https://staff.aist.go.jp/takenaka-t/5075626C69636174696F6E_10_1016_j_cirp_2009_09_010.pdf

Value creation and decision-making in sustainable society

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.

Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

\"Hellenistic Philosophy\" is a thorough introduction to the three schools of philosophy which dominated the Hellenistic era: Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism. It traces the main developments in Greek Philosophy during the period which runs from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. to the end of the Roman Republic 31 B.C.

Hellenistic Philosophy. Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics

The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists depends in large part on what ordinary people mean by ‘free will’, a matter on which previous experimental philosophy studies have yielded conflicting results. In Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner (2005, 2006), most participants judged that agents in deterministic scenarios could have free will and be morally responsible. Nichols and Knobe (2007), though, suggest that these apparent compatibilist responses are performance errors produced by using concrete scenarios, and that their abstract scenarios reveal the folk theory of free will for what it actually is—incompatibilist. Here, we argue that the results of two new studies suggest just the opposite. Most participants only give apparent incompatibilist judgments when they mistakenly interpret determinism to imply that agents’ mental states are bypassed in the causal chains that lead to their behavior. Determinism does not entail bypassing, so these responses do not reflect genuine incompatibilist intuitions. When participants understand what determinism does mean, the vast majority take it to be compatible with free will. Further results indicate that most people’s concepts of choice and the ability to do otherwise do not commit them to incompatibilism, either, putting pressure on incompatibilist arguments that rely on transfer principles, such as the Consequence Argument. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical debates about free will, and suggest that incompatibilism appears to be either false, or else a thesis about something other than what most people mean by ‘free will’.

/pdf/explaining-away-incompatibilist-intuitions-2tk465t7d2.pdf

Explaining Away Incompatibilist Intuitions

Introduction 1 Gassendi's life and times 2 Gassendi's philosophical opponents 3 Skepticism, perception and the truth of the appearances 4 Cognition, knowledge and the theory of signs 5 Space and time 6 Atoms and causes 7 Bodies and motion 8 Generation, life and the corporeal soul 9 The metaphysics of body 10 Faith, reason and the immaterial soul

/pdf/pierre-gassendi-and-the-birth-of-early-modern-philosophy-1czvh51u4p.pdf

Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy

The Ontological Status of Sensible Qualities for Democritus and Epicurus

L'A. defend la these selon laquelle la conception epicurienne de l'amitie est compatible avec la these psychologique de l'egoisme et la these morale de l'hedonisme defendues par Epicure. Soulevant la question de l'altruisme a la lumiere du principe de charite, l'A. montre que l'amour de l'autre participe du propre plaisir du sage, qui est capable de mourir pour son ami.

Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic

Would a Community of Wise Epicureans Be Just

Lucretius on Atomic Motion: A Commentary on de Rerum Natura 2.1-332

Lucretius strives mightily in Book IE of De Rerum Natura to convince the reader that death is annihilation, and hence that death should not be feared. Two of his arguments against the fear of death have received extensive philosophical analysis. In the symmetry argument, Lucretius says that the infinite stretch of post-mortem non-existence is just like the infinite stretch of pre-natal non-existence, and since we do not regard the pre-natal stretch of non-existence as having been anything horrible, by parity of reasoning we should not dread our post-mortem non-existence. In the no subject of harm argument, he argues that death cannot be something harmful for the person who has died because after death he is no longer there. However, between these two arguments, Lucretius gives a third argument against the fear of death, which I will call the cycle of life argument, in which he argues that death should not be feared because it is a necessary part of the natural cycle of life and death. This

Tim O'Keefe

Papers

The Ontological Status of Sensible Qualities for Democritus and Epicurus

Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic

Would a Community of Wise Epicureans Be Just

Lucretius on Atomic Motion: A Commentary on de Rerum Natura 2.1-332

Lucretius on the Cycle of Life and the Fear of Death