Yes, one aspect of the bookcase is community-building. Establishing systematic access to literature available in pdf-files is good to do in parallel.
For German texts, there is a lot at: Projekt Gutenberg-DE - Startseite (projekt-gutenberg.org)
(Cassius made me more aware of this one in an old thread on the Prussian King Friedrich II. (not the medieval Friedrich II.))
Nate's library of electronic files is a good idea if we make sure that no copyrights are violated.
Martin are you able to edit this page?
Yes, I just did it. Please check and modify as you see fit.
The photo shows up twice but when I edit the post, it shows only once. How to remove one of the 2 identical photos from the post?
There are many public bookcases in Germany. The photo shows the one closest to my apartment. Anyone can place no more needed books in such a public bookcase or take books from it without obligation to return them.
These bookcases and having received a book by an Epicurean friend last year inspired the idea to set up a bookcase on http://www.epicureanfriends.com.
Preferably, there should be a page on http://www.epicureanfriends.com with the list of books. The format should not be like a forum page but a table which lists the books with author, title and username of the owner, with the option to add photos of the books and comments.
To minimize the need for administration, any member of http://www.epicureanfriends.com should be able to edit the list.
A member who would like to get a book from the list sends a private message to the owner to ask for the book and to write the address to where the book should be shipped. Then, the owner sends the book, pays the shipping fee and removes the book from the list, and the requestor gets it for free. It is up to the owner and the requestor to negotiate different terms.
Preferably, the content of books on the list should be philosophy, science, history, arts, self-help or non-trivial fiction, but there are no restrictions on the content except for spam and material which is restricted by law in some countries such as pornography, calls to commit a crime, Nazi propaganda.
An alternative way to implement the bookcase project could be that instead of one page with the table of all available books, each willing donor creates a list on the own profile page.
Please feel free to comment and suggest rules which should be added for the implementation.
Logic does not need to be and cannot be validated by the senses. The theorems of logic are true. However, without premises based on observations, no conclusions on the world can be obtained from logic alone.
The truth Plato and probably most ancient philosophers had in mind concerning the world does not exist or is unavailable. What we can get from observations are tentative facts by using logic as a tool.
Welcome Ben!
Welcome Sid!
In response to #16:
Anyone who has done chemical lab courses can probably confirm that some chemical reactions are difficult to reproduce, which may make passing a lab course in time difficult. Chemistry students make jokes about this, e.g., there is a reaction called Mannich reaction, named after Carl Mannich. Instead, you can interpret the name of the reaction as in the verbal German phrase "ma' nich'" (in written German "mal nicht" for "once not"), so it is the reaction which sometimes works and sometimes not.
Joking aside, the reason for such difficulties is usually that the reaction is very sensitive to the experimental conditions. It is conceivable that this sensitivity is associated with amplification from an atomic level subjected to quantum indeterminacy to the macroscopic level in some cases, especially if we have a microscopic cell structure with complex connections and interplay between chemical reactions and charge transport at every connection.
Now, let us take a simplistic model of the brain with domains for sensory input, memory, internal drives and a domain for random generation sensitive to quantum indeterminacy, all connected to a domain for reasoning, which in turn is connected to a domain for decision-making and a domain which controls actions. Especially the domains for memory and internal drives distinguishes an individual person from others.
If the sensory inputs indicate a problem, the domain for reasoning tries to find a solution. The domain for memory may provide something which worked in the past, but the case may appear too different to mechanistically repeat a past action. The domain for random generation produces a series of random patterns, whereby almost all of them are useless nonsense but a few might represent solutions. The domain for reasoning discards the nonsense and picks a workable solution, possibly one which is based on experience modified by an idea from the domain for random generation.
There is no proof that this model is adequate for decision-making of the human brain or that there are amplification mechanisms in the brain to get from quantum indeterminacy to a different output of a domain. However, the model does provide a conceivable explanation how quantum indeterminacy (i.e. the swerve) can lead to free will / agency of the individual in a world which is mostly deterministic at the macroscopic level.
Free will has the connotation of a supernatural soul. In materialism without hard determinism, "agency" is the preferred term to replace the term "free will" to get rid of that supernatural connotation. This leaves enough room for anything from the little "free will" of Onfray to a lot of "free will" and is flexible enough to not be refuted by future research results on how far agency actually goes unless those results prove hard determinism. A proof of hard determinism in the real world as perceived by us appears to be not conceivable as of now.
Complementarily to the recommendations for coping with misery by enjoying the small pleasures, we can try to get out of misery. A major tool to reconcile sustained maximal pleasure as the goal with the actually available options is hedonic calculus. (Growing up as a weak and small guy in a working-class suburb with a construction worker who was an alcoholic as the father, I started off at the very opposite of the "opulent quarters" of the city, and so did Steve Jobs. I figured out hedonic calculus by myself and that helped me to get out of the misery.)
A slave in ancient Greece or in the United States in 19th century might have considered the following options:
1. Working hard to fulfill the master's orders to avoid the pain of corporal punishment and to eventually get freed as a reward.
2. Trying to escape to where conditions are better. (E.g. being a slave in Athens might have been better than to be a slave in Sparta; survival in hiding in a faraway wilderness might have been better than slavery under a cruel master, escaping to freedom in the North and possibly fighting as a Union soldier might have been worth the risk.)
3. Staying a slave because material security was assured under reasonably good circumstances. (E.g. after the rise of Rome and the end of Greek democracy, an educated Greek might have chosen to work as a slave to teach children of a wealthy Roman family.)
An employee in 2022 under miserable conditions might consider the following options:
1. Working hard, saving as much as possible and investing wisely to facilitate early retirement or to start a business.
2. Upgrading of education to qualify for promotion to a better position. (I took the opportunity to get as high an education as possible, which provided opportunities for pleasurable jobs. My sister worked for a bank after high school, quit to take care of her daughter, divorced and worked part time for a public institution, studied remotely for a university degree in her forties and then got the expected promotion to a full-time position which required the degree.)
3. Working for a different company or in a different industry.
Hard work is necessary for quite some years to get out of misery, meet demands of a spouse, provide a good education to the children and get a decent life. However, there is no point in working hard until retirement without much pleasure if then all we can still do is tottering around in an old peoples' home.
Welcome Waterholic!
Mill himself makes no claim to originate this but rather refers to unspecified earlier writers and seems to imply that it originates from Epicurus himself:
"But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former — that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone."
(John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapter II, from http://fair-use.org/john-stuart-mill/utilitarianism)
DA: 3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine (dopamine)
"... any such data would peel back the singularity itself, would it not?"
Such data would tentatively indicate that the singularity did not happen.
"Why not just accept the epistemological limitations implied by the singularity?"
Because there is no evidence that the singularity did happen. The extrapolation implying the singularity is invalid.
We can use an analogy from gravity:
The simple theory of a mass m at distance r from a mass M results in the potential energy V = -G * M * m / r with G as gravitational constant. This potential energy has a singularity at r = 0, i.e. when the position of both masses is the same.
The more accurate theory takes into account that the masses are not points but objects with an extension. Once mass m dives below the surface of mass M, the potential energy is V = -a + b * M * m * r * r for a homogeneously distributed mass M and constants a and b and has no singularity.
If we eventually figure out the modified laws of physics for the early universe, then we can extrapolate more accurately and will probably not obtain a singularity, similar to the example with m and M.
Here is my understanding from occasionally reading articles from cosmologists and astrophysicists for other physicists:
The data we have are best described by expansion from something what was at least similar to a Big Bang.
Some of the difficulties are:
Simply extrapolating the observations back leads to a singularity, i.e. energy density and mass density were infinite, from which the universe started in some sort of giant explosion. That is why that singularity was called Big Bang. In this simple extrapolation, time started with that singularity. However, at that time and until a tiny fraction of a second after the singularity, the conditions were such that our known laws of physics were most likely not valid. So a Big Bang in the strict sense of that singularity might indeed not have happened because the extrapolation to the singularity itself is invalid. That opens ways to speculate about a time before the point in time of the nominal singularity. However, we have no data to support these speculations.
Photons could not escape from the very dense matter of the early universe. No matter how good our optical telescopes become, that most interesting early universe will remain optically invisible. We may have a better chance to get closer with other methods, e.g. gravity waves.
Alan can probably explain this more accurately and in more detail.
There is indeed an analogy between some of the needs and the Epicurean classification of desires.
However, transcendence is not compatible with Epicurean philosophy.
Self actualization is suspicious, too, because it is usually interpreted to become what you are meant to be. However, in Epicurean philosophy, there is no instance which would establish what you are meant to be.
By the way, Maslow himself never rendered his system of needs as a pyramid. The actual importance of a particular need varies with individual circumstances. Therefore, there is no fixed hierarchy.
He added transcendence much later when he apparently got already senile. At latest with the addition of transcendence, his system of needs moved out of science into superstition.
I found no obvious difference in meaning between the French version and the Google translation during a quick read. It seems that the missing accents were no problem for Google.
Osho presented rather a new age hoax instead of an authentic reconstruction of Buddhism.
With new age hoaxes I mean cults which mix genuine quotes of what might be wisdom with trivialities and misleading nonsense masked as deep wisdom. Osho stands out from the new age crowd of pseudo-gurus with his humor and some of his criticisms. If you like satire, reading him for entertainment should be fine but do not waste your time trying to figure out the deep meaning of where he seems difficult to understand. Most likely, there is no such meaning.
We should avoid Osho as a reference for Buddhism because he was too far out at its fringes.
Welcome John!
