Right, so despite having given some pseudo-technical garbage showing its not possible to personally verify either of the rival claims (which is what I'd already said), you've still not answered the first question. You have some condition, you need to take some medication, how do you decide which?

We've just established you can't decide mechanically, you can't gather the raw data yourself, God (the only person you claim to trust) doesn't have a prescription service. Personally, I decide to trust someone on the basis of how I feel about them. You apparently don't, so what do you do. Toss a coin?

Rights are claims on individuals or the government. — BitconnectCarlos

OK

Even if a homeless man dies on the street are we to say that everyone who passed him by violated his rights? — BitconnectCarlos

We could do. As you just said, rights are claims on individuals or governments, there could be one to ensure citizens don't die from exposure.

Rights are not simply wants or desires either. Otherwise I'd have a right to constant back massages. — BitconnectCarlos

So what are they then? All you've given so far is that they are claims on individuals or governments. Nothing in that prevents you from declaring a right to constant back massages.

I do not accept their reasoning and think they are wrong. I believe there are good ideas and bad ideas. — NOS4A2

Hang on, just now it was nothing more than a list of wants. Now there's reasoning? Reasoning which can be good or bad too?

OK. Apart from your own personal preference, what is your 'reasoning' why a government should protect your property?

As far as I am concerned, it is obvious that there are very good reasons for a healthy distrust of doctors, the pharma oligarchy, and the entire medical industry. — alcontali

Iii didn't ask you why you distrusted doctors, I asked you why you trusted these other sources. If western pharmaceutical companies are just out to make money by bumping up prices, then why aren't the Indian ones just out to make money by cutting corners on quality? If the medical journals can't be trusted to print the truth becasue of their biases and their sponsors, then why can those sources you just cited who have biases and revenue streams to consider too?

I'll give you a clue - it's because what they're saying fits a pre-conceived narrative you prefer.

Either your trust no-one and do all first hand research on everything yourself or you just pick who to trust.

what information I trust, is my own choice, and is something that I decide on a case-by-case basis. — alcontali

Really, a minute ago what information we trust was up for public debate when it was everyone else's choices being critiqued.

But no, as a matter of conscience I refuse to say everything is fine when a government demands by threat of force that I give what’s mine so that it can distribute it to others. — NOS4A2

But you'd just agreed that these are your preferences, comparable to the preferences of other for different things. Yet here you refer yours to your "conscience" yet the others you labelled "wants and desires". Do you have any good reason to believe that those who want different things to you aren't also acting according to their conscience?

The fact that most people want this kind of authoritarianism does not suggest that I need to accept it. — NOS4A2

No, we've literally just established it does suggest that exact thing. The fact that you agree other people have different ideas of what a right is, that those ideas are no less subjective than yours, and that the best way to resolve these differences is by democracy. You've just agreed that. So you do, by your own admission have to accept it.

you can search online for people with similar medical conditions and double-check their experience. — alcontali

And you trust the medical websites and search engines to provide you with a statistically viable sample? Why?

some doctors will refuse to prescribe Indian generics, even though they are equivalent — alcontali

You've tested them personally have you? Your own lab facitilies and access to controlled trials, remarkable.

I just safely assume that these people are lying all the time. — alcontali

Assuming they're lying doesn't get you anywhere because it doesn't provide you with the alternative. Presuming everyone is lying just tells you anything you haven't directly tested yourself might be false. Great. Now what? You don't have the facilities to test everything yourself, so what are you going to do now? Ask God? Last I heard his advice on the correct antibiotic was a bit thin on the ground.

What I am speaking about are so-called negative rights, which is essentially someone else’s duty to not interfere in my life. — NOS4A2

I think the distinction between positive and negative rights is spurious and usually just a rhetorical trick to make some rights sound more 'default' than others. The positive right to housing is just the negative right to not die from exposure. The positive right to health care is just the negative right to not be left to die.

Your 'negative' rights to free speech is just a positive right to say what you want.

So you're agreeing that your list of "rights" are no more objective than any other.

So given that we all disagree about what rights we think a society ought to provide us, we use democracy to decide, right? So you don't have a legitimate complaint against the system. You simply disagree with the majority of people about your list, but (unless you're authoritarian) you agree that democracy is the best way of resolving that difference. So everything is fine and nothing need change, right?

Of course, plenty of my fellow voters believe the government has a duty to provide for their wants and desires, and they often call these “rights”. — NOS4A2

You call your wants and desires "rights" too, that's the point. Do you think your "rights" come from somewhere other than what you want/desire?

No, I don’t consider your version of rights to be human rights at all, but merely wants and desires. — NOS4A2

Right, so as I said everyone sees government as defending rights, property and freedom. Its just that you disagree with others about what those rights and freedoms are. Since there's no objective authority to defer to with regards to rights and freedoms we must resolve these differences somehow so that we can live together with a minimum of fighting, yes?

The best way we've found to do that so far is democracy, yes? So the government we have is the one resulting from a system which you entirely agree with. It's your fellow voters who are your problem, not your government.

Many believe the state should also intervene in economics, the environment, and even private life. — NOS4A2

Yes, but not at random. Only to defend the rights property and freedoms of its citizens.

Economic interventions defend rights to employment, sufficient income, and rights to property. Environmental interventions defend rights to clean air, sustainable supply of basic needs. Private life interventions might protect the rights of children or neighbours.

I suspect what you mean is that some people disagree with you about what rights and freedoms people should have, or can you give an example of a government intervention which is universally agreed to be nothing to do with rights, property or freedom?

state proposed by libertarians and minarchists, where a minimal state is required to defend the rights, properties and freedoms of its citizens. — NOS4A2

Who is proposing that a state do anything else?

A frequent defence of the State's legitimacy is that its legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed. There are a number of problems with such a view. — Virgo Avalytikh

How are you defining 'legitimacy'? Legitimate just means allowed by law, but since you reject the authority of law I don't see how we can proceed without you being more clear about what criteria need to be met for something to be 'legitimate'.


Yet again I note you've completely dodged the issue of what constitutes legitimate private property, only giving examples of what you think it's not. Also, you've convenient ignored the simplest challenge to your position. You are indeed completely free to do exactly as the government does.

We can have a discussion, but I'm not prepared to just be lectured at on your prepared talking points only. If you want to address the fundamental issues we can proceed.

In order to rule out souls, we would need evidence that contradicts their existence. This is deduction. It's an application of the law of non-contradiction. — frank

No, because the concept of 'ruling out/in' by deduction is incoherent in ontology. Even if we had evidence which contradicted their existence we could not rule them out deductively. The evidence might later prove to be wrong. We can only say deductively that "either the evidence is wrong, or souls don't exist", but we can't say which by deduction alone (note deduction hasn't told us anything new here).

To say anything about souls (in or out) we have to say it on the grounds of an assessment of the evidence. Currently there is no evidence for souls, so they are ruled out. It's not certain, but the point I was making is that there is no greater certainty than that in ontology. Anyone claiming we can rule out souls deductively is 'not even wrong', ruling out things deductively is just not an activity of ontology. Same goes for someone saying we can't specifically rule out souls deductively as it implies there's things we can rule out that way, it misunderstands what 'ruling out' is in ontology.

(This is all presuming physicalist ontology, which was the context of the discussion)

Governments, in essence, are tax farms, which claim for themselves the unique prerogative to initiate force and invade private property, and use their monopolistic privileges to sustain themselves. — Virgo Avalytikh

No, governments offer that situation to an electorate who mandate it. Take up your concerns with your fellow voters.

This is in distinction from private service providers, which are subject to the discipline of the market; i.e. they must continually satisfy the wants of their consumers in order to survive, and accrue their revenue by voluntary transactions. — Virgo Avalytikh

No, again. Private service providers can manipulate markets using overt or effective monopolies, use rewards or even direct bribery to encourage laws which provide them with income indirectly (revenue on tax breaks for example). They can also create situations (such negative equity, monopolising property, to stretch the meaning of the word 'voluntary' to its absolute limit in terms of transactions.

Social and economic issues are really inseparable, because all activity, whether we see it as 'social' or 'economic', requires the use of scarce resources, and therefore is determined by the relevant property rights. — Virgo Avalytikh

I don't think anyone thinks social and economic issues are separate, do they?

What makes one government 'bigger' than another is the degree to which it initiates force and invades people's justly held property. — Virgo Avalytikh

Define 'justly held property'. Here you are again spending your valuable free time repeating the same trope, but avoiding responding to the arguments already levied against it.

Are the ways in which the State uses force permissible? If 'Yes', then everyone should be able to act similarly, — Virgo Avalytikh

Yes, absolutely, and everyone else can use force in exactly the same way. Get a mandate from the people over whom you're exercising that force to do so, back that mandate up with a constitution built on at least a couple of hundred years of reasonably successful society, fight off any other groups wanting to do things differently. That's the 'way' in which the state uses force, and as far as I can tell there's absolutely nothing whatsoever preventing you from doing the same.

That quote was part of an argument against ruling out via deduction. — Coben

We can't rule anything ontological in or out by deduction. Deduction only deals in tautologies, we need induction from evidence to rule in or out some aspect of ontology. That's the point of what I'm saying. Induction requires evidence, and there is none for souls (whereas there is for quantum foam). The which is ruled 'physical', or may yet be, will be that for which there is evidence. That which is not, and will never be, is that for which there is no evidence - despite looking. And no, this is not certain because it is induction. Induction is never certain. To invoke uncertainty in an argument about ontology is just to make a category error, it's just not relevant to the argument.

If GMBA did say something like "we can be certain that souls don't exist because they are not physical", then he was either wrong because certainty is not an appropriate term in ontology, or he's using 'certain' contextually (the context being an ontological discussion) and meaning by it just 'very justifiable belief'. The matter of whether souls might one day become listed as physical is irrelevant to the incorrectness of his argument as all ontological entities are accepted on the grounds of evidence, so a concept's 'possibility status' has no bearing on the matter.

how do you explain the existence of experts (in other fields)? — TheMadFool

In some fields, the right and the wrong answers are matters that people, in general want to put to some purpose. People allow/support experts in engineering, for example, because they want bridges to stay up. Experts are the ones which make that happen. With leaders, you have two confounding factors. One is that the leader's decision is only partly responsible for the outcome (external factors affect things like well-being of the population), and secondly there is no clear 'right' way to do many of the things leaders need to do. Together, these mean that people (the masses) do not have a particulary high cognitive dissonance to face if they believe a particular leader (some pop idol contestant) will deliver the results they desire.

Get a pop idol to build you a bridge, it's quite hard to convince yourself it wasn't their fault when it falls down. Get a pop idol to implement an economic policy, it really easy to convince yourself (when the economy doesn't do so well) that it was global factors, the previous government, the media, the weather etc.

The belief in personal authority of experts simply turns you into an intellectual have-not. — alcontali

Bullshit, it's just about believing a person's claim to have more experience in a field (ie having accumulated more data than you) because trusting people to a degree is more efficient and certainly a lot nicer than your paranoid delusion that the whole Western world is run by Satan.

Seriously, in God I trust and in nothing else. — alcontali

And who told you about God?

To allow the masses to make decisions would be a grave error. Of course this doesn't mean we ignore popular opinion but you did mention good candidates for leaders losing to pop idols and Disney cartoon characters and that really puts a dent in the reliability of the masses to make right choices — TheMadFool

Indeed. Now is definitely not a stable time.

this vindicates my call for good leaders and institutions where they may be trained . — TheMadFool

Well, no. You're stuck on two grounds

1. The people doing the teaching and the curriculum itself would be drawn from that very mass we've just concluded can't be trusted. You'd have somehow ensure that the institution was started and maintained by the very quality of person you're saying is lacking as a leader. If we can't find them to make leaders out of, then what makes you think we can find any to do the teaching?

2. Even if you found some people, to install them as either leaders or teachers in an institution requires the consent of the masses. The masses are simply more powerful than any group which might oppose them (hence the election of cartoon characters). So whomever you chose to be teachers you'd be faced either with a rebellion in the school to replace your choice with a more 'popular' one, or a rebellion in government to replace the school-taught options with ones from outside that institution.

I could argue that fixing ugliness or equalizing height results in better lives for those people and levels the playing field in a number of areas. — BitconnectCarlos

Sure, you could. But I didn't get the impression that you were seriously advocating it. I thought you were using it as a reductio absurdum argument against promoting equality in general. If so, then the very fact that you would have to argue the case answers your question for you. There's no reductio because the promotion of equality is argued for on a case by case basis, which is perfectly reasonable.

But I'm dubious that it could for example turn any straight person to a true asexual if they wanted to or something else highly linked to human nature like that. — Qmeri

Sure. I forgot the particular definition of emotion you were using. Much broader than the one I usually work with. So yeah, CBT is not going to change anything like basic sexuality.

This I disagree with and it is also pretty much in disagreement with the OP since the whole premise of the OP was that I have found it very hard to change certain emotions of mine irregardless of how I think or behave. And the solution was to fool the emotions in a way where they don't have to agree with my thinking or behavior. — Qmeri

I'm glad you found an alternative solution which worked for you, but this is not the sort of thing you can just disagree with. It's a fact of psychology. Not a fact like gravity - we don't have that kind of replicability in psychology - but fact enough that it's not reasonable to reject it without evidence to the contrary. CBT helps thousands every year, it has one of the highest success rates of any therapy. Either it works, or that success is by chance. If you think the latter, you'd really need some reason to think so other than your sample of one.

I really don't know how to make that clearer. Souls or ghosts are immaterial. Immaterial things don't exist. Souls and ghosts don't exist. I encounter this all the time. — Coben

That's as may be, though I've never heard such a simplistic argument myself. But you actually said

Perhaps 'souls' or other 'things' are on a spectrum within what will be considered physical. — Coben

... so I was just responding to that. It's monumentally unlikely, that's all. I think, in all fairness, if I said "perhaps God will turn out to be a toad called Keith" people would certainly not take such a supposition seriously on a theology forum despite it being technically a possibility.

It is technically a possibility that souls might turn out to be real but such a possibility does not have its chances affected in any meaningful way by the discovery of things like quantum foam.

I can't speak for everyone making such arguments, obviously, but I suspect by 'physical' most mean 'that which has been demonstrated by scientific evidence to actually exist' a physical thing has to have a physical effect, that's how it is identified. There's a need for it in a model which otherwise works well.

So the point about rejecting souls on the grounds of their not being physical, is not simply saying that they are not part of some set whose membership criteria is arbitrary. It's rejecting them from ever being part of that set because of characteristics which will never fit (in all liklihood).

Take quantum foam. It may or may not get included in list of 'things that exist' but we'd be wrong to reject it now, not because of whether it's on the list or not, but because good, working models with detailed predictive capabilities have posited it. It isn't currently physical, but its being posited by a good theoretical model means it fits the criteria of the sorts of things which might be.

Souls are also not currently on list, but they are not part of a good explanatory model, their presence is not posited as part of any predictive hypothesis. So unlike quantum foam, they are unlikely to ever make the list. We can already tell this from their current status.

To laymen like me (and you, but I don't mean to assume), the question is simple. Has the entity been posited by a scientist? If it has, it may well make it into the list. If it hasn't then it's not going to unless there's some very good reason for its exception.

I pretty much use "emotion" as anything "that feels like something" in ones experience in this context. — Qmeri

OK, got it.

With direct I meant direct control where one could simply consciously choose what to feel whenever. — Qmeri

This depends on the timescale. One definitely can consciously choose to feel whatever, but the process of enacting that choice takes time, is it this timescale that you're referring to by direct/indirect, perhaps? What's interesting about the Corchesne results is that if we were to translate them into thoughts it would go something like

"Someone's taken my toy away, what would be the best emotional state to go about solving that problem in?"

"mmm, I think anger might do the job best" - turns on anger

The remaining thoughts then get processed in a state of anger.

That's an extremely simplified and slightly speculative interpretation, but that's the sort of thing the results showed. We used to think emotional states were prior to rational thought.

'm not an expert on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, so I can't say. Perhaps? — Qmeri

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a collective term for a group of therapies developed from the work of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. Basically, it works on the premises you've outlined, that one can rationalise thoughts (ie critically appraise them) and eventually the new rational analysis will replace the old. The other half is the realisation that your emotions and thought processes develop from your behaviour (as well as cause it in the traditional manner), so if you simply behave in the way you've rationally concluded you ought to, your emotions and thoughts 'catch up' with this new approach. It's very successful, but nowadays far less emphasis is placed on the rationalising, just to get quicker results at the expense of a narrowing of the patient base for whom it is effective. But still, enough politics, good luck with your technique.

I was only equalizing the OP. — Qwex

I think you surpassed it. Well done.

using regular motion and registry to generate a field... I have created a lane in memory. My hack is to create many lanes, so that a field is generated of motion registry....My own solipsistic energy shell. — Qwex

Uh huh. A much more 'mature' idea, I'm sure, although it does sound like it's done much of its 'maturing' inside the digestive system of breeding male cattle.

Human nature clearly doesn't care too much about our consciously chosen goals and we seem to be emotionally interested in evolutionary goals like social status, resources and sex irregardless of what we think. — Qmeri

Who's the 'we' doing the thinking, that isn't the 'human' in human nature?

But our emotions do seem to care what we think about how to achieve our goals. — Qmeri

Emotions don't really 'care' about anything, they're most often conceived as states of the brain (and body) which facilitate different response patterns. You'll have to explain this new use of the term.

Therefore our emotions can be influenced indirectly by our conscious conclusions of how to achieve our natural goals. — Qmeri

This is not indirect. Eric Corchesne demonstrated that even 2 year old children run decisions through the cerebral cortex prior to emotional changes. It's quite the normal pattern.

So, with this technique one can keep ones logical world view intact while at the same time he fools his intuition and emotions to feel pretty much whatever he wants. If your emotions want to live in magical world where everything is the very best in a magically perfect way - just make your emotions believe that that is true and go on and concentrate on something you actually chose to concentrate on. — Qmeri

This seems to just be Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, am I missing some distinction?

I'd first think about why people need a leader at all. What is it about the nature of people in a society which prevents them from simply going about their day-to-day lives without any leader at all?

A popular narrative is that when there are disagreements about shared resources someone has to have the final say, but we could also argue that people could just fight it out/vote/reach consensus by themselves with no great loss. Many perfectly functioning groups in fields as disparate as business and the arts are leaderless and function perfectly well. So I don't think we can use this need with any certainty.

Another is administrative, someone has to take charge for the efficient progress of a group. But again, there's actually limited support for this theory too. Groups which contain more independent actors actually tend (in some tests) to be more efficient at complex tasks than groups which are under the yoke of a strong leader. I know it's pretty clichéd business-speak, but the reason they're all put on endless team working courses is because it's an efficient goal (not saying anything about whether the courses actually achieve this goal). So I don't think there's much mileage there either.

My favourite theory of leadership actually comes from a paleoanthropologist studying neanderthals. In changing environments it pays to be innovative, to derive new solution to problems, but innovation costs energy in brain terms, so an efficient community only needs a few innovators. The rest are better off being conservative (small 'c') as it's far more efficient to rely on tradition to tell you what to do rather than work it all out from scratch.

In times of stability, however, innovation isn't needed (and can actually be problem-causing).

So a good leader is an innovator, but they themselves might be a good or a bad choice for a community depending on the stability of the environment. Stable communities don't really need leaders at all.

Schools are places of learning and it begins in the form of general knowledge in all or most subjects of importance like language, math, science, history, etc. — TheMadFool

No, schools are places to keep children occupied so their parents can work, if any learning takes place it's a bonus, and the subjects are those thought most appropriate to a colonial ideal which are sorely in need of updating, not anything to do with importance, otherwise they would be computing, economics, household maintenance, and organisational skills at the very least.

That tangential rant aside...

if people want a doctor, a qualified and experienced one at that, for their aches and pains, i.e. they look for experts in the problems that concern them, why is it that they don't impose the same exacting standards for their leaders (presidents, senators, governors, etc)? — TheMadFool

Because people are not looking, in a leader, for someone who knows how to govern. Knowing how to govern would involve meeting the needs of the population in the long term (or something like that). People are, mostly, looking for someone to meet their needs in the timescale of their lifetime. And that's only if you're lucky enough to get people who think about it at all. The incumbent president almost always gets a second term - why? - because he looks like a president. Policies can go hang, personality - forget it, he can be barely able to read - who cares. He looks right. "Oh look - he's the guy off the telly..."

Put potential leaders through governance school (even assuming that school would actually teach them anything about governance), and they'll be soundly beaten in the next election by the latest winner of Pop Idol, or a Disney cartoon character.

Why would gene editing resulting in height equality or fixing ugliness be antithetical to human well-being? — BitconnectCarlos

1. Diversity is good for societies.
2. Massive medical/technological interventions which we think are fine at the time often turn out later to have negative consequences we didn't forsee, they should be used sparing and only when really beneficial (see 1).

What is it with you people and the fucking free market? Does it also heal leprosy and find my lost keys?

I think it's a little cold and unempathetic to basically claim that you'd just like to preserve the struggles of these disadvantaged populations for the sake of "diversity." — BitconnectCarlos

Who said anything about 'just' preserving the struggles of the disadvantaged for the sake of diversity. That too would have to be weighed against other goals. The point is (again, repeating what I've already written) the ultimate goal is almost universally some variant of human well-being. We preserve diversity becauseof its contribution to well-being, we strive for equality because of its contribution to well-being. If people are struggling we should try to minimise their struggle, but if one method of doing so reduces well-being in some other area then no one but a dogmatic zealot would pursue such a course.

you can't just throw out "diversity" or some other competing value when I mention "equality" and deny that we even value equality. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not denying we value equality, I'm saying that we value it among other values with which it competes and we value it (along with those other principles) entirely because of its supposed contribution to well-being. The moment it no longer contributes to well-being, or conflicts with the ability of other goals to so contribute, we will go no further.

As technology evolves and these issues enter into the realm of possibility, what does everyone think about addressing some of nature's inequalities? — BitconnectCarlos

But I've already explained that in what I thought were fairly straightforward terms. Did you read my initial response to you? Equality is never a goal on its own so it will always be weighed against other goals, one of which is maintaining a degree of diversity.

I wasn't talking about ZBT, specifically. You were the one that raised the issue first, as if it were some kind of reductio argument against the left's pursuit of wealth equality, yet you've completely ignored the argument that equality is not the goal of the left and never has been, so your reductio argument fails. Ignoring arguments which undermine your position may well be a popular move here, but it's not a philosophically effective one.

Ok, but we already agree that the goal itself is on the table. — BitconnectCarlos

No. The goal is absolutely not on the table, as I've just explained above. What evidence have you got in support of such a ludicrous claim?

walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what’s going on in your brain right now?
Or, I walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what does this look like to you.

Which question will he answer? — Mww

Either. It depends on whether they know the answer to the first. A neuroscientist or a psychologist might answer the first. A student would certainly answer the first if it was asked in a lecture about computational neuroscience.

It's still contextual.

the advantage to calling the whole thing rational thought, is the absolute impossibility of individual comprehensions in particular and thereby meaningful communication in general given from it, in any other terms. — Mww

I have tried several times, honestly, but I'm afraid I still don't know what you're saying here, sorry.

Why are you making your objections here? If you want to debate the principles of libertarianism, do it in a libertarianism thread. — Virgo Avalytikh

These are not the principles of libertarianism. That's the point here on this thread as this thread is about the political affiliations of philosophers. I'm saying that many people claiming to follow some ideology (libertarianism for example) do not, in fact, follow such an ideology, but rather select an ideology to fit the preferences they already have, usually toward selfishness. Your posts gave me a perfect example as your ideology was defended robustly as such until it lead to conclusions which clashed with your preconceived ideas. It's not just a failure to respond (that could be anything and wouldn't be enough to raise suspicion on its own) it's the coincidence with appeal to authority and hesitation. As you said yourself, every other objection was responded to with vigour, for one particular objection to not be treated the same way in three separate instances raises suspicion about the treatment of that particular case.

an accusation of post hocery, whether justified or not, has no bearing on the philosophical substance of an argument, and is concerned only with its origin. — Virgo Avalytikh

Absolutely. Which is why its relevant here, in a discussion about political affiliation (which biases arguments) and not on the other thread, which is about the actual argument itself.

Are you suggesting that I am incapable of responding to the latest objections which my thread's dialogue partners have posed, such that I am compelled to find an excuse not to continue? — Virgo Avalytikh

No. I'm saying that you are displaying an example of a pattern in which one ideology is presented as the source of proscription when in fact another is the true source. In this case, a principle of non-aggression and natural property rights is presented as an ideological source proscribing a generally laissez-faire economic policy. Such ideology could also lead to redistribution of property on the grounds that it was obtained by aggression, or at least compensation due resultant from such aggression. It could also lead to supporting environmental legislation on the grounds of community claims to resist the aggressive misuse of joint resources.

Some of these possible consequences must be abandoned (we cannot simultaneously believe all possible proscriptions), but when all the possible proscriptions resulting from an ideology that are not rejected just happen to coincide with proscriptions of another (usually less favoured) ideology, I suspect post hoc rationalisation. Its not a random suspicion, nor is it unreasonable to search for evidence for such in the approach to discussion.

I responded to objections left, right and centre, thousands of words at a time. Of course, any point at which I happen to take a break could also be identified as the crucial 'weak point' which causes my entire position to come crashing down. — Virgo Avalytikh

That's rather the point. If you respond to every objection with thousands of word - except one - which you respond to with an appeal to authority, or a delay, or no response at all, it certainly raises a reasonable suspicion that there's something unique about that particular objection.

Try writing an essay for college in which you critique the 'timing' of an argument, rather than its philosophical substance. I grade undergraduate philosophy essays, and I can tell you that this does certainly does not cut it. — Virgo Avalytikh

Hopefully you're grading essays on the basis of how well your students have demonstrated an understanding of the issue, not on the basis of how much you think they 'really' believe them. I'm not talking here about the substance of your argument at all. The topic here is the political persuasion of academics. You proposed that you have no easily categorisable political persuasion and that one's political philosophy should instead be built from foundational principles. I'm disputing that that is the case, either with or others.

Notwithstanding that..

you have anticipated any libertarian defence against your objections to be post hoc contrivances, which means that you are not receptive to being persuaded by them, regardless of their soundness. — Virgo Avalytikh

I have not anticipated any libertarian defence as being post hoc, that's the point. I have determined some to be post hoc, but it is impossible to present evidence to justify that conclusion on the basis of the arguments alone. Post hoc is a description of the origin of the arguments, it can only be determined by reference to evidence of things like argumentative style.

I intend to return to my thread in due course. fdrake is aware of this, so you need not claim any kind of victory on his part. I will contribute just exactly as much as I want to contribute, at my leisure. — Virgo Avalytikh

My comment has nothing to do with claiming victory on anyone's part, so I'm not sure what the relevance is. Nor am I proposing any requirement to proceed at any particular pace. What I'm disputing is the coincidence of the timing within the argument, and I'm disputing it theoretically (using your case as an example).

The point at which your other commitments prevented you from being able to continue, for example, coincided with the point at which your ideology lead to conclusions unfavourable to typical Western free-market interests. The extraneous comments you felt didn't require a response just so happened to be on the same point. The one time (in an otherwise first-hand argument) you merely appealed to authority also just happened to be on the same point.

Basically, the moment the fundamental flaw in your ideology is brought up you're either too busy to respond, appeal to authority or don't think the comment worthy of response, and you expect me to conclude that this is all just coincidence. It's a pattern I've seen in many situations and yours is just a case in point.

Detecting bias, post hoc arguments, altererior motives... all require analysis of context, and yet are essential parts of discussion. Either you allow meta-discourse factors to figure in, or you dismiss any such analysis and play to the flawed dogma that cold rational facts an constitue an argument alone.

If you have made up your mind in advance of the argument that any defence of libertarianism is a post hoc contrivance, then it is little wonder that you are not interested in hearing a response. — Virgo Avalytikh

So, an example here. If me having 'made up my mind in advance' with regards to the post hoc nature of your position is an accusation you can fairly level at me (and I agree it is), then how would I be able to defend myself against it if the evidence I've used to reach that conclusion (argumentative style, timing, etc) is off-limits?

I certainly should not like to admit to closed-mindedness, if I were so. — Virgo Avalytikh

Note I said "interests me here", not "interests me in general". Your actual response on that thread is not relevant to the topic of this thread, here. I'm still interested to hear what it is in the other thread, but I reserve my right to read into it that meta-data that I feel is appropriate to understanding it in context, if those terms are unacceptable to you then I suppose I'll have to just observe rather than take part.

If you wish to take issue with the case I have made in my own threads, you are free to. — Virgo Avalytikh

I did, as did fdrake far more substantially, here. I was interested to hear your response to both. As I said above, it's telling that the ideology is robustly defended until it leads to issue contrary to the interests of the (broadly Western) wealthy, when interest in its defence wanes.

It's not so much what your actual response would have been that interests me here (I've no doubt some post hoc restructuring of the theory would account for it), it's the fact that these things (positions on moot points, abandoning lines of argument, appeals to authorities etc) all seem to err on the side of some Randian fantasia on the American dream, and yet are defended as if motivated by nothing but theory.

All true, and thanks, but my post was actually just a bad joke. Had way too much wine last night and no excuse for anything I wrote during the entire evening I'm afraid. Read our posts as if mine came before yours (we were talking about different speeds of time). But don't hold your breath as the whole venture is not anywhere near as amusing as the wine-soaked reading presented it to be last night!