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CaseyTS t1_j9ex951 wrote

Reply to comment by loopsataspool in Often mischaracterized as a rather debaucherous, hedonistic philosophy, Epicureanism actually focuses on the removal of pain and anxiety from our lives, and champions a calm ‘philosophy as therapy’ approach in pursuit of life’s highest pleasure: mental tranquility. by philosophybreak

Wow, didn't realized he guessed at quantum uncertainty. That does not affect human brains as far as we know (too big & hot for quantum behaviors), but still, he is prescient.

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ctoph t1_j9fe5ld wrote

No, he did not. Reading quantum theories into the unusable non-scientific ideas of Greeks gets it backward. It looks familiar because the Europeans who spearheaded the scientific revolution came from a tradition whose education was so steeped in Greek philosophy that they borrowed the language for their original and unrelated ideas. looking around and saying big things tend to be made up of smaller component parts that have some sort of behavior is the extent of their insight.

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CaseyTS t1_j9fjlky wrote

>big things tend to be made up of...extent of their insight

Specifically, "swerve" being nondeterministic looks a little like quantum superposition/wave function collapse. That's the extent of my comment, and I do think it's notable.

No, obviously, he didn't observe quantum mechanics. Yes, I know early particle philosophy was guess work. I fully stand by my original comment.

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ctoph t1_j9g8tp1 wrote

I guess I see his use of atomic swerve as a generalization being made to justify his desired outcome, which is a universe, where humans have free will. So, I wouldn't see it as an insight based on intuition about the nature of the universe that ultimately proves to be precient. It looks to me like he starts from the assumption that humans have free will, and if he wants that to be true, it's gonna be a problem for humans to be made up of a bunch of billiard balls knocking around in a completely determined way. So his solution is just to say, but what if they don't do that. If the insight is pointing out, a discontinuity between deterministic cause and effect and free will, fair enough. Anything beyond that feels a stretch because if you don't want a deterministic universe without free will, and you don't want to ditch atoms entirely, you are only gonna be left with atoms that are not deterministic. So, the paradox kinda creates a problem for determinism that is partially explained by quantum mechanics (similar to plank lengths with xemos paradox). If that's the interesting part, fair enough.

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KingOfRages t1_j9g3797 wrote

Swerve was just the philosophers’ way of arguing for free will against deterministic ideas right?

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