Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Cyrenaic assurances

I'm at last back to doing some ancient philosophy and back to the Cyrenaics. I'm starting for now with Plutarch Adv. Col., in which their position is represented as follows (1120C–D; 200 21–26 Westman)
ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰς φαντασίας ἐν αὑτοῖς τιθέντες (D.) οὐκ ᾤοντο τὴν ἀπὸ τούτων πίστιν εἶναι διαρκῆ πρὸς τὰς ὑπὲρ τῶν πραγμάτων καταβεβαιώσεις, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν πολιορκίᾳ τῶν ἐκτὸς ἀποστάντες εἰς τὰ πάθη κατέκλεισαν αὑτούς, τό ‘φαίνεται’ τιθέμενοι τὸ δ’ ‘ἐστί’ <μηκέτι> προσαποφαινόμενοι περὶ τῶν ἐκτός.

Einarson and De Lacy’s Loeb gives:
The first [sc. group, the Cyrenaics], placing all experiences and impressions within themselves thought that evidence derived from them was insufficient warrant for certainty about reality and withdrew as in a siege from the world about them and shut themselves up in their responses, -- admitting that external objects ‘appear’, but refusing to venture further and pronounce the word ‘are’.

The central distinction at work appears to be between what is ‘inside’ the perceivers and what is outside. Inside are pathē and phantasiai while outside are the pragmata. The basic epistemological task at hand is conceived of as a move from the internal impressions to claims about something external, a move which is, if at all possible, meant to generate sound or reliable assurances (katabebaiōseis).

This is my first question: What exactly is a katabebaiōsis? (Einarson and De Lacy gloss over it as ‘warrant for certainty’; Tsouna’s translation gives ‘assertions’.) The compound noun is not at all common, which might suggest that it is a piece of authentic Cyrenaic vocabulary. Plutarch uses the related compound verb once, at Caes. 46 where it clearly means ‘Livy assures us that this is what happened’. Whether or not that is the case, certainly the verb without the kata- prefix is more common, even is similarly epistemological contexts. Yet again, it is not immediately clear what it means.

The most obvious point of comparison is with Epic. KD 24:
εἰ δὲ βεβαιώσεις καὶ τὸ προσμένον ἅπαν ἐν ταῖς δοξαστικαῖς ἐννοίαις καὶ τὸ μὴ τὴν ἐπιμαρτύρησιν <ἔχον>, οὐκ ἐκλείψεις τὸ διεψευσμένον, ὡς τετηρηκὼς ἔσῃ πᾶσαν ἀμφισβήτησιν κατὰ πᾶσαν κρίσιν τοῦ ὀρθῶς ἢ μὴ ὀρθῶς.

Hicks translates:
If in your ideas based upon opinion you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error, as you will be maintaining complete ambiguity whenever it is a case of judging between right and wrong.

This is the second of two injunctions in KD 24 for epistemological rigour. The first injunction requires you never to reject a given impression because of an insufficient discrimination between an opinion and a present impression. The second, given here, advises against overvaluing a given impression to the extent of affirming as secure something which, strictly speaking, still requires sufficient further confirmatory evidence (epimarturēsis).

A similar point appears earlier in Adv. Col., at 1109E (which Körte ascribes to Metrodorus and includes as his fr. 1). Here the Epicurean is trying to explain how even apparently conflicting sense perception must all be accepted as true. One mistake that people often make is to think that they can make more assured (βεβαιοῦν) the truth of their own sense-perception by saying that another’s conflicting sense perception is false.

These texts suggest that the bebaiotēs, so to speak, of an assertion is generated by the evidence supporting it. Just as Livy’s evidence supports Plutarch’s claim in his biography of Caesar, so an assertion about some external pragma is assured to the extent that evidence can be brought to bear in supporting it.

The overall point of this text at 1120C, therefore, seems to be that the standard for reaching a katabebaiōsis (a confident assurance/affirmation) about (external) pragmata is sufficiently high that one’s pathē and phantasiai are insufficient to ground such confident assurances.

Still, we are given no explanation of precisely how they are insufficient. That's the next question.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Down with the kidz

Our own Malcolm Schofield made an appearance on 6Music's George Lamb show on Tuesday (21 April). Go here to the website, click 'Listen again' to Tuesday's programme and skip along to 1h 23 minutes in (just after 'Cream' by Prince)...

Sunday, April 19, 2009

This is just too silly

Facebook sometimes suggests people I might know because some of my friends know them too. But now things have got very silly.

Some questions:

Does God (it does not specify which one but I suppose the cross is a hint) really want 'fans'? I can, I suppose, click the little 'x' to say I am not really interested in becoming a fan of God (and I will do so) but it seems a little unnecessary. Imagine just stumbling on this and thinking: You know what, I had not thought about being a fan of God before now, but now you suggest it, it sounds like an excellent idea.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Seasonal telly

Took the darlings to London today - N. really wanted to see the massive spider sculpture thing in the turbine hall at Tate Modern and R. wanted to see the Museum of London's exhibition on the Great Fire. Both were excellent and, it must be emphasised, free! Better than the train ride which was super expensive even with a railcard. And we didn't get a seat going down to London.

Interesting news that someone thinks there is not enough religions programming on the BBC over Easter. (Love the headline: wonder how many complaints this will get.) Clearly this is someone who fails to see the deep spiritual dimension of a Doctor Who special. Isn't Ben Hur on somewhere? That's surely enough. And the Pope will get to see the same thing in various languages and disrupt usual Sunday morning telly. What more do they want?

Actually, I did a search for 'Urbi et orbi' on this listings site just to check and got the following:

If you like 'Urbi et Orbi', you may also like the upcoming shows...

Weapon Masters - Click to see when Weapon Masters is on next
Grow Your Own Drugs - Click to see when Grow Your Own Drugs is on next
Motorway Patrol - Click to see when Motorway Patrol is on next
Ashton Kutcher - Click to see when Ashton Kutcher is on next
Missing - Click to see when Missing is on next
Trawlers, Rigs & Rescue: North Sea - Click to see when Trawlers, Rigs & Rescue: North Sea is on next
Breaking Up the Biggest - Click to see when Breaking Up the Biggest is on next
Tunnellers - Click to see when Tunnellers is on next
Questions Pour Un Champion - Click to see when Questions Pour Un Champion is on next
Nightscreen - Click to see when Nightscreen is on next

They must have an excellent algorithm to generate that!

Friday, April 03, 2009

Epicurea

A full pdf of Usener's Epicurea can be downloaded from here. If you poke around a bit there are some other handy things to be found, including Madvig's De Finibus.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

On n’a pas à rougir

What do historians of philosophy do? Are they doing philosophy when they are doing the history of philosophy? I've been re-reading two interesting answers to these questions in in B. Cassin ed. Nos grecs et leurs modernes (Paris, 1992; CR review by Simon Goldhill here):

Aubenque, P., 1992, ‘L’histoire de la philosophie est-elle philosophique? Oui et non’: 15–36

Brunschwig, J., 1992, ‘L’histoire de la philosophie est-elle philosophique? Non et oui’: 37–96

One of my favourite passages from Brunschwig's piece is this:
L’historien de la philosophie, je pense, n’a pas à rougir de sa vocation, qui est distincte de celle de la création ou, disons, de l’initiative philosophique, et qui répond à une autre curiosité, à une autre démande. La réflexion sure les doctrines philosophiques (qu’il s’agisse d’une réflexion historique, analytique, interprétative) relève d’un certain genre d’activité intellectuelle; la production de telles dotrines, ou de ce qui en tient lieu, relève d’un autre genre. (p.44)
I'm not sure I was much inclined to be embarrassed for what I get up to but it's good to have Jacques' assurance that there is no need.