Posts by LAMAR__44

Quote from Cassius

I doubt Epicurus would go much past that without stating that "the universe / the all" must be eternal, because it is inconceivable that there was ever a time in which "the all" did not exist. It certainly appear to us that the we exist, and that it makes no sense to consider that there was ever a time that the all did not exist, so I would rule out of hand any supposition (it would require an infinite number of steps to get here and that's not possible) that conflicts with what all appearances tells us does exist.

Yes, I am going to use the universe to refer to “the all that exists”.

Well I guess I’m going to introduce wordplay that people who believe the Big Bang in the beginning do, so forgive me haha.

But I guess we could say that there was never a time where the universe didn’t exist, because if there is a finite amount of time in the past, the time before the first moment isn’t actually a moment in time. So the time before the universe didn’t exist, so in all moments of time the universe existed.

I feel as this situation is different to Zeno’s paradox. I believe Zeno’s paradox is actually true, in the sense that if you agree with the premise that space is infinitely divisible, then motion is impossible, however, clearly motion is possible, so Zeno’s paradox actually proves by contradiction that space is finitely divisible or discrete (I have some confusions about thinking about the universe as discrete but that’s a topic for another day, but I think it’s much better at explaining reality than a continuous universe). Here’s a good video I recommend everyone watch

Now the reason why I think this situation is different to Zeno’s paradox, is that we solve Zeno’s paradox by saying “well you can’t actually traverse an infinite number of points, so space isn’t infinitely divisible”, but for the infinity of the past, we are saying that there are an infinite number of discrete points (moments) that have been traversed.

We either have to accept that an infinite number of points can be traversed, which sort of undermines Epicurean physics that reality is made of discrete matter and time, or say that the past is a finite number of points, which undermines the eternality of the universe.

However, I am sure I’m thinking of something wrongly here, so don’t take this as an attack on Epicureanism.

Essentially, it argues that the universe could not be eternal, since this would require an infinite past. And we can’t have an infinite past, because this would require an actual infinite set to be constructed through successive addition of finite elements, since the past is just previously present moments added onto each other. And in the same way you can’t count and reach infinity, only keep counting infinitely, you can’t have an infinite past.

Another way to reframe the argument is that for you to reach the present moment, you’d have to first wait for an infinite number of past moments to occur, which is analogous to waiting for an infinite time to pass, or walking an infinite distance and eventually getting to the end.

I struggle to properly conceptualise infinity, but what is the argument against this?

Essentially, from what I know about Epicurean physics, is that time extends infinitely into the past and into the future, as well as space extending infinitely in all directions, and there is infinite matter in this universe.

Now, if the soul is just a combination of atoms, and this combination is a finite combination, that I don’t see why the combination cannot arise given infinite matter, infinite time, and infinite space. It seems very likely that at some point, matter will be arranged somewhere, at some time in the universe, where it’s identical to my brain.

Why then wouldn’t this be me living again? Perhaps it’s that we wouldn’t feel a continuation of existence like we do now, but I don’t see why the combination of matter has to be continued. Like if you disassembled my brain and reassembled it 5 minutes in the future, it should just feel like I instantly travelled 5 minutes in the future, since my soul stopped existing once my brain was disassembled, and then it started exisiting again once it was reassembled, since my soul is just this combination of these atoms, when they exist, my soul should exist, and when they don’t, my soul doesn’t exist.

I’ve heard of emergence before, particularly in debates about how the mind arises from the physical. When describing emergence, are you referring to weak/reductive emergence? Where we can map a phenomenon down to its constituent parts, such as a wave being reducible to the location of each water molecule, or are you referring to strong emergence? Something that can’t just be thought of as the sum of its parts but something greater? Like the mind being created by the brain but being above it in a way where you can’t reduce the mind to each neuron in the brain?

So friendship is defined as pleasure created when two or more beings cooperate, as it benefits all parties in fulfilling their own needs, but it emerges into something greater? Either weak emergence where we still map it onto satisfying personal pleasure, but we gain pleasure from viewing the other person’s needs as our own, or is it strong emergence where as the value of friendship now is above just the value of pleasure?

Hi Cassius, thanks for welcoming me. I wanted to speak about the paradox of hedonism. This isn’t me arguing against hedonism, but just something I’ve had trouble in resolving and would love to get everyone’s viewpoints here.

Essentially, since we know that pleasure is the sole good, and pain is the sole evil, everything else that we should pursue has the characteristic of being instrumental towards pleasure, and everything we avoid has the characteristic of being instrumental towards pain. This helps significantly in judging what is worthy of pursuit and what isn’t. However, it’s hard for me to think of this with relationships. I think it makes sense to evaluate before starting a friendship or romantic relationship whether there will be net pleasure or pain, but doing this inside of relationships seems to make them feel shallow and transactional, at least for me.

So now I’m in a paradox. To be a consistent hedonist, I must say that there is no intrinsic value in my relationships with my loved ones, they only have value in so that they’re instrumental to my pleasure, but in doing this, I lower my experience of pleasure within these relationships. But that would result in less net pleasure then if I decided to disbelieve in hedonism, so to live according to hedonism, I need to disbelieve in hedonism.

But how can I live according to hedonism while disbelieving in it? And how could I believe in hedonism but not live according to it?

Thanks again everyone!