Episode 041 - The Nature of the Mind and Spirit Is Complex; Sense is Not a Property of The Elements That Make Them, But An Event
Date: 10/25/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1724-episode-forty-one-the-nature-of-the-mind-and-spirit-is-complex-sense-is-not-a-pr/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”This four-person episode (Cassius, Martin and Charles reading, Elaine) covers Book Three lines 258–357, addressing the complex composition of the mind and soul and the concept that sense is not an inherent property of the elements but an event — an accident — of their combination and motion.
Martin reads the first portion of text, which introduces Lucretius’s most complex and speculative claim: that the mind and soul are composed not just of the three identifiable substances (vapor, air, and heat) but of a fourth, unnamed nature that is even finer and smaller than the others. This nameless fourth thing is “the very soul of the soul itself” — the primary mover that sets the other three in motion, producing sensation. Charles reads the second portion, which describes how the four natures are mixed like smell, heat, and taste in a piece of flesh; how heat, vapor, and air correspond to different animal temperaments (lion = heat/passion; deer = vapor/cold/fear; ox = air/mild calm); how human minds are formed of the same principles, capable of philosophical correction but unable to wholly eradicate innate nature; and how soul and body cannot be separated without destruction to both, since sense is kindled by their joint operation and is an event, not a property peculiar to either alone.
Discussion centers on several major themes. The fourth unnamed nature generates extended debate: the group agrees it is not supernatural — it is matter and void, simply unidentified — and Cassius speculates it might correspond to electricity or some yet-to-be-discovered physical phenomenon. They note that Lucretius explicitly flags the difficulty by saying the Latin language cannot adequately name or describe it, and that he is clearly acknowledging the frontier of his knowledge rather than retreating to the supernatural. The question of whether mind and soul are the same thing or different is also murky: the text seems to use them interchangeably at points, with the “soul of the soul” being the innermost part of the mind — possibly suggesting soul is part of mind, or that they share the fourth nature in common.
The lion/deer/ox passage draws strong medical pushback from Elaine, who identifies it as structurally identical to the ancient theory of humors (phlegm, bile, etc.) and Ayurvedic doshas — constitutional typologies that associate personality with physical substances. She objects to calling this science: it is hypothesis at best, and the underlying model is wrong. Martin agrees. The most contentious passage is the final line of that paragraph: that “the traces of original nature which cannot be corrected by the rules of reason are so small that nothing hinders us from leading a life worthy of the gods.” Elaine argues this is flatly incompatible with modern biology — genetics, epigenetics, phenotypes, constitutional anxiety — and that the blank slate is known to be wrong. Cassius argues the statement must be read in light of what Epicurean gods actually represent (not perfect, not painless) and that leading “a life worthy of the gods” simply means living well within one’s capacity, not achieving perfection. Charles recalls that the Diogenes Laertius wise man sayings explicitly note that not everyone has the same constitution to become wise. The episode closes with a discussion of determinism vs. agency (Elaine prefers “agency” over “free will” as less loaded), epiphenomenalism (Charles), and Munro’s summary note that sense in this passage is treated as an event/accident — not an inherent property — consistent with the framework Lucretius developed back in Book One.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 41 of Lucretius Today. 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. Starting with today’s episode, we’ll jump right into the discussion and will refer everyone who’s not familiar with our podcast to episode one for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. In today’s episode we’ll cover roughly lines 258 through 357 from the Latin text, and we’ll discuss topics that include how the nature of the mind and spirit is complex, and that sense is not a property of the elements that make up the mind and the spirit, but rather an event of their combinations and motions. Now let’s join the discussion with Martin and Charles reading today’s text.
Martin: Yet we are not to suppose this nature of the mind to be simple and unmixed. For a thin breath mingled with a warm vapour forsakes the bodies of dying men, and this vapour draws the air along with it, for there can be no heat without air intermixed, and heat being in its nature rare must needs have some seeds of air united with it.
We find then the mind consists of three principles — of vapour, air, and heat — yet all these are not sufficient to produce sense. For we cannot conceive that either of these, or all of them united, can be the cause of sensible motions that may produce reason and thought. And therefore a fourth nature must needs be added to these, and this indeed has no name at all. But nothing can be more apt to move, nothing more subtle than this, nor consist more of small smooth seeds. And this is what first raises a sensible motion through the body. This, as it is formed of the minutest particles, is first put into motion — then the heat, and the unseen vapour receive a motion from it — and then the air, and so all the limbs are set a-going. Then is the blood agitated, and all the bowels become sensible, and last of all, pleasure or pain is communicated to the bones and marrow. But no pain or any violent evil can pierce so far without disordering and setting the whole into confusion, so that there is no more place for life, and the parts of the soul fly away through the pores of the body. But this motion often stops upon the surface of the body, and then the soul remains whole, and their life is preserved.
Now, how these four principles are mixed, and in what manner they subsist, I am very desirous to explain, but the poorness of the Latin tongue prevents me against my will. Yet, as far as that permits, I will endeavor briefly to touch upon this subject.
The seeds then of these principles move so confusedly among themselves, that no one of them can be separated from another, nor is there any place severally allotted to each, where any one can act by itself. But there are, as it were, many powers of the same body. As in a piece of any animal there is smell, and heat, and taste, and out of all these one perfect body is composed — so heat, air, and the invisible vapour, and that formless active quality which is the principle of motion to the other three, and from which all sensible motion rises through the limbs, composed by the mixture, make one subtle substance or one nature.
This formless something is deeply fixed in the inmost recesses of the body, nor is there anything in the whole body more secretly and inwardly placed. It is, as it were, the very soul of the soul itself. For as in the limbs and through all the body the united force and power of the mind and soul are hid and unseen because they are formed of small and few seeds, so this something without a name, being composed of even smaller principles, lies deep and concealed. It is the very soul of the whole soul itself and governs the whole body.
Charles: By the same rule it is necessary that the vapour, the air, and the heat be so properly mingled through the limbs and be disposed either higher or lower than one another, that one certain nature may be formed from all, lest the power of the heat, the vapour and the air, being divided and separately placed, might destroy the sense and prevent its operation.
Heat prevails in the mind when the creature is enraged, grows hot, and fire sparkles from its glowing eyes. Much vapour is cold and the companion of fear — it excites horror in the body and shakes the limbs. But air is of a calm and mild quality; it resides in a quiet breast and a serene countenance.
But those have most heat whose hearts are fierce and whose angry minds are soon inflamed into passion. Of this sort and the first place is a distracted fury of lions, who, roaring, often burst their very breasts and are unable to contain the torrent of rage that swells within. The cold temperature of the deer has more of vapour and sooner incites a chillness in the limbs which causes a trembling motion through the whole body. But the nature of the ox consists more of soft air, nor does the smoky firebrand of anger that spreads a shade of black darkness over the mind too much inflame him, nor is he stupefied by the darts of chilling fear, but his nature is placed between both, between the fierce lion and the deer.
The mind of man is formed of the same principles, though the discipline of philosophy may polish and correct some, yet it leaves behind the marks of the original nature of the mind. Nor are we to think that the seeds of vice can be wholly rooted out. One man, we see, runs more rashly into passion, another is more disposed to fear, and a third is apt to be more merciful than just. It is impossible but the various tempers of mankind and actions that follow them must differ in many other instances, the reasons of which are at present out of my power to explain. Nor can I find words to express that variety of figures by which the seeds are distinguished and from which this variety of disposition is produced.
This, however, may justly be asserted on this occasion: that the traces of original nature which cannot be corrected by the rules of reason are so very small that nothing hinders us from leading a life worthy of the gods.
This nature therefore of the soul is contained by the whole body. It is the keeper of the body and the cause of its safety, for they are both united closely together by mutual bonds, nor can they be torn asunder but by the destruction of both. Because it is impossible to separate the odor from a lump of frankincense, but the nature of both must perish — so it is equally difficult to part the mind and soul from the whole body, but they must all be dissolved. Of such interwoven principles are they formed from their very beginning, that they enjoy a common life, nor have either of them, either the mind or the body, in a separate state, the power of sense without the assistance of each other. But sense is incited in us by the nerves from the common motions of both, and by their joint operations.
Besides, the body is never born alone, nor does it grow or continue after the soul is fled. For the water throws off vapour when it is made hot — it is not by that means destroyed, but remains entire. The limbs, I say, cannot with the same safety bear the separation of the soul when it retires from them, but thus divided they must all perish and rot together. For the mutual conjunction of the soul and the body from the very beginning, even as they lie in the womb of the mother, does so jointly promote the vital motions that no separation can be made without death and dissolution.
From hence you learn that since their preservation so much depends upon each other, their natures are also inseparably joined and united together.
But further, if anyone denies that the body has sense and believes that the soul diffused through the whole body is only capable of that motion we call sense, he opposes the plainest evidence and the truth of all experience. For who would ever pretend to say that the body has sense if the thing itself did not fully prove and convince us of it? But it is plain, you’ll say, that the body is void of all sense when the soul is gone. True — for this faculty is not peculiar to the body alone, but to the soul and body united. And we know the sense becomes weaker and decays as the body and soul grow old together.
Cassius: Thank you, Charles. Let’s go back to the very beginning and start to sort some of this out. My throat’s a little dry after that.
Elaine, are you still there? I’m sure there’s a lot going on in your mind.
Elaine: Oh, man. You know the sections where I say that there are parts where he goes beyond looking at evidence and uses a lot of conjecture. This is definitely pricey.
Cassius: Yes. Yes. I’m sure that observation applies here too. It’s kind of like — when he goes and starts talking about the lions and deer and things like that, he’s making a point that is important and true: that these animals have natures that come from somewhere. He’s not doing a very good job in attributing them to different types of vapor or air. But on the other hand, he’s giving something as a suggestion for what it could be related to. And when you compare it back to what Plato was saying about recollection and past lives and so forth, he at least is providing some kind of scientific explanation for how different animals can have different dispositions without divine leadership.
Let’s stay with the first paragraph first.
Elaine: Yeah, obviously this calls to mind the humors — black bile, phlegm, sanguine, yellow bile — and the personality characteristics that were supposed to be attributed to them. You find variations of this in all sorts of different cultures. I think about the Ayurvedic medicine that has the vata and the pitta — if I may not be saying those things right — and the different kinds of people’s personalities that you’re supposed to be able to infer from their physical builds. He’s doing the same kind of thing. These all rest on physical, material properties of the body as information about the kind of person. But I object to calling this science. You could have this as a hypothesis, but it’s not science to say that these things are how it is — that’s not scientific whatsoever.
Cassius: Ironically enough, the first sentence reminds me a lot of the 21 grams experiment.
Elaine: Yeah, yes.
Cassius: I’d like to break up a couple of points in what we have as our first paragraph — from “yet we are not supposed” to the line that says “but the motion stops at the surface of the body and the soul remains whole and life is preserved.”
What this section has called to my mind is a discussion we’ve had over the last several episodes about whether he’s saying that there are mind and soul particles. He’s certainly saying that particles of a particular type make up the mind. But when he’s talking about heat and air and vapor and then talking about a fourth nature — it seems to me that, whether or not it’s significant to what we’re talking about right now, he’s saying that these things are made up of small particles, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t transition phases where these particles are coming together and forming something else. When he talks about a fourth nature, he’s certainly not saying that’s a particle — it’s something that is presumably a combination of matter and void just like everything else.
Martin: He doesn’t make it clear whether this fourth something with its small, smooth seeds is one type of small, smooth seed or another combination of different small, smooth seeds.
Cassius: Yeah, I would almost lean toward him saying it’s one — because otherwise, by saying “there is a fourth nature,” you’d imagine he means a specific single type of seed alongside the others: vapor, air, and heat would each be different seeds, and this fourth unnamed thing would be a specific one type of seed. He doesn’t name it, but he does outright say that it is what causes sensation, and combined with the other three natures forms a whole.
Charles: The fourth nature puts the others into motion. Right.
Cassius: Yeah. This discussion of three regular natures plus some fourth unnamed nature gets a lot of attention for the potential that in talking about a fourth nature he is straying into supernatural territory or contradicting his earlier premises. But I don’t think so. I think because he talks about it as being unnamed, he’s talking about it as being mysterious — something we’re not familiar with yet, like we’re familiar with vapor, air, and heat. I would suggest he might even be talking about electricity or something like that which he hasn’t yet identified as a nature. But I think it’s important to lock the door against the idea that he’s talking about anything supernatural or anything that is not matter.
Charles: Yeah, it’s not an instance of hermetic forbidden knowledge or other fanciful things. I do kind of wonder why he didn’t come up with a name for it. But thinking about it — it’s important that he didn’t. It’s acknowledging that this is something not yet discovered, but on the other hand it’s not supernatural. Lucretius has his critics who tend to just go through the book and look for particular things that interest them, and they’ll find this thing and say “there’s a fourth unnamed element” and imply there’s something non-natural about it. But that’s not warranted.
Cassius: Now there’s something else here. We talked a little bit before about whether there’s a difference between mind and soul. And these first couple of paragraphs make it sound like he’s using mind and soul interchangeably. He doesn’t talk about the parts of the mind as being different from the parts of the soul. And this fourth part is like “the soul of the soul” — but he just said that was part of the mind. So I think he’s saying they’re the same thing, or certainly related — related in the sense of being bodily and composed of matter and void.
Elaine: Yeah. How would you say that he says that they’re separate things? Because when he says “this fourth something is deeply fixed in the innermost recesses of the body” — he has just said that’s a part of the mind. And then he talks about that being “the soul of the soul,” and then “the united force and power of the mind and the soul.” So maybe he’s saying the soul is part of the mind?
Cassius: Yeah, I mean, you could use them interchangeably — the mind as reason and intuition, and the soul as consciousness. But he seems to be using two different words or two different designations. And it doesn’t make sense that they would be identical for him to be using both words like that. But he’s not saying that the soul is made of something different from the mind.
Martin: No. Right. It wouldn’t be that the mysterious fourth nature is independent or acts differently compared to the other natures — or made of a different composition than the other natures and particles.
Cassius: Okay. I see what you’re saying. It’s not like he’s saying the mind has four parts and then he starts talking about the fourth part — the soul of the soul — as though the soul is made of something else. He hasn’t talked about what the soul is made of other than calling that fourth part the soul of the soul. So it’s not really clear that he’s saying there’s any difference between them.
Elaine: Yeah, I don’t have any problem with the way you stated that at all. It’s confusing to me — unclear what he’s saying there. I would take the position that mind and soul are clearly related, they clearly cannot exist without each other or without the body. What other points I can draw from it beyond those, I’m going to follow my own rule and not speculate further because I’m not sure what else to draw other than what he says.
Charles: Yeah. And he does outright state in the next paragraph that the Latin language can’t really put it into words. Maybe that’s the problem.
Cassius: Yeah, let’s move into that second passage.
Charles: Last thing in the first paragraph which was interesting — the point that pain or violent evil penetrates the body and parts of the soul fly away through the pores. But it’s important that he made the distinction that it stops before fully exiting the body, because otherwise that excess of pain would result in death. I was wondering if that fourth nature was something a bit about that vital force we were discussing a few weeks ago.
Cassius: Yeah, yeah. I guess he’s wrestling with the issue that you can have lumps of elements in front of you on the table and maybe identify all the elements in the body and put them there, but you can’t just mix them together and expect them to come to life without some kind of something else added to the picture. And that picture, on the other hand, can’t be supernatural either.
Elaine: Right — that’s the hard problem of consciousness, Cassius.
Cassius: What do you think, Martin? You’ve been silent.
Martin: I have difficulty starting on this because, as already mentioned, he’s using the wrong model and tries to infer from that.
Charles: Yeah — this could also be like the thing about limbs being severed and how that doesn’t break off the entirety of the soul. He could be referencing some contemporary theories, kind of like how Elaine talked about the humors.
Elaine: Yeah. It is really fascinating to me from a medical perspective how all sorts of different groups of humans came up with similar ideas — ideas about how the appearance or constitution of something would tell you about the character or personality of the organism. Almost like phrenology, really.
Cassius: That third paragraph — when you say you were thinking about it — that’s very significant material in there. Probably one of the most memorable aspects of what we have as that third paragraph is the conclusion about how “the traces of the original nature which cannot be corrected by the rules of reason are so small that nothing hinders us from leading a life worthy of the gods.” So there’s some really important stuff in here that relates to determinism, to DNA and intuition and instinct, and to the whole issue of blank slates — for Aristotle — or the issue of pre-existence of the soul for Plato.
Elaine: Yeah. But two sentences earlier he says that the seeds of vice can’t be rooted out entirely. And that last sentence is clearly not compatible with modern biology. The blank slate we know is wrong — our DNA shows us that nature versus nurture matters enormously. I like whoever said that nature and nurture are just the short side and the long side of a rectangle — you’ve got both, but our genetic features are extremely important. They affect our personality, our character, what we like, what we don’t like. You can’t just say there’s only a little of that which can’t be corrected with reason. That’s extreme.
Cassius: Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about, because when you first made the statement that that last sentence is clearly incorrect, there are many aspects of it, and I was focusing on the part about “life worthy of the gods” and trying to make a very precise point about whether an Epicurean god is possible or not under this sentence. But, Elaine, you’re talking about more everyday mental issues, emotional issues — things you can’t simply use reason to talk yourself out of.
Elaine: Schizophrenia — I mean, that’s like one in a hundred people. But there are all sorts of other traits that don’t rise to the level of a disease that are biological. There’s a cluster of phenotypes — what’s the actual expression of your genotype and your epigenetic features — where people with certain constitutions have a stronger startle reflex and can be more prone to anxiety. So this is just not true. I just think back then there was no way they could have known how much our starting material, epigenetic features, and early experiences would affect us later — and you can’t just turn all that around with behaviorism. The behaviorists would have loved this statement.
Cassius: Yeah, Charles has pointed this out earlier, but let’s stay with this point for a while, because I think the practical implications are important. He said just a few sentences before this that “the discipline of philosophy may polish and correct some, but it leaves behind the marks of the original nature of the mind. Nor are we to think that the seeds of vice can wholly be rooted out.” He is clearly acknowledging that these dispositions cannot totally be rooted out. And yet a couple of sentences later he makes the statement that “nothing hinders us from leading a life worthy of the gods.” So I do think we ought to spend some time talking about this. It’s not just a matter of his science being wrong. He’s thinking about this contradiction himself — so he had to have had a position on why that final statement is consistent with everything else.
Charles: Well, he opens with “on this specific occasion” — he’s making it a smaller contribution. But he’s not providing context behind it. And Daniel Brown’s translation says: “It is impossible but the various tempers of mankind and actions that follow them must differ in many other instances, the reasons of which are at present out of my power to explain.” So he’s acknowledging he can’t fully explain it.
Cassius: Yeah. And so that’s reasonable — but he just gives a really insignificant place to nature, and that’s not warranted. Not everybody is going to be able to have a fantastically pleasurable life. There’s no doubt about that.
Elaine: Yeah. And I need to stay with this. When I try to parse out what you’re focusing on, Elaine — that last sentence, where it says nothing hinders us from living a life worthy of the gods — if we took out that last sentence, we’ve got line after line where he’s beating into us that these things cannot be totally eradicated.
Cassius: My view of it would be that to read that last line in a way that is consistent with the rest of it — you have to understand what “life worthy of the gods” means to him. I don’t think it means you’ve actually achieved immortality, or a totally painless life. But even to say “more pleasure than pain” — not everybody’s gonna make it, you’re right.
Charles: Yeah, everybody’s going to vary enormously. And it’s just “traces” — it’s not minor. I know that the source is a bit dubious, but this is brought up in the Diogenes Laertius wise man sayings — that not everybody would have the same constitution to become wise. So they knew that not everybody is going to succeed in all of this.
Elaine: I would have been okay if he had said that your original nature is material and it’s not only that you can’t wholly replace it — it warms what you are. And yet there are some ways in which you can learn to work with what you have. It’s pleasure over pain. I would have flipped the importance of those things. I would have put a lot more importance on the original nature. It’s not that we’re getting rid of the traces of our nature — we’re finding out what our nature is and how can we work with what we have to do the best we can. You’re not going to completely remake yourself. There is neuroplasticity — I don’t mean to say there isn’t — but it’s not like we’re mostly remaking ourselves and only leaving a little trace, which is the way he’s putting it. The entire third paragraph is just hammering down that we have instances of nature that are inherent and intrinsic to us, and how they differ from person to person.
Cassius: But there’s something lost in translation. Let’s look at the other translations on those last two sentences. And also — somebody listening to this podcast is going to say to themselves, “why aren’t these guys talking about determinism and free will in this context?” Because he’s going to come down in the end and say that free will exists and that everything is not preordained through determinism. So in talking about these dispositions that animals have, he’s beginning to raise that issue — maybe these dispositions are so strong that there is total determinism and you have no control over the way you act. But in the end, he’s got to come back to his previous fundamental position: that the swerve exists and we do have some degree of control.
Elaine: I hate the word “free will” because there’s really no way for people to hear that without going to this sort of disassociated thing that has escaped material processes. “Agency” is a much better word — that we have the experience of agency, this awareness of deciding. But what has led us to make our decisions? All of that is carried about through interactions of particles with probabilistic outcomes — not exactly predictable, but it’s still matter. Even though it’s agency, we obviously act on our bodies to change our bodies. I can go out and get another earring if I want one — I’m obviously changing my body. I can do things to change my mind. But that with which I change my body is not immaterial and has not escaped the causal chain. There’s no such thing.
Cassius: I would say, though, that one of the things I come back to is that he understands how you’ve got both these deterministic factors and this ability to have some degree of free will. So to me, when he says you’re still capable of leading a life worthy of the gods — we have to live and say: what does it mean to lead a life worthy of the gods? There is no such thing as a god who is perfect, and so perfection is not what we’re talking about here. Epicurus was not perfect and yet they compared him to living a life worthy of the gods. So that’s part of what’s going on here too.
Charles: Going back to the free will thing and the lion — the lion being unable to contain the torrent of rage — it is interesting that the ox was placed in the middle of them. And directly after that he says that the principles which form the human mind are much like that — we’re in between, like the ox, between the lion and the deer. And then afterwards he follows that up by stating that we are capable of change through things like philosophy. So he could have gone further down the free will line, but I don’t think that’s really the matter at heart here.
Cassius: Well, to me this is one of those lines where you’ve got to decide what you really think it means in order to decide whether Epicurean philosophy is worth pursuing. If you read that line in an extreme way — that nothing hinders reason from preventing us from living a godlike life — well, reason does not allow us to live like Jesus Christ or Jehovah. There’s no doubt about that. So if you look at it from a conventional religious perspective, it makes no sense and you’d have to reject it. But I think there are reasonable ways to look at it that do make sense.
Elaine: I really hate the word “free will” — and the theological version, I hate that because there’s no way for people to hear that without going to this disassociated thing that has escaped material processes. Agency is a much better word. Part of the reason is that the term “worthy of gods” is in here — you have to know what type of gods he’s referring to. And it’s going to vary tremendously from person to person how much that person is going to be successful in becoming a highly rational being versus another one. Not everybody seems to have the same constitution — using the words of Diogenes Laertius — to become a super-rational person. It seems like.
Cassius: Super-rational — and that’s not the Epicurean goal. Epicurus needs pleasure, not just becoming super-rational.
Elaine: Right, right. I agree. I didn’t mean to imply that that should be the goal. Just talking about that in the general context of people who think that’s a good idea.
Cassius: Well, we can probably begin to finish by talking briefly about the fourth paragraph. There’s a lot in there as well. And Munro in his summary has hinted that Lucretius is going back and making another analogy here to something he discussed — I think as far back as Book One — into the issue of properties, eternal properties versus qualities. There seem to be several different words they’ll use: qualities, accidents, and then events. Brown prefers the word “event” but a lot of people will use the word “accident.” And so this last paragraph seems to be a discussion of how the soul cannot be separated from the body — to some extent that makes it a property, which if you try to separate it out, it’s gone — just like you can’t separate water from being wet. But on the other hand, the mind and the spirit do an awful lot of things which can be separated from them — and those things they’re doing, these events and accidents that we experience as our day-to-day life, they’re not an eternal part of the soul.
Elaine: Okay — I’m not sure where you’re going there. What I got from this last section is: in times today people talk a lot more about disembodied consciousness or the soul — we’ve got those religious ideas about whether there’s something of us that can exist without the body. But this is interestingly focusing on the reverse — about the body not being able to exist without the soul, or the mind, or whatever. Of course naturally I’m thinking about brain death and bodies that are kept going for a period of time with machines even after the brain has no more activity. But it doesn’t work very well — the body doesn’t really manage itself very well, with the atrophy and all that.
So this is the other side of it — that people don’t talk as much about. When you die, your body doesn’t have any way to maintain itself, and so it will — there’s a time separation when the body starts to come apart. It’s not instant that we vaporize, but the body does rot and come apart without the mind, without the nervous system.
Cassius: Let me read briefly from Munro’s notes on this last part. He says: “The soul is held together by the body and in turn keeps the body in life; the one cannot be torn from the other without destruction to both, any more than perfume can be separated from frankincense. By their mutual motions sense is kindled; nor is the body ever born nor does it grow without the soul, nor continue when the soul has left it, even in the mother’s womb they learn in common the motions of life. And then Munro says: to say that the body has no sense and that the soul spread through it alone is what feels, is to contradict a self-evident truth. But it is said that when the soul departs the body has no sense. And he says: yes — because sense, like much else, is not an inherent property but an accident only.”
So Munro understands this a whole lot better than I do, but there’s a lot going on in that last paragraph about the implications of the fact that the body and the mind are inseparably joined and united.
Charles: Throughout most of Book Three so far I’ve always been getting little reminiscences of the mind-body problem — that’s always going to be brought up whenever you talk about distinguishing the mind and the body and the soul and all that. But there’s a position on the mind-body problem — I’m a little hesitant to bring it up because it’s definitely outside my area of expertise — it’s called epiphenomenalism. I’ll link it into the EpicureanFriends forum so people who are listening to the podcast can find it. But in essence: physical events and mental events in the body are linked with each other, and changes in the mind are physical — through chemicals. This goes back to something like Descartes. So maybe in the following paragraphs in Book Three it might be of some use in understanding where Lucretius is coming from with the different vapors and airs and what constitutes the mind.
Cassius: Looking at that — looking at the summary paragraph of epiphenomenalism — it’s pretty much what you would expect Lucretius to say: that subjective mental states arise from physical changes within the body and they don’t have an independent existence. Is that the point? There’s no independent existence to these mental states?
Charles: I think that would probably summarize it, yeah. Physical things or events in the body are linked with thoughts, consciousness, and even cognition — but those themselves would be physical for that change to take place. Right.
Cassius: We are beginning to come to the end of our allotted time for today, and we have not nearly had enough input from Martin. Martin, you made a parallel earlier about the model being insufficient — the model that Lucretius is using. In the past you’ve talked a lot about the hard-body model being insufficient. As we start talking about these mental processes and so forth — do you think there is a model issue here? Is there a way for you to summarize what you think the current model is on this subject?
Martin: I mean, of course we cannot look again at analogies where these formless substances he mentions would possibly be something like an electric field or electrons or ions or something like that — so that one would be possible. But he’s just pulling it from somewhere. So once starting with an inadequate model, by building on that model it becomes just more and more fantastic. He tries to link it still sometimes with a bit of evidence, but it just doesn’t really prove this. Things become so complicated based on the wrong starting point that it doesn’t really matter in the end.
Cassius: You know, I just want to qualify that when I say “mind-body” I’m always meaning nervous system and the rest of the body. The mind is not different from the body. But I like the framing that our brains are constantly taking in sensory input from the rest of the environment — so the mind is not a brain in a vat. We’re not in a vacuum. Mind includes how our nervous system is processing everything else that’s going on. But it’s not like an insubstantial ether-ghost kind of thing. I would never mean anything like that.
Cassius: Well, let’s begin to come to a close for the day then. Who else has closing comments?
Martin: I don’t have any for this week.
Cassius: Okay. Elaine, anything you haven’t added already?
Elaine: I would just say: this is clear from this passage — that he is at least saying that the mind, that there’s nothing immaterial going on with thinking in the mind. Nothing immaterial — no independent existence for the mind or the soul apart from the body. Is that correct?
Cassius: Right. There’s nothing that inhabits the body from outside. It’s part of the body whatever it is. Yeah.
Elaine: Right. There’s nothing that comes from the outside into the body. It’s part of the body, whatever it is.
Cassius: I think we probably have a consensus on that point. If anybody disagrees, this would be a good time to say so. But I think we do have a consensus on that. And with that maybe we should close for today. Unless anybody has anything else, we’ll come back in another week or so. Talk to you then. Okay, thanks. Bye.
Elaine: Bye.
Martin: Bye.
Charles: Bye.