You should re-read 's excellent reply here. It sums up the idea in developmental psychology terms very succinctly.

The grouping did not exist in its entirety prior to your 'christening'. I'm talking about things that did. You're talking about things that did not. That's the difference. — creativesoul

All things we name are such groupings. The tree is a group of cells, the cell is a group of organelles, the organelles are groups of molecules, the molecules are groups of atoms...

And all such groups are in constant flux, molecules from one group entering and leaving, becoming part of, and then excreted from...

And all such groups change over time such that their actual constituent parts are never the same...

There's not a thing in the world which is not brought into being, from the heterogeneous soup of hidden states, by our conceptualizing, and constant reconstruction of it.

He'll say realism is much better for explaining object permanence than idealism. — bert1

Well then he's 8 words ahead of you and he's not even started.

No, he won't — Banno

11

We want to know if the things we see exist independently of us, and if they are (independently) as they appear to be. — Michael

I don't see how the answer to this question isn't determined entirely by what we mean by 'exist independently of us' and what we mean by 'as they appear to be'.

The problem is that the meaning of both terms cannot be set outside of a context which already begs the question.

We cannot consider the idea of 'independent of us' to have a meaning which shares snh common ground between the phenomenalist and the direct realist. To say something is 'independent of us' already imports concepts which require us to have a policy already on phenomena vs world.

Likewise with 'as they appear to be'. The idea of there being some way objects appear to be which we could compare to the way they 'actually are' to search for a match, imports a ton of concepts about the status of the external world, the status of our reports (both introspective and scientific)...

You'd come to such an investigation with your cup already full to the brim (to paraphrase the Buddhist parable).

There was a Thai-based company which was blacklisted for using coconuts picked by monkeys — Agent Smith

Cool. Nearly there then. Just a few billion more exploitative products and services to go.

Object permanence. — bert1

Go on...

Absolutely.

Bruce eh! An American singer, songwriter, and musician. He has released 20 studio albums, many of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is one of the originators of the heartland rock style of music, combining mainstream rock musical style with narrative songs about working class American life. During a career that has spanned six decades, Springsteen has become known for his poetic, socially conscious lyrics and energetic stage performances, sometimes lasting up to four hours in length. He has been nicknamed "the Boss".

Just doing my bit to keep the thread firmly on those rails you're so concerned about.

I've no idea what point you're trying to make. All of the settlements under those agreements were legal and made years after the 1938 laws were repealed (in the German case).

Nothing in either of those agreements says that a current state's laws determining property do not do so.

All you're reaffirming is that sometimes property law isn't what it ought to be. Nowhere have you shown that it isn't the current determinant of who owns what.

Still confusing who owns what with who ought to own what.

The question was about whether the state, the guarantor if property rights, can be guilty of theft (as NOS4A2 accused).

The answer is: yes. — Tate

It unambiguously isn't. Try taking your state to court for theft on the grounds that you don't think it's property law is what it ought to be and see how far you get.

To me it's only reasonable/decent to pressure people to fight whose lives are already in serious danger. — Pie

I agree. The tricky part is in how we judge that danger. The problem being that fighting a war is bloody dangerous, so the alternative has to be pretty clearly more so before one could justify forcing the former to avoid the latter.

This is the point @ssu was obfuscating earlier. It's insufficient to simply point out that things would be bad for Ukraine under Russian rule. To justify forcing people to fight a war (by claiming it's for their own good), it must be clear that things would be more bad than war. And that's a pretty tall order since war is really, really bad.

If someone does not turn up to the polling both, you can't know if they were protesting or lazy. — Banno

This venerates voting beyond anything justified by the system. I can tell in a hundred other ways how many of my fellow citizens are lazy compared to indignant about the system. Why would an election be the only (or even a very good) way to find this out?

If he can start a movement for folk to do this, there will be a clear indication of dissatisfaction. — Banno

Again, there already is a clear indication of dissatisfaction, an election is merely one way of recording this. It's like claiming that the photograph somehow creates the landscape it is of. An election captures the mood of the electorate on the day. The more people vote, the more accurate that capture will be, but we know from our statistics classes (don't we!) that at some sample size there are diminishing returns in accuracy gained by increasing it. Elections take a very large sample of the population's views, way bigger than is necessary to be statistically sound. What it the pressing need to make it incrementally more accurate by including even more data?

None of this changes the way people are - that's done by campaigns, protests, collectivisation, grass-roots movements, helping your neighbour, being good to your kids...

Elections just record where we've got to.

Obviously they must find some use for it - entertainment or otherwise. Why else would people spend money on it? — Tzeentch

You realise that what you're saying here is that it's impossible for people to be wrong about their strategies.

If plan to be more sporty, an advertiser suggests that buying a pair of their trainers will help, I am convinced and so I buy a pair - you're saying it's impossible that I'm wrong. If I think a pair of trainers will help me become more sporty then I've somehow changed reality such that this will be the case?

It seems the OP has lost interest anyway, — Isaac


Sorry, just been busy with stuff. I have been monitoring this thread and reflecting on things though. — _db

Oh, not a problem. I just felt for a minute I was wasting my time trying to keep the thread focused on what I understood to be your question about the justification for conscription. Had you picked any country other than Ukraine for your example it would have been a lively and interesting discussion, but since there's a contingent of posters who think that saying anything bad about Ukraine amounts to Russian propaganda so you'll get a pretty clipped discussion.

It does seem a little wrong to stay behind in a safety that is only made possible by the risk of others. — Pie

It's this assumption of safety that's in question. In Ukraine, for example, there's a not insignificant number of the population who wanted to be under Russian rule, or who couldn't care less whose flag they were under.

So the question is - if these people don't want to risk their deaths for the gain being offered, then in what sense is forcing them to do so in their interests (the people)?

Also, if there's a moral justification to forcing people to act for the greater good, then why are we still struggling with climate change, why are thousands still dying every minute from poverty? The actions people might be forced to take to resolve those travesties are way more minor impositions than risking being shot or tortured.

If possible, perhaps those who didn't want to fight could be allowed to leave the country entirely, as a kind of compromise. "You don't have to kill/die for us, but we don't have to kill/die for you either." — Pie

In the case used by the OP, this has already been ruled out...

Ukraine imposed a general mobilization of all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60, and banned them from leaving the country. — _db

You don't want to argue that we can't make mistakes and dispossess people immorally. — Tate

The morality of who owns what and the legality of who owns what are two different matters which you keep confusing.

Property is about the legality. You own what you own because the law says so. Even if that's the Nazis claiming ownership of Jewish property.

What you ought to have is a matter of morality. It has nothing to do with what is legally the case, nor even what is currently made the case by a community (even pre-law). It is to do with what ought to be the case.

The corollary of what you're saying is that every pound in the exchequer is disputed property depending on the exact tax rate each community group out there considers just.

No. You're absolutely right. I should try and join in with the spirit a little more.

The thing you have to understand about conscription is that the word originates from the latin "conscriptionem" - a drawing up of a list, but the 'compulsory sense is meaning "enlistment (of soldiers)" is from the French Republic act of Sept. 5, 1798.

You see the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon English army, called the fyrd, was composed of part-time English soldiers drawn from the freemen of each county. In the 690s laws of Ine of Wessex, three levels of fines are imposed on different social classes for neglecting military service.

So when it comes down to it The range of eligible ages for conscripting was expanded to meet national demand during the World Wars. In the United States, the Selective Service System drafted men for World War I initially in an age range from 21 to 30 but expanded its eligibility in 1918 to an age range of 18 to 45. In the case of a widespread mobilization of forces where service includes homefront defense, ages of conscripts may range much higher, with the oldest conscripts serving in roles requiring lesser mobility.

Abortion is an exception to the rule. We generally agree on moral principles like: it's not right to ignore people in need. — Tate

Nonsense. Even abortion can be rendered down to an agreed moral principle (don't kill innocent people), or expanded out to a disagreement (don't terminate a foetus).

You can make basically any moral rule sound universally agreed by simplifying it, or you can explain disagreements by considering the details. All it reveals is the intentions of whoever is doing the comparison.

Read twice, couldn't find an argument. It seems the OP has lost interest anyway, so there's little point in my replying. If you and @Olivier5 just want to swamp the thread with pointless diversions about how conscription works, then do so. With no one discussing the justification for it it seems a waste of time trying to keep such a line of debate open.

Ah, one styles themselves the arbiter of who needs what. Spoken like a true 'collectivist'. — Tzeentch

You said...

a successful capitalist has to produce something others want to buy — Tzeentch

So you're either suggesting that it is impossible to persuade people to buy stuff they don't want, or you are being no less an arbiter by suggesting that all the stuff capitalists sell actually is what people want.

If the former, on what grounds?

I added it to Amazon wish list — dclements

Classic.

https://archive.today/20211025032625/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/technology/amazon-employee-leave-errors.html

https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-revealed-in-leake-1829305201

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/01/amazon-osha-injury-rate/

https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-u-k-accused-of-sweatshop-conditions/

https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/06/26/amazon-delivery-drivers-in-canada-launch-200-million-class-action-claiming-unpaid-wages.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20200824215335/https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/02/new-study-deems-amazon-worst-for-aggressive-tax-avoidance

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/9/20857030/amazon-employees-walkout-environmental-policies

... maybe pick another bookseller?

Just to clarify. The capital levy appears to have been made law, so it turns out the property did legally belong to the Nazi government.

Confiscatory taxation of Jewish property took mainly three forms. The first was a tax on migration. Introduced already before 1933 to stem capital flight, it was changed in 1933 to impose a 25% wealth tax on all wealth transfers out of Germany beyond a lowered threshold. Furthermore, large parts of a migrant’s remaining domestic assets were credited to a blocked account at an affiliate of the Reichsbank, Germany’s central bank at the time, and only a fraction would be converted into foreign exchange (e.g. Drecoll 2011). Jews applying to emigrate would automatically be treated as being suspicious of attempted tax avoidance, creating the strongest incentives not to understate declared asset values (Bajohr 2001). This could also imply that assets sold to non-Jews under duress at below-market prices were still assessed at book values for the purpose of calculating the migration tax. Table 1 collects the data and calculates an effective tax rate on migration, which combines the nominal tax rate and the transfer quota until March 1938.

The second form of confiscatory taxation was a capital levy on Jewish wealth imposed in 1938 after the annexation of Austria. Earlier the same year, all Jewish assets had been registered with the local tax office. As with the migration tax, assessment was at book values according to the tax code to prevent undervaluation. The capital levy was first set at 20% and later increased retroactively to 25%, as the intended revenue target was originally not met. Based on its revenue, the implied net value of Jewish assets in 1938 would be 4.5 billion Reichsmarks, a value also cited in the 1947 source underlying Table 1. In a study of Jewish dispossession in Austria, Junz (2002) finds a slightly lower value of 4.3 billion Reichsmarks.

A third form of confiscatory taxation consisted two further levies. The first targeted the proceeds from the foreclosure of remaining Jewish businesses, imposed after the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 1938. The second consisted in the final transfer of all previously confiscated liquid assets to the central government budget under an executive order of November, 1941. Table 2 lists all fiscal dispossession in Germany excluding Austria after March 1938. — Albrecht Ritschl Professor of Economic History, LSE

My point is that there are a measurable amount of atoms at a certain temporal moment in the universe, i.e "there is something there at a certain amount of time" — Christoffer

I'd agree, but I'm not sure this is sufficient to supports opposition to...

exists outside of any idea that our human consciousness creates reality itself. — Christoffer

It's not my understanding of phenomenalism that it posits no external world, only that 'reality' is constructed (like all Lego models are 'constructed', irrespective of the fact that they're all still made of Lego bricks).

But I may be wrong. I was just interested in what appeared to be a claim about natural kinds, but has turned out not to be.

It was their property. One edict was even called “Decree for the Reporting of Jewish-Owned Property”. — NOS4A2

Well then why did you ask? I'm no historian. I made my position quite clear. Property is determined by law. So if you say it wasn't a law then it was their property. But in that case, I'm baffled as to why you mentioned it.

My argument is that it is immoral to take from others — NOS4A2

So no returning of stolen goods? No legal resolution of land disputes (just fight it out?), no use of communal resources...?

That my money was given to me for services rendered is enough to know that it is mine. — NOS4A2

So tax taken by tax code prior to you receiving your wage packet is OK? It's just the method you're bothered by?

So the capital levy on Jewish wealth imposed in 1938 proves that it wasn’t their property after all? — NOS4A2

It wasn't in 1938, no. It is now.

Nothing about property law says anything about the morality of it.

If you want to make an argument about what people ought to possess, that would be interesting, but yours is not such an argument.

I haven’t quite worked out a theory of property — NOS4A2

Then how the fuck have you determined your pre-tax wages to be your property? Lucky guess?

Is your theory of property one of government dictate? — NOS4A2

Largely, yes. Rightful property is only meaningful in terms of law, and the government make the law. Underneath that is the relationship of power to enforce, but government is a means of controlling that power. People create governments to leverage their numerical advantage over stronger but less numerous groups.

Pretty sure fiat currencies are owned by the government anyway. So technically all of NOS4A2’s money is the government’s. If he doesn’t want them taking any of their money back then he should manufacture his own goods and barter them for the things he needs. — Michael

Ha! Indeed. Perhaps @NOS4A2 would prefer the government stay out of his financial affairs entirely and leave him to do whatever he sees fit with his now useless stack of decorated paper.

Right, the government declares it can legally take my money, and it is theirs, therefor they are not taking my money. You probably work for the government, don’t you? — NOS4A2

How else do you imagine proper ownership of property is determined other than by fiat? Do we ask God whose land it is?

I didn’t think I’d have to explain why theft was wrong. — NOS4A2

Theft is the taking of property not legally belonging to you. Taxes legally belong to the government. You'd just prefer they didn't. I could claim I prefer your car didn't belong to you and then declare your possession of it to be theft.

You're just trying to dodge having to defend your flimsy beliefs about property so that you can continue to accrue more wealth.

I cannot defend my property or take it back by force — NOS4A2

Nor could you without government monopoly. The strongest would simply take whatever they wanted, or the most numerous would, or whatever group could consolidate power. If I think a corporation has taken property I considered mine, what recourse do I have to get it back, government or no?

I’d prefer it wouldn’t take my wealth in any fashion. — NOS4A2

I'd prefer my own private island in the Pacific. Who gives a fuck what you'd prefer. If you have a moral argument, make it. If all you've got is what you'd prefer I can't think why you'd consider some random people on the internet would be in the least bit interested.

use the monopoly on violence to exploit the labor of others so you can spend their dollars on your investments, whether it’s war, infrastructure, or other ineffectual pork. — NOS4A2

We've been through this before. The monopoly on violence is not necessary. The government could merely enter your house when you're out and take what it considers to be it's rightful property.

So you'd be happy with the non-violent version of taxation I take it. Where the government uses subterfuge and cunning to get the property it thinks it has a right to?

I never pinpointed the machine or aliens to detect the object as an apple as we humans perceive the object, but that they detect "an object", meaning, the object exists outside of human perception — Christoffer

Right. But what evidence do you have for that assertion? Why would a machine, or an alien consider the change of atoms at the boundary of the apple any more significant than the change of atoms between the flesh and the pips. An alien might well look at the apple and declare it two objects (flesh and pips), or three objects (all that is solid, all that is liquid and all that is gaseous). An alien with enormously long life might consider the apple to be such a fleeting thing that is merely a temporary state of the ecosystem (the only true 'object' it sees).

This becomes even more obvious when we acknowledge that many of the different senses of the term are mutually exclusive and/or in some clear conflict with one another. They cannot all be accurate depictions and/or characterizations of what existed in its entirety prior to them. — creativesoul

Of course they can. We just agreed that one can define a cell as containing the foreign proteins or as not containing them. Neither definition is right. There's no law governing what we ought to include as covered by our word 'cell'.

As just argued above, whether or not human experience consists of both internal and external things is not a matter of definition and nothing more. — creativesoul

But you just agreed this was the case with 'cell', now you're saying it's not the case with 'experience'. what's different about these two words?

It would follow that the basic elemental constitution of all human experience prior to the term somehow depended upon that which did not even exist at the time. — creativesoul

Not in the least. If I group some cows into 'herd1' the cows still existed prior to my naming them 'herd1' but whether daisy the cow was in or out of herd1 did not pre-exist my naming. I declared it to be the case by grouping the herd that way.

What is and is not part of cell is declared by using the word 'cell'.

What is and is not part of human experience is declared by using the term 'human experience'.

You can disagree all you like, but you'd need, in your account, to provide some source of authority as to what should constitute 'a cell'. if you're to claim that the grouping 'cell' pre-existed our use of the term. To what ought we look to find the 'right' meaning of words?

The consideration I've been trying to coax some kind of agreement upon is that humans had experiences long before the term "experience" was coined. — creativesoul

Indeed. But you additionally claimed that those experiences constituted both internal and external features. The counter was that what experiences constitute depends on the definition being used. Like the cell. Someone claiming "cells contain both organismic and foreign proteins" could just as well be met with exactly the same counter "it depends on which definition of 'cell' you're using"

It's a case for the US and EU to support the Ukrainian war effort, for as long as the need it — Olivier5

New variant on "guns don't kill people...".

"I don't support war, I just support supporting war."

You bemoan my repeating things and then ask me to repeat things. — praxis

I was asking you to explain things, not repeat them.

Neglecting an election is a minor instance of freeloading, in my opinion. — praxis

The 'minor' is not what I'm disputing. The 'freeloading' is.

given that the Ukrainians have decided to fight rather than surrender, and given their relative success so far in doing so, whatever the EU and US spend in support of the Ukrainian side appears to me well worth the price the EU and US are paying, if it helps humbling the Kremlin's militaristic ambitions for a generation. — Olivier5

So because some Ukrainians have decided to fight, you think subjecting all Ukrainians to prolonged war and decades of financial destitution is a good idea?

You can't just hide behind some arbitrary number of other people's decisions. You're supporting a course of action which will seriously harm those who had absolutely no say in that decision. That some people have decided they want to fight doesn't absolve you of responsibility for defending your moral support for a course of action that entails massive harms on non-consenting, innocent bystanders... The others. The ones who didn't decide to fight.

In American elections, we vote for representatives but also many propositions and such. In any case, it seems to me that making a decision about who represents my interests is an act of will. — praxis

I don't deny it, but your argument requires that elections actually require my vote for their success. They may be an act of will but that doesn't prove they need my vote for their success.

I was referring to your rhetorical question about the potential consequences of the absence of your vote. — praxis

That's your argument though. It's not drama. If elections don't actually suffer from my lack of vote then there's no freeloading is there? I'm not failing in any duty, since the democracy I value is completely unharmed by my failing to vote.

If you're saying that I've expressed such talk would you mind pointing it out? — praxis

No need. If it's not what you mean then you only need say so.

You've mentioned both freeloading and neglect. So what did you mean by the use of those terms?

What makes the matrix we interact with ‘external’ to us? — Joshs

I don't think anything 'makes' it external. We assume it is.

isnt that space of reasons in direct and continual contact with a world whose behavior it predicts and anticipates? — Joshs

Yes, that's the way I see it.

the world’s ‘externality’ can only challenge a system of conceptions relative not the nature of those conceptions. — Joshs

I can't make sense of this.

If we belong causally to nature rather than standing outside of it observing it, must not the physical and biological building blocks be reconstructed from our immersion within that world? — Joshs

I'm not seeing why. I mean, they could be, and we've good evidence they are, bug I'm not seeing the argument that they must be.

I suggest that in order for science to progress, the farther away from its origins it moves via its construction of the world, the better it understands those origins. Making progress in understanding the earliest and simplest building blocks of nature is a process of materially altering the world scientists and the rest of us inhabit, in ways that change the world we interact with profoundly relative to those beginnings. — Joshs

I agree with the latter, but I don't see how it relates to the former. The fact that science makes assumptions doesn't make those assumptions bad ones to make. I'm sure there are scientists who will deny the assumption-laden nature of the work we do. I'm not one of them. But I do deny the automatic assumption that because we have presuppositions, those presuppositions need exposing/replacing/examining. There mere existence is not evidence any of those things need to happen.

To assume we are attempting to capture non-contingent intrinsic features of that world through our science may be a dream we inherited from theological notions of the world. — Joshs

Yep. Likely.

the purpose of an election is essentially to express the will of the community. — praxis

I don't see how you could reach such an odd conclusion. If that were the purpose of an election then why is it not in survey format? What are the representatives doing there, and why do they get a job in parliament at the conclusion of the process?

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems considerably more plausible that the purpose of elections is to select a representative.

no one has claimed, as far as I've seen, that abstaining from an election is any great sin. — praxis

Why would it need to be a 'great sin' to warrant a counter argument. You've made the claim several times that people who don't vote are "freeloaders", "neglecting their duty"... etc. I'm just disputing that claim. I've no idea where you're reading some 'drama' into that. Talk of one risking the very existence of democracy strikes me as the more 'dramatic' stance.

Might hard-wired capacities be better thought of as sources of conditioning among others rather than as irreducible determinants of meaning? — Joshs

Yes, I think so.

isn’t there a danger that the myriad senses of a concept like ‘boundary’ be lost as a result of a pre-emptively reductive understanding of ‘hard-wiring’? — Joshs

Not so sure here. I don't really see other senses of boundary being at risk of being lost (like they were some endangered species), I think it's unproblematic that they compete with hardwired concepts 'no holds barred' style. I don't feel I owe alternative world-views anything. If they can complete in the marketplace of ideas same as any other.

Is this way of understanding the innate the result of science or the unintended reliance on a philosophical presupposition guiding the naturalistic stance? — Joshs

I think the idea of 'innate' is quite clearly delineated, it's that mental activity (regardless of how you measure it) that is likely to take place regardless of cultural influence. It's usually inferred from the actions of very young children.

You could certainly pick holes in that methodological assumption, many have, including myself. But the concept itself seems clear enough.

Of course, the value or importance you attach to something being innate is up to you. For me it's a good foundation from which to understand why we think the way we do. For you it might be an irrelevant distinction among many potential sources of conditioning.

My point is merely that the background concept of there being an external world matrix (without specifying the simples), and the idea of there being boundaries (not everything is one homogeneous mass) seem sufficiently innate to me to be premises from which we might find common ground with our fellow humans. One who has a sufficiently open mind may be an exception, but I don't expect there's many such people.

What we pick out with "cell" is up to us. — creativesoul

Right. That's the point @Janus and I have been trying to communicate.

What 'experience' picks out depends on how one uses the word. Could be internal, external, or both.

Just like the word 'cell' could pick out all the phagocytised proteins in the cell vacuole, some or them, of none of them. It all depends how we use the word.