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- Welcome and news / requests for new topics.
- Please help us stay on topic.
- Every session let’s try to cover questions like:
- What is the context of this section?
- Why included at this point in the presentation?
- What are the major points Lucretius is making?
- What are the implications of these points?
- Notes on New Topics / Announcements
- Last week we discussed:
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- Sophistry discussion - Protagoras and Epicurus’s attitude toward him. Also Pythagoras -
- Visible elements can’t be first bodies since what we see is changing.
- In terms of being happy::
- is happiness real or an illusion?
- if man is the measure of all things, are we totally in control of whether we are happy? or is there any “outside” aspect? Does a tree falling in a forest when no one is around make a sound?
- This week we will continue with Lucretius Book 1:734.
- Question about Hume - (empiricism) (Need more on this on the forum on both Hume and Hobbes)
- Issues of meaning of skepticism and knowledge - was there a point that we ‘knew” that atoms exist? When was that? Have we reached it yet?
- Teaching new students what is important. Is seeing things as they are the starting point? Requires some kind of education to see things as they are. How does one do that? Can’t tell them just to “look closer” can you? What do you give them to help?
- Analogy of learning to draw and its application to Epicurean philosophy (or anything else)
- Repetitive techniques
- Can’t just look at something and immediately presume it is true. Yes it is moving you, but a lot of things could be bringing distortion.
- Particularly of sensation to receive only what is present…
