No problem at all! I look forward to our next conversation :smile: .

Experience is cognition by means of conjoined perceptions; consciousness is a natural human condition, represented as the totality of representations. Sometimes called a faculty, but it doesn’t have faculty-like function, so….not so much in T.I..

I didn’t follow this: that still sounds like they are the exact same thing…

This is a kind of categorical error, in that when talking of the brain, the discourse is scientific, in which representation has no place, but when talking of representation, the discourse is philosophical, in which the brain has no place.

They are two sides of the same coin. This makes it sound like neuroscience is a philosophical field of study….

Nothing untoward with the fact the brain is necessary for every facet of human intelligence, but there remains whether or not it is sufficient for it. Until there comes empirical knowledge of the brain’s rational functionality, best not involve it in our metaphysical speculations.

What do you mean? We’ve already determined that the brain is responsible for cognizing reality into the ‘experience’ that you have.

Immanent has to do with empirical cognitions, hence experience; transcendental has to do with a priori cognitions, hence possible experience. Transcendent, then, has do to with neither the one nor the other, hence no experience whatsoever.

Ah, I see. What I am saying is that the transcendental argument—viz., the argument from the given consciousness for the necessity of something else—demonstrates that beyond all cognition there truly are laws.

Law means it works 100% as laid out without fail. If there was 1 fail out of billions of events, then it is not a law. It then is a rule.

Not quite. What you described is not the nature of a law but, rather, how we pragmatically determine what we think is a law.

Is any law transcendent? In what sense?

In the sense that it pertains to reality in-itself as opposed to the way we cognize it.

All laws are the product of human reasoning

No laws which pertain to reality as it were in-itself are the product of human reasoning. Our understanding of them is a product of human reasoning.

They say that the weather changes has been much more unpredictable recent times, so it is harder to predict the weather effects. And there are the other natural phenomenon such as volcano eruptions, hurricanes and earth quakes etc. You cannot predict the date, time and location of these phenomenon, and how they would unfold themselves on the earth by some law.

In principle you can. Just because it is hard, does not negate science.

This sounds circular. You are deciding something through reason but you also deploy principle reason? It sounds ambiguous and tautology.

This is an incoherent thought: do you think it is circular, or tautological? It can’t be both. Either way, it is neither: reason has an a priori structure, which contains principles and laws, of which one is using when thinking. It is impossible to think without deploying, e.g., the law of non-contradiction.

Many believe that human reasoning is just a nature for its survival. Deployment of principles reason? Is it not natural capacity which evolved for thousands of years via the history of human survival, civilization and evolution?

Principles of reason are a part of the faculty of reason; so this makes no sense and is a false dichotomy.

What do you mean by this? Could you elaborate more on the detail and ground for the statement?

I meant like laws in science, such as F = MA, and formal laws, such as A = A. These laws are estimations of laws which exist independently of our thinking of them.

Does everyone's brain then all works exactly the same way to each other when confronted an event?

If you are stipulated that they have the exact same brain, their brains have had the exact same experiences, and they both experience the same event at the same time, place, etc.; then, yes; but this is just to say that they are the exact same being (and that there really isn’t two people)….

If you just mean to ask if two people with, e.g., different brains interpret the same events the same; then no.

. There are certainly observable and provable regularities in reality. However, there are also huge part of its operation which are random and chaos

The OP is not arguing that reality has to be completely ordered; so that is a mute point. Further, like the OP mentioned, without any laws then it is all chaos—and there would be no observable regularities.

the weather changes

Change is not per se an example of randomness: the weather changing changes according to natural laws.

some part of human behavior and psychology

Human behavior is not regulated completely by natural, transcendent laws; but certainly is (at least partially) regulated by transcendental ones. E.g., one cannot decide to do something through reason without deploying principles reason (no matter how poorly deployed it may be).

The brain, however, is constrained by natural laws.

some of the principles in QM

Sure. We have evidence to support that there is randomness in reality—how does that negate the OP?

So it is that in Kant, transcendent relates to experience, not consciousness

What’s the difference between the two in your view?

Besides, and I’m surprised you’d do such a thing….you can’t use the word being defined, in the definition of it. I get nothing of any value from transcendent being defined as that which transcends.

The definition was not circular—e.g., the property of goodness is the property of being good. If you just mean that it is vague, then sure: I can rewrite it. Instead, I would say that that which is transcendent is that which is beyond our experience of reality as opposed to that experience or the preconditions for constructing such an experience.

For instance, when you say, “that by which the brain cognizes reality is transcendental”, is the inconsistency wherein it is reason alone that cognizes anything at all transcendentally, the brain being merely some unknown material something necessary for our intelligence in general.

This seems like a technicality though: the brain is the representation of what is ontologically “responsible” for reason.

Not that I don’t admire your proclivity for stepping outside the lines. It’s just that you’re asking me to upset some rather well stabilized applecarts, but without commensurate benefit.

:smile:

In Kant, transcendent is juxtapositional to immanent, with respect to experience, whereas transcendental merely indicates the mode in which reason constructs and employs pure a priori cognitions

And what is “immanent”? What you defined as “transcendental” here is the exact same as how I defined it, no? I am not seeing any differences here.

Which is possible iff the relevant definitions are inconsistent with each other.

I didn’t follow this: what do you mean?

And there hasn’t yet been mention in the thesis, of principles, under which the transcendent laws would have to be subsumed.

I was thinking of natural laws which exist in reality as it were in-itself: what they would exactly be and why they are there are separate questions (in my mind).

I presume the OP is not talking about the Kantian transcendental law.

The OP is about a law which pertains to reality as it were in-itself—i.e., a transcendent law. A transcendental law would be a strict rule of conformity for how things are cognized.

Define transcendent.

By “transcendent”, I mean that which completely transcends consciousness; whereas “transcendental”, I mean that which transcends but pertains solely to the way consciousness is constructed. Wouldn’t you say that is Kant’s standard distinction?

And transcendent cannot be defined as that by which the brain cognizes reality into a coherent whole, without sufficient justification that pure transcendental reason hasn’t already provided the ground for exactly that.

I would say that by which the brain cognizes reality is transcendental; and that which is sensed, whatever it be, independently of that sensing, is transcendent.

I am not sure what you mean by a transcendent law. What do you mean by transcendent reality?

Admittedly, “transcendent reality” is a double positive; but a transcendent law is a law—viz., a rule of conformance with strict necessity—that is in reality as it were in-itself (“transcendent”).

I am just noting the difference between that which is transcendent and that which is transcendental, as a general dichotomy: the difference between what completely transcends consciousness and what transcends consciousness but pertains to how that consciousness is constructed.

The wordings of the OP title "the existence of transcendent laws" sounds ambiguous and unintelligible.
All laws are from human reasoning be it induction or deduction. Some laws are from the cultural customs and ethical principles.

The justification for a law is not to be conflated with the law itself. A transcendent law, as opposed to a transcendental law, is just making a Kantian distinction between laws which reside a priori and those which are about transcendent reality.

A priori is the way human reasoning functions and possibility of some abstract concepts. It is not about the laws.

Eh, I don’t by that at all. There are, e.g., a priori laws of logic, natural laws (e.g., law of causality), etc.

All laws are nonexistent until found by reasoning and established as laws. For the ancient folks with little or no scientific, philosophical and mathematical knowledge, everything was myth. There was no laws. Therefore there are no such things called "transcendent laws".

So? There are people who don’t believe that germs exist: does that have any bearing on a scientific conversation on germ theory?

How can non-relational transcendent laws ever be determinable by a method necessarily predicated on relations? If the method is relational, mustn’t the model constructed by that method, be relational?

Exactly.

What’s the difference, in this thesis, between consciousness, and consciousness (of reality)?

Ah, just that the former is more generic, and encompasses fabrications (like hallucinations).

Do transcendent laws only precondition the latter, and if so, why not the former as well?

Transcendent laws condition reality (viz., the universe), and, so, also conditioned whatever our faculties are which are cognizing it.

Dunno why I need a law that preconditions the possibility of my consciousness of reality.

Because your brain couldn’t cognize reality into a coherent whole which is accurate enough for survival if there were no transcendent laws.

Well, in relation to Schopenhauer, the problem goes away because objects are ideas

I don't see how this resolves anything: whatever 'thing', more loosely put, is being cognized is cognized as an idea; but Schopenhauer thinks that there's only one 'thing', and it is one will. How is that one will, assuming it even exists, being cognized according to rules if it has itself no rules governing it? This seems to reduce into a form of ontological idealism, where one has to posit a universal mind that is uniquely different from other minds which has the power to just powerfully dream up reality.

Not unless there is a metaphysical necessity – (transcendental) reason – 'why there is anything at all'.

If there is something that is metaphysically necessary, then not everything is contingent; which negates your original point, no? Are you just contending that whatever is necessary is NOT a law?

Only "X is ultimately necessary" (i e. absolute) precipates an infinite regrees of "whys" (or "laws").

That’s what I understand metaphysical necessity to be. I am not following.

I think fundamental physics overwhelmingly suggests, though does/can not prove, that Order is (only) a phase-transition of Disorder such that the more cogent, self-consistent conception of thi

Oh, I see what you mean. Ok, let’s break this down (assuming I understood you correctly): the standard laws of Nature, which we observe, are, under your view, contingent; and more ontologically fundamental than those laws is some sort of disorder. That is an interesting hypothesis, but how can proper laws originate out of things that behave “unlawfully”?

Since we have to speak in terms of our a priori means of mapping reality, my example would be the law of non-contradiction—which is presupposed in every natural law every posited—and it seems very implausible that this sort of formal law—or, more accurately, whatever law this model maps onto—could originate out of pure chaos. I think we can even demonstrate this in principle as false, by way of a thought experiment. Imagine that there’s no order at all to anything. This would entail that there are NO OBJECTS—for an ‘object’ can only refer to something with some sort of formal bounds in concreto (and not just in abstracta or semantically)—and NOT JUST no relations between objects. If there are no formal rules to anything, then there are no composition, no identity, no relation, etc….there’s, to wit, nothing but one ‘thing’.

Therefore, you would not be able to posit, if your view is granted, that there are these objects and laws which arise out of such a “pure chaos”; because there cannot be any formal demarcation in a completely unified existence.

I've been reading from Schopenhauer again.

Yeah, S has a wildly different metaphysics to K even though he builds off of K. For S, causality is the only feature of our faculty of understanding—no reason, no principles, no categories, etc.—and I have no clue why that would be the case.

Likewise, as pointed out in the OP, I think it is possible to note that there must be relations, laws, between objects (which would include some form or forms of causality) even if it is not the same as the law of causality which is a priori. No?

, with Schopenhauer’s insistence on the irrational and blind nature of Will

Yeah, the problem I have is that, among other things, he reduces the real world to a giant unity blob of will. This doesn’t really make sense: how would the brain be able to cognize something which has no laws of relations between things—let alone cognize something that is a complete unity. How is there even distinctions between things if everything is one thing? Of course, there aren’t; and that’s why Schopenhauer compares the universal will to one of those lanterns that has one light which produces many shadows from all sides.

How is it that the order of nature so readily lends itself to mathematical analysis and prediction? That sure seems neither blind nor irrational to me.

Exactly. All S does is strip away the a priori modes of cognizing reality and assumes that the negation of those must be true (e.g., no space and time → absolute unity, no rationality → irrationality, etc.). It doesn’t make sense.

If the nonexistence of nature, like the nonexistence of a sunny day, is a non-contradiction, then nature, like a sunny day, is contingent

I don’t think the universe is necessarily contingent, if by ‘nature’ that is what you are referring to, and it doesn’t help to cite a disanalogous example. Why should one accept that there aren’t brute existences?

To me, it seems more plausible that some “stuff”—whether that be laws, forms, principles, objects, etc.—just is that way because it is (with no sufficient reason for why).

Therefore, if nature as a whole, as well as each of its constituents, is contingent (NB: nature could be otherwise =/= "anything" within nature could happen), then its "laws", or inherent regularities-relations, are 'necessarily contingent', no?

I don’t see why that would be the case: a basic contingency relation of objects does not necessitate that the formal rules of relations between them are contingent—although they may be. If I were to grant your point here, then, it seems like reality would have to have, assuming there are laws, an infinite regress of them—no?

Also, contra Kantianism, isn't 'the human brain-body adaptively interacting with its environment' (i.e. embodied agency) – an emergent constituent of nature – the necessary precognition for 'the human mind' (i.e. grammar, experience, judgment)?

I didn’t follow this part. Of course, the human biology evolves, if that is what you mean.

What if we stumble upon something that is inherently random,
…
If something effects us that is totally random, we just either "win" by sheer luck or we are extremely unlucky. No use of looking there for a pattern, shit happens.

If reality is completely random, then we would not expect our experience, even if it is fabricated into a coherent series, to be useful for survival; which it clearly is.

Sure, if, ceteris paribus, there was one random bit of reality that we experienced along with non-random bits of reality, then our brain would most likely fabricate that part—transcendentally seeking causality—but this still admits of some proper laws.

Isn't this a tautology? If humans and animals make models of the surrounding World rationally or by logic, then naturally the only models we make are these rational and logical models

No, a tautology is when something is necessarily true as a matter of definition (such that its truth-table would be true all the way down). Material implication, of which what you noted above is an instance, is not tautological. Moreover, what I was saying is that if we can only cognize reality relative to those a priori preconditions, then it follows that what the proper law is can only be modeled semi-accurately with such.

It is also worth mentioning that it is entirely possible for a normal human to experience only in time given a drug, as it is apodictically true that our inner sense is in time along.

The real refutation, I think, of your whole position, notwithstanding my earlier critiques, is that a drug merely inhibits the way that the brain is prestructured to cognize; but it would need, quite plausibly, the ability to actually modify the physical pre-structure to cause a human to hallucinate in a manner that is with other pure forms. Just food for thought.

That isn't my view. Please, please, PLEASE stop putting views in my words that simply aren't there.

I am not meaning to imply that you agree with what I am saying: I am giving the logical consequences of your position, which you seem to be failing to see (which is fine). If there are moments where I am presenting it as if it is something you are affirming (as opposed to should be affirming to make your view internally coherent and logically consistent), then please call me out: that is unacceptable.

The problem I am having is that I don’t think you are conceding that either a (1) being experiences in some forms (which are a prior) or (2) they are not experiencing at all, when this seems plainly true to me.

For example:

I get how it could represent things as a jumble and highly inaccurately. — Bob Ross

Then you understand how the concepts of space and time being absent would cause this?

And:

By my lights, if one is affirming that a baby has experience — Bob Ross

I....didn't....affirm this? I actively gave the potential that a baby has no experience.

If the baby has a jumbled experience that is highly inaccurate, then the baby is experiencing in some pure forms, as noted above, AND IF you are affirming that the baby is not experiencing in space and time, THEN IT LOGICALLY FOLLOWS that the baby is experiencing in other pure forms than space and time.

E.g., saying that the baby may not have any experience does not address this issue that I am noting IF you affirm that it is having a jumbled experience (which you certainly have claimed that before in our conversation). Saying that you presented the option that the baby has no experience at all is completely irrelevant to my addressal of your presented option that they experience in an incoherent manner.

Likewise, if you are accepting, as you mentioned in the first quote above, that the baby does indeed experience but that it is the absence of space and time which makes it so jumbled, then you must concede that the baby is experiencing it so jumbled in SOME OTHER pure forms than space and time; OR DENY IN THE FIRST PLACE that the baby has any experience at all. You cannot have the cake and eat it too (; .

I have said quite clearly that it's open to us to posit babies don't experience.

It is completely unclear that you mean by “experience” in light of the PZ thought experiment. I already went in depth into the difference between awareness and experience; so I feel no need to delve into it deeper without your elaboration first.

But to be extremely clear: It would be utterly insane to assert babies could 'behave' without any access to data on which they could base behaviour. I just assert they don't 'know' about it, because no experience to speak of (this raises a similar issue as with some other concepts as to when or how that experience, eventually, arises and as noted earlier, I have no good answer to that).

I need to ask for clarification on what you mean by “experience”: are you talking about qualia? Are you talking about awareness? Does experience require self-knowledge or sufficent self-reflective faculties under your view? It doesn’t for mine. E.g., the fact a squirrel doesn’t know that it is eating an acorn doesn’t mean it isn’t experiencing it….so why would a baby not experience, as noted in the bolded part of your quote, because it has no knowledge of it?

The underlined portion in your quote seems to imply that you do believe that babies have “experience” in the sense of awareness, to some degree.

It isn't a cop out. IT is the fact of hte matter. If there is a possible 'experience' outside time and space, there are no ways within time and space to convey it.

It’s not that it is impossible to properly convey with language that makes it a cop out: it is that you are just blanketly asserting that, on the basis of ineffibility, that people have experienced in pure forms other than space and time, which is seems plausibly impossible since the drugs only interfere with the already prestructured ways that the brain experiences (and so a drug doesn’t plausibly have the ability to introduce new pure forms of sensibility to the mix), without giving a shred of real evidence. Surely you can appreciate why I cannot contend with your claim here, given its lack of transparency. There’s got to be some inaccurate but adequate way of proving that the brain is capable of experiencing in other pure forms...or we shouldn’t take it seriously unless we ourselves have had such an experience.

The 'forms' are whatever they are.

The problem I have is that you can’t explain it even to yourself, so how do you know you weren’t experiencing in space and time but in an incoherent way? How did you rule out, e.g., that the incoherence was with the objects as related in space and time to you, and as cut out incoherently in sections, rather than you experiencing without space and time?

This is the danger of ineffibility, although it is a valid concept, because people just use it as a god of the gaps. Look, I can tell you that my experience of something, of anything, cannot be put accurately into words; and this is because the words erode some of the emotional and phenomenal baggage of the experience itself. Sure, to a being that were to somehow have a language which 1:1 mapped what they experienced in perfect detail, that lost no meaning whatsoever in such a conversion, it may be really hard to convey the point to them; but I can give examples which at least make sense to me. E.g., the wonder and awe I got from seeing the Grand Canyon is clearly not contained perfectly in my description of “I was struck with wonder and awe amidst the Grand Canyon” because it doesn’t describe the feeling perfectly and only a person who experienced something similarly to that degree of awe and wonderment will be able to map that properly to the experience I had.

I am not seeing any analogous kind of example on your part, and no real responses to why you find the alternative possibilities implausible (like the incoherence being in how the brain is presenting the objects within space and time, or like how the higher-order brain functions [such as separating the self from the other] may be inhibited by the drugs without inhibiting the pure forms of sensibility). Without responses, there’s nothing more I can say.

Really appreciate your time and effort on this exchange, Bob. Thank you!

Of course, and you too AmadeusD!

I think something worth mentioning, is that incest is not per se immoral because of the incredible odds of causing severe harm to a potential, conceived child (therefrom)—as incest does not necessitate a relationship where the parties involved can get pregnant (e.g., gay men, infertile women, etc.)—but, rather, it is because, generally speaking, it is not in the Telos of a human to marry and have sexual relations with their own kin.

My duties to, and roles towards, my, e.g., sisters are plausibly such that I should not be having sexual relations with them; when taken from the Aristotelian position.

Americans can (correctly) argue that they haven't been defeated on the battlefield in fixed battle. But the truth is that they have lost wars, there is no credible denial about this. That Afghanistan is an Islamic Emirate today, just shows how the Global War on Terror was lost. Just like the fact that there is no South Vietnam anymore.

I think America underestimated the tactical advantages of their enemy fighting on home turf, with all-or-nothing mentality, and with gorilla-terror tactics; and, as you mentioned, the perception from the US public also plays a huge role.

the Americans left their past ally on it's own because of the unpopularity of the war (perceived or real), with the result that Afghanistan collapsed even quicker than South Vietnam

Not to mention, Biden left billions of dollars of military-grade resources in Afghanistan for the Taliban :roll: . It can’t get anymore embarrassing for the US than that.

The war in Ukraine is talked as a "forever war" that ought to be quickly halted. Marco Rubio, the incoming secretary of state, sees the war as stalemate that has to be ended and we all know Trump's campaign promise to end the war immediately

I think the US people generally don’t want to spend billions of taxpayers dollars on foreign wars when they have so many problems at home that could be fixed with that money. I do not support sending any aid to Israel nor Ukraine: we need to fix our country first.

For Trump to say that he's in good relation with both Zelensky and Putin is very difficult to understand.

Trump says he is in good standing with everyone—he likes to embellish.

Yet when people have the wrongful idea that the conflict is a forever war (that happened because of NATO enlargement) and thus has to be ended with US withdrawal,

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but the US doesn’t actually have any military presence in Ukraine: all we have been doing is funding them. Let them fund their own battles—they aren’t a part of NATO.

The inability for Americans to see how this weakens their own alliance is quite telling.

The US doesn’t have a formal alliance with Ukraine. I would completely agree with you if they were a part of NATO. If Russia hits a NATO country, then they are going to get their shit rocked. Russia can’t even take over Ukraine: imagine what would happen if the US got truly involved.

Well, I am just not following what exactly about an under-developed, human brain would allow it to cognize with different forms of sensibility: I get how it could represent things as a jumble and highly inaccurately.

By my lights, if one is affirming that a baby has experience but not immediately with the forms of space and time, then that entails necessarily that it takes different forms—otherwise, then, the baby is not experiencing, which was affirmed to begin with. This is a point that I am not sure you agree with, but there would have to be something about how an under-developed brain, in the sense of a baby’s, that makes it represent in different forms: for there has to be forms to the sensibility of the any being that has representative faculties.

This is where it gets interesting because, and of which I cannot tell if you have realized that, the baby’s brain having different forms of sensibility, which it would have to if it experiences (to any degree—even if it be incoherent) and not in space and time, does not itself entail any sort of inaccuracy nor incoherency in its representation; but that was the original point you were trying to make. Then, the claim that a baby experiences but not in space and time because their experience is too incoherent becomes a mute point; because it is not the fact that it is too incoherent that makes the baby uncapable of having those two pure forms. Thusly, you would have to explain NOT why the baby’s incoherent experience renders outside of time and space but, rather, why we should believe that a baby’s brain is too underdeveloped to render objects in space and time but it does have the capacity to render it in different pure forms of sensibility.

In short, you would seem to need to argue that the baby just doesn’t have pure forms of sensibility—no? At that point, though, the baby has no experience. Which, again, we can be certain that is false: babies react to some degree to their environment.

Schizophrenic people experience in space and time: the disorder is that they experience things which are not there in space and time. — Bob Ross

This is a claim which i reject, wholesale. as arrogance

Nothing about Schizophrenia entails that the brain is defective in such a way as to intuit objects in other pure forms than space and time. There is no shred of evidence to support that. We give them medication to get rid of their temporal and spatial hallucinations.

PZs are impossible — Bob Ross

You think. I don't. Many don't. You make many claims about htings that aren't known, rather than claiming positions. I get that's your position. Fine. Not mine. I respect your position.

That’s why I granted to the position, but left in the footnote that I don’t think it is possible. Of course, when someone brings up a highly controversial example, then I have to note my position on it; but of course I will entertain the hypothetical despite that.

Without qualia, that's nonsensical to me. There is no experience. Plain and simple.

So this is getting into philosophy of mind, and I am not sure how deep we want to go down that rabbit whole. Traditionally, those who accept qualia note a “hard problem of consciousness” which revolves, by necessity, around the idea that awareness and experience are not equivalent to each other (although, perhaps, they will use different terms sometimes to express it). Awareness is the bare ability to gather information about your environment; whereas, experience is a qualitative, subjective ‘having’ of that gathered and interpreted information. E.g., the brain is aware that this block is the color green because it interpreted the light that reflected off of it as green, but the (qualitative) experience, of which there is something to be you experiencing it, is over-and-beyond that bare awareness that it is green. This is, traditionally, the hard problem in a nutshell: why is there something it is like to be the subject having the awareness, of which is qualitative and subjective, instead of just the bare awareness of it? It doesn’t seem like, prima facie, e.g., there needs to be an actual qualitative experience of the green block of which there is something it is like to be me experiencing it for my brain to be aware that it is green (as interpreted by the wavelengths). It seems like my brain is more than aware of its environment without having a ‘me’ which subjectively experiences it.

So, there would be no experience in the case that a baby were a PZ, but that baby would still be, to some degree, aware; and this distinction has not surfaced in your view yet (as we have discussed it).

This is why I put my disagreement with the possibility of PZs as a footnote (;

I've been over why you are asking for something impossible. If i am right (that I have had an experience which transcends time or space) it would not be possible to elaborate. Ineffability is a key concept in this discussion. Unless you wholesale reject that notion, please respect this since you have asked.

I understand that to a certain degree; but it’s the ultimate cop-out. I can’t contend with your view that they are experiencing somehow with different pure forms of sensibility if you just blanketly assert it.

"The more the subject experiences such characteristics of mystical experience as unity (with all of existence), noetic quality (knowingness and a sense of reality), sacredness,transcendence of time and space, ineffability, sense of awe, etc., the richer may be the rewards. In summary, not only do psychedelic substances sometimes bring therapeutic benefit, but there is definite evidence that such benefit depends upon the discernible richness of the experience’s ‘mystical’ qualities."

Ok, good: this helps. Let’s break it down.

1. Unity is the concept of everything in question as one: this is inherently spatial. A person that experiences no ego, which is sometimes called “ego death”, e.g., thereby experiencing a complete unity with their experience IS NOT thereby experiencing in some form which is non-spatial. Unity of experience is just everything which is presented in space, or in time, or both, as being identical to everything else presented. So this doesn’t demonstrate your point.

2. Noetic quality does not demonstrate your point for obvious reasons.

3. Sacredness: same.

4. Transcendence of time and space: I am assuming this is the heavy-hitter, huh? (: I would need to hear what evidence you have for this, and how it works. I have a feeling you are just going to say you can’t describe it; but what forms are the experience in when not in space and time (on drugs)?

5. Ineffability. This is related to your point insofar as our words can never, in meaning, be reduced down to what they reference (about reality); but you have to be able to explain what those forms are, which are not space and time, that these people are experiencing things in for us to have any serious conversation; and it should be possible, with inadequate diction, if they really aren’t just confused.

And, for me, he's entirely wrong and bares on no explanation for how that could possibly be the case.

If by “how”, you mean ontologically how it would work; then that is an irrelevant question. If by “how”, you mean why it is a necessary precondition for possibility of human experience; then that is elaborated in depth in the Critique.

is that babies do not have a 'coherent' experience at birth

I agree, and never disagree with this: my point is that the (sufficiently) incoherent experience is still in space and time. One can have a spatiotemporal experience which the aftermath of the one’s brain butchering how to represent objects properly.

As they learn concepts of space and time
…
And, for me, he's entirely wrong and bares on no explanation for how that could possibly be the case.

Ok, then, by your own critique, how does a baby’s brain learn to represent objects in space and time?

Schizophrenic people have a similar problem

Schizophrenic people experience in space and time: the disorder is that they experience things which are not there in space and time.

They may not even have an experience, at birth

They have to, though—that’s my point. Babies cry afterbirth when they are hungry: that entails, to some degree, that they have an experience.

so it is an experience akin to some higher dimensional being — Bob Ross

Or, get this Bob – lower.

True, but it wouldn’t be human experience anything like all experience human’s have ever had that they had introspective access to—can we agree on that?

Think of philosophical zombies

PZs are impossible; but if I were to grant their possible existence for a second, then I would note that:

Newborns may be just that, in terms of behaviour.

Then, a newborn does experience—just not in terms of qualia. That non-qualia experience would still be in the forms of space and time.

Millions of people have. I'll give a couple of examples of discussions in the lit on this:

Neither of those links you sent described an experience a human had that didn’t take the forms of space and time: those articles are about the life-altering nature of psychedelics. I want to hear a specific example from you to gauge better what you are saying.

Look Amadeus, I am not denying that psychedelics can make one experience things weirdly: I’ve had them before. I had a trip so bad that I literally perceived layers to my consciousness, periodically lost the concept of time, and lost most motor function. I think you are confusing, with all due respect, concepts qua self-reflective reason with transcendental reason. When, e.g., I was presented pure blankness that seemed, at the time, outside of time; it was still temporal: I just lacked the ability to properly analyze the situation and, quite frankly, lacked the words to properly describe it. People can perceive time differently, and this can be affected by drugs; but the brain is still hallucinating, if it presents anything to the conscious experience, in the forms of space and time.

I remember what it is like to perceive being beyond time; and I was not beyond time, or else I would not have any memory of it—for my memory assumes at least the form of time when recalling.

Generally we do not believe that everyone has legal standing (locus standi).

I think moral and legal standing are different: the latter is a practical attempt at justice for the community, whereas the former can surpass that sphere of jurisdiction. To deny this, by my lights, is to accept that nothing immoral is happening, e.g., when a citizen of another country violently attacks a citizen of another (for there is no notion of justice qua morality in this sphere of discourse since it lands outside of the purview of both societies to a sufficient extent).

Perhaps the solution is to say that both authorities of each society would congregate to resolve the matter, as opposed to the lower institutions (e.g., police) imposing justice; but, then, what of the, e.g., indigenous member of the tribe, which does not have a sufficiently powerful community to advocate on their behalf, or the non-citizen? Are they chopped liver? If there is not such distinction, mentioned above, then I think so.

Similarly, it is the duty of the judge to punish the perpetrator and avenge the victim, not the common person.

This is true if we are careful to denote this duty as legal duty—not moral duty. E.g., I do not have a legal duty to save my daughter from a burning building but I certainly have a moral duty to do so.

Usually, when we note that a person doesn’t have “duty” to enact justice for another; we tend to be saying that as a pragmatic rule of thumb for two reasons: the first being that it tends to be handled more appropriately by those that are of an institution designed to handle it (e.g., police, first responders, etc.), and secondly because imposing that justice usually has sufficiently negative consequences to the avenger that we would not blame them for avoiding avenging or stopping the attack in the first place.

However, I do think it is commonly accepted that if the negative consequences are sufficiently trivial, that it is immoral to do nothing. For example, the man that watched this women get kidnapped while she screamed for help technically doesn’t have a legal duty to intervene; but we all think he should have (morally speaking, as that is a part of a man’s moral duty and role in society to be a protector).

Do we have a duty in justice to right wrongs happening on the other side of the world?

The problem I have with this line of thinking is that, in principle, we can wipe our hands clean when we avoid doing just things because they are outside of our jurisdiction—jurisdiction is just a pragmatic notion to enact justice.

Likewise, the issue with thinking solely in terms of jurisdiction, in the sense Aquinas noted in your quote, is demonstrated sufficiently in the quote itself:

And since the child is subject to the power of the parent, and the slave to the power of his master, a parent can lawfully strike his child, and a master his slave that instruction may be enforced by correction

People who think in terms of solely jurisdiction have the same susceptibility as denotoligists: avoiding the right thing to do because it doesn’t follow the strict rules laid out for people to follow by people.

We are not justified in going to nuclear war with North Korea, assuming both sides have working nukes, to save the people there. The nation firstly has a duty to its own citizens, and not other citizens of other nations.

Well, in virtue of what do we have a duty to prevent immorality?

Justice—no?

Do we have a duty to perpetrators?

What do you mean?

Do we have a duty to victims?

Yes. To punish the perpetrator and avenge the victim(s).

Do we have a duty to "friends"?

Yes.

Do we have a duty to strangers?

Yes. Do you not believe that you have any duty to be just to strangers?

Do we have a duty to strangers on the other side of the world?

Does being just ultimately depend on where the injustice is happening? Sure, circumstances matter, but, in principle, it doesn’t matter.

If there were no negative consequences then we would be justified. But even something as simple as resource allocation is a negative consequence, so there will always be negative consequences.

Agreed.

I would say that cultures interact in much the same way individuals do. In both cases there are things like exchange, mutual cooperation, conflict, argument, persuasion, and coercion.

True. What I would be saying, analogously, is that we have taken the "you-do-you while I-do-me" principle too far: if your friend decides to go out and rape someone, then you have a duty to forceably impose your values on them insofar as they shouldn't be doing that. Similarly, a society has a duty to take over or at least subjugate another society to their values when the latter gets too immoral.

Anti-imperialism is a very limited justification in the first place. But the disorderedness of a society is not in itself a sufficient reason for intervention. Should we intervene in North Korea out of compassion? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Compassion can be a motive, but it is seldom a sufficient condition for action.

Even if the negative consequences were very low (or non-existent), are you saying that the West would not be justified in taking over North Korea by force?

I agree that coercion should be the last resort, but it seems to be a resort; and seems to be a valid resort to stop societal structures that are really immoral; and this entails some version of imperialism, even if it is a much weaker version than the standard ones historically.

Actual mattering is objective; hypothetically mattering is subjective. What you are noting is that something can "actual matter" to a person subjectively; but if we parse that what that really means is that it hypothetically matters and this particular person is affirming the antecedent. E.g., just because someone thinks cars matter does not entail that "cars matter" is true, but it does entail that "if one cares about cares, then cars matter; and this person cares about cars, so cars matter to them".

Actual mattering is when someone matters independently of our desires or beliefs about it.

Oh, haha. I thought you were disagreeing. Nevermind.

That 'space and time' are innate is somewhat implausible to me. These seem to be arguments that would need to come down to some supernatural conclusion. Which, you'll note, Kant does.

Kant does not argue for space and time being a prior as a matter of being supernatural—quite the contrary.

. They have no experience of difference

The fact that they move at all towards or away from things annihilates this hypothesis in concreto; but, in abstracta, it makes no sense to posit that the brain doesn’t develop accurate to a certain prestructure which represents in a specific way. When, then, does the human brain develop enough to construct an experience in space and time? The brain doesn’t fully develop until adulthood.

Let me ask for clarification: are you saying that a baby does not experience in space and time despite lacking the thinking power know that they are experiencing in space and time? — Bob Ross

This is a really quite confused way of approaching a clarification imo

This is exactly why I asked it, because Kant is not talking about what you are talking about: thinking and cognizing are not the same thing. Viz., self-reflective reason is different than transcendental reason—you are conflating them as one ‘faculty of reason’.

Here’s the pinnacle of your confusion (with no disrespect meant):

The baby probably doesn't have a concept of experience

This solidifies to me that you are, in fact, thinking of self-reflective concepts as opposed to transcendental concepts. The baby still experiences, and this you do not contend against (I would imagine), but yet it doesn’t have the self-reflective thinking capacities to understand that—that’s no problem for Kant. Kant is noting that we have concepts built into our brain for cognizing objects—not for thinking about our experience of them.

The baby lack's the thinking power to apprehend those concepts at all to begin with

Correct. But this has nothing to do with the Critique: Kant is noting that, irregardless of that, the baby’s brain is pre-structured to represent objects within space and time which constitute the baby’s experience of the world; and the baby, to your point, of course, does not have the thinking power to understand that its conscious experience is in space and time—this takes time to learn.

Babies don't have reason. SO, unless that, to you, removes humanity, then i simply reject, wholesale your entire conjecture here.

You are, by-at-large, correct that they don’t have “reason” because by “reason” you mean self-reflective reason—viz., the ability to think about one’s conscious experience. Kant means “reason” in the sense of our brain’s cognition for cognizing reality into a coherent experience. This was one complaint that Schopenhauer had of Kant’s semantics, as it led to confusion for people, and S actually advocated to call Kant’s idea of “reason” as “the understanding” and to use “reason” in your sense of the term.

In the baby's perception, this also seems inarguable. Not quite sure what the pushback on this is. If you have an intellect that doesn't correctly order your spatiotemporal categories, you do not cease to be human or cease to experience.

You are not arguing that the brain doesn’t order the objects properly in space and time: you are arguing that the baby’s brain has a super-human power to cognize in different forms of sensibility—viz., to experience objects ordered in some other forms than space and time.

You are saying that the baby that is trying to eat that toy block, that doesn’t really know what it is, isn’t experiencing that toy block with any extension nor in any temporal succession—so it is an experience akin to some higher dimensional being. Imagine being able to experience things outside of time….that’s what you are saying a baby can do.

bare experience, unorganised and automatically responded to.

What does that mean? What would objects look like unorganized outside of space and time?

Take mushrooms my guy. Space and time are not as hard-and-fast as you seem to think, in human experience.

What you experience on psychedelics is still in space and time—if you have experienced hallucinations that did not take those forms, then I would be interested to hear you elaborate on it specifically.

But that is besides the point: the babies conscious experience is still in space and time. They just don't understand that yet in thought. Thinking and cognizing are not the same thing.

Yes, but the thing is @AmadeusD is arguing that the baby that tries to put a square object in a round hold is not experiencing that square object and round hole spatiotemporally; viz., the square object doesn't have extension nor is it placed in succession within that baby's consciousness. Arguably, what, then, would a square, which is a spatial concept, be in a consciousness that doesn't represent it in space?!??

T Clark, all of the politicians that have been voted into the presidency have done wrong things. Biden has a history of racist remarks and policies (and most are on tape); Hillary had secret and top secret emails on her own private email server; and don't even get me started about Hillary and her husband together....

Trump, according to Pence, asked him to halt and illegitimize the votes (because, allegedly, they were fraudulent) and that is what you are referring to as "overthrowing the government". I do not support him doing what he did because I don't think there's reasonable evidence to support that it was fraudulent; and if it was, then it needs to be sent to the courts.

What I am trying to do is have a charitable conversation. The moment you try to whitewash your own political figures as angelic and your opponents as demonic is when there will be no productive conversations.

What do you know of character of those women who have made accusations against him?

Just as much as I can extrapolate from the circumstances which they brought up the charges, and what they benefited from it (if anything).

Why not apply the same standard to them as you do to the accused?

What you do you mean? I am applying the same principles to both: one is innocent until proven guilty, and there must be sufficient evidence (which demonstrates without a reasonable doubt for legal purposes or more likely than not for civil/practical purposes) that proves them guilty.

I am not saying that they are proven, under the court of law nor civilly, to have evil intentions. I was saying that many aspects of Carrol’s case just provide reasonable doubt and so her case would not hold up in criminal court.

There is nothing analogous in these situations

The point was that the phrase you were using to condemn Trump cannot, in-itself, provide that condemnation.

Shooting someone because they pose a threat is not analogues to shooting someone for fun even though the same phrase occurs when I say "I shot him".

Sure, but it would be a fair analogy to say that “I shot him” does not itself entail murder in the case of shooting someone because it could have been self-defense.

The problem is with the misogynistic idea that "the evil woman" poses a threat to innocent men

Evil people and flaws in the court system pose a threat to innocent people. I don’t know why you are turning this into a sexism thing.

The idea of the evil woman seducing and/or wrongly accusing innocent men is ancient.

Are you saying that idea that a woman would be motivated to lie about being sexually assaulted for the sake of getting a lot of money is completely uncredited?

:up:


If @AmadeusD believes that a baby does not experience in space and time, then they are positing that there is a part of human development which is not human experience in any meaningful sense: it would be toto genere different then how we experience and yet with pre-mature versions of the same organs we have.

Yes, when you outlaw weapons (in general), you just make it harder for the good people to protect themselves. If I were in Great Britain, where they still have outlaws with plenty of guns, I would have to defend my family with a bat or a knife, at best, and end up with permanent brain damage at best. It's nonsense.

It seems like you don't really want to have a productive dialogue; so I am going to respectfully remove my hat from the pile. If you ever want to have an in-depth, productive conservation then let me know.

Do you mean liberals or left-wing politics?

I don’t know what the difference is; and, full disclosure, I am not familiar with Scandinavia but I will do my best to elaborate.

1. How does that come

I am thinking of things that I would assume liberal and left-leaning countries would support—e.g., abortion, identity politics, etc.

2. This is also not coming into

I am thinking of the policies of liberal and left-leaning people—e.g., persecuting people that do not believe homosexuality is morally permissible (although they agree that homosexuals should have equal rights), “canceling” people that do not agree with the liberal agenda, etc.

3. If we're looking at actual statistics of this

I am not familiar enough with Scandinavian countries to determine what kind of politics they really have there. I can tell you the US on that map is .93 and I can tell you that the left have been censoring information constantly; so I am guessing that these metrics are taken and calculated in a weird manner.

You definitely could not, and still cannot, post whatever you want, so long as it is not violating someone else’s rights, on major liberal social media platforms.

4. This right is better followed in Scandinavia than in the US

I don’t know. Perhaps.

This one is the only thing that differs, because it actually has nothing to do with human rights

The 2nd amendment is an inalienable right, which is fundamentally the right for a person to defend their own and other peoples’ rights with weaponry.

it's a constitutional law based on types of weapons that aren't remotely alike what exists today.

This is utterly false. There were machine guns, advanced muskets, cannons, explosives, etc. during the time that the founding fathers wrote the 2nd amendment; and, coupled with the fact that, they were not stupid and obviously could anticipate more advanced weaponry being developed and that they were very clear in their letters and literary works about giving people the right to bear military or better graded weapons to combat the government; so there is really no wiggle room for any sort of historical and contextual argument to be had that weapons of today were not intended to be covered under the 2nd amendment.

The problem with this is that the research is clear on the connection between amount and availability of firearms and deadly violence

Although you are right that the homicide rate is higher in the US per capita than countries that ban guns, it is not true that violent crime is significantly higher in the US per capita. E.g., Great Britain still has major crime issues and has a very similar crime index to the US: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/crime-rate-by-country . There is absolute not evidence to support that banning guns actually helps innocent people stop violent crimes.

Likewise, banning guns doesn’t necessarily equate to less crimes either, especially in countries where other parts of it can legally own them, such as Chicago: they have the strictest gun laws and it obviously is not working. Of course, one could try to attribute it to the fact that it is easy to cross into Chicago with legally obtained guns; but most of the guns they use in violent crimes are given to them illegally. However, I can anticipate and grant, to an extent, that it would be much harder for them to get those guns illegally if there wasn’t the possibility of straw purchases.

To put into perspective, if you flip this and instead say "the right to not be a victim of gun violence", which is more akin to an actual citizen right as a protection, then such a right is fundamentally broken by the status of deadly gun violence in the US

That right already exists, and it is called the right to life. The point of the right to bear arms is, among one other reason, to allow people to who are victims to protect that right to life—to, viz., protect their right to not be a victim of gun violence. Banning good people from having guns does not result in securing that right, because then you are relying on the government to protect them—and statistically it is way easier to stop an attacker if you have a weapon on you than to wait for the police to arrive. I am not just talking about defense against a perpetrator with a gun—this also includes brass knuckles, knives, bats, and sheer physical strength (most of which are legal still in countries that ban guns). You can’t just analyze it in terms of the increase of violence with guns—it needs to be relative to violent crimes in general.

The arguments for it are arbitrary and does not have a fundamental impact on the freedom of the people.
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The only notion of freedom it is connected to is within the context of civil war and uprising, so at its core, the importance of it is only valid when all other constitutional laws are broken.

I am assuming you meant to say 2nd amendment (as opposed to the 6th amendment), and I will tell you what I told another person:

It takes a lot less training to use a gun for self-defense than melee fighting (like boxing, mma, using a knife, etc.), significantly safer for the victim to use (e.g., a knife fight ends with both parties at the hospital), it deters criminals from committing the crime in the first place being that a gun is the great equalizer (e.g., that scrawny women my be strapped), and can de-escalate situations (e.g., brandishing a firearm).

Exactly how many times a citizen lawfully “uses” a firearm for self-defense variously significantly depending on the agenda of the group putting out the study. At one point it was anywhere between 600,000 – 2.5 million times per year in the US; then it was 60,000 – 70,000.

The CDC came out with one that when to upwards of 2.5 million per year in the US, but then discreetly removed that study due to political pressure. The sad truth is that we probably won’t know the real numbers because one side wants to use the most liberal of numbers and the other the most conservative of numbers to the point of exaggerations. Liberals don’t want you thinking guns are used very often for self-defense, and conservatives want to think it is constantly happening.
…
Now, bearing arms is more important, although health is also very important, because, like I said, who cares if the government holds all the power? One day, they could just decide to take your healthcare away from you, enslave you, send you to a concentration camp, etc. and what are you going to do about it? Try to stab them with your kitchen knives?!?

A US citizen has, at least, a fighting chance: they can legally buy fully automatic weapons, high caliber rifles, SBRs, shotguns, body armor, RPGs, etc. Now, the US government, especially the ATF, is always trying to ban them and red tape them; so there’s regulations that are in place relative to how dangerous the ATF views it (e.g., true SBRs require a gun registry, which is unconstitutional); but my point is that we can own the stuff that actually could put a dent in a tyrannical governments attempted coup.

Again, seriously, what can you do in your European country if this were to happen? I guess you could try to manufacture improved explosives; but without the proper training you are going to risk blowing yourself up.

The beauty of american values—in Jeffersonian politics—is that it takes a cynical approach to the nature of the government and of the people and tries to come up with a balance—a friction—between the two that keeps them in check. As Jefferson wisely said:

Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it's evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

– Jefferson to Madison, January 30, 1787 (underlined portions were added by me)

Would you say that Scandinavia has more social justice than the US?

I don’t know, because I do not pretend to know about politics in Scandinavia specifically. I am not well-versed on that.

In what way do you define social justice?

I would define it as justice as it relates to persons—viz., a subbranch of morality which pertains to how to treat other persons with proper respect and fairness.

How come Scandinavia have more left politics while still having more freedom of speech and protections of citizens rights?

What do you mean by “left politics”, and what does that look like in Scandinavia?

Fundamentally, in what way do you connect actual left politics with limiting those core values?

I am talking about liberalism as it relates to what I am seeing in Western societies. I noted them briefly at the beginning of this post.

The US could have a major welfare overhaul and mitigate economic inequality, protect workers rights, free education etc. and still have strong protections of the constitution

The problem is that liberals try to do it in an unfair way: they try to just tax the rich or more well-off people in the community to pay for other peoples’ mistakes.

The whole idea that left politics try to destroy the constitution is just fiction.

In my country, liberals are trying to censor speech, persecute people, take away our 2nd amendment right, mutilate children, overly-sexualize children, put men in women’s bathrooms, put men in women’s sports, etc. These are not fictions, my friend.

If you listen to both sides... where's the actual politics?

Yeah, that’s generally fair; but not completely true.

You want to have a weapon in your home to defend yourself from whom?

Criminals and to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Also, is there a correlation between carrying guns and safety?

Absolutely. It takes a lot less training to use a gun for self-defense than melee fighting (like boxing, mma, using a knife, etc.), significantly safer for the victim to use (e.g., a knife fight ends with both parties at the hospital), it deters criminals from committing the crime in the first place being that a gun is the great equalizer (e.g., that scrawny women my be strapped), and can de-escalate situations (e.g., brandishing a firearm).

Exactly how many times a citizen lawfully “uses” a firearm for self-defense variously significantly depending on the agenda of the group putting out the study. At one point it was anywhere between 600,000 – 2.5 million times per year in the US; then it was 60,000 – 70,000.

The CDC came out with one that when to upwards of 2.5 million per year in the US, but then discreetly removed that study due to political pressure. The sad truth is that we probably won’t know the real numbers because one side wants to use the most liberal of numbers and the other the most conservative of numbers to the point of exaggerations. Liberals don’t want you thinking guns are used very often for self-defense, and conservatives want to think it is constantly happening.

I think a that a sublation of those two is probably correct: there are a significant amount of self-defense situations that happen in the US per year, but who knows exactly how much.

It seems like if we decide to ban you from bearing guns, you would feel 'oppresed' by the state, and your freedom will not be fulfilled.

Correct. Once one gives the government the power to regulate arms, not just guns, is when they give up the ability to stop the government from doing horrible things.

Interesting. Why don't you view social justice as a core value too?

I think it is, but I just don’t view it the same as liberals. For liberals, it is all about identity politics—e.g., you are black so we should care more because of the history around black people, you are gay so we care more because you are a minority, you are this, you are that, etc. I care about a merit-based society, and social injustice would be not judging based off of merit; and, ironically, the liberal form of social justice is a form of social injustice under this view, because they are judging people on the basis of their skin, sexual orientation, gender, etc. and not their skills.

Holy sh*t. You left me speechless. It is true that my country is poorer, but honestly, here reigns more common sense than there. I guess it is the luck of being born in Europe.

I wasn’t saying that socialistic healthcare can’t pan out fairly well, and in fact it pans out relatively well in most European countries, but it isn’t the best—the best is a free market economy; and the US doesn’t even have this in terms of its health care.

Now, bearing arms is more important, although health is also very important, because, like I said, who cares if the government holds all the power? One day, they could just decide to take your healthcare away from you, enslave you, send you to a concentration camp, etc. and what are you going to do about it? Try to stab them with your kitchen knives?!?

A US citizen has, at least, a fighting chance: they can legally buy fully automatic weapons, high caliber rifles, SBRs, shotguns, body armor, RPGs, etc. Now, the US government, especially the ATF, is always trying to ban them and red tape them; so there’s regulations that are in place relative to how dangerous the ATF views it (e.g., true SBRs require a gun registry, which is unconstitutional); but my point is that we can own the stuff that actually could put a dent in a tyrannical governments attempted coup.

Again, seriously, what can you do in your European country if this were to happen? I guess you could try to manufacture improved explosives; but without the proper training you are going to risk blowing yourself up.

Says a supporter of the party that tried to overthrow the results of a free and fair election for president in 2020

Trump did try to do that, and I do not approve of that. — Bob Ross

I can't think of a response to that. You live in a different moral world than I do.

Wouldn’t the response be: “I am glad we at least agree on that!”? I was agreeing with you.

Your recent thread "In Support of Western Supremacy, Nationalism, and Imperialism" makes it clear this is not true.

:sad:

The party that refused to consider a Democratic Supreme Court nominee for purely partisan reasons.

I am fine with that: — Bob Ross

Ditto.

How do you not have a response to that? I thought the whole point of this OP was to open up the conversation, in good faith, to Democrats and Conservatives to demonstrate how the former is better.

You just ignored my entire post. How do you expect to convince people of your Democratic views if you are incapable of defending them?

That is a legal principle. As a non legal standard, if one or two people accuse someone of something then it might be reasonable to not reach a conclusion, but as the number of accusations rise in unrelated cases where the accusers who do not know of the other accusations, it would be stupid to continue to assume that they did nothing wrong.

As a practical matter, yes, ceteris paribus, we would say that this person is probably a sexual predator if there are multiple, unrelated accounts. But it does matter if those accounts are not completely unrelated (such as deciding to come out once they realize other people are making such accusations) and to whom is accused (such as a very wealthy person). Likewise, it matters what evidence was presented and by whom (e.g., if my sister makes the claim, then I am much, much more inclined, prima facie, to believe it because I know her character).

So if a large number of people make accusations in cases where the only evidence is the word of the person on each side, it is always wrong to believe the accused and not believe the many accusers?

I would take a look at the evidence, who is making the claim, and who it is being claimed about. If I don’t think that there’s enough evidence, the person is of bad or questionable character, or there are reasonable reasons for someone of bad intention to make false claims about the accused, or something similar, then I would not believe them.

Analogies made in cases that are not analogous are at best misleading and at worse deceptive.

An analogy is a similarity in dissimilar events: that’s how it works. The analogous aspect was that the phrase “I didn’t even have to wait” does not itself indicate a sex crime was committed. Do you agree or not?

You assume the man is innocent, and so a woman who accuses him is assumed to be evil unless she can prove he did it

Please re-read what you quoted here:

I never said we should treat women that accuse men of sexual crimes, who do not have sufficient evidence to prove it, as “evil women”.
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That’s poor reasoning, and opens up for innocent men to be convicted of crimes they didn’t commit by evil women.

I stand by my statement, and you are misunderstanding. The second quote is explaining why we assume innocence, under the law, until proven guilty; the first quote is noting that a women who cannot prove sufficiently that the crime occurred is not in principle evil. It is entirely possible for a good women who was sexually abused to not have sufficient evidence to prove it, and that we would then assume, under the law, that that man is innocent—so your claim here is a false dichotomy.

In practicality, even if a women cannot prove it sufficiently under the law, you are right to note that we may still believe it anyways (and rightly so).

but they can't be believed because they are all evil.

This is a blatant straw man, and hopefully the above provided ample clarification.