Happy Twentieth to all! This month, news came out that a skeleton recovered at Herculaneum “reveals secrets of ancient Roman town obliterated by volcanic eruption“. This month, I also found the video 4 Ways To Practice Epicureanism.
The Cārvaka Darshana is a discussion by the Charvaka YouTube channel. The host identifies as Neo-Charvaka and claims that this lineage is as legitimately a part of Hinduism as any other philosophical school, and that if they go to the Indian government with the desire to get organized as a philosophical School, the state should acknowledge their existence as a sect. The Charvakas are a somewhat parallel tradition to Epicureanism which evolved in the context of India. Only fragments of their ancient scriptures survive, and only thanks to the reports of their enemies. Modern Charvaka discourse is greatly influenced by the new atheism, but distinct from it, as it is not an activist philosophy, but rather one of pleasure (kama).
The SNS essay On Immersive Storytelling contributes to the push to decouple myths, art, and ceremony from superstitious trappings and to channel them into ethically useful purposes. It cites Eikas, and also Lucretian passages as examples of how this can be done. Curiously, it seems like our second Scholarch Hermarchus may have initiated the tradition of telling the story of Epicurus as if it was a “legend”:
Epicurus’ life when compared to other men’s in respect of gentleness and self-sufficiency might be thought a mere legend. – Vatican Saying 36, attributed to Hermarchus
That storytelling was part of the education that took place in the Garden is demonstrated by the many anecdotes that Philodemus of Gadara told 200 years later about the lives of the founders. He must have spend many hours listening to these stories.
Multiple Explanations and Hedonic Calculus
For a number of things, it’s not enough to state one cause, but many, of which one would be true. – Lucretius, De rervm natvra, Liber Sextvs, 703-4
Our last Eikas zoom was facilitated by Alan and was titled “On the method of multiple explanations” (an ancestor to modern multi-valued logic). This method was used by Epicurus in his Epistle to Pythocles, where he explained astronomical phenomena.
The idea here is that, in a universe complex enough to have infinite particles and infinite space, it is possible that there are multiple explanations to phenomena and that, so long as these explanations do not contradict each other or the evidence of nature, they can all be true. For instance, weather systems are caused by pressure patterns in the atmosphere, but they’re also part of annual seasonal cycles, and are affected by patterns of rain condensation and by global temperatures. All these things are true and observable simultaneously. Here is how Diogenes of Oenoanda explains the method of multiple explanations in his Epicurean Wall Inscription:
Let us now discuss risings and settings and related matters after making this preliminary point: if one is investigating things that are not directly perceptible, and if one sees that several explanations are possible, it is reckless to make a dogmatic pronouncement concerning any single one; such a procedure is characteristic of a seer rather than a wise man. It is correct, however, to say that, while all explanations are possible, this one is more plausible (πιθανώτερον) than that. – Diogenes’ Wall
During our discussion of the method of multiple explanations, we agreed that this method was mainly a way of gathering and considering plausible hypotheses, without necessarily settling on only one of them as the only explanation. It would be interesting to consider the intersection between the preoccupations that led to the development of the method of multiple explanations and the post-modern rejection of any one single meta-narrative as inherently authoritarian.
One additional note on the method of multiple explanations: it allows for the existence of many fields of knowledge, each with their own rules, methods, interpretations, and ways of understanding nature.
I consider myself privileged in having wise Epicurean friends who contribute to help me gain depth in Epicurus’ teachings. One of those friends is Jason, who during our second dialogue on the Epicurean gods said this:
The Epicurean method of multiple explanations lands squarely on pleasure as the end and aim. It pleases me more to think that humanity is not alone in the universe. It pleases me more to say that the supernaturalists are hurting themselves in their confusion and the only creature worthy of adoration is that which is actually possible, material beings who have shucked off their vices and live like sages. A race of people whose choices and avoidances have led them to perpetual bliss.
This is because Pleasure is the Guide of Life in all our choices and avoidances, including our choice of what to do, what to say, and even what to think. Jason’s reading of the method of multiple explanations as requiring our choice, for which we must use the faculty of pleasure (and dwell on the most pleasant views), aligns with what we’ve discussed before in our meleta on PD 28 and has great potential benefits in the context of a belief system that is advantageous for our happiness. For me, Jason’s words also constituted the very definition of what Zen Buddhists call “satori”: instant enlightenment concerning a key philosophical concept. This is one of the great benefits of practicing “meleta with others of like mind” with our friends for a long time.
Basically, Jason was saying that if many explanations are equally plausible according to our method and based on how far empirical data can take us, then we must be content to make a choice concerning what theory is most plausible to us, which of the theories pleases us the most and adds the most to the removal of our fears and other hindrances to happiness, and this choice of a hypothesis is not without a component of FEELING. If there are several “worlds” we can imagine ourselves living in that are equally plausible, then let us choose the most pleasant one. Let us unhypocritically make the choice to assent to the truths that add the most to our happiness.
This, of course, does not mean that we suspend the importance of empirically based reasoning, as per our canon. Our views must also be based on the study of nature. But we have a limited time and attention span, and not all knowledge adds the same value to us, so we must choose. In a private message, I later told Jason what this brought up for me:
Our choice to follow scientific truth / study of nature, and our choice to follow pleasure, are not mutually contradictory … they’re mutually inclusive in true philosophy according to our Scholarchs. So your way of thinking about multiple plausible explanations, and our eventual choice of the most pleasant, deserves a deeper look.
They say ignorance is bliss. We disagree.
So the key take-away here is that there is blissful knowledge, or at least knowledge that is both correct and worth-choosing, and that the method of multiple explanations can be an efficient means to greater pleasure.
To say that multiple explanations for a phenomenon are all plausible, is perhaps also to say that, within the range of what is naturally possible, some explanations produce greater pleasure than others, or are more important for our happiness than others. So then, pleasure being the Guide of Life, we tend to take refuge in the most pleasant of the plausible explanations as a matter of choice. This is because the goal of our choices and rejections is the pleasures.
If we diverge from either pleasure or scientific truth, we are not practicing what our Scholarchs considered true philosophy. In this way, philosophy to us can be both true and advantageous for our happiness. The point at which the choices of truth and pleasure converge is where we must sculpt our hedonic regimen, our lifestyle, and our beliefs.