Can Determinism Be Reconciled With Epicureanism? (Admin Edit - No, But Let's Talk About Why Not)

I'm some ways, Epicurus's position on choice and free will and determinism is δογματικός (dogmatikos), not being afraid to declare a position.

In light of Sapolsky and Dennett and the rest, a big part of me wants more than to simply declare a position. That's why Mitchell is intriguing to me. I'm planning on exploring his stuff before weighing back in (too much, that is).

In order to improve the account on the swerve I thought about the following argument. It is important to identify the flaws in it, possibly Martin or DavidN can help us.

1. Assumption: The swerve is the basis for sustaining free will (leeway freedom a.k.a. the capacity to have done otherwise).

2. Definition: the swerve is a random deviance of the movement of atoms. Is an uncaused cause.

3. Definition: determinism is the affirmation that every event in the Universe is caused by prior events. Indeterminism can be defined as the falsity of determinism: the affirmation that not all events are caused by prior events.

4. The swerve works indeterministically; introduces indeterminism (for 2 and 3)

5. Incompatibilist premise: leeway freedom is incompatible with determinism.

6. The swerve can have effects only on the microscopic level or both in the microscopic and macroscopic level.

7. If the swerve has effects only in microscopic level, the indeterminism (for 4) occurs only in this level, so that the macroscopic level operates in a deterministic way. (This is actually Sapolsky's point of view defended in "Determined"). If this is the case, then the swerve is not the basis for leeway freedom (For 1 and 5)

8. If the swerve has effects on both the microscopic and macroscopic levels, then there is indeterminism (for 4) in both levels. This means that there are events that weren't caused by prior events (that is, the swerves). (For 6 and 7)

9. The swerves either occurred only in one moment in the past and the rest of the time the world worked and works deterministically or they occur continually.

10. If the swerves occured only once, or just in the past and the rest of the time the world worked deterministically, then the swerve is not the basis for leeway freedom (for 1, 5 and 9).

11. The swerves happen continually (for 9 and 10, and the affirmation of Lucretius (Book ii) that the very existence of bodies need the swerve).

12. Events can have multiple effects and be caused by multiple events (as pointed out by DavidN). Besides, scientific reasoning tell us that the same event has the same cause(s): if a phenomenon happens in certain circumstances by events A, B, C, we will expect that in the same circumstances under the same events A, B, C, we will have the same phenomenon.

13. The swerves are unpredictable and their effects are unpredictable as well (for 2 and 4)

14. If the swerve occurs continually and unpredictably (for 11 and 13), it would be less probable that the same circumstances for a phenomenon repeat (Considering 12). It seems that there will be new circumstances continually and there would be new and different events continually.

15. The basis for regularities and laws in nature is the repetition of phenomena.

16. The swerve doesn't permit to explain regularities in nature (for 14 and 15). (From this we can conclude that human behavior is impossible, but let's consider more things.)

17. Free Will is the basis for moral responsibility (if a person acts freely, she's responsible for her action). A person can't be responsible for something beyond her control (in a strong sense, as the capacity to have done otherwise, the leeway sense). (For 1)

18. Human behavior is under the unpredictable effects of the swerves (for 8 and 13), so we can imagine at least the following scenario: James intends to do A in order to have certain effects. The swerve can produce events between the intention to do A and the action A, and between the action A and its intended effects. So, sometimes he has success in his intention (he does A), sometimes the action doesn't ocur (because there are unpredictable events that produce other events different to James intention), and sometimes the action A has different effects than those intended by James.

He needs lucky to act and to have the effects he wants.

19. If human choices are not the outcome of their will, their behavior is beyond their control and they're not responsible of it. If the outcomes of actions are beyond reasonable control of the agents, then they're not morally responsible for them (for 17 and 18).

20. If agents are not responsible of their actions, then they don't have free will (for 17).

21. Agents don't have free will (for Modus tollens of 19 and 20) [Modus tollens is an inference that say that if we have the conditional "If A then B", it is equivalent to "if not B then not A". So if we have "Not B". Then we infer "not A"]

22. Given that 21 is the product of assuming 1 and leads to it's negation, there's a contradiction.

23. If an assumption leads to a contradiction, then we should conclude that it's false. So, the swerve is not the basis for free will.

If the argument is valid, then the swerve will need revision. So far I inferred that the swerve occurs continually and its effects are on the macroscopic level, but these characteristics are problematic.

Contemporary libertarians tend to restrict the scope of indeterminism, but one needs to be careful, because there's the risk of ad hoc explanation.

Another option is to take a compatibilist account of free will, but that would make the swerve an useless concept.

Probably you have the impression that determinism is one of the "Four Horsemen", but if you think carefully on a strong indeterminism, you may want to include it as well.

Quote from Onenski

Assumption: The swerve is the basis for sustaining free will (leeway freedom a.k.a. the capacity to have done otherwise).

I look forward to the responses to the detailed way that Onenski presents this, but (per the arguments I seem to recall from the Sedley article) I do not think we should presume that Epicurus held that the swerve is the main reason for sustaining free will. It is likely more of a "multiple possibility" response, with the real basis for holding "free will" to be found as much in the canon as in the physics.

Hi, Don, thank you very much for your comments and for being caritative in your interpretation of my comments.

Quote from Don

The word Metaphysical

I'm sorry for using the word without explain what I meant. Metaphysics, in effect, is a branch of philosophy that goes beyond physics. The idea is that its theses cannot be proven or falsified by empirical data. Empirical information is consistent with two opposite theses. Some examples of metaphyisical objects of study are God (whether exist a supernatural entity with certain properties or not), soul, time (what is its nature or even if it exists), free will, universals, personal identity, the existence of a self, etc.

Everyone has an assumption on any of these objects. Some people believe that a God exists, that they have a soul, that time exists and has certain properties and so on. If they reflect about these assumptions they may find arguments to sustain them, or to change their minds.

You may think that no matter what people assume, they will live their lifes anyway. But I've insisted that these assumptions give form to our practices. People who believe in a God usually prey, those who believe in soul are afraid of their luck after death (or they trust in a Paradise), people who believe that humans have a telos will try to improve their virtue in order to be excellent human beings.

Some people change their metaphysical commitments in a moment of their lives: they discover that a God is not necessary for their lives, or they think that humans don't have a telos and they don't need to be virtuous just by itself.

So this debate is metaphysical, all the empirical information works for both conclusions, the arguments need to be metaphysical and reasonable. Sometimes people use a reduction to absurd (like in the argument I've just posted), for example.

Ontology, in other hand, can be thought as a list of things a theory or a person consider that exist. Metaphysical commitments use to have implications in ontology. For example, Epicurus considered that gods exist, but his metaphysical commitment with materialism implied that those gods should be material. This commitment also implies that ghosts don't exist.

Now, on the issue of control. You think that free will skepticism imply that we lack control over our actions. Not exactly, we lack leeway freedom, but we have control over our actions. The capacity, for example, for self control can be explained as the outcome of your personal history under certain circumstances, I invite you to read Walter Mischel's "The Marshmallow Test" to have an idea of what I mean, or Sapolsky's "Behave".

In other words, the notion of agency (as source freedom) is compatible with determinism. But, as you found in the characterisation of free will skepticism, that notion is not the one that permit to attribute moral responsibility (for these skeptics).

If you also take the conclusion that we can't have to much indeterminism (or not having it at all), almost all the time we are not free. If we need leeway freedom to exercise epicurean philosophy, then the libertarians would have just a little degree of freedom to exercise epicurean philosophy. Their situation wouldn't be so different that the one of the free will skeptic.

My opinion is that we have to acknowledge that there is no such thing as "the swerve."

It was an innovative thought experiment by Epicurus (and Lucretius who mentions it) given the atomic parameters he was working with at the time. Yes, it has parallels or we can overlay the *basic* idea onto modern quantum physics, but the overlay doesn't fit perfectly because it wasn't designed to! But atoms do not move like Epicurus and Democritus thought/said they did. Quantum particles do not move like that. Plus, Epicurus could very well have thought that atomic motions could engender free will because everything was atomic movement, including sensations. And, yes, we know that chemical and biological processes are at the heart of sensation, but they're NOT like Epicurus proposed them. We don't intercept atoms from outside us into channels in our ψυχη (psyche) leading to memories and thoughts. Again, we can make analogies and see Epicurus's atomic movements and swerves as precursors or metaphors of how actually "the way things are." But we are not constrained by Epicurus's physics! Science has come a long way in the last 2300 years, and using outdated terms and ideas to argue for free will is not going to get us anywhere in the year 2024 CE. We need to work with the material world at hand as it is currently understood. That's why I find Mitchell intriguing... and no I haven't had a chance to read any of his stuff in the last couple hours. This is just a visceral reaction to our continuing to talk about whether the swerve leads to free will. Unfortunately, I find it similar to discussing whether God has anything to do with our free will. That's it for me right now.

Epicurus | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Quote from Onenski

The capacity, for example, for self control can be explained as the outcome of your personal history under certain circumstances, I invite you to read Walter Mischel's "The Marshmallow Test"

Thanks! Book is on reserve.

Would you correct l characterize Mischel as deterministic or doesn't that label fit his presentation?

Quote from Don

We need to work with the material world at hand as it is currently understood.

If that means that no ordinary person can have an opinion about the way his world works without a career in physics, and that even those with careers in physics have to be prepared to revise their opinions of the way the world works with every new seminar from Cambridge, then that is a prescription for total skepticism if taken literally.

I don't think anyone suggests that we need to take De Rerum Natura as a blueprint for a nuclear reactor, but the principles and perspectives laid down there remain valid and useful even as science changes.

And it is far more important for happy living to keep the global principles and perspectives in mind rather than it is to pore over the latest dissertations from Cambridge with our minds open to accepting any possibility.

I just wanted to pop on and thank Onenski for the thought provoking discussion, I haven't actually considered the Holonomic Brain theory in almost a quarter century. Now that I'm reconsidering it in the context of free will, and considering free will in the context of a programming break for the purposes of debugging, It might solve one of the biggest problems in Epistemology of AI. How learning takes place, how does one break from cause and effect programming and apply new knowledge, or even test new knowledge. An error in logic as the process of learning rather than true error is very human. Almost wish I still worked in that field cause now that I think I might have figured it out I have no idea who I'd approach with my hypothesis. Although to be honest given enough time to considered and weigh the choice I'd probably still make the same choice I did when i left the field, and simply let my curiosity go. Anyways I don't actually have much time today, I have an previous obligation to get to. Just popped on to say great discussion everyone, thanks.

No one is overstepping. Even if someone decides that the disagree so firmly with a key Epicurean tenet that they just can't see calling themselves an Epicurean, that is for the best, because no one will be happy with being less than honest.

On the other hand, this forum is for made by and for people who are interested in promoting Epicurean philosophy, so that goal has to override total free speech here at the forum, as is very clearly set forth. That's a hard policy to enforce, but I think I need to do it as best I can for the good of the project.

Sometimes a higher "level" forum will solve the issue, as more "mature" Epicureans can better handle the debate. Another step after that would be "take it to private conversation.". The best I can say for now is that I think continuing the conversation in level three will be better, and we will see where things go from here.

Richard Dawkins On Free Will

I posted this a couple years ago on one of my past blogs. I always find the topic worth revisiting. The following is a transcript of a question posed to and…

notesfrombabel.wordpress.com

Richard Dawkins at Politics and Prose .. The God Delusion
Question and Answer

Questioner: Dr. Dawkins thank you for your comments. The thing I have appreciated most about your comments is your consistency in the things I’ve seen you written. One of the areas that I wanted to ask you about and the places where I think there is an inconsistency and I hoped you would clarify it is that in what I’ve read you seem to take a position of a strong determinist who says that what we see around us is the product of physical laws playing themselves out but on the other hand it would seem that you would do things like taking credit for writing this book and things like that. But it would seem, and this isn’t to be funny, that the consistent position would be that necessarily the authoring of this book from the initial condition of the big bang it was set that this would be the product of what we see today. I would take it that that would be the consistent position but I wanted to know what you thought about that.

Dawkins: The philosophical question of determinism is a very difficult question. It’s not one I discuss in this book, indeed in any other book that I’ve ever talked about. Now an extreme determinist, as the questioner says, might say that everything we do, everything we think, everything that we write, has been determined from the beginning of time in which case the very idea of taking credit for anything doesn’t seem to make any sense. Now I don’t actually know what I actually think about that, I haven’t taken up a position about that, it’s not part of my remit to talk about the philosophical issue of determinism. What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don’t feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, “Oh well he couldn’t help doing it, he was determined by his molecules.” Maybe we should.. I sometimes.. Um.. You probably remember many of you would have seen Fawlty Towers. The episode where Basil where his car won’t start and he gives it fair warning, counts up to three, and then gets out of the car and picks up a tree branch and thrashes it within an edge of his life. Maybe that’s what we all ought to… Maybe the way we laugh at Basil Fawlty, we ought to laugh in the same way at people who blame humans. I mean when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is “Oh they were just determined by their molecules.” It’s stupid to punish them. What we should do is say “This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced.” I can’t bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse of whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood. And so again I might take a ..

Questioner: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?

Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion it is an entirely separate issue.

Questioner: Thank you.

Interview: Richard Dawkins

QUESTION: Now, if we are gene machines, presumably then our behavior is also programmed by genes -- you have made that case. But Christians would say that there is a thing called free will, and that free will gives us a genuine choice about our actions, that effectively free will allows us to override biology. What is your response to that as a scientist?

MR. DAWKINS: I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will. Indeed, I encourage people all the time to do it. Much of the message of my first book, "The Selfish Gene," was that we must understand what it means to be a gene machine, what it means to be programmed by genes, so that we are better equipped to escape, so that we are better equipped to use our big brains, use our conscience intelligence, to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and to build for ourselves a new kind of life which as far as I am concerned the more un-Darwinian it is the better, because the Darwinian world in which our ancestors were selected is a very unpleasant world. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. And when we sit down together to argue out and discuss and decide upon how we want to run our societies, I think we should hold up Darwinism as an awful warning for how we should not organize our societies.

QUESTION: So you are not saying then that our genetic programming is fully deterministic?

MR. DAWKINS: It's an important point to realize that the genetic programming of our lives is not fully deterministic. It is statistical -- it is in any animal merely statistical -- not deterministic. Even if you are in some sense a determinist -- and philosophically speaking many of us may be -- that doesn't mean we have to behave as if we are determinists, because the world is so complicated, and especially human brains are so complicated, that we behave as if we are not deterministic, and we feel as if we are not deterministic -- and that's all that matters. In any case, adding the word "genetic" to deterministic doesn't make it any more deterministic. If you are a philosophical determinist, then adding the word "gene" doesn't increase the effect.

We can go round and round quoting Richard Dawkins vs Sam Harris til the end of time, but if doing so causes us to lose sight of the larger goal of living happily through Epicurean philosophy, then we are not doing justice to the reason we are here in the first place.

Not everyone is going to agree with the way we implement that balance, but I think the best we can do is to try to accommodate "privately" those who have the time and interest to pursue the Harris road, while at the same time acknowledging that the Harris view is contrary to Epicurus and therefore not something to be promoted in public on this website.

As Dawkins says "we feel as if we are not deterministic -- and that's all that matters."

Now if someone wants to argue that that is not the position Epicurus took, or that he was wrong to do so, then *that also, or in fact even more* would be a point of productive discussion, because that would implicate the feelings anticipations and senses as the canon of truth. As Sedley says, the swerve itself may well have been an afterthought, as it certainly did not even make the letter to Menoeceus. We aren't required to ground the significance and importance of freedom of will on the swerve by a long shot, any more than we are tied to supporting every one of Epicurus' multiple possibilities for eclipses.

Which leads me to repeat again - if these discussions lead someone to think that Epicurus was so far off on basic issues that they want to drop major parts of his philosophy and refrain from representing themselves to be Epicurean, then we are all better off if that person pursues that result to their satisfaction. But those deviations aren't proper for extended development on this forum.

We do allow people here at the forum - even as Level 3 - who are clearly stating that they do not consider themselves to be "fully Epicurean." We can work with that so long as we do not have long and regular and unbalanced campaigns in public against core Epicurean positions. People who have agency can in fact change their minds, and working through defenses against attacks on Epicurean positions has extremely helpful results, exactly as we are doing in going through Book 2 of Cicero's On Ends in the Lucretius Today podcast.

But I think we owe it to those who are here to study Epicurus to keep the focus on explaining and defending Epicurean positions, and to conduct plank-walking episodes as privately as possible. In general and for the public, we should provide an Epicurean support group and not just another general philosophy forum where the only firm positon is that all firm positions are wrong. There are plenty of those on the internet where hard determinism is welcome. The "articles of faith" at such places are that all knowledge is impossible and that no one has any freedom of will whatsoever. That's exactly the kind of thing that Epicurus fought against, and we need to continue that tradition here if we expect to have an "Epicurean" community.

Quote

In order to improve the account on the swerve I thought about the following argument. It is important to identify the flaws in it, possibly Martin or DavidN can help us.

1. Assumption: The swerve is the basis for sustaining free will (leeway freedom a.k.a. the capacity to have done otherwise).

[...]

Here you go:

1 - 11 seem to be OK. What might be fishy does not show up within 1 - 11.

"12. Events can have multiple effects and be caused by multiple events (as pointed out by DavidN). Besides, scientific reasoning tell us that the same event has the same cause(s): if a phenomenon happens in certain circumstances by events A, B, C, we will expect that in the same circumstances under the same events A, B, C, we will have the same phenomenon."

Anyone trying to reproduce a chemical reaction can tell you that it is sometimnes not like that because in addition to the known A, B, C, there may be unknown events D, E, F, which combined with A, B, C give a different result because D, E, F have changed while A, B, C have not.

"13. The swerves are unpredictable and their effects are unpredictable as well (for 2 and 4)"

Some effects are predictable: The existence of the swerve enabled in Epicurus' physics the formation of compounds.

"14. If the swerve occurs continually and unpredictably (for 11 and 13), it would be less probable that the same circumstances for a phenomenon repeat (Considering 12). It seems that there will be new circumstances continually and there would be new and different events continually."

This seems to be OK.

"15. The basis for regularities and laws in nature is the repetition of phenomena."

This seems to be OK.

"16. The swerve doesn't permit to explain regularities in nature (for 14 and 15). (From this we can conclude that human behavior is impossible, but let's consider more things.)"

This statement is wrong. We can arrange apparent irregularities in a systematic way and find and explain regularities. In the quantum physical analog, this is expressed in the Ehrenfest theorem: The laws of classical physics for classical quantities are usually valid for expectation values of the corresponding quantum mechanical quantities. (This is my dumbed down version.)

"17. Free Will is the basis for moral responsibility (if a person acts freely, she's responsible for her action). A person can't be responsible for something beyond her control (in a strong sense, as the capacity to have done otherwise, the leeway sense). (For 1)"

The argument in 17 is mixing und blurring different perspectives. Free will and moral responsibility are words of idealism meant for an I identified as a supernatural soul different from the body with which it is only temporarily associated. In Epicurus' philosophy, the soul is not an independent entity on its own but an organ of the living being. In the materialistic context, the meaning of free will and moral responsibility is different. If we do not change the words, we hide the change in definition. With the change in definition, the logic becomes invalid.
We can try to reformulate 17 with the analog words. For free will, agency is an established choice. For moral responsibility, we might choose accountability. With the new words, we might state:
17'. Agency is the basis for accountability (if a person acts, she's responsible for her action). A person can't be responsible for something beyond her control.
E.g., I usually do not cause outbreaks of volcanoes. An outbreak of a volcano will not give me remorse, and no one can reasonably hold me accountable for it.
However, an action which I carry out and which results in unpleasant consequences may give me remorse, and I may be held accountable for it, irrespective of how much leeway I had to do otherwise.

"18. Human behavior is under the unpredictable effects of the swerves (for 8 and 13), so we can imagine at least the following scenario: James intends to do A in order to have certain effects. The swerve can produce events between the intention to do A and the action A, and between the action A and its intended effects. So, sometimes he has success in his intention (he does A), sometimes the action doesn't ocur (because there are unpredictable events that produce other events different to James intention), and sometimes the action A has different effects than those intended by James.
He needs lucky to act and to have the effects he wants."

The swerve may increase the options James has to choose from. It is his choice which option he chooses and not merely a random outcome.

"19. If human choices are not the outcome of their will, their behavior is beyond their control and they're not responsible of it. If the outcomes of actions are beyond reasonable control of the agents, then they're not morally responsible for them (for 17 and 18)."

19 falls apart because it depends on 17 and 18, which have been shown to be invalid.

"20. If agents are not responsible of their actions, then they don't have free will (for 17)."

20 is wrong because agents are always responsible for their actions in Epicurus' philosophy as expressed in 17'.

"21. Agents don't have free will (for Modus tollens of 19 and 20) [Modus tollens is an inference that say that if we have the conditional "If A then B", it is equivalent to "if not B then not A". So if we have "Not B". Then we infer "not A"]"

This is invalid because 19 and 20 do not hold.

"22. Given that 21 is the product of assuming 1 and leads to it's negation, there's a contradiction."

There is no contradiction because 21 is invalid.

"23. If an assumption leads to a contradiction, then we should conclude that it's false. So, the swerve is not the basis for free will."

The contradiction does not exist. The swerve can be the basis for free will/agency as described in the comment to 18.

"Probably you have the impression that determinism is one of the "Four Horsemen", but if you think carefully on a strong indeterminism, you may want to include it as well."

Strong indeterminism would lead to counterproductive skepticism and is foreign to Epicurus' philosophy.

Cassius, I perfectly understand your reasons and the change to a private forum. I'm sorry if my comments have been annoying or impertinent. I don't pretend to be against Epicurean philosophy, nor just discuss for winning an argument or something like that. I'm aware of the importance of frank criticism: the importance of words, arguments, and the fact that we must separate friendship from any discussion.

At the same time, I wouldn't say what I say if I wasn't convinced that my position on free will is at least reasonable and that a connexion with epicurean philosophy can be made, or that Epicurean philosophy can be developed with the arguments I share.

In any case, I respect your considerations as a moderator (which I imagine is not an easy work at all), and I'm really really thankful for your work maintaining the group and spreading epicurean philosophy. My admiration for you and our friendship are superior to my desire to keep talking about this topic. If you want we stop talking about this and talk about something else, it would be ok.

Don, Mischel was not a determinist, he was just a psychologist, he worked specially on personality, but he has a study on self-control in children. He followed these children for years to see if the self-control showed in infancy was correlated to later choices in life. His discoverings are very interesting.

Martin, thank you very much for your analysis, I appreciate it. I hope the next comments make sense to you.

Quote from Martin

Anyone trying to reproduce a chemical reaction can tell you that it is sometimnes not like that because in addition to the known A, B, C, there may be unknown events D, E, F, which combined with A, B, C give a different result because D, E, F have changed while A, B, C have not.

In this observation, I'd like to point out that the premise is not about what we know, but about what it is. I'd appreciate if you tell us if the premise is correct by doing this observation.

Probably we don't know D, E, F, but they are part of the circumstances to make that A, B and C cause the phenomenon. Do you agree that if we had different circumstances or different causes we have a distinct phenomenon or, even, we don't have that phenomenon at all. (For example, if we don't have B either the phenomenon doesn't occur or occur another one.)

Quote from Martin

"16. The swerve doesn't permit to explain regularities in nature (for 14 and 15). (From this we can conclude that human behavior is impossible, but let's consider more things.)"

This statement is wrong. We can arrange apparent irregularities in a systematic way and find and explain regularities. In the quantum physical analog, this is expressed in the Ehrenfest theorem: The laws of classical physics for classical quantities are usually valid for expectation values of the corresponding quantum mechanical quantities. (This is my dumbed down version.)

I forgot to make explicit that 16 is about regularities in macroscopic nature (for 8, if I remember well). According to the argument, we have new events and new circumstances all the time (we don't have the same phenomena because for this we need the same causes (if I'm ok with the last observation), but new causes (the swerves) produce different phenomena). So regularities in the macroscopic level should be less, much less, that those we see. Irregularities should be more than regularities.

Quote from Martin

The argument in 17 is mixing und blurring different perspectives. Free will and moral responsibility are words of idealism meant for an I identified as a supernatural soul different from the body with which it is only temporarily associated. In Epicurus' philosophy, the soul is not an independent entity on its own but an organ of the living being. In the materialistic context, the meaning of free will and moral responsibility is different. If we do not change the words, we hide the change in definition. With the change in definition, the logic becomes invalid.
We can try to reformulate 17 with the analog words. For free will, agency is an established choice. For moral responsibility, we might choose accountability. With the new words, we might state:
17'. Agency is the basis for accountability (if a person acts, she's responsible for her action). A person can't be responsible for something beyond her control.
E.g., I usually do not cause outbreaks of volcanoes. An outbreak of a volcano will not give me remorse, and no one can reasonably hold me accountable for it.
However, an action which I carry out and which results in unpleasant consequences may give me remorse, and I may be held accountable for it, irrespective of how much leeway I had to do otherwise.

Possibly you missed one of the comments in which I made a difference between leeway freedom (the capacity to do otherwise) and source freedom (the capacity to act intentionally) in the free will debate. By reading your analysis of the argument I observed that you took the source sense instead of the leeway sense. The argument is directed to the second one (as I stated in the assumption, 1).

Agency and accountability are compatibilist concepts (this means, that they are compatible with a deterministic scenario, even if we are not in a deterministic scenario). I understand why if we take them, the argument gets invalid and your observations are precise in this aspect. But there would be a change in terms in the middle of the argument, because I started with the incompatibilist free will (leeway sense). (I hope you see that if we introduce the swerve as the basis for free will we are trying to defend the leeway sense, not the source sense.)

I don't see a problem if we take the compatibilist approach for epicurean philosophy, I even suggested it. However, that would do the swerve an unnecessary concept for free will basis. It would be a concept just to talk about the formation of compounds, as you pointed out.

Quote from Martin

The swerve may increase the options James has to choose from. It is his choice which option he chooses and not merely a random outcome.

Another observation is that if we part from agency and accountability, more options (introduced by a very limited and specific swerve) don't add something relevant for moral evaluation. That is, the swerve is unnecessary and irrelevant for accountability. (If this part sounds obscure I can explain more.)

But let's think, as the argument goes in this part, that the swerve occur (and it has macroscopic effects and occurs continually) and we want leeway freedom. The idea is that we need a lot of luck to be successful in our purposes. First, we may have intentions that were formed by uncaused causes; intentions that have nothing to do with you and your life. We will need luck to have the intentions that are according to our personal identity, that is, we need luck in order to the swerves don't produce random intentions.

Second, we may have an intention and not being able to put them in practice in circumstances that permit to do it (because there are new intentions formed by uncaused causes). We need luck in order to the swerves don't produce something that precludes the intentions that are according to you.

Third, we may have an intention to act, do the action and have outcomes (because there are new events caused by the swerves) that would be unreasonable to attribute to the person. We need luck, so that our actions have the intended outcomes.

With these observations in mind, do you think the argument is valid?

Again, thanks for your observations!

As long as several of our regular people remain engaged I am not inclined at all to see the conversation stop, so don't worry about that.

In my own case I am trying to edit the podcast we recorded yesterday as I think it contains some pressing material we also need to deal with, so I better work to keep Joshua in line over there while you guys tend to this.

Just keeping Joshua in line is a full time job so you guess tend to things so we don't need to many planks!!

Don't worry, I'm just chained to my lounge chair reading Cicero at the rate of one sentence per week!

Edit to add;

Quote

Some say that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. I find that an awkward principle because, in my view, allowing good men to do nothing is the purpose of civilization.

-David Mitchell, Unruly; A History of England's Kings and Queens

Quote from Cassius

As Dawkins says "we feel as if we are not deterministic -- and that's all that matters."

Isn't this the position of Epicurus in the Letter to Menoeceus?

"(He thinks that with us lies the chief power in determining events, some of which happen by necessity) and some by chance, and some are within our control; for while necessity cannot be called to account, he sees that chance is inconstant, but that which is in our control is subject to no master, and to it are naturally attached praise and blame." (Bailey translation)

I especially remind a German translation by Laskowsky. He renders the bold print as follows:

"und es an uns stehe, ob wir uns einem Herrn unterwerfen wollen!"

"and it is up to us whether we want to submit to a master!"

Laskowsky's translation might be questioned, but I like his wording very much, because it centers self-reliance and independent personal reasoning. It's in particular important, because I think otherwise we are in danger of appreciating every kind of logic that is approaching us in an beguiling way.

It's how Ca(t/ss)ius Cat would tell us: "And yet others will say that, "No thing can be known!" All the while they will offer their own truth to loan."

Onenski

Quote

"In this observation, I'd like to point out that the premise is not about what we know, but about what it is. I'd appreciate if you tell us if the premise is correct by doing this observation."

If the premise is about what it is, then the premise is correct by definition.
What is does not matter if we do not know it. This might inject a flaw into the logic because we are talking about something in the real world, and logic is notoriously shaky with propositions regarding reality instead of just an idealistic realm of thought.

Quote

"I forgot to make explicit that 16 is about regularities in macroscopic nature (for 8, if I remember well). According to the argument, we have new events and new circumstances all the time (we don't have the same phenomena because for this we need the same causes (if I'm ok with the last observation), but new causes (the swerves) produce different phenomena). So regularities in the macroscopic level should be less, much less, that those we see. Irregularities should be more than regularities."

No! Epicurus was careful to let the swerve just do a minimal change each time. This allows for almost deterministic regularity at the macroscopic level.
In the quantum mechanical analogon, this shows up in the difficulty of observing macroscopic quantum effects. Almost all of the indeterminacies at the microscopic level average out at the macroscopic level. This scales with the size of objects and the simplicity of the applicable laws of nature: We can calculate the path of Earth for millions of years ahead but not where I will be in one hour.

Quote

"Possibly you missed one of the comments in which I made a difference between leeway freedom (the capacity to do otherwise) and source freedom (the capacity to act intentionally) in the free will debate. By reading your analysis of the argument I observed that you took the source sense instead of the leeway sense. The argument is directed to the second one (as I stated in the assumption, 1).

Agency and accountability are compatibilist concepts (this means, that they are compatible with a deterministic scenario, even if we are not in a deterministic scenario). I understand why if we take them, the argument gets invalid and your observations are precise in this aspect. But there would be a change in terms in the middle of the argument, because I started with the incompatibilist free will (leeway sense). (I hope you see that if we introduce the swerve as the basis for free will we are trying to defend the leeway sense, not the source sense.)

I don't see a problem if we take the compatibilist approach for epicurean philosophy, I even suggested it. However, that would do the swerve an unnecessary concept for free will basis. It would be a concept just to talk about the formation of compounds, as you pointed out."

I do aim at leeway freedom. Even though the swerve might not be necessary for the original concept of agency, leeway freedom does considerably strengthen agency beyond the not fully convincing argument for it within hard determinism.
There is no issue in applying agency and accountability beyond compatibilism. (By contrast, applying idealistic concepts in a materialistic philosophy is a guarantee for contradictions.)

"Another observation is that if we part from agency and accountability, more options (introduced by a very limited and specific swerve) don't add something relevant for moral evaluation. That is, the swerve is unnecessary and irrelevant for accountability. (If this part sounds obscure I can explain more.)

But let's think, as the argument goes in this part, that the swerve occur (and it has macroscopic effects and occurs continually) and we want leeway freedom. The idea is that we need a lot of luck to be successful in our purposes. First, we may have intentions that were formed by uncaused causes; intentions that have nothing to do with you and your life. We will need luck to have the intentions that are according to our personal identity, that is, we need luck in order to the swerves don't produce random intentions.

Second, we may have an intention and not being able to put them in practice in circumstances that permit to do it (because there are new intentions formed by uncaused causes). We need luck in order to the swerves don't produce something that precludes the intentions that are according to you.

Third, we may have an intention to act, do the action and have outcomes (because there are new events caused by the swerves) that would be unreasonable to attribute to the person. We need luck, so that our actions have the intended outcomes."

We can force the luck by taking more time to think. If we expect to find the solution to a problem within 10 milliseconds, then we are strongly dependent on luck. By taking hours, days or weeks, we give the swerve a lot more opportunities to inject new options for consideration. This may very well make the swerve relevant for moral evaluation (if we want to go that path at all).

Quote

"With these observations in mind, do you think the argument is valid?"

No, partly because of the preceding responses in this comment. There are other, more fundamental issues than the itemized statements in this discussion between you and me:
Epicurus' philosophy does make some use of logic, but it should not be mistaken for a logical system. Going from axioms and definitions to increasingly sophisticated conclusions works reasonably well within mathematics and maybe some other variants of idealistic philosophy. However, with the exception of mathematical models skillfully chosen to describe reality, concepts of idealism are typically meaningless in materialism. Any proposition containing a meaningless concept is meaningless and has no logical value of true or false. This reminds me Wolfgang Pauli's comment on an inadequate theory that it is not even wrong. Moral responsibility is such a meaningless concept. Its prominent occurrence in the argument is already enough to render the argument invalid. If a materialist accepts the definitions of idealists, his materialistic philosophy can most likely be refuted with logic by deriving contradictions.

Quote from Cassius

Even if someone decides that the disagree so firmly with a key Epicurean tenet that they just can't see calling themselves an Epicurean

I don't *think* this is directed at me, but I'm going to use that as a jumping off point anyway to expand on my comments about the swerve on the public thread. I stand by my assertion (my dogmatic assertion) that there is no such thing as "the swerve" because atoms don't act like Democritus and Epicurus thought they did. The Standard Model doesn't leave a place for "the swerve" although, like I said, a rough analogy can be made to overlay it on indeterminacy at the quantum level... but the overlay certainly doesn't fit well.

However, I also do not see the swerve as a "key Epicurean tenet." It's barely mentioned in the extant texts. There's Lucretius and Cicero, and I don't think Cicero relates the swerve to free will, just the impossibility of uncaused action on the part of atoms.

Quote from Cambridge

"Lucretius presents the most extended consideration we have by an Epicurean of the swerve and freedom (DRN II 251–93). It comes immediately after his argument that the swerve must exist in order for atoms to collide. Atoms naturally fall straight downwards, and they also move because of collisions and entanglements with other atoms. However, there is a third cause of atomic motion, a random swerve to the side by one spatial minimum, which saves us from what Lucretius calls the “decrees of fate”. "

However, if we want to explore "how" the swerve functions within the system of Epicurean philosophy: Lucretius talks about the swerve at the atomic level, but then goes into talking about horses at the starting gate of a race. This excerpt from Lucretius doesn't satisfy me:

Quote

But that man's mind itself in all it does
Hath not a fixed necessity within,
Nor is not, like a conquered thing, compelled
To bear and suffer,- this state comes to man
From that slight swervement of the elements
In no fixed line of space, in no fixed time.

A random swervement seems unlikely to lead to the ability of a "man's mind" to make a choice. If the description here is correct, our choices are random - which seems to me to possibly be worse than determined. If choices are random like the swerve, how could one be held responsible? How could praise and blame be attached to them? We would have no more control over them than random coin flips or rolls of the dice. **Maybe** by analogy.... atoms can swerve "on their own", humans can make choices "on their own"... but I don't see how the random swerve can be the mechanism of free choices.

Quote from Cassius

Incremental advances in "scientific" textbooks do not upend basic philosophical conclusions about the nature of life and death, and yet I agree that Epicurus would be the first to accept and incorporate new discoveries.

I fully agree. My contention is that those "basic philosophical conclusions" that make up Epicurean philosophy include (but aren't limited to):

• The universe is material in nature, made of particles and space.
• There are no gods to provide benefit or punishment. We're on our own.
• Pleasure is the "thing" to which all other "things" point.. The endpoint of all actions if asking "Why do you do that?" is pleasure.
• Things like virtue, honor, knowledge, etc. are instrumental ways to achieve pleasure but they aren't the endpoint.
• We live finite lives. Wishing for eternal living wishes one's life away. Live in the here and now, plan for the future but don't be constrained by it, remember pleasant memories of the past, work to make pleasant memories in the future. This life is all we have.
  • We don't exist. We exist. We exist no longer. No reason to fret.

BUT... when it comes to making pronouncements about atoms and physics, we leave the specific details in the past and work with what we have now. Talk of "atoms and void" is certainly acceptable shorthand for a material universe. But if we insist on atoms falling "straight down" and randomly swerving the minutest distance, we will fail to translate Epicurus's core true meaning into a modern vernacular. We cannot be constrained to interpret the philosophy as if we are living in a world 2,300 years old or even 1,900 years old. My contention is that we do Epicurus's insight and foresight and genius a disservice if we do that. I truly believe his philsophy is evergreen and THE most applicable to a modern world, in contrast to the Stoics and their Logos (conveniently left out by modern followers of that philsophy). I think we can re-interpret and update some of Epicurus's terminology and physics and understanding of "how things work" without losing any of the vitality and applicability of his philosophy.

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.