Epicureanism Page 8
In addition to the general phenomenon of the mind and body interacting, the particular ways in which the mind depends on the body helps reinforce the thesis that the mind is something bodily. Lucretius notes that the mind grows with the body, declines with the body, and is subject to diseases just as the body is (DRN III 445–525).2 A person’s mind is undeveloped at birth, along with the rest of his body, and slowly grows and matures. The damage caused by a stroke can destroy a persons memories and change his personality, and we now know that the protein deposits along the neurons that occur because of Alzheimer’s disease do so too. Alcohol ingestion often makes people feel more witty and clever while making them actually less witty and clever. All of these things are exactly what we would expect if the mind is a bodily organ, whereas if the mind were some separable and incorporeal entity that (somehow) was in communication with the body, none of this should occur.
Death, the permanent end of one’s existence
The Epicureans are keen to establish that the mind is a bodily organ not merely because they wish to fit an important natural phenomenon within their materialistic world-view. Additionally, this thesis is the basis for their arguments that death is annihilation, which in turn is central in their therapeutic arguments that death is not bad and should not be feared. Since the body obviously disintegrates in death, Greeks who believe in an afterlife typically think that the mind/soul – the psyche – survives the death of the body. Homer depicts the majority of the dead as milling about in a gloomy, shadowy half-existence, with some evil-doers singled out for elaborate eternal punishments and a few heroes of divine descent enjoying bliss in Elysium, while Plato and the Pythagoreans describe the psyche as being reincarnated in another creature. Accordingly, the Epicurean arguments try to establish that on death the psyche ceases functioning along with the rest of the body.
It is easy to see why death would be annihilation if the mind is identical to the brain. The brain is a bodily organ that needs to be housed in a living body to survive. On death, it dies along with the rest of the body. The matter that makes up the brain continues to exist, but it is no longer matter making up a functioning brain, but a slowly putrefying hunk composed of atoms. And without a mind, there can be no thinking, memory, consciousness or character traits. The person who used to exist is forever no more; death is annihilation.
Once we take differences of physiology into account, the basic Epicurean argument is fairly similar. The mind is a group of fine atoms trapped in the chest. On death, the “container” of the body cannot hold those atoms in as it did before, and the mind disintegrates, as the atoms making it up escape into the surrounding air (DRN III 425–44). An eye or a nose detached from the body cannot sense anything, or even really exist as an eye or a nose. Instead, they quickly decompose. Likewise, the mind can engage in “sensory motions” only when it is confined in the proper way in a living body. Death is the permanent dissolution of body and mind (DRN III 548–79).
This argument is quite powerful, but the thesis that death is annihilation is important enough to secure that Lucretius piles up a host of subsidiary arguments for it. He is also happy to try to discredit the Platonic idea that souls pre-exist their bodies and enter them on conception by mocking it. He says it is ridiculous to imagine a bunch of immortal souls fighting each other at the couplings of wild beasts, trying to be the first to get in; Lucretius facetiously suggests that maybe they would agree to a “first come, first served” policy to avoid the struggle (DRN III 776–83). We shall not go through all of the subsidiary arguments here, but two that turn on issues of personal identity are worth considering further.
The first argument is concessive: even if the mind survives the death of the body, we do not survive, because we are a union of mind and body (DRN III 843–6). Consider the argument for immortality near the end of Plato’s Phaedo, for instance (Phd. 102b–107a): for it to succeed, Socrates should establish not only that the psyche is essentially alive and so can never die, but also that I am my psyche. But Lucretius denies this: I am a human being, a living animal that is a union of mind and body. So even if it goes on and survives my death, I do not survive my death.
While this brief argument seems to rely on a biological criterion of bodily continuity as necessary for personal identity, elsewhere Lucretius appeals to psychological considerations to undercut the Platonic position. For instance, Lucretius argues that the mind does not pre-exist the body because if it did, it should have memories of its past existence, which it does not. He then adds, though, that if the mind did lose all memories on birth, such a total transformation of the mind is not all that different from death anyway (DRN III 670–78). Although he does not explicitly do so, Lucretius could have used this sort of argument against the Platonic theory that the psyche goes on to another life. For the sake of argument, let us grant that my psyche transmigrates after my death and animates the body of a poor factory-farmed chicken, in retribution for my own callous consumption of chicken nuggets. Since there will be no links of memory or personality between me and the chicken, there is little reason for me to think that the chickens suffering will be bad for me, any more than the suffering of some unknown peasant in the Middle Ages that my psyche inhabited was bad for me.
Lucretius appeals to considerations of both biological and psychological continuity when considering the possibility that all of the atoms that constitute me could eventually reassemble and recreate me (DRN III 847–61). Given the infinity of time and space, the Epicureans should grant that this may happen, and it seems to give a plausible ground for post-mortem survival without requiring the soul to survive the death of the body. Lucretius grants the possibility of this re-creation happening, but he denies that this person would be me, rather than an exact duplicate of me. There is a gap of life between me and that future person, a time during which the atoms wandered about not engaging in the motions of sensation, so that when they come back together they form a new creature. Furthermore, there will be no links of memory or consciousness between me and that future person, so that his life is nothing more to me than are the past lives of those past selves I cannot remember at all.
Reason and the reality of the mental3
As we shall see (Chapter 11), Epicurean psychology is hedonistic, with pleasure and pain motivating all of our actions. Given that you desire pleasure, and you believe that doing X will bring you pleasure more effectively than any other available course of action, you will do X. This psychological hedonism does not threaten our freedom, however, because our beliefs are under our control. We can modify such desires that would lead to unhappiness by using our reason. We can discover the limits of pleasure and distinguish natural and necessary desires, merely natural desires, and vain and empty desires (KD 18–22, 29–30). We can ask, of every desire we have, “what will happen if I get what I desire, and what will happen if I do not?” (SV 71). Using our reason, we can overcome hate, envy and contempt (DL X 117). Reason allows us to do this by showing us that certain desires, temperaments and ways of life are not effective for getting us what we ultimately desire for its own sake, that is, pleasure.
This reasons-responsiveness distinguishes us from other animals. Human beings can control their own development, while non-human animals cannot. Lucretius gives the clearest Epicurean statement of this doctrine. For example, lions are naturally irascible because their souls contain many fire atoms; stags are timid because they have more wind atoms (DRN III 288ff.). People also have natural temperaments: some are naturally easily moved to anger, while others are too fearful (DRN III 307–19). These differences cannot be erased entirely, but the traces of these natural temperaments that remain beyond the power of reason to expel are so trivial that they do nothing to impede our living a life worthy of the gods (DRN III 320–22).
Other Epicureans such as Hermarchus and Polystratus also assert that it is our reasoning abilities that set us apart from other animals. We can calculate the outcomes of different possible courses of action, whereas a
nimals have only “irrational memory”, that is, they have repeated experiences that can condition them to act in certain ways, and to find certain things attractive or repulsive, but they do not explicitly think through the outcomes of what they may do. That is because they do not have prudential concepts such as “healthy” and “expedient”, and they cannot make causal inferences.4
So Epicurus needs to account for the emergence and causal efficacy of things such as human reason, plus other psychological phenomena, within an atomistic worldview Epicurus’ efforts here are spurred by the troubles he thinks were encountered by Democritus.
We have already looked (in Chapter 4) at the ways in which Epicurus modified Democritus’ ontology in order to escape sceptical difficulties. Because properties like sweetness are not intrinsic properties of bodies, and because they are mutable and do not exist at the level of the individual atom, Democritus eliminates them from his ontology. He declares that they exist only “by convention”, and that honey is no more sweet than it is bitter because in reality it is neither. Epicurus responds that this does not follow: atomic aggregates have properties and powers that individual atoms do not. In order to account for these properties and powers, we often need to look to the structural features of aggregates, which arise because of the spatial relations holding between the atoms that constitute the aggregate, the ways in which they have become entangled with one another, and so forth. These properties and powers are real, and include relational properties such as being enslaved, being healthy or being sweet.
Now on to the mind. Epicureans think (perhaps wrongly) that Democritus’ eliminativism extends far beyond sensible qualities. Plutarch’s Against Colotes gives the fullest statement of this Epicurean charge against Democritus. In his version of Democritus’ famous saying “By convention,
On this understanding of Democritus’ ontology, Democritus remains close to the Eleatics like Parmenides. For the Eleatics, the realm of Being is the realm of what is ungenerated, imperishable and changeless. As we have seen, Democritean and Epicurean atoms basically meet these Parmenidean requirements for Being, changing only in their locations, motions and relationships to other atoms. The mutable and temporary objects of sensation, however, do not conform to these requirements, and for both Parmenides and Democritus they are relegated to the deceptive and ultimately illusory realm of Becoming.
Plutarch agrees with this radical interpretation of Democritus’ ontology, and he spells out the eliminative position as follows: atoms flying through the void collide and entangle with one another, and the resulting atomic aggregates may appear to be water, or fire, or a human, but in reality nothing other than atoms and the void exists. Plutarch notes that a result of this is that colours and the mind do not exist. So Epicurus also needs to find a way of defending the reality of the mind and of mental properties against the threat of Democritean eliminativism.5
But the same sort of reply is available to the Epicureans in the case of compound bodies generally, and the mind in particular, as it is in the case of sensible qualities: once we understand the meaning of predicates such as being heating it would be naive to think that properties such as being heating are unreal just because they are relative. Likewise, in the case of macroscopic bodies, Epicurus himself regularly refers to them as being merely aggregates of atoms, but he refuses to draw the conclusion that, as atomic aggregates, they are somehow unreal.6 Epicurus admits that some things (atoms and void) are indestructible and unchanging, while others (aggregates and their properties) are generated and mutable, but Colotes insists that Epicurus is wiser than Plato in applying the name “beings” (onto) equally to all of them alike (Adv. Col. 1116c–d).
To put it in resolutely anachronistic terms, let us imagine a group of atoms arranged tablewise: Democritus (on the Epicurean interpretation) will say “we thought that there was a genuine object there, a table, but this is mistaken; in reality there is just a bunch of atoms arranged tablewise, nothing else”.7 The Epicureans, on the other hand, will say that a macroscopic object such as a table can be identified with a bunch of atoms arranged tablewise and, as such, is perfectly real. Likewise with the mind.
This response to Democritus need commit Epicurus to an “emergent” view of the mind in a weak sense only. That is, the mind is real, and it is “emergent” in the sense that has powers and properties that none of its constituent atoms do. This sense of emergence, however, is consistent with identifying the mind with a bodily organ that is nothing more than an atomic aggregate, and with identifying mental events with bodily events that are explained in terms of the motions of the atoms that compose the mind.
And the Epicureans appear to advance such a view, as the texts we have discussed above (§ “The mind, a bodily organ”) point towards an identity theory of the mind. However, this interpretation is contentious: it is clear that Epicurus wishes to preserve the reality of the mental (and of our reason, in particular) against the threat of Democritean eliminative materialism, but it is less widely accepted that he counters this threat by reaffirming the mind’s reality within an identity theory. The controversies largely centre on how to understand the extant portions of book twenty-five of On Nature, Epicurus’ magnum opus. The passages we have contain a description of human psychological development, including the relationship between psychological states and the atoms that constitute the mind.
Going into detail on these issues would far exceed the scope of this chapter.8 The text is in terrible shape (it was buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE) and bristles with unexplained technical terminology. It is hard to overstate its obscurity. In it, Epicurus asserts that psychological “products” arise, and it is these products, and not the nature of the atoms, that are responsible for a person developing in the particular way he does. These products differ from the atoms in a “differential” way, and they acquire the “cause out of itself”, which then reaches as far as the “first natures”.9 My best guess as to what any of this means, so that it is consistent with the other texts we have, is that we can distinguish the psychological products and the atoms of the mind in thought, even though the product is just an aspect of the atomic aggregate. However, once we do so, we see that the proper way to explain why people acquire the characters they do, for example why somebody is irascible, is by referring to the operations of these complicated psychological developments, not to the natures of the atoms that constitute the mind. For instance, an explanation of why some adult grew up to become a hothead will be a complicated story referring to his beliefs, environment, ideals and so on, not just to the preponderance of fiery atoms in his mind. Our ability to shape our own character reaches as far as our “first natures”, that is to the congenital dispositions Lucretius discusses as amenable to reason.
However, on the basis of these passages, others have seen Epicurus as abandoning an identity theory of mind in order to preserve the reality and causal efficacy of the mental. On this view, the operations of reason and other psychological states cannot be identified with atomic processes, even though they arise only when atoms are suitably arranged to constitute a mind. These emergent psychological states then gain causal independence (the “cause out of itself”) from the atoms that constitute the mind; what they do is not determined by the atoms that make up the mind. Furthermore, they exert “downwards causation” and move the soul’s atoms (the “first natures”), that is, they are able to reach “down” from the psychological to the atomic level and change the arrangement of the atoms of the mind.10 I think that this interpretation is too starkly inconsistent with Epicurus’ overall materialistic metaphysics, as well as the Epicurean writings on the mind in particular, to be correct. However, if Epic
urus did think he had to choose between materialism and the reality and causal efficacy of the mental, he would kiss materialism goodbye. It is evident that the mind exists and moves the body, and any theory must comport with what is evident.
EIGHT
Freedom and determinism
The Epicureans wish to preserve human freedom in a world whose ultimate constituents are just extended bits of stuff flying around in empty space. And in order to do so, they famously posit an indeterministic atomic motion: the swerve. While their use of the swerve to preserve our freedom is intriguing, it was subject to withering criticisms by their Academic and Stoic opponents.
Lucretius and “free will”
How our freedom is threatened by determinism, and how the swerve is supposed to counter this threat, are unfortunately obscure; nothing even close to a consensus view of what the Epicurean position is supposed to be has emerged.1 In part that is because the swerve is not even mentioned in the extant writings of Epicurus, so we have to rely on later reports in order to try to piece together Epicurus’ position. Lucretius presents the most extended consideration we have by an Epicurean of the swerve and freedom (DRN II 251–93). It comes immediately after his argument that the swerve must exist in order for atoms to collide. Atoms naturally fall straight downwards, and they also move because of collisions and entanglements with other atoms. However, there is a third cause of atomic motion, a random swerve to the side by one spatial minimum, which saves us from what Lucretius calls the “decrees of fate”. His basic argument goes as follows: