
Lucretius saw no boundary between scientific interests and ethical claims - Hooke
https://aeon.co/essays/lucretius-the-flat-earth-and-the-malaise-of-modern-science
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bambax
> _Lucretius’s poem, dedicated to Memmius, was an attempt to convince the
> boorish Roman that he was obliterating a site of importance._

[Citation needed!!!]

This is so contrary to everything that we know about Memmius, Lucretius, and
the place of poets in Ancient Rome that if you want to argue along those lines
you'd need an extensive bibliography.

In Rome, "poets" were craftsmen, not "authors" in the modern sense of the
term. They worked for hire. Memmius, who was an extremely important man from
one of the most famous families, placed an order for an epic poem to
Lucretius, in order to appear more gracious and to advance his political
career.

Lucretius was happy to oblige.

To think that Lucretius wrote this poem on his own accord and then dedicated
it to Memmius in order to lecture him about his behavior is ludicrous.

~~~
chmod775
> In Rome, "poets" were craftsmen, not "authors" in the modern sense of the
> term. They worked for hire. Memmius, who was an extremely important man from
> one of the most famous families, placed an order for an epic poem to
> Lucretius, in order to appear more gracious and to advance his political
> career.

I wonder if we'd go back to mostly having this if copyright as we know it went
away and no alternative way of paying artists (think Patreon-like platforms,
governmental support, or unconditional basic income) existed.

For example EVE Online has plenty of poets-for-hire and I sometimes pay one to
write me a poem commemorating the loss of one of my ships. Makes you feel
better about your loss and also looks good in your character bio...

There's obviously still "contract" work being done by artists in the real
world today as well, though probably proportionally less so.

With US artists often signing away the rights to their works completely to
their labels and publishers, which is technically the same, we're not even too
far off I'd think. But this is not possible in some other legal systems.

How "creative" were ancient cultures, where probably only the well-off or
people with patrons/customers could spend meaningful time on art, in
comparison to today's culture?

~~~
dTal
The EVE Online poets-for-hire thing is absolutely fascinating. If something
that tangential to gameplay arises organically... it makes me think that
MMORPGs are an underrated technology for test driving social and government
structures. Maybe we should have a sim-world that models our actual world as
closely as possible, so that we can test-drive things like Basic Income in it.

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mgamache
I don't believe that "we can’t get ought from is". This is because there is a
connection between what is and the 'ought' actor (namely humans and the laws
of the universe). That connection and the most basic reality of being human
are enough to get a sense of ought from is. I know this goes against
traditional philosophical thought. If you mean some type of ought that would
be true after humans are extinct then sure, but it's almost a non-sense
question (morality in the absence or human existence). Of course, no one acts
as if we can't get ought from is (even if they disagree about the ought in
many specific instances).

~~~
UnFleshedOne
Exactly, human desires, morals and all other sources of 'ought' are ultimately
influenced by the way humans 'are'. So if you took in account whole
evolutionary history, the way it influenced culture, the way culture developed
itself based on that and other external influences (all 'is' questions), you
would eventually arrive at human moral framework and that would let you
generate 'ought' statements.

Basically what we as humans do every day.

~~~
CM30
So if psychopaths were 100% of the population, and empathy didn't exist at
all, would that make most morals null and void? I think most would agree that
a useful moral code shouldn't entirely be relativistic, and that an entire
society can be in the wrong even if everyone in it considers their actions
just.

~~~
TomMckenny
Exactly so: most existent people (myself included) would still insist the
current "oughts" still apply in a universe of psychopaths. The question is
why. Given that we can not directly observe or measure ought-ness, there must
be some psychological feature that evolved to created the idea in us. Further
more, that feature is critically necessary for us, often more than life
itself.

We also know it breaks down in hypotheticals. In that example about a world of
psychopaths, most would agree right and wrong remain constant. But a different
hypothetical, where god and sacred texts say the exact opposite of what they
do, we would not see as many people saying their god would now be wrong.

Furthermore, we do know somethings about "ought" like that it is not entirely
relative, remains constant across world changes and, is vital to pursue. But
we don't know were it comes from and why it varies slightly among cultures. So
while we know right from wrong and that such distinctions are vital, we don't
know how we know this.

It might be that what I am describing is not quite what is meant by "ought".
But there are other vital "self evident" concepts that needed adjustment to
their definitions yet those adjustments neither destroy the entire concept nor
even make any practical difference.

Time, for example, is not quite what people intuit and heat seems self
evidently entirely different than light yet is not. Yet those facts make no
difference in every day life. I expect a better understanding of the origin of
ethics will follow that pattern.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
To expand on external source of 'ought': I saw a thought experiment somewhere
-- what if you found the True Objective Source of Morality and it said
something you don't like -- for example that murdering every 14th stranger you
meet is justifiable. Thus are the moral laws of Universe.

Society would then promptly adjust the laws to follow suit (it is a true
source of morality after all). Would you then consider murdering 14th stranger
you meet today if that brings you some benefit (outweighing the risk, etc)?

If not, why not?

(Any similarities to religious texts is intentional)

~~~
comex
No... because the idea of an objective source of morality is meaningless. I
'ought' to murder someone – or else what? why should I? 'Ought' is
fundamentally subjective, existing relative to an agent's basic goals. If I
already believe that I ought to do X, an objective source of truth can
convince me I ought to do Y by showing that Y will accomplish X. For example,
I might at least consider murdering every 14th stranger I met... if you could
somehow credibly demonstrate that doing so would save the lives of millions of
people in the future. But no source, no matter how authoritative, can say I
should murder every 14th stranger "just because" – or, for that matter, that I
shouldn't.

Morality only seems universal in our society because we're all human, and most
of our morality is derived from emotional responses preprogrammed into the
human brain as a product of evolution. To evaluate the morality of more
complex actions, we build architectures of logic on top of those emotional
responses, and there's plenty of room to argue about the best way to do so.
But fundamentally, murder is bad because it feels bad, and it feels bad
because we evolved to live in groups; that's all there is to it. Any arguments
about how forbidding murder creates a more stable society are fundamentally
secondary. At best they're explanations for why we evolved this way, and/or
reasons to strengthen a pre-existing moral precept. They can also encourage us
to suppress emotional responses inclining us _toward_ murder, because those
exist too... but the effect of the suppression is limited, and in practice
people sometimes commit murder anyway.

Importantly, though, the fact that my morality is in some sense 'arbitrary'
does not mean I have to tolerate other arbitrary choices of morality. If some
person or AI is strongly driven to kill lots of people or fill the universe
with paperclips, I'm not sure I could argue that my morality is _inherently_
superior. But I'm still going to try to stop them, because that's what my
morality tells me to do.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
Yep, that though experiment is specifically designed to show that idea of
objective external source of morality is absurd.

Internal source like you described is also objective, it is shared among all
humans and based on objective realities of evolution and history.

I bet psychopaths share significant portion of it with neurotypical humans as
well -- they just have different weights among multiple contradicting
heuristics and/or certain mechanisms working slightly differently.

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tbirrell
Okay, but did Memmius end up building over the school or not?

~~~
8bitsrule
Good question. This site seems to suggest that the answer is unknown, as is
the location of the Garden!

[http://wiki.epicurism.info/Epicurus%27_Garden/](http://wiki.epicurism.info/Epicurus%27_Garden/)

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michannne
> _He presents the splendid argument that, if it had a boundary, then all the
> falling atoms would collect at the bottom. From this, it is clear that
> Lucretius respected the intuitive idea that there are absolute directions of
> up and down. By itself, this makes a globular Earth unfeasible because,
> unless perched right on the top, we’d slip off the sides._

I disagree with the author's point here. It seems to me Lucretius uses a
bounded object as an example for his claim that the universe must be
unbounded. A bounded object inherently has ups and downs, there is no mention
on which direction either correspond to. What other phrasing could he have
used?

A lot of what the author states actually seem to be grasps at straws.

~~~
woodandsteel
Have you read Lucretius? If not, then you are not really in a position to make
a claim as to what he was really thinking.

~~~
michannne
Any reason as to why you'd single me out? I have read On the Nature of Things
but what would make you question if I have? We can all contribute opinions,
just as the author cannot read Lucretius' mind as to why he would choose to
write the way he did

~~~
woodandsteel
In that case my comment was off target. I made it because you didn't state you
had read the piece, but I guess I shouldn't have assumed that.

I have not read Lucretius, but I assumed the author was correct because his
overall views fit well with what I do know about the history of metaphysics.
But perhaps he is mistaken in this particular case.

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pvg
Title works curiously well for Locutus (of Borg) as well.

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henriquemaia
For the record: I'm currently researching on Lucretius as a part of my MA in
Philosophy.

This article starts from an assumption on Lucretius intentions that is weird
for anyone familiar with the author. The thing is: we actually know way too
little about Lucretius to try to make any 'learned' guesses. However, I got
the opposite impression reading the article. If that's the starting point of
the author's argument, that somewhat taints its point.

Fun fact: all we know about Lucretius is a conjecture. There are so many holes
in who he was, how he lived, why he wrote, etc, that some researchers simply
go off-script and invent whole biographies for Lucretius [1]. There is even
those who go even further and simply state that Lucretius didn't even exist —
he was a pseudonym for another author, Titus Pomponius Atticus, a friend of
Cicero [2]. Others think that Lucretius' poem was edited by Cicero himself
[3]. Others that the poem was tampered by the renaissance humanists [4],
trying to make it more coherent and complete.

The point is: no one really knows. So, when I read/hear someone stating very
confidently that Lucretius did this or that, that he was this or that person
living this or that life, my alarm bells start ringing: there must be a bit of
creative interpretation here that goes beyond what the historical facts allow.

———

[1] Guido Della Valle (1884-1962), according to the account of Carl Joachim
Classen (1928–2013).

[2] Aloïs Gerlo (1915-1998), on a paper titled _Pseudo-Lucretius?_.

[3] Saint Jerome (c.347-420) was the first to make this claim.

[4] Lee Fratantuono mentions this in his book _A Reading of Lucretius ' De
Rerum Natura_.

~~~
mcguire
" _Others think that Lucretius ' poem was edited by Cicero himself._"

That would be odd. Cicero didn't care for Epicurean philosophy.

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woodandsteel
I think this is an excellent article, very informative.

