what did epicurean actually mean by free will ? i think the article on the main page is confusing determinism with fatalism
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Hello UnPaid_Landlord. How so? Happy to hear your thoughts.
You might find some at least partial response in our recent podcast and notes for Episodes 257 and 258.
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In the meantime:
Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.
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And of course much much more which we can't hope to dissect in detail in the opening article. The practical affect of the issue is whether a human being has any control over his or future at all, and I would say that that is what Epicurus was addressing by referring mostly to the term "necessity" but also dealing with "fortune" and "fate" as well.
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after all there is no emphirical scientific evidence on either side so we don't really know for sure, there are only arguements, better to think you are in control and honestly try and then give up and be passive.
I don't have a full and complete explanation for you but this phrasing helps emphasize to me that we need to talk more here on the forum about what it really means to "know for sure" and the relationship of that to "empirical scientific evidence."
Is everything always simply a matter of argument, or when do we shift our opinion so that we hold that we "know for sure" that something is true?
Do we wait for "empirical scientific" opinions to be issued, as if we are doctors waiting for an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association to be issued? And if fact if JAMA does issue an article, how many times have even they changed their opinions in the past? And if we in fact in our clinical fact find success with a treatment that has not yet been "approved" by the JAMA, do we stop our treatment of our patients and wait for a go-ahead from a published empiral scientific opinion journal?
I think the answer is found in the direction of "all sensations are true" in that the ultimate standard for us as humans involves trusting the senses as our ultimate tests of truth. If we sense the same thing over and over again under repeatable conditions, then we hold it to be true for us regardless of what any number of experts might say that "the science" really is.
And for example what I sense over and over again is that I can choose to eat, or not to eat, one more bite of food. I know that there are many influences that led me to be hungry and the food to be available and for me to assess what is a proper thing to eat, but in the end I sense that I have the mental ability to choose to eat one more bite or not.
And that's sufficient for me to conclude that Epicurus was correct: some things are under our control, some are not, and some happen purely by accident.
Once we agree that there's such a division then there is plenty of room for discussion about the causes that led up to a particular decision. The problem is not that past influences don't exist, but that the hard determinists deny that we as conscious organisms have any role to play in any decisionmaking. And if you conclude that to be the case, you've got a cascade of negative logical and psychological effects that follow.
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Let me extend my doctor / JAMA example. Do I think that there might be circumstances in which a doctor found in his clinical practice that some treatment invariably worked, but held back from prescribing it because JAMA did not approve?
Absolutely yes such circumstances could exist. Maybe the doctor, for example, is president of JAMA, and is convinced that great benefit comes from JAMA being respected, and the treatment is for a minor condition, and the patient is a news reporter trying to undermine JAMA......
The point of this post is that I think that Epicurean philosophy cannot as a general abstraction lay down blanket rules about specific actions for all people at all times and all places. It is clear in the philosophy that sometimes we chose pain, sometimes we consider what appears to be good to be bad when we add up all the consequences.
The first and major contribution of Epicurean philosophy is that while it can give you suggestions in how to proceed in your decisionmaking, ultimately the points that are certain is that when you add up your consequences, DON"T think that you are going to be rewarded or punished after death, and DON'T think that you need to worry about appeasing or being punished by supernatural forces in this life, and DO realize that in the end there's only one thing given to you by Nature for you to take and analyze and then make your decisions based on. That one thing is the faculty of pleasure and pain, which applies to everything you experience, and it's up to you to analyze *all* the consequences of your actions and make your decisions accordingly.
There's of course a lot more, but the basic view of the universe informs how *you* will evaluate pleasure and pain, and getting that basic view of the universe right is essential.
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I take the doctrines on Free Will more practically as you did in the last comment Cassius:
"All sensations are true" style argument...
1) I percieve myself and others to have some degree of "Free will" though obviously within what I have observed of human behavior and capabilties, as well as some things behave by chance and other things are indeed fated. My perceptions must be true and it is really the only way I can proceed with life reasonably.
And more practically and from my own experience of leaving a job that felt impossible to leave:
2) I should not use the notion of Fate, determination and destiny to refrain from altering my course in life to pursue something more pleasant or otherwise less painful. Making a big change can certainly feel like an overturning of everything some times when yours and others' routine and sentiments seem settled in and do not want to be disrupted. You may resign yourself to fate or God's will or what have you; but none of that is actually the case.
This may seem a bit low-brow and I suppose it is, but my Epicurean philosophizing has recently taken a huge turn towards the notion of philosophizing "relationally" or with other folks and their desires, emotions and reasoning in the mix. If their perceptions meet your perceptions and contrast, there must be a new way forward - perhaps not being attached to outcomes but rather to fulfilling mutual desires - that we can create. I only take this approach, or describing it as "relational" from the closing remarks in a Catherine Wilson article. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone done the rabbit track of viewing this sort of relationship reasoning as an expression of Epicurean philosophizing.
