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90 James
llen
The Epicureans also defended theories about the nonevident causes of
astronomical phenomena like eclipses and much else besides. And they
achieved these
results,
or claimed to achieve them, by rationalist means:
inference
or
demonstration
from
signs
or
evidence furnished
by the
phenomena. By these measures, Epicureanism is a form of rationalism.
The aim of this paper is to compare Epicurean views about experience
to other views
available
in the Hellenistic period, including those of the
medical Empiricists.
In
this
way I
hope
to
throw light
on the
Epicureans
distinctive attitude towards experience, an attitude whose
af f in i t ies
with
empiricism sets Epicureanism apart f rom more orthodox forms
of ra-
tionalism but permits the Epicureans to base on experience theories
that
orthodox empiricists would
reject
as
unsupported
by
experience.
Talk
of
experience
involves a certain amount of
unclarity.
The word has
several
senses,
whose history would make an interesting study in its own
right. Present-day discussions
of
what
is
given
in
immediate experience,
where this means something
like
bare sensation prior to interpretation
or inference, or about the quality of conscious experience, use the term
in a way that would, I think, have been new to ancient Greek and Latin
speakers fami l ia r with the words experientia or
empeiria.
Clues that will help us understand the ancient conception of experi-
ence are furnished by the medical Empiricists reflections about their
terminology.
Galen s
Outline
o f
Empiricism
Subfiguratio
empirica;
hence-
forward Subfig emp), which
is
meant
to be a fa i thful
presentation
of the
Empiricists own views, makes a point about one term in the Empiricist
vocabulary
that
is
also true
of
others. Though
the
term autopsia , seeing
or observing for oneself, ought
strictly
to be applied to an activity, he
tells
us, it was
also used
by the
Empiricists
for
knowledge, namely
the
knowledge
one has as a
result
of
observing
for
oneself Subfig emp
47,
14-26). The Empiricists used two terms that are traditionally translated
as
experience , peira
and
empeiria.
The
Outline
o f
Empiricism defines them
not as
activities,
but as
psychic states
or
f o rm s
of
knowledge
notitia:
ãíþóéò).
Peira
is autoptic
knowledge ,
i.e., the knowledge one has as a
result of an episode of observation (44,6 ff. . Empeiria, on the other hand,
is
knowledge or memory of what has been observed to happen many
times in the same way Subfig emp 45,24;
50,23).
The mention of memory
is
significant because the Empiricists seem to have held that knowledge
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Experience
as a
Source 91
was a form of
memory
(Galen, On Therapeutic Method;
henceforward
Meth
med X 36, 3 K hn = fr. 46 Deichgr ber), but that is another story.
1
According
to
these definitions, then,
em peiria is a
kind
of
knowledge
that
arises
on the
basis
of
many episodes
of
observation, each
of
which
gives rise to an instance of peira. One has empeiria as opposed to peira
when
one has
observed something
often
enough
for the
knowledge that
one now has as a
result
to be
expressed
in a
theorem
Subfig
em p
45, 24
ff . ) . And this is the case when one is in a position to say, e.g., that the
administration of such and such a remedy in cases of such and such a
kind
is
followed
by
recovery always,
for the
most part, roughly half
the
time
or
rarely.
In
this favored
sense,
em peiria applies
to
expert knowl-
edge,
many instances
of
which, when they
form
a
cluster (Üèñïéóìá),
make up a
complete expertise
or art
On
Sects for
Beginners; henceforward
Sect
ingred SM
ÉÐ, 13-16 Helmreich).
And in
what
is
perhaps
the
most
privileged sense of all, the term
empeiria
applies to the art as a whole
Subfig emp 47, 26; 54, 10-13). This means that the contrast between
experience and reason is indirect. Experience as knowledge and the
activities that give rise to it are opposed to the activities of the
faculty
of
reason
(or a
special
form
of it) and the
knowledge
to
which they give
rise, and
reason
as a
faculty
is
opposed
to the
faculty
or
faculties which
are
responsible
for
experience (cf. Subfig
emp
86,23-87,12).
In Empiricist usage, however,
the
words
for
experience
are not re-
stricted to these meanings any more than autopsia is restricted to its
official meaning. Empeiria, in particular, is often used in place of peira,
and
both
are
frequently used
for the
activities
of
perception
and
obser-
vation that give rise to
peira
and
empeiria
in the
sense
of knowledge, just
as activity words like
autopsy
and
Observation
ôÞñçóéò)
are some-
times used of the knowledge to which the activities give rise Subfig emp
47,26-48,4;
48,11-21).
2
Nevertheless,
the
distinctions that
we
have seen
are available make it easier to characterize ancient empiricism. Art or
expertise
is
experience empeiria)
and
experience, both
in the
sense
of
empeiria
and that
of
peira, has its source in the activities of perception and
observation. This knowledge is confined to what can be perceived or
observed, items which are called phenomena, evident matters or percep-
tibles by the Empiricists. One can, however, supplement the experience
1 On this poin t see
Frede,
1990.
2 ðåßñá
for
å ì ð åéñß á [Galen], On the best
sect,
1131,
8-9
K
hn = fr. 51 Deichgr ber.
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92 James llen
one has as a result of one s own observation w i th history
É ó ô ï ñ ß á )
—
w hat one
learns
by
reading
and
evaluating
the
reports
of
other people,
which
is
ultimately based
on
their
own
observations
Subf ig emp 47,
14-26).
II
It
should
be
plain that
a
rather generous conception
of
experience, both
in
the
sense
of the
activities
of
perception
and
observation
and in the
sense
of the knowledge they yield, is presupposed. The phenomena or
evident matters that are perceived or observed are things like people,
animals, mountains
or
trees
as
well
as
certain states, qualities
and
activities o f theirs like being green or running or having a fever. Ques-
tions about how observation conceived in this way is ultimately based
on what modem philosophers
call
immediate experience or bare sensa-
tion receive little attention. Instead the
focus
is on how expert knowledge
complete
and
systematic enough
to
qualify
as an
art, e.g.,
o f
medicine,
can
arise
out of
observation
or
experience
of
people, their activities,
habits, diets, environments, symptoms and the like. Nonetheless, gener-
ous as this conception of experience is, it restricts experience to knowl-
edge
that
certain patterns
o f
sequence
an d
correlation among
phenomena obtain.
T he
causes which would explain
wh y the
patterns
occur and recur as they do can be grasped, if at all, only by means of
faculties other than those responsible
for
experience.
The
idea that
it is
only
facts
that
which
are
accessible
to
experience
is
behind a way in which we use the term empirical , e.g., when we speak
of
an
empirical
question . Our
point when speaking
in
this
way is
less
that the question has been or is likely to be resolved by experience than
that, because the truth at issue is not determined by laws of nature or
laws of reason or relations o f ideas or the like — and therefore cannot be
known
by
grasping
h ow it is
determined
in one of
these privileged ways
—
it is a contingent matter of fact that can be known, if at all, by
experience.
B ut it is
important
to
note that
it is
possible
to
grasp
facts,
which are not empirical questions in this sense, as empirical truths.
Something that
we
grasp
as a
fact that
on the
basis
of
experience
may be
th e
necessary consequence
of the
inalterable nature
of
things;
and
some-
one in a position to grasp it as the necessary consequence of
first
principles will grasp
it as
more than
a fact that.
Aristotle s theory
of
knowledge, for example, depends
on
a contrast between grasping a truth
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Experience as a ource 93
as a fact of experience and grasping that same truth as required and
explained
by
first principles.
The
disagreement between rationalism
and
empiricism,
as it is
usu-
ally
understood, presupposes
a
f ramework
of
common assumptions that
was
widely if not universally shared. They emerge especially clearly, for
instance, in the
account
of the
dif ferent epistemic conditions
at the
beginning of Aristotle s
M etaphysics
A l, 980a27 f f . , 981a27 f f . .
i)
Experience grasps only
facts that;
ii) The causes that supply the reasons w h y these facts obtain, if they
can be
known
a t
all,
are the
object
of a
separate rational
faculty;
iii)
Experience is prior to this rational faculty, whose insights, if and
when
possible, are
nonetheless somehow based
on
experience.
This
framework
was
treated
as uncontroversial by
many philoso-
phers and scientists in antiquity, especially in the Hellenistic period,
when just about everyone seems to have been committed to an episte-
mology that was broadly empiricist in the
sense
of taking all knowledge
to
be
based,
ultimately and in the last analysis, on a grasp of the
evident.
The Epicureans seem to have subscribed to an especially strong form of
this position. Pronouncements
of
theirs
to the
effect that
all
knowledge
either
consists
in or
arises
out of a
grasp
of the
evident
are not
hard
to
find
(e.g., Letter to Herodotus 38; Diogenes Laertius X , 32). Nonetheless I
mean to argue that the use Epicureanism made of the common empirical
tradition led them to
take
a position which the
f ramework
could not
accommodate or could accommodate only with very significant
qualifi-
cations. One way of putting this — though this too will require
qualifi-
cation
— is to say
that
the
Epicureans were committed
to a
still more
generous conception of experience.
Ill
W e
can see this, among other places, in the apparently exhaustive
scheme for assessing opinions as true or false proposed by Epicurus DL
X 34;
Ep
H dt
51-2; Sextus
Empir icus, M VII
211-16). Attestation
and
non-attestation Ý ðé ì á ñôýñç óé ò and ïõê Ýðé ì áñôýñçóéò )
apply
to
evident
matters; contestation
and
non-contestation
Ü íôé ì á ñôýñçóéò and
ïõê
Ü í ô é ì á ñ ô ý ñ ç ó é ò ) to nonevident matters. Falsity arises when an opinion
is
either
not
attested
or is
contested
by the
evident, truth when
it is
either
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94 James llen
attested or not
contested
by the
evident.
The
opinion that that
is Plato
over there, for instance, awaits attestation. It can legitim ately be accepted
as
true
if, upon closer inspection, it is attested or rejected as false if, under
th e
same conditions,
it is not
attested.
An
opinion about nonevident
m atters is contested when it has an observable consequence that obser-
vation
shows tobe
false; not
contested when
its
observable consequences
are not
shown
to be
false
by
observation.
Why the
mere absence
of
contestation should confirm th e truth of an opinion about the nonevi-
dent is a notorious puzzle to which we shall turn in a moment; the use
of
contestation to eliminate false opinions, on the other hand,
seems
not
to
present
a
problem. Thus
the
false opinion that there
is no void,
which
is the
contradictory
of the
true Epicurean doctrine,
is
contested
by the
evident fact that there is motion, as there would not be if there were no
void for bodies to move into — or so the Epicureans maintained
Ep
Hdt
40; Lucretius I 334 .
But
suppose
we
connect contestation
and
non-attestation
in the way
that seems most obvious. Then
a
false opinion about nonevident matters
will be contested when one of its observable consequences is not attested
in
the
appropriate
conditions .
Sometimes, when
the
observable conse-
quence
of the
thesis
to be
contested
is a
universal negative, e.g., that there
is no motion, this can be achieved by the attestation of a single counter-
instance, assuming that
we
grant
the
unobjectionable principle that
if P
is attested then not-P
is not
attested.
One
observed episode
of
motion
will banish
the
denial o f
void
and vindicate its contradictory.
Matters are not always so simple, however. Consider, for example,
the
Epicurean argument
for the
principle that nothing comes
to be from
nothing.
If it
did, then anything could come
to be
anywhere
at any
time
without the proper seeds, which is contested because not attested by
observation E p H d t
38;
Lucretius 1159 ff . ) .
Or the
argument that atoms
cannot
be of any
size because,
if
they were, there would have
to be
visible
atomic
bodies, which
is
likewise
not
attested
E p
H d t 55-6; Lucretius
II
496-9).
3
Yet as w e have seen, attestation and non-attestation appear to
establish only contingent matters of fact or empirical truths. A classical
3 To be
sure,
he adds
other reasons, e.g., that
it is not
possible
to
conceive
how an
atom could become visible. This may refer to his theory of vision, according to which
vision is caused by the flow of invisible atomic f i lms
from
the object being seen to
the eyes. The problem would then be how an atom of this size could interact with
the organs of
visual perception.
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Experience as a ource 95
empiricist, a Humean descendent of his, or indeed anyone who sub-
scribes to the
framework
described above, will patiently explain that the
fact that episodes
of
random spontaneous generation
or
absolutely
unbreakable
objects
have
not
been attested
in our
experience,
and
that
recorded history contains no traces of them,
does
not by
itself
entitle us
to conclude that one has not been overlooked or will not occur or be
found
in ten seconds, or ten years or ten million years. According to this
familiar way of looking at things, no amount of observation or experi-
ence by
itself
can rule it out as a possibility.
It
appears that something more
is
required
to
establish opinions
of the
kind that are candidates for contestation and non-contestation. W e must
somehow
be
able
to
tell that what
is
implied
by the
false
opinion
to be
contested, e.g., the manifest episodes of random spontaneous generation
that
are implied by the opinion that creation
ex nihilo
is possible or the
visible atoms that
are
implied
by the opinion
that atoms
can be of any
size, are not the sort or type or kind of thing that can happen or exist. But
attestation and non-attestation through or by means
of
the evident do
not seem to be equal to this task.
The
same result appears
to
follow
if we
approach matters
from
a
different angle.
The
principal candidates
fo r
contestation, which
can be
rejected as false if contested and accepted as true if not contested, are
theories,
for example, the theories about meteorological matters that are
discussed in the Letter
to P ythocles
Ep
Py th).
And the
main source
of
these
is analogy with the phenomena with us (ðáñ
ÞìÀí)
or, as translators often
put it,
in
our experience Ep
H dt
80). Inevitably it often happens that
more than one theory about the nonevident causation of a natural
phenomenon
suggested
by
analogy remains uncontested (cf. Lucretius
V I
703
f f . .
Yet it
appears that
the
status
of
such
a
theory
is not
like that
of
an opinion about an evident matter awaiting attestation by remaining
epistemically possible, i.e., possible for all we know or can say, as long
as it is not
falsified
by observation. Rather, Epicurus seems to have
regarded all the theories compatible with the phenomena as objectively
possible.
Indeed, he
seems
to
have held that they
are
true
in the
sense
of
being realized either a t some time in our world or in some other world
in the
infinite universe (Lucretius
V
526-33).
Now
suppose
that one could somehow be on the moon in the way
imagined by Aristotle in the Posterior
Analytics
and see which accounts
of
eclipses
or
waxing
and
waning
do not
obtain there
(I 31, 87b39; II
90a26). Apparently, on the Epicurean view, the fact that these theories
are not directly attested in these conditions would not show that they
are
false
as claims about what might be or what is true in some world.
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96
James
llen
Y et this is not how Epicurus treated our
failures
to observe episodes of
random spontaneous generation
or to find
a to ms
of
observable size.
These revealed that certain phen om ena — or
objects
or events that would
have
to be
phenomena
if
they we re capable
of
ex is t ing— are
not the
kind
of
things
that can exist at all, and thereby refute certain theo ries once and
for
all.
4
Trips to the moon or
efforts
to determine whether that is , say,
Plato
ove r there, by establishing contingent matters of fact, serve only to
show that an opinion is false here or a theory does not apply in this
cosmos.
The w ay in which the two pairs — attestation and no n-attestation, on
the
one hand, and conte station and non-contestation, on the other — are
both said
to
take place
through
the
evident
appears
to
conceal
a gap
between two quite dif ferent ways of grasping the evident and to leave
the relation betwe en them in the dark Sextus Em piricus M V II 216). At
any rate, this is how someone in sym pathy w ith the frame w ork that I
outlined above is likely to feel.
This suspicion is we ll foun ded, and it receives add itiona l sup po rt from
the use
Epicurus makes
of analogies
wi th
the
phenomena
in
establishing
theories about
the
nonevident. This
use
makes
the
most sense
if it
rests
on the assumption that a grasp of the evident puts us in
possession
of
truths not only, as we have seen, about w hat cannot be, but also about
what , in ve ry robust sense, can be. Near the end of the Letter to
Herodotus
Epicurus says:
seeing
in how
m any ways
the
like comes
to be
wi th
us
ðáñ Þìúí),
one
must theorize about
the
causes
áÀôé ïë ïãçôÝï í )
o f
astro-
4 The
discussion
of the
shapes
of the cosmoi in the
Letter to
Pythocles 88
migh t seem
to
count against this. There
it is
said that many shapes
are
possible because this
is
contested
by none of the phenomena in this cosmos, whose boundary it is not
possible to grasp. This could be
taken
to mean
that
the m an y possible cosmic shapes
are not
contested
since we
cannot grasp
the
shape
of our own cosmos, wi th the
implication that ,
if we
could,
all of the shapes apar t
from
the one
that
belongs to our
cosmos would be contested. In this case, the ir non-attestation here wo uld contest
the
possibility
of
their obtaining an yw here
at
all.
I
take
the
po int rather
to be
tha t
th e
many possible shapes
are not
contested
by
phenomena
wi th in
this cosmos,
whose
own
boundary,
like
the way in
w hich eclipses
and
many
othe r phenomena
come
about i n it , are,
as it
happens, unkno wn .
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Experience as a
ource
97
nomical phenomena ì å ô Ýù ñ á ) and everything nonevident (80). And in
th e
Letter to
Pythodes, he
offers multiple explanations for
a
host
of
meteorological
phenomena based
on
analogies with
the
behavior
of
medium sized physical objects that we can observe
from
close up.
If every possibility is realized somewhere or at some time in the
infinite universe, analogies suggested by observation of the phenomena
among
us
will suggest theories that stand
a
good chance
of
being true
in
th e sense
that they
are
true
of
some episodes
of the
phenomenon
to be
explained at
some time
or in
some cosmos.
But is
being suggested
by the
phenomena
sufficient
to show that a theory is genuinely possible, and
therefore true in this
way?
Perhaps, despite having a better chance of
being true on Epicurean assumptions than it would on other assump-
tions,
a
theory suggested
by an
analogy with
the
phenomena has,
so
far,
only been shown to be epistemically
possible.
It
could still
happen, for
all
w e know or can say, that it is not genuinely or objectively possible.
And
if this is so, we shall be
entitled
to accept it as a genuine possibility
only
after it has survived th e test of contestation by the phenomena. If it
does not survive, then it only seemed to be genuinely possible.
Some of Epicurus language
suggests
an interpretation along these
lines
or is
compatible with
it
Ep Pyth
92, 93,
98-9).
But
there
is
also
evidence suggesting that likeness of the right kind to a phenomenal
analogue
is
suff icient
to
establish
a
theory about nonevident causation
as true. In parts of the Letter
to Pythodes,
where explanations based on
analogies with the phenomena in our experience are discussed, these
phenomena
are
four times said
to bid or call
for
the
analogous explana-
tions
(87, 94,100,113). This may be merely suggestive, but in the same
work,
after
remarking that the waxing and waning
of
the
moon can come
about in all the ways in which we observe similar phenomena coming
about in our experience, and noting that the same is true of the way in
which the moon gets its light and presents a visage to us, Epicurus says
that someone
who
accepts
one of the
explanations
and rejects the
others
will be in
conflict
ìÜ÷ç)
with
the
evident (96). And, after reviewing
the
explanations for the varying lengths of nights and days over the course
of the year that are suggested by analogous occurrences in our experi-
ence, Epicurus insists that
it is
necessary
to
speak
of
meteorological
mat te r s
in a
manner
that is
consonant
or in
agreement
(óõìöþíùò)
with
the phenomena,
before
going on to say that those who accept only one
explanation are, once again, in
conflict
with the phenomena (98).
I t seems very much as if a theory s similarity to the phenomena is
sufficient
to
ensure that
it is in
agreement with them,
and
that being
in
agreement with
the
phenomena guarantees that
a
theory
is
true,
in the
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98
James
llen
sense of being possible and true somewhere
or
at some time, for it is
implied that to reject one of the explan ations based on analogy with a
phenomenon is to deny the reality of the phenomenon that it resembles.
Perhaps theories undergo a do uble test. W hen put
forward
as universal
explanations
holding of all times and places, they q ual ify as true if they
are merely not contested by the
phenomena
but w hen reform ulated as
claims a bo ut possibility, each has a co ntradictory, viz., the proposition
that
it is not
possible, which
is in
conflict with
the
phenomenon that
i t
resembles and which w as the basis of the ana logy tha t is its sourc e. This
would mean that theories — conc eived as c laims abo ut objective possi-
bility — follow from the phenomena to w hich they a re analogous. The
grounds that
the
phenomenon
on
which
an
analogous theory
is
based
furnish
for
accepting
the
theory would then complement
the
grounds
furnished
by the
fact
that the theory is not contested by the phenomena
quite generally.
Epicurus use of the vocabulary o f signs and sign-inference o f signs
that
seem
to
signify
how
nonevident m atters
a re by
being sim ilar
to
them
lends add itiona l support to this suggestion Ep Pyth 97; cf. 104). To reject
some possible explanations while giving a rbitra ry preferenc e
to one is
he
maintains,
to be
unable
to
grasp
the
phenomena
as
signs
and to be
carried into inconceivability (97). My
guess
is that the inconc eivability
that he means is that of denying that one instance of a type of behavior
is possible when other m anifes t instances of it show that behavior of that
type
is
possible.
For our present purpo se, w ha t m atters most is that E pic urus wa s able to
assign such
an
impo rtant part
to
an alogy because
he did not
share
the
assumptions about wha t
can and
cannot
fall
under
a
grasp
of the
evident
that are incorporated in the f ramework set out above. Ac co rding to these
assumptions, on the basis of such a grasp w e know only that things have
behaved as we have observed they did. This knowledge will make an
empiricist, who relies only on experience, expec t that events will coin-
cide, follow
and
precede
one
another
as
they have been observed
to
without
in any way
justifying
h is
expectation.
But
Epicurus
seems to
suppose that, in grasping the phenomena, we grasp how things can and
must
be. I am
tempted
to go
further
and say
that, acco rding
to
Epicurus
to
grasp the pheno m ena is, within limits and in pa rt, to und erstand the
causes at work by grasping the natures in virtue of which ordinary
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Experience
as a
ource 99
medium sized
objects act and
behave
as
they
do .
Understanding
how
and why they behave as they do, we thereby see how bigger objects
fur ther
away that are relevantly like them by sharing the nature respon-
sible for
their behavior must behave.
The
same holds
mutatis mutandis
for
smaller
objects
whose distance from
us m ay be
negligible,
bu t
which
are
too
small
for us to
perceive.
Grasping true theories about the nonevident extends and
deepens
our
understanding of the causes which explain and necessitate the behavior
we
a re able to observe, but the sharp line which the framework takes to
separate knowledge of the phenomena from the grasp of truths about
what
can and must be of the kind that f igure in causal explanations
appears
not to be a
part
of
Epicureanism .
5
For
adherents
of the
f rame-
work, anything that smacks
of
knowledge
o f
natures,
the
necessities they
impose and the possibilities they
open
up is knowledge of the nonevi-
dent, to be had, if it can be had at all, by inference or by means o f another
exercise of a special
rational
faculty
distinct from
experience. But as we
have seen, this
is not so
for Epicurus
and the
Epicureans:
the
grasp
of the
evident, which precedes and secures all knowledge of the nonevident,
must
itself
already be a grasp, however partial, of how
things
can and
must be.
Should we then say that the Epicureans were committed to a concep-
tion of experience still more generous and richer than the one enshrined
in the f ramework — the suggestion that I put forward fo r consideration
above?
6
Perhaps, bu t there are reasons to hesitate, most notably the fact
that this is not something any Epicurean ever says or I suspect, ever
would say.
The
framework takes experience
to be
coordinate with
evident matters or phenomena. They are accessible to experience, and
the
knowledge
o ne has of
them
is
experience.
A
better
way of
describing
the
distinctive character
of the
Epicurean
position, I
shall suggest, would
be to say that this coordination does not obtain in Epicureanism.
5 Perhaps this is what Epicurus is saying in a passage of the Letter to
Pythocles
where
he
notes that
signs
about celestial matters
are
furnished
by
certain phenomena
m
ou r
experience concerning which
it
is
seen
how they are
—
unlike celestial phenom-
ena themselves 87; c f. Ep Hdl 80).
N.B.
however, that this reading is based on an
emendation.
6
This
is
something
I
have
said
elsewhere.
See
Allen, 2001,196,236-9.
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100
James
llen
This becomes clear when we try to see wh at Epicurus and his follow -
ers though t abo ut ancient form s of em piricism. To jud ge by the available
evidence it is not a
subject that Epicu rus himself took m uc h
of an
interest
in .
7
Philodemus
is a
different
matter, however.
On Signs and
Sign-infer-
ences (henceforward On Signs) defends the so called m ethod of similarity,
which would allow
us to
infer, e.g., that
all
hu m an beings everywhere
are mortal
from
the
fact
that
those
amon g us are or that atoms behave
mutatis mutandis in the way visible bodies do from th e fact that visible
bodies behave in that wa y. The work is full of terms and notions from
empiricism, which retain th e
meanings
they have in it, e.g.,
peira
and
historia.
And
Philodemus directly confronts
the
problem that arises
already in Epicurus, nam ely how observation of a finite
sample
however
large of, say, hum an beings, can entitle us to conclude that all human
beings everywhere are
m ortal.
The
occasion for
the
work
is the
challenge
presented by unnamed opponents w ho raise precisely this problem . Yet
Philodemus does not credit
peira,
the activity, w ith any more powers or
take
the
knowledge
we
have
as a
result
of it to
extend
any
further
or
penetrate any more deeply than em piricism does.
8
Consider, how ever, Letter to H erodotus, 79 ,
where Epicurus rem arks that
w h a t
comes
under history
(É ó ô ï ñ ß á )
about
th e risings,
settings , eclipses
and like
matters
does not
contribute to
blessedness because
it
leaves untouc hed fears
that can
block
the way
to
happiness.
H is
point
is
that it is
possible
to have a great
deal
of
astronomical
knowledge
of
this kind while rema ining vulnerable
to
superst it ion, which
can be
banished only by a
grasp
of the
natures
( ö ý ó å éò ) and principal
causes
( íõ ñ é þ ô á ô ï é
á ú ô ß á é underlying
the
phenomena.
É ó ô ï ñ ß á ,
though
not the
exclus ive property
of
Empiricists,
was a key term of theirs, and this passage reads very much
like
a
rejection of
merely empirical astronomy in
favor
of a
version
that
satisfies
the
rationalists demand
for explanation by way of
natures
and
causes, albeit
fo r
reasons
peculiar
to E picureanism.
And
in his wo rk
On rhetoric,
using lang uag e
that
would
not
hav e been
out of
place
in a Platonist
inspired
by the Gorgias, he maintains
that
practices grounded
in
observation and history, ð á ñ á ô Þ ñ ç ó é ò and
É ó ô ï ñ ß á , which
he calls ô ñ é â á ß , are not
arts
properly speaking
Rhet
I I X X X 1 9 f f ; but cf. X X X V I I I 2 f f .
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Experience
as a Source 101
VI
How, then, are
we
able
to
infer
conclusions about
the
nonevident
from
the phenomena? A crucial part in the Epicurean account appears to be
played
by
epilogismos,
which, or at least the term for which, was, as we
noted, also used
by the
medical
Empiricists.
They stressed
two
features:
that
epilogismos
is concerned exclusively with evident matters, unlike
analogismos, the form of reasoning that is employed by the Rationalists
and
which allows them
to
deduce nonevident conclusions;
and
that
it is
the kind of
reasoning employed
by
ordinary human beings
in
everyday
life.
They
use it, for
instance,
of
inferring
one
evident matter, which
is
temporarily
nonevident,
from
another, which they
call
commemorative
signification elsewhere,
e.g.,
since
there is smoke, there is
fire Sect
ingred
10 23-4;
11,
9-10).
As I noted above, however, this is not how the Epicureans used the
term.
An earlier tendency to render it as
empirical inference
has been
much criticized. Though Philodemus speaks frequently of the
epilogismos
of the phenomena, and even, in one especially badly preserved passage,
of
the
application
of
epilogismos
to
what
has
been grasped
by
experience
peira) (fr. 4), a survey of Epicurean usage shows that it is
often
applied
to items that are not obviously empirical. Epicurus himself speaks of the
epilogismos of the end or telos, and one of Philodemus authorities,
Demetrius of Laconia, speaks intriguingly of his
opponents failure
to
apply
ep ilogismos to
their
own
method
of
inference (XXVII I13 ff.). What
is
more,
it is not
obvious that
the
rational activity designated
by epilo-
gismos is a matter
of
inference. Viewed in isolation, a few
passages
seem
to suggest that
epilogismos
is the inference of the nonevident conclusion
from evident signs (XX II37 ff.), but it is plain from a
fuller
survey of the
evidence that
epilogismos
belongs to a preliminary phase prior to the
inference
of a nonevident conclusion, for which the terms
sign-infer-
ence
(óçìåßùóéò)
or reasoning (óõëëïãßæåóèáé) are reserved.
9
Philode-
mus speaks of advancing or making a transition to a nonevident
conclusion through
or by
means
of epilogismos
because
epilogismos is an
indispensable precondition
for the
inference,
not the
inference proper.
The
noun
Ýðéëïãéóìüò and the
verb
Ýðéëïãßæåóèáé
occur
in
several
different constructions.
We find the
verb used with
a
direct
object and
9 Cf. Barnes,
1988,130-1,
Sedley, 1978, 27-34, and especially Schofield, 1996.
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102 James llen
the noun taking an objective genitive, e.g., the epilogismo s of the end or
of the phenomena which have already been mentioned.
10
The verb can
be
used
to
introduce
a
subordinate clause that with which
we
seem
to
come closest to reasoning as
inference
or
deduction.
11
And there are
constructions
in
which
the
verb takes
a
direct
object
and introduces
a
subordinate clause — the
consider
the lilies, how
they grow
construc-
tion especially
fam iliar
in Greek verbs
to
know , where the
subordinate
clause unpacks
in
propositional form what
it is one
knows
o/an
item
in
knowing it (Philodemus,
On Signs
XXVIII15-25;
cf. Epicurus,
Men
133,
where
the
construction
is
implicit).
Though
the
last construction
is rare, the
fact tha t
it is
possible
may
help
us.
Suppose
we
distinguish between
the
materials
to
which reason-
ing is applied and its upshot or result. I hesitate to say
conclusion
because I do not want to prejudge the question of whether the reasoning
at
issue is a fo rm of deduction or inference, though the premises of an
inference may perhaps be viewed as one kind of material and its conclu-
sion as one kind of upshot
or
result. The distinguishing feature of
epilogistic reasoning, signaled by the prefix
epi-
would then be that the
materials to which one applies it and that about which one knows, or
knows better, as a result are the same.
12
Passages in which epilogismos/epi-
logizesthai takes a direct object or objective genitive, signifying the mate-
rial to which epilogistic reasoning is applied, and passages in which
epilogismos/epilogizesthai introduces a subordinate clause, signifying the
upshot or conclusion of the reasoning, would then be incomplete speci-
fications
of part of a whole instance of epilogistic reasoning.
Whether every
use of
epilogismos
can be
made
to fit
this pattern,
I
do not
know.
But if
this
is the
basic idea,
it
might explain
some
things
about
both the Epicurean and Empiricist uses of the term. For instance,
though it is far f rom clear that this distinction is marked in Epicureanism,
according to the Empiricists, what distinguishes epilogismos
f rom
the
analogismos of the rationalists is that it never departs f rom the phenom-
10 W ith a direct object· E picuru s, E p H dt 72
Letter
to M enoeceus 133,
Principal Do ctrines
XXII,
Philodemus, O n Signs XIII
32. W ith an
objective
genitive-
Epicurus,
Principle
Doctrines
XX;
hilodemus, O n Signs XXII37 ,
XXVII 23.
11 Epicurus,
Vatican Sayings
35,
Ep Hdt
73; Phi lodemus,
On
Signs
XXVIII16
12
For these
ideas
ab o u t epilogismos an d analogismos see
Schofield, 1996, nn.
8 which
contains
suggestions of David
Sedley)
and 12
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104
James
llen
one another in certain pattern s and w ith certain re lat ive frequencies. O n
the basis of this knowledge he
can
in a manner of speakin g reason
about
the
phenomena
and form
reasonable expectations abo ut unob-
served observables
or
phenomena
to be. A s a
resul t
o f his
ep ilogismos
on
the other hand the Epicurean has a grasp h ow eve r incomplete and
partial of the natures and powers of the i tems he is s tudying . And on
this basis he is able to
infer
that unobserved and even
unobservable
item s
m ust be the same or similar.
V II
the
Epicureans had
as I put it
earlier
a
still m ore gene rous conception
of
experience than that admitted
by the f ramework
then
it is not one
they described
in
terms draw n from
the
standard em pirical v ocabulary.
The
activities that w ent under
the
head
o f
experience
remained capable
only of grasping facts that
devoid
of necessity and explanatory power.
you will Epicurean epistemology
depends
on a more than em pirical
grasp o r comprehension of the phenom ena or the ev iden t. It is pretty
clear that
epilogismos to
which Epicurus
had
a lready
appealed, w as
enlisted by Philodemus
Epicurean authorities
to
close
a gap
between
the deliverances of experience and the grasp of the phenomena that is
necessary if sign-inferences to the nonevident are to be possible. It is also
a
fair
guess that their opp onents responded
by
tak ing epilogistic reason-
ing to be a matter of inference or ded uction . H av ing elicited the admis-
sion tha t experience
b y
itself tells
us
no thing about
how
things must
be
they could then proceed
by
demanding
to
know
how an
inference
from
the
data
of
experience
can
yield
a
grasp
of the
phenomena which
is at
once the upshot o r result of epilogismos and a sufficient basis for sign-in-
ferences
to the
nonevident.
Thus if the f ramework cannot accom mo date Epicurean views it is
not
because
the
Epicureans explicitly disavow
the
assumptions that
compose it.
Indeed such evidence
as w e
hav e suggests they might hav e
been w illing to endorse claims ab ou t the limits of experience strictly so
called.
Y et the
fact
that they
do not
take experience
to be
coordinate w ith
the phenomena and as I put it earlier permit a more than empirical
grasp
or
comprehension
of the
phenom ena m ean s that this tells
us less
abo ut Epicureanism than it otherw ise m ight. This is not the com prehen-
sion
of the
phenomena that
w e
have when
w e
view them
in the
light
of
first
principles or as effects of their underlying causes because it is an
essential precondition
for
aetiology. A ccord ing
to
orthodo x adherents
to
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Experience as a
ource
105
th e
f ramework, experience plays this
part ,
whereas
for
Epicureans,
experience
merely prepares the wa y
for
the more than empirical grasp
of th e phenomena that in turn supports rational insights about nonevi-
dent matters.
If
experience
were simply
the
name
for the
grasp
or
comprehension
of the
phenomena that precedes aetiology, then
the
Epicureans
would disavow th e restrictions on empirical knowledge
imposed
by the
f ramework.
suggest that we look at matters in this way. Sometimes, when
philosophers like Plato
and
Aristotle defended
one
position
and op-
posed another, they were
not
taking
a
familiar position
in a
dispute
that
was
already being conducted along
wel l
defined lines
so
much
as
creating
a new way of
understanding
th e
issues.
When
th e
medical
Empiricists
defend
th e
claim that experience
can by itself
give rise
to
artistic knowledge, it is an impoverished
form
of experience, experience
as conceived and marked o ff from reason by Plato and Aristotle. But it
is doubtful that earlier figures
w ho
made large claims
for
experience
drew
the
lines quite
so
sharply. Rather,
from the
point
of
view
of
Plato
and
Aristotle,
it was
probably
fairer to say
that they
failed to see
that
knowledge of the kind which they
assumed
could be explained by
experience
and
perception alone actually requires
a
separate rational
faculty with distinctive powers of its own. In this respect, as in others,
Epicurus is something o f a throwback.
14
Bibliography
Allen,
James.
2001.
Inf erence
from Signs:
Ancient
Debates
about
th e
Nature
o f
Evidence.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Annas, J. and Grimm,
R.H.,
eds. 1988.
O x f o r d
Studies in Ancient Philosophy suppl. vol.
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press.
Barnes, Jonathan. 1988. Epicurean
Signs ,
in Annas and Gr imm, eds. 91-134
De Lacy, P.H. and H.A., eds. 2nd edn. 1978. Philodemus: On Methods
of
n f e r e n c e Naples:
Bibliopolis.
14 I am grateful
fo r
comments and criticism to the
participants
in the conference, to the
speakers
and audience at Philoso phy in Assos, Ju ly 2004, where I
delivered
a paper
related to this one, and to the participants in the
Pi t tsburgh/Athens Symposium,
October
2000,
where
I first
presented some
of
these ideas
as a
commentator
on
Michael Frede's paper,
Experience
in the ancient Empiricists
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18/18
106 James Allen
Deichgräber, Kar l , ed 2nd edn 1965 D ie
g riechische
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Frag
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Everson,
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Frede, M. 1990. An empiricist view of know ledge: m em orism , in Evers on , ed 225-50.
Frede,
M. and Striker, G ., eds. 1996. Rationality
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Oxford: Oxford Univers ity
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Schofield, M . 1996. Epilogismos: An Appraisal , in Frede and Striker, eds 221-37.
Sedley,
D.
1973.
Epicurus o n
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X V I I I .
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ercolanesi 3:
5-83
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