Don't forget, this is Florida you are talking about. — swstephe

That some people in Florida are accepting of gays and others not hardly makes Florida unique. In Florida, you have a large retired population, a large Hispanic (especially Cuban) population, and some of the old traditional southern US Floridians in north Florida. None of this really has anything to do with the massacre, as if there needs to be an analysis of the mindset of Floridians to try to figure out why it happened there. It's just as likely to happen anywhere, and it's just as likely the target will be some other minority or even America generally next time.

All it takes is a disturbed guy with a gun.

I really refuse to allow a madman's expression to be representative of anything other than that particular madman. That is, whether gay rights are sporadically surging forward and backwards (so to speak) is a question, but it isn't one that should be raised by the recent events. Even our most ardent opponents of gay rights would condemn the massacre in the harshest terms.

I suppose today's young gays are quite different than the older gays. They've grown up in relative peace, seeing their rights protected and even honored. They don't have to resort to the restrooms, the bathhouses, and the cruisy parks that you mention. They can simply text and grind (I suppose that's how it works).

And sex among gays isn't the only thing that has changed. It seems from my vantage point that technology and changing mores have changed the behavior of the hetero population. I'm to understand that Tinder is the straight counterpart to Grindr. The point being that sex generally is easier to get and more accepted in all its splendid forms due to the miracles of technology.

When I was young and single, internet dating was just starting to emerge. You were generally considered a loser if you had to resort to such dating services. Today it's mainstream and accepted. One now must develop one's online social skills to procreate, which, honestly, are far easier to develop than face to face social skills.

I think that most people mean the same, or at least similar things, when that say that such-and-such is wrong, but then philosophers come along and overcomplicate things. — Sapientia

This assumes near universal agreement on moral issues. The problem is that moral norms vary depending upon time and place, with what is right in the US being different from what is right in Saudi Arabia, and what is right in the US in 2016 is different than what was right in the US in 1776.

In order to deny the relativity of morality (as in it's not dependent upon such things as time and place), some standard has to be asserted that describes the absolutist basis for it. It's not that philosophers are overcomplicating what we already know to be right and wrong, it's that they wish to explain how it is that slavery (for example) was just as immoral in 1600 as it would be in 2016 and why the oppression of women is just as bad in Saudi Arabia as it is in the Ireland (where Baden has a harem of women).

The rule-based approach and other such approaches (some forms of utilitarianism come to mind), when isolated from our emotional feelings regarding an ethical issue, seems to move away from what makes ethics meaningful, and move towards something else, such as duty - which can be blind. — Sapientia

Perhaps it does eliminate some of the feeling from the enterprise, but there is a valid reason for doing that, and it's to remove the subjectivity from the analysis. If my sole reason for not murdering is that it makes me feel hella bad, then it'll be difficult to convince you not to murder if you don't have that same negative feeling. If, though, I have a reason that transcends you and me (like God told us not murder), then that's at least provides an objective basis.

I think your position only works if we're all good people with the same views of right and wrong. Sort of like we all see blue the same way, so we don't need some philosopher offering a complicated view of what blue is. We know blue when we see it. I just don't think the same holds true for morality. Those who share similar norms typically are those in the same community, but the question is whose norms are truly good.

No, we're pretty different I'd say...

didn't will a change in feeling and thinking from "life is barely tolerable" to "life is OK, maybe even good" though I find the change is a relief. It just happened. Maybe the cold, wet rain and dark clouds will return. Don't know. — Bitter Crank

Amen my brother. The pervasive theme of this forum and its less evolved predecessor (especially as it pertains to political discussions) is pessimism masquerading as realism. That is, should anyone ever allow for the possibility that we're not all going to hell in hand basket (whatever that means), they are looked upon as naïve, or worse yet, someone trying to manipulate and control the masses into protecting the status quo.

I do recognize that you haven't really admitted that the world might not be on a collision course, but have instead suggested that your optimism has come upon you as would a random change in the weather. I suppose it goes too far against your grain to allow that you might be feeling better because things are actually better, but I, for one, will take your contentment as a harbinger that the world is on the upswing.

Funny you should say that because after I wrote that, I thought it sounded Bannoish.

Anyway, I'm much more entertaining than Banno.

And yet I am able to tell a random person on the street who I know nothing about and who may not share my worldview that I find lying wrong, and he'll know just what I mean. Curious I can accomplish that there, but the OP can't do that here.

I think we also need to consider the huge differences between the many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. — jamalrob

I think that's where the real answer lies in terms of why certain groups are less successful than others.

I seriously doubt that the entire plight of Africa can be blamed on Western imperialism either, which seems to be the thrust of the OP and many of the responses. Oppression, imperialism, slavery, genocide, are all part of the joys of living as a human being on the planet, and the pain exacted on Sub-Saharan Africa is just another example. It has to do with history, evolution, and all sorts of things.

I think he is addressing this to pessimists (the handful on here). The argument for him is IF the premise IS that life sucks, then why don't you just kill yourself. This is kind of the knee-jerk question people ask antinatalists all the time. I gave my response above. — schopenhauer1

The reason most people don't just kill themselves doubtfully is related to anything rational anymore than the decision to kill one's self is rational. Suicide most often occurs during very emotional episodes, with the rare exception being euthanasia after prolonged illness. the decision is rarely rational.

In any creature that has arisen from an evolutionary system that promotes survivability, you'd have to assume that few would exist who don't have a strong desire to live. Our desire for self-preservation is trumped only by our desire to protect our young or those within our group. All of this is to answer the question of "why don't we all kill ourselves?" is because we are programmed not to. That's the real reason.

An obvious argument for antinatalism would be to argue that life sucks, across the board. It's miserable, tedious, scary, and all sorts of negative things. This leads to the conclusion that this kind of life is not worth starting. — darthbarracuda

That's not an argument. It's a conclusion. If life sucks, then sure, let's not have life. The question is whether life sucks. I say it doesn't. What is obvious is that if you begin with the conclusion that life has no meaning, nihilism follows by definition.

I don't see Trump as any more or less evil than Hillary, and I don't even see him as predictably conservative. He's a self absorbed megalomaniac populist. That just means he might have the perfect set of flaws to gain high status, maybe even be the leader of the free world.

Maybe he uses the forums like teenage girls use text.

The OP seems to be the flip side of the question of whether rocks have consciousness. It's entirely possible that folks who are walking around appearing to be conscious are not, and it's entirely possible that things that don't appear conscious are (like rocks).

All that this means is that we can't know for certain what is taking place inside someone's mind, but it doesn't suggest that there'd be no difference between conscious and unconscious entities with exact behavior.

If I chose to use a women's bathroom, shower, and gym because I like to see women in various states of undress, what makes that justification less worthy than my justification that I'm using those facilities because I identify with women more than men?

Why is it ok for a guy to go into the women's room because he wants to have a cooter but not ok if he just likes to look at cooter? As I shower my naked body next to some random naked woman in the women's locker room, if I say "I want one of them things like what you got down yonder," should I avoid prosecution?

What if those are terms explicitly stated in the marriage agreement and agreed by both parties at the time of the marriage? — Agustino

If I agree to mow your lawn for $20 and I don't do it, the court will not require me to mow your lawn. You would be entitled to the additional costs you have to pay to get your lawn cut. If you could find someone else to cut you lawn for $20, you'd get nothing because you weren't damaged.

What does this have to do with your question? Assuming marriages were actual contracts governed only by contract law (which they are not), you still could not require someone to do what they said they were going to do in the marriage and you could not keep two people married any more than you could keep two business partners remaining as business partners. The typical remedy for a contractual violation is determining the financial damage caused by the breach and giving that to the damaged party, not in imprisoning or otherwise forcing the violator to do what he contracted to do.

Should unrelenting torture of the worst kind be a punishment for such a person UNTIL and IF they repent and feel sorry for what they have done? — Agustino

Sure, and if they repent immediately, set them loose immediately. It's just the stubborn ones we need to beat.

Yes, when there's this young girl wanting a breast augmentation surgery because she thinks men don't fuck her because she has small breasts or some stupid reason like this, absolutely opposed (why would I not be opposed, does it seem to you that I want to license promiscuity and facilitate it? ;) ). When it is someone who has suffered an accident, etc. that's different. — Agustino

I don't think it's any more likely that a young woman gets new breasts, a new nose, or liposuction because she's not getting enough sex as it is that she wears certain clothes or make-up to get more sex. It's obvious that women want to look nice (as do men) and that one reason for that is to be attractive to the opposite sex, but that is but one reason.

The point that you've refused to address is why you believe that modification of appearance is a moral wrong, considering it occurs on all sorts of levels, from sexual reassignment surgery to mascara on one's eye lashes. Instead, you answered the question of whether you were opposed to young women who wanted larger breasts only in order to get fucked more often. To that, you were opposed, but that wasn't the question.

Do you oppose women wearing dresses, high heels, make up, and coloring their hair? If not, why? Suppose a man does the same thing? Are you opposed to people modifying their appearance generally, or are you really just opposed to men modifying their appearance to appear as women? I suspect it's really the latter, meaning your opposition is in the blurring of arbitrary societal norms. You don't want it to be acceptable for men to wear skirts, unless it's a Scottish guy in a kilt, because that's a societal norm already, right?

But these people, as well as all other suffering people, do matter to me, and I will do my best to take care of them. — Agustino

You are such a caring and loving soul, committed to consoling the broken hearted and nursing them back to health while properly chastising the wicked who lack your compassion.

It's hard to take you seriously. At least present your indignation in a credible way.

That particular person X is lesbian, homosexual, transexual, etc. is not a problem to society, it's their freedom to be as they wish. It only becomes a problem when this seeks to become a social NORM or STANDARD. My issue is to ensure that this is contained as a minority position, and not allowed to spread through society, something that I claim is harmful. — Agustino

Then you'll have to explain (1) what the lesbian, homosexual, transsexual, etc. values are, (2) why they are harmful, and (3) how you intend to contain their harmful values. Obviously if your cure (#3) is worse than the disease (#1), then you might want to just allow their values to flourish.

Implicit in your position is also the troublesome idea that gays, lesbians, and transsexuals are the products of environment as opposed to genetics. It would seem that if their behavior were caused by genetics, it would hardly matter what societal norms might dictate. My eyes will remain blue even should the societal norm be brown. By the same token, if we declare gays the norm, I'm pretty sure I'll remain straight, which means I really couldn't care any less what society says because it would have no meaningful impact. I mean, the gays, lesbians, and transsexuals all seemed to persevere when society vehemently condemned them.

At least admit to your actual position, which is that you find lesbians, homosexuals, transsexuals and the etcetera morally wrong and you want a society that considers them as such. However, you also realize you've lost that battle and so you're content in allowing society to just absorb their nonsense as long as it doesn't affect you. You believe it does affect you once it reaches the point where you can't point your finger and call them bad without ostracism, so you want to still be able to do that in peace, thus your nuanced position.

That is, you want to sit in your grandpa chair cursing the new fangled world in peace damn it.

Since modern society no longer links gender identity to anatomy, but instead to personal declaration, the only course would be to allow for a single restroom with individual stalls where each person can decree their own fiefdom. My fiefdom would include all sorts of rules and regulations, but since my jurisdiction is limited to the confines of my stall, there should be no problem. That does seem like where all of this is leading: modern sensibilities make the male/female distinction fluid and subjective. I will withhold my judgments on such developments else be called a traditionalist, or, worse yet, a conservative. Let's at least admit though that a certain amount is lost when we bury our heads to obvious distinctions.

Along BitterCrank's distinctions between gays and transgenders, there is also a fairly profound distinction among many in the transgender community. The narrative we are told is that the typical transgender boy is a girl born in boy's body. As the story goes, he displays female traits early on, plays with the other girls, migrates towards dolls and teacups, prefers dresses and girls' clothing, avoids rough-housing and cops and robbers, and eventually moves on to developing crushes on the little boys. These people certainly exist as do their female counterparts who were men born in women bodies. In fact, these types of people (MtF and FtM) exist in roughly equal numbers, yet they are quite rare.

The truth is that the overwhelming bulk of MtF are men who grew up as typical little boys, playing among the boys, rough housing, avoiding tea parties and girl's dresses. They also developed crushes on little girls. At some point (often much later in life in their 30s or 40s), they began to fetishize about women, wanting to act as and appear as women, first in private and then later in public. The thrill of wearing women's clothing, walking and talking as women, and doing typical women activities eventually escalated into hormone injections and body modifications. Having sex with men is yet another part of the fetish of acting as a woman, but often they are quite heterosexual. There is also often a masochistic side to these folks, with a sexual satisfaction derived from the humiliation of being cast as the weaker sex and performing sexual acts on men. The term describing this type of transsexual is "gynophelia," a lover of women.

I do know that this distinction is controversial within the transsexual community, but there's no denying a substantial difference between homosexual and heterosexual transsexuals.

The point here is that in our fervor to hug everyone and accept them regardless, maybe we should look a bit deeper and figure out if there's a better way to respond than to simply accommodate their peculiarities. Maybe there is something better that we can say and do for Caitlan than telling her she is the best no matter what and building her out her own stall.

My first suggestion is that you offer a brief summary that doesn't require that I read your actual dissertation. You'll get far more feedback that way.

As you like it.

I took my son to a Shakespearean theater and got the cayenne flavored peanuts and a Guinness. There was this fat actor who played two roles, which speaks to possible budgetary issues. Some orthodox Jews sat beside us and they brought their own food due to their dietary restrictions. The seats to the extreme left and right were the cheapest, but they remained empty due to the difficulty one would have watching the play. The homeless man who blocked the outside entry way politely moved without incident.

Why just a father and son were there might have been contemplated by the father and daughter seated behind me.

All the world's a stage.

Unions are the only means workers (which is about 90% of the population, past, present, or future) have of protecting themselves from the predations of management. — Bitter Crank

And yet, as you say, only 11.1% of the workforce is unionized, but all these other folks have jobs that are just as good or better than those held by those in unions. This would mean that the unions aren't necessary.

It would seem that if the average worker has the right to unionize but chooses not to, then he would only have himself to blame if he is abused by management. Why are you insisting that he purchase a protection he has indicated he doesn't want?

Let's also not pretend that the unions have done a good job representing the employees. Unions, like all organizations, are much better at helping themselves than in helping others. Although it's doubtful that I would choose to join a union even if it was on the up and up, I'd certainly not join one that I felt was using its money and influence to help the union bosses and leadership.

Even if all your efforts amount to nothing, which I suspect they will, it was exciting.

I stand by my prior observations.

The problem with everything (well, maybe 99%) of what you say in this thread is that it's not philosophy nor is it any sort of scientific psychology. It's just your own particular sort of stupid way that you think life is best lived, proved to you through periodic revelations you have received throughout your oh so examined life.

I do know they have to go through regular pregnancies every year in order to keep producing milk — Bitter Crank

I did confirm this, although humans will continue producing milk (well, women at least) after they give birth for as long as they are milked. It might therefore be easier to have women instead of cows be available for milk production. It's something to think about if you're a recent mother in need of work.

Here and at PF there have been quite a few discussions about consciousness in computers. — Bitter Crank

Regarding consciousness, we do have some definitional problems, so we'd have to explain what we mean. If I swat a bee and it lies there stunned on the ground not moving but then it gets up and flies away, I think it'd be accurate to say that it lost consciousness momentarily but then regained it. It was less than dead, but not quite the same bee we all previously knew and loved when it was lying there, so I think it's correct to describe it in terms of its consciousness.

The sort of consciousness I find interesting which causes serious current limitations in AI is the idea of conceptual awareness. It's clear that computers don't know "about" things or conceptualize them in their CPUs. I'd say the same of bees, I guess, although I've never been a bee, so it's hard to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZBlqcbpmxY

Well, I stand up next to a mountain and I chop it down with the edge of my hand.

I'm not on Facebook. I don't have the time for it, considering the time I spend here. It is amazing what people put online, especially those in their late teens and early twenties. People let you follow every detail of their life on Twitter. I don't get why someone would do that.

I'm told that one way they caught Osama bin Laden was that they found a home that was dead - no internet, no phone service, no cable, nothing. So, if you want to engage in some counter surveillance, you'll need to create just enough activity so as to not look suspicious. But don't fool yourself. Those clever bastards are going to figure out what you're up to one way or another, which might mean that the best way to avoid detection is to behave.

Of course, veganism is tops. — Wosret

I eat only vegetables who have died of natural causes. I say "who" because I think it's discriminatory to think of plants and people differently. I've been waiting for a carrot to die in my yard so that I can eat it. Any day now.

My cat won't eat peas. She sort of swats them around. She eats fish though. She's such a dick about this whole thing.

Isn't that begging the question, given that whether or not he chose to hit your car, or could have chosen otherwise, is what's at issue? If it was a crime of passion, then that suggests that he was rendered incapable of self-control for the duration of the act. It wouldn't have been a choice, but an abrupt, impulsive reaction. He'd still probably get charged with a crime, even if that line of defence was successful. It would only serve to reduce the sentence. That seems like the way it should be. I don't find the idea of letting such people go unpunished appealing. — Sapientia

This is the traditional thinking on the subject. There are varying degrees of freedom, some of the more dispassionate I suppose have more freedom and those more driven by impulse less. That would seem to link freedom with deliberation and thoughtfulness, which is why a "cold blooded" murderer is considered the worst sort. If you commit murder when you're heated and angry (have "hot" blood, as in "my blood is just boiling"), you're not considered as evil as when you're cool, calm and collected as you would with cold blood.

Of course, if you're a lizard, you do everything with cold blood.

The argument being made in the OP was beyond that and inconsistent on its face. It is argued that we shouldn't hold anyone responsible because everyone is motivated purely by external circumstance and unable to pull themselves from their circumstances and decide freely. That being the case, there is no real distinction between the freedom in one acting coldly and one acting hotly. The inconsistency is in the OP's then attempt to argue how we should behave toward the guilty, as if we are somehow exempt from the same forces as the guilty and that we have the ability to alter our behavior towards them and do otherwise.

If you type in "thephilosophyforum.com" directly into the url, it'll come straight up #1. The trick is in getting people to do that.

You're welcome.

For a brief amount of time, you probably feel rage at the tornado, until you realize that the tornado had no animosity towards you and that your house was simply in the path of destruction. — darthbarracuda

I probably wouldn't get mad at the tornado, but I'll play along. Damn tornado!

But perhaps the reason they felt road rage was because they had just lost their job. Or perhaps their dog just died. Or perhaps there is a chemical imbalance in the brain that led to his actions. — darthbarracuda

Maybe, and then they chose to hit my car, which they shouldn't have done.

Because of your (pre-determined) inability to forgive someone for their (pre-determined) recklessness, you now have to go to court and pay a ton of money for lawyers and charges. — darthbarracuda

I'm not going to court because I'm mad. I'm going to court to get the money necessary to fix my car and maybe to pay my medical bills. I'm not just there for revenge. Even if I were, it's not like the jury is going to enter a decree declaring that vengeance is mine. Civil courts give money. If you're not there for money, don't go.

And so when we see how people are not intentionally bad and cannot be fully responsible for their actions, it is worth it to try to change how we respond to their actions, even if this change in response is ultimately pre-determined. — darthbarracuda

You miss the entire point of my post. You can no more tell me how I ought to act than I can tell the road rager how he ought to act if we're all determined to do whatever we're going to do. If the road rager isn't bad for having done what he did, I'm not bad for punishing him for what he did. We both were forced to do whatever we did.

Sure, international unity so that no one can escape your regulation because any freedom in the market will be used to thwart what the almighty state has decreed just and fair. Your belief that the state is this benevolent force that will work only to the promotion of the individual is severely flawed. What you should expect to occur is that those vested with the power to control wealth will get incredibly wealthy, which is what you get in capitalism, although with capitalism the power of the state is not utilized to oppress and control the masses.

It's not coincidental that the existence of free markets coincides with free societies generally.

American free speech rights are far more protective than other Western nations. If this were a free speech issue, it's very doubtful anyone could be made to say anything or forbidden from saying anything. You have an absolute right to deny the holocaust or to ask that the queen be fucked. This is a civil rights issue, dealing with how people must be treated. If a baker wants to put up a sign itemizing the people he hates, he certainly could, although he couldn't refuse to serve them.

Your utopia entails absolute control over the global market so you can eliminate every worker's ability to innovate or create their own market. Such totalitarianism is required
for your system to work, and the outcome will follow the predictable pattern of all other Marxist countries.

If you cannot hold the guilty morally responsible for their actions, please forgive me when I do. I was predetermined to act that way. If you can't forgive me, I'll understand. You were predetermined not to. Of course, if I don't understand, I couldn't have. I wonder why you seek to convince me of anything since I'm going to do as I must, but I guess you had to try to seek to convince me because you had to.

What sorts of corporate welfare does Joe the baker (for example) get that enslaves him to provide employment opportunities for you? This has less to do with corporate obligation (or non corporate) than it has to do with what you believe you are entitled to.