Yes, but just take the example of the cold father that masks his love. Certainly, this isn't an uncommon practice by many fathers to do so.

So, too can someone else mask his or her emotion including love being masked by anger. Although, this would be something that happens at a semi-conscious level as I can't imagine someone simultaneously feeling love and anger at the same time. — Question

Ah, I see what you are saying now. Yes, the whole thread is about how one feeling can mask another. We Brits are famous for our stiff upper lips, and my own family is like that; "not bad" is our highest accolade. So the man that disguises his affection as a punch on the arm, or the woman that covers her affection with nagging are certainly familiar.

"I hate you for making me feel vulnerable."

I think this expresses clearly a feeling about a feeling that I have been talking about in another form. A great many of the comments here focus on feelings about feelings - is this feeling always good or bad?
So to love is to be vulnerable to rejection or ridicule, one is afraid of this, so one becomes angry.

So if one is in such a state, and following this thread, one will find that looking at one's anger and asking not 'what about?', but 'why?', one is in great danger, as Mongrel pointed out, of uncovering the masked feeling that one had rejected. So, before one starts, one needs to suspend judgement about feelings; one needs a mental space that is dispassionate, and compassionate, and insatiably curious with regard to oneself.

One point I'd make is this: that's a person you're analyzing. Take a moment to become aware of your own motives for doing psychoanalysis. — Mongrel

Well the person I'm mostly interested in analysing is myself. Understanding my own understanding is just what I am interested in. Sometimes it looks like psychoanalysis, and sometimes it looks more like philosophical analysis.

Anger is a component of PTSD and typical grief. Why? Don't know. — Mongrel

So I am suggesting a reason. Whether it is true for another is for them to find out for themselves or not as they wish. Your health warning will no doubt be heeded by some, but for those that like to think too hard about such things, I plan to continue to dispense my rather vague psychobabble.

Personally, I think the toddler deserves to be taken seriously and offered an apology and compensation. I don't find the anger of the powerless that funny.

I see emotion as just that which moves you to action, thus the root "motion" within it. If we were emotionless we'd be as computers waiting for someone to offer a use for us. And so I'd submit that if anger over injustice moves us to feed the hungry, then it is a good thing, and if love of our country moves us to open fire into a crowd, it is a bad thing.

Catagories schmatagories. — Hanover

I agree with your definition of emotion, but it seems to entail that a tempered judge is not an emotionless judge. You seem to be clear enough on the distinction between fiery and tempered, but you dismiss my analysis. Perhaps you could explain your own schmatagories?

Jealousy, as a source of evil at least, would make more sense to me to focus on because I find it hard to think of a case where the motivation of jealousy is a good thin... — Moliere

I'm not so sure jealousy is simpler. One could say that jealousy is the motivator of competition, and competition is the motivator of excellence. It seems to be concerned again with self image, and may or may not involve a component of anger. But whether it is felt to be good or bad, that feeling comes after the jealousy itself, and does not affect the complexity of the source of the feeling.

Anger is a proper response in some cases, and in some ways, and not so in other cases or other ways. It's the way anger is expressed, I'd wager, that makes it bad or good. (indeed, I would hazard to say that unexpressed anger is itself not a good thing, though it makes sense to wait for the right context in which to express it)

For instance, I think there is a kind of anger that is harmful to the angry person. It doesn't matter if the anger is acted on or not, but it is a kind of consuming anger which causes harm to the person who is angry -- and if it is acted upon, harm to what that person directs their anger against. — Moliere

I'm concerned to emphasise that whether anger is proper or improper, good or bad, harmful or not, is a feeling one has about one's anger (or about another's). The phrase 'consuming anger' is interesting; when one is consumed by anger, it has taken over, to the extent that in the moment, there is no judgement - no feeling about anger - one is anger itself, completely. To get carried away is to be for a moment undivided, single minded, and this is a wonderful state of no (internal) conflict. Afterwards, one may judge one's condition to have been proper or improper in the usual divided and conflicted way. This is part of the attraction of anger, that it liberates one from conflict.

... harm to another is not something I would say is wrong, tout court. That isn't to say I endorse revenge -- revenge, I would agree, is a poor motivation. But I'm not so certain that harm is morally forbidden. Or, at least, that it both is and isn't -- there's a sense in which I would say harming another is always a shame, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done, in such and such a circumstance. (as in, a better world is one without harm to others, but in this world, harm in this case was the better option) — Moliere

I want to hold clear the distinction between the feeling - anger, and the action - harming. So, although it is not always used quite this way, I define anger as the feeling that motivates harm. Now one can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, but breaking eggs isn't normally the motive. So to endorse harm is not necessarily to endorse anger. I support taxing the rich, not to damage them, but to help the poor. I can imagine not hating Hitler, but loving Jews enough to assassinate him.

There is a great danger in this though, that it gives comfort to the reluctant torturer. "I don't really want to hurt you, I'm just thinking of all those innocent people who will be harmed if I don't."

Psychologically, I would say that this happens on a small scale all the time. I like to think I'm a decent chap who wishes harm to no one, so my anger is unacceptable to me. So I deny it, suppress the immediate response, and rationalise to an action that expresses my anger covertly. And this tertiary response to my own anger has the semblance to me and to another of being a positive response to empathic hurt.

Ken Loach interview.

“Angry? Mmmmmmm,” Loach says so quietly it barely registers. He talks about the people he and his regular writer Paul Laverty met while doing their research: the young lad with nothing in his fridge who hadn’t eaten properly for three days; the woman ashamed of attending food banks; the man told to queue for a casual shift at 5.30am, then sent home an hour later because he wasn’t needed. “That constant humiliation to survive. If you’re not angry about it, what kind of person are you?”

Here is a little challenge that helps me clarify my thinking. Ken is extolling the virtue of empathic anger. But what is this feeling that he expresses so quietly? We see the empathic hurt, and then we see the response, to make film. Ken's films are "hard hitting" Is that violence? Is that anger?

I want to say that to be hurt and upset, and to respond with vigour and determination is not necessarily to be angry, at least in the sense in which I have been using the word. I would rather say that Ken responds to the primary empathic hurt, which he does not cover with a secondary anger. I say this because for me anger consists of the urge to hurt or harm, and there seems to be none.

I'm not sure if this is a sustainable distinction in terms of a judgement of another's actions, but on a personal level, I think it works. There is a clear difference in motivation between wanting to support the underdog, and wanting to cut the overlord down to size, although the action may sometimes be the same.

Just as, though we talk about 'fighting cancer', the motivation is to help the patient, not to hurt the cancer.

Leonard Cohen on Bob Dylan's nobel award: “To me, it's like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.”

I find myself surprised at how widely varying people's feelings are about this. Last night we discussed which of the following we would find it harder to cope with:
- seventy people being killed by a tornado; vs
- seventy people being deliberately killed by a person, like Anders Bering Breivik.

To me the second is far more disturbing, because of the anger it evokes, but not everybody felt that way. — andrewk

Here's the thing; when you say that anger is worse, or more disturbing, you are naming the (tertiary) feeling that you have about the feeling of anger. The notion of coping with one's feelings is rather odd, when you think about it.

Suppose I said that the 70 people do not care one way or the other, that they have no feelings on the matter - suppose I said that the people being deliberately killed is preferable and easier to cope with because a gun makes far less mess than a tornado. These are somehow the wrong considerations, I appear callous, oddly, for not focusing on my own feelings.

I can imagine John Cleese indulging his justified anger by giving the tornado a damn good thrashing. So if you feel bad about feeling angry then anger is hard to cope with, but if you feel bad about feeling helpless, anger is preferable. And from that side, it is hard to comprehend that character that enjoys the expression of anger.

X has an image of himself as a calm and measured but sensitive person. So he is disturbed by the angry feelings that Breivik evokes in him, that threaten his self image. There is a positive feedback going on, such that the threat makes him more angry which disturbs him more. He finds it much more comfortable to endure the sadness of the tornado's effect.

Y has an image of himself as an active and responsive person who can live with his own feelings because they are always appropriate. He is unthreatened by his anger at Breivik, but probably more so at his anger at a tornado which looks ridiculously inappropriate, which threatens his self image and makes him more angry in a similar feedback.

I might have a go at Z later on, who has a negative selfi-mage...

One can assume that people with low amount of empathy or desensitized emotions due to various factors, in fact experience emotions differently than the rest of the group. — Question

Actually I think one cannot assume that. Rather one has to assume that we are talking about the same emotions that folks can have more or less of. Otherwise, we will be talking at cross purposes and without communication. So I do not agree that one can express love with anger, indifference hostility or malice. If you want to use words that way, then I'm afraid I cannot discuss with you meaningfully.

It is interesting that there are no unexpressed emotions, no unconscious emotions, the idea does not seem to make sense. There are however experiences that we do repress, traumas that we have experienced but that we have blocked out of psyche, yet these blocked experiences still effect our lives. — Cavacava

This is rather difficult. There are no unexpressed emotions - but sometimes one bites one's tongue. I think I would say that there are indeed unexpressed emotions, in the sense that biting one's tongue does not express the anger but the unwillingness to express the anger. It is at the centre of what I have been saying that the hurt is felt momentarily, but the expression is not made, (because big boys don't cry?), instead it is masked, diverted, assuaged, ameliorated by anger. And this happens so fast, that if one is not attending to oneself, one is not conscious of having been hurt.

But I agree that blocked experiences find expression of some sort; they have their effect - bitten tongues or stress illnesses, or confused masked inexplicable 'other' feelings and sensations.

...it may be a reaction to emotional pain, but the source of that pain is not always entirely clearly evident. People get in a mood, they become angry for no apparent reason. Anger is an affect, and I think it is associated with anxiety, and sadness as sort of a combined affects feeding off each other. — Cavacava

Yes, I'm not even hoping to capture the complexity of emotional life in a few easy concepts. For sure there is what I can call 'emotional weather' with its origins in childhood, or yesterday's unexpressed feelings or whatever. So in some moods, a small irritation can provoke a huge outburst, and in other moods a deal of provocation can be shrugged off.

There are layers and cycles of feeling that are so habitually denied, sublimated, repressed and projected that one often has no idea what one actually feels, or what one is feeling something about. But let's try and consider the simple case first.

...here is the crux, they more often than not exploit this facet of their personality and see it as a strength (comparative evolutionary advantage within game theoretic bounds) given therapy is a much more arduous, alienating, and astigmatic path to take which is further compounded by the fact that such individuals are desensitized to the process of learning via emotional reasoning. Coming to terms with being the way they are is often more off putting than accepting themselves and integrating with the rest of people. — Question

I'm not sure if I'm following you, but certainly I agree that anger is felt and thought of as a strength, and that is how it functions, in the psyche, as a way of resisting pain, and in the world as a way of resisting others. But I'm not seeing the connection to love you mentioned before.

What constitutes the response if not the internal condition? Perhaps I misunderstand, but I'd say anger is the internal condition expressed. It can be a response to other internal conditions or external events, or instantiate/emerge without being about anything in particular. — jkop

Hmm. I need to be a linguistic dictator here. Anger is an emotion, and so an internal motivation. The expression of anger we can call violence to distinguish it. This can take the form of a harsh word, a sharp slap, or whatever, but feeling and action are not the same thing. Perhaps I should say that they become distinct in the process of masking which is the loss of authenticity. If one's primary emotion expressed itself unmodified, when hurt one would cry, and there would not be a need to distinguish the feeling hurt from the crying.


I don't want to go into this yet really, but one can have a response to one's own anger, of fear, or guilt, perhaps, which would be a tertiary emotion that inhibits the secondary feeling of anger that is masking the original pain. And then one can mask that again with a blanket of numbness that becomes depression.

I'll entertain, if you care to explain.

Your homework for tonight:

Compare and contrast Dylan's The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Secondary vs primary emotions is a new concept for me. I need to get my head around it before I can comment. — andrewk

Well it is my own terminology, and there is a certain inevitable arbitrariness but it ties in closely with this from a review you referenced:

"... (Nussbaum) argues that despite anger’s long cultural history of being seen as morally justifiable and as a useful signal that wrongdoing has taken place, it is a normatively faulty response that masks deeper, more difficult emotions and stands in the way of resolving them."

But here is her position in her own nutshell.

I argue that anger includes, conceptually, not only the idea of a serious wrong done to someone or something of significance, but also the idea that it would be a good thing if the wrongdoer suffered some bad consequences somehow. Each of these thoughts must be qualified in complex ways, but that‟s the essence of the analysis. I then argue that anger, so understood, is always normatively problematic in one or the other of two possible ways.
One way, which I call the road of payback, makes the mistake of thinking that the suffering of the wrongdoer somehow restores, or contributes to restore, the important thing that was damaged. That road is normatively problematic because the beliefs involved are false and incoherent, ubiquitous though they are. They derive from deep-rooted but misleading ideas of cosmic balance, and from people‟s attempt to recover control in situations of helplessness. But the wrongdoer‟s suffering does not bring back the person or valued item that was damaged. At most it may deter future offending and incapacitate the offender: but this is not all that the person taking the road of payback believes and seeks.
There is one case, however, in which the beliefs involved in anger make a lot of sense, indeed all too much sense. That is the case that I shall call the road of status. If the victim sees the injury as about relative status and only about that – seeing it as a “down-ranking” of the victim‟s self, as Aristotle put it – then indeed it does turn out to be the case that payback of some sort can be really efficacious. Lowering the status of the wrongdoer by pain or humiliation does indeed put me relatively up. But then there is a different problem: it is normatively problematic to focus exclusively on relative status, and that type of obsessive narrowness, thought common enough, is something we ought to discourage in both self and others. — Nussbaum

Now to my mind, this is far too cerebral, and makes a distinction between loss of 'the important thing that was damaged' and loss of status that does not look very fruitful. "...the wrongdoer‟s suffering does not bring back the person or valued item that was damaged." It is as if there were a calculation to be made that might make sense of the anger, but the anger comes before the wrongdoer's suffering, which cannot therefore motivate the anger. Rather, anger itself must have animmediate psychological benefit that is expressed in retribution. And I think this is the reduction or masking of pain, specifically the psychological pain of damage to the self-image. This can include any identifications - status, but also the loss of a loved one (note that it is my loss that operates here not the loved one's), or the loss of my stuff, which again is part of my psyche.

The sense that anger makes is thus nothing to do with justice or normativity in the first place, but has an internal defensive role. That is why it is an inappropriate response, because it projects outwards a response to an internal condition. Everyone thinks, including Nussbaum, that anger is a response to the world, but it is not.

It's emotional responses to crime that generate harmful actions that make us all worse off.
— andrewk

Emotional responses are the problem? Um.. no. It takes a hardening of the heart to be able to chop somebody's head off. The vileness actually starts with a lack of natural emotion. — Mongrel

I'm stealing this to start a new thread, hopefully out of the eye and interest of the extremists.

It is nevertheless interesting that in UK, it is illegal to burn a Quran if you are non-Muslim, but *legal* to burn a Quran if you *are* Muslim. — tom

It's not that interesting really. No more interesting than that homosexuals can use words like 'faggot' and 'queer' without sounding homophobic, where heterosexuals are less likely to be able to. There is no law against burning the Quran, any more than there is a law against waving a knife about. But there is a law against threatening behaviour and against incitement of hatred. Do such things in the comfort of your own home by all means, but make a public display, and it is a different matter.

"Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."

"Those who had involvement in CSE were acutely aware of these issues and recalled a general nervousness in the earlier years about discussing them, for fear of being thought racist." — report

Here at last is something worth thinking about. You see the same kind of pressure being applied to anyone who is critical of Israeli policy. Such hasty judgements serve to shut down debate, and in this case stifle proper investigation. In the case of Israel, it looks to me as if there is somewhat of a deliberate attempt to delegitimise any criticism of their policy, which is abhorrent; in Rotherham I'm not sure if it is that, or more of an internalised fear of seeming racist?

The phrase 'without fear or favour' comes to mind. There is no argument but that prejudice has been and remains the major problem, but nevertheless, fear of the stigma of prejudice can and does lead to bending over backwards. I can only commend to folks to be open to both possibilities in themselves and others.

Where did I defend any such behaviour? — tom

Well if you did not mean to defend it, then I fail to see why you brought it into the discussion.

Well just to quote from one article and not bothering to look very carefully:

'This is a case of theatrical bigotry. It was pre-planned by you as you stole the book deliberately. You went out to cause maximum publicity and to cause distress.'
He told Ryan that people were entitled to protest but not in the manner he chose. The court heard the defendant had six public order convictions between 2002 and 2010 including racial chanting at a football match and assault with intent to resist arrest.

Nothing to do with Sharia law, nothing to do with political correctness, everything to do with incitement.

And you are pretty close to theatrical bigotry yourself in defending this behaviour.

I'm not about to trawl through the huge increase of Islamophobic crimes that have occurred recently, particularly since the explosion in them surrounding Brexit, but certain notable crimes serve as a good example. Several people in UK have been arrested and sentenced for burning the Quran. Nobody has been arrested for treating the Bible in the same way. In fact, it is only ever non-Muslims who are prosecuted for burning a Quran, because under British law, Muslims are allowed to do that, because Muslims are allowed to burn the Quran under Sharia. — tom

I'm not about to take your word for any of this, particularly as it is incoherent.

the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.
Wikipedia definition of political correctness — Cavacava

And there we have it. Political correctness consists in not kicking a man when he's down, often considered to be taken to extremes by folks that think that not kicking men when they are down is a terrible imposition on their rights. Folks who like to kick men when they are down are then claiming to be a disadvantaged minority being discriminated against.

And that is how fucking pathetic this debate is. Myself, as a left wing liberal fascist bigot, I will continue to delight in calling out those that think it is their right to kick men when they are down and cut them down and kick them. I am just that kind of asshole.

In UK you stand a good chance of being accused of a hate-crime if you draw a certain character, or point out that a certain religion teaches homophobia, paedophilia, or bigotry. — tom

Show me a legal case, or admit that your complaint is simply that folks call you names when you call them names.

Mr Corbyn has to defend himself against the charge of anti-semitism on a regular basis. I find it distasteful, but neither he nor his accusers face any legal sanction. but if you point out that a certain religion teaches paedophilia, then you are not calling anyone out individually, but calling out a whole group in an indiscriminate way that might well be deemed incitement to hatred, which is a crime.

But this is not political correctness, it is a reasonable restriction of free speech in the interest of public safety.

But you aren't allowed to call certain people these things, and if you do, in several countries in the West, you risk being accused of hate-crime. — tom

What countries? Being called a hate criminal is of course totally legitimate, unless you are one of the PC brigade. But at least in the UK a hate crime is a criminal act motivated by hatred of a minority group, and 'not being allowed' means there being a law against it, such that a well founded 'accusation' will lead to arrest and prosecution. So let's have some cases, or I might call you a bullshitter.

And when I say 'cases' I mean to exclude libel and slander cases, because not being allowed to make false accusations is no part of political correctness.

But they can't command me to agree. So if my 'not agreeing' amounts to 'bigotry', then so be it. — Wayfarer

So be it, Amen. Not being allowed to call folks homophobes, racists, misogynists and bigots would be political correctness gone mental health issue.

Oh shit, my life has been wasted and I never even knew.

I'm very lost. I'm 64, graduated in philosophy (and psychology) with honors a deal of years ago, and have been working dead-end jobs since.

I don't think there is a job or a life that is not dead-end. To live by thinking is no different from stacking shelves, it is to stack library shelves instead of supermarket shelves.

But work is not soul-destroying. Recently, I have been a cleaner and night porter. One cleans the kitchen, not to have a clean kitchen, but so that the dirt is always fresh. One cleans the toilets so that folks will not get sick and die. One stacks the shelves so that folks can eat. One does work of value to the world, and it sustains the soul.

What destroys the soul is the fantasy that there is something more valuable than doing what needs to be done, something fulfilling. The Nobel prize is never awarded to cleaners, no prizes at all are awarded to shelf stackers. Is that what you want? To give a gracious speech as you clutch the Oscar, thanking the world and his brother for enabling your achievement? Would that fulfil and satisfy?

My advice is to stay lost, stay dissatisfied (as if there is some other condition you might be in).

...by oneself one is purified, by oneself one is defiled'. — Wayfarer

That is a strand of Buddhism, but it makes no sense to me, that the impure is the agent of purity. I prefer the Taoist notion that it is inaction that allows the mud to settle and the water to clear. It seems to me that enlightenment and salvation have the same function here, as goals to strive for. And striving to end strife is as good a way as any of muddying the waters.

But this quietism is not fatalism; the fatalist will not be still, but continues to act as before.

But I think the basic insight must be that humans are in some sense related to (i.e. 'children of') the higher intelligence (however conceived) that is the origin/source/ground of being. — Wayfarer

Again, this seems like pious hope, wishful thinking. Vice has no relation to virtue. Hatred is not the child of love, but the absence of love.

What I observed was that there are Christian philosophers who say that 'hell' or 'damnation' can be understood as the rejection of salvation, so, in some sense, those who suffer it have chosen that fate; it is a consequence of their actions. It parallels the doctrine of 'evil as the privation of the good', which is also associated with Augustine. — Wayfarer

Ah the good old problem of evil. We see it is not resolved in this world, but surely it must be in the next?

Here is the hard line theology: there is no reward for virtue, and no punishment for vice but that which man initiates. Because, if virtue were rewarded, it would be reduced to mere prudence.

How one would like to be comforted that having been crucified and being innocent, justice reigned in the other world. And naughty children will be sent to bed with no supper. Verily I say unto ye, the arseholes will get away with it, and decent folk will be trodden upon and there will be no recourse but what ye impose yourselves. For if being good was too much fun, then everyone would do it, and the real estate of heaven would suffer inflation.

In the UK...

It costs about £70,000 to build a house - a nice modern insulated one. The average house price is somewhere around £270,000. The £200,000 difference is the cost of land with planning permission, which is not being manufactured any more.

Even in depressed areas, one is hard pressed to find even an old, rundown Victorian terraced house with no garden for anything close to the cost of building a house. My house is one of those, and is worth about £140,000. So I won't be moving to London anytime soon, where the same house would be worth from 3 to 10 times the price, depending on centrality.

So you landless peasants who rent obviously have to pay the equivalent in rent of a loan on the house plus a bit for maintenance and insurance, and a bit for the profit of the landlord. And that is almost everywhere a huge chunk of the minimum wage which is what peasants are supposed to be worth.

Aye, and there's the rub. There is a glut of peasants, not a shortage of housing. Time for a war...

So this enables gay advocacy to turn the opprobrium which used to be heaped on gays back against their critics, who are now portrayed as, and widely accepted to be, the enemies of human rights and natural justice, just like those who used to oppose racial integration. — Wayfarer

This suggests that there is a quantity of opprobrium that cannot be created or destroyed but only deflected from one to another. But gays were never regarded the enemies of human rights and natural justice, nor were blacks. The opprobrium is not the same opprobrium, and not on the same scale. One does not generally find racists and homophobes being lynched or beaten up by gangs, or even being imprisoned with hard labour.

Rather, it is the racists and homophobes who are trying to turn the opprobrium they receive back on their opponents, as if being called out on their prejudice is the same as the oppression they have meted out.

if there is an individual, then its preferences are an imposition onto itself. — darthbarracuda

No. if there is an individual, then its preferences are itself.

It is only in dividing the individual that one part, the preference can be an imposition on another part, the complainant.

there's always a preference lurking behind the choice. — darthbarracuda

Yes. And there is always no one lurking behind the preference not being able to choose it, only an imaginary homunculus.

I meant preferences which would be outside of the self's grasp. I did not choose to hate tomatoes, for example. This preferences against tomatoes guides my action - without any over-riding higher-level preferences, I will not eat tomatoes. So I suppose it does look like a homunculus, but then again I suspect agency is entirely epiphenomenal. — darthbarracuda

You need to stretch your nostrils if you want to reach into your brain and grasp your preferences. There are bits of yourself that can be grasped, and bits that cannot. You seem to be wanting to grasp your wanting to grasp, and concluding that you cannot grasp anything if you cannot grasp that.

If you care to experiment, you will find that you can eat tomatoes even if you prefer not to. It just requires will-power. But even if you are entirely the slave of your passions and your passions are out of control, you unfreedom only arises because you separate yourself from your passions so as to say, 'not I, but my preferences choose'. The homunculus is yourself imagined without passions, so as to choose them.

Imagine that one could do that with every aspect of oneself. When one is choosing to like tomatoes or not to, who is choosing, and on what basis. I suggest that if you liked tomatoes, you would not be darthbarracuda, but darthfruitfly. Perhaps in the spirit world, darthfruitfly chose not to like tomatoes, and was reincarnated as darthbarracuda. It's all his choice, not yours. But this is nonsense talk, isn't it?

Free will requires us to have autonomous control over our actions. Actions are initiated by mental states, specifically preferences. — darthbarracuda

This is another homunculus argument very similar to the one that proves we cannot see things. Light enters the eye, optic nerve signals, neurons fire, etc, but 'we' don't 'see' the world. The explanation of how we see purports to demonstrate that we don't see.

"Actions are initiated by mental states" looks as if it is saying something other than "we initiate actions".

We have no control over our preferences: — darthbarracuda

Again, it looks as though there is a me, a mental state and some preferences. This disowning of myself into fragments does indeed result in a powerless homunculus that has no will at all, but is ruled by outside forces called 'preferences'. But I choose to strangle the little wretch to silence its incessant complaints and excuses, and since it has no preferences of its own, it doesn't even care.

I reject this dichotomy entirely and say that property ownership, if it exists at all, is a relation between a person and an object (or objects) which endows the person with the moral right to make decisions regarding that object. — Dan

Sounds a bit arbitrary to me. I'm the king, so everything morally belongs to me. And such relations are either god-given, or socially given, I can't see how they can be personal in the sense required without dissolving in conflict. But never mind, I've said my piece.

While making that assumption there isn't much to be said in regards to those who think that all property is theft except "no it isn't" which isn't very interesting. But if you can think of an interesting way to engage with that flavor of anarchist, please let me know. — Dan

:D Well I must say I am inclined to present the same argument to those who say "taxation is theft". It seems to me that either position is unjustifiable.

My point is that the removal of one's property through threat of force, such as threat of prison, is a form of theft. — Dan

So I disagree with this, which is the same assumption, differently expressed. Let me see if I can present an outline of an argument. I would suggest that if you as a property owner want me as a non-property owner to respect your right to property, then you are asking me to agree to a social contract. So on the one hand you say it doesn't exist, and on the other you want to impose it. and since (without taxation) it is a contract that benefits property owners exclusively and does nothing or as I argued above actually harms non-owners, there is no reason for us peasants to agree it, except the threat of force that you don't much like when it is applied the other way.

Theft is possible iff property exists, and property exists either in the way that animals have whatever territory they can successfully defend from day to day, or it exists by agreement. But if it only exists in the former sense, then possession is ten points of the law, in which case theft still does not exist, because whatever I take is mine and not yours. So the notion of theft itself depends upon the social contract - the agreement to respect property rights. No one is asked their opinion, or has to sign this contract at birth, and some of us never assent to it. But most of us do, most of the time, until life becomes un-livable under it, and then there is revolution and civil war.

Your reference to "walls and fences" I suppose must be figurative because... — Hanover

It is both literal and figurative. Please don't expect me to defend sharing our shirts, it would be un-hygenic. I'm not arguing that property should not exist, that literal and figurative walls and fences should not exist. Most of your post is an exposition of the tragedy of the commons.

What I am suggesting is that in principle, my exclusive right to my own home necessarily deprives you of the use of it. This is not an argument against my having exclusive rights to my own home. it is the acknowledgement of a debt incurred to the world that is so deprived.

To take an example opposite and equally silly to your shirt, if I happen to own the whole world, and my property rights are unfettered, then you are in trouble unless I happen to like the cut of your jib. And take your shirt with you on your way out, but don't use any of my launchpads.

This isn't as much a criticism of libertarianism as it is a dismissal of it. — Hanover

Well it certainly questions the assumptions of this brand of libertarianism, but if one is putting freedom at the centre of everything, I think it is important to address the, to me obvious, restrictions on freedom that the walls and fences of private property produce. Not that I am against property myself, (bla bia, tragedy of the commons), but it adds a responsibility to the right, which does not seem to me to be a 'natural' one, for all its commonplace assumption.

I blame the Welsh. Radicalisation began during WW1...

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-one/lawrence-of-arabia/

I am a monetary antirealist; I don't belive money has any intrinsic value. But I know the people at Walmart like to collect it so I take some to them and they let me have food which does have intrinsic value.

Perhaps you address this elsewhere, but I would like to see some engagement with Proudhon.

To put it very simply, property is theft, and taxation is the rent owed. When you fence off your cabbage patch, you deprive the rest of us of the freedom to forage there. There is a tendency to regard property as an absolute right that has no impact on others, but in a crowded world this is not at all the case. Every man's property adds a limitation on my freedom, to the extent, eventually of leaving me no place to be at all. Thus taxation is not theft, but property without taxation is theft.