CFP: First Principles, Cause, and Explanation in Ancient Philosophy

Our excellent graduate students in ancient philosophy here in Cambridge are organizing their third annual conference.  This year's theme is: 'First Principles, Cause, and Explanation in Ancient Philosophy' (12-13 April 2013).

The website for the conference with more details and information about submitting a proposal can be found here.

• Submission deadline: 13th January 2013
• Word limit: Abstract should be 500 words (max.)
• Please put ‘Conference Abstract Submission’ as the subject of your email.
• Please include your name, departmental affiliation, email address, and title of your paper in the body of the email.
• Abstracts should be prepared for blind review. · Please ensure your abstract is free from identifying personal details.
• Please submit abstracts as .doc or .pdf by email to gccam.ancientphil@gmail.com as an attachment.

Epicurisme et scepticisme

I'm going to Lyon next month for this brief conference.  Here's the poster:

The war that never ends

Here's a blast from the past.  I remember seeing this (IMDB entry) on the BBC in 1991 just before the first Iraq war.  (I think there was a 2006 performace or version too.)  It's an interesting project and explicit in insisting the relevance of Thucydides and Plato for understanding modern conflicts too.  It's a bit stagey at times. But there's a good cast (Ben Kingsley as Pericles, a young Nathaniel Parker as Alcibiades, Don Henderson as Socrates, Bob Peck as Nicias). I can't see this sort of thing getting an hour on the telly now, though. Radio, perhaps, but not TV.

Anathem

I've just finished Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  It's a whopper -- and probably a good advert for reading on a Kindle rather than lugging around an enormous (900+ page book).  It's good.  An amazing act of speculative imagination.  Perhaps the story peters out a bit towards the end but like most good scifi the interest is to a large extent concerned with just living for a while in a different world.

Here he is discussing the novel and the genesis of the ideas behind it.

Anyhow, it is worth mentioning here because there is a lot of philosophy in it and a lot of ancient philosophy in particular.  There's certainly a lot of Plato there (and just why there might be philosophical ideas reminiscent of Platonism in this world turns out to be part of what the book is about.)  There's an appendix that does a good job, for example, of offering an alternative dialogue that makes the same point as the slave experiment in Plato's Meno.

Surprise surprise!

The unexpected hits you between the eyes etc.

Here is an interesting Epicurean argument against divination, found in a scholion to Aesh. Prometh. 624 (Us. 395):

᾿Επικούρειον ἐστι δόγμα ἀναιρῶν τὴν μαντικήν. «εἱμαρμένης γὰρ», φησί, «πάντων κρατούσης πρὸ καιροῦ λελύπηκας †εἰπὼν τὴν συμφορὰν ἢ χρηστόν† τι εἰπὼν τὴν ἡδονὴν ἐξέλυσας». λέγουσι δὲ καὶ τὸ «ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι, ταῦτα καὶ γενήσεται» 

 There is an Epicurean doctrine that denies divination. Epicurus says: ‘If fate controls everything then when you declare the misfortune then you have been pained before the right moment. Alternatively, if you declare something positive, then you have ruined the pleasure’. These people also say: ‘What has to be will be’. [1] 

It’s quite neat but not convincing. At best it's an argument that divination is something you ought not to do.  If it's not reliable then it is useless.  It it is reliable then it is no benefit.  You go to a fortune teller and ask about your future. If the fortune teller tells you that something bad will happen then this increases your overall distress. Given that the event is fated and therefore inevitable you have simply added the dread of expectation to the eventual pain to come. But if the fortune teller tells you that something good will happen then this ruins the pleasure to come.

I’m interested in this because I am interested in Epicurean attitudes to hope, expectation, and pleasure. The first arm of the dilemma accords well with the claim that prescience or anticipation of an pain merely makes a pain present. This is denied by the Cyrenaics, of course, who think that thinking in advance that an evil will occur may overall lessen the pain of the event. They might have a point, I suppose. 

The second arm, however, seems to run counter to the Epicurean claim that knowledge and expectation of a future pleasure can produce confidence and pleasure in the present. And it doesn’t ring true in any case: unless the fortune teller reveals that your friend has organised a surprise party for you tomorrow and the pleasure of that party should come mostly from the fact that it is a surprise then it seems to me not true that knowing some pleasure will come about will diminish the pleasure. Perhaps we would say it does not diminish the pleasure of the event itself but it might diminish any extra pleasure that might come from its being unexpected. Still, that seems to me to be outweighed by the pleasure you get in the confident expectation of the happy event. Imagine, for example, you are told that you will win big on the lottery next year. (And imagine also that this is a reliable prediction!) Will this make the win any less pleasant? It might make it less of a surprise, for sure, but is that what is pleasant about winning the lottery? 

 [1] Usener prints: εἱμαρμένης γὰρ, φησί, πάντα κρατούσης πρὸ καιροῦ λελύπηκας <εἰπὼν τὴν συμφοράν>, ἢ χρηστόν τι εἰπὼν τὴν ἡδονὴν ἐξέλυσας. 
The line in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound is spoken by Prometheus: τὸ μὴ μαθεῖν σοι κρεῖσσον ἢ μαθεῖν τάδε.

Not in SSR

I've been looking again at some of the bits and pieces in Plutarch that might concern the Hellenistic philosophers' debates over the nature of pleasure.  This bit of information on the Cyrenaics is not in Giannantoni's SSR.  It's in the Quaestiones Convivales 7.5 705A-B.

 οὐδὲν οὖν ὁρῶ τὰς τοιαύτας ἡδονὰς ἴδιον ἐχούσας,  ὅτι μόναι τῆς ψυχῆς εἰσιν, αἱ δ' ἄλλαι τοῦ σώματος καὶ περὶ τὸ σῶμα καταλήγουσιν· μέλος δὲ καὶ ῥυθμὸς καὶ ὄρχησις καὶ ᾠδὴ παραμειψάμεναι τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐν τῷ χαίροντι τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπερείδονται τὸ ἐπιτερπὲς καὶ γαργαλίζον.  ὅθεν οὐδεμία τῶν τοιούτων ἡδονῶν ἀπόκρυφός ἐστιν οὐδὲ σκότους δεομένη καὶ τῶν τοίχων ‘περιθεόντων’, ὡς  οἱ Κυρηναϊκοὶ λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ στάδια ταύταις καὶ θέατρα ποιεῖται, καὶ τὸ μετὰ πολλῶν θεάσασθαί τι καὶ ἀκοῦσαι ἐπιτερπέστερόν ἐστι καὶ σεμνότερον, οὐκ ἀκρασίας δήπου καὶ ἡδυπαθείας ἀλλ' ἐλευθερίου διατριβῆς καὶ ἀστείας μάρτυρας ἡμῶν ὅτι πλείστους λαμβανόντων.’

This is a modified version of the translation I found online here: [1]

Therefore I see nothing peculiar in those pleasures, that they should be thought to belong only to the soul, and all others to belong to the body, so far as to end there. But music, rhythm, dancing, song, passing through the sense, fix a pleasure and titillation [1] in the pleased part of the soul and therefore none of these pleasures is enjoyed in secret, nor wants darkness nor walls about it, according to the Cyrenaics' phrase; but circuses and theatres are built for them. And to frequent shows and music-meetings with company is both more delightful and more genteel; because we take a great many witnesses, not of a luxurious and intemperate, but of a pleasant and respectable manner of passing our time. 

The Quaestio here is 'That we ought to keep ourselves from pleasures from bad music and how this should be done'.  Callistratus is trying to defend the idea that it would be wrong to think that the pleasures from theatre etc. are a cause of intemperance even if audiences occasionally get carried away.  He doesn't think, with Aristoxenus, that only the pleasures of music should be called 'fine' but he also disagrees with Aristotle who thinks that the pleasures of music and dance belong only to rational human animals and not to non-rational animals.  (Here Callistratus cites how some fish appear to take pleasure in rhythms and sounds.) Then he declares that the pleasures of dancing, songs, and the like generate pleasure in the soul such that they can (and indeed should) be enjoyed in public and in company.  This, after all, is what theatres are built for.  And there is nothing grubby or shameful in that.

The interesting bit for me is the phrase: τῶν τοίχων ‘περιθεόντων’, ὡς  οἱ Κυρηναϊκοὶ λέγουσιν.  It's pretty obscure.   First, is this really a reference to some Cyrenaic philosophical vocabulary?  The context seems appropriate and appropriately philosophical to think that it is.  Second, if that's right, then what does it mean?  We're used to thinking of the Cyrenaics as envisaging each person as in receipt of various pathê which are in themselves veridical and reliable insofar as they relate incorrigibly how the person is affected.  And they will, as pathê of pleasure and pain, give good recommendations of what affections to pursue and which to avoid.  But they won't give any reliable information about the nature of the external objects by which they are caused.  In terms of walls and the like, I've seen the Cyrenaics (or perhaps their critics) use walls (city walls) as a metaphor before in their epistemology.  Plutarch Adversus Colotem  1120C-D has the Cyrenaics holed up within themselves 'as if in a siege' (cf. 1120F).  So I wonder: perhaps here Plutarch is using again this metaphor to contrast the Cyrenaics' position in which every perceiver is isolated and walled off from others with the public and communal enjoyment of theatrical and musical performances.

The other possibility (see note below) is that Plutarch is again referring to something mentioned also at 1089A, namely the Epicurean and Cyrenaic disagreement over whether one ought to have sex with the lights off.  There we are told that the Cyrenaics were rather more restrained than their Epicurean hedonist rivals because they recommended doing it in the dark so as not to over-inflame the desires (Cf. QC 654D and Cic. Tusc. 5.112.)

[1] That 1909 translation doesn't refer to 'Cyrenaics', instead reading 'according to the women's phrase'.  οἱ Κυρ. is Doehner's emendation (in his Quaestiones Plutarcheae 4 vols., 1840-63) for the MSS αἱ γυναῖκες.  (Perhaps the textual uncertainty is the reason why this is not in SSR.)  Both Hubert's 1971 Teubner and Minar, Sandbach and Helmbold's Loeb (Moralia vol. 9) retain οἱ Κυρ.  I haven't managed to read Doehner, but the Teubner note ad loc. suggests the emendation was supported by reference to Non Posse 1089A. 

A surfeit of papers

I'm in a bit of a daze this weekend after back-to-back conferences.  It's hard work sitting and listening to people read out loud...  And I found it harder work, oddly, sitting listening to someone reading out something that had been pre-circulated.  It's a weird way of exchanging ideas, isn't it, to print out someone's paper, read it in advance and then sit with twenty other people listening to the author read it out?  The rustle of paper as we all turn over the page...

The best thing about conferences, really, is catching up with friends and colleagues.  So perhaps we should cut the reading-out time and increase the drinking coffee/gossiping/bitching time.

Meades

Hooray.  Jonathan Meades has a new book coming out.  He's always interesting.  Sometimes infuriating.  But in an interesting way.  Here he is on a recent bit of Loose Ends on Radio 4 (35 minutes in; but just before then there's a lovely bit of Beth Orton).

To illustrate, here is a bit of his recent 3 part BBC 4 series On France.

I think the whole series on the YouTube. But this is the first bit. You get the idea.

Encyclomedia online

I wrote a couple of short things for this interesting project, 'Encyclomedia' that combines text, images and video. I've seen a print version of some of the material but not yet how it has been integrated with some of the multimedia stuff.  I'm not sure as yet what the subscriptions costs will be and I imagine it will mostly be of interest to institutions rather than individuals, but it will be worth keeping and eye on how well it does. It's certainly ambitious in its scope and range.

Here's an introduction to the project:

Courageous burglary

It looks like we will be reading Plato's Laches in our Thursday seminar at some point this academic year.  And it's topical.  A judge in Teesside has sparked a minor row by saying that burgling a house is courageous.  Is it possible to be a courageous criminal?  (Let's also assume for now that burglary is not just illegal but is also a bad thing to do.  Can you be courageous in performing a vicious act?)

This is from the local news report:

He [Judge Peter Bowers] said: "It takes a huge amount of courage as far as I can see for somebody to burgle somebody’s house.  I wouldn’t have the nerve. Yet somehow, bolstered by drugs and desperation, you were prepared to do that."

Needless to say, this didn't go down well with one of the people burgled and now 'Dave' Cameron has had to say something about it because the story has been picked up by the national media.

And now also by the satirists.

Notes to self

We're gearing up for the new term here in Cambridge.  I'm on sabbatical leave this year (all year!) so it's not so bad for me.  But I've been thinking about the new students coming up and what helpful advice they might need.  I think I wish someone had explained to me how best to use a supervision and that it was perfectly OK for me to come along and try to steer the conversation how I wanted with my own questions, difficulties and the like.  I think I was far too passive and may have lost out on the opportunity to set straight things in my mind that I really didn't understand.  I had probably also fudged those things in the essay because I thought it important not to seem as if there was anything I didn't quite follow.  Now, I quite like it if a student tries really hard to sort something out, writes the best essay they can, and leaves a note at the end or puts in a footnote: 'Is this right?  I don't think I understand xxxx because if it means yyyy then surely....    Can we talk about this at the supervision?'  It makes the supervision easier, because I know what to talk about, and I can be more confident that we are actually talking about something that will help the student when they come to look again at the topic later in the year.  I suppose I still thought that the essays were submitted mostly to be graded and handed back. 

So, over to you: what do you wish you had been told (and/or took notice of) when you were a new undergraduate?

The Ancient Philosopher's Annual

The Philosopher's Annual for 2011 (volume 31) can be found here.  I've been looking back over the contents of past volumes (1-29; not sure where volume 30 went but there's a list on Brian Leiter's site here) and there is not very much in there about ancient philosophy.  In the new issue there is “The Concept of Unified Agency in Nietzsche, Plato, and Schiller” by Paul Katsafanas in Journal of the History of Philosophy 49. Before then, Jessica Moss' "Akrasia and perceptual illusion" from AGP was in volume 29 and Michael N. Forster's "Socrates' Profession of Ignorance" from Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy in volume 27.  Then (if I haven't missed something) you have to go all the way back to volume 12 for the next one: Jean Roberts' 'Political Animals in the Nicomachean Ethics' from Phronesis. 

Well, perhaps ancient philosophy is a relatively small sub-discipline.  But just 4 out of the 300 or so papers in the 30 volumes so far?  True, things have looked better more recently.  But I don't suppose that is because scholarship in ancient philosophy has got better only recently or that it has got better relative to scholarship in other areas of philosophy more recently.  (There's a brief explanation of the process that generates the annual list here.)

Anyway, perhaps there's not quite enough published in ancient philosophy each year to put together a crop of ten papers for an Ancient Philosopher's Annual, but if we widen the search to include chapters in books, I think we could come up a few nominations.  Any suggestions for 2011?  Or even for 2012 so far?

Ercolano

We're just back from hols in Italy. We stayed in Ercolano, which tuned out to be very convenient for all the good sites, but also very quiet. This is a good thing, but the August holidays in fact ensured that most of the shops and restaurants were closed.  Still, we did find the excellent Tubba Catubba, though it kept to eccentric and unpredictable opening hours and, like most other places, would/could not take payment by card. Great food though. And we found a couple of good pizzerias (my favourite was Luna Caprese - a bit chaotic and lots of fun).

The hotel was good too and had an excellent pool. 

Some bits were less good. The Naples Archeological Museum was suffering from the familiar malaise of random gallery closures. Sara really wanted to see the stuff from the Greek colonies but that section was closed. Would it be open later in the week?  A shrug from the person at the info desk didn't help much. Maybe, maybe not.  Perhaps we should have rung ahead and arranged to see it.

Pompeii is amazing, of course, but for my money Herculaneum is better.

Credit where it's due

Here's an interesting bit of a review in the current Times Higher of Charles Fernyhough's Piece of Light: the new science of memory.

When planning to give a talk, Fernyhough argues, we draw on relevant memories, including memories of previous talks. From them, we extract some general lessons to help us to plan our talk, such as how to engage the audience, how to keep to time, and how best to cope with the cramped room in which the talk is to be given. It is a mundane example, but deliberately so, because from it he extracts the general contention that memory enables us to imagine future events. If this is so, we might expect those who have serious memory problems, such as amnesia, to experience problems in imagining future scenarios. One might also expect overlap between the brain areas that are active when recalling past events and those active when imagining future ones. Both these predictions have recently received empirical support, and this has added weight to what medieval writers contended: that memory and imagination are intimately related. It also reminds us of one reason why we have such sophisticated memory abilities in the first place: remembering enhances our ability to deal with the present and to imagine different possible futures. 

What medieval writers contended?  Huh.  They may well have done.  But they were by no means the first to have the idea.  Try Plato's Philebus -- which is where Aristotle also got the idea, I reckon.

People to cheer for in the Olympics II

Chad Le Clos. Not so much for him as for his excellent Dad. 

 

And here he is charming Claire Balding:

Taking the tablets

I have resisted up until now but I have splurged some of my supervision money on a Nexus 7 tablet. I'm trying out its blogging app at the moment. So far, I'm impressed. I'm not a Mac person so this suits me fine. It syncs with my Google account, as does my phone. So that's easy. And for now it seems big enough without being too big. More updates if I can be bothered.

People to cheer for in the Olympics, part 1

Fran Halsall, GB swimmer.

 
She likes Aristotle.  This is a good thing, even if her chronology is a bit out.  This is from an article in Sunday's Observer.

She also told me "Aristotle is my main man. Oh my God, it's definitely got to be old Aristotle. He had all these ideas before anyone really knew anything – a whole new way of thinking was based around his thoughts. And this was like millions of years ago! It's crazy!"  

Something more beautiful

Hooray.  Beth Orton has a new album, Sugaring Season, coming in the autumn.  There's some news about it here.  And here is the first single from it.

If you haven't listed to Beth before, for shame!  Here are some of my favourites: this one, this one, and this one.

Occupational direction of fit

'Direction of fit' is a useful metaphor to distinguish, for example, ways of thinking about beliefs and ways of thinking about desires (or 'cognitive' vs. 'conative' attitudes generally).  So, roughly, beliefs should fit the way the world is because beliefs aim at truth while desires involve wanting the world to fit the picture of the world the agent has in mind.

Here is a related distinction between different kinds of people that may be familiar to those who work in institutions a bit like the ones I belong to.

Call this 'occupational direction of fit'.

In some cases the direction of fit is: job  ---> behaviour (JtoB).  That is: the job one has places certain constraints and obligations on how one acts and the job-holder's behaviour alters to fit.

But in come other cases the direction of fit is: behaviour ---> job (BtoJ).  That is: the way a person behaves places certain constraints and requirements on the way that person's job is understood.

(Cartoon from here.)

Most organisations in which people have paid employment will, I think, assume a JtoB model.  Someone employed as a X in the organisation, because of what is involved in being an X, will do what that role requires and not do what that role precludes.  The payment is what compensates for the employee making the alterations to behaviour that are required to fit the role.

But there are occasions when it goes the other way.  Imagine a person who simply cannot do A or cannot refrain from doing B.  Sometimes what happens is that the job alters to fit the behaviour.  (Sometimes it's by far the easier option than trying to get the person's behaviour to change.)  'Well, we can't ask Y to do this because, you know...  so we'll have to do it for him/get someone else to do it' etc. 

It seems to me that in messy practical contexts we often work with an amalgam of JtoB and BtoJ.  And this mostly negotiates the demands that various jobs get done and respects the fact that people are different, sometimes malleable and sometimes not.  Sometimes this is OK.  But at other times it is annoying, particularly in cases in which it seems that two similarly placed people within an organisation are not respecting the same direction of fit...

(Cartoon from here.)

Why knowing things is good

I’ve been thinking about some uplifting Epicurean sayings about pleasure and philosophy [1].
Here’s the first, Vatican Saying 27:

Ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιτηδευμάτων μόλις τελειωθεῖσιν ὁ καρπὸς ἔρχεται, ἐπὶ δὲ φιλοσοφίας συντρέχει τῇ γνώσει τὸ τερπνόν· οὐ γὰρ μετὰ μάθησιν ἀπόλαυσις, ἀλλὰ ἅμα μάθησις καὶ ἀπόλαυσις. 

Bailey translates:

‘In all other occupations the fruit comes painfully after completion, but in philosophy pleasure goes hand in hand with knowledge; for enjoyment does not come after comprehension, but comprehension and enjoyment are simultaneous.’ 

Compare Diogenes of Oinoanda fr. 33.VI.11–VII.10 Smith for the idea that the pleasure and the cause of the pleasure can be simultaneous: we do not eat and then afterwards experience pleasure because of eating nor do we ejaculate and then later experience pleasure because of that [2]. In these cases what causes the pleasure and the pleasure itself are simultaneous.

This Saying is mostly concerned with pointing out that knowledge and pleasure come about simultaneously (at the moment I come to know something I simultaneously enjoy knowing that something). Knowing is just all by itself something pleasant. I don’t need to wait for that knowledge to be useful or to lead to some later pleasure; it’s pleasant all by itself and the pleasure occurs as soon as something is known. So, like the Diogenes of Oinoanda fragment, it might well be aimed at dispelling the idea that the Epicureans think that knowledge—like virtue—is good only in a crude way because of some later pleasure that it might produce. Instead, they want to say that knowledge is good because it is pleasant immediately and all by itself. The chronological claim is perhaps best understood as a claim about the nature of the value of knowledge. Knowledge is intrinsically pleasant and therefore valuable; knowledge does not have to wait to cause some later pleasure for it to be valuable.

The Epicureans clearly feel some pressure to recognise a value of knowledge that is not merely contingent on its producing some later pleasure while still holding firm to their hedonist axiology. Perhaps the idea is this: It is not pleasant to know some trigonometry just because it will allow me later on to build a house efficiently and live in a secure and water-tight dwelling. Yes, it will do that. But knowing that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to etc. etc. is just pleasant all by itself. Or, if we want a more specific example of some Epicurean ‘philosophy’, perhaps it is not pleasant to know that lightning is not caused by divine anger just because that will allow me to live a life free from superstitious anxieties. Yes, it will do that. But knowing that lightning is caused thus-and-so is just pleasant all by itself. (Compare Ep. Hdt. 78–9 and Ep. Pyth. 86 which also stress the necessity of a sufficient knowledge of such things for living a good life.)

It is still the case that the value of knowledge lies in its being pleasant, of course, but its pleasantness is intrinsic and inseperable. The Saying does not say whether it continues to be pleasant to know something. A lot would depend on the precise meaning of gnōsis and mathēsis. For example: if the latter means ‘learning’ in the sense of the event of coming to know something, then it will not follow that just because this is all by itself pleasant just when it happens, it will continue to be pleasant to have learned something. But the sense of the event of coming to know something makes best sense of the claim there need be no time-lag between the mathēsis and the pleasure. (This is not a common word in Epicurus. Nor is the cognate verb common. But compare SV 74: ‘In philosophical shared inquiry the one who is beaten gains more according to how much more he learns [prosemathen].’) The former, however, gnōsis, is more likely to mean an on-going state of knowing or understanding. (See, for example, its use in Ep. Hdt. 78–9). (It’s a familiar problem with ancient philosophical claims for the pleasantness of knowing that it is sometimes unclear whether they mean that it is pleasant to come-to-know or to continue-to-know, or both. And the reasons for making either claim or both claims might have to be different.)

[1] I’ve been thinking a bit about Epicureanism again lately because Pamela Gordon very kindly sent me a copy of her new book, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus (Ann Arbor, 2012): very interesting it is too.

[2] For a recent discussion see D. N. Sedley, ‘Diogenes of Oenoanda on Cyrenaic hedonism’, PCPS 48 (2002), 159–74