Hi guys.
I'd like to say that I prefer not going beyond this point. I feel it has become in some moments a kind of ideological exchange of opinions. According to my hedonistic calculus, is better for me to stop commenting on this and move forward.
Martin, thanks for your comments. I disagree with them, but I'll attribute my disagreement to a flaw in my understanding of your ideas.
At least, I think we've advanced in the shared understanding of this aspect of Epicurean philosophy, that means that we no longer take just for granted that the swerve gives us the capacity to make choices. We have reflected on this and now we can form a more refined idea of it. If you let me, I'll do a reconstruction of the positions:
From one side, Martin saves the swerve. He speculates that we live in an almost deterministic scenario. We are already accountable, but the swerve gives us more options (and, it seems that, more options is better for agency and accountability).
For him, the swerve is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for agency and accountability. So, even if we were in a deterministic scenario in the macroscopic level (and Martin speculates we aren't), that wouldn't posit a thread for agency. Therefore, determinism is not a thread at all (first, because he has defined agency in a compatibilist way and, second, because he thinks that the world is not deterministic anyway).
For another side, Don considers (just like me) that we can abandon the idea of the swerve and stay with the core ideas of Epicurus.
For another last side, Cassius considers that we can abandon the swerve, because the feeling of free will/agency is prior to any other consideration in the epicurean system, as part of the canonics (possibly, it can be another prolepsis). This means that that feeling doesn't need any argument, basis or proof. It is on the base of the epicurean system.
See you, guys.