I think my point was that if you are prepared to conscript soldiers, you have already abandoned ethical thinking beyond your own survival. Questions of adulthood or not have been set aside. — Ludwig V

Well the notion of in extremis is a central part of ethics, and I don't see why one couldn't be ethically prepared to accept conscription while at the same time being ethically unprepared to accept the conscription of children. It's not as if anyone who favors conscription therefore cannot distinguish between conscripting adults and conscripting children.

They would simply not be “complete” or certain, though not thus “errors” or simply “predispositions”. They would still be rational, communal, and correct based on the individual criteria for each thing. — Antony Nickles

:up:

It's great to see someone address this topic with clarity, answer questions directly, philosophize forthrightly, etc. Thanks for that.

We appear to agree that the “local”/“absolute” framework needs to be set aside, — Antony Nickles

In different ways, though. For @J and Williams it is not set aside insofar as it remains as a central foil to any thinking going forward. For many others it must actually be set aside as a manufactured dichotomy, which cannot be appealed to as some kind of eternal foil for all future thinking. The question is whether one continues to be haunted by the infallibilist paradigm that they have "set aside."

This is a strawman. I'm not claiming teleology doesn't exist. — Janus

The OP is not about you. You asked about the rationale of the OP and then immediately objected because of something you're not claiming. Do you think the OP was written against Janus in particular? And that if something in the OP does not apply to you then the OP lacks rationale?

I am claiming these things:

1. The assertions... — Michael

To just assume that we are talking about assertions seems to beg the question of the whole thread. For instance:

The prefix, however we phrase it - "I hereby assert that..." [...] does seem to iterate naturally.

... A sentence is already an assertion sign. [...] How does it end up needing reinforcement? — bongo fury

You basically want to stipulate that everything we are talking about is an assertion. You could stipulate that, but it is contrary to the spirit of the thread because it moots the central question of the thread.

John believes that the cat is on the mat. Jane does not believe that the cat is on the mat.

John asserts "the cat is on the mat".

Jane asserts "I disagree".

Jane is not disagreeing with the implicit assertion "I [John] assert that the cat is on the mat" because Jane agrees that John is asserting that the cat is on the mat. Jane is disagreeing with the explicit assertion "the cat is on the mat". As such, we should not identify the explicit assertion with the implicit assertion. — Michael

Good. If this is right then @bongo fury is correct when he says, "A sentence is already an assertion sign."

So we might then ask why anyone would ever make explicit their asserting. For example:

• John: "The cat is on the mat."
• Jane: "Oh, would you like to read some Dr. Suess?"
• John: "No, I am asserting that the cat is on the mat."

It seems that we make the implicit assertion explicit when someone misjudges our intent and thereby misjudges the fact that an implicit assertion is occurring. More generally, we make the species of our act explicit when we wish to clarify the kind of act that we are engaged in.

Similarly, when someone says, "I hereby assert that...," they are generally broadcasting or communicating the fact of their assertion, and broadcasting/communicating is a bit different than asserting. This is why the flavor of asserting is less applicable to recursivity than, say, the flavor of judging. Recursivity requires a mixture of act and potency, and judgment does involve both whereas assertion really only involves the former. Hence assertion does not have the same degree of self-reflexivity as judgment.

Yes, it is, if you are thinking of volunteering. It's a life-and-death decision. Conscription is different. There's an ambivalence here between the soldiers as heroic defenders laying their lives on the line and soldiers as cannon-fodder. — Ludwig V

I guess conscription is different if we think it is okay to conscript children, but I don't think that. It seems as though conscription also entails adulthood.

The analogical reasoning from one case to the other is not valid. — Janus

Again, that's not the claim.

Where does our anti-teleological approach come from, if not from the broad anti-teleological prejudice of the modern period?

This is a simplified version of the modern argument:

1. Teleology does not exist
2. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
3. Therefore, plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist

This is the biological argument:

4. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
5. Plant and animal teleology certainly exists
6. Therefore, it is false that teleology does not exist

Now someone like yourself will be prone to say, "Ah, but (5) has only to do with plant and animal teleology, and nothing else." But your error is to fail to understand that (1) was not specific to plants and animals. (1) was a thesis that entailed all sorts of things; some of those things turned out to be false; therefore (1) is false; therefore we have no grounds for any of the entailments qua (1).*

@Wayfarer is correctly pointing out that the anti-teleological prejudice seems to be nothing more than the bad fruits from a faulty and expired worldview. In a historical sense this looks to be accurate.

For example, suppose someone is a Mormon but they realize it is false and they abandon the religion. Yet they retain all sorts of Mormon practices without realizing it. When this is pointed out to them, they realize that those practices also have no validity given that the practices derive from Mormonism and Mormonism is false (or defunct). You are a bit like the Mormon who demands that the person prove that those other practices are false. Yet the point is not that they are false, but that they are unjustified. This is an important move in a society which is still beholden to the recently deceased worldview. Understanding that something is unjustified is an important prerequisite for reconsidering it.


* We have undercut R and therefore invalidated P.

Let 'em vote. Adults are no more politically savvy than mid to late teenagers. 13 year olds can do well at debate club. Most adults can't. — fdrake

First, I would say that this whole question turns on whether they are an adult. "They can do X, Y, and Z; therefore they are an adult; therefore they should be able to vote." I don't think it makes much sense to deny the 16 year-old adulthood and then claim they should be able to vote.

Second, I don't remotely agree that 16 year-olds are no less politically savvy. I would say "Political savvy" has little to do with debating and reading your favorite news sources . It has to do with understanding the rationale behind societal decision-making, which begins in the family. The reason adults have the political wherewithal to vote is because the family life they lead is a microcosm of the polis. More simply and broadly, we are thinking about the age at which one's decisions are on a par with other citizens (e.g. able to legally contract, consent, etc.).

In any case, I think any good argument has to be based on adulthood. The reason the age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18 in the U.S. was largely because 18 year-olds could serve in the military. It was the same idea. The argument that military service entails adulthood is very strong.

We see purpose or agency in the data collected by observing animal behavior. Are you claiming there is purpose or agency there in the inorganic even though we cannot detect it? — Janus

There are a few arguments, but one of them is something like this:

1. Modern science long rejected teleology, even among plants and animals
2. This turned out to be false, and it was based on background assumptions rather than any rigorous reasoning
3. Given that this conclusion about plant and animal teleology turned out to be unsound, do we have any reason to believe that the conclusion about teleology more generally is sound?

The question is, "What is the rational basis for an anti-teleological view, given that the anti-teleological view as applied to plants and animals turned out to be baseless?"

You will probably say what you always say, "They have the burden of proof, not me." But the question is whether the anti-teleological side has any reasonable arguments. They certainly thought they had good arguments in the past, and the current state of science sees most of those arguments as faulty.

- I was about to ask the same thing asked. What do you think about this?

In this light, the familiar claim that the universe is meaningless begins to look suspicious. It isn’t so much a conclusion reached by science, but a background assumption—one built into the methodology from the outset. The exclusion of purpose was never, and in fact could never be, empirically demonstrated; it was simply excluded as a factor in the kind of explanations physics was intended to provide. Meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy and control in specific conditions.

That this bracketing was useful—indeed revolutionary—is not in doubt. But the further move, so often taken for granted in modern discourse, is the assertion that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. — Wayfarer

The Catholic Church teaches that God Almighty came down from heaven to save us... from His own wrath... by allowing Himself to be tortured to death. — frank

Where does it teach that?

Here is the comment which both motivated and suffices to answer your OP:

Bob Ross - The reason these threads are tricky on TPF is because asking TPFers religious questions is like going into a bar and asking the patrons about quantum physics. They will have a lot to say, and none of it will be remotely accurate. Toss in the large number of anti-religious cynics like Frank and the quality dips even further. — Leontiskos

But just as "the cat is on the mat" doesn't mean "I am speaking English", it also doesn't mean "I assert that the cat is on the mat". — Michael

But we are asking why, "I assert the cat is on the mat," cannot mean that one is asserting that the cat is on the mat. You are thinking of the claim, "[ I assert that] I assert the cat is on the mat," but that too is an arguably different claim.

So with any such pair, we can assume that there is an implicit assertion or not, and we can identify the explicit assertion with that implicit assertion or not. Again, there is no special rule that tells us how to interpret such a thing.

They mean different things and have different truth conditions.

(a) is true if and only if the cat is on the mat
(b) is true if and only if I assert that the cat is on the mat

(b) can be true even if (a) is false. — Michael

So when someone says, "The cat is on the mat," they are not asserting that the cat is on the mat?

16 just sounds awfully young to vote or to serve in the military. — Hanover

I agree, especially in a world where maturity seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. To take one simple example, what is the average age that people have children now as compared to 40 years ago? 16 year-olds seem to be less mature than they were in the recent past.

Sure: knowing, understanding, thinking, seeing, being just, but they all have (specific) ways we judge them and philosophy is the way we talk about what is essential to us about them. There is no fact that ensures those discussions even will be resolved, but that doesn’t annihilate the ability or process to do so, nor make it a matter of individual “opinion” (or a sociological matter). — Antony Nickles

Yes, and when one despairs of progress are they being reasonable? What is their time frame and criteria for progress? Is it really true that we have not made moral or philosophical progress over the last 4,000 years?

Yes, the last bastion is undefended, without justification or authority, without an arbiter of right. Thus why it is a claim for acceptance, that you accept my observations because you see them for yourself, that you have gathered on your own what evidence is necessary for you to concede. — Antony Nickles

And this is why a theory of error is helpful, at least in nuce. It helps one see their own errors and move beyond them. The notion that a theory of error or a theory of knowledge or a theory of justification must always be other-focused is entirely non sequitur.

Science is not trying to give an account of what the universe would be like were there no observers. It is trying to give an account of what the universe is like for any observer. — Banno

Yep. :up:

They are not seeking to remove perspective, but to give an account that works from as many perspectives as possible. — Banno

Now how do you say philosophy is different?

@J is convinced that science can give an account that works from as many perspectives as possible, but philosophy can't. Usually what someone of @J's persuasion eventually comes to realize is that either both can or both can't. Scientific knowledge and philosophical knowledge go hand in hand, given that the difference between the two is not as great as has been supposed. The idea that scientific knowledge is possible but philosophical knowledge is not is utterly strange, to say the least. It seems more a consequence of philosophers staring into the mirror of their own reflection than anything of interest.

Sort of, but that would be immune to the strongest part of my argument; which involves the children. We could dispute plausbly either way if, for example, there were any healthy adults which could be held to be an Amalekite proper and I am willing to concede, given the seemingly identity relation between being an Amalekate and a part of the cult, that there weren't any. — Bob Ross

Okay, that's fair. I just wanted to try to impress the idea that the Amalekite culture and the Amalekite religion/cult go hand in hand, and if we want to get into the exegesis we could show that it is specifically the abominations associated with the Amalekites that God is concerned with. The question, "Why the Amalekites?," is something we ought to keep in mind. It would be a significant mistake to assume that this is how God/Israel deals with every people-group. But let's move on to children.

At the end of the day, I emphasize the children, although I understand you are setting that aspect of it aside for a second, because it is really implausible in my mind that there were no Amalekate children and it seems like they would be a part of the ban. — Bob Ross

I think it is reasonable to assume that there were Amalekite children and that they were part of the ban.

1. The God of the OT commanded Saul to put the Amalekites under the ban
2. There were innocent children among the Amalekites
3. Therefore, the God of the OT commanded the killing of the innocent
4. The killing of the innocent is unjust
5. Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust — Leontiskos

In the first place I would want to note that in our Western society which strongly values individualism, the individual is the central agent and the child is often seen to be his own person, so to speak. I saw the new Superman movie (which I did not think was very good) and there is a scene where Clark's father is telling him that parents don't shape their children's lives, but instead give the children tools with which to shape their own lives. That a pretty standard individualistic sentiment, and it would in no way have been the view of ancient peoples.

To oversimplify, the ancient world is going to see the child as strongly shaped by their environment—both "nature" and "nurture"—whereas our own culture tends to see the child as a free agent who largely transcends their environment. I think we have veered too far in the "libertarian" direction, and I think that a factual or statistical analysis would show that children are deeply influenced by environment and culture.

A second consideration is the question of support mechanism. Suppose Israel wipes out the adults. Would they have the resources to absorb all of the children into their own numbers? That seems unlikely, and neither is it clear that the children would be overly cooperative at that point or even when they grow older. So there is the simple logistical problem, where there is a people-group who practices abominations (human sacrifice, cannibalism, rape, demon worship, etc.) and you have to address the problem. How do you address it? Given that the adults are not able to be reformed, they must be imprisoned or killed, and imprisonment of such a large number would have been impractical in that day (if not in ours as well!). So what do you do with the children? How do you view the children? Similarly, what is best for the children? Should they be left to live without parents and support? Should they be left to grow up into evil cannibals (in the case where their parents are not killed)? Should they be abandoned to their fate if they cannot be incorporated and supported? I don't see any obvious answers here. Indeed, the command to kill the children is much like a command to pull out the weed by its root, so that it does not regrow.

Now your argument is apparently thinking in terms of commutative justice, where the child is the agent, the agent has done nothing wrong and is therefore innocent, and therefore the child cannot be harmed and certainly not killed.

So at this stage we have three considerations which cannot be altogether ignored:

• Individual agency vs. group agency
• How to address the problem of abominations which have become embedded in a people-group
• The injustice of killing the individual, including children

The injustice argument has a certain preeminence given that it is trading in exceptionless norms. More explicitly, if the Amalekite children have a right to life, then it is unjust to kill them. So we probably want to ask whether they do in fact have a right to life, even though they are Amalekite children.

Certainly if we think of agency in terms of groups instead of in terms of individuals, then it is no longer clear that the Amalekite children have a right to life. More specifically, it is no longer clear that the Amalekite children are innocent, given that they are inextricably bound up with an abominable group.

Note that when thinking in terms of group agency rather than individual agency, children of the Edomites, for example, are innocent in virtue of their people-group and therefore do have a right to life. Or more simply, the commandment against murder applies straightforwardly to them. So the criterion of innocence has not been abandoned, but is rather being interpreted and applied differently.

Anyway, those are three of the basic data points I think we would need to consider when thinking about the Amalekite children.

If so, then how do you explain the fact that God punished Saul for sparing some animals? Doesn't that suggest that God was including everything that lived in the City itself? — Bob Ross

At the very end of that clip I suggested this is addressed quite well (beginning at 1:11:45). If you didn't get a chance to watch those 18 minutes I would recommend it.


P.S. The reason you aren't getting a lot of direct answers to your argument in this thread is simply because it is a very difficult argument to address. For that reason I'm not sure whether I will succeed in giving you a satisfactory answer either, but I think these considerations complicate the initial picture quite a bit.

Talmud helps us apply Torah, but Torah is the holier, more primary text. — BitconnectCarlos

Thanks for confirming.

- How many philosophy forum rules do you break each time you refuse to do philosophy? Almost 28,000 posts. :roll:

You and Tim pretending that the concluding remark is the whole argument is pathetic. — Banno

Why don't you try making an argument for once? Do you realize this is a philosophy forum?

More simple questions that you refuse to answer. They just keep piling up:

What's the reasoning here:

P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no language to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But what if we actually spoke about assertions rather than circumlocutions that may or may not indicate assertion? What about:

"The cat is on the mat."
"I assert the cat is on the mat."

Yes. No work can be done or progress made if one believes “equal rationality” applies to both sides of any dispute.

Rationality may exist on both sides, but how “equal”? The inequality of the rationality is what constitutes any dispute, whether one side (or both) are making invalid arguments and/or using unfounded facts. — Fire Ologist

That's right, and this is precisely why one of @J's heroes contradict themselves:

The moral of the story is that if someone takes up Chakravartty's stance voluntarism, then they must give up their ability to "encourage others... to see things our way." By definition, the stance voluntarist has no reasons for why someone should "see things his way." — Leontiskos

Relativistic "stances" undermine dialogue and knowledge altogether. If no one view is more rational than any other, then there is no reason to search for what is better.

This is @J's underlying approach in the vast majority of his posts. It is a "search" for the stone of infallibility:

1. Either the stone of infallibility exists, or else it doesn't
2. If it exists, then there is an end to relativistic pluralism
3. If it does not exist, then there is no end to relativistic pluralism
4. The stone of infallibility does not exist
5. Therefore, there is no end to relativistic pluralism

For my money @J wants (5), and this is post hoc rationalization, even though he styles it as a "search." But even if that is wrong, the whole framing around the horizon of infallibility is entirely confused. That is the fundamental error of both Williams and @J: this obsession with infallibility, which has become the gravitational center of their thought whether they like it or not. The correct response to this bizarrely redundant argument is, "Why do you care so much about infallibility?"

- :up:

-

The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality. — J

Why is that a problem?

Or rather, how do you determine that every claim is made "with equal rationality"?

What you always end up saying is, "Oh, well not every claim is made with equal rationality. But every claim from the set of [serious/professional/rational people] is made with equal rationality, and I have no way to tell you how to identify that set." These threads of yours always involve this same petitio principii, which amounts to a sort of question-begging assertion in favor of relativistic pluralism.

I suspect what's at bottom is the same old TPF schtick of, "You have the burden of proof." "I don't know why any one claim could be said to be more rational than any other claim, and you have the burden of proof in showing such a thing." I don't see that sound methodology is being used in trying to support such theses in these sorts of threads. This is one place where Wittgenstein's "therapeutic" diagnosis seems especially apt.

- So would you still work out if in return you received nothing more than the pain? Even if it did not help you "achieve a better body"?

- Yes, that is a good parallel in the UK context. :up:

Kimhi may be correct that Frege's assumption that the unasserted proposition and the assertion are "on a par," so to speak, is the source of many problems.* It is certainly occurring in this thread. Taxonomical thinking is occluding linguistic realities. — Leontiskos

This is related to Srap's observation:

(It is even plausible to claim that the division itself is not a posit of theory, but is itself found in nature -- right up until you hit the exception at quantum scale.) — Srap Tasmaner

These two moves are very similar:

• Scientist: "My observing the electron could not possibly have an effect on the experiment!"
• Philosopher: "My taxonomical dissection of assertions could not possibly have a per se effect on the outcome of these arguments!"

What's the reasoning here:

P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no language to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean.

Prima facie, that's a ridiculous claim unless one runs back from the motte to the bailey in order to massively caveat it so as to make it an entirely different claim. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up: :fire:

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah fair enough - didn't quite grok the subtext, sorry. I do now. — AmadeusD

:up:

Two of Aristotle's basic criteria in identifying the kind of regime in question are: "Who votes/decides on the rulers?" and "Who is eligible to be voted for?"

Election is always of some people by some people, but everything depends on who chooses whom and how. The fundamental options (to follow Aristotle) are that all may choose from all or from some or from both; or some may choose from all or from some or from both; or all and some may choose from all or from some or from both. When all choose from all, the election may be called democratic; when some from some, oligarchic; when mixed, aristocratic or political. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Political Illiberalism, p. 30

and:

...One might conclude from this analysis that the system of elections in the United States would, by this classification, count as aristocratic or political. With respect to form, it may be so. With respect to practice, it is not. For an element of political sophistry here intervenes, since there are at least two ways of understanding what is meant by election. We mean by elections choosing between candidates whose names are on the ballot and who have, before the election, been going about soliciting people for their votes. Others, by contrast, have meant choosing from among candidates who are not named on any ballot and who have not been going about soliciting votes. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Political Illiberalism, p. 31

So the idea is that you identify the set of people who choose or cast votes, and then you identify the set of people who are chosen from, and at that point you have the first criterion for determining regime (at least in the common case of electoral regimes).

For Aristotle this is practical, not theoretical. Even if everyone can vote in a theoretical sense, and everyone can be voted for in a theoretical sense, in a practical sense not everyone votes and not everyone can be voted for. A big part of politics is controlling who votes and who can be voted for.

the act and the performing of it as distinct things. — bongo fury

Whatever narrower psychological sense of "perform" or "assert" makes us disqualify an otherwise appropriate sound event from being a performance or an assertion string from being an assertion. (Is what I feared was being reified.) — bongo fury

To distinguish an act from a performing of [that act] is to attach oneself to a very strange doctrine of human action, where acts are somehow reified and can even be "unperformed." "Performance" is a metaphor, and it will get us into trouble with its unclarity.

Assertion (and performance) require a necessary condition of intention. Whether something was asserted or performed cannot be decided without consulting the agent's intentions.

Additional criteria would be completeness (encompassing all variables and outcomes); infallibility or predictability; being right without being responsible; ensuring agreement, being only either true or false, etc. It seems we are taking abstraction from context or an individual (or human fallibility, limitation) as the criteria for “certainty”. I’m trying to point out how forced this is by differentiating topics and claiming that their individual criteria and their appropriate contexts are necessary and sufficient for being accepted (that we can all assert intelligible and rational claims about their “framework”). That this does not ensure agreement is philosophy’s (and morality’s) lack of power (which Fire Ologistpoints out correctly) which science claims (though as easily ignored it appears). But this a categorical difference (it works differently) not a relegation to individual persuasion, opinion, belief, rhetoric (“locality”). — Antony Nickles

:up:

They mean different things whether asserted or not. — Michael

• Teacher: "What do you think, Michael?"
• Michael: "The cat is on the mat."

Is that different than, "I think the cat is on the mat"?

The notion that material strings have strict meanings without taking context and intention into account is not going to get us anywhere.

My point is, there you almost go... reifying the act and the performing of it as distinct things. — bongo fury

Yes, and this is Kimhi through and through, as well as Rombout's paper on Frege.

The point that Kimhi makes successfully is that it is more unnatural for an assertion to be unasserted-and-reified than for it to be asserted. When we put the assertion into limbo in order to scrutinize it absent any assertion on our part, we are doing something that is weird and which is not usually done. Further, even the reified assertion has a kind of latent assertativeness or at least assertability.

Kimhi may be correct that Frege's assumption that the unasserted proposition and the assertion are "on a par," so to speak, is the source of many problems.* It is certainly occurring in this thread. Taxonomical thinking is occluding linguistic realities.


* More precisely, this is not an assumption so much as a necessity of the sort of logical work to which Frege applied himself, which is why Geach was right to defend it at least on that score.

I believe if God voluntarily creates a world, then He will always have to (1) create the best possible world and (2) freely will to incarnate Himself through hypostatic union as a representative member of the species of any that are persons to save them. I think, and Leontiskos can correct me on this, this would be a heresy for Christianity of God being forced to always pick the best. — Bob Ross

Quickly, I would not say that the doctrine which holds that God always creates the best is a heresy, although it isn't characteristically Christian and I don't think it comes onto the scene until Leibniz. Aquinas doesn't think the word "best" makes sense in that context, given the infinite possibilities. Regarding (2), it looks like you are claiming that, "He will always have to freely will..." Here necessity runs up against freedom, and beyond that, Christians do not tend to hold that the hypostatic union was logically necessary. They will say that it was conditionally necessary either upon the condition of creation, or else upon the condition of sin.

I haven't been following the thread too closely, but I realize some are imputing (1) to the OP and then arguing against (1). I don't think the OP requires (1)—or (2), for that matter. The OP looks to me like an argument from injustice, and it is much easier to get a theist to agree that God is not unjust than to get them to agree to these other points.

This is how the concept is used in law. It's a bit more complicated than this, but essentially its the "if but for..." rule. — AmadeusD

Yes, exactly. :up:

I was thinking about the way that the legal context tries to avoid over-committing to metaphysical or causal doctrines by using "but-for" reasoning.

The one who controls the pre-selection of the candidates would lose enormous amounts of power and control if they were to yield up that prerogative. — Leontiskos

and who is that? — AmadeusD

Were you responding to that?

It is usually not a single person. I don't know if you follow American politics, but supporters of Bernie Sanders know the ballot gatekeeping well, particularly after the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.* In that sense the political parties control the ballot, and in particular they exert a great deal of influence over their own candidate. In fact you could read American politics since 2016 as the incursion of populism into the presidential scene, where on the one hand the Democrats were able to exclude Sanders from the nomination and on the other hand the Republics were unable to exclude Trump from the nomination. It's likely true that if the DNC were set up like the RNC then Sanders would have won the Democratic primary, and that if the RNC were set up like the DNC then Trump would have lost the Republican primary.

All of that is indicative of the way that partisan interests control the ballot, and in fact this isn't altogether unintentional in our system.


* In 2024 the Democrats held no primary at all in order to nominate Harris.

Chiming in on the topic, using a point of departure from a different thread...

The question boggles me, too. Thoughts and verbal or written expressions are perhaps the least consequential and harmless actions a person can make in his life time. So it is a conundrum why people get so worked up about beliefs and words and often respond with some very consequential and harmful actions, like censorship, ostracization, or even violence.

Can such an inconsequential act, like the imperceptible movements of the brain and making articulated sounds from the mouth, be evil? I don’t think so. I believe the reactions to acts of speech, though, undoubtedly are, and represent some sort of superstition of language, though I no argument for it yet. — NOS4A2

Sorry, I forgot about this reply.

For my part, I am not convinced that speech is an inconsequential act. This is why free speech always becomes a difficult issue. If speech were inconsequential then no one would worry about free speech and we would need no civil right to free speech.

To give a very blasé example, suppose the captain orders his troops to kill the women and children. That is a consequential speech act, albeit a command. Its causal power is manifest. Other acts of speech, such as persuasive speech, can also be consequential. If someone traveled back in time to kill Hitler, they may very well aim to off him before he starts giving his big speeches, given what a powerful orator he was. — Leontiskos

Further, we could also try to avoid all doctrines of causality and just think about counterfactual reasoning, namely by holding that an event is impactful if it has a counterfactual effect.

For example, was Hitler's speech impactful? On the counterfactual approach we look at what would have happened had Hitler been born mute, unable to speak (and presumably also unable to write). If this would have had an impact on the historical events, then apparently Hitler's speech played a role in shaping events, regardless of any particular causal doctrine.

I think that if we accept the counterfactual approach to assessing impact, then speech must have an impact.

It's the literalism that is unworkable. — Hanover

One of the reasons I think the Stephen De Young is because it addresses your approach as well, specifically at 1:00:17, where De Young considers using Game of Thrones as a religious text.

The response to your claim that the story is unworkable when taken in a literal sense would be, "Actually the story is unworkable even when taken in a mythological sense." For example, when Plato critiques the Greek myths, he is critiquing them qua mythology. Such a critique is equally open to @Bob Ross or anyone else who takes issue with the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). I think De Young is correct when he says that the mythological pivot doesn't solve the problem.

I think if you begin with an immovable preconceived notion of what God is (love, etc.) and you encounter a tradition inconsistent with that, you are left with either judgmentally or non-judgmentally responding to it. Non-judgmentally, you'd recognize it academically and consider yourself educated. Judgmentally, you'd tell the other side they were worshipping a false god. — Hanover

And again I ask, is this what @Bob Ross is doing? Are you representing him fairly? Is his argument a "declaration"? Is he merely "considering himself educated" or "judgmentally telling the other side they are worshipping a false god"? Isn't he doing something altogether different when he offers you an argument?

It seems clear to me that you think it is impossible to give an argument for a religious position, and yet this is precisely what Bob Ross is doing. So apparently you are forced to construe Ross' argument as something other than an argument. That doesn't make any sense to me.

Both at extremes are not virtuous [...]

The problem is in taking these stories too literally. — Hanover

Would you say that taking these stories too non-literally is also an extreme?

The point is this is a mythological story about responding to evil and the consequences of misplaced sympathy. I don't think a Christian should find that notion objectionable. It's the literalism that is unworkable. — Hanover

That's possible, but the arguments are where the rubber hits the road, and those will necessarily be religious arguments. If the story is mythological then the religion which takes it to be mythological will be better than the religion that does not, ceteris paribus. Thus in order to support your own religion you would want to show that the story is in fact mythological. The point is that religious argument is inevitable. We can't make progress in any of this without it.

- But this is little more than a quibble. Neoplatonism is heavily indebted to Aristotle, and therefore ' counterpoint was perfectly valid. Clearly Ross is claiming that his conception of God is philosophical and is based on classical theism, particularly thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.