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.

If you can't defeat a position, at least disarm it with absurdity.

I'm just fooling around. It's important to keep a sense of humour, even about topics like abortion and infanticide; after all, if we can't laugh at ourselves, what's the point of forcing women to bear children. — Soylent

Yes

They make a difference, as they ought to, but not big enough. You seem to be judging proportionality based soley on the amount contributed, rather than on the amount contributed in relation to wealth. If the donor is still stinking rich after donating, then it is disproportionate in that they aren't donating enough. — Sapientia

Why does rich "stink," considering it is that wealth that you incentivized them to obtain that you now need. If you create a system where people will know their efforts will not be rewarded, why would they try to get wealthy?

The argument is that they can do so much more, but choose not to for unjust reasons, and that they are allowed to get away with it, and that this situation should be rectified. — Sapientia

They choose not to give away their money for the same reasons they chose to earn their money. If we remove their right to choose how to spend their money, don't you think they will choose not to earn the money? Who is going to create the wealth once you've eliminated the wealth producers?

Differences in wealth and merit are not at the heart of the issue. It's about proportionality. — Sapientia

This is exactly where I said this argument would end up in my first post, with me submitting that merit was the object worth promoting and you submitting that equality was the object worth promoting. That is the fundamental point of disagreement always in these debates.

A long way? That is incredibly naïve. — Sapientia

I was being sarcastic. A little levity.

I am only one person, and I work part-time on minimum wage. — Sapientia

A couple of things about this: I understand that you can do only so much, but I also think that if you and everyone like you worked together, you could get something meaningful done. And the truth is that it will take an organizer to do such things, and organizers are not a dime a dozen, but they have special talents far exceeding the ordinary folks. Those you mentioned (MLK and Gandhi) are those who fought for civil rights and they certainly have their place. There are others with extraordinary talents who have an incredible ability to organize people and create wealth. The wealth they create is much needed for all sorts of things, like providing you a job to paying to help the poor and homeless. Those organizers are not a dime a dozen either and they rightfully get paid for their services.

You can be annoyed that you work very hard for little money when the owner of your company perhaps makes far more working what seems to you to be far less hard, which means you should go get your boss' job and open your own company as should all your co-workers. Obviously that isn't going to happen, largely because you wouldn't know where to begin and you'd likely fail, yet there are people who do know where to begin and who don't fail, and those people are therefore due their reward.

And sure, there are those who inherited their wealth and did not start from scratch, but there are many who did. It can be done, so either do it yourself, or respect the fact that there are those whose extraordinary talents deserve far greater compensation. Instead of vilifying the rich, respect the fact that they are an integral part of society and need to be encouraged to continue to create wealth.

You are trying to kill the goose that lays the golden egg because you think it's unfair that you aren't that goose.

Right, because that has worked so well thus far. A big part of the problem is that your appeal to voluntary action falls on deaf ears for so many people, and, importantly, for a number of those who are exceptionally rich; yet just a single one of them could quite easily make a massive difference.

I take a more cynical view, and advocate a more practical solution. — Sapientia

Well, I do think the rich already make a massive difference, not only from the fact that they already contribute disproportionately to the tax base, but because they also contribute disproportionately to charity. Take a look at the donors to the next charitable event you attend. A single Platinum sponsor (usually a corporation, a trust fund, or a single very rich person) likely contributes more than all the regular donors like you and me combined.

It's for this reason that I just don't follow the argument that the rich suck, which seems to be the pervasive argument. If the problem is poverty, the solution is wealth, making those who have figured out this whole wealth collection thing a bit important.

It boils down to what amount of their money has been earnt. Ownership of the means of production doesn't mean that you've earnt a grossly disproportionate amount of the wealth created by the workers. — Sapientia

The value of the service you provide isn't set by committee. It's set by the market. If you have the ability to organize labor and produce a product and that results in great wealth to you, then that's how much you have earned. Every grunt in the field is important, but not as important as the person coordinating their efforts.

But this is already the case, and yet we seem to agree that what's being done isn't enough. So, how do you propose increasing private supplementation to the required level on a voluntary basis? Are you going to go door-to-door asking "What are you doing to correct this problem?"? — Sapientia

Having recognized your abilities, I'm trying desperately to elicit action on your part. I think if I can motivate you to serve your fellow man, then we'll have come a long way to resolving the problem of poverty and hunger.

I think that you and I simply differ on where said decision should be made, then. Birth works well enough for me because it's far before the gray zone you're referring to. I'd say personhood, in the metaphysical/moral sense, occurs well after birth. — Moliere

Yes, but if birth is also clearly before the gray zone, then we should allow parents to drown their kids in the well for some period of time after birth. Well drowning is cheaper and more medically safe than abortion, and it allows the parent to look at the child and see if its worth keeping. It also gives the well water that much desired new baby smell.

I don't care if it's 30 years old. — The Great Whatever

I don't care if you're 30 years old.

I think personhood begins at birth. However, an 8 1/2 month old fetus is a viable infant, probably without any help. — Bitter Crank

Allowing abortion up until "personhood" is a philosophical concept, asserting that only "people" have an inherent right to live. A "person" are those entities endowed with whatever essential qualities other people have. The word "essence" is just a secular word for "soul."

Viability is a legal concept, enshrined by the US Supreme Court in the Roe v. Wade case that asserts that only those human entities that are capable of living outside the womb have the right to life. The inherent problem with that view is that viability changes as medical technology advances. The advantage of the position is that it avoids all this impossible personhood talk.

My point here is simply to point out that you've intermingled the personhood and viability arguments. It would seem that if you had a fetus that was endowed with personhood, it would be wrong to kill it simply because it was still dependent upon the womb (i.e. not viable). On the other hand, it wouldn't seem particularly wrong to abort a non-person even if it were possible to support that entity outside the womb. That is, if we could take a two minute old united sperm and egg and incubate it until it was a fully formed baby, I wouldn't really consider it murder if we instead just poured it down the sink (which is what is commonly done in fertility clinics).

We should be more like the Spartans and allow it after birth, too. — Michael

In a showdown, who would win, the Spartans, the Vikings, or the Mongols?

Morally speaking the question hinges on personhood, I would say, and how you approach that topic. — Moliere

Then why arbitrarily choose birth as the moment of personhood? It's not like a 1 day old infant can do a whole lot of the things that fully fledged kids can do and they certainly can't do what fully mature adults can do. Morally speaking, though, they may be superior to those who actually believe that 8 1/2 month old fetuses should be killed with impunity.

morally speaking I am more conservative. But legally speaking I am not. I don't think the question is amenable to the necessary precision we expect of law nor should it be answered by the force of the state. — Moliere

If you're speaking legally, then you'll need to cite to the law that permits the abortion of 8 1/2 month old fetuses. We do in fact have precision in the law when it comes to abortion. It's just a matter of looking it up and reading it. Any highly disputed area of law is going to be subject to some arbitrary decision, whether it be when a person is endowed with rights, to how much emissions are acceptable, to how much privacy I am afforded. The power granted to those to decide isn't arbitrary, but to some extent decisions have to be made. I'd say, though, that the simple fact that it might be disputed whether the government can walk into my open yard and look for me but they can't walk into my open garage, for example, hardly means that it's disputed whether there are some limits I have from government intrusion. The outer parameters are obvious (like 8 1/2 month old fetuses), but at some point we reach a gray zone.

Abortion: Legal up until birth — Moliere

This is absurd.

Abortion - The right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to life of those infringing upon it; so permissible so long as birth requires inhabitation of a body, but not otherwise — The Great Whatever

Suppose the fetus is 8 1/2 months old?

Generalized label - Common sense conservative.
Form of government - Constitutional democracy limited to what the Constitution actually says.
Form of economy - Free market capitalistic within reason
Abortion - In favor of it within the 1st trimester.
Gay marriage - In favor of it if that's really what they want to do.
Death penalty - In favor of it as long as we're killing the right folks
Euthanasia - Limited to very serious cases, not just folks who are annoyed with life.
Campaign finance - No limitations
Surveillance - Free reign for the government to conduct surveillance outside of areas where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but beyond that only by court order.
Health care -- Private pay, with some allowances for pre-existing conditions.
Immigration - Enforce the immigration law.
Education - Public education for everyone with some accountability for bad schools.
Environmental policy - Balance the damage done to the environment against the damage done to the economy when considering policy.
Gun policy - Allow law abiding folks to have guns and triple the penalties for those committing crimes with guns.
Drug policy - Legalization is way overdue.
Foreign policy - Do what is necessary to protect US interests and once military action is taken, commit to stabilizing whatever destabilization arose.

Here's a link to the good old days of civil political debate: http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-25/news/33367841_1_jefferson-presidency-presidential-power-hideous-hermaphroditical-character

That having been said, I do believe we have reached a new nadir in all of our lifetimes regarding the state of political discourse. Trump responds to the Mexican president's refusal to fund the wall by stating that now that's there's this back-talk, the wall is going to be 10 feet higher. He then starts calling Rubio "little Rubio" and calls him a choke artist and then says that Cruz is the biggest liar he's ever seen. Trump then attacks the moderator by telling him that no one watches his TV show and asks the public to look up his ratings to confirm it. Rubio, getting late into the fray, later mentions Trump's horrible spray on tan.

What we do know about the wall is that it will be funded by Mexico, that it will be fantastic, the best we've ever seen, and that with Trump in charge, you better believe it will come in under budget and ahead of schedule.

It's just amazingly stupid, but entertaining, which is what it is sort of about I guess.

Regarding what you see in the House of Commons, it appears to me to be a bit tongue in cheek, and the people are generally informed and actually responsive to the issues, even if they throw in a few unnecessary barbs. There is also a level of civility that always accompanies an English accent, where no matter what they say, it seems important and well thought out. Sometimes when I have nothing to say, I'll say it with my award winning English accent so that I can gain some credibility. It's the Simon Cowell effect.

Can't say I read through the entire OP, but from my perspective, if people want to gamble or engage in other forms of self-destruction, I'm generally of the mind to allow them.

My objection to the lottery is the hypocrisy of the government declaring gambling immoral and then legalizing it only for itself so that it can maintain a monopoly and avoid the competition from private enterprise. It also begs the question of whether the proper role of government is to create for profit organizations in order to provide for the public.

That having been said, in Georgia the lottery proceeds are earmarked by Constitutional amendment to be used only for college education. This has resulted in every child who maintains a B average to have 80% of his college in state tuition paid (room and board excluded). An A average earns you 100% tuition. Competition for all in state schools has dramatically risen because of this. When I was college age, they'd admit anyone into UGA (goooooo Dawgs, sic 'em, ruff, ruff, ruff). Now there are kids who get admitted in Vanderbilt, but not UGA.

So, I like the result, even if I disagree with the idea. I also like the idea that the stupidest segment of the population buys the most lottery tickets and therefore pays for the smartest segment's education. I like the idea that trailer park parents are paying for suburban kids to go to school. It's funny in an upside down sort of way.

You haven't established why, in principle, communist forms of government necessarily cannot protect individual rights. I suspect this is because you don't know what you're talking about, and haven't actually read any Marxist political theory. — Shevek

This is the very nonsense I've been trying to avoid. Of course anyone can sit around and hypothesize a possible situation where a Marxist government would protect individual rights. That would be a wonderful exercise I suppose. But, to the extent that economic theories can be actually implemented, the question of whether Marxist governments have been protectors of individual rights is an empirical question. It's the same old argument that's been made for decades and decades: Marxism isn't per se bad, it just happens to be every time it's been attempted.

If they decide they don't like working 60 hours a week at McDonalds and forced to wear stupid attire and flair and quit their job, then they're threatened with the prospect of going homeless, racking up debts and hurting their credit score, and not eating. — Shevek

We're all slaves under this definition. I have to eat, so I am a slave to food. Equating working at McDonalds to slave working the fields is hyperbole and a bit of an insult to those suffering slavery. We all have to work. Food doesn't fall from the sky. How you choose to work is your choice, but no one is making you work at McDonalds are in any particular job you don't want to.

Oh the 'market force of demand' is alive and well in Vietnam. — Shevek

Of course it is. Without capitalistic initiatives, Vietnam's economy wouldn't be thriving and it would be a far more miserable place to live. Capitalism is saving Vietnam from its failed communistic system. That is pretty obvious even if it pisses you off.

As if the shitty corporate media in the US owned by a handful of conglomerates provides a vibrant democratic interchange of journalistic integrity. — Shevek

The US media sucks, yet somehow everyone (here at least) seems to know it and seems to know what's really going on. That would seem to indicate that there is no control over information or opinions in the US and that media, in all its various forms, is doing its job.

Yet I was implying that 'Marxism doesn't work' is a meaningless claim. You're making it not me. 'Marxism' isn't a definite set of principles or a political and economic system that we can test whether or not it 'works'. It's an intellectual and political tradition. You can argue that that tradition is wrong-headed for certain reasons, or that certain ideas within the tradition were failures, but then you might have to treat them like actual philosophers and read them. Yuck. — Shevek

I just think you're stuck in trying to evaluate Marxism as an intellectual enterprise as opposed to looking at what has happened when it has been implemented. The proof is in the pudding, not in the recipe.

So I endured a day long meeting at work that I thought useless, but now am excited because it contained information I can now use, if only here. They explained this concept of disruption, where a product will be sold on the market and all competitors will slowly evolve toward the industry leader. Think of the minor differences in cell phones, cars and the like. Then, all of a sudden, a new player will show up and BAM the whole industry is changed. One day everyone has flip phones and the next androids.

This is where the meeting turned into bullshit, where they tried to encourage us to innovate the next best thing. I figured if I was that smart, why would I be sitting in this meeting?

At any rate, I think we're see innovations every day. I don't know which to call revolutions though.

Don't all governments necessarily back up their authority on principles that the state maintains some level of supremacy over the individual? — Shevek

No, there are some governments that hold that certain principles are self evident and that derive from nature and cannot be infringed upon. The government is understood as the protector of those inherent rights, as opposed to the grantor of those rights.

Marxists want to create a system where the state isn't a coercive apparatus for the capitalist class to enforce their unequal power relation with labour and the economically/politically excluded. — Shevek

This characterizes Marxist governments as nothing other than protectors against capitalism, as if they have no proactive goal of their own.

Large political and economic forces suppress the vast majority of individuals in capitalist societies. Freedom of expression and self-determination suddenly magically disappear when you enter the workplace, where most people spend a majority of their waking life. — Shevek

It's hard to coherently speak of self-determination when you suggest it doesn't exist. If I voluntarily choose a job that requires behavior that I find oppressive, then one must ask why I chose it unless I find the pros of that job outweigh the cons, which simply means I've made a rational choice. If you're suggesting that I was forced to take that job because I was forced not to have adequate skills to find other employment, then I don't know what you mean by choice or self-determination. That is to say, if you don't like wearing a hair net at McDonalds because it makes you look silly, then don't work there.

So basically you've convinced yourself that by calling Marx a 'politician', you can dismiss an entire body of work and say that it's flawed without ever having to read it or understand it. That's pretty convenient. I should have tried that trick in my philosophy program in college. I can't believe philosophers haven't found out that devastating way of arguing yet. — Shevek

And you again miss my point, although this time apparently intentionally. Is Cartesian dualism defensible? Let's first read the Meditations and break it down and figure out what it says, then we can see the strengths and weakness of it. All fun stuff. My question relates to whether Marxism pragmatically applied is better than capitalism. My position is hardly anti-intellectual. It just starts with the idea that if you're going to argue a political theory (as opposed to a metaphysical theory), it actually matters whether your theory works.

And why would a Marxist charter necessarily include such measures? — Shevek

The better question is why they all do, not why they all must, including in Vietnam.

For what it's worth, I'm an American living in one of those scary supposedly 'Marxist' countries (Vietnam), and I can tell you from first hand experience that a) there is nothing meaningfully Marxist about the organization of society, except for perhaps some terminology and government posters, and b) to say that oppressive structures in the US are "child's play" compared to here is more than simply hyperbole, it's blatantly false and the truth is arguably the opposite in certain aspects. — Shevek

Oh, yes, nothing like a single government media outlet to get your news from. Although I understand that you don't really care about the market force of demand, maybe ask yourself why the trail of immigrants moves from Vietnam to the US and not the other way around.

Spoiler alert: 'Marxism' isn't a set of doctrines but a tradition of many different writers disagreeing with each other. — Shevek

And such is my point: trying to declare Marxism a failure simply results in its redefinition where someone cries out "yeah, but that's not really Marxism." The claim "Marxism doesn't work" becomes unfalsifiable, meaning it is a meaningless claim

But I don't see any virtue in further discussing these contexts or arguing why Marx matters outside of academia if you're unashamedly sticking to intellectual laziness and dogmatism. — Shevek

I know, but you'll keep talking to me about it because you can't help yourself not to. It's just too near and dear to your heart for some reason.

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