 what it actually means to live in a place of nature? Yeah, if it was our already part of it. Well, so I'd like to turn to the text here because there's a controversy about what this means. It's not very clear. And even in Cicero, he says, the early Stoics didn't agree, and they have at least three different ways of interpreting what it means. And just think generally about this idea of nature So there is a book called Primitivism in Antiquity by Lovejoy that has an appendix that has 100 different definitions of nature that were used in antiquity, all totally different. Nature is invoked all over the place to explain everything. So some people are naturally homosexual according to nature. But then other people think that homosexuality is contrary to nature. So nature is used on both sides of that divide. Go into the grocery store. Find little stickers that say, natural. What does that mean? I saw one the other day really puzzling. It was on a piece of cheese, and it said, real. And I was like, wow, it's an ontological moment. Here's something that's real. And I was like, cream cheese. So the notion of nature is not immediately obvious what it means. And one thing it can mean is the whole cosmos. Another thing it can mean is human nature, or animal nature, or the nature of living things. And all of those would have different implications, living in accordance with animal nature. I'm an animal, after all. I'm like, woo-hoo, I'm an animal, but I am. And I'm also a kind of plant. And I'm a human. Which nature am I supposed to live in accordance with? Those are all part of my nature. Or am I supposed to live in accordance with the whole cosmos? And how couldn't I? How would you not live in accordance with it? So we have to get further into this question. And Bronson is doing, is actually researching this, is the focus of his paper, what the hell did they mean by living in accordance with nature. And because it's a really intriguing thing that is still around, and we still think we want to live naturally, there's still something about that. There's a kind of normative pull to this idea of let's live naturally. Let's not be artificial. And it could be consistent with the kind of environmental ethics, live in accordance with nature. That's a very attractive notion. We're destroying nature right now. Let's change and live in accordance with it instead. So that's all to say, it's unclear. This is a big philosophical issue. And a slogan, living in accordance with nature, only goes so far. We have to philosophically unpack it. So in section 14 of book four, we are told that even predecessors of Zeno said that the supreme good was to live in accordance with nature. And that the Stoics interpret this formula, so says Cicero, in three ways. So what's the first way? Explain what the first way that they will do is. How do you interpret the first explanation that he gives? Bronson, what are you doing about it? Because we've talked about this already. So it's actually kind of a really interesting question. And I feel like it's easier to work down it. But my 15th kind of start this, that the editor says that this is actually misattributed and also misquoted. So Zeno himself originally just said to live consistently, which of course has nothing to do with it. It doesn't have nature in it at all. And so that could be taken in a lot of different ways. And a lot of research seems to suggest that Zeno meant something maybe even more along the lines of the cynics of just kind of like eschewing almost everything about society and just kind of being a hermit almost. It was Chrysippus who added this like, well, how would you interpret if that's right, living consistently? I can think of two things that could mean. One consistent with something and then I'm wondering what that thing is or consistently meaning I don't contradict myself. I don't do things at variance with my own beliefs or something. Is that what living consistently is supposed to mean? Well, so Chrysippus and the future so it was interpreted to be in terms of consistently with nature. So they added the nature like this to be with nature. Don't test me with that. So you're taking the former. Right, taking the former. So okay, but that's, I just want a gloss or an explanation on the first possible interpretation of living in accordance with nature. So in just in terms of one's knowledge of the knowledge about the fact that nature and thus the cosmos, since that's what they mean by nature is rational and that humans share that rationality and would be acting according to the knowledge of the fact that we have rationality. Okay, so this is like living in accordance with nature means understanding nature, physics, studying physics and then living and then drawing certain conclusions about the nature of reality and living in accordance with that kind of knowledge. Right. So if you have knowledge that climate change is happening then living consistently with that might require you to use consumption or something. Exactly. Okay, so there's one possible answer is that living in accordance with nature means knowing what the nature is, i.e. doing physics and then somehow living in accordance with it. There's problems with that view but that gives us some idea of what it could mean. Okay, what do you want to go on? So the second interpretation is, I really went down with the first interpretation so far in my research. Okay, did anybody else even explain to us what is meant by this second one, which doesn't reiterate the word nature? Yeah. All the way I read it, it seems you should have wisdom with the virtue of wisdom where you know which actions to take and which are appropriate and since living in accordance with nature also means possessing all virtues. If you possess all virtues, if you possess the virtue of wisdom, you know what to do and when to do it and that is the supreme good because you have all the virtues and you are living in accordance with nature. Okay, that's good but it doesn't account for the actual terminology here in section 15. The second interpretation is that it means, quote, to live performing all or most of the intermediate appropriate actions. Okay, so what is an intermediate appropriate action? Let's break that down. Well, I think they're referring to the preferred goods instead of, well, things like wealth when it would be appropriate, it would be and you, it's referring to the notion of preferred goods versus actual good where having wisdom would require you to choose wisely in terms of preferred goods at the correct time. Okay, that's very close. I need to correct one thing you said there but Michael, you wanna come in here? It kind of, I mean, it reminds me of the golden mean or like their style of thing of like a moderation, like by saying the intermediate, like it's like, it kind of reminds me of like gold. Oh, like it's the mean. Yeah. That actually is not being referred to here. Okay, so intermediate appropriate actions does refer to these actions that are neither good nor bad but it doesn't mean, it doesn't have to do with discriminating between the ones that are preferred and dispreferred. That's obvious. We prefer health to disease. We prefer wealth to poverty. We prefer beauty to ugliness. Okay. But sometimes we need to select poverty, disease and ugliness other times the opposites in order to engage in virtuous activity. And so virtuous activity isn't a matter of going, I wanna be wise, I wanna be self-controlled so I'll just do that. What that means, having self-control means somebody puts chocolate cake in front of you and you decide not to eat it. Or somebody puts heroin in front of you and you decide not to do it in that case or do it if that's a good thing to do in that because that's the right thing to do in that case. But so notice that we don't just immediately choose the end. We don't just choose virtue, wouldn't that be nice? We just said, yeah, I'll just choose to be a courageous person. No, it means choosing to hold your line in battle when that is the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing to do is run, okay? If it's you versus 10,000 Spartans then it would be foolhardy, not courageous to stand the line in battle there. But if it's a matter of protecting your homeland and you can do it and so forth then choosing those intermediate actions is the right thing. So virtue comes down to not just choosing to be virtuous. In fact, that we don't do at all. That's just a matter of what our value system is. The real way to be virtuous is to choose correctly the intermediate things. And so that does require not confusing intermediate things with ends. Like not thinking that health is intrinsically a good thing. But, and of course we need to discriminate between preferred and disperferred indifference. But what it really means is choosing disperferred indifference when that is the virtuous thing to do, okay? So that is a very different sense, it seems, of living in accordance with nature than living in accordance with my knowledge of the natural order as a result of studying physics and doing science. Okay, much more immediately ethically focused idea there. Okay, and so just to give Cicero his due, what's the third one? So somebody explain what he says the third interpretation is. Michael? So he says living in enjoyment of all are the most important things that are in accordance with nature. But he said that to do this is only available to the widest. Where does he say that? Like a little bit further down since however the spring good got set up in this third interpretation and like based upon it is only available to the widest since virtue is a part of it. Okay, and this is where, okay so first of all let's make sure we understand what it means. What does it mean to live in enjoyment of all or the most important things that are in accordance with nature? And how is that different from live performing all or most of the intermediate appropriate actions? Isn't this one, you have to actually possess those things? Okay, you have to actually possess, it looks like this one has, that you have to actually possess the virtues and only the widest do that. Now, in the footnotes, which Bronson told us all to read and we certainly should read when we come into confusing things like this, we're told that this really isn't fair. It looks like Cicero's making up a thing that the Stokes really shouldn't accept. So what is the problem, you think, with this idea that you need to actually enjoy and succeed in accomplishing the things in order to live in accordance with nature? Well, didn't, I don't think they ever actually claimed that anyone was at stage, right? It said that everyone was working towards it but did they ever actually claim anyone to have reached stage with? Well, they have some examples, you know, Socrates, Diogenes, those guys were probably stages. Maybe not, but probably were. Yeah, they're pretty rare. In fact, it might, there might not be anyone. So that's true, but what does that have to do with the problem with this interpretation? There are too many things that aren't in your control which would determine whether you become that. Exactly, and that says he goes on to say that this depends on things that aren't in our own power. Whether I actually, whether it consequentially I end up achieving those things is not in my power. And so we don't wanna make living in accordance with nature, which is the goal, something that is not in my power. First of all, it doesn't recognize the nature of the kind of thing I am, which is a thing that only has control over my own reasoning and in my value system. But second of all, it totally goes against the stoic idea. Stoics are what we call anti-consequentialists. Very strange term, anti-consequentialism. That means they consider the consequences irrelevant. What matters is the state of mind of the person deciding. And so they compare this to an archer. You wanna have the skill of an archer, okay? And you wanna pluck the bow as skillfully as possible. But if somebody moves the target or a gust of wind comes along and blows it away so that you don't exactly hit the bullseye, that doesn't matter. You shouldn't cheat in order to make sure it actually does hit it or something. What matters is the intentions you have behind it. Consequences are totally irrelevant. So they can't really accept this view that you have to actually have the consequence of achieving all of these things. And additionally, there's the fact that it's not clear that anyone has ever achieved these things. It's still the only worthwhile thing to do. But, and there's a couple of examples of people that copy did. As I said, Zeno himself, the head of the school, Socrates, looks like Socrates chose all the appropriate intermediate things. He basically was wise, was courage, did have self-control. So there are people we can point to. Confucius is someone like this. The Buddha might be someone like this. So there are these people and they're doing it right. And we all should be trying to do it right and don't give up and think, well, I'm not gonna be able to become a moral stage so I may as well just pursue wealth or something. That's worthless. And that actually leads, that'll entrap you in vice. At least this other thing gives you a possibility of happiness. Okay, so there's a problem with that third interpretation, but it's a deep problem because it has to do with whether the results and outcomes really matter. And they take a hard line on this. They don't matter. Okay, so the Stoics have easy answers to questions that, for example, utilitarians like to pose. Suppose you could chop up an innocent person and distribute their organs to five sick people and so save their lives. Would that be a good thing to do? No, because it doesn't matter if you save other people's, five other people's lives. What matters is whether you would do an unjust thing there. Okay, and again, consequences totally irrelevant. What matters is the state of mind and the value judgments made about the things. You don't have control over consequences. So we can't be responsible for them. Now, so those are the views that Cicero gives and not all of them, there might even be something to the third one. I'm not sure if the footnote is right that this is completely anti-Stoic. It could have been a strain of Stoicism or something like that. But those are three different accounts of living in accordance with nature, but more research on it is needed. And there are other questions that remain. If you think that it means living in accordance with human nature, what do you mean by human nature? Apparently they mean reason. Reason is, after all, what makes us humans, what differentiates us from other animals. We are animals, what kind of animals, animals that use language and animals that reason. So I need to live in accordance with reason. But what reason tells me is that certain things are good, certain things are bad, and certain things are indifferent. So I need to live in accordance with those. Well, and so that means selecting the right things that are indifferent so as to bring about the goods and avoid the bad things. And in order to gain that knowledge of what's good and bad, one must understand the physical cosmos and the fact that it is rationally ordered and that reasonable explanations of the causes of things happening in it are possible. Because you can sort of tie in these different elements of the definition together.