Posts by Cassius

Dave that's a great question and I'm not the best to answer it, but there's a lot written about this period in Cicero's life, when he was essentially in forced political retirement (due to opposing Julius Caesar) and in bad personal circumstances (his daughter dying in childbirth). He explains a lot of this himself in his various works as his motivation for wanting to engage in something to help get his mind off his problems, and I've seen it observed that this seems to make sense in that while he was certainly interested in philosophy previously, he hadn't written extensively before that period.

So, who was Cicero trying to convert to his Platonic belief that eternal virtues are the highest good? Was he succeeding in his goal? And is that the reason he kept at it, sensing that he was winning the game?

Remember that the form of Platonism Cicero saw himself a part of was arguably more skeptical than Plato's own form, so he may have seen himself not as arguing exactly what the highest good "is" as much as he was opposing the Epicurean (and Stoic) confidence that they themselves held the correct position. But yes he clearly sided more with the Stoics that virtue is the highest good. As for me I am not sure that he thought he was succeeding. He seems to have been very negative about the situation "Oh the times! Oh the morals!"  and he'd already seen many of his friends dead in the loss of Pompeii and the battle of Pharsalia. I'd say at this point he was trying to (1) console himself that he was right despite the bad turn of events, and (2) rally whoever among the Senatorial class was still around to listen to him.

And I'd say his effectiveness is the reason that his works were preserved by the Judeo-Christians, who saw in them justification for their political suppression of dissent.

Quote from DaveT

One foundation of good writing that I learned over time is that as a writer, you must know your audience. You shape your premise and your theme based on the audience who will read the work.

As Dewitt wrote, Cicero could not have misrepresented Epicurus so well if he had not understood Epicurus so thoroughly.

In my view, Cicero -- correctly -- identified that to describe "absence of pain" as pleasure is totally unsatisfactory and will never be acceptable to ordinary people who are not aware of the philosophical explanation that the person in "absence of pain" is not engaged in inactive nothingness, but is actually engaging in normal and pleasurable mental and physical activities unaccompanied by any pains.

I would equate this difficulty to the "the sun is the size it appears to be." That phrase appears laughably ridiculous unless attended with the explanation that the point is not to assert a particular size, but to assert that the size is in fact determined by the senses, rather than by abstract calculations which have not been grounded in reality.

To any audience of normally educated people, all you have to do is strip "absence of pain" of its explanation, and Epicurean philosophy becomes ridiculous. Cicero and Plutarch and Seneca and others did exactly that. They gave the Epicurean slogans detached from the Epicurean explanations in physics and canonics, and thereby they wrote the narrative that has prevailed ever since. And the worst part is that many of today's friends of Epicurus continue to do exactly the same thing, burying the philosophy deeper rather than doing anything to recover the explanation.

It is deadly to Epicurean philosophy to interpret "absence of pain" as inactivity.

The latest podcast is now posted:

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RE: Episode 298 - TD26 - Facts And Feelings In Epicurean Philosophy - Part 1"

Episode 298 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today our episode is entitled: "Facts and Feelings In Epicurean Philosophy - Part 1"

[media]https://www.spreaker.com/episode/67739526/media

Cassius

September 12, 2025 at 4:53 PM

Episode 298 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today our episode is entitled: "Facts and Feelings In Epicurean Philosophy - Part 1"

Next week we will incorporate this statement from Diogenes Laertius 32 as to the relationship between the feelings of pleasure and pain and Epicurus' view of what is true and real:

EpicureanFriends Side-By-Side Diogenes Laertius Ten

32

Moreover, they are out of the reach of any control; for one sensation cannot judge of another which resembles itself; for they have all an equal value. Nor can one judge of another which is different from itself; since their objects are not identical. In a word, one sensation cannot control another, since the effects of all of them influence us equally. Again, the reason cannot pronounce on the senses; for we have already said that all reasoning has the senses for its foundation. Reality and the evidence of sensation establish the certainty of the senses; for the impressions of sight and hearing are just as real, just as evident, as pain.

In last night's zoom it became clear to me that it would be good to have an additional timeline beyond what we have now (TIMELINES: Joshua's Timeline of Epicureanism From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity and Nate's Timeline of Ancient Epicurean History)

I focus on this because of the recent reading I've been doing that indicates how the development of skepticism was in the process of blowing up the Academy and how there were many reactions to it - with Stoics and Epicureans to some degree in alignment in response to this negative development. And there are key names in this war over skepticism that are not familiar parts of our discussions at all, including Arcesilaus, Carneades, Panaetus and others cited by Cicero as important, etc.

What's missing it seems to me is a parallel presentation of (1) the leaders of the Academy, Lyceum, and Stoa over the next hundred or so years from Epicurus' time up to the Roman period, and (2) the political leaders of Athens and Rome over the same period. We know that Epicurus was corresponding with the court of Lysemachus during his own time, and the other leaders thereafter would have also had significant impact on what was going on within the schools.

At the moment I'm just putting this out there for us to consider as we go forward, but I think we'd get important context from such a chart showing both the political context AND the leaders of the major schools, probably starting at the time of Plato and going up all the way through Julius Caesar.

All these names and dates can get overwhelming, but rather then try to incorporate everyone from the dawn of history to the present, we'd get a lot out of focusing on the period from Plato to Cicero to see how the Epicurean debates were affected by current leaders and events.

This passage came up in discussion last night and I want to ask a question about it:

Quote from Fragment 32 - MFS Translation

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.

Each (virtue?) therefore ............... means of (?) ... just as if a mother for whatever reasons sees that the possessing nature has been summoned there, it then being necessary to allow the court to asked what each (virtue?) is doing and for whom .................................... [We must show] both which of the desires are natural and which are not; and in general all things that [are included] in the [former category are easily attained] .....

Fr. 32 lower margin (Epic. Sent. 6,

[For the purpose of gaining security from men government and kingship are a natural good, so long as] this end can be procured [from them].

No pleasure is intrinsically bad; but the] means for achieving some pleasures [involve disturbances] that are far, [outweigh the pleasures.]

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A question has been raised about the meaning of the underline section. I've always thought this was worded in a difficult way, and it is not entirely clear whether the point is to state that virtue exists only in humans, or that every animal has its own set of virtues that do not desert that animal or act other than for the benefit of that animal (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)

My interpretation is that the Epicurean position is that "virtue" is a generic term that applies to the "strengths" or "excellences" or the particular activities of a thing that keep it alive and allow it to flourish. As such, not only humans but also any other animal can be thought of as having its own virtues. I see that as a subset of the larger point that virtues do not exist in the air or as ends in themselves or as created by gods, but are simply a word we use to describe the methods and tools by which a thing thrives.

But that's not the only way to read this, and it really doesn't flow as I would expect it to from the paragraphs before it -- especially the question about asking what or who the virtues benefit, which is apparently being held up as an obviously stupid question to ask. Why is it obviously stupid? Because there is no god or other purpose for pursuing virtue? I can see an Epicurean saying that, very definitely, but I am not sure i would have called it a naive question given the way most of the world thinks.

Any thoughts on the best translation of this? Could MFS have translated it differently?

Dave:

Definitely in the end for each of us what matters is knowing the right answer. But there's a lot of trash to cut through for most of us before getting to that, and to a significant extent - going all the way back to Lucretius and go Epicurus himself, the task of gaining new like-minded friends means "creating" them by lifting the trash away that accumulates around all of us.

I was relistening to our Emily Austin interview yesterday and she made the point: there is no better way to understand something than to teach it.

And teaching it requires us to cut through the fog that surrounded it in common culture.

Referenced from Sedley - Epicurean Theories of Knowledge from Hermarchus to Lucretius And Philodemus - regarding Cicero's Lucullus 80)

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A further attempted innovation likely to have been motivated by the challenge of Academic scepticism is attributable to the Rhodian Epicurean Timasagoras. We have already encountered one of his two recorded innovations to the school’s doctrine of vision. The other, noted by Cicero (Lucullus, 80) in his defence of the New Academy’s scepticism, concerns the case of seeing double. To judge from the Ciceronian context, the debate ran more or less as follows.

1) Epicurus insists on the truth of all sense-perceptions. If a single case of a false sense-perception were found, trust in the senses would collapse. But in fact the eye simply registers with unfailing accuracy the visual data reaching it. In all alleged cases of optical illusion the errorlies in the mind’s misinterpretation or over-interpretation of those visual data.

2) Critics from the New Academy respond with the counterexample of an eye squeezed out of shape and as a result falsely seeing the single flame in a lamp as two flames. Here what appear to the eye are the visual data, but not in the form in which they first reached it.How can the Epicureans say that the appearance is ‘true’, when it is not even true to those visual data?

3) Timasagoras replies on behalf of the Epicureans that never, when he has squeezed his eye while looking at a lamp, have there appeared to him to be twoflames. This supports the Epicurean thesis that falsehood is always located in the added opinion, not in the eyes themselves.

In stage (3), does Timasagoras mean (a) that in the situation described the bare visual appearance has never even momentarily lookedto him like two flames? Or (b) that he has never been misled into thinkingthat there actually were two flames? Cicero seems to understand the latter. But on either understanding Timasagoras’ reply would be meant to disqualify the Academic example fromcounting as a genuine optical illusion at all, and thereby to block it from being used as the single counterexample that Epicurus in stage (1) conceded would suffice to destroy his most fundamental epistemological doctrine.

This is very useful for explaining the Epicurean position (in opposition to the Skeptics) that concepts such as "fair" and "foul" and "larger" and "smaller" are no less real than gold or silver, even though (the Skeptics argue) that the former are unreal because they are perceived and interpreted differently by everyone, while the latter are real because they are perceived the same everywhere.

Quote from Sedley Translation of Philodemus' "On Irrational Contempt" - From Epicurean Theories of Knowledge from Hermarchus to Lucretius And Philodemus

Or do you think, on the basis of the foregoing argument, that someone would not suffer the troubles which I mention but rather would make it convincing that fair, foul and all other matters of belief are falsely believed in, just because unlike gold and similar things they are not the same everywhere? After all, it must stare everybody in the face that bigger and smaller are also not perceived the same everywhere and in relation to all magnitudes […] So too with heavier and lighter. And the same applies also to other powers, without exception. For neither are the same things healthy for everybody, nor nourishing or fatal, nor the opposites of these, but the very same things are healthy and nourishing for some yet have the opposite effect on others. Therefore either they must say that these too are false –things whose effects are plain for everyone to see –or else they must refuse to brazen it out and to battle against what is evident, and not abolish fair and foul as falsely believed in either, just because unlike stone and gold they are not the same for everybody […] Relative predicates do not have the same status as things said not relatively but in accordance with something’s own nature. Nor does the one kind truly exist but the other not. So to expect them to have the same attributes, or the one kind to exist but the other not, is naive. And there is no difference between starting from these and eliminating those and starting from those and eliminating these: it would be similarly naive to think that since the bigger and heavier and whiter and sweeter are bigger than one thing but smaller than another, and heavier, and likewise with the other attributes, and since nothing has the same one of these attributes per se as it has in relation to something else, in the same way stone, gold and the like ought also, if they truly existed, likewise to be gold in relation to one person while having the opposite nature in relation to another; and to say that, since that is not the case, these things are falsely believed in and do not really exist (On irrational contempt,XXIII, 26-XXVI, 23). (Quoted from Sedley - Epicurean Theories of Knowledge from Hermarchus to Lucretius And Philodemus)

Sedley comments about this:

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The opponents can be seen to draw heavily on Platonic dialectical materials in order to launch their attack on the reality of values, in particular in their contrast between the universally agreed determinate nature exhibited by minerals and the cultural relativity of values. As one might expect of the New Academy, this sceptical argument borrows its materials freely from the text of Plato (Phaedrus, 263a, cf. also Euthyphro, 7b-d, Theaetetus, 172b). More remarkable is how Polystratus, in his reply,appears himself to draw inspiration from Plato –a strategy with all the more ad hominem force when directed against Plato’s own self-declared successors. Plato had indeed never intended by this contrast between minerals and values to impugn the reality of the latter, any more than he had meant to infer from the relativity of large(r) and small(er) to their unreality. On the contrary, at Sophist 255c he had presented an exhaustive division of beings(ὄντα) into absolute and relative, a bicategorial scheme which became formal Academic doctrine under his second successor Xenocrates (F15 Isnardi Parente2).

...

... He resourcefully points out that the mere existence of an ontological difference between the two categories does not entail that one or other of them will fall short of reality. Anyone who thinks otherwise, he ingeniously adds, could as easily arguethat, since such relative predicates as beneficial and harmful manifestly arepart of the structure of reality, it must be the non-relative items such as minerals that are unreal!

Thank you Don! Here's a direct link to the full issue - "Hellenistic Theories of Knowledge" which has both articles:

View of 2018: Special Issue - Hellenistic Theories of Knowledge

Unfortunately for us the Verde article is in Italian, but it has this English abstract:

ABSTRACT:The main goals of this article are, on the one hand, to show the peculiar features of the Epicurean view of sense-perception (aisthesis), the first criterion of truth of Epicurus’ canonic; and, on the other hand, to critically discuss a recent contribution by Alexander Bown (“Epicurus on Truth and Falsehood”, Phronesis, 61 (4), 2016, p. 463-503), which deals with Epicurus’ double notion of truth (i.e. the truth of sense-perceptions/aistheseisand the truth of opinions/hypolepseis). Besides Book 10 of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophersand Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus, columns LXXII-LXXIII of PHerc. 1012 (including a work by the Epicurean philosopher Demetrius Lacon) and a passage from Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Logicians(M, VIII,9) will be examined in order to explain the meaning of truth linked by Epicurus to perceptible objects (aistheta)

Thank you Tau Phi! If you (or anyone) finds a like to the work by "Verde" referenced in the first sentence of that paper please post it too. So far I find only a work that is later than Sedley's article and therefore cannot be the right link. These look like very useful articles.

It's possible that we ought to set up a separate thread on "Ways To Resist AI" or maybe the entire subject is better for other sites to cover and we leave "ways to resist AI" alone entirely beyond discussing how we deal with it here. [EDIT: That new thread is now set up and you're reading within it now.]

However until the answer to that question becomes clear, here's a recent article along the same lines as how to get past the google search problem. This one is above browsers that don't incorporate AI:

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Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human

Browsing should push you to explore, chase ideas, and make your own decisions. It should light up your brain. Vivaldi is taking a stand. We choose humans over hype, and we will not turn the joy of exploring into inactive spectatorship.

...

The field of machine learning in general remains an exciting one and may lead to features that are actually useful.

But right now, there is enough misinformation going around to risk adding more to the pile. We will not use an LLM to add a chatbot, a summarization solution or a suggestion engine to fill up forms for you, until more rigorous ways to do those things are available.

Vivaldi is the haven for people who still want to explore. We will continue building a browser for curious minds, power users, researchers, and anyone who values autonomy. If AI contributes to that goal without stealing intellectual property, compromising privacy or the open web, we will use it. If it turns people into passive consumers, we will not.

We will stay true to our identity, giving users control and enabling people to use the browser in combination with whatever tools they want to use. Our focus is on building a powerful personal and private browser for you to explore the web on your own terms. We will not turn exploration into passive consumption.

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Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human | Vivaldi Browser

Browsing should push you to explore, chase ideas, and make your own decisions. It should light up your brain. Vivaldi is taking a stand. We choose humans over…

vivaldi.com

This list might grow so large as to be useless, or it might turn out to be helpful to have a list of specific references which attest to Epicurus giving examples of pleasures that he himself endorsed. I'll start a list based on section XIX and XX of Part 3 of Tusculan Disputations. Of course even these specific endorsements are contextual, in that at times we will choose the bad over the good when the choice leads to greater pleasure when all consequences are considered. But we so often speak of pleasure just in the generic sense, or as abstract labels such as absence of pain, that it might be helpful to have a list for finding description of specific activities. I'll include here references to Lucretius or Diogenes of Oinoanda, and maybe Philodemus, but the purpose here is not to list all possible pleasures but to accumulate references from the authoritative texts.

1. Taste
   1. Food and Drink (presumably) (TD3,19-20)
2. Hearing
   1. Music (TD3,19-20)
3. Sight
   1. "Abstracted from ideas raised by external objects visible to the eye." (TD3,19-20)
   2. "those forms which affect the eyes with pleasure" (TD3,19-20)
4. Touch
   1. Embraces (TD3,19-20)
   2. Sports (TD3,19-20)
5. Multiple Senses
   1. Agreeable Motions (TD3,19-20)
   2. "those other pleasures which are perceived by the whole man by means of any of his senses" (TD3,19-20)
6. Pleasures of the Mind
   1. "I have perceived men's minds to be pleased with the hopes of enjoying those things which I mentioned above, and with the idea that it should enjoy them without any interruption from pain." (TD3,19-20)
   2. Confidence of continued pleasure ("and with the idea that it should enjoy them without any interruption from pain" (TD3,19-20)
   3. "It is sweet to see from what evils you are yourself exempt."

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II-XX.¶

... Why, Epicurus, do we use any evasions, and not allow in our own words the same feeling to be pleasure, which you are used to boast of with such assurance? Are these your words or not? This is what you say in that book which contains all the doctrine of your school; for I will perform, on this occasion, the office of a translator, lest any one should imagine that I am inventing anything. Thus you speak: “Nor can I form any notion of the chief good, abstracted from those pleasures which are perceived by taste, or from what depends on hearing music, or abstracted from ideas raised by external objects visible to the eye, or by agreeable motions, or from those other pleasures which are perceived by the whole man by means of any of his senses; nor can it possibly be said that the pleasures of the mind are excited only by what is good; for I have perceived men's minds to be pleased with the hopes of enjoying those things which I mentioned above, and with the idea that it should enjoy them without any interruption from pain.” And these are his exact words, so that any one may understand what were the pleasures with which Epicurus was acquainted. Then he speaks thus, a little lower down: “I have often inquired of those who have been called wise men, what would be the remaining good if they should exclude from consideration all these pleasures, unless they meant to give us nothing but words? I could never learn anything from them; and unless they choose that all virtue and wisdom should vanish and come to nothing, they must say with me, that the only road to happiness lies through those pleasures which I mentioned above.” What follows is much the same, and his whole book on the chief good everywhere abounds with the same opinions.

...

II-XX.¶

It may be said, What! do you imagine Epicurus really meant this, and that he maintained anything so sensual? Indeed I do not imagine so, for I am sensible that he has uttered many excellent things and sentiments, and delivered maxims of great weight. Therefore, as I said before, I am speaking of his acuteness, not of his morals. Though he should hold those pleasures in contempt, which he just now commended, yet I must remember wherein he places the chief good. For he was not contented with barely saying this, but he has explained what he meant: he says, that taste, and embraces, and sports, and music, and those forms which affect the eyes with pleasure, are the chief good. Have I invented this? have I misrepresented him?

Quote from Lucretius Book 2:1

It is sweet, when on the great sea the winds trouble its waters, to behold from land another’s deep distress; not that it is a pleasure and delight that any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what evils you are yourself exempt. It is sweet also to look upon the mighty struggles of war arrayed along the plains without sharing yourself in the danger. But nothing is more welcome than to hold the lofty and serene positions well fortified by the learning of the wise, from which you may look down upon others and see them wandering all abroad and going astray in their search for the path of life, see the contest among them of intellect, the rivalry of birth, the striving night and day with surpassing effort to struggle up to the summit of power and be masters of the world.

In Chapter 7 Frances Wright has Epicurus say this:

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Zeno, in his present speech, has rested much of the truth of his system on its expediency; I, therefore, shall do the same by mine. The door to my gardens is ever open, and my books are in the hands of the public; to enter, therefore, here, into the detail or the expounding of the principles of my philosophy, were equally out of place and out of season. ‘Tell us not that that is right which admits of evil construction; that that is virtue which leaves an open gate to vice.’

In a generic sense Wright could have picked up this idea for her argument from any number of places in Cicero or Plutarch. As we are currently as of this writing dealing with Tusculan Disputations, Part 3, Section XX, it seems to me that some of the text here is particularly apt to have generated the need to frame the argument the way Wright did.

This section specifically comes to mind, with Cicero speaking against Epicurus:

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The last mistake he falls into in common with some others; which is this: that as virtue is the most desirable thing, and as philosophy has been investigated with a view to the attainment of it, he has separated the chief good from virtue. But he commends virtue, and that frequently; and indeed C. Gracchus, when he had made the largest distributions of the public money, and had exhausted the treasury, nevertheless spoke much of defending the treasury. What signifies what men say, when we see what they do? That Piso, who was surnamed Frugal, had always harangued against the law that was proposed for distributing the corn, but when it had passed, though a man of consular dignity, he came to receive the corn. Gracchus observed Piso standing in the court, and asked him, in the hearing of the people, how it was consistent for him to take corn by a law he had himself opposed? “It was,” said he, “against your distributing my goods to every man as you thought proper; but, as you do so, I claim my share.” Did not this grave and wise man sufficiently show that the public revenue was dissipated by the Sempronian law? Read Gracchus's speeches, and you will pronounce him the advocate of the treasury. Epicurus denies that any one can live pleasantly who does not lead a life of virtue; he denies that fortune has any power over a wise man: he prefers a spare diet to great plenty, and maintains that a wise man is always happy. All these things become a philosopher to say, but they are not consistent with pleasure. But the reply is, that he doth not mean that pleasure: let him mean any pleasure, it must be such a one as makes no part of virtue. But suppose we are mistaken as to his pleasure, are we so too as to his pain? I maintain therefore the impropriety of language which that man uses when talking of virtue, who would measure every great evil by pain.

Yes Don, I don't think the article came to Martin's attention because it was the best science available or particularly well written. It's more of a data point give a current generic summary of arguments we seen thrown around by average people (to the extent average people get around to discussing the issue). You're certainly right about how easy it is to publish things nowadays.

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Quote But this says nothing about the origins of such life, either here or elsewhere. The salient question: is it physically or chemically possible for living, self-replicating organisms with internal metabolic processes to come about through entirely naturalistic processes unaided by intelligence? The evidence seems to say, resoundingly, No.

Quote from Joshua

The evidence is inconclusive. To say that the evidence is inconclusive is not at all the same as saying that the evidence suggests (resoundingly or otherwise) that abiogenesis is impossible.

My slight twist on Joshua's point would be to differ on whether the evidence is inconclusive. I think Epicurus would likely say that the evidence IS conclusive.

We do see the existence of living self-replicating organizes with internal metabolic processes in existence, and the examples include us as human beings.

We (Epicurus) also holds that the eternality of the universe as (1) uncreated by an intelligence force, and (2) infinite in extent, to be rendering impossible that there is an intelligent force before or over or outside the universe. Our observations and the logic supporting these conclusions are "conclusive evidence" in the only real meaning that that term can have.

There are no gods or supernatural forces or higher realms to overrule these conclusions, and absolutely no reason to believe that any "new evidence" will be discovered to overturn that conclusion. Speculation without evidence is not admissible in most court, nor should it be admissible in a rational discussion of these issues.

And if someone wants to appeal to irrationality, then that's why there are wars and all sorts of lesser levels of expressing disagreement. But while wars and the like do exist, if you're going to approach life as an Epicurean, you aren't going to be considering irrational and groundless speculation about important issues.

So I would not admit that the existence of life without the supervision of intelligent design is an open or undetermined question or that the evidence is inconclusive. We have all the evidence we need to conclude firmly that life is a product of natural processes and did not originate from a supernatural intelligence. And we have absolutely no evidence on which to base a supposition that the gods of the supernaturalists or the platonists or anyone else are going to appear tomorrow or at any time in the future.

Hi Scott:

To me, these discussions are almost as interesting for what they say about the terminology as what they say about the science. What does "definitive answer" or "certainty" really mean? In order to say that anything is definitive do we have to stand in the shoes of a Plato in contact with ideal forms, or a supernatural god who can claim "I know the real answer because I created everything"?

I think the answer to both those is of course "no, we can't and shouldn't and don't claim such levels of authority." And in fact anyone who does claim them is a sham and a fraud.

On the other hand what we can talk in terms of is "confidence" give the observations that re possible and our logical reasoning based on those observations.

And what it appears that Epicurus has done is to take as starting point that the universe is eternal in time (nothing can come from nothing) and infinite in size (there can logically be no ultimate boundaries, and combine those with the observation that what we see here on earth is that nature never makes a single thing of kind, and that what happens here we would logically expect to happen whereever conditions are similar.

And from those and similar observations it's a hop skip and jump to conclude that there is really "nothing new under the sun," and that life as a category (not the same living things, but "life") has always existed throughout the universe.

At least for me, once I discard the fake standards of certainty suggested by religion and Platonists, I have no problem accepting Epicurus, line of reasoning, so I personally am as confident that "life" has always existed in the universe just as all other natural processes have existed, and will exist, forever.

Of course my confidence and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee, but I think an approach similar to this is inherent once the problem of skepticism is identified for the self-contradictory nonsense that it really is. Sure there are lots of specifics that we don't have enough evidence to be confident about. Has life existed on Mars subsequent to its formation? That's a specific question where we can do nothing but weigh and balance the evidence as it changes, but the "universal" or "cosmic" scale is different, and generalizations about infinity and eternality are as logically compelled as just about anything can be -- at least enough that it is more rational to be confident that life does exist elsewhere than earth than it is to say that we are unique in the universe.

I would argue that saying "I don't know, maybe life only exists here" is as good as laying down to be walked over by the religionists or Platonists on every other issue as well. So the issues of eternality and infinity of both the universe and of life within it seems about as good a place to start in standing up to those guys as anywhere else. And again regardless of what I think, that seems to have been Epicurus own approach.

I see there is at least one video of a lecture by Professor Nikolsky:

Tau Phi has updated this excellent PDF of Diogenes Laertius Book X.

Version 1.0.3 has the following changes:

- fixed the alignment in sections 96/97 for Greek text (thanks to Bryan for noticing the misalignment)
- added Public Domain Mark Button at the very end of the document for clarity regarding the license

Martin has brought the attached article to my attention. First let me state the usual caveats: no endorsement of the author or the author's views (here or elsewhere) is expressed or implied by posting this here. At first glance, however, it does appear that the article does a good job of bringing up competing explanations for the existence of life, although it arrives at answers that disagree with Epicurus. For those who find this subject interesting (as do I) I am posting this as another exercise in our ability to understand and respond to issues regarding the existence of life both here on earth and elsewhere in the universe.

Fantasizing About the Origin of Life

A hundred years of materialist science comes up empty.

stevenyates.substack.com