Category talk:Knowledge

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There are several knowledge strategies: causality/physiologia for predictable needs and observational/definitive propositions, through aisthêseis and prolêpseis and the pathê [Diog.L 10. 31] that are evident 'proofs' (apòdeixis, Ep. Hdt.73), topic of kritêrion (term formerly used by Parmenides): science on behalf of which flexibility is suitable (not for technology); today neurology establishes, for instance, that “hormonal system uses retroactive control [Ridley, Genome , ch. Self-assembly]; our innate drives (Epicurean syggenika telê) and innate emotions follow a definite course, in spite of reaction to some parameters, otherwise there is illness (vain desires, for Epicurus) [see, about cognitive science: AAVV, Rethinking Innateness]. The very senses are empirical but through an innate programming. Causal understanding and forecast may regard 'spiritual' human nature too, as it's expounded in most of Principal Docrines (by Epicurus innateness is generally said 'nature'); expertise/conjecture/frank speech for non necessary desires (if we have no choice, why should we change?, philo-); multiple explanation (theorized by Theophrastus too), a development of skepticism without rash suspension of judgment/ epochê, open to add new possible points or a sole new proof, for ataraxia/mental relaxation about casualness and variety of the world (pragmasi poikilôs astaton [Diog. Oin., fr. 63, Smith]) - told also 'words explanation' [On Nature XXV] - of History and Literature, that is against threat of finding a world lacking meaning. But their repeatability is only doxa/ypolêpsis. "While qualities of compounds change, the atoms do not change at all [Herod. L. 054] [...] temporary qualities accompany body – accidents. They too do not exist by themselves [...] We must not deny the self-evident reality of accidents, just because they do not have the nature of the whole (i.e., the body...)" [ibid 070-71]. No predictive science, no universal values, only pleasurable catharsis/ataraxia (Aristotle, Nobel prize E. Montale's Non chiederci la parola), and knowledge of possible Ways of Life (Peri ethon kai bion) that relies on feeling gratitude for experienced values; even mathematics and natural sciences have mostly no practical employment, so far
“ I've lived well (vixi, Gr. bebiôtai)[...] in the knowledge that what has come to be cannot be undone" [Hor., Carm. III, 29, 43-48; Serm. I, 5, 101-3; see also V.S. 47; Virg., Aeneid 4.653; Sen. Ben. 5.17.5]
Empirical foundation is reduced to 'signals' semêiôn, as Carnap will teach. It distinguishes what is collectively knowable from what is particular, locally useful, less teachable, and what is far-off/future i.e. localistic/chronicle truth, as the case may be, therefore normatively undecided (see Lucretius' IV, 477: dubium certo probare, tripartite logic).

Conjectural knowledge (hypolepsis)

Most causalities are not linearly consecutive, nor may they be finalistic, thus not scientifically definite, but just 'more or less' recurring by blocks. "It's far better having suitable opinions among useful things than an exact science among useless ones [...] which don't bring any relief to the life" [Phld., Rhetoric book VIII, PHerc. 1015/832].Conjectural arts achieve their end only for the most part, and proceed from the apparent to the non-apparent (to adêlon). “... the prudent persons (phronimoi) often speak even when they think that they won't for the most part be successful” [On Conversation PHerc. 873 X.9-12]; if that is the case probabilist practical though with occasional pleasure has prominence over insisting for an exact theory in sorrow. "This is how the Epicureans define craft (technê): a craft is a method which produces what is advantageous for human life” [U227b]. When decisions concern the future or someone else' s feelings (invisible world), one has to proceed from the past, following approximate analogy (never exact repetition nor logical formalization of induction), or from one's own feelings or from empirical inquiry (visible world), with inference from particular to particular, not as an analogismos of Rationalists: Epicurean epilogismòs does involve multiple explanations, characteristic of life (but also of multiple degree equations...). So philosophy Canon can evaluate beliefs, epilogismòs prudence worthiness of non necessary desires and of suggesting, warning, promising, or requesting. It's important to declare the need of the latter, even though teachable theory can be given only by the former. Only necessary events are teachable by causes and by prolêpseis; soul has its own causality, describable about its past, not about the future (no finalism).
Physiology research - mainly for advanced learners - was not in the center of common school activity, spreading as a conversational assistance (omilia and parrhesia) in turn with sapiential tenets study, rewarded by homages (suntaxeis) to the sage friend. Practical/conjectural method is not only for business , but also for educability, conviviality and fine arts, that is non necessary desires. After Herodotus Letter "epitomizing only first I-XII books of Perì Physeos" [Sedley, The Structure of E.' On Nat., Cr.Herc. 4 (1974)], Epicurus realized that "there are two kinds of philosophical inquiry: one concerns facts, the other mere words" [Diog.L. 034; epilogismos refers direct empiricism of perceptions to analogical hidden empiricism, while dialecticians continued to anlogize only actions to words]. Today hermeneutic and analytic philosophy have mostly chosen the latter way, the analogy of discursiveness with factuality; E. anchored language to senses and intuitions, and mostly for non necessary (not causal/predictive) phenomena, such as those handled by conversations (On Conversation Pherc 873) and 'moral invention' literature (On Plain Speech PHerc. 146, 1082, 1471; and several biographic books), which warm our lives; in some respects maybe some Epicurean biographies were 'creative non fiction' essays.

Epilogismòs: first time at Arist Pol. 1322B 35 codd. (pl); Philodemus: tôn phainomenôn' epilogismoy (by analogical inference with noticeable things; De Lacy's tr.: “by empirical inference from appearances”; to parakoloythein epilogismôi synbibazôn oti kata toyto dei tên omoiotêt einay “confirming by empirical inference that the similarity must exist in this respect also”: De Lacy's tr. of Phld. Sign. § 38 col. XXII; Ir. (pl); Epicurus Hrd. 73; Arr. 72,10 - 73,1 p. 65: ”it has to be payed attention to the way we associate in and analogically calculate it ” (alla monon ô symplekomen to idion toyto kai parametroymen, malista e p i l o g i s t e o n . ). - PD 20: ton e p i l o g i s m o n (see Talk:Principal Doctrine 20). Deperditorum librorum reliquiae 12 iv; Arr. 31, 5 p.296 : mete[the]metha syn[i]dontes oy [toi]ayta ek timos e[p]il[og]ism[o]y “we changed them [some words] considering after analogical calculation/assessment they were not exactly like” [r.'s tr.]]; Arr. 34. 17 (see below, and Talk:Virtue); Schofield (1996), Manetti (2010): epilogismos a “comparative appraisal”; ; “comparative judgment” [Roskam, 2007]; the prefix 'epi': implying reciprocity: not efficient nor final cause, but balance's 'more or less' [Lyddle Schott p. 623 2nd col. 2G; Plutarchus also describes tois epilogizesthai dynamenois as 'theirs back and forth' in Pleasant life impossible, 4, p. 1089D] +'logismòs': calculation: not fixed truth (logos), but a volatile abacus of latin calcula/small stones, a differentiated assessment in Aristotle too [there is science only about necessity, Nicom. Eth. VI, 5; but his scientific research assumes only dogmatic finalistic nature, no Epicurean fallible chance]. In On Anger [col. 46.18 Indelli] Phld. refute two epilogismoi of dissidents: unequivocal the meaning 'analogic'. “Let him demonstrate some rule by analogic calculus (epilogismos) and not by describing particular classifications” [Phld. On Poems I, 201; not “the being the non being, the similar the dissimilar" (Theetetus), but the probable, the more similar the less probable too]. For unforeseeable route analytical geometry of curves, Aristotle's moral mesòtês and logismos, Latin mediocritas [Hor. Carm.. 2, 10, 5], Epicurus' 'more or less' or epilogismos (expression dating back to Plato's Protagoras) and nephon logismòs - i.e. supple calculation for praxis [Men..132; Hor.'s, Epist. II, 2, 144: numeros modosque vitae], Academic scepticism of Arcesilaus and Philo of Larissa, perform without dualistic logic: measuring temporal (mostly future) facts through atemporal words, through analogy from anchored to senses descriptions to the not anchored ones concerning future.
First Plato and Aristotle explained analogy as referring both to something identical and different; Aristotle named it also 'homonymic' or equivocal, e.g. “what is is named in many ways” “the being, the one, the something”; Epicurus made it a principal choice fact-finding instrument, that is a reason in one case may be no reason at all; “So both affections' explanation method and causes' explanation method ” [On Nature XXV], a natural bridge between intuitive idiographic phenomenalism and scientific creativity [physicalism]. A perfect today example of proto-rational (like immune system) past-present interaction is biological 'epigenesis' concept. It's openly opposite to classifying schematism, when the estimates are blindly believed. That is particularly important for Ways of Life and literature, where materials for empirical inference (empeiria) are so individually variable (parallagai); ê analogia, ê omoiotês are more fitting for external Epicurean empirical inference sêmeiôsis. So no Epicurean definition of epilogismòs is preserved. An idea about it may come from the today Games Theory's calculation about human interactions [see R. Trivers ('Quarterly Review of Biology', 46) ; McNamara, J., Z. Barta, L. Fromhage, and A. Houston. (2008); about significance of 'analogy ' and 'model', see Mach, H. Herz, P. Duhem, M. Hesse, E.H. Hutten, E. Nagel, R. Harré, E. M. Sander - D. Hofstadter, 2013]. But often professorship uses optimistically the terms of 'science, logic, theory, universal' about humanities, decisions, morality, law. Epilogismos, as non pretentious instrument in relational life, allows however prudence to have an unifying esoteric faculty for virtues (justice and honorableness are no incontrovertible science...) indispensable for wellbeing (Menoec. L. 132), whereas philosophy is too maximalist, but physiology is, for necessities, theoretically sufficiently effective .
Prudence is an art capable of close forecast, as a circumstantial (peristasin) reasoning is the only valid method of bendable assumptions, even though situational and contingent assertions are hardly universally true [see Cic. De Fato. 19 and 37: "(in opinion of the Epicureans) disjunction (e.g. a ˅ -a) of proposition are true, but that of the original proposition [predictive (context.)] contained in them neither is true"]; nor cause and effect but probabilist correlations inferences, or rather a a tendential interpretation of probability: “It is not necessary (that i.e. 'multiple explanations) because these things do not exist in our experience, they do not exist in other places.” [On methods of Inference PHerc. 1065 item 1. De Lacy' s tr.; non existence of not contradictory virtual object is undemonstrable: today Popper, and the end of nineteenth-century inductive positivism]. Limits of Epicurus' theoretical Ethic (blurred pragmatism of 'prudence', in Menoec. 132) have been openly reasserted by On Choices and Avoidances, Sect. XI, contrary to what “some have clumsily interpreted it” (kathaper exedexanto tines agroikôs [adverb: 'as a yokel']): for a few fanatical rough followers the cure-all ta kyriôtata the cardinal tenets (meant for beginners memorization) were become a 'red booklet'. Sect. VII warns against religion and charitableness which bear fatalism, laziness (egalitarian laxity); Phld's On Anger warns against tolerance about another's intolerance, and too much gratefulness; Horace (like Pherc. 1251) against too much virtue, i.e. maximalism [Ep. I, 6, 14]. One can seek into particulars (idiômata) and one's own character and past (mesos, relative to each one) what may stay on, or 'more or less', that is a level of approximation peculiar of illocutionary and sensorial field. Here many-sided decisions are progressive and frequent (today is tried also a virtual storage for collective 'big data' - that is no abstract statistical data but many concrete individual data), after a circular or reticular process of 'multiple analogical explanations' and reassessments, so changes are addressed promptly along some probabilistic correlations, therefore freedom (further anticipatory means) is higher. Ills of necessities are more predictable (art of medicine, though conjectural), what is helpful (art of navigation, ê kybernetikê) is less predictable [Epic. at Sextus E. Adv. Math. 1.49-52], hence the mythos of prudent Ulisses. Just that Cybernetics, for machinery, Decision Theory and General Problem Solver (GPS) for the brain, will learn to self-adjust the estimated (virtual reality) course of action just with mathematics of chance and statistics (for instance by fractal models in finance, sequences of random numbers in cryptography). For this anti-dualism - that is gradualism, never precisely foreseeable, of 'analogical calculus' and 'more or less' (epilogismon [...] kata to pleon ê (ἢ) elatton) [Epicurus Pherc 1056, Arr. 34. 17; which Horace translated with est modus (measure) in rebus (Serm. I,1, 106)] Epicurus has a place in logic and analytic Philosophy; whereas about digital-bivalent logic (true/false) applied to the future one cannot say neither P nor not-P, as it is impossible to refer to any sensation, it results just a not-reality. Epicurus was little interested in collectivism and general abstractness, but rather in calculus of personal secluded stability (eustatheia) in analogy of one's reasonable past. MIT engineering dean Vannevar Bush's (1890-1974 ) reasserted it with a personal-information device plan, the 'Memex': “The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the associatiation of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain.” [As We May Think; 'Atlantic Monthly'; July 1945, 32-33]; [analogical association of ideas, individually useful and relevant, like in the Whole Earth Catalog access to tools (1968-72), and small-scale information technologies, like in personal computers, browsers, links, web2]. Yet computers don't understand meanings, since they have no personal history of common contexts, graded by needs, every meaning being inevitably contextual. Connectionism expounds biological and possibly artificial digital intelligence, as operation of inherited or acquired neural nets stimulus and response.
Goethe employed his Plants Morphology and metamorphosis in order to understand art's creativity: “Every real thing is an analogy of all realities" [Jedes Existierende ist ein analogen alles Existiendierenden, (Max. und Refl. n. 554)]. 'Similarity' (plus contiguity, that is empiricism) was the logical link in structural linguistics of Jakobson, and in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams ('condensation', plus transfer, in ideas, memories, feelings too), and now in Cognitive Psychology (analogy: the approach to what makes us intelligent [S. Pinker, The Blank Slate, ch. Political Scientists]). Epicurean analogy (homoiotes) was not more primitive than Aristotelian logic, actually it's his major legacy. Choice and Avoidance instead of Ethic, completeness of pleasure as an aim and foundation of Canon instead of Supreme Good (and God, first cause) are epistemological consequences. Quite, what Epicurus (circularity of definitions, no excluded middle) and Bush intuited has been mathematically demonstrated … (that is: it has been shown the logical form of a definitively undecidable problem) by Gödel (1931). Each logic mathematical system cannot decide his own wrongness from its inside (only a more elaborate one eventually can), no metalinguistic reference is possible. As a computer is a mathematical system, it cannot go out its assignments, except be cracked or damaged, i.e. reprogrammed. Human being varies by being whole, through analogy and scientific revolutions, which involve many 'more or less' (shaded proprieties) between previous yes and no. Data banks and web involve many more or less informations, but analogical expediency is decided by brains, not by cue algorithm. Dogmatic necessity of nature (often custom) opens to approximations of free speech, from Locke's Tolerance, Jefferson, to classical liberal political philosophy, now under Constitution, and W. James' notion that intelligence is a process and it isn't understandable but in relation to action. One does not arrive to εναργεια/enargeia the certainty, but to επιβολη/epibolê the hopes and the shared feelings (intersubjectivity): even the art of moral guidance is conjectural [PHerc. 1461. fr. 57; De Rhetorica. I, fr. 71, Longo] .
Prudence/ phronêsis is distinct from wisdom/sophia as opinion/doxa/ypolêpsis of probable improvements (choices) and of imminent conjunctures (avoidances) are distinct from knowledge/εναργεια/enargeia of necessities, that cannot vary. There is choice (deliberation) only where is no science nor law, involving mere technical execution. “ Prudence is concerned only with things which admit of variation” [Arist. Nicom. Eth. VI.6.1]. For Epicurus variation of kinetic desires (P.D. 18) is a rationale of 'living secluded' for freedom and individualism of choices (no collectivism, not much politics) and values, beside our common nature founded on necessity. Pragmatical prudence is a disposable knowledge which is available in one circumstance (to a digital logic a space-time intentionality continuum of more or plus is added), where science breaks, not in abstract terms. Real life is something wider than philosophy that, as for ethic and system, fixes values that are not part of external world, but we, as for action, do. So, when we make decisions we set aside formal rigor. How can we decide when we don't know enough what we are doing? That was the issue Existentialists mulled over, and let themselves freeze by anguish. Faced with the mutability of human things, the Epicurean looks closely at events within his reach, and – without moral rigorism – uses self psychagogic (agôgos, ágein: leader, to lead) techne: he likes better to be active and, if necessary, unlucky than lucky but fatalist; he classifies desires, but boundaries have some 'more or less' pore spaces: nature has its freaks. Failing Providence and spiritualist ethic naivety, one sails along the coast. Opinions about future must always be related to a fruition in the present – first no emulative guilty feeling - chosen warily only if they have a comparison with what was sustained or enjoyed in the past and if they are things that are not troublesome to attain. But Phronêsis is not surrender of courage but a different way of acting with practical intelligence.
Foretelling impossible changes is enargeia ; possible events are poiêsis, phantasia, epibolè [tas phantastikas epibolas tes dianoias Diog.L. 10. 31]; probable improvements or conjunctures are epilogismòs, possible and impossible knowledge are kanôn. Choices and avoidances imply a degree of inner freedom and little external restrictions, that is different situations for the citizen, the sophos, the prudent man/phronimos, the good manager/chrêmatistês of reputable business, rather than for the destitute person, the slave and the animal. Less wrong desires more autarky, for the frugal landowner and the non in love sophos. Epicurus prefers phronêsis (prudence, practical intelligence, common sense) more than sophia (Menoec. 132). Easiness of desires and effectiveness depend on environmental opportunities, personal talents, beauty, robustness rather than on a norm, while official philosophy (normative knowledge, immobilism) opts for foundation of wisdom on sophia. Ironically, have been left mostly Epicurean 'Doctrines'… But for he who is attentive to connotative style, conditional clauses of possibility, adversative conjunctions are indicative of problematic situations and prudence about future : “If their lives really are secure” [P.D.7 (see our Talk)]; “but security in general depends” [P.D. 14]; “if it comes unsought” [V.S. 64]. Other maxims are explicit: “because of a change in circumstances” [P.D. 38]. Basic esoteric treatises like Doubtful Cases (Diaporiai: U18, U19, U20), On Life Courses (Peri biôn, U8, U10 U12, U13, Arr. 10,2 ) are lost. Choices and avoidances' activities are for a certain part an art (τεχνη, technê, how to do it). " A search which conjectures on the basis of the most part of cases and on the reasonableness" [Epic. Basic Aspects of Existence Book I & On Rhetoric : quoted by Phld. De Rhetorica II, col. 27. Sudhaus p. 54] "Metrodorus as well said no branch of learning to be able to think over his aim but philosophy, hence no art" [Metrod. at Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. I, 60; it does not only think about production of goods but what they are beneficial to indeed]: philosophy is more intersubjective too (universalisable?). Therefore art of prudence phronêsis is not generalizable nor it's enargeia (a knowledge of what cannot be different from that which is): it's a practice of deciding preferentially (proairetikê), on one's own account, not on what is good for oneself and for men generally (as for Aristotle, Nicom. VI,5, 1140b 7-10: but, how can it be universal since it isn't theoretic?). “logismos […] as < rational conjectural calculus> has brought the worst things too” [Phld. On Music 4 148, 34, Delattre]. No politics for the Epicurean phronimos but many particular cases for each person. Everybody feels better one's own needs and fears.“The speaker does profess to persuade, but his end, which nature of the circumstances produces, is posited neither always, nor by Zeus, for the most part” [Phld. Rhet 2 Pherc1674 col. 6 Longo Auricchio]. Failing really shared aims in complex societies, politicians were taught to persuade masses to share the rhetorician's ones , carrying out an universal pseudo-moral, what Epicureans contested: “ political rhetoric is no science nor an art” [Phld. Rhetoric I- II col. XXIV (Longo, 95), Chandler]: their withdrawal from politics and managing on one's own.
"Expertise is conceived and spoken out among the Greeks as a state or disposition arising from observation of certain common and elementary things extending through many particular cases, which grasps something and which accomplishes something of such a sort that none of those who have not learned it can do in a similar way, whether fixedly and firmly or conjecturally" [Philod. De rhet. I P. Herc 1664 I 69 s. SUDHAUS 1892)]. There are both universal truth and personal useful truth, less conjectural arts (linguistics, gramatike), more conjectural (finance). “ it remains that by those principles I'll govern myself and alone [Hor. Ep. I, 1, 25; restat ut his ego me ipse regam solerque elementis].

Definitions and classifications

Epicurus replaces essences, definitions, rules with sensation aisthêsis and feeling pathos (particular cases), whose existence judgment (bowing to the facts) is always true about in their own circumstance [they are out of deliberation (bouleusis), reasoning; see similarly Aristotle, Metaphysic I, 5 1009b 7: “the one is not more true than the other, all are true all the same”], but, at proper time and place, notwithstanding they infinitely differ each other: individual harmonization through logismòs (rational calculus of symmetry, rotation, draft, analogy, set) is required, otherwise the object disperses itself in a dissociated kaleidoscope (a confused mass of isolated colors). "Since these are cast off in rapid succession (in sympathy with the vibrations of atoms in the depths of the object), they present an uninterrupted image and preserve their relationship to the source" [Herod. L. 50; see also DRN IV 799;]. We are conscious of result or product of perceiving (apperception), not of the automatic and since eons intelligent - prôton ennoêma - act of perceiving [see modern phenomenology and constancy ('unity' of Kant) of apperceived object]: “that the mind has to distinguish, the eyes cannot penetrate the nature of the things” [DRN 4. 384-5]. We see in the brain through the eye.
E. expanded an esoteric (skeptical?) Plato's position about definitions' limits (Theetetus 202 ) that brings to first undefinable elements, and of Skeptics and Buddhists' infinite regress, in the end circularity, and thereby resolution of definitions to appearance and mâyâ. [see: Epic. at Erotianus; U258]. And he agrees [Diog.L. X, 33] with: “If prolêpseis, as they say, correspond to real objects, then to define them is useless; if, on the other hand, they don’t correspond, how can we seek an explanation regarding prolêpseis that we haven’t been able to think of already?” [Plut., by way of Olympiodorus the Younger's comm. on Plato’s Phaedo (p. 125.10 Finck); all authors quoted here by Plut. Peripatetic and Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (II. 104) defined prolêpsis a potential intuition, not induction. Philologically too, pro/ante means 'before'; there is not meta/post that is 'after'-(experience), metalêpsis]. About affections (another knowledge basis) harmonization, choices and avoidances decisions work for ataraxia, shared values covenants, - descriptions with common terms (hypotyposis: “to bring before the eyes” [Phld., De ira I, 23; hypographê, On Signs; a phenomenological primary language seems to be foreseen (as today O. Neuratt)], positive logismos is personally needed and to some extent shared in common contingences and aims 'bringing before the eyes', because affections and values intuitions (epibolês) can only be shown by images, stories, empathetic expressions/attitudes, not be demonstrated. Evolutions of stories apply to contingent or past and possible analogous motions of objects. But he denies dialectics can lay the foundations of physic (non contradictory assertions, theoretically found , unsuited to single things, precluding from knowledge of the particular. [P. Phys, XVIII]), but he admits "both affections/words explanation [reversible thinking of I. Matte Blanco) and causes explanation-method” [asymmetrical logic, ibid; one-way linearity] [On Nature XXV], and conjectures (multiple too) which yield security, when they exclude the worst, or get a likely usefulness. Aristotle's logic but Frege's either are far from formalizing most of subordinate clauses (concessive, final, temporal and so on), not to speak of exclamations, irony etc., all not intersubjective but brightening up the life Reversible, (epi-) reticular, retroactive thinking is distinctive of palaeo-encephalon [but narrow dual propositional logic has operatively earned computer revolution and its light speedy inhuman 'bitonality']. Epicurus planned not so much the basis of knowledge but to be content with its contemporaneous results. A multi-faceted picture on how men/women [and most of all the thinking subject himself, through epilogismos] along their character and habits react to vary situations, faulty or adaptively. For men words are the links/synapses that dynamize human social mythology by natural and necessary drives of feeding and mating; a sort of quasi-aetiologie that is intelligible only through circumstances: “all these things as old wives’ tales, and think that our good is to be found in the belly and the other passages by which pleasure reaches us ... ” [U409]

Working methods

Each branch of learning has its method of research. “It is unwise to desire what is impossible: to proclaim a uniform theory about everything. So here we cannot adopt the method that we have followed in our discussions of ethics” [L. Pyth. 86]. For Epicurus soul' s atoms motions/aggregations by-product are not identical (as in idealism and naive realism: “The soul thinks itself by oneself after criterion of the same and undifferentiated" [Pap. 1056 Arr. 34. 15 ]) but analogous to inorganic atoms/things' motions/aggregations (epiphenomenalism), therefore 'appearances' are real (alêtê); description of 'appearances', i.e. of sensations/passions are of use, but they aren't usable through dialectics, that is word based definitions and counter definitions with syllogism deductions - actually already known in the concrete, a dramatisation of logic through questions and answers recited in Platonic dialogs and theorized by Aristotle's Organon, which all are refused; because the meaning of a word, as often changing according to context (polysemy), is not involved by the principle of identity and of logic bivalence. Private personal context is inevitably a part of any assignment of literary meaning, an exploratory, circumstantial non unifying anti-omeostatic drive (said also 'multi-static'), varying situations and viewpoints.
To the same positions arrived medical school of Empiricists (see Asclepiades) - as epistemological epigones of Epicurus' Menoec. 132 ' antidogmatic "something even more valuable than Philosophy" - arrived medical school of Empiricists (see Asclepiades) up to Galen's (AD 129 - 200/216) reusing epilogismos: definitions refusal, practical outcomes: definitions refusal, practical outcomes. "The competence to cure, that does distinguish the Epicurean Sage" [Phld., Perì Parrhêsias.] "It's far better having suitable opinions among useful things than an exact science among useless ones [...] which don't bring any relief to the life" [PHerc. 1015/832, cit.].
Epicurus expanded however some Parmenides and Plato's (Meno, 80 d-e) absolute innate certainties (epistême, for E. enargeia, for instance ai dôdeca stocheiôsis [U56] the twelve elementary propositions; or no possible 'iron man' who passes through the walls in Signs 36), in materialistic sense (a sort of cones and rods 'swage block', spatially distributed [see our Cassius Longinus; Diog. Oin. fr.9 Smith: “after the impingements of the first images, our nature is rendered porous ”]) like micro-wax tablets deltoi, contained into seeds, e.g. of a tree; as a part of our genetic corporeal senses software, in a sense Platonic 'pre-natal existence', but no longer the 'unfathomable decrees of Heaven' and ethical totalitarism (“We are endowed by nature to recognize pleasure as the greatest good”. Menoec. 128) - easily observable in babies and animals, formed since billion years as the result of repeated successful sense-experiences of ancestry through survival of the fittest genes; but P. Natorp and A.E. Taylor hold Epicurus' apriorism and empiricism clash each other. Actually it is just through an analogue experience that one becomes aware to have a direct knowledge, for instance, of six birds which get through trees, without counting them one by one: otherwise most experiences would be chaotic. For an ancient materialist that was manifest in visible seed (sperma; Platonic ideas were said logoi spermatikoi too) of plants , in animal foresight of storms and earthquakes, in their ways of communication. There are knowledges that don't derive from individual (ontogenetic) experience [Diog.L. 32: apo tôn aisthêseon]. So all human knowledge is derived exclusively from some present or ancestral empiric sensorial experience (more long lasting - more probable induction than recent intellect and language), and in this case no observed counter-instance is needed (e.g. fear of ravine, of snakes) our species survival is enough: “[... ] idea of truth to be formed by earlier senses - ab primis sensis”, [DRN IV 478, prôton ennoêma early notion of Epicurus syggenika telê, innate aims (Phild. On Choice XIII, the more explicit)]; today the ideas of Gestalt have applications just in relation to perception]. It was an inevitable alignement about Meno Platonic Dialogue [5. 80 d-e, cit.] that, as Clement of Alexandria reports [Stromates. Il, 4, 157 .44]: "[...] holds that no one can either investigate or puzzle over, nor even hold an opinion or even refute someone, without a preconception" (prolêpsis), and [Epicurus] defines a prolêpsis as an application of the intellect [epibolê, right brain non-verbal thought?] to something clear [reasserted by DRN IV 478 fol., see below]; “the first mental image each word conjures up […] things <that will always remain> hidden from our [present] senses” [Letter to Herodotus, 38; fast, stereotypic, subconscious]; “intuitive faculty of mind” [P.D. 24 : phantastikên epibolên tês dianoias; Köhler claims that his apes have also demonstrated insight rather than foresight [the blind instinct of insects]] - “sensory ground is tactile”, that is dynamic spatial temporal. Our intelligence - expressed by senses - is then unconscious and automatic. Learning to reason helps only to verbal memory, but the same logical relationship can be thought without dialectics. Learning to reason helps only to language memory, but dialectics is unnecessary. For Empiricists reason get proved by senses, for Epicurus an ancestrally proven spatial reason (prôton ennoêma) chooses which amid many-sided images is the most typical. Therefore all common-sense words must be not only linguistically correct nor unduly abstract but evident ('palpable'...) [Schopenhauer, Husserl, Wittgenstein stood up too for 'return to things', with a certain immanent sensorial words-based metaphysics (for Ep. 'invisible world' must be known by tracks, semeioseon … kath' omoiotêta metabasis not by dialectics)]. Epicurean Velleius speaks of “conceptions which nature itself imprinted in the mind of all” [Cic. De Nat. Deor. 1. 43-44: Quae enim nobis natura informationem dedit], and of “ implanted [insitas i.e. hardly underminable; anteceptam was also translated 'aprioristic'] or rather inborn concepts” vel potius innatas cognitiones habemus: “an innate idea Epicurus calls prolêpsis, that is to say, a certain form of knowledge which is inborn in the mind [Diog.L. 33: "congenital in us"] and without which there can be no other knowledge, not rational thought or argument. The force and value of this doctrine we can see from his own inspired work Perì kritêrioy ê Kanôn [U255 De Nat. Deorum; see also Cic. De Fin. I. 9.30] and according to Cicero the field of observation of Epicurus were the newborn creatures (the 'cradle argument'); "it's necessary to suppose that nature learned many different things and drives compelled by practical experience; reason of men then has improved new discoveries ..." (Alla mên ypolepteon kai physin polla kai pantoia ypo autôn tôn pragmatôn didachthênai te kai anagkasthênai) [Letter to Herodotus, 075]. Lucretius argue that the blind has got prolêpsis (notitia) of spatial form without eyesight [2.745]; “it follows that Nature [i.e. our innate brain DNA, ed.'s n.] herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature” [Cic. De Fin. I,30], so the long lasting phylogenic ouk antimartyrêsis (i.e. adaptive survival) of prolêpsis/prôton ennoêma/antecepta informatio/antecedent notion quae natura dedit animo (Velleius at Cic.) stand in need of no further too long DIY proof or definition (whereas for Pyrrhon it was only a 'commemorative sign, not reliable as the 'indicative sign' does). If they were ever incomplete inductions (ontogenetic acquired common sense) they would be inconsistent with their status as criteria of truth (enargeis; Diog. L. X, 33). Bar in some omogeneous appearances (e.g. 'all men are mortal'), if there is no every day evidence to the contrary [cf. On Sign, 35]. In general terms the more or less (kata to pleon ê elatton, cit.) is prevalent. Common prolêpseis are good (quam appellat prolempsin Epicurus, id est anteceptam animo rei quandam informationem, De Nat. Deor, ibid.), but “one must also show that no other clear perception conflicts with this view." [On metods of inference item 54; the past is the basis, but the present is real]; for instance when instincts of early way of life as armed bands turn out obsolete in overpopulated civilized cities (but not yet in a walled estate of rentiers out of the wall of Athenes, nor today for gangs of unemployed young people. Fibs about gods clash with 'immortals and blessed' prolêpsis [DRN 2. 655-60], but not with the likelihood of intemundia and their human appearance [ Velleius at DND I. 43-49]. About time's nature, E. too denies absolute truth of prolêpseis, he says inquiries about time are not to be developed by referring "to prolêpseis which we contemplate into us" [Herod. L. 72 (to note he don't says: "which we have inferred into us")].
Non-counter-claim (ouk antimartyrêsis) - today 'falsificationism' theory (Popper 1979) - is a strong Epicurean method, having showed either complete proof and complete negation, that is possibility of universal reduction to nothing - the basis of Epicurus' fundamental exclusions [Twelve-book of Doctrine of the Elements, U56], are false, and perception of ourselves implies enargeia (certainty of the opposite). In other cases the non-contestation of known evident phenomena or of several competing theories (multiple explanation) is only a 'not yet falsified' ataraxic proof (until proved otherwise). No everyday counter-claim about relativism of decisions and values strengthens the rigorous foundation of pleasure/pain on personal stable sensation. It involves that some innate knowledges and bents for memorizing certain experiences during the evolutionary competition have survived, since sound, together with their fit carriers, because not so far falsified by selection of clumsy living, and: "It's evident that many capabilities have to contribute in order to propagate one's species.. [DRN V. 849]. If inductions of infinite cases and intuitions are only likely but not logically demonstrable and lend only further but never complete support, theoretical philosophy and foundation of mathematic cannot either; today Gödel's (cit.) theory just says certain (existential) propositions of binary logic are ever-true [e.g. 'don't exists negation' is self-invalidating: if one denies negation, one's own negation is there; if one's negation is there, one has got this supreme certainty of the existence of Being, and of one's mental freedom, as a faculty of negative feedback: choice rises when there is a crossroad; but not all true propositions are demonstrable/decidable, after 'incompleteness theorem'; nor the universal ones [e.g. the universalized former: all 'existent are negative' is not true; i.e. 'all is false' is self-confuting ever-false]. Differently, 'I'm not a demonstrable proposition' is practically true, even if it's true it's not provable; but if it's false, one demonstrates a thing that had before classified as non demonstrable (a contradiction between the uttering subject and enunciation (an allowed self-referring), called 'performative' or 'pragmatical', like a liar who says 'I am a liar', that is ever-false); so it is not completely decidable inside binary logic system. Excluded middle principle don't apply to demonstrableness inside a system. It's the end of deductive foundation of Philosophy. A consistent system has to find its evidence out of itself. It can be true if it renounces to be demonstrated, viz outside perfect rationalism. For instance mathematical Goldhach's conjecture (inductively ever-true so far) has not been demonstrated. Twenty century before: "For valuing a demonstration a Criterion is needed, and, for Criterion, another demonstration" [Pyrrho, at D.L: IX, 91; he found it in the East, a sword cannot cut itself]. Others will seek safety in dopamine of the Faith, in inner life dwells truth (Augustine); “Epicurus himself declares that there is no occasion to argue about pleasure at all: its criterion resides in the senses, so that proof is entirely superfluous” [Cicero, On End-Goals, Good and Bad, III.1.3; U399]. On the other hand he disparaged syllogism and dialectic (deductive method). Knowledge is supported by sensation that are polarized by pleasure which is the outcome of usefulness, the aim of felt evaluations: no circularity of definitions but it's discursiveness (logos) which is relied on prolêpseis (i.e. prôton ennoêma and axia, pragmatic inductive phylogenesis). He felt in oneself the pleasure of living and it was enough. Materiality (not logical but tactile: two things in the same place clash with; a thing in two places cannot be the same, and so on) of our senses, affections, anticipations is the keystone of Epicurean anti-skepticism. It can be practically usable (like infinity, zero, point, etc. of mathematics and geometry, for E. illogicalities but: no fundamentalist skepticism); for instance a future (and a not observable remote) event is true and false together, not coherent, so undecidable – as told Epicurus (“E. denies that every proposition is either true or false”; U376), not: 'A or nA', as Stoics said. So it seems quanta are without contradiction principle... The former was one of Epicurus' arguments for freedom of men too, claimed also by Popper [see Talk:Vatican Saying 40] against widespread necessity.

Straight certainty (Gnosis enargês)

After former demanding review of finds – some of them well-known but undervalued – it follows as enough tenable that E. was more interested to results than to theoretics (Aristotleian notion of 'prudence' was basic, and accepted in Menooec. 132): but “When we proceed by analogy, therefore, the process will surely turn out to be infinite, since it is unclear to us whether a thing is this qua this, with the result that the inference is incomplete” [Phld. On Infer., 9. De Lacy; induction of indeterminable cases is never complete for today epistemology either, so only antimartyrêsis/falsifiability is safe; even epistemologist Kurt Gödel (cit. above) at Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton said to an astrophysicist not to believe in empirical science demonstrability but only in some a-priori]. Contemplation of truths has on the contrary more stable pleasures, as “in the study of philosophy pleasure keeps pace with growing knowledge; for pleasure does not follow learning; rather, learning and pleasure advance side by side [V.S. 27]”. As knowledge depends on sensations and feelings, so – distinguishing from Aristotle - , foundation of Epicurean philosophy cannot be logical/dialectical nor calculable (it admits some amphilogistos; see Scholarchs: Zeno of Sidon) but perceptual/existentialist (withdrawal into oneself and few friends - who share some feelings - as independence from established values): e.g. no contemplation greatest value, as pathê is one of three criterions of truth and pleasure/pain is the principal one: “ E. says pleasure to be completeness/contentment, but denies that it needs demonstration” [Dem. Lac., Enchiridion, PHerc. 1012, col 2. LIV; Puglia; outdated is E. Zeller 's (1892) “philosophical sterility" criticism], “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man” [U221] it's not reason what can justify itself but good life, of which reason is an instrument. “If you do not reconcile your behavior with the goal of nature, but instead use some other criterion in matters of choice and avoidance, then there will be a conflict between theory and practice” [P.D. 25]; how to avoid trusting on reason and senses while we assess them with reason and senses? so Epicureanism avoids regressus in indefinitum even though declaring no induction nor proof of prolêpseis to be demonstrable, “If you argue against all your sensations, you will then have no criterion to declare any of them false” [P.D. 23]; and it agrees to all form of thought for which we have no option left (take it or skeptic nihilism), intuiting no value to be above pleasure: it results the beginning and completeness/contentment of knowledge too, because “the one who possesses it requests noting else” [Enchiridion, ibid.], until knowledge heals suffering. As Plato philosophical foundation says all ideas originate from intellectual idea of good, Epicurus, as a foundation and completion (archên kai telos , Menoec. 129), founds his certainty on sensation of pleasure, the common animal aim of all vital experiences; that is compatible with above principle that a consistent system has to find its evidence out of itself. It's not true that philosophy is disinterested (Aristotle), nor more true (Arist.'s syllogismos), it's only a complete pleasure in se (contemplation)[see Metrod. cit. above], because pleasure is upper (more complete) than each useful aim (as a mean to), and is intersubjective, if not universal. Affections and sensations are practically true (inside their 'system', as they aren't falsifiable, i.e. true now: for saying 'sensation is false' you have to employ a sensation, that is true, at that time) by the same procedure (see also talk: Vatican Saying 40), to repeat: "If you argue against all [not: some, e.n.] your sensations, you will then have no criterion to declare any of them false." [P.D. 23; ever-true as a whole, wrongness not demonstrable; but today we have 'artificial sensations': outside that system; e.g. laser beam and eco-sounder for distances ...; so, prof. and philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote: "What is it like to be a bat?" (1974)]. “We say affections [inner self perceptions] perceive themselves watch themselves” [...] “and sensations [perception of outer images and motions] don't provide discrimination of affections [...]” [On Sensations, Ed. Monet 1996, Pherc. 19/628; on 'contact' perception see DRN III, 161-7; very cognitively important are innate affections of pleasure and displeasure, mainly dopamine effect (for mental ones)] so common coordination [synaesthesia and generative syntax] is performed by corporeal mind" (“mind's primitive constitution” ”with its own causality” [ Perì Physeos VIII Pap. 1056/697/1191.7. Arrighetti]). Of course, mind causality is not 'billiards-like'. Prolêpseis of 'body' 'usefulness' - whether imprinted (typoi) after switch prearranged/innate alternatives at different ages, or prenatal but not trascendent - [Demetrius L. PHerc.1012 col. 41,5 & PHerc 1786; “all that's innate - prius nata- stood the anticipation (notitiam) later on his usefulness”, (DRN IV.854; V.148)], 'truth' [DRN IV 478], speech [DRN, V 1041 f. ; Diog. Oin.], friendliness (e.g. men, dogs, not cats), all our instincts etc., are part of our hereditary chest (brain). 'Application softwares' of our brain cannot be learned by individual induction. In Herodotus Letter [that epitomizes only first I-XII books of Perì Physeos] p r o l ê p s i s (term borrowed from Plato) is not discussed for the aporia quoted above (only in passing, prolêpseis are “sensed” enargêma; in Menoec. L. 124 it is opposed to conventional ypolêpseis of the mass), prôton ennoêma [Herod. 37 & 38; DRN II, 745; IV, 476; V, 182: notities] are more explicit: 'early mental structures' or “prior notion” (DND, I.17.44) inherited via spermata , structures of atoms or semina (Lucr.) which fix qualities and breed [seeds containing soul atoms too, wrongly translated as atoms: certa vis animi suo semine et seminio crescit, III, 746-7] endowed with the same building and informational power we acknowledge to gametogenesis and epigenesis (crescit): knowledge begins with senses (and their anticipations) rather than reason; or rather Epicurean reason is a tactile (materialistic) reason. "Primitive men were taught or inspired by instinct to do many kinds of things, but reason later built upon what had been begun by instinct" [Herod 75].

If all knowledge is experience, namely induction, proton generalizations have not been falsified all through huge time because material mind cannot not apply to his epiphenomenon (the thought) the elemental prime principle/force by which it is moved; because soul's atoms are made of the same stuff external object and eidôla are made up of. E.g.: atoms' motion is restless into aggregate too, like our mind; right cerebral hemisphere of men counters spatial (katastêmatikos?) reasoning to verbal (kinêtikos?) reasoning of the left one; impenetrability = not contradiction principle; momentum of inertia (no void's resistance) = no thing can come back to nothing; conservation of energy/permanence of object (no spot out of the whole) = nothing come from nothing ; dimension of space (distinctness) = each thing cannot come out from each thing, etc.. All that is expression of an archetypal Parmenidean undeniable one principle impossibility of reduction to nothing (what does not change is per se kath' eaytò, it exists without depending for their existence on something else): no space in no place is unthinkable. Aristotles defined the truth of of an affirmative proposition as union of subject and predicate; and 'inclusion' (from clausus, close)), conjunction, disjunction are basic modern logical concept. These mental automatic reactions have been established in all higher animals (Hauser) and babies by psychological laboratories. Their denial is absurd in our world and would avert the very possibility for life.
"We will name 'immediate certainty' (the representation) [understood by itself] which does not derive from surrounding environment, but exists according to the pulsation of the arteries [i.e. of soul's motions; ed.'s n., and engl. tr. of]: “η και οτι[ο]υ το ωμοιωμέ[ν]ον τούτωι καλέσο[μ]εν ε ν ά ρ γ ε ι α ν μη εκ του περέχοντο[ς] ον, αλλα κατα τη[ν] φλεβοπαλιαν”. [ e kai otioy to ômoiômenon toytôi kalesomen enargeian me ek toy perechontos on, alla katà ten flebopalian. [On Nature book XXXIV Col. XXI. Leone G.'s multispectral images ed. of PHerc. 1431: see further details at Talk:Canon]. “If you arbitrarily reject [...] every intuitive faculty of mind, you will impute trouble to all other sensory experiences” [P.D. 24]. “According to the wise Epicurus, it is not possible to investigate or even to be puzzled without preconceptions” [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors; Us. 255].
"I want to ask [the sceptic or the upholder of an absolute 'a-posteriori' [like Hume later on; ed.'s n.], whether he has known nothing like 'Truth' into things in advance, where he learned what is 'to know' and 'not to know' otherwise, what kind of object has made the idea of truth and of falsehood and what taught how to distinguish between doubt and certainty. One will discover the anticipation of truth to be formed by early faculty of sensation [inherited synapses of perception], and sensation cannot be retracted" [Quaeram, cum nil veri viderit ante in rebus, unde sciat quid sit scire et nescire vicissim, quae res crearit notitiam [prolêpsis] veri falsique et quae res probarit differre dubium certo. Invenies notitiam veri esse creatam ab primis sensibus [Gr. prôton ennoêma, that don't relate semantics but sensorial innate intuition (apperception)] neque sensus posse refelli; DRN IV 478 fol.].
Diog. Oin.': "[in no way would the upholders of] the view under discussion have been able [to say] (and this is just what they do [maintain]) that [at one time] this is [white] and this black, while [at another time] neither this is [white nor] that black, [if] they had not had [previous] knowledge of the nature of both white and black" [ fr. 5.3. Smith, about Epicurus' prôton ennoêma; kai gar oydamôs pot'an] eischysan eip[ein oi tê ] doxê tê de [chroomenoi], to dê oion phe[roysi, tote] men einai tode [leykon] kai tode melan, [allote] de oyte toy[to leykon oy]t' ekeino mel[an, ei mê pro]teron êdeisan [tên ley]koy te kai mel[anos phy]sin.]

“he also establishes the congenital ends [syggenyka telê, sc. sensations & prolêpseis ], which yield the most conspicuous evidence” [Phld. Choices XIII . Indelli, Voula Tsouna].

ta kata tas ormas kai ta meth êdonês kai lypês en tautê i ginomena, epeidê tôn oikeiôn diatheseôn oyk exôthen, all en êmin echomen tas aitias [Phld. On Music Book 4 col 25. 1-6. Delattre]. “… what is conformable to impulses and what in it is followed by pleasure and sadness, as the causes of our own propensities do not originate from outside, but we have got them into us.”

Cicero call it prolempsin id est anteceptam animo rei quandam informationem ; Plutarch strengthen the same for Epicurus: “The Epicureans, then, accuse us of seeking and rediscovering the prolêpsis” [U255].
That Goethe reassumed: “If I hadn't carried into myself the world as a preconception, I would have remained a blind person with sighting eyes, and every experience would have been nothing but a completely inactive striving”. Wile for Democritus and Plato reason was authentic autononomous, for Epicurus no autonomy, but comparison (perìptôsis)/confirmation (epimartyrêsis) (epi-: ' back and forth', reciprocity) by epilogismos and epibole of prolêpseis with sensations and feelings; it was the way of intellect toward enargeis, certainty.

Individual knowledge

Basic prolêpseis, prôton ennoêma and oligon ennoêma (elementary notion, most of all the 'twelve elementary propositions '[U56]) have to precede sensations, that are alogos irrational without those, i.e. undecidable in themselves, so ever-true until evidence to the contrary (multiple explication principle of oyk antimartyrêsis, that is no inherent intelligent counter-witnessing at its disposal) or positive waiting for, or no thinking would be possible [P.D. 24 and 23]. But “mind's primitive constitution” (instincts and intuitions, that is feeling/pathê, awareness of inner states) and human “mind's growth” (empiricism and evolution, that is perceptions/aisthêsis, awareness of outer states) are net-like structure's leading actors, while among lower animals, “mind's primitive constitution” and “mind's growth” “are unified in the same way” [Perì Physeos VIII, cit.] sc. are nearer to heredity, they do not have prudential concepts, that is open-mindedness to 'variation' [poikilia (lit. poikilletai) of P.D. XVIII]. Our feelings/pathos are always attractive, as they are our nature, but pleasures are not to be ever chosen, as they are not automatic reactions. So, prôton ennoêma (early notion) gets tested and filled with present sensations and other feelings and we use for them common words we grasp without need of definition and proof [Hdt. L.. 37-8; let's define 'red' to a born blind person ...: red don't exist 'per se' like atoms (e.g. daltonic persons) but our prolêpsis of red and its word (without definition) enable us to act, for instance a waiter to take sb's orders]; so they become intersubjective. Epicurean school named that a prolêpsis, that has no shareable worth, like the time's one (cit. below). Plato conceived instead an inward and rational 'recollection', distrustful of senses, and least of all of passions, and considered definitions of values as objective (moral realism). For Epicurus values exist (he accepts word interpretations) but they are personally generated by desires and very variably felt degree of compassion [DRN, 5.1023: ..."to be just that all pity weak beings"]; qualities (i.e. symptômata), as per spatial/temporal materialism, are sensation (not reason) dependent, that is localized, not abstract (universal) like substantives they are worded by. My values may be passingly conflicting in me, but don't falsify yours, they are only different, practice (active feelings) not statements, whereof they have only seeming propositional logic form, nor can be translated into empirical terms and thus cannot be verified, nor are they intersubjective; gradable (Epicurus' more or less) qualifiers are definitionally 'not able to stand alone' - like atoms void movement - 'they are relative'. Epicurus condensed the nature of attributes, such as color, the soul, sensation, the evolution of society, Democritus belittled, as ' according to the more or less' [kata to pleon ê elatton, Epicurus Pherc 1056, Arr. 34. 17], they need a leading actor under certain circumstances, as they are not existing in itself, whereas factual words and substantives, like a substance or individuals vs relative thing do - so substantivization of a qualifier ('the good is a value') is a grammatical proposition but not logical, not verifiable nor falsiable ("sometimes we must regard the good as evil, and conversely: the evil as good", said Lett. to Menoec. 130); 'gold is inoxidizable' does [see Polystratus]. They have no requirement of universal consistency but circumstantial operative consistency, no value as a truth but as an advantage or a duty, attributed to an individual who feels it at that situation, that is individual knowledge, like certain medicines and plans, Epicureans said. Only like this they do not border to common obstinacy and over-emotionalism. There are two natures, the external and almost predictable one of Physics and general biological instincts and senses - which is why we have prolêpseis and necessary desires; and a personal nature (philogenic, epigenetic or imprinted) - which is why we have variable desires, different value judgments and individual knowledge This was the observable revolution of Epicureanism against Platonism and absolute Skepticism. If one stop thinking what others think about oneself, there is time - if one has some fit character - for thinking what one's felt values are about. How are physicians or central committee able to decide passe-partout medicines and any fulfillment of variable desires? phronêsis has to be proper or not to be. Decades since Vannevar Bush (cited above) envisioned the intimate and personal memex. What's useful for an organism to believe is an important orientation of knowledge. Sometime a biography of an esteemed fellow is an exemplar orientation in itself.
'All is subjective' is however self confuting Individual knowledge is a synthesis of inherited and acquired behavior. Pleasure itself is proportional to spatial temporal extent of one or more participating senses. They are satisfactorily 'personal' (like one's own body) if they are not unstable nor cyclic, but repeatable in analogical circumstances and that way of life is functional for one's niche even though, perhaps, an utopia for the many; one is usually self-assured through them; a philosopher is somebody who builds his self-trust, without affiliation. Feelings/pathos are certainly alogon, intuition out of reasoning and as such specific (cradle argument: a new born does not reason), but as for open-ended instincts [ quasi naturalem atque insitam (almost natural, not only genetic but - we can say - epigenetic/imprinted and most of all 'nurtured', out of cradle) animi nostri notionem; De fin. 1,31: that is not completely a prolêpsis] they can be combined only with particular natural objects and situations (imprinting) [ut alterum esse appetendum, alterum aspernandum sentiamus , in order to make us s e n s e what is whether worth seeking or worth avoiding (Torquatus/Cic. ibid)]: prolêpseis of usefulness and of our own past genetic sensations have to harmonize with present empirical variable sensations; open-ended epigenesis: that allows evolvability that future generations can inherit trough memes (not only words but technology and radical local transformations): natural selection anagkê gives way to freedom; at the most they can be inhibited, not harmonized with an abstract humanity, that does not exist; they do not depend on the provision of general principles either, otherwise they would result big words. Our prolêpsis of time too is inadequate for not fearing death and valuing our desire [see P.D. XIX, and E.' Properties and Accidents and Her. L. 073a, : “the very thing we call time is, in a special sense, an accident of accidents”], we need calculation.
Feelings are specific, but knowledge of other persons is not intersubjective. Feelings of an unknown person in an island are non perceivable, his atoms and their mutable aggregate and emergent properties (analogies, self-intuitions, qualities: epiphenomenons) exist, but are not intersubjective, non exactly definable nor intuitable as causes, nor in practice either. Results of each person are 'more or less', that is personally gradable by each person. That is no inducement to egoist oddity, but to regard of other individualities with indulgence: "[...] So, too, we must regard the characters of those around us if they are our friends" [V.S.: 15; and Horace's Epist. 2. 2. 209: ignoscis amicis? are you broadminded toward friends?]. Each conscience is an island: necessary desires, 'physiologia', friendship among sages, sole ferries. Perhaps one day constituents of moral sense will be found, and present bedlam restricted to limited variables. . Historians report the collapse of solidarity value during famines and plagues, some values are missing into psychotic and autistic persons, some mix (non-necessary overwhelming necessary, vainness) can be excluded, but most human values are few (there is an innate generative-transformational grammatic of the moral ones, for M. Hauser) and narratively describable (“to bring before the eyes” pro ommatôn); however their hierarchical order and gradualness are too much subdivided among individuals and groups in order to be defined by causes and to allow so far an utopian world parliamentarianism without power of veto, or politically stable dirigism without opposition. Values are to be personal as well or, under non-contradiction principle, not to be (nihilism). All agree with all on seven notes but details and development differ greatly; each generated grammatic is different. But if there are perceptible conditions that prevent value judgments, then they are for sure defective, or "wrong". Moreover, saying all values in abstract terms are equivalent (absolute relativism) is for safeguarding international civil rights value and business relationships in peacetime, lacking logical demonstration (universalistic ethics groundlessness) of any of them, not for saying they are equally productive, competitive, long-living, pleasant, since situational consequentialist individual experience denies. For instance, one should say that a defender of international civil rights culture is equivalent to the non defender's one, and open-minded extreme relativists cannot contest chauvinists and must tolerate intolerance; in virtues also (V.S. 63; Hor., Ep. I, 6, 14) unlimited positions exceed our four dimensions reality. But situational consequentialism is no universal value in this case either, because one is entitled to tolerate a short uncomfortable life defending the pride and 'culture' of one's compatriots, even though poor. Values are individually valid until they come across rewarding fulfillment of a necessary desire in certain unchanging situation, whereas unnecessary desires mostly generate taste evaluations. Therefore values must have a pragmatical (not demonstrable, not universal) individual or political validity, mostly locally/biographically and more or less culturally grounded, because without one's own values a complex civilization and sometime progress is impossible, like amid changeless totems and tabous of tribes; like a generalized unvarying immune system, a perfect conformism in values and choices or an oversimplified utopian sameness would be unadaptive to society fashions and technological changes, with economical crisis; most of all, without individual desirable belief a person cannot act and is on the verge of depersonalizing madness or of abnegation, so a philosophy of action must have individually well-grounded positions, even though not subjectively demonstrable either (is my success caused by cleverness or fortune?); there is no alternative, conformism too is a desirable belief - or rather an ancient fear to stroll all alone the savanna; law and ethical formalism are desirable decisions [P.D. 23, V.S. 40 and Colote's Conformity to the Teachings of Other Philosophers Makes Living Impossible are parallel cases too]. Epicurus aporiai confutations: P.D. 23, V.S. 40 and Colote's Conformity to the Teachings of Other Philosophers Makes Living Impossible are parallel cases too]. Values and moral are practice not general theory, so as general theory cannot impose practice. Natural instincts and body necessities cannot be imposed if they don't involve person's trouble and pain, and if that does not harm others. But, as for theory, in general terms may be said there are a common nature and individual nature of man, as there are natural necessary desires, a natural but individual nature with variable desire (kinetic, changeable, replaceable), and natural variable desires which may turn harmful (Epicurus called 'non natural', i.e. against natural need of wellbeing). Multicultural relativism is not surprisingly welcomed both by pride of xenophobic oppressed - even if 'an envious wrong interpretation', and by dominant culture as an expression of 'scientific' open mindedness. Since values (not per se things) are soul's non necessary desires (variable, no physiologia), and they are neither to be sought, but nor shunned if 'at hand' [Pherc 1251, § IV, XIII; e.g. Epicurus at Sen. De Matrimonio fr. 45: “(marriages) stand on the border line of good and ill”], theoretical collective Epicurean resolution is a temporary pragmatical epochê (Judgment Abstention; Aporiai, Doubtful Cases) and willingness to compromise about laws and international relations [P.D. XXXVI].

The major consequence of that epistemology, contentious against Platonism and Skepticism, is but on ethic, which turns out to be personal Ways of Life, not only normative but descriptive too.
Tên philosophian energeian einai logois kai dialogismois ton eudaimona bion perikoioysa.
(Epicurus declared that) “philosophy is an activity which secures the happy life by reflection and speech therapy”[Sextus E. Against the Dogmatists, V 169; first speech therapist had been Antiphon (480-410) at Corinth with his art of avoiding troubles (techné alypias)], that blamed people who forgot the present life for preparing for any other life.

If value judgments aren't universal but at all times circumstantial (but not empirically intersubjective...: "sensations don't provide discrimination of affections" [On Sensations, Ed. Monet 1996, cit.]), that is, for instance like: "Up to now in this class X has got more success than Y, Z, in Geography according prof..." - the same person, compared with the one having more is negative, and positive with people who have less (non-contradiction principle is broken: no generalizable (logic) demonstrability either) - one cannot do better than one's more or less, and should avoid worrying and fooling oneself for absolute good/justice (Plato), but also avoid scrupling about abstaining (Skeptical epochê), but accept things as now they are, not as one would wish they were (normativeness), going even-tempered. Man is not completely free nor fully limited by genetic and external necessity and casualness of atoms: our psychology is not per se – like atoms and void - but is an unstable reality; one is born a compulsive baby, then a more or less emergent freedom depends by our capacity of knowing, but also by a strong-willed character (“Not every bodily constitution makes it possible for one to become wise” [DL 10.117]). No metaphysical pride, but how can we “act effectively”. While for the Stoics nature and law are certain, as the logos is divine and defined as natural law, for Epicurus sensations and affections of pleasure and pain are “mind's primitive constitution” we share with all men and higher animals, because they are deep-seated in the body (“exists according to the pulsation of the arteries ”) and are per se (kath' ayta ep. Hrdt. 40), as per tactile destructive/reconstructive movements of soul's atoms that pervade capillarily the entire body: so pleasure is foundational for life, not only a completion/aim. “If you arbitrarily reject [...] what is already perceived by the senses, feelings, and every intuitive faculty of mind, you will impute trouble to all other sensory experiences, thereby rejecting every criterion” [P.D. 24]. The reciprocal actual touch/awareness [a future primary quality, the motion/weight] of soul atoms, in periferal nervous system too, i.e. tas phantastikas epibolas tes dianoias, is another direct form of inward awareness (dianoia, a cognitive structure), “We say affections perceive themselves” [On Sensations, cit. above], whereas outer senses are mediated by other atomic organs, therefore they are transformed and need intellectual judgment: "sensations don't provide discrimination of affections" [ibid.].
Other animals have no ethical values nor prudential concepts, and in men those “mind's growth”, in Gr. symbebêkota, (and accidents, symptômata: a structural growth of extension and motion, in today terms also 'epiphenomenon') are liable both to progress and to fault, they have to be managed by conjectural calculation according to circumstances (pragmatôn) and personal history and identity, so they are relative (not intersubjective, no longer specific; no innate and universal Platonic ideas) or relational (pros ti) but real (atoms structures and movements ascertainable only in that place and time): real life is made by fixedness and variations, being and becoming. Shape, weight, mass are objective stable characteristics but: “qualities of compounds change, the atoms do not change at all, since something solid and indestructible must persist in order to make change possible. Change results from rearrangements of certain particles – or from their addition and removal (but never to or from non-existence)” [Herod. L. 54]. No happening of variants amounts to the end of evolution. So in motion pleasures are as much vital as the immutable metaphysical substances which normative ethics is based on. They arise from natural instinct of usefulness and connected to felt pleasure/pain - what Skeptics denied (nothing is natural, all is relative) -, so they are indispensable, but they are in part nurture (individual desires and positions, no unerring goal: “Who is it whom virtue benefit?” [Diog.Oin. fr. 32; Plut. Adv. Col. 1109 F – 1110 D; Polystr. De cont. irr. XXIII. (§6) - XXVI. (§7)]. One of the most important virtues - which spring from prudence (Menoec. 132) - is 'justice'" (dikaiosynê P.D. XXXIII), which is not per se thing (kath' eayto: it is 'relative'), but infinitely negotiable; but in spite of that E. writes "'justice after nature' (Physeôs dikaion, P.D. XXXI) is the covenant (symbolon', elsewhere sunthêkê) of the usefulness (toy sympherontos)" (ibid): as 'useful' is one of three meanings of 'natural' for human beings, made more explicit by Demetrios the Lakon (see Talk:Canon) . For that Polystratus says that relative judgments (or localistic truth) "we do not consider it empty opinions [P.Herc 336 / 1150 col. 28]"; individual and group behavior is not evident (enarges) and therefore not normative , as it cannot be demonstrated but not falsified either, it is waiting for witness from its results, so it is not only tolerable but reassuring (ataraxia of agreeing oneself), if not against the law, because for E. - as for Gödel and Popper - no witnessing and undecidability (oyk epimartyrêsis) are possible truth (tripartite logic, quite different from constructivist epistemology or decontructionism) until falsified otherwise: only counter-witnessing (antimartyrêsis) is peremptory. Whole Darwinian genetic mutations and selections cannot have been watched, but so far no so much pregnant evidence to the contrary has been done. Ways of life (Peri ethon kai bion) are multiple explanation subject. Thus they are not intersubjective (for whom? one's own pleasure, not others'; P.D. XXII: “calculate the end-goal which is given to each one”) but useful to individuals and conciliatory reasonable persons, e.g. most of all: distributive justice and unions vs employers never-ending disputes (only air is, so far, peacefully shareable). "The laws of nature can not tell the difference between right and wrong just [...] we have to admit that the law has been devised by concern of damage" [Hor. Serm. I, 3, 113]; “Epicurus says nothing is right after nature” [Sen, Luc. 97, 15: nihil justum esse natura]. Even today for instance, where may we find the same national customs and legislations on death penalty, euthanasia, abortion, prostitution, cannabis? (nor among honest, intelligent, learned persons) “Epicurus and Metrodorus ... speak spitefully of the earliest and wisest lawgivers” [U558]; beauty, courage (“I spit upon the honorable”, U 512); temperance (“No pleasure is an evil per se, kath' eaytên”, P.D. 8) are managed by 'more or less' (by 'measuring stick', kanôn) that is private felt empiricism and positive public law, that is actions, not words emotionalism and commands, not descriptivism nor demonstration. (Even drugs and wine effects are not intersubjective [Us 60; Arr. 21,3]). When those 'values' are useless, and turn out to be merely projective that is conflictual insatiable drives, they are vain, unnatural. But if useful, (P.D. 37) like money, criminal punishment, official language, official religion (: “we must pray in social conformity with the laws”, On Piety, 26; see Talk:Gods) they are commonly accepted as intersubjective. Temperate self-government (autarkeia), as dependent – to some extent – on natural waste of energies , ends by overcoming the drunk of moral virtue, and is overcome occasionally by luxury [Menoec. L. 131: “not so that we may only enjoy a few things”; see Hor., Ep. I, 6, 14: quoted also by Montaigne I. 30 On Moderation].

Nor is logikon/nous/psychê ('spirit') per se” thing. It is not out of space and time (indivisibility of Plato): 'here' and 'there' 'now' and 'once' are only seemingly unified by extreme speed of tiny slippery soul's atoms [we know there's a thought even speedier than our electrochemical one: the digital electronic one; but both are divisible, extended, manipulatable; beforehand Epicurus/Lucretius demonstrated it]. Thought doesn't originate from immortal soul atoms, but from their aggregate, therefore it can be broken. So Epicurus doesn't aim at spiritual normativeness, nor makes the mistake to infer "ought" from "is" ('naturalistic fallacy'): evaluation thought cannot establish a truth more universal than particular experiences, there are only highly shared desires (first of all pleasure, then necessary desires; but for the ones of external compelling (see Demetrius the Lakonian), necessity may also vary after time and site, and the very internal necessity may be 'disturbed') or else variable natural desires, depending on conjectural epilogismòs. Third scholarch Polystratus uses the same epistemological terms, that is no peculiar Epicurean corpus [confirmed also by DRN I. 459]: “to relative things – it has to be said –, oh man, not to per se things, pertain the examples [value statements] you produce” (; tôn gar pros ti, || phêsei tis, ô anthrôpe, estin tauta, oy tôn kath ayta, ôsper a sy prophereis. [On Irrational Contempt cit, Indelli (1978); see also: Epicurean Scholarch: Polystratus]. “... affections which are effect of irrational movement of thinking” [Dem. Lac. On Poems Col. 9]: how could they are the same (i.e. have universal innate verifiability) for all women/men, and not be affected, e.g., by drugs, anger, depression, official sectarian orders? "We'll say that, as the sage may be inebriated by nature, so for the same nature anger may overcome him" [Phld. On Anger, col. XLVII, Indelli]. Into the future projected values are neither true nor false, but expression of our feelings (unattainable values are not true, are they?), others are only gradable (shaded proprieties, 'more or less'), they do be genetically grounded but variable according character and circumstances, as the very DNA varies: 'character' may be not empty opinion [see Polystr. P.Herc 336 / 1150 col. 28], because feelings are foundation of knowledge. So an ever circumstantial character rule cannot be confronted but to itself (see Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigation, § 198) and assessed on the basis of personal experience, like a helmsman. General rule is not enough [Phld. Choices , XI]; no "helmsman on the basis of one book" [Phld. Ad Contubernales , PHerc. 1418 and 310]. Every rule is a little different but they grow compatible by law and conformism (e.g.monogamy or polygamy). Only present invariable pleasure is an intersubjective foundation of axiology: as it doesn't change (as long as there is life... only causes of pleasure do it) so pleasure might be per se, or at least universal to living being. Neither poverty nor wealth are "once and for all" good or bad or indifferent. Rather, "they are good, bad, or indifferent for some people, but not for others." [On Wealth, col. 51.2-10; PHerc. 163 e 1570]. Today this ethical position is called 'particularism': all moral reasons are particular and context-sensitive. Despite value judgments are relative, for having confidence into one's deeds one has to feel a stable personal pleasure about them, and not to despise the others' ones, in order to avoid absolutism and authoritarianism, after all a contrast, lessening the feeling of easiness, an Epicurean value and ethical foundation of rational choice (prudence/phronêsis) [Polystratus, On contempt, 7]. Day-to-day undeniable compromises and give and take are at the basis of complex societies, where the minority has the same right of majority, they need a democratic not dogmatic nor authoritarian moral mind for an innovative society and development, with side effect of avoiding the consequences of a divided personality. Personal 'locally acknowledged' values reach the freedom of creativeness; some more today we witness an unbundling of information and arts through personal editing, YouTube etc. that meet a consonant audience, debunking the mythical figure, monopolistic in aristocratic societies; natural sciences (technai) are mostly instrumental (we must adapt our necessary desires to its means) only philosophy is creative of freedom and autarcheia together with prudence and logismos, creating correlated means, a laboratory of personally recognized values. "Metrodorus as well said no branch of learning to be able to think over his aim but philosophy, whence no art" [cit.].

While the major outcome of Pyrrhonistic skepticism was the ataraxia one reaches by getting rid of infinite (vain) pursuit of one-sided universal values (the virtue of Socrates and Socratics that makes no difference between pleasure and pain to happiness, and between happiness and excellence), which cannot be epistemologically sound, and by deflating troubling protesting rage for alleged justice, bordering along paranoia - that at the risk of complete conventional behavior (no thing is good by nature, no skill/virtue is always successful) - Epicurus tallies with him [he appreciated the êthos of him, D.L. IX, 64] about questioning of conventions (even though esoterically made) on empty virtues, desires without environmental foundation, reasoning which go on to infinity (ê eis apeiron apodeiknyoysin ê kenoys phthoygoys echomen [Herod. 37; " to go on to infinity into demonstrations and to possess empty word"]), but retrieves harmless variable desires (values), sensations, which might be individually useful and therefore epistemologically sound too; it accepts 'shared values' (laws) if positive, sc. enforceable, not only rationale- though felt as just one may have no sufficient virtue to execution - so thankfulness and justice are a question of character and education, not of rational demonstration; and of a certain conformism in order to escape mass contempt, but with reservation about not enforceable ones (lathe biôsas; nec vixit male qui natus moriensque fefellit [Hor. Ep. I, 18, 10]). Besides, he who refuses one's variable desires on behalf of pure Reason/Necessity or Epochê is forced into consenting to desires of others. “It isn't useful for all to do the same action; but certain ones are useful for certain persons and certain actions for others” [Polystr., On irrational contempt 7, col. 27: oyde gar entaytha pasin tayta sympherein, all allois alla, oy pseydôs doxazomena panta, alla kata tên diaphoran kai tês physeôs ekastoy kai tôn symbebêkotôn]. He accept individual knowledge of what is unteachable but it's better self-taught. Skeptics and subversive theoreticians (at that time the cosmopolitan rabble-rouser anti-monetary Cynics) deny all not general knowledge and not egalitarian ethics, play genetic variety down, that is also a form of intellectual laziness out of lack of big data aid ... but they remain nostalgic of messianic universality and eternity, of what is equally useful for all persons, a sort of plagiarism. Most philosophers and religious also think one can find a metaphysical formula which allows them to contemplate all day long without craving for. "For while it is a shameful thing to be excessively involved in such matters [entrepreneurial activity, contextually], to the extent that this is useful it is honorable, and the shameful thing is rather to do nothing at all" [Phld. On property Management, col 26, Tsouna]. It's the picture of E.' gods, all exactly alike, with bare deterministic satisfied needs, in 'air-conditioned shielded row suburban worlds'. Epicurean kinetic world is unforeseeable ... but into it a man is free to be out. If it's hindrance that create value, he don't seek it but accepts it after calculation and exclaims bebiôtai, like Goethe's Faust (940): Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich sein! So he establish some captured katastasis as Faust his: Alles Vergängliche/ Ist nur ein Gleichnis (12,104), each variation is only analogy.
After one of the 'twelve elementary propositions '[U56, cit.], isonomia [De Nat. Deor., 50] compensation principle of 'more or less' gradable qualities, there is no solid part without vacuum, no higher pan without the lower one (Kanon hints to a steelyard' balance), no better choice without the different one of others. For the Epicurean it remains as substantial all that is not lawfully banned. Modest privacy, no Cynic shouting for implausible differences, which does not make out democracy, that is number and epistemology (see talk:Canon), very different from ever-frustrating rage for ideal things that are not up to us, no noisy passions, no civil disobedience through decibels, nor spectacularism in matter of one's relationship to others. That means everybody is entitled to an opinion, but nobody is entitled to have anybody take that opinion seriously.
Unlike the Skeptic the Epicurean cannot continue to debate and abstain in all circumstances. Only decision and pragmatism (epilogizesthai, to sum up “the ultimate completion”, of P.D.22) make him decide not to split hairs and not to analyze infinite differences and viewpoints: “otherwise, life will be full of confusion and disturbance (ibid)”. Yes, among wise person dialogismos is prevalent, a philosophical exchange, sometime machesthai, dispute. But while he is teaching the results of physic and epistemology (kanôn) but also the choices of the school, of twelve principles and genetic/prolêpsis certainties of maxims, he is dogmatist (like today; out of question in antiquity); “He will formulate beliefs and not be a pure skeptic” [D.L. X.121]; moreover about “all things which admit a sole explanation according to perception [apperception]” [Pyth. 86.5]. And so or more does the Epicurean psychotherapist: take or leave it! Every shrink will consider it a 'resistance'. The very philosopher (Philodemus) ends up by using 'against person' arguing not an empirical or logical debate. “They think that they are wiser because they have lived a long time” (P. parrhêsias XXIVa. 9-15). Metrodorus employed “frankness aggressively in regard to [laziness and] procrastination” [Peri Parrhesias col. V a, Olivieri] against character pupils not too much inclined to kinetic desires. The ambiance of educational 'frank speech' (parrhêsia) of Zeno/Philodemus (even though they admit that sometime a psychagogue “will slip”) is not epistemological but rhetorical (psychagogy, no individualism, informers; col. XXa. 8-12 Konstan). Its aim is at cementing with responsiveness shared values through inducement for helping fellowship and warm-heartedness. An educator finds knowledge of certain emotional links (synapses) which are by character/impulsiveness over-busy, other that are inhibited for full awareness about contrasting motives. By speaking about them he restores a range of choices/avoidances calculus: not logic but rhetoric/frank-speech. Rhetoric (no 'Aristotelian' consistence, nor testable calculus/logismos) is also dualistic goal acceptation of present pain in order to avoid a future conjectural major pain: often self-denying, the future brings a conflict in the present. It should be assessed by actual statistical data, as it is effective only if it contributes to a pupil avoidance of pain (but even for today's bare psychotherapy, in general, it is very limited, otherwise rather questionable)... [As said Sedgwick: "Society is like a schoolmaster who estimates boys according to their conformity to a standard that is easiest for running a school". That, plus the customary/mandatory religious oath of allegiance of all Greek sects, has blown up the picture of a dogmatic and stationary Epicureanism (which we know firsthand not very much about )].
Usefulness tries first of all to avoid future pains. While Spiritualists cannot avoid moral pains, because those are values, i.e. truth, and truth cannot be denied, for Epicureans senses are the truth; as all persons try to avoid physical pains, and heart/brain are physical, so moral pain can be avoided by distraction (another not philosophical but effective practice), if it is not useful, without a convention that rules out inflicting and suffering harm; in other words: utilitarian deeds (Epicurean values are mainly personally felt) are to be without future physical sensations of pain and with mind pleasure presence.
Potential choices, i.e. our own values, are neither universally true nor false (binary logic), they are relative (deontic and pragmatic logic: facere [to do] docet philosophia, non dicere [to chat]): more useful less useful, i.e. necessary to survival, necessary to wellbeing, natural and easy, natural but difficult, abstractions (vain words) of infinite accessibility. The art of choice and avoidances is a 'more or less open question: conscious, slow, calculating, "<what in our thinking leaves aside each emotion and> enables us to recollect the past's memories, and to do our analogical calculation (epilogismòs), after criterion of the more or less" [Epicurus. Pherc 1056 697 & 1191 (34, 14 foll. Arr.2; 'epilogismos' and artlessness appear many times in the related context)].
Skeptics cannot speak about future, as they are totally skeptic... they cannot openly avoid useless moral pains as they must be conventional persons. “And yet others held the doctrine that what we call grief or joy are totally empty notions because of the manifest indeterminacy of thing” [Phld., Choices, III]. In time of crazy public duties Epicureans may in case live secluded, Skeptic must play the 'comedy of manners'. Pyrrho was quite an Alexander's soldier and finally a High Priest. “[contextual, skeptics say: misconduct and decorum are the same] ... these opinions are preposterous, you know which excessive impracticableness is to behave that way! What kind of possibility is there that all that people have enough assurance about their deeds?" [Polyst., On irrational contempt § 7, 28]
For Epicurus, impossible-explanation (parallel to multiple explanations; 'it's plausible to suppose that such knowledge is impossible' is not self-refuting, see DRN IV 473: hoc quoque uti concedam scire ) has a pragmatic design too, in order to distract attention from ruminating and waving on unknowable thing (e.g. whether life or after-life are the better ('death is nothing for us'); how is life in other worlds; perfect distributive justice, etc.) and to provide easy-going and ataraxy through some non mythological/animist answers. Eidôla lose atoms on the way. Faraway images may mislead: how far is the sun?. They don't know how to handle a ruler (kanon) or intruments of astronomers (organa) which Epicurus conceitedly questioned, for sure not clear as Galilei's ones, but, Epicureans are s e c u r e - more plausibly than Pyrrho - that sun is there, it lights and heats, and “This is what the evidence suggests” [Herod. L.. 90; no established trigonometry, and calculators … but no Apollo's biga, at least ]. To day 'multiple explications' method by neurology and cognitive psychology (an almost immanent words explanation, the latter, tested in informatics) are more progressive than Epicurean one. But A.I. unfinished and sometime conjectural results about identification of faces, OCR, chess playing, translations, correction of texts, robots, systems of computational generative universal moduli, stellar number of neurons and synapses connections (like chips, more 'nanoneurons' and close axons [Primates vs Ruminantia] more intelligence - i.e. less resistance for sodium/calcium/potassium ions supervised by astrocytes: how much electronic bytes, analogical fluttering among very multiple 'RAM' [distinct cerebral working memory modules integrated into distinct Processing Unities (neural core)] ...?) go same way, and make at least obsolete the 'ghost into machine' casting of Spiritualists (ridiculed by Gilbert Ryle). However in 2008 the Human Brain Project has been successful in reconstruct an information mock-up of a core sampling (10,000 neurons) of mouse's neocortical brain through a theraflop new brain-like supercomputer with thousands processors ('Science ', August 2012; www. But that equivalent of 570,000 home pc, 1 second = 560m years of human quickness of thought, is not yet able of self-taught epilogismos and prudence, gotten by billions years of genetic memory.

Epicurus opposes - at first metaphysically, but concluding esoterically by fuzzy logic of 'more or less' and para-philosophical 'prudence' - the great onenesses of simplistic thinking, world, matter, spirit, god, humanity, Empire to multiple conjectural explanations, numberless limited worlds, numberless unruly atoms, numberless limited minds, numberless retired gods, he translates subjective time (no 'substance' but 'accident') into numberless minima motions. Nature follows (it does not head) from their location, without fatality. [“development of embryo, so difficult for us to realize, is a totally decentralized process” [Ridley, Genome, ch. Self-assembly]]. So he gets rid of Zeno of Elea and Parmenides' paradoxes (appearances, no change), and of Eraclitus (all changes and ends in contrasts). Reason is power of totalization (a sort of katastêmatikos instinct), but it is to combine the most number of correlate parts (kinêtikos instinct). Against ontological monism of Parmenides, who denied motion, Epicurus' pluralism concluded with multiple explanations and many individual prudences. Atoms are not opposed, they are different and they can combine, as simply distinct. Sensations were and are operationally true, but Epicurean non-Euclidean geometry contributed to new space perception conception (Kantian analytical a priori judgments obsoleteness). Epicurean many-sided scientific answer, analogical openness of inferences, pragmatic attitude to the law, its multiple worlds that take form and disintegrate from collision/combination of infinite movers, led to advanced social differentiation (live secluded, out of the archaic tribal unitary sense, widespread need of privacy and Roman-Epicureanism-oriented individualism in politics in complex mass society: gardens that space out and hide), to moderate freedom (more individualism, less hierarchy) of different life choices according to different characters, intelligences and positions, to reassessment (deconstructionism) of fine arts (hype, religion, politics out of arts: man of letter is to teach and entertain, as indicated by Horace, no seer hype), to criticism of ideological and showy undercurrent of educational literature, distancing from Platonic totalitarianism and ideologies. Modern thought has followed his path and has reached useful chemistry and power sharing, but has established the failures of philosophical and legal foundationalism too. This Epicurean esoteric individualism (unveiled by the non sectarian Horace ["The laws of nature can not tell the difference between right and wrong " of Serm.. I, 3, 113] and, after a few centuries, confirmed by esoteric archaeological papyri) was prevalent in the Renaissance intellectuals, then widespread in Lutheranism and Calvinism's personal business success. These positions, we may define today in some aspect as postmodernist (as for the logic of 'difference' : Ep. : 'variety', poikilma; not for prolêpsis of course'; and importance of epilogismòs - particularist tactics rather than principles), account for an existing interest for Epicureanism. Nothing may be one, as no atom is infinite, and it does be determined by the others: a behavior identical with itself is impossible; life is variety together with death.

Greek text of Philodemus, On methods of inference De signis (Perì Semêiôn kai Semêiôseôn) Papyrus number : 1065 [the word ἐπιλογισμός (exactly and inflected) appears seven times: coll. 12- 13- 22- 24- 27; fr. 4 two time].

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