Recent Updates From Across EpicureanFriends.com
We are now requiring that new registrants confirm their request for an account by email. Once you complete the "Sign Up" process to set up your user name and password, please send an email to the New Accounts Administator to obtain new account approval.
Regularly Checking In On A Small Screen Device? Bookmark THIS page!
Recent Activities
-
Kalosyni
November 30, 2025 at 7:53 PM Replied to the thread Improving Website Navigation and User Interface.PostThis page now has hyper-links (may still add or change links)...
Dashboard
(This is currently under "Latest" in the dropdown menu). -
Cassius
November 30, 2025 at 6:31 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.PostPD26. Of desires, all that do not lead to a sense of pain, if they are not satisfied, are not necessary, but involve a craving which is easily dispelled when the object is hard to procure, or they seem likely to produce harm.
Joshua is right to point to… -
Joshua
November 30, 2025 at 4:39 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.Post[…]
I'm not sure, but perhaps not? I might consider friendship to be a necessary desire, and loneliness to be the contrary pain, for example. In fact, now that I look at it I notice that the two Principal Doctrines on friendship are sandwiched between… -
Kalosyni
November 30, 2025 at 3:49 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.Post[…]
A thought experiment that can help clarify things is asking yourself:
For any given choice, ask: Will what I do and the outcome matter to me next week, in one month, in a year, or 10 years from now?
What you choose to eat for breakfast hardly matters… -
Cassius
November 30, 2025 at 3:41 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.Post[…]
.... because only YOU can measure the pain or pleasure that results from any action.
It is exactly wrong to do what the Benthamites tried to do and reduce the calculation purely to mathemetics.
However, so long as you realize that the mathematics is… -
Kalosyni
November 30, 2025 at 3:37 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.Post[…]
Joshua would you want to add the word "bodily"?
So it would be:
The test of whether a desire is necessary is in determining whether a feeling of bodily pain results if that desire is not satisfied. If bodily pain results, the desire is necessary. If … -
Joshua
November 30, 2025 at 12:35 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.PostHere is a sample of the relevant texts:
[…]
And here is how I would synthesize all of this information;
The test of whether a desire is necessary is in determining whether a feeling of pain results if that desire is not satisfied. If pain results, the… -
Joshua
November 30, 2025 at 11:24 AM Replied to the thread Episode 310 - Not Yet Recorded - The Internal Logic of Virtue-Based Happiness.Post -
Patrikios
November 30, 2025 at 10:52 AM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.Post -
Patrikios
November 30, 2025 at 9:39 AM Replied to the thread Epicurean strategies for dealing with bad habits and urges..Post[…]
Daniel188
Here’s are some examples of writings I have found helpful in dealing with hurtful choices.
Philodemus' On Anger provides the most detailed practical methodology. He acknowledged that anger arises from our nature and should be treated with… -
Kalosyni
November 30, 2025 at 8:43 AM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.Post[…]
I'm just re-reading over this list and each definition, and realizing that things like cream-puffs and rootbeer floats would fall into the first category if they are easy to get, but they would fall into the second category if they were unavailable… -
Kalosyni
November 29, 2025 at 5:36 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.PostHow do I know what desires fall into the various categories of natural and necessary desires, and are there hard and fast rules about how to apply the resulting categorization of a particular desire I am considering?"
- natural and necessary - desire for
-
Godfrey
November 29, 2025 at 3:27 PM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.Post[…]
This is well said and definitely bears repeating. -
Kalosyni
November 29, 2025 at 2:19 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.PostThere is a hubris here in thinking that everything that humans imagine can eventually be technologically created...the hubris is in the idea of going beyond Nature, and the nature of things ("atoms/void").
Regarding the word hubris:
[…] -
Matteng
November 29, 2025 at 11:04 AM Reacted withReaction (Blog Article)
to the blog article “When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed”.“When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed”
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his work The Antichrist, denounces Paul as the inventor of Christianity and an enemy of Rome’s grandeur. But perhaps Nietzsche himself… -
Kalosyni
November 29, 2025 at 10:58 AM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.Post[…]
I think that there is a difference between saying that "death i s nothing to us [me]"...vs..."death means nothing to us [me]".
Maybe I am splitting hairs here...but...
The first one is a simply way of saying that you can't think about or experience… -
DaveT
November 29, 2025 at 10:05 AM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.PostHere's an interesting recent paper out of Germany on three different levels or degrees of consciousness in humans and some animals. The discussion deals with some Epicurean concepts as it posits the physical capabilities of consciousness that humans… -
Kalosyni
November 29, 2025 at 9:31 AM Replied to the thread Happy Birthday General Thread.Post -
Cassius
ThreadNovember 29, 2025 at 6:29 AM Welcome to Episode 310 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the… -
Matteng
November 29, 2025 at 4:50 AM Replied to the thread Latest Thoughts On Natural and Necessary Classification of Desires - Adding A FAQ entry.PostA strict rule based decision making I find difficult, we need always sober reasoning/prudence to judge/feel the consequences and the context to make good choices/avoidances.
But for orientation I see it currently like this table:
Epicurean Necessary… -
Cassius
November 29, 2025 at 4:05 AM Replied to the thread Happy Birthday General Thread.PostHappy Birthday to Tgonzalez3790! Learn more about Tgonzalez3790 and say happy birthday on Tgonzalez3790's timeline: Tgonzalez3790 -
Cassius
November 28, 2025 at 9:01 PM Replied to the thread Improving Website Navigation and User Interface.PostThank you Kalosyni and thanks to others such as Raphael Raul who have suggested navigation revisions.
There's always going to be a tradeoff due to vastly different screen sizes. We're currently a little more heavily weighted towards larger screens… -
Cassius
November 28, 2025 at 8:34 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.PostThis seems like a very close issue as raised in Lucretius Book 3 when he points out that even if our atoms were rearranged later due to the effects of infinite time and space, that would still not be "us" because of the absence of continuous memory.
… -
Don
November 28, 2025 at 8:01 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.Post[…]
Oh, I fully agree that consciousness is "nothing more" than biology, chemistry, and physics. But the question remains: If some kind of mechanism could "read" a biological, chemical, and physical signature at a given moment in time and "upload" that… -
Lowri834
November 28, 2025 at 6:27 PM Reacted withReaction (Blog Article)
to the blog article “When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed”.“When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed”
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his work The Antichrist, denounces Paul as the inventor of Christianity and an enemy of Rome’s grandeur. But perhaps Nietzsche himself… -
Godfrey
November 28, 2025 at 4:39 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.Post[…]
That show was quite amusing! There's also a movie, The Island, which grapples with the subject, though not with a lot of intellectual depth. I only mention it because of the fun fact that the wombs which the clones were grown in were literally… -
EPicuruean
November 28, 2025 at 3:01 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.Post[…]
Count your blessings friend. Not only did we have a big dinner yesterday, we have a birthday today. And I'm out of town with family for the week. All my efforts over the last months were for nothing!
-
Don
November 28, 2025 at 2:59 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.Post[…]
Indeed. Maybe in the far future, lab-grown clones - independent of the usual way of creating humans - will be able to be grown. They would arguably have consciousness, but there's a whole genre of sci-fi where lab-grown humanoids and cyborgs create… -
EPicuruean
November 28, 2025 at 2:55 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.Post[…]
I can see your point. I don't have much to argue about. However, I think you oversimplify the mind-body idea.
Our current understanding of the mind is that it is just brain activity. Something akin to a computer program (or an analog circuit if you're… -
Godfrey
November 28, 2025 at 1:40 PM Replied to the thread What's the consensus on transhumanism/brain uploading?.PostI'm in agreement with Don on this issue as far as I can tell. His post above points out what I have considered the basic problem, which is that the uploading idea, as far as I know, is typically presented as "a brain in a box", which is to me…
Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com
What's the best strategy for finding things on EpicureanFriends.com? Here's a suggested search strategy:
- First, familiarize yourself with the list of forums. The best way to find threads related to a particular topic is to look in the relevant forum. Over the years most people have tried to start threads according to forum topic, and we regularly move threads from our "general discussion" area over to forums with more descriptive titles.
- Use the "Search" facility at the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere." Also check the "Search Assistance" page.
- Use the "Tag" facility, starting with the "Key Tags By Topic" in the right hand navigation pane, or using the "Search By Tag" page, or the "Tag Overview" page which contains a list of all tags alphabetically. We curate the available tags to keep them to a manageable number that is descriptive of frequently-searched topics.