Posts by Kalosyni

Quote from Kalosyni

As for how this deals with the limits of pleasure: many of the most intense pleasures that result in feeling "full vitality" happen from a removal of pain such as the pleasure of eating good food when hungry

I need to add that this is in regard to physical pleasure.

As for mental pleasures -- joy, satisfaction, gratitude, learning a skill or exercising a skill, social connection, etc. -- these arise when psychological needs are met. If you are regularly getting your psychological needs met and actively aware that they are getting met, then your life will be full of these kinds of pleasure, regardless of how long your life is.

Quote from DevinH

I mentioned PD19/20, and it's an area I struggle with. If I measure a life by the fraction of it spent in pleasure, a short life at 100% equals a long one at 100%, and I can follow PD19/20 that far. But I also personally feel the pull to have more time within my lifetime (so long as life is pleasurable). Lucretius touches on it in book 5 ("Whoever has been born must want to continue in life, so long as fond pleasure shall keep him..."). That's the pull I feel, even if PD19/20 says more time doesn't add anything.

Here is my take on this:

Another way to think about this is as a remedy. This mental remedy would be useful for those who became ill in mid-life and due to lack of medical knowledge it was uncertain if they would soon die. At mid-life they would have already experienced a lot of pleasures in life. Yet their internal thoughts might have been: "I'm too young to die."

As for how this deals with the limits of pleasure: many of the most intense pleasures that result in feeling "full vitality" happen from a removal of pain such as the pleasure of eating good food when hungry. In modern times we have things like rollercoasters or zipline sports, but Epicurus would probably have thought that these are natural but unnecessary.

What I mean by full vitality is enjoying things that support or increase bodily and mental well-being and that don't bring unpleasant consequences. I don't like using the term "moderation" because that word doesn't fully capture the active use of reason for evaluating one's choices (and "everything in moderation" is an unwise way to think, imo).

You can then reason how in some ways life is like the movie "Groundhog Day" especially for the average person - a certain kind of repetition. (A certain wise person once said: that life is finite makes it precious). Perhaps an ultra wealthy person will struggle more with the "more time equals more pleasure", since they will have the financial means to experience the novelty of travel, etc. (But eventually they may either run short on finances or get ill, and likely the endless novelty isn't as pleasurable without also having good social connections).

PD19 and PD20 go together with the following excerpt from the Letter to Menoeceus:

"But the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another (yearn for it) as a respite from the (evils) in life. (But the wise man neither seeks to escape life) nor fears the cessation of life, for neither does life offend him nor does the absence of life seem to be any evil."

This again shows as evidence of how Epicurean philosophy is put forward as a mental remedy.

I just found this:

Relationships – selfdeterminationtheory.org

I recently discovered Self-Determination Theory while doing online research, and I am finding it to be helpful.

We see within Epicurean philosophy that friendship, self-sufficiency, and the skill of making prudent choices are important for creating a life of well-being. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) has aspects that touch on these Epicurean "goods", as you will see below.

Here is an overview:

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) originated through the work of psychologists Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, who began developing the theory in the 1970s. Their early research focused on understanding human motivation, particularly the differences between intrinsic motivation (engaging in activities for personal enjoyment or satisfaction) and extrinsic motivation (engaging in activities to obtain external rewards or avoid punishment). In 1985, Deci and Ryan formally presented the theory in their book Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. Since its development, SDT has continued to evolve through extensive psychological research and has been applied to areas such as education, healthcare, relationships, and workplace motivation.

Self-Determination Theory is a psychological framework that explains human motivation, personal development, and overall well-being. The theory proposes that individuals have three basic psychological needs that must be supported to promote healthy psychological growth and fulfillment: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy refers to the need to feel that one's actions and decisions are personally chosen and self-directed. Competence involves feeling capable and effective in accomplishing tasks and overcoming challenges. Relatedness refers to the need to feel connected to others and experience meaningful relationships. According to SDT, when these three psychological needs are satisfied, individuals are more likely to experience intrinsic motivation, greater personal fulfillment, and improved psychological well-being.

Psychologists and mental health professionals generally agree that the three basic psychological needs identified in Self-Determination Theory (SDT)—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—are essential to emotional health, personal development, and overall well-being. According to psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, these needs are universal, meaning that everyone needs them regardless of personality, age, culture, or background. However, people differ in how well these needs are fulfilled throughout their lives. Research suggests that when individuals experience satisfaction in all three areas, they tend to have greater motivation, confidence, emotional stability, and life satisfaction. Conversely, when these needs are consistently neglected or frustrated, individuals may experience anxiety, insecurity, low motivation, emotional distress, or feelings of disconnection. Importantly, psychologists do not consider these needs to be fixed personality traits or a hierarchy in which one must be fulfilled before another. Rather, they are ongoing psychological needs that can be satisfied to different degrees depending on a person's circumstances, relationships, and environment.

1. Autonomy: The Need to Have Control Over Your Life

Autonomy is the feeling that you have the freedom to make your own decisions and that your actions reflect your personal values, interests, and beliefs. Psychologists describe autonomy as having a sense of ownership over your life rather than feeling controlled by other people or circumstances. A person experiences autonomy fulfillment when they can make meaningful choices, express their opinions, establish personal boundaries, and pursue goals that are important to them. For example, someone who chooses a career because it reflects their interests and values is more likely to experience autonomy than someone who chooses a career solely because of family pressure or fear of disappointing others. Autonomy remains unfulfilled when a person feels uncertain about what they want, lacks opportunities to make meaningful choices, or routinely puts other people's expectations ahead of their own. It becomes actively frustrated when someone experiences excessive control, manipulation, coercion, or pressure. Therapists working from an SDT perspective often encourage clients to recognize their personal values, develop healthy boundaries, and make decisions that reflect their authentic preferences.

2. Competence: The Need to Feel Capable and Effective

Competence refers to the human need to feel capable, successful, and effective in dealing with everyday challenges. Psychologists explain that people experience competence when they believe they have the skills, knowledge, and abilities necessary to accomplish meaningful tasks and make progress toward their goals. Competence fulfillment does not mean being perfect, highly accomplished, or successful at everything. Instead, it involves experiencing growth, recognizing personal achievements, overcoming challenges, and believing that one's efforts make a difference. For example, someone learning a new skill may experience competence as they gradually improve, gain confidence, and recognize their progress. Competence remains unfulfilled when a person feels stagnant, lacks opportunities to develop their abilities, or consistently doubts their capacity to accomplish things. It becomes frustrated when individuals experience repeated failure, harsh criticism, unrealistic expectations, or situations that make them feel incapable or inadequate. Therapists may help clients recognize their strengths, establish realistic goals, develop new skills, and acknowledge progress rather than focusing exclusively on perceived shortcomings.

3. Relatedness: The Need to Feel Connected and Valued

Relatedness is the need to feel loved, accepted, understood, and connected to other people. Psychologists emphasize that meaningful human relationships are important to emotional well-being because people need to feel that they belong and matter to others. Relatedness is fulfilled when individuals experience genuine friendships, supportive family relationships, emotional intimacy, trust, and a sense of belonging. It does not necessarily mean having a large social circle; even a few meaningful relationships can provide a strong sense of connection. Relatedness remains unfulfilled when someone feels lonely, isolated, misunderstood, excluded, or disconnected from others, even when surrounded by people. It becomes actively frustrated when a person experiences rejection, neglect, abandonment, emotional manipulation, or relationships in which they feel unimportant or unwanted. Therapists often help clients explore relationship patterns, develop communication skills, establish healthy connections, and address experiences that interfere with their ability to trust and connect with others.

Differing Levels of Fulfillment

One important contribution of more recent SDT research is the distinction between need satisfaction, need unfulfillment, and need frustration. These are useful ways of understanding how well a person's psychological needs are being met.

Researchers have identified three general experiences:

• Need satisfaction (fulfilled): The individual experiences a positive sense of autonomy, competence, or relatedness. They feel in control of their choices, capable of accomplishing things, or connected to others.
• Need unfulfillment (not adequately fulfilled): The individual does not experience enough satisfaction in a particular area but is not necessarily experiencing active harm. For example, someone may have few opportunities to develop their abilities without necessarily feeling incapable.
• Need frustration (actively thwarted): The individual experiences something that directly interferes with a psychological need. Examples include being controlled, repeatedly criticized, rejected, or made to feel inadequate.

An important distinction is that having a need remain unfulfilled is not necessarily the same as having that need actively frustrated. For example, someone who does not have close friendships may experience an absence of relatedness fulfillment. However, someone who repeatedly experiences rejection or mistreatment in relationships may experience relatedness frustration. Contemporary SDT research recognizes these as different psychological experiences.

Researchers also use psychological assessment questionnaires to measure the degree of satisfaction and frustration individuals experience in each category. Therefore, fulfillment is not simply an all-or-nothing condition. Someone may experience high autonomy but low competence, or strong relatedness but limited autonomy. These experiences can also change over time as circumstances and relationships change.

DevinH Welcome to the forum!

Quote from Patrikios

If you want, I can cite other examples of modern writers who explain the death process medically and psychologically, that reinforces Epicurean principle of ‘soul does not survive death’.

Patrikios I'd be curious to see more examples, and then I could soon set up another thread on this specific topic so that this can be easily found for future reference.

If you want to reply here in this thread, and then I can later move all these relevant posts.

This is really interesting regarding the pleasure of listening to music, and other fascinating insights.

Quote

But if you’ve ever taken a physiology or anatomy course, you know that between the ear and the cortex, there are at least three or four subcortical structures that you have to get through that process sound. So from the ear, you go to the cochlear nucleus and then you go to the inferior colliculus, then you go to the middle geniculate. It’s what you learn in first-year anatomy class. But until very recently, our brain scanners could not even see those structures because they’re quite small. They’re very tiny. It doesn’t mean they’re not important. They’re just small, so they’re hard to see. So almost all of our theories are about the cortex, even though we know that by the time the sound information gets to the cortex, it’s been pre-processed three or four layers.

So now we have much higher resolution magnetic resonance imaging devices, which allow us to see these structures. The inferior colliculus is about the size of half of the nail on your little finger, 4 or 5 millimeters across. But now we can see it. We can actually visualize it.

Speaking of Psychology: Why does music move us? With Robert Zatorre, PhD

https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/music

Quote from Cassius

Bottom line: our purpose here is not to nitpick each others' posts, but to draw out in conversation fine points that help us and others to better apply the philosophy and articulate it to others. So I see both posts above as useful contributions.

Quote from Cassius

Where do you plan to take this?

The question is...does this help with understanding the Epicurean concepts...and can we then compare this with modern pyschology and science (and the understanding of clinical death and brain death).

Quote from Patrikios

the moderation of passions

I'd venture to say that Epicurus never spoke this way.

Also, from a modern psychology standpoint, t is actually healthy and motivates you to take action when you feel strong passions (or strong emotions/feelings) when you aren't getting your basic necessities for life met.

Here is an updated version:

Prompt: make a text based flow chart that consolidates Lucretius' theory of the nature of the soul in De Rerum Natura, starting with atoms and void and ending with what happens to the soul at death.

ChatGPT result:

Lucretius’ Theory of the Soul in De Rerum Natura: Text-Based Flowchart

                    ATOMS AND VOID
                          |
                          ↓
        Everything in the universe consists of
             atoms moving through empty space.
                          |
                          ↓
                  ATOMIC COMPOSITION
                          |
                          ↓
       The soul, like everything else, is made of
       atoms. It is material, not supernatural.
                          |
                          ↓
                  NATURE OF THE SOUL
                          |
                          ↓
       The soul consists of extremely fine,
       subtle, and mobile atoms.
                          |
                          ↓
       The soul is closely connected to the body
       and is distributed throughout it.
                          |
                          ↓
              TWO PARTS OF THE SOUL
                          |
              ┌───────────┴───────────┐
              ↓                       ↓
       ANIMUS (MIND)              ANIMA (SPIRIT)
              |                       |
       The reasoning and          The vital spirit
       thinking center.           spread throughout
       Located in the             the body.
       chest.                          |
              |                       |
              └───────────┬───────────┘
                          ↓
                SOUL AND BODY UNITY
                          |
                          ↓
       The soul and body work together as one.
       The soul depends on the body to function,
       while the body depends on the soul for
       sensation and life.
                          |
                          ↓
                    MORTALITY
                          |
                          ↓
       Because the soul is made of atoms, it is
       subject to the same natural processes as
       all other material things.
                          |
                          ↓
                    DEATH
                          |
                          ↓
       When the body dies, the connection between
       the soul and body is broken.
                          |
                          ↓
                 ATOMIC DISPERSION
                          |
                          ↓
       The soul's atoms separate and disperse,
       just as the atoms of the body do.
                          |
                          ↓
                END OF SENSATION
                          |
                          ↓
       Without the unified soul-body connection,
       sensation, consciousness, and thought cease.
                          |
                          ↓
                  NO AFTERLIFE
                          |
                          ↓
       The individual no longer exists as a
       conscious being. There is no experience
       of suffering, punishment, or reward after
       death.

                 DEATH = NONEXISTENCE

Central Argument

Lucretius argues that the soul is material, mortal, and inseparable from the functioning body. Since it is composed of atoms, it cannot exist eternally. At death, the soul's atoms disperse, ending consciousness and sensation. Therefore, humans should not fear death because death is not an experience of suffering; it is the complete absence of experience.

Key takeaway: Just as we did not experience anything before we were born, we will not experience anything after we die.

*****

Edit note: the formatting looked fine until I click Submit, which then changed everything and added the line numbers.

Quote from Joshua

Shinzaemon: "Soon. But if I'm late... I'll be at the Festival of the Dead.

I had to look that up...internet says: "The Festival of the Dead in Japan is known as Obon, a Buddhist celebration that honors deceased ancestors and is typically observed in mid-August. Families welcome the spirits of their ancestors back home, perform rituals, and conclude the festival by sending the spirits back to the afterlife with lanterns and bonfires."

Happy Halloween Everyone!

I just posted this image in the image gallery:

Quote from Thomas Karion

If I don’t feel pleasure, it’s indeed because I’m experiencing suffering, however slight it may be.

It's important to be clear about what you mean by "suffering". It could be referring to physical pain or to mental pain.

For physical pain we see that there is this Principal Doctrine:

PD04 - "Continuous pain does not last long in the flesh; on the contrary, pain, if extreme, is present a very short time, and even that degree of pain which barely outweighs pleasure in the flesh does not last for many days together. Illnesses of long duration even permit of an excess of pleasure over pain in the flesh." (Hicks translation)

For mental pain, PD01 and PD02 deal with fear of the gods and fear of death. Then various other PD's deal with other issues, such as fear of natural phenomena (PD12), and other issues, etc. It could make an interesting list to see which PD's help with which mental pains.

A person can feel both pleasure and pain at the same time. But to arrive at a state of unalloyed pleasure requires removing the mental pains caused by the incorrect understanding of things.

Thomas Karion please see this forum regarding your second question:

The Term "Pleasure" Means The Same As "Absence of Pain," And Includes All Experience Which Is Not Painful

Quote from Thomas Karion

I’m not sure if this is the right forum, or even if I’m in the right section of the forum. I hope you’ll forgive me if that’s the case.

Yes, entry level (Level 1) is granted posting permissions only in their Welcome thread.

Quote from Thomas Karion

My question is this:

What do you think Epicurus would write about today if he were alive in our time?

To add to what Cassius wrote, I would say "free will vs determinism".

Cassius this phrase is way too vague, and so I personally wouldn't state the following:

Quote from Cassius

People live thinking that they should follow "virtue," or "reason," or "piety" rather than pursuing happiness through pleasure.

We see in PD16 the following:

PD16. "In but few things chance hinders a wise man, but the greatest and most important matters, reason has ordained, and throughout the whole period of life does and will ordain."

So...a possible alternative would state:

Because of pleasure we choose virtue/just actions (which are not to harm or be harmed) and this leads to the pleasure of experiencing the most pleasant life. ---> This is virtue/just actions as a tool that leads to a pleasant and fullfilling life.

Compare these two scenarios: 1) God decrees that one should not kill one's neighbor (and then that person goes ahead anyway --> This is virtue/just actions as a blind rule that is not fully understood) --vs-- 2) Reasoning and remembering that killing one's neighbor won't lead to a most pleasant life, and in fact will bring about many bad consequences (unless done as a clear act of self-defence) ---> a fully developed moral understanding that leads to a happy life.

Of course there is an additional layer of moral development, which comes from the full understanding of pain and the full understanding of conscious experience of all animals (including humans) incorporating awareness of "self and other". ---> And which I would venture to say is a newer and further development of civilization beyond Epicurean philosophy. ---> And this also leads to a pleasant and fulfilling life (which is the goal of Epicurean philosophy).

Welcome to the forum! Thomas Karion

Believing in fate can provide comfort by framing life's challenges as part of a "larger plan" (reducing stress by increasing acceptance of circumstances) but it may also contribute to feelings of helplessness and reduced motivation when individuals perceive outcomes as beyond their control.

I've been thinking lately that a common theme in movies is this notion of fate, that things were "meant to be", especially in romance movies. Fate is thought to be either some sort of outside force is dictating the unfolding of reality, or for those who are religious, God. This is actually so common in movies (and wider culture) that one must guard one's thinking against it.

Epicureans do not believe in fate, and seeing that things as not subject to fate is actually a liberating way of living in the world. But it does require taking responsibilty for choices and using critical thinking skills. "In but few things chance hinders a wise man, but the greatest and most important matters, reason has ordained, and throughout the whole period of life does and will ordain." PD16

According to Pew Research here are some statistics, (Report date: November 23, 2021):

Quote

Overall, 44% of U.S. adults say they believe in fate, defined as the course of their life being predetermined. This group includes half of women (51%) and 35% of men. There also are differences based on levels of educational attainment, with college graduates significantly less likely than those without a degree to say they believe in fate (32% vs. 49%).

Source

So now the question is this: do you notice people around you believing in fate, or do you notice yourself occasionally slipping into that way of thinking?