to judge either decision, but it's a decision on the "process" we would go through. Both have pain and pleasure involved. There is also fear of the way one will die. If we make choices to avoid certain circumstances, we need not fear some ways that lead to death. But, there is a BIG element of chance to the WAY in which we might die. Getting in the shower, slip on the soap, bang your head, massive concussion, no one finds you for awhile. Not seeing a speeding car and stepping off the sidewalk. Genetic abnormality in a brain vessel or your aorta completely undetected and one rupture. Choking on a piece of food while dining alone at home. If we would obsess over the ways in which we might die, we would drive ourselves to all kinds of fear, anxiety, and depression!

Okay, now I need to read the paper before I comment anymore.

Cassius : Your experience with Philodemus' On Methods of Inference seems like it would be directly relevant here:

Philodemus: On methods of inference: a study in ancient empiricism : Philodemus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/uf.jsp?st=UF001032148&ix=nu&I=0&V=D

archive.org

(No, I have not read it yet)

Quote from TauPhi

perfectly fine when you understand she's talking about fear of dying and not fear of death. There are no different forms of the fear of death in Epicurus' system. Epicurus was as radical about fear of death as it's humanly possible - we can't experience death so there's nothing to be afraid of. This radical claim is crucial to his system because it slams the door shut on supernaturalism, heaven, hell, eternal punishment, reward etc., and it leaves no backdoor option to get back to such concepts.

Well said TauPhi

The fact that "dying" is a physical process where we are STILL aware and sensations have not been dissolved is of paramount importance here, dying is NOT nothing to us because we are aware, sensing, and feeling. I agree with TauPhithat conflating "fear of (ways of) dying" and "fear of death (the end result of dying" are two very different things. We try to avoid certain ways of dying through our actions and decisions and taking care of our health. If we end up with a terminal diagnosis without recourse to therapy, medicine, surgery, etc., then we *could/should/can* focus on our coming death with the knowledge that "death is nothing to us." I can even see a bit/bite of grief for "leaving the stage" but, optimally, it should not overwhelm or deprive us of the pleasure left to us, rob us of pleasant memories.

I need to re-read Austin's paper and refresh my memory. I vaguely remember seeing it several years ago (I think)? Or maybe I bookmarked it in Academia.edu and didn't get back to it.

Quote from Joshua

Phaedrus was a Scholarch of the Garden, a successor in a long line of leaders of the school of Epicurus. Philodemus was also a devoted member of the school, having studied under the Scholarch Zeno of Sidon.

Lucretius is probably the outlier here--a Roman among Greeks, as it were. He held orthodox beliefs about the gods, and was not an atheist, but he was more critical of cultural religious devotions than Epicurus was.

Excellent summary, Joshua !!

There's a whole thread on On Piety:

Thread

Philodemus On Piety

Check out what came in on interlibrary loan this afternoon! I'll share thoughts etc on this thread. Stay tuned... epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1550/

Don

December 10, 2020 at 5:14 PM

In addition to it having been referenced elsewhere on a number of occasions.

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Don

Isn't virtue itself a concern of humans?

Presumably he'd say that animals don't have the same kind of virtue and classify virtue with the divine (?)

Agreed. And isn't that convenient for him.

Along these lines, I'm going to quote Obbink in his On Piety by Philodemus translation and commentary:

Quote

traditional forms of worship are viewed by Epicurus as natural responses to the recognition of divine nature, and are not merely tolerated but recommended to his followers. Numerous acts of worship are attested for Epicurus and individual Epicureans, including sacrifice, prayer, and oaths, 1 adoration of statues, dedications, mystery initiation,• participation in calendrical festivals,s and rites of private and ancestral cult. Their opponents, considering such practices were incompatible with the Epicurean rejection of natural teleology, divine providence, and divination, viewed them as insincere parodies designed to cultivate popular favour. Epicureans, however, maintained
that participation in such practices was intended to illustrate the Epicurean theory of religion and social cohesion, and the degree to which cultural phenomena (including false beliefs) could be accounted for; for Epicurus, like Prodicus and Democritus, viewed cult as a natural
outgrowth of cultural history. Similarly, we find Epicureans, in an attempt to rationalize and thereby vindicate popular belief (thus demonstrating a clear philosophical understanding of even the most primitive of ideas), maintaining the proposition that 'gods' are actually capable of doing men harm (i.e. the wicked, as a result of their own depraved conceptions of the gods).

These practices seem well-attested by the author of On Piety (it could have been Phaedrus or Philodemus, but now traditionally attributed to the latter) but they seem at odds with Lucretius in his scorn for religious practices in book V: 1198-1203: "It is no piety to show oneself / Bowing with veiled head towards a stone, Nor to be seen frequenting every altar, Nor to fall prostrate on the ground, with palms outspread ..." It seems Epicurus himself would have done these and encouraged his school to do so. I'm certain Epicurus ascribed different motivations for bowing, sacrificing, etc than would the hoi polloi but he seems to have taken part in all that.

Oh, this is a little interesting, the phrase was used by Varro in his work being written contemporaneously with Cicero:

Quote

all worldly things [rerum humanarum...

Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"It was written in the 50s or 40s BC.[2]"

Cicero's "contempt for all worldly things [rerum humanarum despicientiae]" seems even worse than Philippians "επίγαιος". That's at least generally "on or of the world" but Cicero is advocating specifically contempt for all "human" things. Isn't virtue itself a concern of humans?

Admin. Note: This post has been copied from thread Their God is Their Belly.

Quote from Pacatus

Quote from Cassius

who mind earthly things.

Oh the horror! That we should "mind earthly things"!? [/s]

The KJV "earthly things" makes it sound like a moral slight (earthy, base things.. And I'm sure that's part of it), but the word is literally "things on the earth, things in the world."

Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. (NRSV updated ed.)

ἐπίγαιος "on or of the earth, terrestrial" I'm assuming in contrast to things of heaven.

Quote from Pacatus

Quote from Cassius

who mind earthly things.

Oh the horror! That we should "mind earthly things"!? [/s]

The KJV "earthly things" makes it sound like a moral slight (earthy, base things.. And I'm sure that's part of it), but the word is literally "things on the earth, things in the world."

Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. (NRSV updated ed.)

ἐπίγαιος "on or of the earth, terrestrial" I'm assuming in contrast to things of heaven.

Quote from Cassius

date of publication from the PDF.

Copyright citation at bottom:

apeiron,vol. 45, pp. 109–129 ©Walter de Gruyter 2012

Apeiron Volume 45 Issue 2

Volume 45, issue 2 of the journal Apeiron was published in 2012.

www.degruyterbrill.com

Quote from Kalosyni

Don Have you looked at Aristotle's book 10 ?

Have not made it to Book 10. I was trying to go beginning to end, but it's a slog for all the things I have to rant about against Aristotle.

fwiw, here's my contribution to this...

Work in progress, naturally.

A helpful tutorial on Greek numerals.

PS. And note their use in the list of books of Epicurus (DL 10.28)

Τιμοκράτης γ᾽. (Timokrates 3 (books))

Μητρόδωρος ε᾽. (Metrodoros 5 (books))

Ἀντίδωρος β᾽. (Antidoros 2 (books)

Cleveland Okie and Joshua : Thank you both so much for the kind words. I am so glad y'all have found that work helpful.

I can't believe it's been 2.5 years since I uploaded the revised edition. Time flies.

I would go further in saying the "experience machine" hypothetical in all its forms is NOT about choosing pleasure over pain/reality, it's about choosing reality for the promise of a blissful alternative existence. The person/entity offering the experience machine is promising you pleasure, an alternative experience from the one you're living now filled with your subjective pleasure. You have no way of evaluating those claims -- until you're hooked up.

There's a little more of a twist to the original "experience machine" hypothetical that your Star Trek episode brings up.

I wouldn't necessarily see this as a straight "Would you hook up to the pleasure machine?"

I would see this as more of a question of "exiting the stage" if your life is filled with pain, which Capt. Pike's is arguably at the time of The Menagerie episode.

Pike himself decides to return to Talos IV to live "unfettered by his natural body" (as the Talossians put it). So, this is more a decision to end his current life; and, after a fashion, enter a more pleasant "afterlife" "unfettered by his natural body." This seems more of a commentary on an afterlife than a pleasure machine in many respects. The Talossian even says that "Captain Pike has his illusion..." The life he lives is not real but it can be pleasant for him. What happens to his physical body? Does it matter since it's so damaged?

An interesting take on the original hypothetical, but I'm not so sure it resolves much in the end for the everyday person living their real life. I certainly don't think it's a cut and dried argument for hooking up to the machine (which I don't think you're saying btw!).

Quote from EPicuruean

To say that brain uploading is possible is not a denial of the inherently materialistic nature of consciousness, rather it's an embrace of the idea. If consciousness or experience is material, than through proper interfacing with a computer that eventually replicates the brain activity entirely, the same individual who once experienced their existence in a body of flesh could eventually experience it in a body of silicon. Just like how the same computer program that once ran on a clockwork computer can be made to run on an electronic one.

Oh, I fully agree that consciousness is "nothing more" than biology, chemistry, and physics. But the question remains: If some kind of mechanism could "read" a biological, chemical, and physical signature at a given moment in time and "upload" that measured instance into a "computer" or into a new biological body (assuming the biological body didn't have its own active biological, chemical, and physical consciousness), the primary question to me remains: Is that new uploaded instance the original person with a continued existence - a continuity of consciousness - or it essentially a photocopy or duplication of the original? If I acquiece to the eventual possibility of upload technology, I still don't accept that that uploaded version is a continuation of the original. There's a break, just like the transporter issue in that video. A fictional version of this is the Altered Carbon series where a physical disc storing the essential memories of a person is installed in a new "skin" over and over again. At least that's something physical that makes the trip from one "life" to another.

Quote from EPicuruean

So, science indicates that our mind specifically is the electrical activity in our body (our brain more specifically). That's what we call our "conscious experience." It's electrical activity. Computation maybe.

There's more than just "electrical activity" in that there's influences on that electrical activity and chemical reactions in the brain from throughout the body and environment that directly affect the conscious experience, from hormones and interoception of bodily signals to external factors that influence cognitive and behavior. The brain is, of course, inseparable from the experience of consciousness; but I would offer that the experience of "me" is not separable from the whole interplay of brain, body, and environment. That totality is what I'm very skeptical of being uploadable; and without that context, I'm highly skeptical of there ever being any technology capable of "storing" a copy of a human consciousness. Can a machine become conscious in the future? Maybe, because we're biological machines in a sense. But we've evolved over millennia of millennia. Is natural selection necessary for consciousness to arise? I don't know. I lean toward consciousness being more then computation. It seems there needs to be a body interacting with the physical world, but now we're heading down a deep deep rabbit hole. In summary: I remain highly skeptical of there ever being a feasible upload technology at any time in the future.

Quote from Godfrey

The more "realistic" approach would be to re-create a fully functioning brain in a fully functioning body, in a real world environment. This would seemingly increase the complexity of the problem exponentially, but might make the idea of reproducing consciousness captivating for those who take pleasure in pondering hypotheticals.

Indeed. Maybe in the far future, lab-grown clones - independent of the usual way of creating humans - will be able to be grown. They would arguably have consciousness, but there's a whole genre of sci-fi where lab-grown humanoids and cyborgs create issues. For a humorous take, see the Murderbot Diaries. But this angle still doesn't address the transfer of an older person to a younger body (see John Scalzi's Old Man's War for an interesting and often humorous take on this): What's being transferred? Even brain or head transplants present an infinite number of issues (See Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher for a fascinating nonfiction book on that!!)