First we had G.W. and that resulted in Obama and now we're getting Trump. I just see the pendulum that used to swing slightly left then slightly right swinging a bit more wildly.

I also think that the US political system is incredibly conservative by design, with so many checks and balances, that in times of turbulence, you end up with preservation of the status quo. As long as the Dems and the Republicans remain so far apart, nothing happens.

The problem is that the ideology of communism is ill defined and that the fall of the USSR was never considered by Marxists to represent the fall of communism. Socialism is also ill defined, but whether socialism will also fall remains a question, if for no other reason than it's expensive to maintain.

I see the emergence of Bernie and Donald not to be a sign of the remarkable human spirit, but as evidence of the law of entropy in action. Why you can only see the left side of the ledger and not the right seems like selective analysis.

The SCOTUS is key because we can't count on the bowels of congress moving in an orderly fashion in the next few terms, as long as the far right maintains enough strength in office. — Bitter Crank

Unless Congress excretes some sort of law, SCOTUS will have nothing to rule on.

It was twenty-five years ago that America defeated communism and any ideas of socialism with it. Yet, here we are today with a serious Democratic candidate arguing, successfully, for socialism in America. Isn't that rather amazing? I find this relieving as opposed to the rather constant pessimism hereabouts about the human spirit/condition/nature. — Question

The USSR was defeated. If by that you mean communism, then I guess it was. The idea of socialism was not defeated, as it existed and continues to exist throughout Europe. Whether socialism is an early form of communism is debatable, but certainly not something that has ever empirically occurred.

The truth is that all countries' economies exist on a spectrum, with some having little government control and few social security protections and some having more. The US is to the right of Sweden which is to the left of the UK. That the US has moved to the left isn't amazing, nor is it a triumph for Marxists.

How did I contradict myself? I said that the Israelis won some land in a war, that they weren't required to return it, but they gratuitously did return some of it. Does that somehow make them required to return all of it?

What European or other developed nation questions the right of Israel to exist? — Baden

The proposed two state solution is problematic because the Palestinians reject that idea and wish to push the Israelis into the sea (or some such rhetoric). Those who advocate the two state solution do so with the understanding that Palestine does not want a two state solution, but wish to destroy it. So, when you say "what European nation questions Israel's right to exist," my response is any that believes ceding authority or land to a hostile nation and who wishes to destroy it.

No-one is arguing Tel Aviv is not legitimately Israel's but there is reason to think that Jerusalem should be shared with the Palestinians as both peoples have in recent times controlled it or parts of it and both lay claim to it. And there is certainly reason to think that the West Bank which is part of the Palestinian territories should be considered legitimately Palestinian land. You do not automatically get a moral right to own land simply because you are presently in charge of it. Historical context has to be taken into consideration. And the context suggests the dividing up of the land in the region rather than giving it all to one or the other party is the only fair solution. — Baden

Please. There is no universal standard to determine who gets to control land. It makes no more sense to say that an aboriginal tribe gets to keep its land because great great grandpa was the first to build a hut there than it does to say that another nation gets to control it because it was taken forcibly in war. Why the Irish get to be in Ireland is no more justified than allowing the Americans to occupy Indian lands or why Russia gets to be in the Crimea. What is unique about Israel is that it alone is forced to justify its occupation of various parts of the country, including those won in a defensive war, notwithstanding the fact that some of those militarily won lands have already been gratuitously returned.

And so it comes down to why Israeli occupation of lands is of such international consequence and why they in particular have to engage in offering a moral basis for their occupation. Whether Britain gets to hold on to Belfast hardly seems a matter for my consideration.

Do you really think though that if Israel had been set up in Europe and was living peacefully with its neighbours like Sweden, Holland or Ireland are, it would be subject to threats of economic boycott? — Baden

Not to quibble with wording, but "set up" suggests an artificial creation. We don't hypothesize about what might have been had Ireland been set up in Madagascar and could therefore have avoided the troubles it had with Britain. Israel is in fact trying to live in peace and only doing what is necessary to protect itself from constant terroristic attacks. If Mexico demanded the return of their native Texas and lobbed missiles over the border, no one would question a ferocious response from the US, and no one would offer great sympathies if Mexico became part of the US.

It has soldiers and roadblocks there that can prevent Palestinians travelling from one place to another even in the case of emergency. And it has a built a security wall within the territories that separates Palestinians families and villages from each other. — Baden

You build a great case for Palestinian sympathy by pointing out the disruption in their lives at the hands of a tyrannical oppressor as long as you ignore the reason why such measures are required. Would you live in Israel if they didn't have such measures, or might you feel some comfort that someone was trying to be sure that you actually were alive to wake up the morning?

While we both accept absolutely that Israelis have a right to self-determination and legitimate claims to some of the land in the region, do you accept that Palestinians also have also have a right to self-determination and a legitimate claim to some of the land there? And, if so, how do you think that claim should be realized? — Baden

Of course, in a ideal world, we'd just go down the deed office at the courthouse, pull out the plats, and mark which land each got, file it in, stamp it, shake hands, and call one another "neighbor." Unfortunately, this isn't just a dispute over borders and plats. It's that the Palestinians want to kill their neighbors and take all the land. Sure, reasonable people can reasonably resolve their dispute. Our disagreement is that I think the Israelis are reasonable and the Palestinians aren't.

In any case, critics of Israeli policy include Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and non-Israelis alike so obviously antisemitism is not necessarily a part of such critiques. But the accusation of antisemitism is such a serious one that of course it's likely to put off debate. — Baden

The reason that some associate criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism is because there does appear to be an over-analysis of Israeli policy (like should they develop certain areas of their country and how they should defend themselves from enemies) in comparison to how other countries are analyzed. It is only Israel that actually has to justify its own existence and state its legitimate claim to its own land, a requirement that all other nations are relieved of. Israel appears to be specially targeted, and because it is Jewish run, it leads some to conclude it is the Jewishness of the nation that provides the basis for being targeted. Considering Jews have long been subject to unfair criticism (many of which you pointed out), it doesn't seem such a stretch to believe that the current criticisms of Israel are just part of this same historical criticism.

So, yes, Israel, like all nations, has policies that aren't internally consistent, are entirely self-interested, that might be hypocritical, and that might even be unjustified to the objective observer. These policies however aren't of such magnitude that Israel ought to always remain under the microscope anymore than should the policies of the various European nations that offer these criticisms.

Israel is not the Jewish world. The Jewish world as a whole is mostly very secular and forward looking (unlike a lot of the Muslim world obviously). — Baden

Sure, and Israel is also largely secular and forward looking. I don't know why you draw a distinction between secular/religious, forward looking/backward looking, and Israeli Jews/American Jews. You're just a labeler, trying to divide my people so that you can conquer us.

The Muslim world is just misunderstood, but the Jewish world is evil. Such is the narrative.

I have no opinion on the matter--except that I like Carter for his support of GM crops--but I'm curious: what was so bad about him as a president? — jamalrob

Long fuel lines at gas stations, weak foreign policy resulting in Iran hostages, double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, Russian wheat debacle, and I'm sure there's more, but just can't remember. America was weak, which made room for Reagan, much like Obama has made room for Trump (a joke, only sort of).

His more recent positions on Israel have been atrocious, although I'm sure you disagree with my assessment.

It wasn't until late in her 2nd trimester that she did, and then you have to actually schedule the abortion -- which can take a long time. It's not like you can just go in and get it done. — Moliere

Is this the consequence of public healthcare? In the US, you can just go get it done. There are additional restrictions with later term abortions, but there aren't time delays - just pay the lady at the window and get in line.

And if Hilbert's hotel were half full, it'd still have an infinite number of guests, which means when it was fully full, it'd have double the infinite number of guests it had when it was half full.

Did we really need a hotel thought experiment to inform us of one of the infinite number of paradoxes associated with infinity?

In other words: all our beliefs would be happenstance without determinism. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Substitute the term "belief" with X and I agree with what you're saying in a very global way. Everything would be happenstance without determinism, including all your judgments and beliefs.

Determinism leads to happenstance as well.

This means that neither determinism nor indeterminism offers a meaningful way for free will to exist. The idea of free will is incoherent under both the determinist (whether a compatibilist or hard determinist) and the libertarian (indeterminate) account of free will. Either your decisions are based upon the pre-existing causes or they are based upon random events that are uncaused.

Free will is therefore a mystical sort of uncaused cause that expresses the decision of the decision maker without reference to how the decision was reached. It assumes that a variety of factors can be considered by the agent, but which should prevail and result in the ultimate decision are never determined and fully uncaused.

By the same token, if one were to accept this position, one is led to admitting a sort of solipsism, where nothing can really be known other than that you exist in some sort of confused state. And so I simply hold to the general idea that the acceptance of the existence of free will is a necessary precondition for interacting with the world and understanding reality at any level. It must be accepted superficially because any attempt to clarify it will lead to incoherence.

That's what I've been saying all along.

I would hold a fetus as more special than a gall bladder. — Moliere

I just don't think the power of law should be involved in the decision to have an abortion prior to birth. — Moliere

If a fetus is special, then why can't there be special laws for it?

The Supreme Court never enunciated any fetal rights in Roe v Wade or in any abortion case that followed. All analysis dealt with the state's right to regulate versus the woman's right to choose, with the state's rights increasing progressively in each successive trimester. That is, no court has ever declared a fetus is endowed with Constitutional rights.

That is not to say that no law has ever protected the sanctity of the fetus. In particular, there are extensive federal regulations dealing with fetal research and handling fetal tissue. Such rules specifically declare that the fetus has special worth, which one certainly does not see when gall bladders and the like are discussed. That is to say, your position is not at all consistent with law (or common ethical views).

I couldn't understand your post.

It's a conservative-only office? — jamalrob

Among those I joke around with, yes. I'd also imagine that you might consider our liberals conservative, considering my location and industry.

As a joke in my office we often try to prove how we're more conservative than the other by picking out comments the other one makes that might be interpreted as liberal.

I see such banter occurs in all circles.

Which implies nothing about whether those beliefs are justified, correct, true 'only be happenstance,' etc. But this is derailing anyway. — The Great Whatever

Your comments are very unclear. If your beliefs are the result of pre-determined causes beyond your control, they would be held by pure happenstance (i.e. it's just the way things are). They would also not be justified to the extent that justifications are defined as subjectively held explanations that one has some control over deciding which is correct (as in a determined world there is no ability to decide which explanation is correct). Someone could have a belief that happens to be correct and true (synonyms), but that belief would not be knowledge to the extent that a justification could not be had (as explained above) in a determined world.

Only in an ideal sense. I recognize the difficulties in real life of implementing something like that. But, in general, I believe that those who are effected/affected by policy should be the ones who have say -- and abortion policy is one of those that clearly effects/affects women more than men. — Moliere

I don't know of any other situations in typical democracies where affected parties are afforded more votes than those not so affected. Take driving under the influence laws, for example. If we're trying to arrive at better laws to deter drinking and driving, I'd certainly wish to hear from those who have been injured or affected by drunk drivers, and I'd like to hear from drunk drivers themselves and the judges who sentenced them. I don't think though that only their views count or that they are necessarily the most enlightened views. If I don't drive at all, I still get a say in how drivers license laws are designed.

I don't believe that only women can meaningfully debate the abortion issue. I'm stating that in an ideal sense I think that policy should be set by women. — Moliere

For the reasons I've already said, I don't think this makes a whole lot of sense, as if women have some advanced sense of right and wrong in these matters and that aborting a fetus or denying an abortion only affects women. And, of course, even if it did only affect women, that hardly means that unaffected women better empathize than men with affected women, especially those women who have never experienced the issue first or second hand.

This whole setting standards of who gets to vote is troubling for thousands of other reasons.

To simplify my point:

This is really the Cartesian problem of the brain in the vat. We can't know whether all of our perceptions and judgments are accurate because an evil genius might be probing our brains and inserting all of these ideas in us. Or, using a more modern example, we don't know if we're in the Matrix.

The evil genius planting thoughts in us is a deterministic force. It is that force that negates our ability to know anything about the world. Whether that deterministic force is an evil genius or just the omnipotent power of the causal chain, we can know nothing about the world.

To remove us from the evil genius (or the causal chain) is the only way to make us an autonomous agent, fully capable of knowing reality. That is why free will is necessary for us to have knowledge.

I'd also point out that the solution to this mess is exactly as Descartes suggested and it's what has been suggested in this thread. It's to just assert that a good God would never so deceive us and make us believe that which is not true. So, yes, we can simply assert that determinism is just set up to give us correct knowledge, just because it's a good world I suppose.

One could compatibly have one's belief that there is a cat on the mat determined by conditions that held one billion years ago and, also, conceive of this belief being the actualisation of the reliable power to form true beliefs about cats and mats when one encounters them. — Pierre-Normand

And in order for one to hold the belief that beliefs about the world are typically true because determinism just happens to be set up that way, one has to have faith. That dogma would read as follows: Your beliefs reflect reality when you feel you have an adequate justification for them even though your justifications are entirely beyond your control but are forced upon you by your genetics and environment. How one responds to conflicting views is problematic as those other people with varying beliefs would supposedly subscribe to the same dogma.

If I'm going to take a leap of faith, I'd likely not make it so limited and complicated. I'd likely just say that I do have free will to the extent that I really can choose to do otherwise, even if I can't fully make sense out of that concept.

Determinism would seem to negate the possibility, not of knowing anything, but of having any justifiable confidence in the rationality of judgements. Of course if you are one of those who is determined by nature to have confidence in the rationality of judgements, and determined to think that confidence justified, then... — John

Which is exactly my point. You are left believing whatever it is that you must believe, including believing that you believe correctly.

Your position is plainly ridiculous.

So what exactly do you think follows from that? Above you said this means that whether the beliefs are true is just happenstance. But this simply does not follow. — The Great Whatever

If our beliefs are the result of pre-existing causes beyond our control, what follows is that our beliefs cannot be asserted to relate to truth. To the extent that we believe that there are rocks because there are actually rocks, that would be happenstance. It could not be said that we arrived at that conclusion based upon our own independent judgment, but just as the result of some cosmic coincidence the causal chain led us to form a correct belief.

What follows from this is that the inadequacy of compatiblism is not that free will is incompatible with determinism, but it's that determinism negates the possibility of knowing anything.

That doesn't follow. — The Great Whatever

It absolutely follows unless you impose reason into the universe, which requires that all deterministic forces lead conscious beings to truthful beliefs. I still don't know how you'd know that though, considering all that you think you know is just what you happened to be determined to think you know.

Why do I think the earth is flat? The same reason you think the earth round. It's because the laws of nature caused me to believe that.

The locus of morality is the individual person and in the relations between individuals. I think bodily autonomy is basic to a person and to being a free member of society. I think the very idea that anyone else has a say over what a person does with their own body is a denial of this basic element of personhood and renders the subject of such coercion less free than others. — jamalrob

I think you must start your argument with the prefatory statement Assuming that a fetus is a part of, as opposed to contained within, a woman's body. That statement I think will ferret out enough people that many won't find the rest of your thesis useful. This isn't to say that your qualification isn't arguable; it's just that it doesn't really seem at all realistic (to me at least).

In the ideal of all ideals, I'd prefer the question of abortion's legality to be settled by women only. But, I'm not sure how you'd implement that. — Moliere

This doesn't follow. Your prior position was that the pregnant woman alone had the right to choose abortion at any time because it was her body. If that is your position, it makes no more sense to allow a man or another woman to decide what that woman gets to do with her own body. Women don't have a special sisterhood where one gets decide what to do with another's body. If a 15 year old girl is pregnant, you believe Sarah Palin should be given greater rights to decide what she ought to do over Bernie Sanders?

Suppose some women believe that men ought to weigh in on the issue, does the authority they have as women encompass the power to delegate that power to men?

Either you want to make every case subjective where the pregnant woman herself gets to weigh her life circumstances and emotions and decide or you create some objective criteria that you apply across the board. If you're going to look for some objective criteria that allows limitations on abortions, women are no better objective evaluators than men regarding what criteria ought to be used. It's not as if every woman has been pregnant or can be pregnant, and it's not as if no man has any understanding of what human life is.

And, of course, arguing that only women can meaningfully debate the abortion issue somewhat defeats any argument you've presented here regarding abortion, your being male and all.

Why not? The qualities that make a good argument would be the same either way, all we have to do is look and see. — The Great Whatever

So, if offered two options, going to the store or coming home, you are compelled to do that which was pre-determined. If the preexisting causes lead you to come home, you will come home. Your decision is not free.

If offered two options, accepting evolution as true or not accepting evolution as true, you are compelled to do that which is pre-determined. If the preexisting causes lead you not to accept evolution as true, you will not accept evolution as true. Your decision is not free.

The same holds true for everything: whether that be to come home, to accept evolution, to make arguments supportive of evolution, to believe evolution to be true, to be convinced that evolution is true, etc.

When you tell me that you believe evolution to be true for 10 different reasons, you tell me that only because you are compelled to. Whether your reasons are true would just be happenstance. Maybe they are, maybe they're not.

You simply don't understand what I'm saying. You really don't. You can't judge the quality of my argument if determinism is true. If a judge has a predetermined conclusion, he would be recused.

The worst philosophers are those who con you into thinking they had something to say and then you realize you've wasted your time.

This does not follow. Whether an idea is right or not can be judged by its own internal coherence and explanatory merit. Whether it was coerced or determined or not makes no difference to the quality of an argument, nor does it make it 'meaningless.' — The Great Whatever

No, assuming determinism true, an idea will be judged by pre-existing causes and whether your conclusion is actually based on internal coherence and explanatory merit will be entirely happenstance. That is, all your discussion of what can be is meaningless. Everything is predetermined and there is no way to speak in terms of what could be or not.

Your belief that free will is incompatible with determinism is due to the fact that you are required by the laws of determinism to think that period. The justification that you provide for your belief is simply what the laws of determinism require you to think is an adequate justification. Any suggestion that you can consider various reasons and choose the correct one assumes the ability to meaningfully choose, which you reject.

I'm not following how the Governor is to blame or Republicans generally. It looks like it was a failure of the EPA (run by the Obama administration) and Flint County officials (run by Democrats). http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/03/05/e-mails-shed-light-epas-role-flint-water-crisis/80576406/ . <a href="http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20160124/BLOG007/160129941/opinion-buck-stops-with-snyder-but-heres-whom-to-really-blame-in" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20160124/BLOG007/160129941/opinion-buck-stops-with-snyder-but-heres-whom-to-really-blame-in</a>

The best I can determine is that the City of Flint had been for years trying to create its own water system and be free from sending money to Detroit for its water. That process had been going on through many administrations, although the city officials who signed off on it were Democrats. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429803/flint-water-scandal-democratic-pattern.

Regardless, if you think the Flint water crisis is a matter of presidential concern (as the OP indicates it ought to be getting coverage in the Republican primary debates), then why aren't we blaming the current President?

For the record this is already legal in some states in the U.S. -- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/18/us/politics/abortion-restrictions.html?_r=0 — Moliere

I clicked on your link which supposedly provided a basis for your argument that abortions in some states were legally permissible for 8 1/2 month fetuses. I didn't go through checking out every state listed, but I just choose Colorado. http://statelaws.findlaw.com/colorado-law/colorado-abortion-laws.html . It was as expected, which is that abortion is illegal in such instances except to save the life of the mother. That is, it's a bit of a misstatement to say that some states openly allow abortions well into the 3rd trimester without pointing out this detail.

In fact, if you look at all the laws in all the states, they all adhere to the trimester framework, offering different levels of protection to the fetus depending upon its level of development. They adhere to that framework because it's the system set out by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. You'll note that in the link I cited above, Planned Parenthood only performs abortion up to the 19th week.

A few stats for you: 91% of all abortions are performed in the first trimester (first 12 weeks), 9% in the second trimester, and .01% in the third trimester. http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/06/17/fast-facts-us-abortion-statistics.html . The point being that no one really believes or practices 8 1/2 month abortions, other than probably in some really extreme circumstances, like a true life and death decision has to be made to save one or the other.

As for my take, I don't think states should be making such decisions. I agree with those who say that abortion is a weighty moral decision, but I don't think it should be prevented prior to birth by the power of the law. I think that it is something which a woman should be able to choose in accordance with their own moral compass and life circumstances (it is a moral choice only if it is a choice, after all). — Moliere

And if that is your position, I don't see how you consistently hold that a mother doesn't have the right to kill her child after its birth, as there really isn't anything significantly different between a fetus whose head is crowning at the edge of the cervix and that same baby just a few feet further away, fully outside the birth canal. To call one a citizen entitled to protection and the other the woman's chattel based upon it's physical whereabouts seems arbitrary, considering both are identical down to the cellular level. In fact, the newborn infant is still attached by umbilical cord to its mother for a few moments.

The profit that you can gain will be in proportion to the work that you've put in. — Sapientia

Those things in high demand and low supply fetch the highest price. That applies to gold, sports cars, and doctors. We need floor sweepers too, but unfortunately they are in very, very high supply and so they fetch a low price. Since the service you provide is a commodity just like the products you might produce, it's going to be to your advantage to find a position in low supply and high demand. That's how the market set prices.

There should be a hierarchy of pay based on merit, skills, the importance of the job, how difficult it is, how essential it is, and so on, and so forth, but within reason. — Sapientia

And so a committee will decide how much my haircut should be, regardless of what the market demands?

Is the job of a top football player worth more than that of building a hospital or staffing it with nurses. — Sapientia

Yes, very much so. If not, then don't pay him that much and he'll go to another team and bring in more money for that team.

Wouldn't it have been better spent on pressing societal needs? — Sapientia

I don't feel like looking it up, but my guess is that Renaldo has contributed far more to charitable causes than all of us will in our lifetimes combined.

And that's the problem. People like you just don't see it, or choose not to - and there are so many of you it's depressing. — Sapientia

Oh, I do see it very well. What I see is that poverty reduction, hunger reduction, freedom, and every positive societal development has arisen from the free market. Giving people the freedom to buy and sell with minimal government interference has led to great wealth for everyone.

The point is that all things in life are coerced, in that they take place within a coercive institution (birth). While the ice cream does not hold a gun to your head, it does hold a smaller consequence over you -- the pain of desiring, but not getting, ice cream. But it doesn't matter, because the desire for ice cream is itself a product of a coercive institution (birth). — The Great Whatever

Alright, so you have two options here: determinism where everything is coerced or libertarianism where there are uncaused causes. The former is consistent with our understanding of the world, and the latter is incoherent. It simply makes no sense for something to spontaneously occur, and it makes even less sense why we should think we are responsible fpr those decisions we make that are uncaused.

So, along come the soft determinists/compatibilists who try to allow for both free will and determinism, but they get hit with the objections from the hard determinists like you who insist that there's nothing special about internal causes versus external causes.

But, things hardly simplify when you bite the bullet and declare yourself a hard determinist who insists there is no free will. You sink into a world of nonsense under such a position. To say you are a hard determinist because the logic leads you to that is self delusion. The reason you think hard determinism is the truth is no different from why you think anything and that is because you are coerced into thinking it. All judgments rendered by you cannot be said to be the result of careful deliberation and consideration, but you must acknowledge that your statements are just barks and screeches with no particular meaning or purpose, but are just the things you are forced to do. That is to say, nothing makes sense under hard determinism and it's self contradictory to say that hard determinism is true based upon reason when the theory itself requires that you admit that your conclusions about hard determinism must be based upon random prior causes.

I tend toward the Kantian view that the existence of free will is a required assumption in order to understand the world. It's no difference from time and space in that regard, where the elimination of it leads to incoherence.

Unfortunately, life itself is such a coercive situation, since it is impossible to consent to being born, and all 'decisions' made while alive are within the context of that coercive establishment. So even if we give the compatibilist everything he wants, he is still wrong about free will insofar as he further makes the positive claim that people actually can be, or are, free. — The Great Whatever

A compatibilist holds that free will is compatible with determinism, the belief that everything is pre-determined. He's not disagreeing with the notion that every single event in his life (including being born) is beyond his control and subject to pre-existing causes. The compatibilist defines a free will (and there are alternate ways the theory is presented) as one that is acting on one's own motivations, wants, or desires as opposed to one that feels coerced. It points to the fatally obvious difference between eating a bowl of ice-cream because one enjoys ice-cream as opposed to eating a bowl of ice-cream in order to avoid being shot in the head.

That being said, it's not as if the compatibilist argument has no problems or that it is an ultimately acceptable solution to the free will question. I don't think, though, that the problem with it is that it doesn't accept the consequences of determinism. It tries to distinguish between different types of deterministic forces in distinguishing which it will designate as a free choice or a not free choice. It holds that whether a choice is determined or not has nothing to do with it being free because every choice is ultimately determined.

That has been my experience. I tend to believe now that reading large amounts of secondary literature is actually positively harmful not only to your enjoyment, but to your understanding as well. — The Great Whatever

And that creates the problem of your not being able to talk about what you've read because no one should be interested in your views as a secondary source.

In my view, if you can't summarize a position into a textbook, if you can't convey your ideas without falling back into obscurantism or a kind of "sophisticated" philosophy, then it's probably bullshit or at least needs refinement. — darthbarracuda

Amen.

In less inflammatory terms, I was speaking of excess wealth. They will be rewarded with proportional wealth. They aren't entitled to more than that in a just society. — Sapientia

You have to explain how this works then. I go out and organize people and secure the capital to build a building. I build it and then start renting out space and I secure all the personnel I need to market, collect rent, do upkeep, etc. I then begin noticing profit after everyone else has been paid. Who decides how much of this profit I am to keep? If my investment fails and I begin to take losses, do the workers have to contribute to eliminate the losses and provide me some salary for all my hard work? Will the fairness committee indemnify me against unfair losses since it's penalizing me for unfair gains?

Can I be on the fairness committee? That seems like the best job.

Money gained through corruption and exploitation has not truly been earnt. — Sapientia

Right, and money stolen by the clerk from the drawer hasn't been earned. I stand opposed to theft regardless of who's stealing.

And do you seriously think that those at the top are irreplaceable? The wealth producers would not be eliminated; only the uncooperative ones, and of their own accord. — Sapientia

They are replaceable, but nearly as much as the common worker, which explains why they get paid so much. It's like anything else. A top football player gets paid millions, not because there aren't thousands of others who would love to have his job, but because he is better than the thousands of others. If an entrepreneur sucks, he doesn't get paid. If he knows what he's doing, he gets paid what he earns.

Except that I advocate merit-based proportionality, as do you, I think. This cannot be equated with equality. I just reject your assessment of merit. You think that some people merit what I consider to be excessive and disproportionate wealth. — Sapientia

The distinction between our positions is that you believe that merit is an artificial measure calculated by people who have such concerns as fairness and equality. It's some sort of philosophical committee that makes these determinations. My position is that the market forces determine what you earn. If I sell a banana for $2 and it cost me $1 to grow, I get $1 per banana. I figured out how to profitably sell bananas, and I get to reap that reward for my ingenuity. No one gets to come behind me and tell me that $0.50 would be a more fair profit and then take that excess from me.

You, on the other hand, seem to want to conserve this injust and unfair status quo, rather than aim for progress and reform. — Sapientia

I just don't think it's unfair and unjust, so I don't see the need to change.

What's the difference, then, between birth, and before birth that is so important when you say decisions must be made on the safer side of things? — Moliere

I buy into the essentialist argument when it comes to what a person is. As one disassembles a ship, at some point it is no longer is a ship. It's never clear which board is the deciding board or if there is any one particular element that stops it from being a ship. It is clear though that a fully formed ship is in fact a ship and that a single board is not a ship. At some point, though, we have a ship and at some point we don't.

I would say the same applies to humans. I can't say when the magical moment of development occurs that makes the fetus a person and when it doesn't. I can only go on generalities, like can it think, feel, perceive, etc. I don't consider the ability to live without assistance on one's own to be an important factor in determining personhood. But, I'd agree, as with deciphering what the critical essential element of any entity is, whether it be a rock, a ship, or a plant, we can never specifically say. It's a mixture of all sorts of ingredients, with no one being necessary, but I do feel comfortable saying that we have the appropriate mixture for a person when we have a newborn child.