Episode 011 - More On The Void and Its Implications
Date: 03/28/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1485-episode-eleven-more-on-the-void-and-its-implications/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 011 returns to the full panel — Cassius, Julie, Elaine, Charles, and Martin — resuming the discussion of void from the previous week’s two-person coronavirus episode. Julie reads the extended Daniel Brown passage from Book 1 covering multiple proofs that void exists and is mixed into all matter: that things move (and therefore empty space must exist for them to move into); that liquids seep through apparently solid rock; that sound passes through walls; that objects of equal size differ in weight because the lighter one contains more void; and that even the behavior of fish in water and of flat bodies separating in air demonstrates that void must be “mixed with everything.” Cassius highlights a framing passage near line 420 from Daniel Brown where Lucretius asserts that all nature is either body or space, and nothing else can be conceived.
The main philosophical discussion probes what it means for something to “exist” or “not exist,” and how the Epicurean standard of observable reality guards against word games. Elaine argues that the question of the void is at root a language problem — void is nothing, not a thing, so saying it “exists” is a trick of abstraction — and applies this insight to the classic question of God’s existence: without even a basis in observable extrapolation, claims about God are pure imagination, not falsifiable hypothesis. Cassius presses the group with the square-circle thought experiment: can it exist? Martin answers that its non-existence follows from what we observe in reality; Elaine adds that the definitions themselves guarantee the contradiction. Charles connects this to the importance of consensus definitions and cites Epicurus’s Letter to Pythocles on the various possible shapes of worlds as an example of Epicurean openness within a materialist framework. The episode ends with a brief tangent on the “growing block universe” theory (raised by Martin after Elaine mentioned a dentist acquaintance who had convinced himself that the block universe proved all beings are one), and closing thoughts on how Epicureanism’s practical grounding in observation is precisely its appeal.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 11 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers, and everyone here is a self-taught Epicurean. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. Last week we started our examination of issues surrounding the void, which is the section of text we’re currently reading. Today we’ll continue on the same theme as we now join the discussion.
Julie: I’ve been busy keeping up with the medical stuff with the virus, and I have not had a chance to listen to the podcast that you all did last week, and I haven’t read this section in advance, though I hope I’ll still have something to say about it — but I’m not as prepared as I have been.
Elaine: You are not alone. I could start reading the text earlier this morning but I didn’t finish.
Charles: You know, I have some thoughts on that too.
Cassius: I’m still thinking — I know you guys haven’t listened to what I posted with Martin last week. Martin and I spent most of the time talking about some general background issues in regard to this. This is something that we’ll never have the opportunity to do again: to cold — without a lot of preparation — talk about some background questions that it might be interesting to get initial impressions of without having first boned up on the background.
Elaine: I think that’s true too, because then I think it’s more accessible to people who don’t have a background in philosophy — you know, they’re not trained philosophers like we’re not — and to feel our way through this the way they would might be interesting.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s great. Last week Martin and I talked about some basic issues surrounding why Epicurus would be concerned about the void, and I think I’d like to stay with that today and get the impressions from Julie and Elaine and Charles that we didn’t get last week. But I’d still like to read the text again, and so I don’t know whose turn it is.
Elaine: I think that’s Julie’s turn.
Cassius: I think it’s Julie’s turn too. But I’m thinking that some of the questions that we ought to talk about today — it would be good for us to quote a section that comes after what we’re doing today, and I don’t want to try to read all the way down to it. But let me point out what it said at around line 420, because I think that is maybe a summary of what we’re really talking about in detail. Because what I see at line 420 in the Daniel Brown edition is sort of a conclusion, I think, of part of this section, which is:
All nature therefore in itself considered is one of these: is body, or is space in which all things are placed and from which the various motions of all beings spring. That there is body, common sense will show — this as a fundamental truth must be allowed, or there is nothing we can fix as certain in our pursuit of hidden things by which to find the truth or prove it when it is found. Then if there were no place or space we call it void, bodies would have nowhere to be, nor could they move at all, as we have fully proved to you before. Besides there is nothing you can strictly say is neither body nor void, which you may call a third degree of things distinct from these. For every being must in quantity be more or less, and if it can be touched, though near so small or light, it must be body and so esteemed. But if it can’t be touched, and has not in itself a power to stop the course of other bodies as they pass, this is the void we call empty space.
Some background questions have come to my attention that I think are relevant to why we’re even discussing this. I’d like to think about them after we read the main text, but what does it mean to say that something exists, and what does it mean to say that something does not exist? The answers to those questions are not necessarily very obvious. And another question is: if we consider the word “universe” to mean everything — and when I say everything, I mean not just our star system or our cosmos but all star systems, everything — if you say that something doesn’t exist in this universe, do you think it’s possible that it can exist in another universe, and if not, why not? There’s some related questions that I’ll postpone talking about right now, but there are some basic questions about what does it mean to say that something exists or does not exist that are important to why this is even being discussed. So with that as background, Julie, will you read the text for us?
Julie: [reads Daniel Brown’s 1743 translation]
And yet all things are not formed of close and solid parts. In things there is a void, which in your searches into nature will be of use to know. This will preserve your wandering mind from doubt, prevent your constant toil by judging right of nature’s laws. Wherefore there is a place we call a void, an empty space intangible, or else no bodies could be moved or stir. The quality all bodies have to stop and to oppose does never fail, so that to move would be in vain to try. No body first by yielding would give way. But now we see before our eyes that things move various ways in seas and earth and in the heaven above. But were there no void, they would not be deprived of that activity of motion only, but would not be at all, for matter wedged and crowded close on every side had ever been at rest.
Besides, though things appear of solid parts composed, yet you will find them in some measure formed of bodies that are rare. The liquid moisture of the water sweats through rocks and stones, and all things weep with drops abundant. The food that every creature eats disperses through the body. The trees increase and grow and in due season shew their fruit as the juices from the low roots spread through the trunk and over all the boughs. Sounds pass through strong partitions and fly quick through walls of houses, and the piercing cold strikes through the very bones. But were no void, no empty space, that bodies ever should pass, you’d find a thing impossible to prove.
Again, why do we see some things exceed others in weight, though of equal size? For if as much of body went to form a ball of wool as made a ball of lead, their weight would be the same. For the quality of body is to press downward, but a perfect void by nature has no weight. So that a body of equal size but lighter in its weight proves it has more of empty space. So again, the heavier body has more of solid parts, ‘tis plain, and has within it less void. And this is doubtless what with reason’s searching light we look for — mixed with things, we call it space.
But I am forced to step before and answer what some pretend, lest you should be seduced from truth. They say the waters yield to fish making their way and open their liquid paths, for when the fish have left a space, that instant thither the yielding water circling flows. By the same rule all beings may be moved among themselves and change their former place, though all things should be full. But this ‘tis plain is false throughout, for how could fish advance at all unless the waters gave them way? And whither should the waves retire if the fish did not move and leave a space behind? So that all bodies must be deprived of motion, or you must say a void is mixed with everything, from whence each being first arrives a power to move.
Lastly, if two broad bodies meet and instantly are separated again, the air must needs fill up the void that is between. But this air, though it should hurry with its swiftest powers, it cannot all at once fill up the space these bodies will disclose at parting. First the nearest part will be filled up, and then the more remote, until the whole be full. If one should say, when these flat bodies meet the air is condensed, but when they part the air is rarefied — this is the mistake: for then there must be void where there was none before, and that void that was before must now be full. In such a case the air can’t be condensed, and if it could, it can’t without a void contract itself and so reduce its parts into a closer space. Wherefore, perplex the matter as you please, you must confess in things there is a void.
Julie: He’s got a lot of physics there that I didn’t realize they were thinking about back then.
Cassius: And it goes much further than this as the chapter goes forward, so we’ll have a lot of this to deal with. Last week Martin and I talked some about the physics of it, and we want to talk about that today too I think. But even more so than trying to compare this to modern physics, I’m thinking that it is important for us to get a grounding on where Epicurus was at this point and why he considered this to be important. He is obviously arguing that the void exists, but it’s not necessarily clear what the word “exists” means. What do you guys think about that question?
Elaine: I think that’s a trick of language. I think that you have to be careful with things like that, because this is where abstraction can really lead you wrong. So just because a word exists does not mean that it represents a thing. The void is no thing — the void is nothing there. So I think that’s entirely a language issue: don’t get mixed up in it.
Cassius: I think you’re completely right about that, but I also think that this is a common, common problem for people when they get into philosophy. They’ll run into questions like this and they need to understand what the right approach to responding to it is. And I think we’re going to see that illustrated in what Epicurus is doing here.
Julie: I mean, to me that’s like asking: if a person is dead, do they exist? You know, it’s a word game. So we all know, if you just think about it not words-wise — just represent it with bodies and empty space — it’s clear what it means. But then you get language into it and it could be easy to create paradoxes where there are no paradoxes.
Cassius: And in fact, last week we talked about some of Zeno’s paradoxes and how you can allege that it’s impossible to move, that everything really is one, at least that motion is an illusion. There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s a word game and trickery, and it is something to avoid. But how do we give confidence to people in avoiding it? Just to say that it’s a game — does that even tell us that it’s true or false? We really need a grounding in what we are going to be confident about and what we’re not going to be confident about. What does the word “possible” mean? What does the word “probable” mean? What does the word “certain” mean? Where do we even begin to approach questions like that?
Elaine: So I think we approach it in the way Epicurus did — everything that we’re saying has got to refer to something you could actually observe, and that is what keeps you out of the weeds.
Cassius: You have not observed, I think personally, anything outside of our universe. Does that mean that nothing outside of our universe exists?
Elaine: No, no, no, no — but if we’re imagining the possibility of that, we’re still referring to observations here that we made. So extrapolating is a different process from letting the words themselves be more “real” than observable reality. It’s a totally different thing that would be going on in your mind. It’s not abstract — it’s just extrapolating your imagination to other possibly observable things that we can’t see. And I don’t think that is in any way a related process.
Cassius: Okay, let’s talk about one of the classic questions. You’ve never seen any evidence of God — does that mean that God does not exist?
Elaine: Right, so we have no objective evidence of anything like a God, so we’re not even extrapolating from known observables. We have no basis for it, so it’s pure imagination. There’s nothing to it — it’s not a useful thing to even talk about.
Cassius: Okay, you’ve used the word “pure observables” and “extrapolating from pure observables.”
Elaine: No, no — I didn’t say “pure observables,” I said “pure imagination.”
Cassius: I’m sorry, you did say that, and then you said “extrapolating from observables” versus “pure imagination.” Yes. What is our confidence? Where’s the bright line? Why do we take the position that extrapolating from observables is the prudent way to approach things as opposed to pure imagination?
Elaine: I would say by experience, because it often results, when you’re able to investigate further, in evidence. But we have to be careful — this is one of the things you’ve got to hold loosely. You can’t say that we know that these things we’re extrapolating from our observations are right; we might have made mistakes in doing that. It’s not as reliable, but it has a higher chance — just historically and empirically — it has a higher chance of being accurate than just making stuff up.
Julie: I want to add one thing to that: if you start to make things up in your mind that don’t have any basis in observation, you can make up a hundred different things, and then how do you know which one is right? And all of that is going to lead to the doubt and confusion that Epicurus is trying to prevent.
Cassius: Right — that’s excellent, that’s perfect. That needs to be said.
Elaine: I think about people I’ve known who were in 12-step groups, or any kind of religious group, trying to listen to what God was telling them — giving everything over to their God and trying to figure out what God was telling them versus what their own mind was telling them. It was like torture for them, because: “How do I know what’s my voice and what’s God’s voice?” So yeah, if you don’t have an anchor in observable reality, you’re lost, and you’re going to be anxious.
Cassius: Epicurus did talk quite a bit about worlds and heavenly bodies in his Letter to Pythocles, and his basis for all of this was by laying down a definition — something that is observable, something that is based completely in reality. For his definitions, Charles, were explained by pointing to things that are observable to us through our senses in our reality — that is how he defines something. And so that is a perfect segue for me to ask this question. Let’s take the example of a square circle. Can a square circle exist?
Julie: Well, that’s another word game, because we have definite definitions of what a square is and definitions of a circle. It’s taking two firm definitions of shapes that everyone agrees on and clashing them together. We don’t have a conception of a square circle. It’s outside of our definitions — our concepts don’t overlap. So it’s clear we can show it leads to a contradiction, which means it doesn’t exist.
Cassius: Why, Martin? Why do we take the position that a contradiction cannot exist?
Martin: This is what we observe in our world — that our world actually is logical.
Cassius: Anybody else?
Elaine: So no — I still think you’re mixing up words and observations. I mean, although we’re applying the word “circle” to describe shapes that we see, and that’s a word we’ve agreed on, we’ve also defined it mathematically. And the mathematical definitions of square and circle don’t overlap. But it’s not because that’s some kind of weirdness in reality — it’s because we picked those definitions. There’s nothing weird or funny or magical about that. It should just be like: well, of course it can’t, because we defined it so that it couldn’t.
Cassius: And does that mean, Elaine, that you are certain in taking the position that a square circle cannot exist in this or any other universe?
Elaine: Not if the definition is the same, because the way we defined it guarantees that it can’t. So the question itself is a sort of nonsense question.
Cassius: It’s not really a nonsense question. It is a question which can then plainly be answered: no, it does not exist.
Elaine: Yeah, but I mean — to even think that there’s a possible answer other than “of course not” — it just feels silly to me to ask that, because people will ask that question and sometimes they’ll get a feeling of “oh wow, isn’t that weird,” like there’s something profound about it. But there’s nothing profound about that. I don’t understand why anybody would ask it.
Martin: In this case, it’s obvious. In other cases, a question like that shows up and it may not be that obvious, so we need to work out more to come to the answer “no,” or maybe “yes.”
Elaine: Yeah, I can agree with that. But this particular question is not — it’s not even really a question.
Cassius: Later in Book One, Lucretius will talk about how Heraclitus does exactly what Elaine just referred to — causing people to say, “Wow, that’s a very profound question.”
Julie: Yes. There are people who really enjoy getting into that profundity and then just get themselves totally confused about things.
Cassius: But as we’re saying, people do ask questions like this. I’ve got a specific example that I’d cite another time, but the square-circle question is something that probably does help us grapple with the contradiction — or, as Elaine is saying, whether it’s even legitimate to ask the question. Because what is a square? And what is a circle? Do squares and circles exist in nature? Well, it depends on how you’re defining them. So you have your mathematical definition of square and circle, and then you have the general consensus — like, my TV is square, and everybody knows what you mean: the sides of the shape are equal, and the angles are right angles.
Charles: But are you getting at whether there’s an abstract realm of square and circle? I’m definitely trying to unpack the question. The math is abstract, and reality — no. We attach an error bar to the mathematical definition, and then everything within that error description would in practice be considered a circle.
Martin: And so how we can link this mathematical definition — which some people may interpret as referring to an idealistic realm — to our actual observation: we attach an error bar to the mathematical definition, and then anything within that tolerance would in practice be considered a circle.
Cassius: Yeah, right. You used the word “arrow,” and then you said “error” — an error bar. E-double-R, yes. And the very last thing you said: then everything within that would be a what?
Martin: Would be a circle. So if we start from the mathematical definition and allow for some tolerance around it, then anything that fits into that tolerance would be a circle.
Cassius: Yeah. Okay. And we do that sort of roughly just with our vision all the time. So basically, there are circular objects, there are roughly rectangular or squarish objects in nature.
Elaine: Yeah. And close enough to a square that we would say “square.” Like what Martin said — with an error bar. So we don’t think that there’s some realm out there with perfect circles and perfect squares, like Plato would.
Charles: I just thought — there’s no abstraction or reasoning that tells us that this is a perfect square in every single capacity. It’s usually found through consensus, like Martin said with the error bar and the tolerance — not through perfect squares found throughout nature. Which does remind me: in the Letter to Pythocles, Epicurus talks about how an outline of a world could be spherical or three-cornered or any kind of shape at all. He compared it right next to a sphere and then goes on to say it could be any kind of shape. I tend to think that Epicurus is probably emphasizing in his own mind “any kind of shape,” because he would not put any mystical or abstract value on a shape — which of course the Pythagoreans were doing, as I understand it.
Cassius: Oh yeah, yeah. So are we going to look — I’m kind of interested in looking at this section of the poem the way we did with the matter, like the different arguments that he uses in each section here, how they come together and how convincing they would be to somebody who hadn’t thought about the idea of void. Where would you like to dig into it, Elaine?
Elaine: Well, so the first section — where he just talks about how you couldn’t move — I think is fairly convincing. But the first thing I thought about was: one time I went to a New Year’s in New Orleans — I don’t recommend it — but my ex was in law school there at Tulane. So we didn’t go to Mardi Gras there, that was just too much, but we went to New Year’s. And we were in this crowd and I realized that I couldn’t fall down — that if I were to trip, the crowd was moving, because there was moving into a void where there was no crowd. But within the crowd, there was no room for me to fall over. That if I fell, I would not fall; I would just be carried along. It was a really weird feeling to be packed that tight, you know, against strangers. By making this argument, any lay person could say, “Oh yeah, that’s right — something else has got to move for this object to move. If they’re close together, you wouldn’t be able to move if there were no space for something else to move into.” So I think that’s a good argument.
Cassius: Anybody else have any thoughts about that? Maybe we should remind ourselves as well of the context of the pre-existing Zeno’s paradox, which said that things do not move, it’s all an illusion, and so Epicurus would have known that people argued that kind of thing — that all is one, whether it’s divine fire or some other element. And so in the paragraph that Julie just read, it says, “But now we see before our eyes that things move.” He is trusting in what his eyes tell him to establish that things do move, regardless of any logical proof from Zeno or anyone else that things do not move.
Elaine: Yeah, great. I knew a dentist who was doing some amateur physics, and he had convinced himself using Zeno’s paradox and some Russian physicist who believes in the block universe that the only possible answer was the block universe — and that this meant that we were all one being. It was elaborate but full of holes — his whole plan of how he got to this from various things in physics. But he spent a lot of time on it, and I read it and I said, “Hey, look, here and here you’ve made leaps that you don’t have any basis for.” He didn’t realize where he’d made the leaps because he got so excited about his words, and then he realized it wasn’t true. But that is what happens if you stop making observations: you can talk yourself into a crazy mess.
Cassius: And any philosophy student in any college is going to run into exactly that argument.
Julie: It’s also partially just the idea of abstraction versus something that is concrete. Because when you start talking about Zeno’s paradox, really what you’re talking about is like a number line, right?
Elaine: Yeah.
Julie: And a number line is very abstract. But technically the idea of a circle is an abstraction. The idea of a square is an abstraction — it’s something that we have just made up to describe the things that we are seeing. But when you get into an abstraction like that, that’s when you start to get into all of these things that don’t necessarily apply to reality. So division is the important one with Zeno’s paradox, right? Infinite division? So I guess it would have to be infinite division. But with a number line, there’s an infinite number of real numbers between any two points.
Elaine: Yes. And I’m actually having a conversation. There’s a person that I know in reality that I’m conversing with on a website — on an agnostic website — about how people who are abstractionists and materialists can communicate. Is there a way for abstractionists and materialists to communicate? And his thought was that I lacked abstract thought — which I thought was, whoa, you know, actually, no. I know how to think abstractly. I’ve done advanced calculus. I don’t have any trouble manipulating concepts with my mind. I just know that they are tricky — they can backfire, they can get you into the weeds — and that you’re more likely to find things that you can actually use in life by always keeping stuff connected to reality, which is what Epicurus said. Keep the stuff grounded in reality and don’t just go flipping off into the abstract realm. That is a decision, which is totally different from an inability. This sort of fascinated me — that that would be his thought.
Charles: I’ve met hundreds of people who think that abstraction — or even just trying to find a Kantian notion of pure reason — is superior to materialism. Yes. They’ve convinced themselves that just because you have to think about it, it’s superior, or better, or more true. More sophisticated, more evolved.
Cassius: I think it would be safe to say that we don’t deny that abstractions are useful, that abstractions in a sense exist. But we also say that abstractions have — and this is a word that Epicurus uses a lot — a limit. There’s a limit to what abstractions can do, there’s a limit to what they are. They are not reality themselves. Within their limited sphere of action or existence, they’re very useful and very helpful, and valid within their sphere. But they are not reality itself. There’s a limit to which they describe reality. They can describe reality extremely well in certain respects — you can use calculus or algebra or geometry to perform all sorts of things in the real world, to fly to the moon and predict exactly where you want to be and how much thrust, and so forth. But those calculations are not themselves reality.
In the next section, Lucretius talks about bodies moving, and then he talks about liquids seeping through things to show space in a stationary body — which is another way of observing: there’s got to be some space for that to go into. Not just solid bodies, but a liquid spreading through a solid body. And even sound — that’s really cool. This is before we knew about sound waves. All these are examples that people reading this should have observed for themselves, and they would think: well, how could that happen if there weren’t space in there? And again, in each of those examples, we’re looking to observation through the senses for our proof, our confidence, and our conclusion.
Elaine: Right. And what’s the next one? Wait. Oh. The next one — he’s getting at density, which is of course very important always to physics, but he’s already figured out the role of void in density. I just think that’s really cool that he did. And he’s talking about objects that people would have seen: a ball of wool, a ball of lead. That’s nice.
Cassius: And you could go on to the next example of the fish, but I would emphasize that he throws in, in the middle of the discussion: “But I am forced to step before and answer what some pretend, lest you should be seduced from truth.” He’s reminding us that there are reasons why these things are being discussed — we’re not just lining up bits of knowledge to put on the shelf. These are issues that are constantly, in different forms, going to be thrown in our face, as we’ve seen. So in the paragraph above, he talked about liquids moving through the apparent solids. And now he’s talking about solids moving through liquids and the behavior of the liquids — just reminding us there’s really no exception, no way around this phenomenon of bodies and space. And then in the next paragraph, it sounds to me like he’s talking about the creation of a vacuum when the bodies separate, and then the air — which is not void. That’s really important to know: the air itself is not void. So the air rushes in to fill the vacuum, from the nearest part to the farthest part.
Elaine: He just — you know, nature abhors a vacuum — there you go. I think he’s covered all the ways that people would need to be able to connect their observations to what he’s asserting.
Cassius: Now, next week we’ll go a little further into some of the implications of this. But even though we didn’t read it as part of this week’s text, it is significant. We can probably include that the next thing he says is:
I could by many arguments confirm this system of a void and fix your faith to what I say, but these small tracks I have drawn to such a searching mind will be enough. The rest you may find out without a guide; for as staunch hounds once put upon the foot will nose soon the mountain game from their thick covers, so you in things like these will one thing by another trace, will hunt for truth in every dark recess and draw her out.
And I quote that only to say that he is really, really emphasizing the importance of what he’s covered so far — that bodies exist, and so too does void. He’s saying that really, with that foundation, you can reason everything else that you need to reason. And that’s a pretty bold statement, in part because he’s contrasting: these things exist, bodies and space, but it’s probably equally important — or more so — that he’s taking the position that besides bodies and space, nothing else exists. That’s the extra paragraph I read when we started.
I don’t know that we’re about to wrap up yet, but we’re probably getting to the closing section today. The point I would probably come back to, unless somebody has another specific point to raise — please do. And in the absence of that, the point I would come back to: I think that a lot of people who are not reading this in as much detail, who are not familiar with Epicurus in as much detail, are going to go back to this question: how can you be sure that nothing else exists but matter and void? Isn’t it possible that in another universe things exist that are not matter and void? You’ve not been there, Julie; you haven’t been there, Elaine. It’s possible, isn’t it, that things that are not matter and void exist? In fact, it’s possible that God exists. It’s possible that all sorts of things exist. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, somebody has said. So why should you think that the universe is consistent? Just because it’s in this tiny speck called Earth that things operate this way — where do you get off extrapolating and thinking that everything that exists in the entire universe is the same as it is here on Earth? That’s almost ridiculous on its face. So many things exist beyond what’s in your philosophy that you just don’t know. You have to consider that God may have created the universe, and therefore if there’s anything in the world that’s wrong, it’s certainty — because you’ve never been everywhere, you haven’t existed from eternity in the past, you know things will happen after you’re gone. It is wrong to be certain about taking a position on something as important as whether there’s no God.
Julie: I think there was a leap in there in the middle of your talking, where you went from “is it possible” to “you must consider that it’s possible” — and I think that’s an important leap that’s being made there. Do I close off the possibility that there are ways of arranging things that I don’t know about? No, I don’t. But I’m not a philosophical skeptic, because I don’t think that matters. I’m a pragmatist in that I’m gonna stick with what’s the most likely thing and treat that as if it’s true — it’s “true enough for government work,” right? It’s good enough, and I’m going with it. And it doesn’t bother me particularly that there are other possibilities out there. But I’m not interested enough in them to think that they’re useful topics of discussion — at least not frequently. And so I do not feel obligated to consider them as possibly being as real as what I can observe.
Cassius: That’s another way of asking the question: what’s the dividing line between what is possible and what is not possible? Is it ever appropriate to say that something is not possible?
Elaine: If you’re going to be a real good scientist, you would probably not put it that way — that’s why people accuse scientists of hedging, because we’re leaving room for falsifiability. But pragmatically speaking, the only thing that matters to me is: what do we know well enough to proceed on? How am I going to make my life decisions? Am I going to make them based on somebody saying I have to consider their imaginary idea, or am I going to make my life decisions based on what I can observe and what seems almost certainly good enough? I don’t know if I’m like Epicurus in that he may have gone a little bit further to say you must absolutely decide to believe that it has to be that way, because you’re going to worry otherwise. But I don’t worry about it — this does not bother me whatsoever.
Martin: And Epicurus doesn’t say you have to decide on this kind of question. Epicurus states that some things should be considered as not known at this time — that’s the withholding issue.
Cassius: Yes. And then if Elaine were here — well, she would remind us of the manifold options discussion: that if you can describe not just one but a series of possibilities that are consistent with the facts and not inconsistent with the facts, then to choose between them is itself the function of what soothsayers and mystics do, because you don’t have enough information to choose between them. So you’re right, Martin has mentioned the issue of withholding judgment and just not taking a position. I think it’s also — probably distinct from that — the position on manifold options: if more than one option is out there, you should not choose between them. Which is probably related to withholding of course. But I don’t think he would apply the manifold-options rule to “could there be a supernatural God that is neither matter nor void?” —
Elaine: Because we’re not in that situation where we have any evidence for that one. So, the pragmatist would say: look, you don’t have any evidence for that position; we’ve got plenty of evidence for this; so let’s just go with this — it makes the most sense. But a pragmatist would not say it is impossible that any other answer could be right. They would just sort of say, “Who cares?” But the important part is that you have multiple explanations if you do have what’s called the manifold options — as long as they’re consistent with your other principles and they don’t contradict the observed evidence. It’s like Lucretius talking about his propositions for meteorology.
Cassius: All of them have been disproven by modern science, but he maintains that the exact causes may not be known in his time.
Martin: Yeah, he did play the withholding game on that. But like I said, the more important part is that these were explanations he made to fit within the framework of Epicurean philosophy.
Cassius: Julie, you haven’t weighed in on this.
Julie: I don’t really have a whole lot to add. I agree 100% with everything that Elaine said, and to me it just comes down to what is useful and what is not useful in our world. I guess I wanted to touch on the question we did ask earlier — but when somebody asks us, “Well, why hasn’t this happened?” — within our materialism, it hasn’t happened, and even for people who are — basically, it’s not observable. Right, and if it’s not observable, why is it that we don’t observe… oh, actually, I just lost my train of thought.
Cassius: That’s easy to do when you get into this — I think the language can get you a little.
Julie: Yeah. Well, I think unfortunately too, you could claim that there are limits to our senses. Sure. And so something could happen that — and obviously we’re aware of things that happen that we cannot sense. So I think just not being able to observe something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist or doesn’t happen.
Cassius: That is the answer to the question I raised in the beginning — what does “non-existence” mean? That’s another way of stating that same question. Yes. That’s why I stress the canon so much — the Epicurean standard of what we can know.
Elaine: So, Julie — I guess to that I would say we’re still the only thing we have to go on when we’re making our decision is information that is available, right?
Julie: Absolutely. And that’s why I like the pragmatic “what is useful to us” approach. Because what can you say about anything beyond our knowledge now?
Cassius: Well, I do want to emphasize: unless anybody thinks that means I would not be interested in exploring new ideas — no. If you’re a scientist, you’re going to be interested in asking questions. But the important thing is to focus on questions that you can address, not on things that have been sort of automatically put beyond your reach. Because when people talk about a supernatural realm, they have by definition said that these things are not accessible to us and cannot ever be directly tested — at least during what they say is our life here. And that means they’re beyond our access. So if something has automatically been placed by another person as an abstract realm that is beyond our senses and beyond our access, then no, it’s not something I’m going to be interested in trying to test, because you’ve already told me I can’t ever see it. It’s like the concept of forbidden or esoteric knowledge that I’ve seen a lot of people talk about recently.
Cassius: Elaine, what you were just saying is the direction I was going to try to steer us as we concluded the episode for today, because I think that Epicurus’ position is very similar to what you’ve stated your own position to be. But to the extent that you’re questioning whether he would go further than you would — I think that perhaps he would. But I think that he would be phrasing all of this in the context of the discussion we had earlier about the square circle. I don’t think that he ultimately would be pointing to his precise physics observations in terms of atoms and void as much as he would be asking us to look at the definitions of the words we’re using. And so that when we start talking about God or supernatural or nature, we really can’t make an intelligent assessment of what these questions even mean unless we think about what each word is referring to. And when you really drill down to whether a word is connected with reality or not, I think it’s probably more possible to take very strong positions — such as that a square circle cannot exist — and you explain that because squares and circles are only constructs of your mind that are conceptually defined, and you’ve conceptually defined them in different ways, so they’re not going to be unifiable without redefining your words. Which is certainly possible if you choose to do that, but it’s all ultimately a word game. And many of these questions about “is there a God” and “how do you know, because you haven’t been there” — many of these things are analyzable in terms of picking out whether they are actually a word game. Which is what you did at the very beginning of the episode when I was asking the questions — you were saying these are things you have to be very careful with. And I think that’s where Epicurus comes from: not only with the observation from the senses, but also with a logical analysis that will tear apart the opposition and point out that it’s one of those “emperor has no clothes” situations — they’re asserting things that are not even wrong, as the cliché goes.
And I’d like to say something here: when I was first learning about Epicurus, this whole general topic is one that I have been interested in for a long, long time, and have noticed conflict between what I now understand would be an Epicurean versus a Platonist — but I didn’t recognize that was what was happening. It just irritated the stew out of me when people would go off on these Platonic tangents and get into these word games, but I didn’t know that my response to them would be connected to any kind of philosophical structure. It was one of the things when I read Epicurus — even just reading the Principal Doctrines — I thought, “Ah, yeah, he’s like me.” You know, it wasn’t just pleasure, of course, that was a big thing, but it was also things like this, where I just can’t understand a lot of the modern position on these kinds of discussions. And now I understand it’s their Platonism — and that has made some of that much easier for me, because I don’t have to feel like I’m just some weird outlier who doesn’t understand them.
Charles: I think catching up on definitions would be good, because a lot of the terminology within Epicurean philosophy is contrasted between contemporaries of Epicurus but also with accepted definitions today. For example, pleasure — the way we conceive of it is very different from the Cyrenaic sense. And as Cassius had put out in the thread for Episode 10, the Stoics understand God in a very different manner — it’s very similar to Baruch Spinoza’s God, and that alone is different from a Platonic sense or a Peripatetic or even a Christian understanding. And that’s why I think words have to be articulated without getting into word games.
Cassius: Yes. That’s what part of that certainty comes from within the philosophy.
Charles: In the Cyril Bailey translation — I believe it’s the Letter to Herodotus — yeah, so in the Cyril Bailey translation of the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus — or at least the translation — makes it a point to use the word “space” differently from “void.” And we have to understand that our definitions, founded on consensus, aren’t always going to be the same. To some people they could absolutely define a square circle — and I think we kind of have to be wary of things like that.
Cassius: Well, yeah, they could take those words and change the definition, but then —
Charles: It’s for the necessity of consensus to stay put in reality. Words are a key part of that, so we have to understand the relationships between words and understand them at their most basic sense. Any word you know can be deconstructed indefinitely, but we do have to always be able to point to some kind of reality example — at least something that we’re extrapolating from — if we really get confused with each other. As I said, we can have a general understanding; we can’t completely untether them and get into an abstract realm, or there’s no way the definitions are ever going to make sense.
Cassius: Okay, let’s have a round of closing thoughts here. We’ll go around the table. So that I don’t forget what I want to say at the moment, let me add this: one of the continuing themes and one of the reasons we’re doing the review of the book of Lucretius is to address what a lot of people think — “Oh, this is just a physics book, and it’s very fascinating how 2,000 years ago the Greeks came up with atoms and void even though they didn’t have electron microscopes, and gee, isn’t that nice.” But I think if Epicurus were here, one thing he might say is that in fact, even the basic theory of atoms and void is one of those manifold possibilities that he would have been the first to admit might need to be expressed or explained differently once he had additional information. But I don’t think that would have bothered him. He would have said: I suggested to you one way that was consistent with the facts; if there’s another way that’s consistent with the facts, then absolutely we should consider that as well. And so he would point to that argument of manifold possibilities — that that’s what you use to explain what you see around you and put it into a theory that you can then apply and live with. But I think he would also say that more so than the details of his atoms and void, he’s confronting the logical arguments that these other people are throwing in our face and confusing us with about things like square circles and the existence of God. Epicurus is fighting not only on the ground of physics but on the ground of logic. And when he illustrates for us that you meet logical word games by the senses, that is so absolutely hugely important that everything else kind of fades into the background for me, because every other question comes down to: what is your standard of proof? What is your means of analysis? How are you going to look at something? And Epicurus is answering that over and over by pointing out the method. So that’s kind of my closing thought — but let’s go around the table and bring things to a close for today. Who wants to go first? Martin, are you still with us?
Martin: Yes, but I don’t have a closing statement. I just got a bit hooked on this “block universe” that Elaine mentioned. I just find references to movies and physics — but what does the “block universe” mean? I say “black universe” —
Elaine: “Block” — B-L-O-C-K. Block universe. Yeah, it’s called the Growing Block theory.
Cassius: I’ve heard of it. Why is it a “block” instead of a circle? I thought the classical analysis of monism — it’s a circle. Why is it a block?
Elaine: You know, I don’t know. I think the idea is that all time is synchronous — yeah. So I don’t know. It’s a syllogism in like four or five points; I’d have to look it up again.
Martin: Well, I’m sorry — I was off on that. Let me look for it. I see a link about “block universe” now. Okay — it looks like nonsense, but anyway, I will have a look.
Cassius: Kind of my general feeling.
Elaine: This guy Denis was saying that we’re actually all one being, just at different space positions within the block, and therefore that should make us feel more friendly towards these other beings, because they’re actually all us. I’m like — dude, then we’re like a monster.
Cassius: I heard that theory from a cult movie in the 60s. I really don’t have anything to add — I’ll just say that we’ve talked a lot about abstraction versus what is practical, and I think that’s part of the reason Epicureanism appeals to me: it’s much more practical. It’s something you can actually apply to your life. So that’s its appeal.
Cassius: And you’re confident — you’re confirmed in your opinion — and you’re willing to go with practicality as what’s important, even though you’ve never existed throughout the history of the universe and even though you haven’t been everywhere in the universe. You’re going to stick with practicality as your rule.
Julie: I am, yes.
Cassius: Charles?
Charles: As I was saying — I don’t really have one — just that I kind of want to reaffirm the importance of definitions and consensus, and how they differ among different groups, and how that leads to misconception and straw-man arguments and word games.
Cassius: I think it’s been a very good discussion today. And I appreciate it, especially during the midst of the coronavirus epidemic — or pandemic — right? But we won’t let that stop us, and we’ll be back next week. Right. All right, hope everybody has a good week. Thanks a lot. Bye.