>The text is from Peter Green's Alexander to Actium (California 1993), from Chapter 35, "The Garden of Epicurus" (618-630).

Thank you. I'll try to hunt that down.

>My original post simply expressed the direction I have come to lean concerning the preponderance of testimonia and scholarly debate.

The problem is that you're trying to evaluate Epicurus' personal behavior from those sources. Most of them are either vague or unreliable (like Plutarch) because they come from writers who were philosophically opposed to Epicurus, or wrote centuries later.

>You are of course free to weigh the evidence yourself, toss out whatever you wish, and thus lean in whatever direction you wish.

My direction is that we don't know, and probably can't know, because there are no sources from people who knew Epicurus personally.

>I hope you'll understand if I tend to weigh the opinion of Peter Green and my own over yours. :D

Of course. This is Reddit after all...

>Did Epicurus practice what he preached?

We don't know. There's no evidence either way from people who knew him.

His last will and testament is available to us, and it makes no mention of his own children. I'm not an expert on ancient Attic laws of inheritance, but I'd assume his children would be mentioned in such documents.

>According to our testimonia collected by Peter Green:

That name is unfamiliar to me. Can you give me a link or citation?

>"[...] the Garden abounded in stimulating female company, of which he clearly approved."

The Garden was a philosophical school that accepted women as students and faculty, yes.

>'there is no need to assume that the relations between the male and female members of the school were platonic [Rist 11]'.

Apart from the fact that no self-respecting Epicurean would take advice from Plato? :D

But seriously... There is no reason to assume so, but neither is there reason to assume that the relations were in any way different from relations in similar situations.

We in fact know that such relations existed, produced children, and Epicurus didn't condemn it. His will mentions and provides for the children of his student Metrodorus, and those children must have been born during the Garden period.

> The Leader seems to have enjoyed droit de seigneur with several of his followers' wives and mistresses [Plutarch Moralia 1098B, 1129B].

Here Plutarch is straight-up lying... I mean... "provides no evidence to back up his argument".

>I've never seen this written as part of the definition of Epicurean pleasure.

I'm not trying to write the definition, just my understanding of what Epicureanism is about.

>This article is how I've usually heard it described.

I don't think that the author of that article would accept Nozick's machine either.

"[addressing a young man] I understand from you that your natural disposition is too much inclined toward sexual passion. Follow your inclination as you will, provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb well-established customs, harm any one of your neighbors, injure your own body, nor waste your possessions. That you be not constrained by one or more of these conditions is impossible; for a man never gets any good from sexual passion, and he is fortunate if he does not receive harm." (Sayings 51)

Epicurus was bit of a prude...

There are ways to argue against Nozick's machine, especially from an Epicurean viewpoint.

The main one would be that the machine does not in fact produce pleasure. An Epicurean would not accept the proposition that "electrochemical stimulation of a certain part of your brain" is the same thing as "eating a good meal". In essence, a pleasure has a distinct cause (and effect) because we are living, biological beings. There are no good short-cuts to pleasure. Only very very bad ones.

A more funny one is that the experience machine is just a magic trick... and like all magic tricks it's fake. "Beware the man behind the curtain!" winkwinknudgenudge

>3. The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone.
>
>4. The absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.

For an Epicurean, these statements would be false. Pleasure and pain are experiences of living beings, not abstract Platonic Ideas. The absence of pain is always enjoyed by someone, and the absence of pleasure is always a deprivation on someone.

>2. There is a moral obligation not to produce a child if it can be foreseen that it will be unhappy.

This statement is falsified, for an Epicurean, because such foresight is impossible... especially for a human.

>We can clearly see that even with the grossly unrealistic assumption that the amount of happiness in one’s life quantitatively outweighs the amount of suffering, the ethical choice is weighed in favor of non-procreation.

Epicurus didn't think that procreation was bad because we can't guarantee that the offspring will be happy... but because the raising of children is a painful burden on the parent.

It's revealing that Shermer and others on one hand say that science (as opposed to philosophy) can prescribe human values, and on the other don't say which science they're talking about.

Shermer can't answer the question because such science doesn't exist. No current branch of scientific inquiry does this. He can't really shoehorn morality into a random science's field either. If he would claim that it was one of the 'hard' sciences, like physics or chemistry, he would lose the audience that would instantly recognize the foolishness of such a proposition. If he would claim that it was one of the 'soft' sciences, like sociology or psychology, he would lose his "skeptic" audience who value hard data and numbers.

He has to vaguely gesture towards empiricism, being evidence based and doing some field work (asking people what they prefer), and call that "science".

The assertion of "philosophy hasn't solved the moral problems but science can!" arises from a outdated and fundamentally incomplete understanding of what moral philosophers have been doing all these years. Shermer can be so certain of his positions because he doesn't understand what he's talking about.

Not every philosopher has been pondering the meaning of good in an ivory tower. There are ancient moral philosophers, like Epicurus, who had a well-grounded ideas about how our morality arose and how we can determine our moral values. In more modern times consequentialists have also been engaged in scientific inquiry into morality.

Philosophers have been doing the "science of morals" for literally thousands of years. Not even Shermer's idea of asking people their preferences is an original idea. Socrates did that.

>(science_fiction)

Your link answered your question. We don't become wireheads because it's impossible.

Many people use mind altering substances to stimulate their brains. It doesn't (usually) end well.

>That being said, giving to charity can be done at the same time as working toward systemic change.

Singer doesn't encourage people to do so. His focus is entirely (or close to it) on charity.

Has he ever gone after a systemic problem with the same vigour as animal cruelty? I don't think so.

>it's not really Gates' money anymore, and there are rules regarding what he can do with it.

It's 100% still his money. He controls what is done with it.

I think you need to do some digging into why we don't have open source covid vaccines.

(Hint: It's because of Bill's 'charity'.)