Posts by Martin

Welcome Brian!

Sigh!

Again, in a nutshell:

With his syllogisms, Epicurus himself made ample use of logic.

"He judged that the logic of your school ..." is an abbreviation which does not refer to logic in itself but the wrong way it is used, e.g. by starting with ideas which have no justification in reality as premises and then claiming the conclusiveness of logic for conclusions on reality or by constructing apparent paradoxes which confuse people who are not skilled in the proper use of logic.

The excluded middle is probably the only theorem where Epicurus disagrees with Aristotelian / binary logic with respect to propositions on the future. Even Aristoteles himself was aware that the excluded middle might not be rock solid concerning propositions on the future (but Cicero apparently did not know that).

Let us stay clear of futile attacks on logic because those would just undermine our credibility. Instead we should point out which premises are wrong or what other aspect of the application of logic is wrong in specific cases.

It is mostly Plato himself with his dialectics and ideal forms who uses logic wrongly. The Stoics are relatively innocent and typically use logic properly for their reasoning as they have learned from Aristoteles except that some basic premises of the ancient Stoics are most likely false. There is no "Stoic logic" to refute.

Quote from smoothiekiwi

Well, but the theory that "the world only consists of atoms and void" is false (waves), that the "universe is infinite" (it only expands really fast, but it has a border), that the multitude of atoms is infinite (we've only a few types of quarks and bosons), etc..... so I wouldn't call EP coherent by today's standards. Sadly.

I am not sad :

Some of Epicurus' statements on physics do not match reality as we model it today and are therefore obsolete. It is part of the history of science that older theories get replaced by better ones. That does not take anything away from the merit of the obsolete theories.

Moreover, EP is still coherent in itself despite that some of its statements on physics are obsolete. None of the conclusions derived for the philosophy depend on the obsolete parts.

Another perspective to look at it is to not take the statements literally to have to match modern science but just to describe the analogies between them and modern science.

Or we can consider them as analogous to those unrealistic idealizations which we use today sometimes as physical models because they combine mathematical simplicity with sufficient accuracy. E.g., the universe is much larger than a human can travel in his lifetime. Therefore, it is a good approximation to call the universe infinite in size.

Waves are complementary to particles and are therefore rather a refinement than something that exists completely without particles. Taking this into account and by assigning physical properties to the void, there are still just particles and void from a very basic perspective.

As of now, we have no experimental base to claim for sure that the universe is not infinite. We have a horizon beyond which we cannot see but that horizon expands with the speed of light. The furthest away parts of the universe which are now still within the horizon seem to move beyond it to be never seen again because of the apparent expansion of space.

Welcome nixmercury!

Sorry for missing out because I needed to focus on work to catch up with some backlog and forgot to carry my headset.

I will try to join, mostly for listening while at work.

Welcome JMK1100!

Welcome SimonC!

Happy New Year!

Corrections:

Stammtisch

The emphasis is in most cases on drinking, talk and laughter but they come in all types of regular gatherings.

At first pass reading, this is fine with 2 clarifications:

Prudence is the greatest good - in our toolset to assure pleasure as the goal.

We have the confidence that with prudence, we can always fulfill our necessary desires. Based on the peace of mind this gives, we can make prudent choices of fulfilling unnecessary desires if we expect that their fulfillment gives us pleasures which are worth the involved pain.

Welcome Ayraj!

Welcome Pacatus!

I agree with rediscoverability of the major ideas of Epicurus' philosophy in a similarly consistent way.

Quote

A question that comes up for me lately is, at what point does an Epicurean say: "I've studied the teachings and I've learned the teachings, now I will simply just live the teachings." Yet, one would not feel fully contented until one as established the fundamental material attributes underlying the Epicurean lifestyle.

After having studied "enough", the confidence that our intuition and the philosophy match comes up as an inner sensation. If pleasurable, we can keep delving into ever more details but there is no need to do so. This is similar to science: Once we have studied enough science to reach the confidence in an exclusively material world, there is no more need to study more science unless we need specific knowledge for a hedonic calculus. However, if science gives us great pleasure, we may choose it as our main hobby or profession and thereby spend a large part of our life studying or contributing to science.

While reading more Epicurean texts and contributing to the forum is pleasurable for me, I spend most of my free time on other pleasures and on preparations for other pleasures.

Welcome boyh0wdy!

I do not know of any better living German Scholar on Epicurus than Gisela Striker.

I get the same access problem.

Piece of mind is pleasurable, should preferably be there when we go for the next exciting kind of pleasure, and should preferably be there when we are exhausted from that exciting pleasure later on. We might recede to a cave with a stock of bread and water at that time but if we stay there for a longer time than what we need for rest or meditation, pain in the form of boredom will come up.

Some of Hossenfelder's ideas do look like from the "Stoics and Epicureans are much the same" camp but he is well aware of differences as well. Therefore, he is in the middle between us and that camp. I focused my review mostly on where I disagree with Hossenfelder and where he took a clearer position than I have seen before. He has a lot of material which matches our interpretation. He quotes Lucretius a lot and treats the poem like a primary source of Epicurus' ideas.