Posts by Martin

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  • Stoic view of passions / patheia vs the Epicurean view

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    When I understood Philodemus right, I think the Epicurean view would only match with the Stoic view when the Emotion

    1) has harmful consequences ( pleasure then is not choiceworthy for example )
    2) is irrational, based on empty believe
    3) is based on unnecessary desire

    There seems to be a mix-up of two different usages of "irrational":
    The usage in the quote seems to indicate that "irrational" is something "bad", against reason, to be avoided.
    The other usage is neutral and refers to sensations, emotions, feelings being fundamentally, by definition, irrational, in contrast to something we have obtained with reasoning.

    In cases 1) and 3) from the quote, the hedonic calculus may justify pursuing the concerned desire:
    1) We sometimes willfully risk pain/harm to obtain greater pleasure or less pain in the future.
    3) Epicurus' philosophy does not make us reject all unnecessary desires. Instead, we pursue some of the unnecessary desires when they are natural.

    It seems that the Stoic and Epicurean views match far less than what the quote indicates. The Stoic vocabulary in the Wikipedia article is misleading from an Epicurean perspective.

  • What Are Some Epicurean Tips to Deal With Anxiety Over Painful Scenarios?

    What I observed and found confirmed in Philodemus' writings is that an initial sting of anger is unavoidable/normal/desirable/good and we should address it consciously and acknowledge it. We should anticipate that the interaction of the mind ruminating toward how bad the issue is with glands churning out biochemicals for a fight-or-flight reaction might turn the sting into a rage. By repeated practice of the awareness of the inner escalation and consciously nurturing the desire to stop the escalation, we can prevent the sting from spiraling into a rage. The initial sting is enough to drive us to effective action; the rage would be bad for our health and might propel us to do stupid things.

    My turning point was about 26 years ago when I hit something with my fist in a fit of anger in public, luckily without any adverse consequences. Subsequently, I have put effort into intercepting the spiral toward rage, and this prevention of the escalation from sting to rage has become natural for me.

  • Welcome Wbernys!

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    I would also like to ask a question for those who don't mind on "atoms and void". From what i can tell science tells us that the space between atoms is not really "empty space" but more like energy (electromagnetic, gravitational energy, quantum waves) which provided no friction and has no form, thus allowing movement. Do you all consider this to be a kind of "Epicurean void" or do you still believe in the classical void that there's empty space in-between?

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    Martin maybe you can give a good answer to the question in the above post.

    Don gave already a good answer, but OK, here is my answer:
    The space with properties (field) is a kind of "Epicurean void", and there is space in-between particles, which is empty almost everywhere most of the time under typical circumstances on Earth.

    There is a fundamental difference between Epicurus and the Kantian philosophy of science adhered to by the majority of modern scientists, of whom I am a dumbed down specimen.
    After careful consideration, Epicurus came to the conclusion that he found the truth about reality and called his philosophy "true philosophy". "True" referred to materialism, his metaphysics, his ethics and his pre-scientific methodology, not the description of particular phenomena, for which he typically offered multiple materialistic explanations and suspended judgement on which one is true. Today, the majority of scientists think that reality/truth is fundamentally unknowable, but we can create models which describe the phenomena very well. So, when scientists talk like quoted above, they do not mean that this is true for reality but true within the chosen model.

    For Newton and Coulomb, masses and charges, respectively, interact at a distance, with the space in between remaining like Epicurus' void.
    Faraday changed this. He let mass and charge give properties to the space around them and called that space with properties field. The field affects other masses or charges in that field, and the contributions of these other masses or charges to the field affect the first mass or charge. This was a major progress because it removed the spooky interaction at a distance in Newton's theory of gravity. Field theory was consequently applied to the more recently discoverd other fundamental forces. Except for virtual particles occasionally popping up as part of the description of interactions, the space is empty. The field adds something fundamentally new to Epicurus' plain void and enables that coming into existence of virtual particles. Again, this is all talk about properties of a model, not reality. However, there are some scientists, even excellent ones, who believe that science has been approaching the truth and who might claim that they talk about reality and its truth and not just a model of it but ultimately, they can neither know nor prove this.

  • Comparing The Pleasure of A Great Physicist Making A Discovery To The Pleasure of A Lion Eating A Lamb

    There is not necessarily great pleasure over time for a scientist. Paul Ehrenfest contributed to quantum theory but felt that peers made greater discoveries around the same time and commited suicide.
    In other cases, peers have dismissed a revolutionary new theory, even with ad-hominem. Accolades which come in only posthumously are too late. Examples of this are Ludwig Boltzmann and Alfred Wegener (geologist, but close enough). In Boltzmann's case, the hostility by peers probably contributed to his suicide. Dan Shechtman's discovery of quasicrystals was initially rejected, even by his boss, such that Dan Shechtman had to leave his research group and was the target of ridicule, e.g. Linus Pauling's infamous ad-hominem "There are no quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists". Luckily, Dan Shechtman is not a "snowflake" like Boltzmann and Ehrenfest may appear to have been and got eventually the accolades, including the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

  • Comparing The Pleasure of A Great Physicist Making A Discovery To The Pleasure of A Lion Eating A Lamb

    "Engaging In Discovery" should be changed to "Making a Discovery" or similar because the path to a discovery is more or less painful, as expressed in quotes attributed to Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein on the ratio of inspiration to perspiration. We can skip the "Great" because the pleasure I had with my small discoveries was certainly not less than the great physicists had with their great ones, in analogy to the "Great Physicist" and the lion.

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