Sunday Zoom - August 17, 2025 - 12:30 PM ET - Topic: "All Sensations Are True"

The topic for this week's zoom (after we finish new business) will be "All Sensations Are True"

The Major Doctrines Of Classical Epicurean Philosophy - Epicureanfriends.com

This page presents a summary of Classical Epicurean Philosophy . For additional citations to Epicurean texts, click here. Nothing From Nothing Nothing Can Be…

www.epicureanfriends.com

Thanks for letting us know Robert. Drive safe.

sorry to have missed you Patrikios -- we spent a lot of time on physics and you would have enjoyed it.

Quote from Bryan

Any "science" that uses math to try to explain away the observable is doing something fundamentally different -- and this path can lead to any conclusion. Even such things as the universe just popping into existence, or that matter is not fundamentally physical.

That is a better way of getting at what I tried to approach in my last question before we ran out of time. There are now, have been for 2000+ years, and will always be people who advocate for a new kind of knowledge that is difficult of impossible for people who are not initiated in the specialty to understand. The rub comes when people use string theory or any other system of thought to argue against the basic ability of humans to have adequate confidence in the fundamental conclusions of their senses and the logical implications of what the senses have established. In our day, most of the advocates of quantum and other experimentation seem to be atheists, so they do not jump to arguing that their experiments prove that there is a "god," as the mathematics of the size of the sun issue was used in the past.

Today the advocates of these theories seem to be content to argue that their experiments prove that there is nothing that we should have confidence in. To my observation, they don't often state an explicit agenda of their own, and they seem satisfied to undermine the confidence of confidence of anyone else (anyone who does not participate in their theories) in anything else. They do this in the name of "science," without stating any more specific agenda for "science" other than that it is they (the scientists) who alone are objective.

Regardless of what quantum mechanics or what any other subatomic experimentation will eventually establish, there is every reason to be confident that what it will establish will be completely in line with a totally natural universe which has not prime mover, no master plan, and no intentional teleology for the way humanity should live other than that which we are given through pleasure and pain.

I am firmly convinced that most subatomic scientists are totally benevolent in their motivations, and if Epicurus were alive today he would be every bit as interested in their research as he was in atomism 2000 years ago. But I am also firmly convinced that there is and always will be a class of people who will attempt to manipulate the discussion, just as they did in Epicurus' time, to take advantage of the disparity in knowledge between "experts" and ordinary people. And I am convinced that the record shows that Epicurus was completely alert to this tendency and instilled deeply into his philosophy an antidote to it.

And that antidote is the understanding that all human sensations are to humans true, and there is no otherworldly or metaphysical standard of truth, no matter whether the person making the claim has a doctorate in theology from the Vatican or a doctorate in particle physics from M.I.T.

For those who understand the importance of the issue, the sun is, has always been, and will always be the size that it appears to be.

Quote from Rolf

While this is likely true in a literal sense, I wouldn’t underestimate the trend of “quantum woo” or “quantum mysticism”. I’ve encountered many people online who use their interpretations of quantum theory to argue absurd claims, such as the idea that there is some kind of higher level of existence we must escape to.

Yes I agree with that. Every time I hear the "weirdness" words i suspect also that that is what is meant, but I also know that many of them also insist that they are not mysticists themselves, so to keep the discussion civil and constructive I'll take them at their word until something otherwise becomes clear. All these issues of determinism and skepticism and mysticism are right beneath the surface, even though it might not be stated explicitly by the advocates. So the best way at the moment I can think of to handle the issue is to go right along that no doubt they have some interesting experiments, but to require them to spell out what implications do they take from those experiments. So long as those implications aren't skepticism or determinism or mysticism, I'm all ears.

Lots of interesting history in that wikipedia link. Just like I wouldn't take medical advise from a professed Christian Scientist, I might well entertain adopting the rule that before I admit any credibility in anyone claiming to be an expert in "quantum weirdness" I would first want to know the writer's personal position on mysticism, determinism, and skepticism. And if he or she wasn't willing to lay their cards on the table on these issues, that would be a major red flag.

Quote

Many early quantum physicists held some interest in traditionally Eastern metaphysics. Physicists Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, two of the main pioneers of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, were interested in Eastern mysticism, but are not known to have directly associated one with the other. In fact, both endorsed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Olav Hammer said that "Schrödinger’s studies of Hindu mysticism never compelled him to pursue the same course as quantum metaphysicists such as David Bohm or Fritjof Capra." Schrödinger biographer Walter J. Moore said that Schrödinger's two interests of quantum physics and Hindu mysticism were "strangely dissociated".^[11]

In his 1961 paper "Remarks on the mind–body question", Eugene Wigner suggested that a conscious observer played a fundamental role in quantum mechanics,^{[12][13]: 93}a concept which is part of the consciousness causes collapse interpretation. While his paper served as inspiration for later mystical works by others,^[12] Wigner's ideas were primarily philosophical and were not considered overtly pseudoscientific like the mysticism that followed.^[14] By the late 1970s, Wigner had shifted his position and rejected the role of consciousness in quantum mechanics.^[15] Harvard historian Juan Miguel Marin suggests that "consciousness [was] introduced hypothetically at the birth of quantum physics, [and] the term 'mystical' was also used by its founders, to argue in favor of and against such an introduction."^[16]

Mysticism was argued against by Albert Einstein. Einstein's theories have often been falsely believed to support mystical interpretations of quantum theory. Einstein said, with regard to quantum mysticism, "No physicist believes that. Otherwise he wouldn't be a physicist."^[16] He debates several arguments about the approval of mysticism, even suggesting Bohr and Pauli to be in support of and to hold a positive belief in mysticism which he believes to be false.

Quote from DaveT

suggest that none of us, (except perhaps Martin ) have any capacity to judge the credibility of those giants of modern physics you refer to above.

I think that Epicurus would reject that attitude even if he were here today. and especially if he were here today to see the effects of some scientists - by no means all - making similar claims.

It wouldn't matter to me if Martin or 100 people with more experience than Martin were to tell me that "modern physics establishes that there is a mystical realm, or modern physics establishes that knowledge is impossible, or modern physics establishes that human life is entirely mechanistic."

Despite my regard for Martin, I would nicely but firmly 100% reject each of those conclusions, and never lose a moments sleep concerned that any new discovery has already or would arise to prove the opposite. I think what we are discussing is very much the situation Epicurus found himself in 2000 years ago, and it will very likely remain the situation 2000 years from now.

I know that there are questions as to how Epicurean we should consider Lucian to have been, but here are two citations from two of his works that have seemed to me to be relevant to this question. To me, they ring of the Epicurean attitude, not one of radical skepticism, in refusing to defer to "weird" claims whether based on mathematics or other claims of advanced knowledge.

The point here is not that there won't always be new discoveries of new facts, but that on the largest issues that concern us we already have plenty of facts to reach firm conclusions. And these areas where we have more than enough evidence include that there is nothing supernatural over us, that we can have confidence in some conclusions, and that we are not so tightly controlled by determinism that we have no freedom of will whatsoever.

These following selections aren't from Epicurus, but I would argue that Lucian was reflecting Epicurus' attitude towards claims of authority that contradict what we can gain from the sensations, anticipations, and feelings:

Quote

Lucian's Hermotimus

Perhaps an illustration will make my meaning clearer: when one of those audacious poets affirms that there was once a three-headed and six-handed man, if you accept that quietly without questioning its possibility, he will proceed to fill in the picture consistently—six eyes and ears, three voices talking at once, three mouths eating, and thirty fingers instead of our poor ten all told; if he has to fight, three of his hands will have a buckler, wicker targe, or shield apiece, while of the other three one swings an axe, another hurls a spear, and the third wields a sword. It is too late to carp at these details, when they come; they are consistent with the beginning; it was about that that the question ought to have been raised whether it was to be accepted and passed as true. Once grant that, and the rest comes flooding in, irresistible, hardly now susceptible of doubt, because it is consistent and accordant with your initial admissions. That is just your case; your love-yearning would not allow you to look into the facts at each entrance, and so you are dragged on by consistency; it never occurs to you that a thing may be self- consistent and yet false; if a man says twice five is seven, and you take his word for it without checking the sum, he will naturally deduce that four times five is fourteen, and so on ad libitum.

This is the way that weird geometry proceeds: it sets before beginners certain strange assumptions, and insists on their granting the existence of inconceivable things, such as points having no parts, lines without breadth, and so on, builds on these rotten foundations a superstructure equally rotten, and pretends to go on to a demonstration which is true, though it starts from premises which are false.

Just so you, when you have granted the principles of any school, believe in the deductions from them, and take their consistency, false as it is, for a guarantee of truth. Then with some of you, hope travels through, and you die before you have seen the truth and detected your deceivers, while the rest, disillusioned too late, will not turn back for shame: what, confess at their years that they have been abused with toys all this time? So they hold on desperately, putting the best face upon it and making all the converts they can, to have the consolation of good company in their deception; they are well aware that to speak out is to sacrifice the respect and superiority and honor they are accustomed to; so they will not do it if it may be helped, knowing the height from which they will fall to the common level. Just a few are found with the courage to say they were deluded, and warn other aspirants. Meeting such a one, call him a good man, a true and an honest; nay, call him philosopher, if you will; to my mind, the name is his or no one’s; the rest either have no knowledge of the truth, though they think they have, or else have knowledge and hide it, shamefaced cowards clinging to reputation.

Quote

Lucian’s Dialog “Icaromenippus, An Aerial Expedition:”

“Menippus. Ah, but keep your laughter till you have heard something of their pretentious mystifications. To begin with, their feet are on the ground; they are no taller than the rest of us ‘men that walk the earth’; they are no sharper-sighted than their neighbors, some of them purblind, indeed, with age or indolence. And yet they say they can distinguish the limits of the sky, they measure the sun’s circumference, take their walks in the supra-lunar regions, and specify the sizes and shapes of the stars as though they had fallen from them. Often one of them could not tell you correctly the number of miles from Megara to Athens, but has no hesitation about the distance in feet from the sun to the moon. How high the atmosphere is, how deep the sea, how far it is round the earth— they have the figures for all that. Moreover, they have only to draw some circles, arrange a few triangles and squares, add certain complicated spheres, and lo, they have the cubic contents of Heaven.

Then, how reasonable and modest of them, dealing with subjects so debatable, to issue their views without a hint of uncertainty; thus it must be and it shall be; contra gentes they will have it so. They will tell you on oath the sun is a molten mass, the moon inhabited, and the stars water-drinkers, moisture being drawn up by the sun’s rope and bucket and equitably distributed among them.”

Quote

Lucian's Alexander the Oracle Monger

And at this point, my dear Celsus, we may, if we will be candid, make some allowance for these Paphlagonians and Pontics; the poor uneducated ‘fat-heads’ might well be taken in when they handled the serpent—a privilege conceded to all who choose—and saw in that dim light its head with the mouth that opened and shut. It was an occasion for a Democritus, nay, for an Epicurus or a Metrodorus, perhaps, a man whose intelligence was steeled against such assaults by skepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility.