Our classic Stoics often spent a good deal of time on Logical problems.  As I wrote yesterday about the question regarding ‘right reason’ (Gr: ὀρθὸς λόγος), the foundation of Stoic epistemology requires that true understanding is possible, via the idea of katalepsis (Gr: κατάληψις).  The idea of the Sage necessitates it, and without the Sage there isn’t a measure for our own knowledge and progress.

One such issue is the “Sorites Paradox,” so named for the Greek word for ‘heap’ which is σωρίτης.  The basic paradox has two forms.

First:
If I place down a single grain of sand, is it a heap?  “No,” you will say.  I will continue placing down grains and asking the question, until at some point you admit, “yes, that’s a heap.”  Then I remove one.  ‘Is this still a heap?’  Thus the paradox, that one grain of sand cannot determine heapness.

Second:
I start with a heap of 10,000 grains of sand, since the absence of one grain cannot unmake a heap (see above), we will recursively remove grains until there is 1, and then 0.  Both of these would necessarily qualify as heaps per the above.  Paradox.  We can even logically go further to negative numbered grains still being heaps if Heap-Number minus 1 always yields a new Heap-Number.

We can see this same problem with baldness, plucking the hairs from the head one-by-one, at what point would we call him bald? The English form of the word “balding” might provide us with a logical escape here, in that he is in the process of becoming bald, but that’s neither here nor there.

We can also see it in the issues of collective nouns for groups of animals, as shown by this joke image, on the right.  A murder being the collective noun for a group of corvidae, this image presents the question and pun of ‘attempted murder.’

This problem is not localized to quantities of sand, hairs, and crows, as we will see shortly.

Chrysippus’ answer to the heap paradox is recorded in Cicero’s Lucullus/Academic Prior, and amounts to suspending judgment:

“You value the art [of logic], but remember that it gave rise to fallacies like the sorites, which you say is faulty. If it is so, refute it. The plan of Chrysippus to refrain from answering, will avail you nothing. If you refrain because you cannot answer, your knowledge fails you, if you can answer and yet refrain, you are unfair.”

—Cicero, Lucullus/Academic Prior §§ 91—98.

Chrysippus suggests that before the vagueness of the question causes doubt, one should withhold judgment until it’s sure.  This prevents the incongruency between 17 not being a heap, but 18 being one.

However, this is not really a solution, merely a way of avoiding the dialectal trap, as History of Philosophy notes.  In the podcast, the example is given that before one is forced into the logical corner of arguing that 24 is not a heap, and 25 is; we should begin to withhold judgment sometime around 20, before the doubt is clear.  I suspect any argument partner would infer, however, the logical paradox in silence; but Chrysippus was more concerned with protecting the epistemology of the Stoics than he was at winning 6th Grade debate points.

The issue at hand is one of vagueness, and the imprecision that is manifest in human language.  Language is made up of arbitrary symbols, for instance, nothing about the sounds of the English word ‘tree’ ( /t͡ʃɹi:/) contains anything which carries a universal understanding of the conception of ‘tree.’  It’s a symbol, agreed upon by all English speakers, but it is arbitrary.

Some of the solutions to the paradox rely on this trait of human language.  Some, by means of technical resolution, affirm a boundary which is fixed (like 10,000 units makes a heap), and others posit that there are boundaries for heaps, but they are unknowable.  Still more rely on specific types of many-value logics, and similar types of reasoning.

The colloquial phrase, “I know it when I see it” is often disparaged as simplistic understanding or ‘folksy cleverness’, but in fact it relates a truth about vagueness, subjectivity, and the symbols available to us through human language.

It is possible to make a case for the subjectivity of a heap:
Say we have boulders the size of a mini-van.  Five of these would make quite a formidable pile… one we could reasonably describe as a heap.  50 sesame seeds, however, might not be a heap.  What about 500 motes of dust?

That is not my position, however.  Rather, I want to look past the sign of the word ‘heap,’ and try to get at the thing which it symbolizes.

In grammar and linguistics we can discuss ‘mass nouns,’ which are also called no-count nouns.  Liquids tend to fall in this category.  Many languages have a partitive case (sometimes a function of the genitive) which deals with these.  See: English “some tea,” or Russian “чаю.”

The core premise of the paradox is that a heap is a certain number of objects grouped together, but this premise is not explicitly stated, and its suppression causes the logical issues seen here.  So, I will bring that out, and state that such a definition is not accurate, and show how a more accurate definition alleviates the paradox.

‘Heap,” I argue, is a similar no-count word as above.  A heap describes the manner of ordering and/or generally parabolic shape of the bodies of the items in question, and in which the specific number of items is not the operative determiner of the disposition.  Example, 10 shirts in the corner of my bedroom are deemed by my girlfriend to be a heap, as in “Can you please clean up that heap of clothes.”  The very same number of shirts, (even the exact same shirts themselves) folded and stored in a stack in the closet, are no longer a heap, it seems.  The operative determiner, then, is the relatively unordered manner of stacking, and the parabolic shape which results.

Remembering that bodies according to the stoics can even be “matter disposed in a certain way,” as in the difference between ‘a hand’ and ‘a fist’, ‘heap’ seems to be one such disposition.  Thus, heaps exist, and do have an objective definition.

The issue which then needs to be explicitly pointed out is the count-requirement of the paradox.  Applying a count-criteria to a no-count problem necessarily creates a paradox, and it’s not that this particular paradox in questions needs a count-resolution, it’s simply an inappropriate question.

Inappropriate questions are easily formulated, such as “How many waters does that bottle hold?”  or “What is the number five’s favorite color?”  These are certainly sayable, and even intelligible utterances.  Yet, they lack any relevance to the universe as we know it.  They have no clear answer, because the type of answer requested doesn’t fit the proposition.

Whether one agrees that heap is a count or no-count word, the paradox provides an interesting avenue of exploration.  The chance to apply Stoic ontology, that of bodies and disposition, to the subject was a fun thought experiment.  I don’t recall ever seeing this position stated before, possibly because relying on definitions is a weak point in propositional logic.  As this is my first attempt to wrestle with a classical paradox, I’ll accept that it’s a baby step.  So far as surety can go with the Sorites Paradox, the thing I’m most sure of is that I ought to fold my shirts before they become a heap in the corner.  (:

Inside:

– My political beliefs
– My ideas of family
– My nationalism
– My support for a state
– My theism or atheism (sometimes anti-theism)
– My support for popular causes
– My dislike of certain “indifferent things”
– My like of other “indifferent things”

How many of us have a box of our favorite things which we’ve haphazardly scrawled “STOICISM” across the side?  Inside this box of decades’, generations’ worth of baggage, is there much room leftover for the ideas of Epictetus?

How about Marcus’s reminders to himself?

The lectures of Musonius, do those have a home in this box of my favorite things?

Maybe, this thing I’m calling Stoicism, is simply a label for a new demagoguery, that reinforces all my biases by applying a systematic slant to them.  “See!”  I can say, “there’s a good reason that I should prefer this to that, treat this as indifferent, and lobby for my favorite politician of choice!”  Fate forbid, call it a vice, it’s indifferent!

“Watch your own conduct thus and you will discover to what school you belong. You will find that most of you are Epicureans and some few Peripatetics, but with all the fibre gone from you. Where have you shown that you really hold virtue to be equal to all else, or even superior?

Show me a Stoic if you can! Where or how is he to be found? You can show me men who use the fine phrases of the Stoics, in any number, for the same men who do this can recite Epicurean phrases just as well and can repeat those of the Peripatetics just as perfectly; is it not so?

Who then is a Stoic?

Show me a man moulded to the pattern of the judgements that he utters, in the same way as we call a statue Phidian that is moulded according to the art of Phidias. Show me one who is sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show him me. By the gods I would fain see a Stoic. Nay you cannot show me a finished Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his feet on the path. Do me this kindness, do not grudge an old man like me a sight I never saw till now.”

— Epictetus, Discourses II.19

Am I studying Stoicism, am I trying to be a Stoic?  Or am I taking refuge in a label?  Am I being a Stoic, or am I just saying I’m a Stoic?  Do I really try to inculcate virtue as the sole good, or am I an undercover Epicurean?  Can I show it, in my every day life?  Can I see the skill with which I weigh impressions and assent or deny them?  Can the others in my life say, “There’s something good going on there,” ?

Not here.

“Nay you cannot show me a finished Stoic; then show me one in the moulding, one who has set his feet on the path.”

In Musonius’ Lecture X, he makes the claim that a good philosopher ought never to levy a civil suit against another for personal injury.  This is because all of the things which the civil authority might bring to a plaintiff are indifferents; and no accused person has it in their power to take anything good from nor foist anything evil on a philosopher.

This level of commitment to intellectual integrity is not often seen.  While the questions of society, the state, and communities are very close to Stoicism, this is a particular poignant recommendation.  But did Musonius live up to his own advice?

In the year 70 CE, Musonius went to court and assisted in the conviction of Publius Egnatius Celer, a fellow Stoic.  Celer has betrayed Barea Soranus to his death during the reign of Nero; one of the three so-called Stoic Martyrs.  

Is this a problem for the unity of Musonius’ teachings?

No.  Musonius’ suggestions that a philosopher avoid suits of personal injury is well-grounded in Stoicism, but so too is his participation in the Celer’s trial.  Musonius was seeking justice to a man betrayed.  Justice, being one of the four constituent parts of Virtue; his endeavor was thus in accord with his own teaching.

It seems that we can infer a difference in his thinking between the personal injury claims of civil or equity law; and the laws of the state (malum in se, if not malum prohibitum) and criminal law.

Granted, this is an interpretation between what we have of his teaching and the way he lived his life.  We have it from our sources that The Roman Socrates was especially known for practicing what he preached.  It is reasonable, then, I think, to infer this dichotomy between the civil and criminal law.

What are your thoughts?
– Is Musonius suggestions that philosophers expressly avoid personal injury suits relevant to our modern times; or is this a core aspect of how our society now dispenses justice?
– Do you think this dichotomy between civil and criminal law is well grounded, or is it splitting fine hairs?

My academic background is anthropology and linguistics.  Although my current job is pretty far from these, that perspective is still one lens through which I view culture and societies.  To my knowledge, no culture exists without rituals.

For most folks, the term ritual evokes the image of religion (which is a borderline four-letter word on some sites and blogs these days).  While it’s true that religions generally have rituals, we have many secular ones as well.  Getting a driver’s license tends to have ritual significance as a coming of age rite, graduations are heavily and careful prescribed activities (even with ritual garments, gestures, talismans, and music).  Weddings, even at the court house, and on and on.  The story of human life is punctuated with ritual.

There are several reasons why a modern Stoic should consider ritualizing his or her practice.  Ritual and symbolism speak to the human mind in a way that overt, language-based impressions do not.  Rituals build a sense of seriousness and solemnity to activities; like the Japanese Tea Ceremony.  Rituals help make sure that we are doing complex things in a prescribed manner.  How many of us learned to tie our shoes and cross the street with ritualistic formalism?   Maybe even a parable about a rabbit?

When we undertake certain things with a ritual mindset, we learn it in a way that fossilizes the thing acquired.  In doing “philosophy as a way of life” we are endeavoring to untrain and retrain certain reactions which we have spent decades reinforcing.  No small thing, that.

Ritualizing our daily practices will build regularity, seriousness, and competence in our chosen endeavors.  Just like we train in a gym or a dojo in a specific manner before we’re expected to use those skills in a more serious context, rituals will help us prepare in the relative security of the philosophical school before we go out into the world to test what we’ve learned.

If we want to learn to box, we start in a gym; we don’t go pick a fight with Ronda Rousey.

Epictetus advises us to “Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and thence proceed to greater.”

Ritualizing our practice is one way to do that.

It’s not my intent to lay out an entire scheme of things to ritualize, that’s the kind of nitty-gritty work most folks would rather do on their own.  But everything from clothing, meals, scholarly activities, etc. can be imbued with that special quality and signification of the ritual.

One of the biggest challenges for me, is figuring out how to inculcate Stoic practice, and effectively “automate” their use.  When it occurs to me use a Stoic technique, I’m pretty successful at using it.  The hard part, is gaining that little bit of time to remember to do the thing!  Ritual helps with that.

Musonius was big on habits.  It’s fair to say that Musonius believe that building good habits was the foundation of virtuous living.  While the classical Stoics all agreed that virtue was a sort of episteme or knowledge; building that justified belief into real actions is also important.  For Musonius, that was habits, hands down.

Ritualizing our practice builds habits.

As many a coach has said, “perfect practice makes perfect, practice just makes permanent.”  By building specific and prescribed rituals we will be doing the former, and hopefully the latter.

Do you already have something akin to “Stoic rituals” in your daily practice?  If so, what are they?  If not, what are some fertile grounds for that particular seed?

In this post, someone asked what a Stoic commencement address would look like.  I thought this would be an interesting thought experiment in couching Stoic lessons in that format without the technical jargon that often features in our discussions.

To the graduating class of 2015:

Congratulations on your achievement, and I wish you excellence in your coming endeavors whatever they may be.  Some will enter the workforce immediately, others will commit themselves to some form of national service like the armed forces, and some will go on to college or university.  You are preparing yourselves, regardless, for big changes, new adventures, and exciting challenges.

High school, however, is a microcosm of the larger world.  For instance, while all of you here have made this achievement, your paths have been very different.  Some of you struggled and fought to make Bs, others acquired As easily.  Some maybe skated by, “D is for diploma,” right?  Classes varied from remedial, grade level, to honors and Advanced Placement.  You each took a different journey.  The same will be true in your coming fields.

I have something uncomfortable to tell you.  Soon, this achievement will fall by the wayside.  Enjoy today, but tomorrow, this will be in the past.  Once you’re in college your high school GPA is of little importance.  The same for the workforce or military.  Once you take the next step, the previous one matters less.  Each new challenge becomes the focus, and previous victories will become smaller in comparison.

For those going on to higher education, once you leave those institutions and enter the workforce your college GPA will become less important.  At your first ten year work anniversary, no one will say “Remember when she got a 4.0 four semesters in a row?”  It will fade.

But one thing, however, will not fade.  One thing is far more permanent.  The character you build in yourself while working hard for a B, or cruising easily in a cake class for an A will stick around.  You will, day by day, step by step, build and create the person you will be for the rest of your life.  Character.  Character development is not something that happens in the future.  It is not an activity one takes up once “things are settled.”  Character development happens regardless, the only question is, will you do it consciously or accidentally?

Many of us have a person, maybe a grandparent, neighbor, or family friend.  Some good, older person.  We admire their character and think, “I’d like to be like that one day.” If we want that, the time is now, because if we wait until the future to work on that, it will be too late.

Character is like a boat or a ship.  We take the rude and rough materials that we are presented with.  We start with a tree, which is felled and carried to the worksite.  Once we begin to examine and work with the tree, we find defects, burls, gnarls, and knots.  These are not up to us, we don’t chose them.  Maybe someone or something else had, but that is not important.  We have what we’re given.  Ours is to make the best of it.

So we take out our tools and begin to work the tree, ripping planks and boards from its trunk.  These planks are rough, splintery, and not too pretty to look at.  This is where we are now.  You’ve made choices, built habits with new and green wood, still wet from the earth.

Next, we begin to plane down the planks, smoothing the surface, taking off the rough parts, and producing a useful plank.  This is a lot of work.  Based on the grain, the shape, the bend, the flexibility of this plank we choose to use it for the hull, or decking, or a decorative handrail artfully carved.  Each one, its natural character determining its use can be taken and fitted to our ship.  And when it’s finished, we have one plank, with many more to go.  Each of these choices, these planks helps build our ship.  But if done haphazardly, what kind of vessel will we have?  It is only by conscious, focused, and neutral judgement that each part can be fitted to its appropriate use.

A shoddy ship might float in the harbor, where it is safe, but that’s not what ships are made for.  We must take it out into the wild and fierce waves, test it against the untamed seas of real life.

When you go into the world, as a worker, manager, teacher, or other role:  you will find folks doing the minimum, doing less than, and other yet excelling.  It is not yours to compete with them but to compete with yourself.  To quietly, doggedly, and determinedly do better tomorrow than you did today.  You might end up with the same salary, the same awards, and the same qualifications of these others, but those things are temporary and transient.  They will pass.

But that character you build in the process is yours for the rest of your life.  Did you do your work with honor?  Did you do it with determination and discipline?  Did you do it with kindness, lend a helping hand?  Did you cheat?  Did you lie?  Did you steal?  Which ship are you building?

You have a short period of time where it is slightly easier to change course, the degree of change is small here, but further into the journey it will be many and many miles to correct your course.  If you’re headed in a rough direction, change now, at the beginning.  Suit your ship for the seas ahead, build it well, and track your right course.

I leave you with this, congratulations on this achievement, and there is the possibility for glory on the horizon for you.  Your ship stands in the yards, not yet complete, but its shape is beginning to become visible.  Which one will you build?

There is a split in the Stoic community. On one side we have the anti-theist/atheist camp, and on the other is the theist/deist camp. This is not a particularly new debate in philosophy, and it is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. That being said, for current practitioners there are those who are being called Orthodox or Traditional Stoics and the Modern Stoics. The Moderns aren’t calling themselves that, they’re not taking an adjective as I think they’d rather just be called  ‘The Stoics,’ but I think it’s fair to hand one to each. I’d prefer to say “atheist Stoic” but whichever works.

The key divisor between the two camps tends to revolve around Stoic Physics. The Moderns see it as utter rubbish, and the Orthodox are unwilling to toss out a key part of the traditionally tripartite study of philosophy. I’m not at all sure how everyone reads the Physics, but I see it as mere romantic or allegorical description of modern science. I see them in agreement.  It’s important to note that the classical Stoics were speaking as they could, with the terminology they had.  They were speculating.  Speculation is the realm of philosophy, and when it becomes accepted as fact, we call it science.  What the Stoics had on the nose for modern understanding is quite astounding.

The Stoics classically believed that the universe expands and then contracts in a great fire, called Ekpyrosis. Sounds a lot like the Big Bang and Big Crunch (Heat Death fans will take umbrage here). The ancient Stoics discussed pneuma, the active function of matter, the Logos, or God permeating and infusing all things, connecting and enlivening them. Sounds to me like quantum entanglement and zero-point fields. I personally see no big issue with the manner that our ancient forbears used to describe speculatively the things we test today. If we borrow atoms from the Epicureans, then we’ve got an empirically tested system with flowery language. I’m fine with this.

Additionally, the universe is providential in that causes yield effects. This is regular and is the unconscious basis on which all living critters navigate the cosmos.  We see an unmitigated trend towards increasing complexity and energy consumption.  We can posit from this the cosmos is working towards some end, and the classical Stoics would say that such an end will be ‘good’ on the level of the universal scale.  The universe seems perfectly constituted to bring about living creatures, and (I will argue) consciousness.  Additionally, the laws of physics are so finely tuned as to allow for our existence.  The tiniest change (as I’m told by specialists) in the speed of light, the functions of gravity, the forces required for the universe to support us, and it wouldn’t.

I got into a friendly debate with a fellow Stoic on the Great Book of Faces, and we were hashing out the particulars of the claim made by the Orthodox Stoics that the universe is both conscious and providential. I will summarize my argument there, below.

Although I cannot prove it, most folks will accept that four billion years ago there was nothing we would call ‘consciousness’ on Earth. Today, that is not the case. Is this point debated? I think not. From this, we can interpret that consciousness is a developmental state of matter; if we remove the possibility of a Personality-God injecting it into creation a la the Abrahamic faiths. Take for instance that at some point during the life cycle of a human, the fetal cells are not-conscious. It is alive, but nothing we’d recognize as ‘consciousness’ is happening there. Then, at some later developmental point this is no longer true, and the human is conscious. Where this occurs is not a material factor in this discussion (is for others), but let us say that it in fact does occur. In this case, we see a thing go from non-consciousness to consciousness.

I do not claim to understand the mechanism here, and I’m not sure there is anyone alive who does. However, I will posit a possibility. Consciousness is a point on a continuum of matter. As matter organizes itself on the rational principles of the universe (meaning we can divine them by reason), in certain configurations it goes from mere chemicals to organic compounds. Those organic compounds like amino acids begin to form into larger, more complicated things like DNA. From there, we get living things, made up of the very same base-stuff as the non-living parts of the universe. At some point, specialized cells begin forming electro-chemical networks. Given enough time and appropriate energy availability, these networks might form something we would call “consciousness.” We see this in evolution and in ourselves. It occurs on the scale of the geologic and the individual lifetime. We see that things in the universe go from one state to another regularly, might not this trend continue?

This position is without superstition, religion, or magic. I suspect there is something special about consciousness, something in our ruling faculty that merits being called a soul. Something religious, but we will set that aside for now; although I would like to come back to that at some point.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/

The universe has produced reason and consciousness, since it contains such a thing, it’s fair to say it is such a thing. We are part and parcel of the universe. Now, one might call out the Fallacy of Composition. If the universe is constituted in such a way to produce consciousness within it, I argue it’s fair to call it conscious. Just as the cells of my finger are not themselves conscious (to my knowledge), I am. A rock or a pencil are not conscious, indeed not even living like hair, but the larger body is, (as hair:humans). It could have been phrased “since humans are conscious, consciousness is a feature of the universe.” Maybe this would be more palatable to some?

If that’s true (granted: large ‘if’), then I’m comfortable with saying the universe is conscious and providential. I don’t understand the mechanisms; however, the universe has never shown itself to be overly bothered with my understanding it or not.

I see no contradiction between the Physics of the classical Stoics (and the Orthodox today) and modern science. One does not necessarily preclude the other, as the atheist Moderns would contend. What I would like the reader to take away from this, is not my position wholesale (on faith), but the element of doubt enough to ask “what if?” Take that ‘what if’ and see where it leads you. You might just find, Fate permitting, that it’s an interesting and meaningful place.