Philodemus led a school of Epicurean philosophy in the area of Naples in the mid-first century B.C., with which Cicero had some connection. The work describes the debate between the Stoics and Epicureans over, essentially, the problem of induction, or the inference to general facts from observations. To infer “All men are mortal” from “All observed men are mortal” requires, according to the Stoics, following Aristotle, rational insight into the nature of man. The Epicureans maintain that there are no such rational insights into natures and that one can only make the inference from suitably
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