Philosophy is naturally anti-social. — bert1

A distinctly modern notion. The ancient philosophers would have argued that philosophy simply cannot be done in isolation and without cross-examination. It was the image of Descartes shut up in his room that started the trend towards believing that philosophy could be done alone. But even then there were letters containing objections and encouragements traded back and forth before any of his works were completed.

...in the latter, progress of that sort would've been made in having reached that conclusion, and the problem would've been dissolved. — Sapientia

I'm pretty sure we're in agreement here, but I would like to clarify. I take it you are saying that even in these unsatisfying cases (when we think the question must have an answer but is indefinitely unanswerable for us), we must still admit that some progress has been made. This I agree with. I don't think that progress will entirely mitigate the dissatisfaction, however, insofar as we still think the question must have an answer (just not one we can obtain, even if we can still rule out a few). I also don't think that this counts as resolving the problem. Though I suppose it would tell us how much of a resolution is possible, which would at least be enough to let us (as you say) move on to other problems. So it's a resolution of sorts to the inquiry, insofar as the inquiry might end (though not a resolution in the sense that it is completed).

I didn't say philosophy cannot have any practical applications. — John

And I neither said nor implied that you did.

The suggestion was merely that it does not have anything like the very obvious practical applications that science does. — John

And that was what I was disagreeing with. Ethics strikes me as an extremely obvious practical application of philosophy—and, indeed, one of the oldest practical applications thereof. That philosophy is linked to ethics and living well goes back further than even ancient Greece.

In any case you would need to provide an argument to support the contention that "living well" should be counted as a practical matter, even if it were accepted that philosophy inevitably helps with that. — John

It would seem to be a practical matter by definition. Living well has to do with what we actually do in our everyday lives. One cannot live well merely in theory because living is something we do in the world. Thus one must put wisdom into practice in order to live well. Indeed, the technical use of the word "practical" within philosophy was invented precisely for this sort of pursuit. To deny that living well is a practical matter is to misunderstand the very words one is using.

How is one to determine whether a philosophical problem cannot be satisfactorily resolved? — Sapientia

I agree that this is a real issue for those who would decry the study of problems they have deemed unresolvable, and I have serious doubts about many claims that are made along those lines. But I also think the objection to engaging with such problems can be largely diffused by pointing out that it doesn't necessarily matter whether the problems themselves are resolvable so long as engaging with them at least provides other benefits.

And even if it cannot be, hasn't it still been paradoxically resolved to a worthwhile degree of satisfaction? — Sapientia

I think it might depend on how we come to this conclusion. If the problem is one that we think must have an answer, but not one we can find, there is bound to be a certain residual dissatisfaction with stopping there. If, on the other hand, we declare it unresolvable because it turns out that the problem was ill-conceived in the first place, I think you are correct that dissolving the problem counts as a sort of resolution.

But I don't just think that progress is possible, I think that progress is made with each and every conclusion that one reaches or even approaches. — Sapientia

This is an interesting idea. It mirrors something I've argued before, which is that every dead end we discover is a mark of progress because we often have to figure out 10,000 ways that don't work before we figure out the one that might. Learning that x won't work lets us put ¬x into the pool of accumulated data.

I did not know this was an option. Good to know. — darthbarracuda

Options > Edit Profile > Show Ratings? > No

Anonymity would be a good idea if the single, unanimous goal of this forum was to conduct formal philosophical discussions. — darthbarracuda

I still don't think this is true. In addition to the reasons I have already presented, I think it would make longer conversations difficult to follow. We often find ourselves needing to refer back to previous points we have made (perhaps to build on something we have already said, or to clear up a misinterpretation, or some other reason). But even if this were true, I think the point you make about community is strong enough to counterbalance whatever we lose by attaching usernames to our posts.

You seem to be stating that there is progress being made in addressing problems which have no satisfactory resolution. It just doesn't involve resolving those problems. — Ciceronianus the White

Correct.

Well if that's the case then it's clear I'm wrong. — Ciceronianus the White

Which was more or less my point. 8-)

*masturbates furiously* — The Great Whatever

I accept your apology.

...these issues largely come down to taste so I didn't intend to present an argument just some thoughts. — shmik

No problem. I agree that taste is going to be a large part of it.

Of course I don't think that we should post without names. The point was that in a forum context we can't reach the ideal of looking only at the content of the post and maybe we shouldn't be aiming for it. — shmik

I'm not sure we can achieve this in any context. It's less a problem of format and more a problem of human nature. So I take your point, but I do think there are smaller and larger influences, and that we make the most progress by focusing on the larger influences—especially if they can be removed with minimal loss.

If the point of likes and karma is to create some positive incentive to post or some positive reinforcement for doing so, allowing that without the possibility of negative feedback encourages a maximization of posting at the expense of quality control, because there are no negative repercussions for 'bad' posts, only positive repercussions for 'good' ones. — The Great Whatever

First, the antecedent of your conditional is false. That's not the point of likes (and there would be no accumulated karma score if option 3 succeeds), so you can't get any sort of modus ponens argument going here. The consequent also doesn't follow from the antecedent: allowing likes without dislikes doesn't remove the possibility of negative feedback. It just affects what form that feedback must take. Without anonymous dislikes, one must actually go through the trouble of formulating a counterargument.

Having only likes and no dislikes is maybe the worst possible option, but nothing would be best. — The Great Whatever

Do you, perchance, have an argument for this? It might be helpful to actually defend your view (not just to get your way, but also to enlighten others).

I know there have been a lot of articles written about the factual errors behind Rubio's statement, but here's a nice (and short!) piece from Neil Sinhababu's new blog about the long-term consequences of the attitude behind it.

The point being there are always going to be elements which affect how a post is taken, outside of the post itself. We have the names on the post, we get to see how other people react to the post in their comments, we see how people react to other contributors in general. — shmik

Sure, but I take it that the issue here is about undue influences, which context (the general category into which each of your examples falls) does not seem to be. With all due respect to Foucault, knowing who one is conversing with can be helpful when it provides information about background assumptions (I don't have to ask why Sally assumes x when I have previously read her argument for it). This isn't to say that his idea doesn't have merit—a bit of context-free reading can be an excellent exercise. But the shortcuts allowed by names aren't always bad, and are often helpful.

As for seeing other reactions, maybe I think y is a good reply to x until I see someone else break it down as part of their explanation for why response z is better. This might prove enlightening while also preventing me from wasting effort on defending y. Alternatively, it might help me formulate y', which is an improved version of y that overcomes the objections motivating z. So all in all, we have an improved level of discourse.

And of course, seeing how others respond gives me an idea of the forum's norms and what sort of responses are expected. In a forum with high standards then, this again raises the level of discourse. And even in a forum without high standards, it at least helps bring the level of discourse to the appropriate level. None of these are undue or undesirable effects, so they don't seem as objectionable as a reputation system.

One possible objection here might be that certain names will inevitably gather certain reputations within the community anyway (and certainly within the minds of individual members). Thus a person with a strong reputation might receive undue deference and a person with a weak reputation might receive undue umbrage. It might also act as filter such that one occasionally reads a bad post by Famous Frank while ignoring an excellent post by Newbie Nicholas. This, I take it, is in the background of Foucault's proposal.

The first issue strikes me as more of a problem than the second. However, completely anonymous systems often end up with members treating everyone else as Newbie Nicholas rather than showing the sort of restraint they might muster for dealing with Famous Frank. So complete anonymity might actually exacerbate the problem more than using names would.

However, this strikes me as less of a problem in a community like this than it might be in the field of published work. For one, our biggest filter is more likely to be in the form of which discussions we read and participate in. I doubt many people read individual posts at random. Instead, they are reading all new posts to a discussion they have decided to follow. This is different from a situation where there might be ten books on topic A, and so you have to pick whether to read the one by Established Esther or Debut Debbie.

I had this idea a while ago that if you took a normal poster and started 'rewarding' them when they were a bit short with others, sprinkling in some dislikes when they were helpful, you could eventually turn them into an arsehole. — shmik

But how would one control for the natural tendency of the internet to do precisely the same thing without provocation? ;)

...is there any way that perhaps we could make post counts invisible? — Pneumenon

I have no idea if that is possible, but I agree with @Baden that it's not nearly as big an issue on a forum like this where you have to go to someone's profile to see their post count.

"Likes" and "dislikes" have always struck me as importantly different, especially in the context of philosophy. There are times when someone posts something that says everything you think needs to be said. Having "likes" gets rid of the temptation to post "me too" responses, which are essentially empty. "Dislikes," meanwhile, make it all too easy to express disagreement without having to present any actual objection. This is a classic case of enjoying the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought, and it is quite unphilosophical. For these reasons, I find option three to be the most preferable.

Option two would be my second choice because it seems to me that the reputation system is unproductive enough to undercut the value of likes. I've seen sites that run largely on reputation, and it affects the behavior of everyone on them—including, and sometimes especially, those who claim most that they couldn't care less. It can also be discouraging to those who are newer in a way that a simple system of likes typically is not. Anyone can get a few likes with a strong post, after all. But a reputation system tracks seniority as much as—and often more than—ability.

Good point. Here are some readings to get us started:

To try to rephrase my thinking here: If we don't know we are correct (as in, we are not omniscient), then is it reasonable to hold a position as truth? — darthbarracuda

I don't see why not. You seem to be assuming that certainty is necessary for knowledge (a position known as "infallibilism"). But why should we accept this standard for knowledge? Furthermore, is it even possible that there could be an argument for infallibilism that isn't self-defeating—particularly given the fact that you are also assuming that nothing can be known with certainty?

And notice that the Pyrrhonist response won't work here. Either the Pyrrhonist assumes infallibilism (which, besides not getting us out of the problem, is inconsistent with his Pyrrhonism) or he has no way of pushing the argument against those who are not infallibilists. So if one is a fallibilist, and therefore holds that knowledge does not require certainty, then it does not seem that you have presented any reason to think it is not rational to have beliefs.

Sure, the fallibilist must always be open to the possibility that he is mistaken. But that's not a bug, it's a feature. It is a bit of epistemic humility that forces us to remember how high a standard certainty really is. Nevertheless, belief itself can be rational—and we might even think that it makes sense for practical purposes to sometimes say that we know things (even if our knowledge claims are always subject to revision).

First of all, fewer philosophers, not less. It doesn't speak well of Rubio's education that his education didn't prepare him to speak well. Also, I notice he isn't volunteering to give up his political science degree for a chance to retrain as an electrician. I guess this is a "do as I say, not as I do" situation.

Anyway, I do support vocational education. Not everyone needs a traditional college education, and Rubio is correct that we shouldn't stigmatize it. But that's about as far as I can go in agreeing with him. Whether it's Rubio taking aim at philosophy majors or Santorum pointing out that there are fewer job openings calling for philosophers than there are calling for welders, both seem to be missing the fact that a traditional college education gives one more flexibility than a vocational school.

Majoring in philosophy doesn't mean you can only respond to job listings calling for a philosopher. In fact, an education in philosophy typically inculcates skills that can be adapted to a wide variety of professions. This wasn't as valuable 50 years ago when people still expected to stay in the same job (or at least field) for life, but it is far more desirable in the modern, shifting economy where your job description can change overnight even if you haven't changed positions. Having a broadly applicable skill base makes it easier to change course, whether voluntarily or otherwise.

Nor does majoring in philosophy prevent you from majoring in something else as well. I try to get all of my students to double major (either in a language or a specialized field linked to their interests; I also like to recommend computer science and mathematics if their proclivities lean at all in that direction as they are also broadly applicable in the modern world). Statistics also show that philosophy majors have an easier time of getting into medical school than biology majors (indeed, I have a former student who is now a very successful international doctor), and it is well known that philosophy has long been the best way of getting into law school.

Welders are important. That society looks down on those who perform the basic labor needed to keep things together—literally, in this case—is an unfortunate reflection of what we value (see also: teachers). And since they will always be needed, the fact that the vocational training they receive isn't as flexible as a traditional college education isn't terribly worrying. But this doesn't mean we have to denigrate traditional academics to build up vocational education. If no one's a farmer, we all starve. If no one's a doctor, we all die of the plague. And if no one's a philosopher, we all fall for the lines that politicians try to sell us every time their lips move.

Maybe if Rubio had taken a class in critical thinking, he wouldn't spout such nonsense. Welders teach that, right?

Point taken. But my impression is philosophy isn't primarily devoted to making us better thinkers through the consideration of unsolvable problems. — Ciceronianus the White

I never said that this was a primary goal of philosophy. The point was twofold. First, contrary to your claim that it is hard to speak of progress being made when the problem addressed is not subject to a satisfactory resolution, I say that there is progress being made. It's just not where you expected it to be. Second, insofar as you are endorsing the Dewey quote you posted ("philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men"), I am pointing out that addressing such problems plays an important role in enabling philosophers to deal with the problems of men. Thus you don't really have any grounds for objecting to such pursuits.

The difference with science is that it generates new possibilities for technological inventiveness, and thus possesses very obvious practical applications. — John

And philosophy helps us to learn more and more about how to live well, which also has very obvious practical applications. The technologies it refines are the oldest kind of all: cognitive, linguistic, moral, and political.

As for the more abstract, there is no problem with them, but if the "problem" addressed is one that isn't subject to a satisfactory resolution, even to a reasonable degree of probability, it's hard to even speak of progress being made. — Ciceronianus the White

Sometimes the progress being made is in us. Getting a better grip on an unsolvable problem makes us better thinkers, which prepares us to better solve the problems of man.

This is why we give grants to theoretical physicists and not philosophers. — darthbarracuda

There are plenty of grants for philosophers—even for metaphysicians!—and they don't all come from the NEH. Off the top of my head, there's also the American Council of Learned Societies, the Templeton Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

For anyone who is still terribly worried about the wording of the paradox, feel free to substitute the following (which changes nothing):

1. Pinocchio's nose grows within ten seconds of completing an utterance if and only if he claims any falsehood as part of that utterance.
2. Pinocchio claims, "my nose will grow within ten seconds of completing this utterance."

This won't do. It is declared a contradiction only because a paradox arises. When you then explain the paradox as arising because there is a contradiction taken to be true, you have rather gone in a circle. — unenlightened

I don't think this is correct. That liar sentences (and variations on them) contain contradictions is a diagnosis. In that sense, it's true that such sentences are declared contradictions only because an apparent paradox arises: if they didn't present any sort of problem, there would be nothing to diagnose and resolve. But plenty of paradoxes are resolved without any declarations of contradiction, and plenty of sentences are declared contradictions even when no paradox arises. It's just that in this case, the problem is—according to this solution—that we have a sentence that is a contradiction without appearing as such. Only on analysis can we see what the sentence is really saying. So again, it is true that the diagnosis says the paradox only arises in this case because someone tries to understand a necessarily false sentence as true, but that's not circular. It's just one diagnosis: liar sentences are false because they are contradictions, but they give rise to an apparent paradox because some people are fooled by their syntax and don't realize that they are contradictions (and thus think that anyone who says they are false is also committed to saying they are true, which appears paradoxical).

This is where the justification is missing. The leap from logical impossibility (e.g., that the Pinocchio paradox demonstrates a logical contradiction in causing someone's nose to both grow and not grow) to the ontological impossibility of a world with simultaneous contradictory truth-values. — Soylent

This isn't a point that you will see defended very often because it is generally thought that logical possibility is—by definition—a stricter criterion than metaphysical possibility, which is a stricter criterion than physical possibility. Therefore, that something is physically impossible does not entail that it is metaphysically impossible, and that it is metaphysically impossible does not entail that it is logically impossible. But anything that is logically impossible is metaphysically impossible, and anything that is metaphysically impossible is physically impossible. One can take issue with this, of course, but many would argue that this is just how the terms are used.

My own view is that this point cannot be used against the dialetheist, who after all agrees with the Priorian (contra all other interested parties) that liar sentences are disguised contradictions. The difference between them is just how to respond to this fact. The dialetheist says there are true contradictions, while the Priorian says contradictions are necessarily false so there never was a real paradox to begin with (liar sentences are just unproblematically false sentences that people incorrectly take to be problematically false because they have misanalyzed them). But nothing prevents the dialetheist from claiming that true contradictions go "all the way to the top," so to speak. That is, the dialetheist is not restricted to saying that true contradictions are only physically or metaphysically possible. And if that's right, then Eldridge-Smith should have stuck to the original line that the Pinocchio paradox showed why the Priorian tradition is better than other classical logic solutions and found a different way of going after dialetheism.

(Indeed, he could even rest on the argument that just having a successful classical logic solution is enough insofar as the only real motivation for dialetheism is the lack of such a solution. Such an argument only goes so far, of course, but it is at least dialectically useful. A committed dialetheist can remain a dialetheist but is left without reasons why anyone else should be a dialetheist if they are not already attracted to the view.)

Others, like the old PF, didn't mind multiple consecutive posts at all as far as I could tell. — bert1

This is more or less correct regarding PF. Especially if one was giving elaborate responses to several different people, a post for each person would generally be considered acceptable. There was a tool for merging posts, however, and it would be used for less sensible sequences of posts. For example, there was a member who used to make a separate post for each individual quote to which he was responding (often leading to six posts in a row directed to the same interlocutor). Or if someone had six one-line responses to six separate interlocutors, they would get merged rather than be left as six separate posts. It's a bit of a judgment call, but not a difficult one to make. I imagine a similar practice will emerge here if the issue arises. But in general, it seems reasonable to allow consecutive posts by default and only merge them if the number gets unreasonable (which appears to be the current policy given @Baden's comments).

The Pinocchio paradox is basically a variation on the liar paradox, and you are more or less adopting the Bradwardine-Prior response. I agree that it is the correct response (though Graham Priest took issue with me over it during his PF visit). Ultimately, this tradition claims that liar sentences are contradictions in disguise. It's just a bit easier to prove formally with the Pinocchio paradox.

There is a contradiction here. — Sir2u

Only superficially, I think. Pinocchio's claim is "my nose grows now." It is only as a linguistic convention that @Michael is using the future tense to discuss that claim from a perspective outside the event of its utterance. A bit infelicitous perhaps, but nothing that cannot be solved with a dash of charity.

How dare you bring this back on topic! ;)

But yes, I agree. According to the Epicurean, the academic approach is instrumentally valuable in maximizing the therapeutic effects of philosophy. So they practice both, but the medical approach reigns supreme.

When it comes to the police, I think the situation is very much the same as with politicians: 90% of them give the other 10% a bad name. And indeed, like @Moliere mentioned, increasing militarization seems to be driving a lot of the problem. But I think it goes beyond just equipping the police as if they were soldiers. There is also more and more of a military mentality behind policing in the United States. One of the things that strikes me in various defenses of the police is how often fatal incidents are referred to as "combat situations."

Now, the police are still human beings and citizens of whichever state they serve, so they retain all of the normal rights to self-preservation. And when the police face an armed individual, it certainly counts as a self-defense situation. But a self-defense situation is importantly different from a combat situation. In a self-defense situation, the aim is to stop the threat. In a combat situation, the aim is to kill. Stopping a threat is consistent with everyone involved escaping unscathed. It is consistent with diffusing a situation, or recognizing that there was simply a misunderstanding. Not so with combat.

Police officers, who are charged with protecting and serving their community, ought to take themselves as defenders rather than combatants. If they are going to be protecting a community (even if that sometimes means protecting it from its own members), they have to be part of that community. Instead, they behave like an invading force. And just like @BitterCrank says, that's the way the system was designed. From the perspective of those giving the orders, it's not a bug—it's a feature. This is why many people argue that there can be no such thing as a "good cop." The very decision to join the police is seen as siding with the oppressors. And on that view, it makes very little difference whether any given officer joined out of malice or ignorance.

But conservative measures when it comes to the taking of life are surely what we want of our security forces. — Baden

Indeed. And as a martial artist, what often stands out to me is that I—a private citizen—seem to be not only better trained in how to handle some (emphasis on some) of these situations, but expected to show more control in these situations than a police officer. It seems there are failures at multiple levels here: in the hiring process, the training process, and perhaps even the assignment process. As money gets tighter, it becomes harder to hire qualified candidates and budget gaps are filled with (military-grade) equipment rather than training. Then officers are taught to be suspicious of everyone rather than to learn about and integrate with the community in which they will be serving (particularly bizarre when you consider this would make threat assessments much easier, and threat assessment is precisely what so much of an officer's training focus on). And perhaps there is an important mistake being made in which assignments are given to novices and which to officers with more experience. Maybe beat cop isn't the entry-level position that it gets treated as.

The police do public relations stunts like that in order to have a good report with the communities they police. — Moliere

And while such stunts might be fine so far as they help officers integrate with their communities, it often seems to be nothing more than public relations (as you say). And the public they are trying to impress doesn't seem to be the one they are policing. In fact, I'm far more impressed by the officer who diffused a situation with a dance-off (and then refused media attention) than by any police media event.

I'm not sure I know of a solution, or one that doesn't result in me reading a bunch of rubbish. — invizzy

Well, you obviously can't be too offended by rubbish if you're reading Sam Harris. ;)

But I suppose the thing to keep in mind is that you can't know whether or not something is rubbish until you read it. Furthermore, the main prejudice to overcome is the idea that anything you dislike or disagree with is rubbish. When we read a work of philosophy according to the principle of charity, we should always come away with an understanding of how a reasonable person might hold the position defended therein. This is particularly true in the case of the "greats." Even if you ultimately disagree with them, failing to understand how they achieved that status is a failure in the reader and not the author. This isn't to say that all frustration will vanish. But understanding breeds at least a certain kind of appreciation.

One of the most important parts of my development as a philosopher was a class I took on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in graduate school. We read the entire work, summarized large portions of it for graded assignments (reducing 50 pages down to three is a nightmarish task that I recommend everyone try sometime), and were forbidden to disagree with Kant on our final exam or in our term paper (because it was a class in the history of philosophy; anyone can take potshots from the future). So we had to understand what Kant wrote and find something good in it (or defend it from some important criticism). Several of us were even assigned paper topics on precisely the issues where we had shown the most disagreement with Kant in class. These days, the students would revolt at this sort of imposition. I was tempted to myself. But it was wonderfully beneficial in the end.

I more or less agree with this but I wonder how much freedom we actually have on this point. Can we really know what judgments of ours are a result of prejudices? And aren't all our judgments prejudiced to some degree just by virtue of who we are? — Baden

Sure, but we don't need to adopt any sort of radical doxastic voluntarism in order to think that our prejudices can be overcome (or at least mitigated). Slow habituation can do the job, even if we are dragged kicking and screaming all the way. And of course, a good teacher can be rather helpful.

It certainly may be I'm simply unaware of those analytic philosophers who claim to have ascertained our fundamental nature, or that of the universe. — Ciceronianus the White

I realize that you were responding to @The Great Whatever, but for my own part, there's a reason I specified the analytic tradition. Thanks to how ill-defined the term is, we get to include the likes of Plato and Descartes.

Which one didn't? Carnap is the analytic philosopher par excellence, and his magnum opus was The Logical Structure of the World... — The Great Whatever

Alfred North Whitehead comes to mind as well.

Like @Baden says, it's common for people who aren't familiar with something to think that its practitioners are wasting their time or that they know all the answers. Sometimes it takes a bit of experience to understand what's at stake in certain debates. But of course, philosophy is supposed to break us of this habit. What, then, explains how an MA student makes this sort of grievous mistake? Surely he would not have been equally dismissive of, say, David Lewis' equally expansive metaphysics simply on the grounds that it is difficult to understand. As such, it seems relevant that this video is about Schopenhauer. Even in philosophy departments, anything considered to be outside of the analytic tradition is often considered a fair target for casual derision (unless, of course, that department does not focus on analytic philosophy). It's an unfortunate prejudice, and one that remains firmly entrenched even among many who ought to know better.

Unless, perhaps, they are razor blade cookies.

One problem here is that there are many things that go by the name "nihilism." On the one hand, there are specific or thesis nihilisms (that is, nihilisms with respect to a particular concept or claim). One might be a nihilist about morality and claim that there are no moral truths. Alternatively, one might be a nihilist about truth and argue that there are no objective and/or absolute truths (or perhaps even no truths at all). There is also existential nihilism, which is the view that life has no intrinsic meaning. This list is not exhaustive.

Then there is what might be called movement or ideological nihilism, which is a broader worldview that embraces several (and, in more radical strains, all) of the specific nihilisms mentioned above and draws pessimistic conclusions about life, the universe, and everything from them. To hold one of the specific nihilisms, or even more than one, does not automatically make one an ideological nihilist. It all depends on how one reacts to the specific nihilisms one embraces. One need not be a pessimist just because one embraces a specific nihilism or two.

For example, a moral nihilist rejects the idea that there are moral truths but may yet think that we can nonetheless invent a replacement that functions as well or better than the traditional moral edifice. Similarly, one might accept the existential nihilism but reject the pessimistic conclusions that ideological nihilists typically draw from it (this being the characteristic feature of existentialism). Thus it would be a mistake to conflate the specific nihilisms with the broader ideological nihilism that some see as the logical consequence of those views.

I am not aware of any sustained discussion of this point. It's more of an observation that emerges from the various known historical facts (such as Epicurus' prolific output of highly technical works, which are obscure enough to require significant training to understand, and his synoptic works, which are meant for more casual adherents). Furthermore, Epicurus' own Letter to Herodotus seems to begin and end with an acknowledgment of this fact about the Epicurean community (and, indeed, Epicurus seems to say therein that his later letters were written precisely due to this fact).

That said, Diskin Clay has written extensively about the Epicurean community. And while his work is more sociological (concerning the role of Epicureanism's quasi-religious elements in promoting social cohesion among its adherents), one of the points that emerges from his work is that Epicurus instituted these elements as a way of generating solidarity within the community (which was far less homogenous than those of the other schools).

(Having just seen your edit: yes, it is more a matter of connecting the dots than any explicit policy or structure within the school.)

Given that this site isn't high up in the list of google results, how will this forum attract new members? Can it move higher up the list, and if so, is that achievable? — Sapientia

I don't want to disregard the importance of new members. But one very important lesson that this site should take from PF is that curating a site's membership is just as important as growing it (indeed, perhaps more important than growing it).

Note that it's The Philosophy Forum, singular. I always hated that plural nonsense. — jamalrob

To each their own, but it wasn't nonsense. PF is made up of several forums (e.g., ethics, metaphysics, feedback), some of which had subforums (e.g., logic and math homework, politics, religion). These forums were also arranged in sections (philosophy, not quite philosophy, and off-topic). Calling sites that are arranged this way forums is actually quite typical in communities that devote themselves to multiple topics or that restrict certain areas to specific topics.

I want to complicate Nussbaum's reading of Epicurus (or perhaps your reading of Nussbaum's reading of Epicurus). It is frequently missed that there were in fact two paths through the garden. One was for people who just wanted the cure. The other was for those who wanted to be able to administer the cure. The first set was given the arguments. The second set was trained in the arguments. This leaves us with a community comprised of both "lay Epicureans" (ordinary citizens who bought into the Epicurean doctrines) and "professional Epicureans" (i.e., Epicurean philosophers who spread the doctrines and defended them from objections).

In part, this is a reflection of something almost unheard of in the Hellenistic period: the Epicureans did not believe that a professional philosopher was better off than a layperson with correct beliefs. While it is true that Epicurus enjoined everyone to study philosophy (since one cannot live well without wisdom), he did not hold that there was any special blessedness in the life of the professional philosopher. An Epicurean farmer could be just as happy as an Epicurean philosopher according to the doctrines. The only difference between them was their job.

Note, however, that this fits in well with the medical analogy. A society with no doctors is certainly at risk of being wiped out by disease, but a society with no farmers would be wiped out by starvation. The doctor is important to the society, but not so important that everyone should be doctors to the exclusion of anyone being a farmer (or a cobbler, or a carpenter, et cetera). So philosophy is there to cure the soul, but your soul isn't all that needs attending to. And anyone who doesn't just want to take the philosopher's word for it is free to study the craft more seriously. Whether the relationship is master-pupil or teacher-student is entirely up to each individual and what they want out of Epicureanism.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
—Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?