Cassius : Your experience with Philodemus' On Methods of Inference seems like it would be directly relevant here:
(No, I have not read it yet)
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.
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:
In addition to it having been referenced elsewhere on a number of occasions.
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:
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:
all worldly things [rerum humanarum...
"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.
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.
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.
date of publication from the PDF.
Copyright citation at bottom:
apeiron,vol. 45, pp. 109–129 ©Walter de Gruyter 2012
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!).
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.
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.
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!!)
Is there is some theoretical barrier or insuperable obstacle that will always be impossible to overcome no matter what the technology?
I think so. The whole premise seems to me to be akin to "stealing someone's soul" simply dressed up in techno-babble and wishful thinking. The idea that one could "upload" one's consciousness to a computer is based on the idea that a person's being is reducible to some kind of (let's say Aristotelian) essence, usually thought of as some kind of electrical signal that can be read and copied into some kind of a computer-like machine. Or think of a Star Trek transporter that "reads" the individual's construction, breaks it down into a signal, and reconstitutes that person at a distance. For one thing there, it's not necessarily the same "person." See this video:
The video also brings up the idea of "What is consciousness?" Which is really what this question of uploading for immortality purposes hinges on. To upload one's consciousness means we have to define consciousness itself. Good luck with that! One intriguing idea is the embodied cognition theory:
Nevertheless, as Epicureans, we insist the mind and body depend on each other. The mind does not exist independent of the body and both die together. In light of this, the mind cannot exist separate from the body, so the mind (our essence) is not able to be uploaded or separated from the body. There's no "me" without my body and mind working together. Giving into the idea of some future technology being able to do this can be fun, but ultimately it's dangerous to our life here and now because it literally denigrates this physical flesh as lesser than some fanciful pure mental existence that is somehow better than our current way of living. That smacks of heaven-talk and a better next world which is anathema to Epicurean philosophy.
Happy Thanksgiving for those in the United States.
I continue to maintain that Thanksgiving is the most Epicurean of the secular holidays. Gratitude plays such a large role in Epicurus' philosophy that already having an established holiday in the culture is a convenient bonus. While Epicureans have a Twentieth every month, Thanksgiving is a time already in the calendar that brings together friends and family and provides an opportunity to reflect on what we can be grateful for.
A selection:
VS35. Don't ruin the things you have by wanting what you don't have, but realize that they too are things you once did wish for.
VS55. Misfortune must be cured through gratitude for what has been lost and the knowledge that it is impossible to change what has happened.
U423 Epicurus too makes a similar statement to the effect that the good is a thing that arises out of your very escape from evil and from your memory and reflection and gratitude that this has happened to you. (Plutarch)
U435 Seneca, On Benefits, III.4.1: Here I must do Epicurus the justice to say that he constantly complains of our ingratitude for past benefits, because we cannot bring back again, or count among our present pleasures, those good things which we have received long ago, although no pleasures can be more undeniable than those which cannot be taken from us.
U491 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 15.10: … a striking maxim that comes from Greece – here it is: "The life of folly is empty of gratitude and full of anxiety – it is focused wholly on the future." "Who said that?" you ask. The same man as before. {Epicurus}
U592 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, X.121: He will be grateful to anyone when he is corrected.
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."
I need to state for the record that I have no problem with life-saving and life-enhancing medical science. Treatments and therapies like prostheses, vaccinations, surgery under anesthesia, cochlear implants, MRIs, pacemakers, and all the others that bring a good quality of life to those who would have died or would have lived lives of pain in decades and centuries past is a boon of modern medical science. Sign me up.
Where I draw the line is at those who feel life should be extended at any cost when death is inescapable. Trust me. I know firsthand how hard it is to "let someone go." In the past, this simply wasn't an option. They just died. Ventilators etc were not an option. Medical science now lets hearts beat and lungs breathe with no hope of recovery or consciousness. That's not life. To paraphrase Dr. Malcom in Jurassic Park, just because they can, they don't stop to ask if they should.
The other line is at those who feel death is something to be conquered. Like dying is some kind of failure. And, while not believing in a god or a supernatural afterlife, they place technology in the role of God and technological fantasies in place of Heaven. Extending a good quality of life is admirable IN THIS LIFE. Trying to "cheat death" by cryonic suspension, computer upload, brain transplant, and similar speculative fiction tropes robs people of taking pleasure in THIS one precious life that is here and now.
