Posts by Martin

Happy 20th!

This is my position regarding the linked to articlele, of which the main point is that uncertainty of emergent properties or their relations assure non-determinism even if elementary particles are deterministic :

In the past, theoretical chemistry dealt predominantly with emergent properties and was thereby clearly separated from physics.

More and more of these emergent properties can be completely derived from first principles of physics by ab initio calculations. Thereby, hard determinism in the first principles translates into hard determinism of the derived emergent properties. Stochastics comes into play merely as a side effect of efficient expression of relationships between emergent properties at their higher level. Therefore, hard determinism would survive the stochastics in those relationships.

There appears to be no principal boundary which would make it imposssible to extend this approach to higher level emergent properties. Therefore, it appears feasible to uphold determinism to higher level emergent properties, too, as long as the hard-line determinist makes the bold assumption that there is still hidden physics which upholds determinism.

The Epicurean position correponds to non-deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. Emergent properties and their relationships inherit this non-determinism from the first principles. The scale of the additional stochastic nature of these relationships may hide the atomic swerve but it really comes only on top of that atomic swerve and does not refute determinism without the atomic swerve.

Typically, I access this homepage (and FB) between twice a day and once every 2 days on a laptop and usually not from a smartphone.

I mostly go down straight to the bottom and click on "Unread Posts" but ignore many links because I feel that I spend too much time reading instead of producing something new.

The only inconsistency of the interface is when I open the tab under "Notifications", "Moderation" or "Conversations" because a white on red number indicates how many new items there are, the links under the tabs usually do not lead me to anything which I did not yet read. Nevertheless, those numbers shrink and eventually diappear the more I go through the unread posts.

Aurelius was apparently Marcus' family name and not an attribute given to him. I just read that Marcus Aurelius' father got this attribute and this apparently became then the family name but the reference gave no details.

As mentioned on FB already, "golden" is much more fitting to Plato, in particular because Epicurus used "the golden" as reference to Plato.

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations are rather eclectic than plainly stoic. So, using him as a representative for stoicism/virtue does not fit that well.

Moreover, "golden" does not fit to an emperor who himself lead his army to battles and who died of typhoid on the way back from his last battle.

Elayne : The outline looks fine to me.

I guess that adolescence is no more part of childhood and therefore outside the scope of your book. During our son's adolescence, things got really painful and it was no more obvious what to do. I would have dearly needed guidance on how to deal with strong disagreements between the spouses and between spouse and son during that period. With one spouse strongly influenced by Confucius (i.e the East Asian predecessor and equivalent of Plato) and the other being (at that time implicitly) Epicurean, the conflict between spouses was impossible to hide from the son and certainly caused confusion and had negative effects. I am almost surprised that he has turned out just fine so far, has already earned his bachelor's degree and seems to be on track for a pleasant life.

Godfrey: The sensations etc. are the objects of biological research. The theories and methods of biology correspond to those of physics.

Welcome, Joshua!

Happy Twentieth!

Welcome accord!

Welcome here, too, Mousikos!

Welcome philosofer123!

Welcome here, too, Leonard!

Welcome Samj!

"Den Zehnten (des Einkommens) an die Kirche abliefern" or by meaning just "Den Zehnten bezahlen".

OK, so I withdraw my assumption of a spelling mistake because I just did not know this English word.

You must have been just one second faster than me, Cassius, because I saw your comment only after posting mine.

Thanks for sharing your draft. I mostly agree with the content but recommend rework regading the following items:

"but do not cure others who are healthy" sounds weird because of what should healthy people be cured?

"the (false) boundary that exists between science and philosophy" is not that false outside EP. Recognition of this boundary allowed the Vatican to withdraw from meddling with science and from excommunicating or killing scientists and allowed science to proceed without refuting religions. Moreover, a number of modern cults deceive people with false claims to have overcome the boundary and to provide a path to understand science from the (of course non-sensical) beliefs of the respective cult. We need to be clear that EP's way to overcome the boundary is to start from science and not from religion but that overcoming the boundary is already beyond science because any suitable definition of truth is different for science and philosophy.

"Just as we see both symbiosis and competition in organic nature, we also see both cooperation and hostility in social relations." This analogy sounds far-fetched to me because what happens in both realms is conceptually very different.

Is "tithe" a spelling mistake?

The "original" was probably that re-assigned Italian site.

That each translation of a fragment by an Italian reseacher seems to be revised by a member of the Wuerzburg center indicates that the cooperation between the teams is fairly close and that the Wuerzburg page is a good mirror site of whatever original might exist on an intranet in Italy.

South Germany is not on my itinerary this year, so it is unlikely that I will get some first-hand info soon. If I find some interesting material from Wuerzburg in German, I will certainly elaborate here or on FB. Moreover, I prefer to acquire more formal knowledge on Epicurus' philosophy before making direct contact with the Wuerzburg center.

Welcome Rivelle!

Welcome Daniel!