Episode 043 - The Mind is Born, Grows Old, and Dies With the Body
Date: 11/07/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1749-episode-forty-three-the-mind-is-born-grows-old-and-dies-with-the-body/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 43 covers lines 445–547 of Book Three, Lucretius’s catalogue of evidence that the mind is mortal: it grows with the body in childhood, matures in middle age, deteriorates in old age, is distorted by disease, intoxicated by wine, and ravaged by seizure. Martin reads the text, which Cassius describes as sounding like a German professor’s lecture. The group notes that all of Lucretius’s examples argue from deterioration, and Cassius wonders whether the argument could ever be run in reverse — from enhancement rather than decay. Elaine, as a physician, identifies the one positive instance in the passage: “the mind can be made sound by the powers of medicine.”
An extended epistemological discussion grows from the line “so evidently does the true matter of fact overthrow all false reasoning.” Cassius connects this to Philodemus’s concept of inconceivability as a standard of proof, and to Pierre-Simon Laplace’s formulation that “the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness” (often misattributed to Carl Sagan). This leads into a conversation about anxiety and evidence: Elaine reports that research shows reassurance actually increases anxiety in susceptible people, and proposes that the Epicurean maxim “death is nothing to us” works precisely because it acknowledges fear without dwelling on it and moves on, rather than attempting to argue the fear away with data. Charles contributes a story about a tweet in which someone claiming to believe that evidence changes minds is told “studies prove that’s not the case” and replies “I still believe it’s true.”
The session closes with two additional topics. The line “whatever is so altered as to leave the limits of its first nature is no more what it was, but instantly dies” prompts comparison with Heraclitus’s river — Martin and Cassius agree that Lucretius may be engaging the classical argument about being, non-being, and change, and Charles cites both Bailey’s and Munro’s translations to confirm the reading. Cassius links this to Platonic idealism’s definition of the perfect as that which cannot be improved (from Plato’s Philebus) and sees Lucretius as offering an implicit counter to it. The final section’s argument that the soul is mortal whether it scatters into air or contracts into one place draws Cassius’s praise as a model of Epicurean multi-hypothesis reasoning: more than one physical mechanism may explain the phenomenon, but the conclusion remains the same.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 43 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’s 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. For anyone who’s not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode One for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about that, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In today’s episode we’ll cover roughly Latin lines 445 through 547 from Book Three of the poem. The topic will be how the mind is born, grows old, and dies with the body. Now let’s join the discussion with Martin reading today’s text.
Martin: (reads lines 445–547)
Besides, we perceive the soul is born with the body, grows up with it, and both wax old together. For as children are of a weak and tender body, their mind likewise is of the same frail complexion. As the age improves and their strength is more confirmed, their judgment ripens more and the powers of their mind are more enlarged. But when the body is shaken by the irresistible stroke of time and the limbs fail without strength, their understanding grows lame, their tongue and their mind lose their vigor. All the faculties fail and go away together. The whole nature of the soul therefore must be dissolved and scattered like smoke into the air since we see it is born with the body, increases together with it and, with it, as I said before, becomes feeble by age and decay.
Add to this that the body is subject to violent diseases and tormenting pains: so the mind is affected by sharp scares, by griefs and fear, and therefore must equally partake of death and dissolution with it. And then, in greatest disorders of the body, the mind frequently grows mad, raves and talks wildly. Sometimes it is sunk into such a profound and never-ending sleep by a heavy lethargy, the eyes shut and the head nodding, so that neither hears the words, nor is able to distinguish the face of those who stand about, but during their cheeks with tears and striving to recall the departing breath. Therefore, you must needs allow that the mind may be dissolved, since the infection of the disease pierces through it. For grief and disease are both the causes of death, as we are taught by experience in a thousand instances.
And again, why is it, when the quick force of wine strikes through a man, and the insinuating heat works in all his veins, why follows the heaviness of the limbs? The legs no longer support the reeling body, the tongue falters, the mind is drowned, the eyes swim, noise, hiccups, brawlings, deafen your ears, and many other evils the consequence of such debauches. How could this be, did not the impetuous force of the wine distract the soul as it lies diffused through the body? Now whatever can be thus disturbed and hindered in its operations would, were the force to grow more violent, be destroyed and utterly deprived of future being.
Besides, a person surprised with the sudden fate of a disease drops down before our eyes as if he were thunderstruck, he foams, he groans and trembles all over, he is distracted, stretches his nerves, is distorted, he pants, he tosses and tires his limbs with strange and unnatural postures. The reason is because the force of the disease, driven violently through the limbs, agitates and disturbs the mind, as the foaming waves of the sea are enraged by the strong blast of winds. And then groans are forced from the breast, because the limbs are tormented with pain, and the seeds of the voice are thrown out from the bottom of the breast, and hurried in confusion, without any distinct accent through the mouth. The men rave, because the powers of the mind and soul are distracted, and their principles, as I said, broken, disjoint and divided by the violence of the distemper. But when the cause of the disease gives way, and the black humor of the corrupt body retires into some convenient vessel, then the patient begins to rise, feeble and staggering, and by degrees returns to all his senses, and recovers life.
Since therefore the soul is so tossed about with such strange disorders, and labors with such agonies in so miserable a manner, as it is enclosed in the body, how do you think it can subsist without the body in the open air, and exposed forever to the raging fury of all the winds?
And since we see the mind can be made sound, and be affected by the powers of medicine, as well as the disordered body, this is a strong evidence that the mind is mortal. For whoever attempts to make any alteration in the mind, or offers to change the nature of any other thing, must either add some new parts to it, or take off some of the old, or else transpose the former order and situation. But what is immortal can have nothing added to it, or taken from it, nor will admit of any change in the order of its parts. For whatever is so altered as to leave the limits of its first nature, is no more what it was, but instantly dies. The mind therefore, whether it is distempered or relieved by medicine, shows as I observed strong symptoms of its mortality. So evidently does the true matter of fact overthrow all false reasoning, that there is no possibility to escape its force, and the contrary opinion is either way fully refuted.
Besides, we often see men perish by degrees, and lose their vital sense limb by limb. First the nails and toes grow black, then the feet and legs rot. At length the traces of cold death proceed on, step by step, over the other parts of the body. Since therefore the soul is divided, and does not at such a time continue whole and entire, you must pronounce it mortal. But if you think the soul retires out of the dying members into the more inward parts of the body, and contracts its seeds into one place, and so withdraws the sense from the rest of the limbs, yet that place to which the soul retreats, and where so much of it is crowded together, ought to enjoy a more lively and brisker sense, but since there is no such place, it is plain, as we said before, it is scattered piece-meal through the air, and therefore perishes. But suppose we grant, which is false in itself, and allow that the soul may be huddled up together in the bodies of those who die one limb after another, yet then the soul must be confessed to be by nature mortal, for it signifies not whether the soul dies scattered through the air, or perishes with its parts contracted into one place, while the senses steal away from the whole body more and more, and the powers of life by degrees appear less and less.
Cassius: Thank you for reading all of that, Martin. It seems to me particularly appropriate to hear all of that coming from you — you sound like sort of a German doctor lecturing us in some classroom somewhere. That’s very helpful, and thank you very much. So where do we begin?
Charles: Well, I just got to say it’s kind of depressing. We’re all just going to disintegrate and get old and stupid. What a way to start the day.
Cassius: It seems to me — in reading some other material, I don’t know why I mention this right now — but I was first looking into Lucian of Samosata and I ran into Lucan, the Roman poet, and I read his poem, I think it’s called the Pharsalia, about the Roman Civil War.
Charles: The Roman Civil War, yes.
Cassius: And the reason I make that comment now is that it’s amazing — he’ll go paragraph after paragraph about slashing arms, slashing feet, slashing ears, and blood spurting everywhere, and it’s just amazingly graphic in describing the battle scenes. It’s like he’s really just enjoying describing all of that detail, which seems to me to have no purpose whatsoever except to try to horrify you with the horrors of war. And nevertheless, that’s kind of the effect here with this reading — all of these things about toes turning black and so forth.
Charles: Yeah. It’s very quotable though. And yes, I’ve read bits and sections of the Pharsalia before. Lucan was a great writer — it’s just that he died very young.
Cassius: Yeah, these Roman epic poems certainly are a very significant part of our history. What strikes me about the whole section is very, very similar — again, I think I mentioned this last time — to current writings about how the mind is a function of matter and not some supernatural thing that’s living in the body. They use these same kinds of examples about how, clearly, if you get a brain tumor or dementia or whatever, what you think of as “you” is changed. But it just strikes me for the first time, this argument is always made from the standpoint of deterioration. I don’t know if you could make the argument from the standpoint of enhancement, because I don’t guess we know how to do that. But it would be kind of cool if we could ever say, well, look, here we have just this ordinary person and they have had their brain power made much more amazing, and that wasn’t what they started with. Nobody ever goes that way.
Elaine: That’s right. When you’re saying that — there’s the one sentence in here: “since we see the mind can be made sound and be affected by the powers of medicine” — that’s, I suppose, a positive reference there, but in this long stretch of things, that’s the only thing that’s even halfway positive.
Charles: Yeah. Another sentence at the end of that paragraph is pretty important, and I guess we could consider it a positive.
Cassius: Which one?
Charles: “So evidently does the true matter of fact overthrow all false reasoning, that there is no possibility to escape its force, and the contrary opinion is either way fully refuted” — about this immortality of the mind.
Cassius: Now Charles, that’s one of the — I think throughout these passages today there are sentences that are particularly significant, and that was one that I was definitely going to point out. Not so much for its effect on this particular argument about the mind and the soul being mortal, but just for its sort of epistemological value. He’s throwing in this canonical reasoning principle that the truth of facts can be so evident to you that that’s the way you overthrow false opinions. I’ve seen this — and I think this may be an allusion to something we commented on recently in the forum — Philodemus talks about inconceivability as a sort of standard of proof or standard of evidence, where you separate something you should have confidence in from something you don’t. And it sounds to me like almost that he’s talking about that here: there’s no possibility to escape the force of this conclusion. So it’s interesting that I think that sentence probably goes in a collection of epistemology text references.
So our modern take on this is slightly different, but only a little bit. Carl Sagan gets popular credit for saying “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” but it was actually a French mathematician — is it Laplace? I’m not French — how do you pronounce L-A-P-L-A-C-E?
Martin: Laplace.
Cassius: Laplace — okay, all right — who said “the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.” And I think that applies here. To say something is inconceivable — we don’t necessarily close that up, but we’re at the point where we have so much weight of evidence that you’re going to have to come up with something amazing to even introduce your contrary claim into the conversation. For practical purposes it’s the same thing: it’s just inconceivable that right now there’s an invisible unicorn in my living room that I can’t see. I don’t believe in it, but I could also say it’s an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof. Either way works.
Cassius: That’s going to be a continuing topic of conversation as long as we’re talking about Epicurean philosophy, because I think it really goes to the way people think in ordinary life, and to the question — I think Cicero talks about it — of whether probability is the only thing we have in life, or whether there’s a way to go beyond probability and say that at some point something is certain.
Is that the way, Elaine, that you would suggest somebody consider the state of their living room — that there is a one-in-a-million chance there’s a unicorn?
Elaine: Well, it’s a small chance — I couldn’t even put a number on it. It’s close enough to zero that I’m not worried about it. I’m a pragmatist, and I think I’ve mentioned that before — I’m not bothered that one hundred percent certainty is, I think, imaginary. I’m not bothered by that whatsoever.
Cassius: I’m going to take the responsibility for saying this, but I heard somebody else say it on an earlier podcast — one cliché that encapsulates that is “close enough for government work.” Who else has heard that besides me?
Elaine: Yeah, it’s exactly right. What we’re going to base our decisions on — if you feel certain and confident about something and it would really be totally bizarre to think otherwise, go on and take action on it. But I think a skeptic gets obsessed — not necessarily saying anything factually different — but obsessed with that uncertainty to the point of absurdity. And I just don’t think it’s worth worrying about.
Cassius: You know, Elaine, a lot of us know people in the world who have problems with anxiety.
Elaine: Yes. And we had actually a conversation on your page — I posted something this morning. The intuitive thing about anxiety is that you should reassure people with evidence, that you should show them that what they’re worried about is not the case. But it doesn’t work for people with anxiety. If you reassure them, they tend to become more anxious — and the only reason we know that is because the research question has been asked. So if you have a kid that’s worried about monsters and you reassure them, they get more worried. But if you say something like, “Oh, that’s interesting — I remember being worried about monsters when I was your age,” and you just don’t act like their anxiety is worrying you, they drop it.
So Epicurus seems to believe that the way to reassure people’s anxieties is to give them proof, and to a certain extent that really does satisfy people’s minds. But it doesn’t work with everybody. If you have a person who is so anxious that they cannot tolerate the slightest bit of uncertainty, you’re not going to remove that with more reassurance. That’s pathological. You have to go about it a different way.
Charles: No, it’s not related to anxiety, but I saw this tweet — oh my God, it was hilarious. This person wants to believe that you could change anybody’s mind if you show them evidence, and somebody replied saying, “Actually, there have been multiple studies proving that this isn’t the case,” and the person replied, “Well, I still believe it’s true.”
Cassius: Oh my God, Charles, that is wonderful.
Yeah, Elaine, I think we’ve swerved into a topic here that really deserves much more treatment than we’ve given it. It may deserve putting on a list of articles that need to be written at some point, because clearly there’s a segment of people who are not going to be reassured by additional data — and additional data thrown at them probably just makes them more anxious than before. Now that doesn’t mean we just across the board stop this approach, because I’m convinced that a lot of people — maybe even a majority — are rational and balanced enough that they’re looking for evidence to fit into a rational conclusion. But there are going to be some number of people who need a different approach, and I’m not sure I even know how to begin to deal with that. Clearly Epicurus was interested in and compassionate toward everybody, and if someone approaches life from a position where the data-driven approach is not effective, that requires some interesting thought about what might work better.
Elaine: What do you think that would be? What are your ideas?
Cassius: I didn’t just say I had any ideas at the moment — I find that particularly troubling and particularly something we need to give thought to, well beyond the scope of what we can deal with today. I mean, what comes to mind of course is — you were saying some of those things — that’s sort of the Platonic approach: the noble myth, and so forth. Is that what those people need who don’t appreciate data? I don’t think that’s right either, and I don’t think you’re suggesting that at all. If I grasp a thread of what you were suggesting, you were saying that people who are overly anxious about certainty just need general reassurance and not data. And you sounded like you have some particular experience in dealing with particular types of people.
Elaine: So no — they don’t need general reassurance. That’s exactly what I’m saying is wrong. Reassurance does not help them because their pathology is that they cannot tolerate uncertainty. What you teach them is to experience uncertainty first in small ways, less threatening ways, and then you build up so that they learn it doesn’t actually kill them and they can still enjoy life — and then they actually quit worrying about uncertainty as much. There’s a real, good body of evidence for it: reassurance makes them more anxious.
Charles: Double down on their uncertainty.
Cassius: Yeah. You know, okay — here’s another premise of my approach to Epicurean philosophy: if something can be learned through practical experience by us today, then Epicurus and the ancient Epicureans probably learned the same lesson. So I would expect that within the Epicurean texts there would be a recognition that the data-driven approach is not going to work with some people, and there would be other approaches in there. Maybe that’s the issue with Lucretius opening his poem by talking about the gods. Maybe there’s just some kind of… and I’m not suggesting that’s the way to do it either. But I feel confident that if we can observe that accumulations of data are not effective with everybody, then surely Epicurus observed the same thing and there would be other approaches within his method.
Maybe they just need more honey around the rim of the glass. Well — that’s it. What about that, Elaine? Does honey around the rim —
Elaine: So actually, I mean really, this is an area of science — an area where we have data. The intuitive thing for anxious people is to reassure them; we have evidence that reassurance makes them more anxious. So the way to proceed is to act like their anxiety doesn’t worry you. You’re able to tolerate their anxiety without trying to talk them out of it, and you just move on and enjoy life. And they learn they can do that too, and then they just quit focusing on it.
Charles: I think maybe we could look at that and point to the famous quote: “death is nothing to us.” Okay, say more — because it’s such an obvious and common fear and source of anxiety for a lot of people even to this day. And you think that “nothing to us” is sort of a way of implementing “it’s not significant, let’s move on” — is that what you’re saying?
Cassius: That’s exactly what Elaine is saying.
Elaine: Well, so you don’t say to a child “the monsters are nothing to you.” You say, “Oh, you’re worried about monsters — isn’t that interesting? I remember being worried about monsters when I was your age.” So for them, you’d say, “You know, some people worry about death. I don’t really worry about it, but I remember when I used to worry about it.” And you just move on that way. You acknowledge their fear, but you don’t actually try to solve it.
Charles: You just change the subject?
Elaine: Yeah, yeah — you don’t dwell on it. You’re just like, “Yeah, it’s like that. Oh yeah, you’re scared of thunder — isn’t that interesting?” And then you move on. They’re much more able to move on if you just say, “Well, that’s how it is right now. You’re worried and you can’t solve it.”
Cassius: Let’s solve this problem by turning to Martin. Martin, do you have any commentary on what we’re discussing?
Martin: I’m out of my expertise here.
Cassius: Okay, well, we better come back to that in the future. I do think that’s something we should make a note of. I mean, it’s a strategy question, and I don’t think Epicurus would have any trouble taking advantage of research on what strategies work. I would say further that anxiety has been around a long time, and maybe one thing we do see repeated in DeWitt’s commentary about Epicurus is that he’s very concerned about the proper attitude. Maybe what you’re talking about is sort of an attitude-adjustment response rather than a data-driven response.
Elaine: Yeah, yeah — that’s a good way of thinking about it.
Cassius: Okay, well, we’ll never get through this section today if we extend that too much further. Let’s go ahead and move to the second paragraph and plan to come back to that topic in the future, or keep an eye on what we’re reading and see if it comes up naturally.
What about the second paragraph — disorders of the body creating disorders of the mind, the infectious diseases of the body piercing the mind, mind-altering substances affecting the whole body and the mind — specifically the wine reference?
Cassius: Yeah, they mention wine, and I’m getting the idea that in the ancient period they were really interested in the effect of wine on the body, because there are other references in some of the fragments about wine, and Epicurus — one of the Vatican Sayings, I think — talks about a man “in his cups” and how you treat him. It’s a very difficult one to understand because the text is kind of corrupted, the commentators say.
Elaine: Well, he’s showing, he’s proposing a physical mechanism for this substance in the wine that affects the body and the mind at the same time.
Martin: Right. Yep.
Cassius: Let’s move to the next passage, starting with “now whatever can be thus disturbed and hindered.” It starts off with a seizure.
Elaine: Yes — “if the force would grow more violent, it would be destroyed.” So I mean, I think this person is having a seizure that he’s describing — the foaming and the distorted postures.
Cassius: So what did they believe about seizures at that time? They weren’t thinking demon possession, right? Or — like, there was a period of time where people thought that, but I wonder what they thought seizures were caused by when Lucretius was around.
Charles: I don’t have an answer to that. Possibly — because in the Bible there are references not to epilepsy but to the possibility that demons can get into people.
Cassius: Yeah. Now you’re referring to the biblical tradition, as opposed to the Greeks, who are a little bit more advanced in my view than some of the biblical material on this — but you’re right, you’re right. I don’t have anything concrete to say on it, but I do know that it was something they talked about. You probably have to look to Hippocrates or Asclepiades for the Greek medical perspective.
Charles: Yeah. I mean, Julius Caesar had epilepsy, right? So there was a discussion about his condition.
Cassius: Is it real or just from the movie? Can anybody validate that? I thought it was true that Julius Caesar was well documented as having epilepsy and would have seizures.
Martin: I don’t know. No, I had not heard that.
Cassius: I thought maybe I picked that up. You know more history than I do, I’m not —
Elaine: Well, the first article that comes up on Google says he may have suffered from strokes, not epilepsy.
Cassius: Okay. Well, that — yeah. I think the reason they write it that way is that there must be something in the Roman texts about him having episodes on a regular basis or something. Anyway, all right. So Hippocrates proposed that the source of epilepsy was natural. The word epilepsy comes from the Greek, as do a lot of medical terms.
Elaine: Yeah.
Cassius: And I guess I raised Julius Caesar because it was commonly thought that he had epilepsy, but I have never read that anybody thought he was demon-possessed.
Charles: Oh, right. I associate the demon possession — like Martin does — with the Bible, and demons cast out of people into the pigs or something like that, from those stories.
Cassius: Yes, yes — so that’s what I was thinking of. Yeah, okay. Well, that paragraph has probably been covered enough. And then the next passage has the comment Charles made about the true matter of fact overthrowing false reasoning. But what else is there? Well, I was wondering if —
Charles: Oh yes — go ahead —
Cassius: Go ahead, Charles.
Charles: There’s something else important in that passage. I haven’t been able to formulate it into an actual talking point, but it’s definitely an opposition. And I think we can still use it as direct opposition to people who believe that the mind is immortal over and above matter and body.
Cassius: Yeah, that immortality aspect of it is what I was going to comment on. He’s getting pretty philosophical there, because he’s talking about how anytime something changes, that means it cannot be immortal — something that’s immortal is not going to change. So he’s looking at the definition of immortality and working on that.
Elaine: Well, I took that as a bit more of a semantic difference — not necessarily word games, but playing around with definitions and observations to arrive at the idea that the mind is immortal, when he is very clearly counteracting that with observable evidence.
Cassius: This little line in here is real interesting to me: “for whatever is so altered as to leave the limits of its first nature is no more what it was, but instantly dies.” I guess he means that if humans get so far beyond some point of the human form that they can’t live — but it also could be taken further: maybe the person I am now has been altered a good bit from who I was thirty years ago and maybe that person isn’t here anymore. But I don’t know if he would go quite that far.
Elaine, that’s the one I was going to comment on, and I would direct it to Martin. Martin — is that not just an echo of some of this philosophy of being and non-being? Whatever is altered to leave the limits of its first nature is no more what it was — that’s one of those allegedly deep arguments. Is it not about being and non-being and change and all that stuff?
Martin: Right — that you’re always dying from what you were like one second before, or not being able to step into the same river again.
Cassius: Exactly, exactly — you can’t step into the same river twice. Martin, do you remember anything parallel to that in the ancient sources?
Martin: No, but I feel — these limits of the first nature — I take it so wide that it’s really that these limits are pretty much what then circumscribes the possibility of living on. So like, when the lungs no longer operate, or something like that.
Elaine: Yeah, I’m not clear he really means it in the more expansive way. Cassius, you could read it that way, but does he say anything else that would make you think he means it in the way we’re talking about it now?
Cassius: Well, go ahead, Charles.
Charles: The other translations I think sort of imply the direction Cassius was going. We can look at Bailey’s — “for whenever a thing changes and passes out of its own limits, straight away this is the death of that which was before” — and the Munro one is very similar to that.
Cassius: That doesn’t quite clarify it for me. But the first answer to that, Elaine, would be that what we’re talking about comes right before that sentence about the true facts overthrowing false reasoning and no possibility of escape. So I would assert that that whole passage starting with “for whoever attempts to make any alteration in the mind” through to the end of the paragraph could be read very broadly to be addressing that philosophical argument of what does it mean to be something, and from one moment to the next is it the same thing.
Martin: You’re exactly right. Yeah, yeah — the impermanence of things, the change versus the flux issue.
Cassius: But the example that you raised earlier — stepping into the stream and how you cannot step into the same stream twice — it doesn’t have to be read all that deeply, but if you can read it that way I will say so, because I like thinking about that. It’s real interesting. So is there enough evidence that you think he might actually have been saying that? I would say it’s pretty strong in my mind.
Elaine: Okay, well, that’s cool. You know, because the other thing that I link this to is the issue of perfection and purity that I see discussed in Plato’s Philebus, because there are several places where they use this argument that something perfect cannot be improved — if it can be improved, then it wasn’t the best it could be in the first place. The best possible, by definition, must be something that cannot be improved. And I know, Elaine, that is a way of looking at it that we’ve talked back and forth about a lot. But some people apparently get into that method of analysis — they define the best as that which cannot be improved, without caring about any particular examples of what’s good and bad. They’re looking to define the words in an absolute way so that they can take that absolute word and apply it to other things.
Cassius: So anyway, that’s probably enough on that unless Charles has something else. Charles, do you want to add something?
Charles: No, I don’t have anything to add.
Cassius: Well, let’s go ahead and finish the last paragraph, so we can see what else we want to talk about today — because it’s late, especially for Martin with daylight savings time today.
Okay, “perish by degrees” — so the interesting thing in this last section, and this is something we’ve been talking about on the forum too, is that he gives more than one possible explanation. What he’s imagining is that these soul seeds could be scattered through the air, or could be huddled up in the middle. As he says, it signifies not whether the soul dies scattered through the air or perishes with its parts contracted into one place — either way you come to the same conclusion: the soul of the person is mortal. And it turns out there aren’t particles quite like what he’s thinking, but it doesn’t matter. The human is still mortal. We’ve added more options to the mechanisms and the explanations, but we haven’t come away with a different ending conclusion.
Martin: I think what you’ve just said is very well stated. I completely agree. He’s putting out two possibilities, either of which could be possible based on what we see, but nevertheless the end result is that the senses are gone. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s scattered through the air or just contracts into a ball — the senses are gone; the end result is the same.
Cassius: Okay, who wants to go next? Martin, what’s your overall take from this section?
Martin: The most interesting part — well, he just gives an almost atomistic explanation of how when we die, then the soul dies with us. He comes with a lot of explanatory evidence for this. And to visualize it — actually, too visually, for me already. Too visually.
Cassius: Yeah, right — it’s pretty graphic. You know, I think we’ve hit on today something that needs to turn into a regular theme of our discussions: that there are clearly different approaches that people have, and you can hear it in our own voices. Martin, Elaine, Charles, and I come at these things from different directions and have different things we find important. And it’s interesting to think about how a philosophy will deal with that variety of approach. I don’t know that anybody could deal with variety of approach better than somebody who emphasizes the variety of possible causes — that seems to me to go hand in hand. But let’s begin the closing section for today.
Martin, you may have just given your closing thought, but do you have anything else to add?
Martin: No, no.
Cassius: Charles?
Charles: Not really this time — nothing that hasn’t already been said.
Cassius: I don’t want to bring us to close too quickly here — if there’s something else that people want to say, we have had a pretty lively session today. And of course we’ll come to Elaine.
Elaine: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve left anything out.
Cassius: Okay, all right. Well, is there anything else in general that we should include before we quit? Okay — well, thanks everybody for their participation today. Unless anybody has something else, we’ll close for the day.
All: Yeah, thank you. Thanks everybody — we’ll be back next week. Bye-bye.