Since the historical basis of the seperate bathrooms was the result of the sexual distinctions and not the gender based distinctions, you cannot allow the gender based women access simply because of the happenstance of their both now using the term "woman." — Hanover

We already do and have done so, because the "check" at the bathroom door is a social check, not a biological one. Even if you put "XX" and "XY", these will simply work as substitutes for "Woman" and "Man", and the people who "pass" will get to use the bathroom they want to. I think it's always been a gender-based social enforcement, even if we used the language of sex.

how do people who don't get anxious cope with not knowing? — Ludwig V

I'm not sure that many people live entirely without anxiety, so hopefully this clarifies: my confusion. Anxiety seems pretty common to me. I'm not sure it's as universal as the existentialists stress, but I'd go as far as to say it's a cross-cultural and cross-species phenomena. It's reasonable to tie the phenomena of anxiety to the evolutionary story, as you do.

A possible path might be curiosity, but I'm not sure that's a passion as much as a habit or character trait (and many a scientist would fit "curious" when in fact "anxious" applies, hence my hesitation to name it a passion). Even with a joyful attitude towards the unknown I don't think this is a total lack of anxiety, either. The joy of discovery works as kind of temper to the anxiety of not-knowing, to continue a theme. While there's a certain amount of anxiety there's also joy in finding out things -- but what I remain uncertain of is why some things I don't know about cause anxiety, and other things I don't know about don't.

For instance, it's not like I worry that I don't know how many grains of sand Mars contains. And with a far out fact like that I'm sure we could come up with all kinds of irrelevant questions which ask after answers but clearly aren't related to the anxiety of not-knowing. We worry about a small portion of all that we do not know.

The part that's curious to me is that often times knowing doesn't really cure the anxiety. The vicious circle you mention can spiral even with knowledge because the imagination is captivated by something more than just the knowledge (or, rather, the lack thereof).

So, yes -- it makes sense to want to know. I didn't mean to be that obtuse. :D That's a natural desire which helps us cope with the world around us. Only that it's curious that it does do so, given how there's so much we do not know (and it can even be fun to not know), and a lot of what we do not know doesn't matter to us, and how even after we know the imagination can continue its anxiety spiral regardless of that desire for knowledge being satiated.

All off-topic to atheist dogma, but I found the topic interesting to continue. Sorry un.

Yes and no. By which I mean that, as well as provoking and inspiring us, they sometimes puzzle or frighten us. Though, to be honest, I'm not at all sure what "understanding" means. Certainly, knowing about my hormonal system explains nothing, in the relevant sense. — Ludwig V

Right!

And so the ancient wisdom from the religious traditions still has an appeal because it deals with this non-factual understanding that's hard to really articulate.

For the modern Humean such stories are thought to be nothing but falsity, but this non-factual understanding is a part of their attraction, I think.

The flexibility of all this is quite tiresome. Philosophers, at least, regarded the subjective ("introspection") as preferable because they thought it was immune to error - the same reason as their preference for mathematics. Aiming for something objective meant risk to them - something to be avoided at all costs. — Ludwig V

For fear of being tiresome (but admitting that I hold things flexible and open, and it can be tiresome): Is that not the desire to be invulnerable?

Here the philosophers cast the objective as vulnerable, the subjective as invulnerable -- so we have a certitude from which we can build towards the objective. Or vice-versa, for thems who think that measurement is invulnerable, and introspection is vulnerable, we can have certitude from measurement and build towards introspection.

Usually I opt to drop subjective/objective as a distinction because it's more confusing than helpful. Within a practice it's fairly easy to differentiate. But In general, like in a philosophical discussion, especially a general philosophical discussion, I've noticed the terms are worm-like. (to use a vague but hopefully accurate metaphor)

Well, emotions and values are ineradicable (saving certain ideas like Buddhism (nirvana) or Stoicism/Epicureanism (ataraxia)) from human life. We need to understand them whatever their status. Human life is a good place to start to identify what's valuable (and therefore to be desired or avoided, loved or hated, feared or welcomed. Where else would be better?). — Ludwig V

And even with those ideas, depending on how we interpret emotion and values they are not ineradicable as much as they can be "tamed" to live a certain way. Marcus Aurelius certainly felt things, as demonstrated by his meditations -- he just addressed his feelings from a stoic perspective. (though I'll note I even interpret Kant as emotion-driven in this sense -- since respect for others is an emotional attachment, and that's a simplified but close interpretation of what holds his ethics together on the emotional side)

I think the question I'd ask is -- human life is a good place to start, but how do you get there in such a way that one can understand emotions and values? And is it even wise to try? Don't we have a kind of understanding of emotions and values through our commitments and emotions we carry? Why do we need to understand these things at all?

You're right about that. But people do hunger for something decisive. Not knowing makes for anxiety. — Ludwig V

True. Though have you ever wondered why not knowing makes for anxiety? And why are some people comfortable with how little we know? Is this hunger for something decisive worth feeding?

Going back to dogma, amazingly (thank you for your patience!): Kantian dogma might be that set of beliefs which he thought were contrary to reason but which people believed mostly due to this hunger for something decisive where nothing decisive could be said.


****

Also, an afterthought @unenlightened -- while I at first thought it more important to focus on science as dogma, and dropping point 1, now I can see how fact/value is atheist dogma in your sense.

I think it goes like this : Given fear of death, fear of tigers and poisonous snakes is 'reasonable' in the sense that they are capable of causing death, whereas fear of mice is not. But as Hume famously didn't say, "you can't get an emotion from a fact". Fear of death is not reasonable, merely common. — unenlightened

I agree. There has to be something aside from the emotion in order to be able to say that a fear is unreasonable or reasonable (it can even be another emotion about the emotion). One environment where I think this classification can be appropriate is the therapeutic environment. If a person fears death so much that they aren't able to live life, and they want to live life, then it is unreasonable, by that desire, to fear death (that much). This is a simplification, though, for how we evaluate desires as being reasonable or unreasonable. There's truth to your:

Reasonable passions are what decent, {ie English} people feel. The Continentals cannot control themselves, and the savages don't even try. — unenlightened

Not only because we compare back to ourselves in judging others reasonable, but also because of the notion of self-control: a peculiar notion which always feels contradictory to me. As if anyone could be other than who they are (when the notion is usually invoked to say that a person lacks self-control, which is to say, they dislike how that person behaves -- rather than it being a character trait)

Why do we want to get rid of it? — Ludwig V

Because then we can be more correct than the other guy, objectively ;). "He can carry on with his thoughts, but I know the truth, and here are my reasons, and here are the people who will respect me for this belief", to interpret "objective" as a more competitive desire than a cooperative one. If my beliefs are objective than I can state them proudly, declaring their truth in spite of opposition. Or I can choose to quietly move on. Either way I am invulnerable to my interlocutor whose beliefs are wrong or dogmatic or subjective.

If my beliefs are subjective then while they are important to me they aren't important to others except insofar that they take an interest in me, and likewise in order to find out what's important to them I'd have to listen. But that's no fun in comparison to being right so we get rid of the subjective in favor of the objective in order to win the game of being right, and having been right all along.

At least this is another motivation for the game of reasons that lives alongside the cooperative motivations. And the subjective, in relation to that motivation, is a position of vulnerability rather than invulnerability. Whether either is called for depends upon circumstance, though -- I don't think that can be decided ahead of time. And, however we might spell out objective/subjective, we'll always be both of these things at once.

In another part of the jungle, the is/ought distinction shows that theoretical reason is not relevant to the passions. But that doesn’t need to mean that they are irrational. There are reasonable fears and unreasonable fears, reasonable joys (winning the race) and unreasonable joys (preventing an opponent from winning the race – unreasonable because it undermines the point of the practice of racing.) (Actually, “reasonable” is useful also in theoretical contexts, when formal conclusive proof is not available.) — Ludwig V

"Reasonable" works well. I think that's more or less our limit as human beings -- we can be reasonable within a particular practice which requires reason. I have to say it's a particular practice because I'm skeptical about reason in general. I think reason gets re-expressed and re-interpreted depending upon what we're doing rather than having it act like an arbiter or judge of the reasonable.

I'm in full agreement that the passions are not necessarily irrational, though. That's one reason why the distinction is fuzzy in normal use. There are frequent examples which touch on both the objective and the subjective, such as the category of "reasonable emotions" -- which I endorse as a good way of looking at one's emotions under certain circumstances, but in others I'd say it's inappropriate such as what someone feels while watching a play.

:D

A curse! ;)

One of my cravings is for boredom. May I never have another interesting thing happen to me again. I march to the drum of the blinking last man who wants good sleep.

I don't think I would, actually. I don't reject or renounce my negative feelings. They're not pleasant, but they're reasonable, necessary; they serve a function and fill a need I could probably explain if I took the time and attention to articulate it - probably; not really sure. — Vera Mont

Then I've misinterpreted you in my own way as I try to mark out distinctions and such.

I agree with this in that I don't reject or renounce negative feelings. I think the Epicurean philosophy can lead one to being even more able to feel those feelings. They are healthy to feel, I think.

But then another aspect of my life has changed over time: my physical world, and especially my social world, has shrunk, even as my info-sphere has expanded. Perspective is skewed; it's an entirely different configuration and dimensions from what it was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. — Vera Mont

I'm at about the 20, 30 line -- not the 40, 50 line. But I still can empathize with perspective being skewed, and feeling like everything is different now from whenever.

To retain some amount of Epicurean credence, the beginning of the letter to Monoeceus:

And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.

I think Epicurus is right on happiness, and I think happiness makes us more willing to do good towards one another, but the world is such that people aren't happy, do cruel things, and the Epicurean philosophy isn't enough to stop them.

You have to want tranquility, and most people are attached to, as Epicurus would say it, groundless desires.

And given that we're a social species, and even more deeply interconnected now through a world economy, what others do matters for the purposes of living a tranquil life.

So there might be a political angle I could work in. But given the time I wouldn't want to make it consequential -- I'd want it to be virtue-theoretic somehow.

But for me ethics can never be finished. It's always a reflection which I come back to and think through. Which isn't to say I can say, in the abstract, when it's a good thing to take on anxiety. Only that I've made that choice before and it felt right, even though the dogma said it was wrong.

Heh. Then for all my studying you are more devout than me, and you'd still ask "Why not hedonism?" where I would say "well, sometimes anxiety is worth it -- and not because it leads to a calmer state of mind"

Right!

Answering my own hook question: that's where the hedonic ethic starts to fall short. There are some circumstances, namely political, which the hedonic ethic is incomplete for. I believe this is true for all ethical philosophies. They are good-at or good-for, rather than good simpliciter or an arbiter of all action allowing us to once and for all categorize our actions and choose the good ones. And when they are good-at or good-for isn't subject to a rule: it's a choice which we make.

But in favor of this still counting as a moral realism, rather than the obvious anti-realism that this seems to indicate, I might say that hedonism is the first morality, cribbing from Levinas. It's not always the case, but often enough we look out for ourselves and our pleasures and our people and our projects first, and we are even expected to do so. So if there is a higher ethic, something beyond human beings seeking pleasure, due to us being human we have to find a way to satisfy our hedonism regardless.

And then from Levinas I would depart to Kate Millet's Sexual Politics -- forming a Bildungsroman that starts with human pleasure and integrates sexual, racial, and economic equality as a worthy pursuit. Just tempered by human pleasure and joy -- because while anger is a gift, it's a double-edged one that can turn into rage and hate if left unchecked.

And that's definitely not tranquil.

I'm sorry, I can't decipher NIST. What does it mean? — Ludwig V

I'm sorry! I should have posted a link and not just assumed we might use the same acronyms. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a peanut butter reference standard.

One could claim that one brand of peanut butter is better than another on objective grounds - that it is organic or doesn't use palm oil. Sure, the fact/value distinction would kick in, but the argument about whether those grounds are appropriate is at least not straightforwardly subjective. Whereas making that claim on the ground that "I like it" is quite different; that would be subjective. (But "I like it because it is organic" is different.) — Ludwig V

Yup, I think I can go along with this. I'm not hardline on how I use the objective/subjective distinction. There are other ways of expressing the same without it.

But, yes, the examples were meant to highlight exactly that one can claim this peanut butter does or does not fit a standard, or has so much oil concentration in it, or is organic and that'd be the "objective" example with NIST, and the "subjective" example is the "I like Brand A over Brand B", though in normal usage there are fuzzy cases (which is why I'm not hardline on how we use objective/subjective).

"Reputable", it seems to me has objective elements, because (in normal use) it would be based on reasonably objective grounds. The question would be about the worth of, for example, relevant social status (relevant professorship or other mark of success).

Surely with dogma, though, there'd have to be a shared other dogma which would allow for a third party to be relevant? Which is where the subject would come back into the mix -- we can poison the well ahead of time and claim our dogma is good, and their dogma is bad objectively because we have chosen a judge. This process can be repeated so as to bury the foundations, so that the judge is also chosen on objective grounds -- philosophers would be tempted to call this ground "reason".

But reason speaks differently to different people, and people are motivated by passion before reason so subjectivity has a way of coming back around even as we try our best to adhere to objective reason.

But in normal use, yes I agree. Relevant social status, and also I think a general sort of trust in our social designations gets us over the intellectual hurdles. If my doctor was right about a sickness before then she's probably right about this one. Being in a safe social environment which allows for that kind of trust is a very important feature of being able to have reasonably objective grounds for everyday use, though. If we trust our third parties and they have the relevant social status then there are objective grounds.

It looks like it. :grin:

I accept that if we dig in to it, we'll find differences of opinion. — Ludwig V

True.

I'm still happy. Progress!

Originally I wanted to have a kind of rule for classifying dogma, but this way of looking isn't really like that. It's probably better that way.

Well, yes - if you don't have a definition of "reputable" that's not subjective. — Ludwig V

Heh. I think the people I read and like would say you cannot have that definition :D. Or suggest it, in various ways that doesn't assert it.

I'll grant differences, though. While NIST is ultimately a maker of subjective definitions, they are inter-subjective and checked and about as good as you can get for those purposes. That's not the same as me claiming this or that brand of peanut butter is better though; we'd call that obviously subjective.

The assumption seems to be that dogma makes for intolerance, but perhaps intolerance is more related to power, and dogma is simply 'certainty'. — unenlightened

This version is fine. — Ludwig V

So I'm just going to ask the obvious: Did we actually find a description of dogma that three of us are fine with?

Sorry to hear it my friend. I like the quote you chose: stoic courage means nothing.

I'd say that this can be resolved, though it's not resolvable internally to the thoughts of Epicurus -- going back to notions of resonances and balances from before I think Epicurean dogma is a good basis for orienting oneself towards having a calmer mind, which in turn makes one more able to engage in public political life.

And, on the flip side, if one is dedicated to a political life, Epicureanism serves as a counter-balance to making that a total life philosophy -- the impulse to totalize can be tempered with an opposing philosophy.

In the end the resolution is only in how we actually act. The philosophies are for reflection on that, but regardless of the justification we're the ones who own the choices we make. So there's an existential element to my approach to ethics. In fact I don't think we can re-create that era when there were ethical masters, so in a way the existential approach is forced on us by our circumstances.

For myself, at least, while I've lived in intentional community spaces I'm of the mind that they're more like personal projects and less like political projects. In one sense they are political in that you're arranging the basic economy of the home, which is where we all begin. But in the other sense you have to utilize the system of private property rights in order to establish a space for those who fit in, which is actually quite insular rather than addressing the needs of people at large. It becomes a private affair rather than a public one.

But the Epicurean wouldn't care that their life is a private affair. In fact, if we adhered to the code that would be the right thing to do.

What if you are? You may be a professional prizefighter, ballerina or soldier and nobody thinks it's any of their business. If you are seen to do certain kinds of self-harm, you may be deprived of your liberty by legal authority and placed in an institutions. But modern human rights codes generally allow people to overindulge in food, drink, sex, extreme bodybuilding, masochistic relationships, conspiracy theories or sleep-depriving, stressful occupations.
Either it's your life, your choice, your responsibility or it's someone else's. — Vera Mont

I'd say that our legal system is doing the work for us here -- Epicurus made a decision as to when it was time to intercede on the basis of self-harm, and we have to make that same decision collectively if we ever believe it's OK to act against someone else's will for their own good.

That, or something like it may already exist. https://www.ic.org/directory/communes/
Or you can start one. Modern intentional communities are whatever the participants want them to be. — Vera Mont

Starting one wouldn't be the same, would it? Not for the method of immersion, at least. That would be a creative move rather than listening and letting go to see where a particular way of life leads in practice.

The reason I chose Buddhist centers is Epicureanism is variously described as greek Buddhism, and there are enough resonances between the thoughts that I thought it worked as a living tradition that's close enough. (though, clearly, I eventually decided that was wrong)

That's why I put that school in with the Pythagoreans, Zen, Bauhaus and Kellogg - because they're holistic lifestyle regimes, rather than stand-alone philosophical theories. — Vera Mont

Cool. Then I won't re-iterate the point :).

The immersion method is exactly what some people need -- but it must be one that corresponds to their actual life situation and the options available to them. Anything you can't move into for six months is just theory: interesting, often edifying, but external. — Vera Mont

Yup! So goes it with Epicureanism. The closest I could find were Buddhist study centers, but the emphasis was different enough for me -- I was looking for something more materialist than what I encountered. I did do a lot of gardening at the time, though... and still love gardening (I'd like it if I ever get access to a plot of dirt again).

I've always preferred the immersion method, though I'd call it the phenomenological method. Combining gardening, buddhism, and Epicurean philosophy with a few academic monographs I got a coherent feel for the philosophy at the way-of-life level, but then I had all the thoughts I've already expressed about the lack of a community and how it's very much a long dead way of life out of time.

Epicurean philosophy and the purpose of science -- rather than truth, it, too, is reduced to its ability to reduce anxiety.

As human beings, however, we have reduced anxiety when we do not attribute cosmic significance to the world, and so the naturalization of experience -- demystification -- is appropriate not because of the power it brings over nature, but rather because of the peace of mind it brings someone to realize that the sun doesn't rise because we sacrifice goats, but due to momentum and the way of nature. The mantras you say are for you, and not for the gods or nature. You have no magic powers.

So even knowledge is put in a secondary position. In my reading Epicurus is a practioner of ethics as first philosophy.

Another reflection:

The main reason I like the ancients is because, through study, you can start to get a sense for how different life was back then which gives a basis for understanding how life is now.

To get an idea across I say I'm an Epicurean-ish person, but in thinking through the implications I don't think it's really possible due to the practices of Epicureans. There's a philosophy we can piece together from the quotes of others and study, and I think it's a worthy and worthwhile philosophy -- but the community is long dead. And looking at the efforts of stoics it's apparent to me that reviving ancient communities still manages to ignore the important political problems of the day.

Ethics as a personal quest rather than as a way of life.

And while you don't need Epicurus to see that difference, it is a remarkable difference to note for understanding ourselves -- then there were masters of ethics, and now:

Anybody can call himself a philosopher. — Vera Mont

Many people call themselves philosophers, and they are on offer like a buffet for each individual to pick and choose as they see fit.

Which is different from the way the Epicurean philosophy reads, and is different from the way the Epicurean philosophy was practiced.

By overruling you, or rolling over you.... not quite my definition of freedom. — Vera Mont

Sure.

What if I'm hurting myself, though?

If goodness is living a tranquil life, and tranquility is what leads to independence, then the material conditions of freedom aren't exactly being satisfied if I'm chasing groundless desires out of anxiety.

Which goes to show different faces of freedom -- in one freedom is an individual choice and inhibiting that choice is what deprives one of freedom. In the other freedom is the ability to choose from tranquil desires rather than from groundless desires -- since the anxious desires tend to build on themselves and make one un-free.

It's the state of mind, rather than one's formal rights, which define freedom.

Though students and masters aren't unusual -- where it's unusual to a modern ear is on the topic of ethics.

Heh, that's what's different to our ears about the Epicurean philosophy -- it's an authoritarian philosophy. It's the student who is wrong, rather than the master.

At least this is how the texts make sense to me.

And to make things even more confusing I'd point out that sometimes we don't really know what works for us, and others can tell better than we can. The only refrain here is to double-down on the value of individual freedom over other values.

But there's a hint there -- one of the goals of the Epicurean cure is autonomy. So what Epicurus aims to remove from the soul without your permission are the very things which inhibit a person from being free.

But surely there's no rule for that.

And yet -- there's value in reading a text from the standpoint of its own truth. While he is not my master I had to think through the text to really find the parts I disagreed with. There wasn't a list ahead of time. Else that would be one boring interpretation -- comparing what I already believe to what is stated and checking off the boxes.

Maybe it's best to say that Epicurus is one of the philosophical masters that I think people should study because there's something good in there.

Oh no, it couldn't work for me. There's no master to do the teaching, after all. In terms of how Epicureanism was lived the philosophy is basically dead.

I say The Master because I think that's the appropriate way to read the texts -- Epicurus was a dogmatist in the same way that a modern doctor is a dogmatist, in that you don't allow people to opt-in to sickness. I don't say it because he is my master.

Yes. Kant is using "dogma" in its traditional, non-rhetorical use. Which is not wrong, just very unusual. One of my problems here is precisely to distinguish "respectable" dogma from the disreputable kind. — Ludwig V

Right... if we have reputable dogma then my dogma is good and their dogma is bad.

I certainly agree that dogma is a relationship between beliefs, in that dogma is in some way protected against refutation, with the implication that other beliefs can go to the wall. But that status is attributed by the believer, so I don't see that I can delineate any content in advance. — Ludwig V

True.

Though I wouldn't propose content could be understood in advance -- only after reading or understanding or listening or something like that. The informal inferential relationships come to be known through reading scripts or through conversation, and can partially define dogma.

Though that's very cumbersome in comparison to:

Dogma is the bedrock of one's understanding; the bars on the cage of the mind that stop one falling out into the bliss of total ignorance. To imagine oneself without dogma is to imagine oneself as God. — unenlightened

Which is succinct and manages to lay out what's meant. I'm understanding better what is meant by dogma at this point.

This clicked:

It is a dogma that dogma is bad. — unenlightened

I've been expressing my own disdain for certain patterns of thought, a certainty which I've acquired through experience.

The only avowedly atheist governments I know of are the old Soviet regime and Modern China. One might also include Japan, but not 'avowedly'.

It's a very small sample, but not a great record. the assumption seems to be that dogma makes for intolerance, but perhaps it is more related to power, and dogma is simply 'certainty'.

I was thinking of dogma differently before, but I think I can get along with this way of talking.

Could some customized variation on that theme work for you? — Vera Mont

Heh, never. I read philosophy, which means I'm interminably unsatisfied ;). On a more personal note I think I grab-bag because I see resonances and also balances between philosophies -- so, for instance, Marxism-Anarchy holds both a resonance and also they balance one another. Something like that. Still working it out.

The doctrine shouldn't be ignored. I say "The Master", and thought I should include Epicureanism in my list of dogmas, because of Martha Nussbaum's Therapy of Desire -- whom I owe a deep debt to. The Garden, in terms of the community, was dogmatic in the same way that a hospital is dogmatic. The Doctor knows how to set a bone, and The Master knows how to cure your soul. Why would a doctor listen to the opinion of a non-practitioner? At least, this is how I've been able to make the most sense of the Epicurean philosophy so far.

Desiring not to have desires is still ‘desire’. — I like sushi

True, but it's a therapy of desire rather than the elimination of, or freedom from, desire. At least in this rendition -- obviously these are ancient texts and we can read things in various ways. And because of my general existential outlook I'd say one has to actually want ataraxia in order for the therapy to begin to work. Nietzsche is a good contrast case, here. From Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

Lo! I show you the last man.
What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is
a star? so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth
the last man who maketh everything small. His species is in
eradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
We have discovered happiness; say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they
need warmth. One still loveth one s neighbour and rubbeth
against him; for one needeth warmth.

If one wants to be filled with passion and pursue great deeds, inventing new values in a continual process of puissance and overcoming then the words of Epicurus look like advice to get good sleep, rather than advice on how to be truly good.

So as with any ethic there is a normative dimension to its prescriptions, and we might choose to emphasize different norms. In a grand sense what unites both of these ethics is the focus on freedom, but their ideas of what constitutes freedom of the self differs -- one emphasizes joy and tranquility, and the other emphasizes nobility and striving (ever striving!).

Thoughts on the tetrapharmakos:

Don't fear god,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get,
What is terrible is easy to endure

The first and the second relate to what I mentioned in the dogma thread -- that superstition or cosmic significance ("supernatural" in that thread) are easy paths to anxiety. If you believe everything you do is judged by god in the here and now and in the afterlife (the first and the second doctrines, in my interpretation) then you will pursue groundless desires that can never be fulfilled -- the afterlife isn't the life you have to deal with, and the gods are already perfect so don't think anything about you.

I think I've explained the third doctrine in the previous posts on pleasure.

The fourth one has always been the hardest for myself, in trying out this way of thinking and living. But my second post about being "impervious" (resistant?) to pain due to having so much joy is something that's making a lot of sense to me as explanation.

Now, I'm interested that you think that the content might be relevant. — Ludwig V

Originally, I was closer to considering content because I was thinking about dogma as a relationship between beliefs, which would be partially content-dependent -- if flipping the truth-value of a belief flips the truth-value of other beliefs that could only be judged if we knew what the beliefs are and their (informal) inferential relationships to one another.

Also I have been thinking about Kant throughout the discussion and his notion of dogmatism relies upon what can or cannot be justified -- so insisting that space is infinite, for instance, is dogmatic due to the place that "space" fits within the scheme of reason.

:grin: But seriously... there is another variety of dogmatism, which is not quite the same. It starts from exactly the same response - "you must not understand me.", but does argue, properly at first. But when it becomes apparent that the proposition at stake will not be abandoned, (for example, as in ad hoc explanations), the debate is over - unless one can agree on a solution such "hinge proposition" or axiom, in which case a solution has been reached. Those solutions are a bit of a problem.

The key, though, is that proper engagement requires that one put one's own beliefs at stake. — Ludwig V

This is an interesting method for determining dogmatism!

It is interesting because the content of beliefs isn't referenced at all -- it's the character of the person at the moment rather than the beliefs, whether in content or even in relation to other beliefs. So any belief could serve as an example of dogmatism, depending upon the attitude of the person.

:rofl:

And yet we crave the reply of others -- almost like we only believe in ourselves if the other person says something.

idk guys -- I'm pretty sure those shrines have a hidden aesthetic meaning beyond both the beautiful and the sublime.

I like it. Solipsism is always good for a joke at least.

hah thanks. I was just playing along ;)

I know I'm not a fiction of your mind because I'm not that clever.

Did I post the Discussion "Solipsism" some odd 2 minutes ago?

Part of the reason Epicureanism isn't read as much is it's an interpretative nightmare due to how few sources there are. At least with Plato you have one author(EDIT: Well, there are spurious texts... it's still different? Maybe not expressing it right). With Epicurus you have quotes from other authors and later implementations of his ideas -- Cicero and Lucretius being the most cogent sources to compare the letters to (EDIT: The letters are written by Epicurus -- the primary source for the ideas, but they are just letters EDIT-EDIT: The letters are also only known because they were quoted by Diogenes in his Lives of the Philosophers. So... lots of interpretative layers).

I like the letters because that's where I began.

We're similar in spirit then. I hate cars -- nothing has caused me more anxiety in my life than all the things I have to do to do cars. But I am nowhere near as austere as The Master recommends -- if I am one then I'd say I'm a bad Epicurean :).

But I'm still Punk rock! Kind of. Not really. Sympathetic. (just to riff on 80's counter-culture)

Another point on Epicurean pleasure -- I think I disagree with the rendition of Epicurean happiness being defined as freedom from pain. The four part cure states that pain is easy to endure, not that we don't feel pain, and I tend to interpret "freedom from pain" to mean no pain rather than being able to deal with pain. I need to track down the paper, because I owe a debt to them and I don't remember who it was, but I like the rendition of Epicurus as a philosopher of joy -- rather than the harsh and austere invulnerability of the Stoics, one becomes invulnerable through developing a character that can weather pain with joy.

Focusing so much on invulnerability, which was a major philosophical theme at the time so it makes sense, is also another point of departure for me. This dovetails with the above. It's not to be impervious to fortune, but to be able to feel and go with the flows of fortune with tranquility.