Quizzes Feb 25, 27

Skepticism, LH 3; FL 17-18; midterm reports continue. Scroll down to *Th27

LISTEN (Pyrrho)... LISTEN (FL 17-18)

1. What was the main teaching of skepticism? ("Scepticism" in Br. spelling)

2. How did Pyrrho feel about the senses? 

3. Where did Pyrrho visit as a young man and probably encounter influences for his philosophy?  

4. How did Pyrrho say you could become free from all worry? Does Warburton think this would work for most of us?

5. How does modern skepticism differ from its ancient predecessor?

6. What is the opposite of skepticism?

7.  What is a "favorite fiction" of the first "tramp" Dickens describes?

8. What does the "tramp" with the "perplexed demeanor" do with the money (half-a-crown) given to him? 

9. What theme park opened in Brooklyn at the turn of the 20th century?

10. Who was Robert Love Taylor and what did he lecture about?

11. What 1915 movie contributed to the growth of the KKK? 

12. What do southerners turn away from, according to The Mind of the South?

13. What was foolish, according to the modernist New Theology of the early 20th century?

14. How did Christian modernists reconcile scripture with science?

15. What happened in Dayton TN in the summer of 1925, and what did Clarence Darrow say about "what Tennessee had done"?

16. What was the "cultural impact" for each side of the Scopes trial?

Discussion Questions:

• Do you agree that withholding commitment minimizes disappointment?
• Is it really possible to believe nothing? Or therapeutic to try?
• Can you think of an example when you were misled by your senses in a situation that had serious consequences?
• If the senses sometimes mislead, is the most rational response to mistrust them entirely?
• What kinds of things do you tend to worry about? What strategies might lessen your worry?
• What are you skeptical about?
• How much skepticism is appropriate? How much is too much?
• Were you taught in school about the history of racism in post-Emancipation America, and specifically about the KKK?
• How can science and religion be reconciled? Or can they?
• Add your DQs

Why be skeptical?
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire

“I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!” 
― J.K. Rowling

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” 
― Albert Einstein

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” 
― Carl Sagan

“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.” 
― Sam Harris

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.” 
― David Hume

“I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.” 
― Clarence Darrow

"The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.” 
― H.L. Mencken

Summer '18-MALA 6040, Evolution in America - we had a field trip to Dayton TN, for the annual Scopes Trial re-enactment (as discussed in FL 18)...

Ancient Skepticism, from Philosophy Without Any Gaps...

Pyrrho & Ancient Skepticism discussed in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy...

  

	60 Minutes (@60Minutes)
9/30/18, 8:38 PM After delaying the Kavanagh vote, Senators Jeff Flake and Chris Coons talked to 60 Minutes about give-and-take in politics: "Our nation can't survive if it doesn't exist." cbsn.ws/2OqUVSs

Dream of Reason on Pyrrho-"Two centuries after Pyrrho's death, one of his defenders tossed aside these tales and claimed that 'although he practised philosophy on the principles of suspension of judgement, he did not act carelessly in  the details of everyday life.' This must be right. He may have been magnificently imperturbable... But he was surely not an idiot. He apparently lived to be nearly ninety..." 337

"What use is knowledge if, for its sake, we lose the calm and repose which we should enjoy without it and if it makes our condition worse than that of Pyrrho's pig?" Montaigne on Pyrrho's Pig, in Consolations of Philosophy... 120

skepticism

Belief that some or all human knowledge is impossible. Since even our best methods for learning about the world sometimes fall short of perfect certainty, skeptics argue, it is better to suspend belief than to rely on the dubitable products of reason. Classical skeptics include Pyrrhoand Sextus Empiricus. In the modern era, Montaigne, Bayle, and Hume all advocated some form of skeptical philosophy. Fallibilism is a more moderate response to the lack of certainty.

Pyrrho of Elis (365-270 BCE)

Greek philosopher who originated classical skepticism. Since there are plausible arguments for both sides of any issue, Pyrrho argued, the only rational practice is to suspend all judgment, abandon worries of every kind {Gk. αταραξια [ataraxia]}, and live comfortably in an appreciation of the appearances. His teachings were preserved and amplified by his pupil Timon of Philius.

Recommended Reading: Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Skeptics (Ares, 1980) and Richard Bett, Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy (Oxford, 2000).

Also see SEP, IEP, EB, and ELC.

Sextus Empiricus (c. 200)

Ancient skeptic who defended the practical viability of Pyrrhonism as the only way of life that results in genuine αταραξια [ataraxia] in Pyrrhonian Hypotyposeis (Outlines of Pyrrhonism). The translation into Latin of Sextus's comprehensive criticisms of ancient schools of thought in Adversos Mathematicos (Against the Dogmatists) provided an important resource for the development of modern skepticism during the sixteenth century.

Recommended Reading: The Original Sceptics: A Controversy, ed. by Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede (Hackett, 1997); Tad Brennan, Ethics and Epistemology in Sextus Empircus(Garland, 1999); and Luciano Floridi, Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism (Oxford, 2001).

Also see SEP, EB, and ELC.

Ancient Skepticism (SEP)

The Greek word skepsis means investigation. By calling themselves skeptics, the ancient skeptics thus describe themselves as investigators. They also call themselves ‘those who suspend’ (ephektikoi), thereby signaling that their investigations lead them to suspension of judgment. They do not put forward theories, and they do not deny that knowledge can be found. At its core, ancient skepticism is a way of life devoted to inquiry. Also, it is as much concerned with belief as with knowledge. As long as knowledge has not been attained, the skeptics aim not to affirm anything. This gives rise to their most controversial ambition: a life without belief.

Ancient skepticism is, for the most part, a phenomenon of Post-Classical, Hellenistic philosophy. The Academic and Pyrrhonian skeptical movements begin roughly in the third century BCE, and end with Sextus Empiricus in the second century CE.... (continues)

Bertrand Russell: Popular Cynicism did not teach abstinence from the good things of this world, but only a certain indifference to them. In the case of a borrower, this might take the form of minimizing the obligation to the lender. One can see how the word "cynic" acquired its every-day meaning. What was best in the Cynic doctrine passed over into Stoicism, which was an altogether more complete and rounded philosophy. Scepticism, as a doctrine of the schools, was first proclaimed by Pyrrho, who was in Alexander's army, and campaigned with it as far as India. It seems that this gave him a sufficient taste of travel, and. that he spent the rest of his life in his native city, Elis, where he died in 275 B.C. There was not much that was new in his doctrine, beyond a certain systematizing and formalizing of older doubts. Scepticism with regard to the senses had troubled Greek philosophers from a very early stage; the only exceptions were those who, like Parmenides and Plato, denied the cognitive value of perception, and made their denial into an opportunity for an intellectual dogmatism. The Sophists, notably Protagoras and Gorgias, had been led by the ambiguities and. apparent contradictions of sense-perception to a subjectivism not unlike Hume's. Pyrrho seems (for he very wisely wrote no books) to have added moral and logical scepticism to scepticism as to the senses. He is said to have maintained that there could never be any rational ground for preferring one course of action to another. In practice, this meant that one conformed to the customs of whatever country one inhabited. A modern disciple would go to church on Sundays and. perform the correct genuflexions, but without any of the religious beliefs that are supposed to inspire these actions. Ancient Sceptics went through the whole pagan ritual, and were even sometimes priests; their Scepticism assured them that this behaviour could not be proved wrong, and their common sense (which survived their philosophy) assured them that it was convenient. Scepticism naturally made an appeal to many unphilosophic minds. People observed the diversity of schools and the acerbity of their disputes, and decided that all alike were pretending to knowledge which ____________________ * The Hellenistic Age ( Cambridge, 1923), p. 86. -233- was in fact unattainable. Scepticism was a lazy man's consolation, since it showed the ignorant to be as wise as the reputed men of learning. To men who, by temperament, required a gospel, it might seem unsatisfying, but like every doctrine of the Hellenistic period it recommended itself as an antidote to worry. Why trouble about the future? It is wholly uncertain. You may as well enjoy the present; "What's to come is still unsure." For these reasons, Scepticism enjoyed a considerable popular success. It should be observed that Scepticism as a philosophy is not merely doubt, but what may be called dogmatic doubt. The man of science says "I think it is so-and-so, but I am not sure." The man of intellectual curiosity says "I don't know how it is, but I hope to find out." The philosophical Sceptic says "nobody knows, and nobody ever can know." It is this element of dogmatism that makes the system vulnerable. Sceptics, of course, deny that they assert the impossibility of knowledge dogmatically, but their denials are not very convincing. Pyrrho's disciple Timon, however, advanced some intellectual arguments which, from the standpoint of Greek logic, were very hard to answer. The only logic admitted by the Greeks was deductive, and all deduction had to start, like Euclid, from general principles regarded as self-evident. Timon denied the possibility of finding such principles. Everything, therefore, will have to be proved by means of something else, and all argument will be either circular or an endless chain hanging from nothing. In either case nothing can be proved. This argument, as we can see, cut at the root of the Aristotelian philosophy which dominated the Middle Ages. Some forms of Scepticism which, in our own day, are advocated by men who are by no means wholly sceptical, had not occurred to the Sceptics of antiquity. They did not doubt phenomena, or question propositions which, in their opinion, only expressed what we know directly concerning phenomena. Most of Timon's work is lost, but two surviving fragments will illustrate this point. One says "The phenomenon is always valid." The other says: "That honey is sweet I refuse to assert; that it appears sweet, I fully grant." * A modern Sceptic would point out that the phenomenon merely occurs, and is not either valid or invalid; what is valid or invalid must be a state- ____________________ * Quoted by Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 126. -234- ment, and no statement can be so closely linked to the phenomenon as to be incapable of falsehood. For the same reason, he would say that the statement "honey appears sweet" is only highly probable, not absolutely certain. In some respects, the doctrine of Timon was very similar... History of Western Philosophy==
An old post:

Today in CoPhi it's skeptics. Or sceptics, if you prefer the British spelling. Or you can follow their lead and refuse to commit. "Don't commit, and you won't be disappointed."

I haven't generally found that to be a reliable guidepost in life, instead taking my cue from the lesson James's "first act of free will" (previously noted) seems to me to teach: don't just sit there, stand and select a destination. And get going. As my old pal the Carolina prof says, do something-even if it's wrong. And as James also said, "our errors surely are not such awfully solemn things." Lighten up.  Pick a path. Move. (My friend's colleague David Henderson gave a first-rate presentation at the conference, btw, on not reducing wilderness and the national park system to an American thing but seeing wilderness as a call to cosmopolitanism.)

But that's my therapy, it may not be yours. Some of us really do prefer sitting on a fence, avoiding firm opinions, keeping all accounts open. And there's no doubt, a healthy dose of skepticism is good for you. But how much is too much? 

My answer is implied by the bumper sticker message on my bulletin board: "even fatalists look both ways before crossing the street." If you stop looking, you're either too skeptical or not skeptical enough. Probably a lunatic, too. Or the ruler of the universe. "I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say." [see below*]

Point is, we need beliefs to motivate action lest we sit and starve like Buridan's ass, or cross paths with a cart and get flattened. Prudence demands commitment. Commitment is no guarantee against error and disappointment, but indifference and non-commitment typically leave us stuck in the middle of the road or drop us off the cliff.

That wasn't Pyrrho's perspective, jay- and cliff-walker though he was. Fortunately for him, he seems always to have had friends steering him from the edge. His prescription - but is a skeptic allowed to prescribe? - was to free yourself from desires, don't care how things will turn out, persuade yourself that nothing ultimately matters, and you'll eventually shuck all worry. Or not. If we all were Pyrrho "there wouldn't be anyone left to protect the Pyrrhonic Sceptics from themselves." Prudence wins again.

Prudence and moderation. "The point of moderate philosophical scepticism is to get closer to the truth," or further at least from falsehood and bullshit. Easier said than done, in these alt-fact days of doublespeak. "All the great philosophers have been [moderate] sceptics," have sought truth and spurned lies, have deployed their baloney detectors and upheld the bar of objective evidence. Sincerity alone won't cut it.

The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These anti-realist doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry... Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial-notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.

So, be a skeptic. But to paraphrase David Hume and Jon Batiste, stay human. ("Be a philosopher, but amidst your philosophy be still a man.")

Read Skeptic magazine, which in a recent issue doubts the possibility of eternal youth and features the parodic perspective of Mr. Deity. Skeptic's editor Michael Shermer says “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.” And, “I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.”

Pyrrho must not have been that crazy, to have lived to nearly ninety. "He did not act carelessly in the details of everyday life," said a defender, he just suspended judgment as to their ultimate import in the larger truths of things. Or maybe he just wanted to protect his batting average, so to speak. If you never swing, you'll never miss. But you'll still strike out if you take too many.

David Hume, again. He was a skeptic but he didn't let that interfere with living. He ventured opinions but couched them in philosophic humility. He knew we couldn't all be Pyrrho, for "all action would immediately cease" and "the necessities of nature" would "put an end to [our] miserable existence." Miserable? He must have been having a bad day. Generally he was of great cheer and humane disposition.

So let's not throw in the sponge on humanity just yet. What a strange expression, "throwing in the sponge"-it comes from the Roman Skeptic Sextus Empiricus, who told a story about a painter who stopped trying so hard to paint the perfect representation of a horse's mouth and discovered that sometimes it's best to just let fly. Fling your sponge, let it land where it may. Okay, if you're just painting. If you're living a life, though, maybe just a bit less skepticism is prudent.

Is it possible to go through life questioning and doubting everything, committing always to nothing, and holding no firm opinions? Is it desirable or useful to try doing so? And do you know anyone who doesn't look both ways before crossing the street?

*Pyrrho reminds me of the Ruler of the Universe

...who is really more Pyrrhonist Skeptic than solipsist, I think.

RULER OF THE UNIVERSE AS SOLIPSIST:
Excerpts from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts

MAN:   Pussy pussy pussy . . . coochicoochicoochi . . . pussy want his fish? Nice piece of fish . . . pussy want it? Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think. I imagine this is what will happen, but how can I tell? I think it's better if I don't get involved. I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet so who am I to judge? Ah, you're eating it.

I like it when I see you eat the fish, because in my mind you will waste away if you don't.

Fish come from far away, or so I'm told. Or so I imagine I'm told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black shiny ships do they come in your mind too? What do you see, pussy? And when I hear their questions, all their many questions do you hear questions? Perhaps you just think they're singing songs to you. Perhaps they are singing songs to you and I just think they're asking me questions. Do you think they came today? I do. There's mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on my table, fish in your plate and a memory of them in my mind. And look what else they've left me. Crosswords, dictionaries and a calculator. I think I must be right in thinking they ask me questions. To come all that way and leave all these things just for the privilege of singing songs to you would be very strange behaviour. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell.

. . . .

MAN:   I think I saw another ship in the sky today. A big white one. I've never seen a big white one. Only six small black ones. Perhaps six small black ones can look like one big white one. Perhaps I would like a glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more likely.

. . . .

Perhaps some different people are coming to see me.

. . . .

MAN:     Hello?

FORD PREFECT:    Er, excuse me, do you rule the Universe?

MAN:     I try not to. Are you wet?

FORD:    Wet! Well, doesn't it look as if we're wet?

MAN:    That's how it looks to me, but how you feel about it might be a different matter. If you find warmth makes you feel dry you'd better come in.

. . . .

ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX:  Er, man, like what's your name?

MAN:       I don't know. Why, do you think I ought to have one? It seems odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.

ZARNIWOOP:  Listen. We must ask you some questions.

MAN:    All right. You can sing to my cat if you like.

ARTHUR DENT:  Would he like that?

MAN:   You'd better ask him that.

ZARNIWOOP:  How long have you been ruling the Universe?

MAN:   Ah, this is a question about the past is it?

ZARNIWOOP:  Yes.

MAN:    How can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?

ZARNIWOOP:  Do you answer all questions like this?

MAN: I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.
. . . .

ZARNIWOOP:     No. Listen. People come to you, yes?

MAN:  I think so.

ZARNIWOOP:    And they ask you to take decisions—about wars, about economies, about people, about everything going on out there in the Universe?

MAN:    I only decide about my Universe. My Universe is what happens to my eyes and ears. Anything else is surmise and hearsay. For all I know, these people may not exist. You may not exist. I say what it occurs to me to say.

ZARNIWOOP:  But don't you see? What you decide affects the fate of millions of people.

MAN: I don't know them, I've never met them. They only exist in words I think I hear. The men who come say to me, say, so and so wants to declare what we call a war. These are the facts, what do you think? And I say. Sometimes it's a smaller thing. . . .
. . . .

MAN: But it's folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know. If they exist.

ZARNIWOOP: Do you think they do?

MAN: I have no opinion. How can I have?

ZARNIWOOP:  I have.

MAN:   So you say—or so I hear you say.

. . . .

ZARNIWOOP:  But don't you see that people live or die on your word?

MAN:    It's nothing to do with me, I am not involved with people. The Lord knows I am not a cruel man.

ZARNIWOOP:    Ah! You say . . . the Lord! You believe in . . .

MAN:    My cat. I call him the Lord. I am kind to him.

ZARNIWOOP:  All right. How do you know he exists? How do you know he knows you to be kind, or enjoys what you think of as your kindness?

MAN:    I don't. I have no idea. It merely pleases me to behave in a certain way to what appears to be a cat. What else do you do? Please I am tired.

. . . .

---

Note: This philosophical dialogue is excerpted from the final scene of the original radio series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  This sequence can also be found in chapter 29 of the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, with more narrative description and slightly expanded dialogue.

==

Here's something completely different: a cartoon view of Aristophanes' fable in Plato's Symposium:

Skeptic Magazine... Skeptic magazine examines extraordinary claims, promotes science and reason, and serves as an educational tool for those seeking a sound scientific viewpoint.

eSkeptic-

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.” Spinoza, quoted by Michael Shermer

• Science Salon # 53: Adam Higginbotham — China Syndrome II: The True Story of What Happened at Chernobyl
• Personhood & Abortion Rights: How Science Might Inform this Contentious Issue

Arts & Letters Daily search results for “skepticism” (17)

2010-01-01 | Skepticism, yes, egomania and arrogance, no. As Descartes, hero of scientists and skeptics everywhere, said, skepticism, like charity, begins at home more »

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2014-01-14 | Erez Aiden slaloms between the sciences and the humanities, accumulating patents, publications, and skepticism as he goes more »

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2010-01-01 | Martin Gardner, mathematical gamester and champion of science and skepticism, is dead at the age of 95 more »

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2015-01-22 | Science once had moral authority. But today, with scientism resurgent, skepticism reigns. The cost is paid by all of us more »

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2014-09-05 | The return of Luddism. Awash in techno-giddiness and gadget infatuation, skepticism is useful, essential, and in short supply more »

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2012-08-17 | Doubt is crucial to intellectual life. But a malign and exaggerated skepticism has undermined science. What's to blame, gullibility or greed? more »

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2017-01-11 | Written with seen-it-all skepticism and pseudo-philosophical detachment, the feuilletonwas part journalism, part prose poem. The reaction to the new form? Utter contempt more »

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2018-03-12 | Skepticism toward intellectual authority runs deep in America. It's a healthy instinct, until it's not. Tom Nichols is worried about the death of expertise more »

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2014-11-05 | Here's the story we know: Scientific skepticism eroded religious faith. But the line between religion and science was not so bright more »

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2010-01-01 | Penn and Tellerâ?'s act has no showgirls, fireworks, or tigers. It is suffused with a kind of irony, skepticism, and beauty seldom seen in Las Vegas more »

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2013-03-28 | The question of monsters is credulity versus skepticism: Science puts to rest tales of Minotaur and Medusa. And yet we want to believe. Why? more »

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2010-01-01 | Did the Trojan War really happen? If so, did it flare at the archeological site that some scholars call Troy? Skepticism is slowly giving way more »

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2011-01-01 | When the Civil War began, the literati - Whitman, Emerson, Dickinson, Melville - erupted in support of the Union cause. But patriotic fervor soon gave way to skepticism, confusion, and moral ambivalence more »

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2016-08-31 | The replication crisis in psychology is rooted in bad incentives: skepticism isn't rewarded, unexpected findings are. But coverage of the crisis is susceptible to its own bad incentives more »

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2010-01-01 | Our melting brains. From the pencil to the typewriter to the computer, every change in media has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing to save the old ways more »

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2016-06-30 | Anti-vaxxing, flat-Earthism, climate-change skepticism — the marketplace of ideasdoesn’t work. You can try to kill zombie ideas, but they just won’t die more »

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2016-09-03 | Philip K. Dick made skepticism an art form. His inability to separate reality from fiction, and his certainty that everyone was out to get him, was the wellspring of his work more »

LISTEN:: Nothing Matters? I'm Skeptical - LISTEN... Scepticism (PB)... Skeptics (rec.10/1/18)
==
*Th27 - no class today, but read, find quiz answers, post comments etc.

LISTEN

Epicureans and Stoics, LH 4-5; Gissing, "Walking Experiences" (JW); FL 19-20.
ALSO RECOMMENDED: De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) Cicero's dialogue between a Skeptic, a Stoic, and an Epicurean... & JMH's smart commentary on it in Doubt: A History*

LH 4-5 

1. According to Epicurus, fear of death is based on what, and the best way to live is what?

2. How is the modern meaning of "epicurean" different from Epicurus's?

3. What famous 20th century philosopher echoed Epicurus's attitude towards death?

4. How did Epicurus respond to the idea of divine punishment in the afterlife?

5. What was the Stoics' basic idea, and what was their aim?

6. Why did Cicero think we shouldn't worry about dying?

7. Why didn't Seneca consider life too short?

8. What does the author say might be the cost of stoicism?

JW

9. What gave Gissing peace while he was walking "penniless and miserable?"

10. What is it that "creates the world about us?"

FL 19-20

11. One writer of The Book of Progress likened the effect of a motion picture to the effect of what? 

12. Newspapers and magazines are the "first foundations" of what?

13. What two "fantasies" did the suburb satisfy?

14. What two locations are described as invented paradises?

Also of note in FL 19: "Before movies and radio, most Americans had surely never heard the voice  of more than a single major celebrity in their lifetimes... For the first time, most of the most famous Americans were not politicians or military men or writers or painters but actors-people renowned for being people they weren't." 140-41

DQ:

• Are you afraid of death, of dying, or of any other aspect of human mortality? Why or why not? What's the best way to counter such fear?
• Are you epicurean in any sense of the word?
• Have you experienced the death of someone close to you? How did you handle it?
• Do you believe in the possibility of a punitive and painful afterlife? Do you care about the lives of those who will survive you? Which do you consider more important? Why?
• Do you consider Epicurus's disbelief in immortal souls a solution to the problem of dying, or an evasion of it? Do you find the thought of ultimate mortality consoling or mortifying?
• How do you know, or decide, which things you can change and which you can't? 
• Were the Stoics right to say we can always control our attitude towards events, even if we can't control events themselves?
• Is it easier for you not to get "worked up" about small things you can't change (like the weather, or bad drivers) or large things (like presidential malfeasance and terrorist atrocites)?  Should you be equally calm in the face of both?
• Who had the better idea about why we shouldn't be afraid to die, Epicurus or Cicero?
• Do you waste too much time? How do you think you can make the most of the time you have?
• Is it possible to live like a Stoic without becoming cold, heartless, and inhumane?
• What do you think of when you hear the word "therapy"? Do you think philosophers can be good therapists? 
• Do you think "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is an appropriate goal in life? Can it be effectively pursued by those who shun "any direct involvement in public life"? 
• If the motion of atoms explains everything, can we be free? 
• Is it true that your private thoughts can never be enslaved? 
• Do you agree with the Stoic critique of Plato's Forms? (321) 
• How do you distinguish things that are and are not subject to your control? 

Jefferson the Stoic-Epicurean

"Before he attained domestic happiness he had probably worked out his enduring philosophy of life; it was marked by cheerfulness not gloom, and he afterwards described it as Epicurean, though he hastened to say that the term was much misunderstood. He came to believe that happiness was the end of life, but, as has been said, he was engaged by the "peculiar conjunction of duty with happiness"; and his working philosophy was a sort of blend of Epicureanism and Stoicism, in which the goal of happiness was attained by self-discipline." Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian

Jefferson Pro Epicurus, Contra Plato

– Thomas Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819 .

This letter contains Jefferson’s explicit endorsement of Epicureanism along with his statement “I too am an Epicurean.” Jefferson shows here that he understood Epicurus’ true views to have been grossly misrepresented, and that he understood Epicurus to have been the arch-enemy of Platonism. Jefferson also states that he considered Jesus of Nazareth to have been a man of great personal merit bent on reforming the corrupt theology of Judaism, but that the theology that Jesus’ followers developed after his death was a fabrication built on a corrupt variation of Platonism. 

– Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, July 5, 1814 

Here Jefferson denounces Plato (labeling The Republic as full of “whimsies, puerilities, and unintelligible jargon”) and stating of the Platonisms grafted into Christian theology that “nonsense can never be explained.”

– Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 15, 1820 

Here Jefferson complains to Adams about Christian theology and states that “To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise.”

New Epicurean

Differences & similarities between Epicureans & Stoics-"Where the Epicureans believed there was only atoms and void, the Stoics believed there was only inert matter (bodies) and logos (reason) that organized matter’s motions and fate. Logos was the structuring principle, the how and the why of matter, and, like a deductive argument, had its own inner necessity. So, they too were determinists (a bit of an over-simplification), but for different reasons..."

The Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was born in 341 BC, on the island of Samos, a few miles off the coast of modern Turkey. He had an unusually long beard, wrote over three hundred books and was one of the most famous philosophers of his age.

What made him famous was his skilful and relentless focus on one particular subject: happiness. Previously, philosophers had wanted to know how to be good; Epicurus insisted he wanted to focus on how to be happy.

Few philosophers had ever made such a frank, down-to-earth admission of their interests before. It shocked many, especially when they heard that Epicurus had started a School for Happiness. The idea of what was going on inside was both entirely shocking and deeply titillating. A few disgruntled Epicureans made some damaging leaks about what was going on in the school. Timocrates said that Epicurus had to vomit twice a day because he spent all his time on a sofa being fed luxurious meats and fish by a team of slaves. And Diotimus the Stoic published fifty lewd letters which he said had been written by Epicurus to some young students when he’d been drunk and sexually obsessed. It’s because of such gossip that we still sometimes now use the adjective ‘Epicurean’ to describe luxury and decadence... SoL

Book of Life: Epicurus

What is the best life we can live? How can we cope with whatever the universe throws at us and keep thriving nonetheless? The ancient Greco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism explains that while we may not always have control over the events affecting us, we can have control over how we approach things. Massimo Pigliucci describes the philosophy of Stoicism...Ed.ted

‘Stoicism’ was a philosophy that flourished for some 400 years in Ancient Greece and Rome, gaining widespread support among all classes of society. It had one overwhelming and highly practical ambition: to teach people how to be calm and brave in the face of overwhelming anxiety and pain.

We still honour this school whenever we call someone ‘stoic’ or plain ‘philosophical’ when fate turns against them: when they lose their keys, are humiliated at work, rejected in love or disgraced in society. Of all philosophies, Stoicism remains perhaps the most immediately relevant and useful for our uncertain and panicky times... SoL

Pigliucci's Best Books on Stoicism

Stoicism, in contrast with a lot of contemporary philosophy, puts a great emphasis on living well: the person who studies Stoicism, if sincere, will also practise it. I know you’re both a theorist and a practitioner. Could you say a little bit about how you came to Stoicism?

We’ll get back to the theorist part because I’m definitely not an ancient philosophy scholar, so I’m not a theorist in that sense, but I’m interested in Stoicism as both theory and practice for today’s world. How did I come to it? It was a long circuitous route. A few years ago I went through a midlife crisis and switched from my first academic career as an evolutionary biologist to become a philosopher. Within philosophy I’m interested mostly in the philosophy of science, but you can’t switch to philosophy and start studying it seriously and just be limited to your own technical field of expertise; at least you can, but I don’t think you should.

I began reading more broadly, and—coming to philosophy in the second half of my life—I had a lot to catch up with. I started reading about ethics. I read Kant and Mill, and looked at modern ethics in terms of deontology and utilitarianism in all their forms. I found those ways of understanding ethics wanting. They are wonderful authors, but it didn’t click with me. Then I remembered studying philosophy back in high school – I grew up in Italy where it is mandatory to study three years of history of philosophy. I remembered reading about the ancient Greeks and Romans, and had vague recollections that these people had a very different conception of ethics.

The first stop there was obviously Aristotle. I rediscovered virtue ethics, and that really did appeal to me immediately. Then I went beyond Aristotle and read what little there is available on Epicureanism and some of the other Hellenistic schools of virtue ethics. All this interested me because it clearly embodied a much broader conception of ethics. Most contemporary ethics is focused on answering narrower questions such as: ‘Is this action right or wrong?’ and: ‘Under what circumstances is this permissible or not permissible?’ (...continues)
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Modern Stoicism-"stoic philosophy resources for modern living"...

Human Nature and the Ethical Life

Oct 1, 2018 MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI

Philosophers have been debating human nature for centuries, but in an era of increasing political vitriol and partisanship, the issues at stake are gaining new relevance. To understand what we should expect from our leaders, we must first consider what to expect of ourselves.

NEW YORK – Does human nature exist? The answer has implications for anyone concerned about ethics. In an era defined by amoral political leadership and eroding social values, thinking about the essence of humanity has never been more important.

The philosophical concept of “human nature” has a long history. In Western culture, its study began with Socrates in the fifth century BCE, but it was Aristotle who argued that human nature was characterized by unique attributes – particularly, people’s need to socialize and our ability to reason. For the Stoics of Hellenistic Greece, human nature was what gave life meaning and contributed to their embrace of cosmopolitanism and equality.

Ancient Chinese philosophers like Confucius and Menciusbelieved human nature was innately good, while Xunzi thought it was evil and lacked a moral compass. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, human nature is fundamentally corrupted by sin, but can be redeemed by embracing God, in whose image we have been created.

Modern Western philosophers, writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, expanded on these ideas. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that our natural state leads to a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” which is why we need a strong, centralized political authority (the so-called Leviathan).

By contrast, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that human nature is malleable, but that our original state was one without reason, language, or community. He concluded that the mismatch between our early condition and modern civilization is at the root of our unhappiness, advocating a literal return to nature. David Hume, always sensible and moderate, proposed that humans are characterized by a combination of altruism and selfishness, and that such a combination can be partially molded for the better (or worse) by culture.

Charles Darwin’s work in the mid-1800s made many of the early “essentialist” views of human nature untenable. The idea that humans had a small set of characteristics that only humans possess was at odds with the slow, gradual pace of Darwinian evolution. While Homo sapiens evolved as a particular species of primate, there are no clean breaks between our biology and that of other species.

So the philosophical debate over human nature rages on, updated with the findings of biology. Today, some philosophers interpret Rousseau and Darwin to mean that human nature itself is nonexistent, and that while biology may constrain the body, it does not restrict our minds or our volition.

Evolutionary psychologists and even some neuroscientists say that is nonsense. The message they take from Darwin (and partly from Rousseau) is that we are maladaptive in a modern context – basically, Pleistocene apes who find themselves equipped with mobile phones and nuclear weapons.

As an evolutionary biologist and philosopher of science, my view is that human nature certainly exists, but that it is not based on an “essence” of any kind. Rather, our species, just like any other biological species, is characterized by a dynamic and evolving set of traits that are statistically typical for our lineage but neither present in every member nor absent from every other species.

Why does any of this matter to someone who is not a scientist or a philosopher? There are at least two good reasons that I can think of. One is personal; the other is political.

First, how we interpret human nature has broad implications for ethics, in the ancient Greco-Roman sense of the study of how we should live our lives. Someone who holds a Judeo-Christian-Islamic view of human nature is naturally going to worship God and follow the guidance of religious commandments. By contrast, someone adopting an existentialist philosophyalong the lines of Jean-Paul Sartre or Simone de Beauvoir might believe that because “existence precedes essence,” we are radically free to shape our livesaccording to our own choices, and do not need God to help us along.

Moreover, views on human nature affect views on ethics. And today, our ethics are a mess. One recent study in the United States called Donald Drumpf’s presidency the “most unethical” in American history, while Gallup’s annual survey of US attitudes toward morality suggests a steady erosion of social mores. If we all took a moment to consider where we stood on the debate about human nature, we might gain valuable insight into our own beliefs – and by extension, the beliefs of others.

Personally, I lean toward the naturalistic ethics of the Stoics, for whom human nature constrains and suggests – but does not rigidly determine – what we can and should do. But regardless of one’s religious or philosophical leanings, reflecting on who we are – biologically and otherwise – is a good way to take more ownership of our actions. Needless to say, there are many among us who could benefit from such an exercise.

Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He is the author of How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life. He blogs at patreon.com/PlatoFootnotes

Want To Be Happy? Live Like A Stoic For A Week

What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, obviously the roads – the roads go without saying. How about guidance for how to live in the 21st century? That seems less likely, but in fact the last few years have seen a flurry of interest in the work of three Roman Stoic philosophers who offered just that. They were Seneca, tutor to the Emperor Nero; Epictetus, a former slave; and Marcus Aurelius, himself emperor.

Modern books drawing on their ideas and repackaged as guidance for how to live well today include A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine, Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, and How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci. What all these books share is the conviction that people can benefit by going back and looking at the ideas of these Roman Stoics. There’s even an annual week dedicated to Stoicism.

Stoicism holds that the key to a good, happy life is the cultivation of an excellent mental state, which the Stoics identified with virtue and being rational. The ideal life is one that is in harmony with Nature, of which we are all part, and an attitude of calm indifference towards external events. It began in Greece, and was founded around 300BC by Zeno, who used teach at the site of the Painted Stoa in Athens, hence the name Stoicism. The works of the early Stoics are for the most part lost, so it is the Roman Stoics who have been most influential over the centuries, and continue to be today... (continues)
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A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety

“There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is,”Kurt Vonnegut observed in discussing Hamlet during his influential lecture on the shapes of stories. “The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad,” Alan Watts wrote a generation earlier in his sobering case for learning not to think in terms of gain or loss. And yet most of us spend swaths of our days worrying about the prospect of events we judge to be negative, potential losses driven by what we perceive to be “bad news.” In the 1930s, one pastor itemized anxiety into five categories of worries, four of which imaginary and the fifth, “worries that have a real foundation,” occupying “possibly 8% of the total.”

A twenty-four-hour news cycle that preys on this human propensity has undeniably aggravated the problem and swelled the 8% to appear as 98%, but at the heart of this warping of reality is an ancient tendency of mind so hard-wired into our psyche that it exists independently of external events. The great first-century Roman philosopher Seneca examined it, and its only real antidote, with uncommon insight in his correspondence with his friend Lucilius Junior, later published as Letters from a Stoic(public library) — the timeless trove of wisdom that gave us Seneca on true and false friendship and the mental discipline of overcoming fear... (continues)

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* "The conceit of The Nature of the Gods was that many years earlier Cicero’s friend Cotta, a great orator and priest, had invited the young Cicero to his home. When Cicero arrived he found himself in the company of three famous men—one an Epicurean, one a Stoic, and one, Cotta himself, a Skeptic from the Academy—engaged in a heated conversation about the gods. The Epicurean and the Stoic have some very definite ideas about the matter; Cotta, the Skeptic, claims to know nothing for sure, but also claims to be expert at seeing falsehood..."

Hecht is also very good on my favorite Stoic, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius: "Aurelius stands out as a man struggling to internalize the truths of philosophy; his Meditations read like a sage counseling himself through some dark night or ethical confusion. That he was emperor, and perhaps as close to a philosopher-king as the West would ever know, has long fueled interest in his Meditations, but it needn’t have. The book is a marvel of insight and advice. It is not particularly original in its ideas—it is mostly a mixture of Stoicism and Epicureanism—but the voice here is new and warm, and the advice, on all sorts of subjects, is good. It feels good to read it."

Start reading it for free: http://a.co/i8pkJ5A

― from "Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson"

Arts & Letters Daily search results for “stoicism” (3)

2016-02-09 | We speak of being consumed by envy but filled with gratitude. Oliver Sacks approached death with poignancy, stoicism -- and gratitude more »

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2018-10-31 | The appeal of Stoic philosophy to both ancient Romans and today’s therapy-chasing Americans is unsurprising. But darkness is at the heart of Stoicism more »

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2010-01-01 | Between university philosophers with their high abstractions and the glib advice of self-help gurus, there lies the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius more »

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“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” 
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.” 

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.” 

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” 

“It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.” 

“If what you have seems insufficient to you, then though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.” 
― Seneca

“Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.” 

“What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.” 

“Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.” 
― Epictetus, The Art of Living