Posts by Martin

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If the same thought pattern shows up with only minor variation among the vast majority of members of a population, that should qualify as a universal.

The quotes from Mortimer Adler seem to be consistent with Epicurus' philosophy. In particular, he makes clear that the universals are (although commonly found among humans) not absolute:

"To say that the objects of conceptual thought are always universals is not to assert that these universals exist as such in reality, independent of the human mind that apprehends them."

Welcome A_Gardener!

Of course, I cannot tell how accurate his translations are, but I found some of them closer to how I understand Epicurus' philosophy and accept it as my own than any other of the readily available translations.

Welcome here, too, Mike!

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Welcome Egghead!

Welcome Darius!

Nice to hear from you, Oscar!

DeWitt's book "Epicurus & his Philosophy" is the most adequate to Epicurus' philosophy, detailed and comprehensive among the secondary literature I have read so far. Except for the exaggerated connections he makes to Christianism, he is usually convincing.

Welcome JLR!

"Without Muhammad, Muslims would perform Salah to Mecca five times a day."

should be

Without Muhammad, Muslims would not perform Salah to Mecca five times a day."

Happy 20th!

In this case, the frame of reference should be the usage in statistics. Basic statistics is part of the school curriculum in math and should thereby be a part of common understanding. It is not required that everybody still knows how to do the calculations after graduation but the understanding should remain.

Except for "suspiciously out of place", the slang usage listed above is close enough to "random" in science and technology to not cause contradictions or misundestandings when applying Epicurus' / Popper's view on how communication works.

I see no point in a generalization like that. We need to go into specifics when applying these adjectives.

E.g., in the described behaviour of animals, "undirected" is distinct from "random".

In popular publications on non-linear physics for laymen, too, "chaotic" has the meaning of "undirected" as above.

When our pleasure depends on a whimsical king, "subject to fortune" sounds adequate.

I agree that the "key is in the definitions of these words".

Quantum uncertainty / the swerve is random in the sense of how "random" is used across specialized disciplines in science and technology.

I avoid "chaotic" because its usage is more controversial but those who use it do so casually as synonym for "random" or in non-linear physics as synonym for "undirected" as visualized in the excerpt.

For me, "not random, but undirected" is not a good high-level summary of the Epicurean position in physics.