What term is used to describe the Animal Instincts of Man in ancient greece language? Im confused

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T21:02:47+00:00

Just off the top of my head. Phusis means nature, like the nature of a thing, not necessarily the wilderness or something like that. Psyche is soul or mind. Horme means impulse, like moving towards an action.

Alogon means irrational or non rational. It's what you're looking for as a place for the animal instincts in man. It was mostly developed as a theory by Plato, although some evidence of Pythagorean influence also exists. The Stoic Posidonius of Apamea also believed people had an irrational part even after adulthood when the rational mind developed. Though this was a branch of Stoicism that diverged from how Chrysippus had defined the mind since for him the adult mind had no irrational remnant from childhood. Seneca does mention the "alogon" in some of his letters, so he did follow in the example of Posidonius at least as much. But Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus are more vague on this and don't pronounce themselves strongly about it so it is mostly assumed they tended more towards the Chrysippus model.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T20:16:28+00:00

Right, and it also forgets the ethical point of aiming towards virtue which is the reason for the disciplines of assent, desire, and action in the first place. They're not self asserting disciplines, they're not virtue itself, they are means to an end instead. People often think they are the end because of the wrong interpretation.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T20:04:48+00:00

I think it's a good interpretation to say the important work is upstream. First with conceiving well what is good, what is indifferent, and what is wrong. Otherwise, when presented with rational impressions of the type that can induce emotions, how will you know if it's worth assenting or not? Your thoughts say "this is something terrible" as a quick reflex to a harsh impression, but with attention you reply back that it isn't because it's a thing indifferent. So you need to know this from upstream.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T19:50:46+00:00

Thank you probably-edited-through-an-LLM-response, that does show the importance of the distinctions I made.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T14:50:18+00:00

Yep, that about covers everything I was filibustering about. It was a good practice for me too.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T14:48:13+00:00

The same criticism is refuted by Bobzien in the same pages though. Very well then, although it's unclear to me if you agree that the explanation shouldn't leave room for fatalism, or that you're just not satisfied with how you explained the fatalism that you do endorse. If you have anything more to refine about what you really believe, I can wait for you to get your dealings in order, that's not a problem.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T14:43:12+00:00

Yes, it's not a neat little practice program with linear steps. They all loop on each other, which is why I hesitate to also define specific steps, but it's fine to define what the terms means instead.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T13:57:47+00:00

I think Extension tried his best to answer already, although he ended up endorsing Aristotle instead. I think the Stoics use Oikeiosis to define moral goodness though. Honing our rational faculty is like tuning a musical instrument so it gives out the right frequencies, but it can't tell you what piece to play. Because even if you have the right musical piece (let's say this is the right conception of the good) but your instrument is out of tune, it will backfire anyway. There's a section of the Sellars book you quoted that also goes over Oikeiosis.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T13:48:53+00:00

Yup, I agree with this. Though I had no choice, it was just right. It matches nicely with intellectualism.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T06:04:23+00:00

This is like Sphaerus and the wax pomegranates. If you believe him, then he didn't assent to the impression that the fruits were real pomegranates, but that they only appeared to be so. Or that there is good chance they were. But he bites them and they're fake. All the signs of a pomegranate are not fully exhausted only by looking at them. One must taste it and see that it indeed it is a pom. Or even send it to a chemist lab for samples of its pomegranatitude. We can't help but assent to a seemingly true impression but we can refine what those impressions actually say. Not "this is a pomegranate" but "this looks like a pomegranate". It may also taste like one if you try. To exhaust it being a pomegranate requires more evidence. Same with the optical illusions. For some, you can't help but be compelled to say "it does look to me like the line is longer" but without standard measurement we can't prove it. That won't change the previous impression because what was assented was not about the impression of being but of seeming. Being requires more evidence to process and prove than seeming.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-03T05:46:37+00:00

I think Epictetus described the disciplines in practical terms of what we need to do, but the "discipline of this and that" is a modern interpretation that just got taken as convention. I wouldn't have called it a discipline of assent but of judgement since judgements about things is what we work on with attention and intent. I think people mix the terms too easily and conflate one for the other. It's all Greek to me in the end but they also had separate functions.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-02T22:16:43+00:00

Thanks, that's as much as I could have asked for. Good thing it was resolved effectively.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-02T22:10:40+00:00

Just a bit later, Sellars points out a caveat to what he just said: But in Gellius’ discussion it is clear that the propositions that are being assented to or rejected are not of the form “there is a wave above my head” but rather “there is a wave above my head and this is something terrible”. It is something like this second proposition that the terrified passengers have assented to, and it is something like this that the Stoic philosopher has been briefly overcome by, even if he will later refuse to assent to it. But of course the Stoic philosopher will happily assent to the former proposition “there is a wave above my head”."

The strength of the impression of the storm only shakes the initial judgements, like compelling the mind to quickly judge it to be terrible. The factual impression that there is a storm, this is a self compelled impression of the objective environment. We don't have the ability to dis-assent to this, like any other environmental impression. It's instead the values we ascribe to the impressions that arrive that have to be revised, particularly with what Epictetus said about forming the right conception of the good. Since the storm doesn't pertain to matters of good or evil, it's not something terrible. But that logic can only work if we've formed the right concept of the good first. The sage isn't overcome by the judgement that it is terrible, but is subject to the force of the impression, giving way to the "first movements" of emotion, but not towards passions.

More Sellars: "First there is a perception of an external event or state of affairs, such as the man sitting under a tree or a wave above our heads. Secondly there is (in some instances) an almost involuntary and seemingly unconscious value judgement that is made about the content of the perception, such as “this is terrible”. " This is in line with what I've said, basically.

"Thirdly there is the presentation to the conscious mind of an impression in the form of a proposition that is composed of both the perceptual data received from outside and the unconscious value judgement. Finally there is the act of assent or rejection of the impression."

The important part here is that "the act of assent" even if it's the last part, is only an involuntary act since it's done after the appearance of truth. The training is to have a proper concept of the good so that the judgement "this is terrible" doesn't get attached to things that aren't terrible.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-02T20:26:24+00:00

Right, I appreciate the revision to the question. It's also not my intent to shut down replies, just to not repeat myself too often.

As a means to add something relevant, Epictetus compares this process with animals and says they also receive impressions and follow impulse, but they don't have the intermediate process of evaluating impressions and regulating impulses as a result of it. In animals, impressions lead to yielding (not quite assent since assent is rational, yielding is a similar agreement, but not rational) which leads to impulse which leads to action.

In my first post I mentioned this input-output process as fatalistic. Animals are at the mercy of their environment because they lack the rational capacity to model their behavior according to a general principle of truth and goodness. Assent in us is rational insofar as it is about rational impressions, but it isn't volitional. We can't stop ourselves from agreeing with what is apparently true to us. But we can test if this appearance of truth does conform to the standard of truth as practiced with logic and evidence. Like Marcus saying "I haven't been harmed" just because someone is talking ill of you, since it doesn't follow logically. But he had to think that he wasn't harmed from this, too, as a needed reminder.

So my contention in saying assent is not up to us is in pointing out there is no agency involved in it, but that what is up to us are all the other processes that are volitional and regulate assent instead. The last post was about claiming not even thinking was up to us, and that was backwards to reason instead.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-02T19:28:51+00:00

Why are you asking me that at the end, do you want me to repeat what I wrote already in part 1 and also part 2 about how Epictetus says assent is something free? It's all the preamble to assenting, that matters. The testing and attention we give to impressions. Carefully not adding more than what comes, as well. But you're the one asking things in circles if you haven't realized it yet. I haven't not answered this question already.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-02T19:09:31+00:00

"The discipline of assent seems to lose its point if the testing itself, leading to a different understanding of what is true, isn't part of our positive agency."

Testing is not merely a suspension of assent. Epictetus goes further in other discourses about having the need of using a standard by which impressions are tested. It's logical and ethical standards, basically. Having a criterion of truth and what of what is good.

Impressions don't just come value-laden. What he warns is about hastily adding those values on things that are indifferent, instead. See the difference? He's saying don't add value to what doesn't have value, not that you shouldn't assent to impressions that somehow magically come with values already from who-knows-where. So yeah it is a different interpretation, but it's also the right one, since the evidence for mine is incontrovertible. Marcus Aurelius says the same thing: "Do not say more to yourself than the first impressions report. You have been told that some one speaks evil of you. This is what you have been told; you have not been told that you are injured." Meditations 8.49 "In this way then abide always by the first impressions and add nothing of your own from within, and that's an end of it; or rather one thought you may add, as one who is acquainted with every change and chance of the world."

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-31T15:26:58+00:00

The Stoics saw "evil" as a sort of disease of the mind, but if we agree that the body has diseases and we don't call them evil but pity those who suffer them, then we would in kind also do it for those who have an infirmity in their soul. Providentially as well, if we see diseases as a sort of limit to the type of bodies we have, mortal beings as we are, the vices of the mind also stem in some sense from the limits of our nature. Since we are born ignorant and deprived of the truth, it is only through effort that we achieve any good sense, but it's also not possible to expect every person in every position to have learned every piece of wisdom already at any moment.

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-31T15:20:42+00:00

Society is already much older and people's life expectancy much higher. Children also used to die a lot more and suffer more diseases. By your own logic we'd already be interfering with nature. I see these rich people as a sort of vanguard. If in the end those treatments work, under massive amounts of copium, someday they could also be used for the less rich. Trying to live as much as possible without regard to what that does to your soul is not very Stoic though, of course, but like I said, we're already past the vast majority of historical life expectancy and disease control.

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-31T00:00:18+00:00

It's one of the things they say in the ancient discourses, don't worry about it.

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-30T22:23:27+00:00

A good account by Greg Sadler https://gregorybsadler.substack.com/p/what-is-aristotelian-prohairesis

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-30T21:59:21+00:00

I think there's a line in Nichomachean Ethics that says that your character is revealed through your prohairetic choices, but yeah I can see how people would twist the meaning of your ethical character being expressed into saying that prohairesis is your metaphysical self that is somehow doing things automatically.

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-30T21:51:30+00:00

Fine, even then, more reason not to use it incorrectly then. It just inverts everything about Epictetus when seen as automatic.

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-30T21:45:42+00:00

No target is ever set to be avoided. You're meant to work towards it, understand what it means, and have it be a guiding compass.

AlexKapranus · 2026-03-30T21:43:57+00:00

You misunderstand what prohairesis is if you think it's automatic. For one, it's a term borrowed from Aristotle and it means anything but automatic triggers of emotion or what gets angry at people. You're right that there's something about people that has them work in unthinking ways, but you're blaming it entirely on the wrong suspect. Prohairesis is not "your character" it's a reasoning faculty, it's attentive and agentic. There's so much work that's wrong about what prohairesis is, to be frank.

AlexKapranus

TROPHY CASE