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I also have one more follow-up question: how does believing that everything you do is predetermined enhance a person's happiness?
I am perfectly willing to think that for some people it might, because everyone does have different perspectives and pleasures and pains, and the same idea that some find offensive may be pleasing to others.
But I find it difficult to see how the positions being advocated for determinism would be of general usefulness even from a determinist point of view.
Kalosyni I have not read Harris's book. On my list but not yet.
Hey Don - You started this latest iteration of the Determinism saga and then you never weighed in yourself!!! 
Very in-depth post Onenski!
So why do you not consider your position to be hard determinism? (I see you called it "hard incompatibilism.")
A quick comment before i turn in for the night is that it seems to me that Epicurus thought that "reality' is what we perceive (or experience might be better word). And as I think has already been mentioned by several people in several ways, we perceive that we have the ability to make choices.
Even dreams are real from that perspective - anything that affects us is real; anything that does not affect us is unreal to us.
While I appreciate that it makes sense to look for physical explanations to back up that position (that we have the ability to make choices), in the end it seems to me the force of Epicurus' position comes from the opposite approach from that which draws some people to determinism.
Rather than looking for reasons not to praise or blame, it seems to me that if I think that my life is short I want to make the very most of it that I can. From that perspective, my first and really only concern is that which affects me in some way. What other people do can definitely affect me, and it really doesn't make any difference *why* they do what they do - if it pleases me I should react appropriately; if it displeases me I should act appropriately. Of course the meaning of "appropriately" is going to be entirely contextual, but I would not consider it helpful to my own or to other people's lives to consider myself or them to be unable to make choices.
Because of the confusions among various understandings of “free will” (which Dennett addresses) I prefer the term “constrained choice” or “constrained agency” – that is, although facing causal/situational constraints (including endogenous ones, such as native intelligence or ability), nevertheless we have positive agency. That seems to be a version of “compatibilism.”
I can understand that the corruptions of religious thinking have caused this area of discussion to require lots of hedging.
However from my admittedly "man on the street" Epicurean perspective, I get a strong feeling that the advocates of the position that Epicurus was embracing have gone far too much on the defensive. The pendulum of the discussion on this has swung far too much in the direction of accommodating the hard determinists, with the result that they monopolize the discussion and the common-sense support that ordinary people need is lacking.
It seems to me that Epicurus was "in-your-face" on this issue (as he was on others), and that he was trying to drive the point home with his "it would be better to believe in the myths of the religions" than to follow the path of the hard determinists. When it is better to believe a lie than to believe an error, the error must be pretty damaging!
I am glad that Don brought this up because it is a reminder that the determinists have held the initiative on this subject for far too long. Dennett seems to be the main one fighting this issues, and it deserves books from more people with a non-religious but Epicurean "in your face" strong reaction to it.
andkankan -- Please respond to your Welcome message and tell us a little more about yourself.
epicureanfriends.com/thread/3720/....Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works—the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody’s “fault”; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession.
Yet, as he acknowledges, it’s very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.
I underlined two statements for comment:
(1) As I understand it Epicurus would certainly not assert that there is "some separate self telling our biology what to do." Epicurus is much more like "we are the sum of our biology and that sum has the ability to make choices affecting its life."
(2) "Making for a much more humane world" always seems to be at the bottom of attacks on free will, with the goal of nothing being anyone's "fault." In other words, this debate is usually driven by ethical issues rather than simply wanting to know more about "natural science." Where there is no "fault" and no "credit" there can be no praise and blame, which are essential to an Epicurean understanding of the workings of people in society. As Fernando brought up in our discussion last night, there is always the question of the fact that different people have different feelings of pleasure, and it is essential to think about how to reconcile what we think are the requirements of our feelings vs those of others.
Does the Epicurean want to fly to the stars for the pleasure of doing so, or does the Epicurean prefer to stay home where he is safe? Does the Epicurean who wants to fly to the stars stay home so that he can devote his resources to feeding and clothing people on the other side of the world who he's never met?
My view is that the answer to those questions from an Epicurean viewpoint has to start with the premise that there is no supernatural god, and there is no Platonic ideal, that gives every person the same answer to such questions. Not only is there no right and wrong course that every Epicurean / wise person should follow in every situation, the real heart of the matter is seeing why it is wrong to even consider the possibility that there might be inflexible and absolute ethical commandments for all persons, all times, and all places.
As also was stated yesterday, Epicurean philosophy doesn't consist of or lead to a set of "Ten Commandments." The way the Principal Doctrines are written is much different than those alleged tablets from Mount Sinai. Epicurus tells us what "is" about pleasure and pain, and then we have to go about applying it to our own circumstances.
And liking certain things (and "praising" them) and disliking other things (and "blaming" them) is what pleasure and pain are all about.
i hope you will have some new artwork or music this year Michele?
I am very hopeful that Michele will eventually raise an army along the model of Reinzi and take back some of the Epicurean homeland, but I am afraid that may take a while! 
Unfortunately in the past we've been totally unsuccessful in getting English transcripts of the Greek material. Hopefully that will change one day and it is worth asking, but if the past is any indication there is not much hope of it. In fairness it's a pretty large undertaking, and I gather the presenters are totally focused on their own local audience, which is natural.
michelepinto has sent me this from his newsletter. I am afraid the Google Translate is poor but enough to give us a sense of this year's festival:
I am writing to you just a few minutes before it ends on February 20 to inform you that this year the Epicurean Festival will be held on July 16 and 17, as always in Senigallia.
There is still no officiality and nothing is definitive, but I can anticipate many things already. We will be hosted again at the Rotonda a Mare.
The title will be "Seeing the invisible" and the protagonists will obviously be the Papyri of Herculaneum. The day of Wednesday 17 July will be dedicated to them.
July 16, on the other hand, will be a less academic day and more dedicated to militant epicureanism.
I take this opportunity to summarize the latest articles on the site.
February was a month full of epicurean events. An important 7 was held event academic in Venice. In Pallini in Greece it has just ended on 14th Pan-Hellenic Epicurean Symposium.
You can find a slight reflection on the Jungle Book here.
The most interesting thing, which newspapers around the world have talked about, is undoubtedly the Vesuvius Challenge.
Here the interview with the papyrologist Ginaluca del Mastro :
https://epicuro.org/il-tesoro-dei-papiri-di-ercolano-sta-per-essere-revealed /.
Before the greetings I wanted to tell you that the number of recipients of this email has grown and exceeded 400 readers. I thank you one by one for your patience and I wait for you all in Senigallia.
With epicurean friendship ,
Michele
Happy Twentieth To All!
Great post and thank you for the link to Anchorites! Never seen that before, and that's very helpful as an illustration of how supremely stupid people can be.
I think we also have to take into respect, that this is not only a theoretical discussion of ideas, but of experiences that are fundamental to our being. The idea of fulfilling natural and necessary needs while sitting in a cave by drinking water and eating bread is a state of idealized sanctification. While it focuses on the relatively low hardware requirements concerning human material needs, it ignores all the other variables to our lives in our ever-changing material conditions.
I totally agree.
However I will comment further because it's hard for me to think of describing "sitting in a cave drinking water and eating bread" as a state of "idealized sanctification."
While there are definitely times and places in world history where sitting in a cave and subsisting on bread and water would be exactly the right course of conduct, doing as some do and setting up such states of existence as not only desirable, but the highest life desirable for a human being, would be better described in my view as "supremely stupid."
And yet there are religions and philosophies that (at least allegorically) do exactly that.
I am not sure "Proof" is the right word but I'd like to read that article too!
Yes I think that's a very big problem. I don't see any reason to suspect that Philodemus himself intended to deviate from Epicurus in major ways, so when something that is attributed to Philodemus would appear to deviate significantly from Epicurus, I personally disregard it. However we have to keep in mind that we may not fully understand what Epicurus himself was saying, so statements that can be reconciled probably should be reconciled rather than just set aside.
Kalosyni the question of whether we should regard happiness as something that "comes and goes" is pretty much what we are grappling with.
[122] They hold that faults are not all of equal gravity, that health is a blessing to some, but indifferent to others, that courage does not come by nature, but by a calculation of advantage. That friendship too has practical needs as its motive: one must indeed lay its foundations (for we sow the ground too for the sake of crops), but it is formed and maintained by means of community of life among those who have reached the fullness of pleasure. They say also that there are two ideas of happiness, complete happiness, such as belongs to a god, which admits of no increase, and the happiness which is concerned with the addition and subtraction of pleasures.
One would think that if happiness can come and go, then being under torture would be one of the times when happiness "goes," but if Epicurus indeed said that even under torture the wise man can consider himself to be happy, then it looks like Epicurus may not have viewed happiness as something that the wise will see "go."
[118] And even if the wise man be put on the rack, he is happy.
We're going to be discussing these issues further as we proceed in Book 2.
It may be that one's mix of stimulative pleasures and pains changes constantly, but if you are wisely philosophical about life then you are constantly appreciating that you are alive and that certain parts of your mind and body are functioning well even while others are not, and you consider yourself happy no matter how bad the temporary painful stilmulations are because, all things considered, you focus on the many types of pleasures available to you while you are alive, and you realize that stimulative pains are short if intense and manageable if long.
Thanks Joshua. In addition to the reason you posted it, this excerpt brings to my attention that the "leaky vessel" analogy appears not only at the opening of book six but here as well, for a total of at least two appearances.
Considering this from Diogenes of Oinoanda in the same context, when he says "But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end," It seems legitimate to ask whether "happiness" is really that much different from a "virtue" such as "wisdom" and whether it constitutes anything more than an ongoing assessment of your personal mix of pleasures and pains, in which the mix of pleasure is always subject to increase of decrease but which should never go less than 50% (in the sense that the wise man always has more reason for joy than vexation, according to Torquatus). And if so the complete pleasure of the gods hardly seems different than human pleasure in anything more than that for the gods they have the confident expectation that a 100% life of pleasure will continue without end, while ours comes to an end with death.
Fr. 32
... [the latter] being as malicious as the former.
I shall discuss folly shortly, the virtues and pleasure now.
If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «the virtues» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end.
Let us therefore now state that this is true, making it our starting-point.
Suppose, then, someone were to ask someone, though it is a naive question, «who is it whom these virtues benefit?», obviously the answer will be «man.» The virtues certainly do not make provision for these birds flying past, enabling them to fly well, or for each of the other animals: they do not desert the nature with which they live and by which they have been engendered; rather it is for the sake of this nature that the virtues do everything and exist.
It seems to me that for the most "global" answer to questions like "Are Epicureans always happy?" or "Is it possible for some Epicureans to be always happy?" we are going to have to parse this from DIogenes Laertius:
They say also that there are two ideas of happiness, complete happiness, such as belongs to a god, which admits of no increase, and the happiness which is concerned with the addition and subtraction of pleasures.
And we're going to need to take a position "living as a god among men" and perhaps similar references mean that "complete happiness, such as belongs to a god" is something that is possible to a human being, or whether that kind of happiness only to a true Epicurean god in the intermundia.
Plus the term "complete happiness" may not necessarily tell us how long that happiness lasts (?)
That's a question where i am very interested in any comments anyone has to offer.
