Updated FAQ Entry: Why Should I Care About Epicurean Physics When So Much Science Has Changed In The Last 2000 Years?

Reductionism is true for the simple reason that we know of nothing that can't be reduced to atoms. Literally everything is made of bosons and fermions. I personally favor the reductionist version of Epicureanism. So called emergent phenomena aren't real but that doesn't mean or imply that reality is an illusion in some sort of way.

In this debate I side with Tim O' Keefe. Here's the abstract of his paper.

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Epicurus' "On Nature" 25 is the key text for anti-reductionist interpretations of Epicurus' philosophy of mind. In it, Epicurus is trying to argue against those, like Democritus, who say that everything occurs 'of necessity,' and in the course of this argument, he says many things that appear to conflict with an Identity Theory of Mind and with causal determinism. In this paper, I engage in a close reading of this text in order to show that it does not contain any clear statement of either a doctrine of radically emergent properties and "downwards causation" (contra David Sedley) or of the non-reducibility of the mental to the atomic (contra Julia Annas). I argue that Epicurus' main thesis is that we cannot consistently argue against our conception of ourselves as rational agents, and that it is our reason that allows us to reform our characters, control our actions, and blame and praise one another appropriately. The way that Epicurus describes the development and causal efficacy of reason in "On Nature" book 25 is consistent both with reductionism and (more surprisingly) with causal determinism.

IMO emergence has become popular because it promises a middle way between dualism and physicalism. You can have your cake of not believing in the supernatural and eat it with the pleasure of knowing that, while the cake is made of atoms, it is somehow more than those atoms.

Stephen Hawking said in an interview that the human race is just a chemical scum. Well, emergence allows us to accept we are a chemical scum while rejoicing in being more than just a chemical scum. This appeal is part of the reason for the remarkable spread of the term. It can be found everywhere, from fundamental physics to chemistry and biology, to sociology and economics.

However appealing, it is an illusion. To be real means to have causal power. If everything is physics, only the atomic entities of fundamental physics have causal power. Other things are therefore unreal, illusions. So there are no objects. No creatures, colours or concepts. Instead, there are distinct arrangements of quantum fields.

Our sensory limitations mean we can’t see quantum fields. Our cognitive limitations mean we can’t intuitively understand them. Yet despite these limitations we perceive a world full of structure and meaning. From a physicalist perspective, this leads to many fascinating whys. Why do we perceive creatures, colours and concepts? Answering such whys doesn't require us to accept emergence and it doesn't require us to revise Epicureanism.

Yes, accepting materialism and atomism entails abandoning both the weak and the strong variations of emergence.

As I see it, Epicurean physics is based on the rejection of Democritean compatibilism. Democritus thought free will is compatible with atomic determinism, Epicurus argued rightly that the two are not compatible, so he was what we call an anti-compatibilist.

When it comes to humans the acquisition of pleasure and the avoidance of pain are the only true determinant forces of human behavior and all other motivations are illusory. This is determinism. But Epicurus rejected fatalism because he saw human behavior as reformable to a substantial degree. The reform process involves re-orienting humans from fear to pleasure though intensive therapy and the study of physics is part of it.

Epicurus' concern with necessity was not about preserving a modern notion of "contra-causal free will," but about preserving the practical efficacy of deliberation, education, therapy, and self-cultivation. In that reading, the real target is not determinism but fatalism — the idea that human effort cannot make a difference.

There's a lot of philosophical jargon flying through this thread, and I'll freely admit some of it is going over my head. For y'all's consideration:

Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Causal Determinism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Determinism versus Determinism | Issue 141 | Philosophy Now

Quote from Peter Konstans

Epicurus argued rightly that the two are not compatible, so he was what we call an anti-compatibilist.

But that last link states (emphasis added)...

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Morally speaking, determinists are mainly divided into two camps, namely compatibilists and incompatibilists. The incompatibilists argue that determinism completely negates the possibility of agent causation, and therefore moral responsibility. On the other hand, compatibilists claim that moral responsibility is still applicable under determinism. They are both contrasted to libertarians, who defend moral responsibility through believing in free will, dismissing determinism.

Epicurus clearly thought we could be held accountable for our choices, so if you're saying Epicurus was a determinist (which I'm not sure is correct - he states the exact opposite of that in Menoikeus) he would have to be a compatibilist according to that article.

Quote from Peter Konstans

When it comes to humans the acquisition of pleasure and the avoidance of pain are the only true determinant forces of human behavior and all other motivations are illusory. This is determinism.

I didn't understand determinism in that way. I understood determinism to mean "roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature." Epicurus writes:

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even though some things happen by necessity, some by chance, and some by our own power, for although necessity is beyond our control, they see that chance is unstable and there is no other master beyond themselves, so that praise and its opposite are inseparably connected to themselves. [134] Because of this, it is better to follow the stories of the gods than to be enslaved by the deterministic decrees of the old natural philosophers, because necessity is not moved by prayer; and such a one accepts that Fortune is not a god, as the hoi polloi understand (for a god does nothing in a disorderly or haphazardly manner); And it is not the uncertain cause of everything, for one cannot think it can grant good or evil for a person’s blessed life; however, it does furnish for oneself the starting point of great goods and great evils, [135] believing that it is better to be unfortunate rationally than fortunate irrationally because it is better to have been deciding the noble way in accomplishing one's actions and to have been foiled than having decided the bad way and to succeed by means of chance.

Just because our ultimate motivation is either pursuing pleasure or rejecting pain, that doesn't to me mean our choices are deterministic. Unless I'm misunderstanding the use of that term.

The notion of moral responsibility is not the same as the notion that human behavior is (to some degree) reformable. Moral responsibility implies that humans are rational agents endowed with free will. If one accepts physicalism, that is just false, an illusion that stems from folk psychology.

Humans act the way they act for two inexorable reasons and for no other reasons. One reason is a rational attempt to adapt to environmental pressures in a way that increases their biological fitness. For example, a guy in some ghetto becoming a two-bit criminal to make some decent money, or the two women we encounter in Procopius' Wars who were going around slaughtering people for meat to survive the famine caused by Justinian's war in Italy.

The other reason is simply the unique configuration of someone's brain chemistry. If you were born with such anomalies in your brain chemistry that conduce you to derive pleasure from the suffering of others, then your moral behavior can't and won't change unless some suitable pharmacological substance steps in to interfere with the chemistry.

So common sense can kick and scream as much as it likes but humans are not responsible for their behavior, whatever the heck that behavior is. They do what they do because from their point of view they have perfectly compelling neurobiological (and biology is just physics) reasons to do precisely what they do.

No philosophy, no advice, no magic formula made up of a string of words can bring down the iron walls of the environment and the brain. Someone's environment is what it is and someone's brain is what it is. This fixes human behavior in full.

Now, the absence of moral agency doesn't mean humans can't influence other humans. This is trivially easy to do by means of manipulating the circuits of human neurobiology that govern pleasure and pain. This technique is morally neutral and people use it as they please both to benefit others and to do harm.

For example, all sorts of scammers and swindlers use it to extract some leverage by taking advantage of the many vulnerabilities caused by people's primeval need to seek pleasure and comfort and to avoid danger and pain. And once they have the leverage, they use it against them.

Epicurean philosophy is just another means to influence people's neurobiology in a manner that benefits people to the maximum extent that the environment and the unique brains of the recipients allow it. This has nothing to do with moral agency, moral responsibility, free will, the social contract or other such intellectual fables.

And there's no such thing as wisdom by the way. There's just knowledge of how the physics of something works and then there's a set of illusions about how it works. So wisdom is indistinguishable from knowledge which is why it's impossible to maximize the chances of a decent life without being illusion-free. And here's where physics kicks in.

In fact, if Epicurus lived today he would probably advise us that we shouldn't read any literature that isn't strictly science-based. Works of fiction and storytelling are good at entertaining us but they're also good at misleading us about the nature of reality and ruining our life. It's no accident that people who consume lots of romantic novels suck at actual relationships.