Shouldn't that have been investigated? The DA decided not to. — frank

The cover up was fucked up. There's now a new DA assigned who has no political connections to the area, so we'll expect all avenues to be explored.

As some additional video indicates, Arbery had been trespassing onto a construction site, had been noticed by two neighbors, who then called the police, who then armed themselves seeking justice, and who then came upon the perpetrator.

Now here's the problem. Arbery runs from the construction site behind the pickup truck and then he circles around and grabs the shotgun of the guy on the ground. They then wrestle over the gun and Arbery gets shot by the shotgun, not by the sniper in the truck bed.

Driving around with a shotgun and playing policeman isn't illegal. In fact, citizen arrests are legal. Is it complete dumbassery to walk the streets with a shotgun in search of prowlers? Of course. But, if what is shown to have happened is that there was a gun shot motivated by someone coming after a legally armed person, you've got a very different question.

Notes to self: Don't chase suspects with shotguns and don't grab at someone's shotgun. We all get that. But the question turns to whether there was an illegal act committed by the shooters, not whether people are stupid and not whether they're racist.

I'd say the same thing if a white guy were grabbing at a black person's gun too, but I acknowledge that the race issue clouds this whole analysis.

My question is: how common is this in Georgia? In the US? In the world? What factors make it more likely to happen? — frank

I live in Georgia, and, anecdotally speaking, it's pretty uncommon. I can't recall the last one actually. It's for that reason it makes the news.

My take on this is that it was a couple of redneck, racist vigilantes who heard there was a guy committing the high crime of misdemeanor trespass on a construction site and they decided to arm themselves and administer a citizen's arrest (wtf?) with a shot gun while another stood watch in the bed of the truck with a handgun. I'm sure the guy was up to no good, but the remedy isn't to go out and kill him.

They claimed there had been a number of break ins in the area, but I've heard there was only one break in the last month and it was of a gun that was stolen out of someone's car.

Why there was a one month cover-up is very problematic. They asked the mother of the deceased and she said she had accepted her son was killed in self-defense, which means she wasn't out looking to scream racism prior to seeing the video. She didn't think her son a saint, but she is now understandably upset.

Brunswick is a port town and I've always remembered as a kid driving through it on the way to the beaches with the paper mills that made the entire town stink to high hell. It's a poor south Georgia city, with a very wealthy class of haves (versus the have nots) that have their Summer homes on St. Simons Island and Sea Island.

Some attorneys have expressed the view that the right to lethal self defense is not actually supported by the 2nd amendment, in which case, it says absolutely nothing, and could be entirely deleted. — ernestm

Some attorneys have argued that the 2nd Amendment relates only to your right to protect yourself against the government and not against your fellow citizen. Four of those lawyers were on the Supreme Court when the matter was decided against them in the Heller case.

I do think there is merit to the dissenter's opinion, although I do not agree that had the dissent prevailed, the 2nd Amendment would have become meaningless. The right would have been considered only another of the protections against a tyrannical government, as opposed to a right to citizens against one another.

I voted yes, but it's paradoxical. In saying "we hold these Truths to be self-evident", we're making a choice. Natural rights are stipulated or asserted under certain social conditions, and we thereby create them, according to how we want to live in those conditions. — jamalrob

If we take the definition of "natural law" as "a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct," then I would see natural law as referencing an absolute standard necessary for all human beings. This would be opposed to a relativistic standard, which is what I take your concern above to be. For example, if we accept freedom from slavery and the right to a certain autonomy of decision to be a natural right, then that would mean in all cases at all times enslavement is a violation of my natural right. It's an absolute standard. If, it's as you say, that my right to freedom from slavery is only stipulated under certain social conditions, then you're arguing the right is relative to something (specifically, certain social conditions).

Building on what Pfhorrest says, it's as if we cannot conceive of universal rights unless we conceive of them as features of the natural world. The idea of moral objectivity without naturalism is a difficult one for us to handle. — jamalrob

It's difficult to handle only because it attempts to secularize the notion of God into the notion of nature. The problem with that is that nature is studied empirically, meaning if we expect to learn the laws of nature (e.g. gravity), we go out there and measure them. While we can pretend that these moral laws are "self evident," clearly they're not because there's nothing specifically we point to to show what that evidence is. Even should we be able to see clear as day that it's wrong to enslave people because nature says so, it's not clear what authority nature has over me.

All of this makes sense in the context of a god creating these moral rules and that god being of higher moral knowledge than the rest of us. It's for that reason historically we have said these laws are endowed by our creator. I think that without accepting an absolute (god), you can't really justify an absolute morality. I think it's part of what secular humanists struggle with, but I don't see it as ultimately successful.

The problem is simply this: shooting someone to death infringes on their right to bear arms. — ernestm

Which must mean you don't have the Constitutional right to kill someone with a gun solely because they have a gun.

From whatever the 2nd Amendment suffers, it's not that it's self-contradictory.

Strange thing. Attorneys who dont know very much often say the DoI is not a legal document, and insist it is true, which just goes to show how awful the USA education system is. — ernestm

It's not a legal document. If someone were to sue claiming that their rights under the Declaration had been violated, they'd be suing without any legal basis.

More importantly to their profession, the truth is that the Supreme Court prmarily considers the Intent of the Founding Fathers in decisions based on interpretation of Constitutional Law for new situations. That means the Declaration of Independence, being the primary intent of the Founding Fathers, which all the founding fathers signed, and was the first thing they all agreed upon, is the primary basis of all Constitutional law, both for current cases and for all other Constitutional decisions via precedence. — ernestm

Original intent is one method of Constitutional construction not adhered to by all Justices. Regardless, to the extent you're arguing that the Declaration might be persuasive to some in interpreting legally binding documents, that's true, but that doesn't make the persuasive document legally binding. The Federal Register, for example, records the minutes of various government agencies when they arrive at certain regulations. The regulations themselves are binding and perhaps the minutes of the meetings might offer some better understanding of the intent behind the regulation, but it doesn't make the Federal Register a legally binding document. You're referencing rules of construction of binding documents and so it might make sense to look at the intent of the framers, but that's simply one form of construction and it doesn't make that document binding in any way.

I do agree that it was a mistake to ground rights in theology. — NOS4A2

Certain rights are being declared absolute and therefore no government has the right to impede them . The reference to the creator is not a reference to a specific theological system, but it is using God to anchor the absolute nature of the law. For example, if I say the right to free speech is something that no government can legitimately limit, I'm saying something about my rights regardless of what an oppressive government might say. As to the question, why is that right beyond the power of the government to limit? According the Declaration, because the Creator says so. If you wish to reject the divine command theory nature of this, that doesn't affect the concept of natural law, but it requires that you arrive at some logical basis for decreeing certain rights cannot be infringed upon.

You are not allowed to be taught that belief in God is required in state shcools. You are allowed to be taught it from a narrative or cultural sense, but you are not allowed to learn anything that requires belief in one particular theology besides atheism. — ernestm

The restrictions in public college are fairly limited and it's not at all uncommon for students to openly express their religious beliefs when taking a course specifically on Christian theology. You also indicated that private schools labored under the same restrictions, but they don't, with many being very openly religious and being directly affiliated with a religion.

There is no constitutional law in England. The law in England follows Aquinas that authority is promulgated to judges, who are required to consider precedence first. — ernestm

There's no Constitutional law in England because there's no Constitution in England. England has statutory law and it references specific ancient legal documents in the decisions by its courts. It's not as if their parliament is incapable of passing statutes and that they have to wait around for the judges to decree laws. What do you envision, that some judge just declares what the tax rate will be or any other such law?

Your understanding of the common law appears confused.

My point is that State schools teach children to believe that natural rights are self evident, and therefore, almost everybody, I'd estimate 99.9%, also think they understand what constitutional law should be from their own intuition, without thinking that intuition is refined by acquiring more knowledge and learning more principals of reason. — ernestm

Natural rights are to be self-evident by definition. Whether they are or not is a point of contention philosophically, but it's not error to teach someone what the definition of a natural right is. Regardless, no one suggests that Constitutional law (which is distinct from natural law and common law) is knowable from intuition. How could someone know what a document says without reading it?

As to whether the Declaration's reference to certain unalienable rights suggests that the rights enumerated in the Constitution must all be natural rights is a questionable leap. I'm not sure anyone argues that the rights afforded to the States under the 10th Amendment, for example, would be considered a natural right. How could you have such a natural right without having the idiosyncratic federalistic system the US has?

The problem is, it is forbidden in the state school system to teach anything requiring religious belief, and private schools follow the state curricula — ernestm

Did you go to college in the US? This is just categorically incorrect. I took religion classes at a state school and some private colleges even specifically require prayer..

However, the ADDITION of the concept 'self evident' has proven disastrous. — ernestm

Natural law demands that the law be self-evident. That addition was therefore superfluous. How else can one know the natural law except by introspection? The only other option is if God decreed it, but that wouldn't be natural law; that would be divine command theory.

The Jeffersonian concept is promulgation of authority, from the divine, through natural rights, to constitutional law, and from that common law, with the last form in particular influenced by legal precedence. — ernestm

This doesn't follow. The common law preceded Constitutional law and was inherited from England. If the common law is deriveable from natural law, then you're arguing the English followed natural law principles. If that's the case, then why did the colonies write the Declaration and rebel if the English system was already in compliance with it.

What I would say is that intuition is refined by the practice of learning and reason to become more robust. It appears that is not generally agreed upon at all in the USA. — ernestm

It's obvious that universal agreement is lacking on what rights ought be fundamental, but that's just a general attack on natural rights theory, really not central to your OP.

Perhaps the greatest problem the USA has is Franklin's replacing ''self-evident' for 'sacred and irrefutable' in the Declaration of independence's definition of natural rights. As a result, almost no one knows that Jefferson actually based them on a long empirical argument by John Locke in 'Essay of Human Understanding.' Even lawyers aren’t allowed to read it in college because it is requires accepting the existence of God as a premise. — ernestm

Why wouldn't lawyers be permitted to read something about God? Is that a rule somewhere?

I don't follow anything you've said here. Even if you can cite to me and prove Franklin specifically edited Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration as you've noted, I fail to see the significance of the edit. The final version continued to show a direct reference to God, claiming that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,..." The Creator is God.

now, because Franklin called the natural rights 'self evident,' everyone from the stupidest buffoon to the President of the United States thinks their opinion of law is more important than even the greatest scholars of Constitutional Law. — ernestm

Locke thought them self evident as well, deriveable by reason. Regardless, no one attempts to enforce newly dreamt up laws they've derived from reason alone. There always must be some statutory or Constitutional basis or it must be of such ancient acceptamce it's found in the common law. Whether the rights set out in the Constitution are examples of natural rights or of positive law has little practical import as far as I can tell.

corroboration of which, it is very easy to show how even natural rights are not self evident. France has different natural rights: equality, liberty, and fraternity. Everyone in France thinks their different natural rights are self evident. That proves natural rights are NOT self evident. Almost no one realizes that either, perhaps maybe 0.02% of the USA at most. — ernestm

This is an argument for cultural relativism. Is murder moral in those countries where it is legal? This is just to point out that you can hold to certain absolutes regardless of whether others disagree with your absolutes. Do you justify the prohibition against slavery on the basis men have declared it such or do you base it on a sacred principle related to freedom and autonomy?

That’s all one should need to know to recognize that one's own opinion of constitutional and common law is really rather more insignificant as a 6-year-old child's opinion of what driving laws should be. — ernestm

This is your first reference to the Constitution or to common law. How does this apply to your natural law argument?

And below them...will be the people who are doing what you are doing, Baden. That bottom group will be regarded as the true sludge. — Frank Apisa

I understand the approach of supporting the ideology but not the person. You can logically be a good person and vote for a bad person. It really comes down to what degree you expect your leaders to be good people versus wanting them to support your views.

I don't follow your position tough. You blast Trump for being a disgusting person and provide that as reason not to support him, but you give Biden a pass for the same behavior.

Logic would require some consistency here. Either be a pragmatist and vote for a bad person whose politics you agree with (and so withhold your criticisms when your Trump opponents do the same), or condemn anyone who votes for a morally bad person.

I've expressed some reservation in convicting Biden myself, despite mounting evidence because I do think as a society we're too quick to judge. However I do wish to distance myself from any suggestion that the accusation against Biden couldn't possibly have occurred because digital penetration is impossible without arousal and consent. That argument indicates an irrational advocate unwilling to accept any damaging evidence.

I take your position really to be to do whatever is necessary to get Biden elected, regardless of what double standards, logical contradictions, or ad homs you have to engage in. Fair enough, but I don't think that position holds much weight in a philosophy forum and it's very doubtful that's a winning marketing strategy either.

Come back a month after opening and if folks are behaving themselves and infections are going down, you can call it a relative success. Of course, if folks are behaving themselves, your economy will still be somewhat screwed, just not lockdown screwed. — Baden

Don't hedge your bets here. If it works, it works. Don't try to say it must've been because us Georgians behaved ourselves if it does work. We're going to have a strong economy and no infections and you're just going to have your naysayer sour attitude.

Such are the wonders of a two party system and the self-fulfilling attitude of having no choice. — Baden

So you think the best way to find a candidate with personal integrity is to just have more parties to increase the odds one won't be a piece of shit in his personal life?

It seems like better vetting is in order more than anything else. It's not like I'm going to vote for the Bill Moose party or some such shit just because their candidate is an eagle scout.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-reports-lowest-number-covid-patients-in-a-month

Looks like the Georgia experiment was the correct course.

I'm concerned about what's happening in US politics, aren't you? — Shawn

Only if it means Trump might not get reelected.

Wow, Hanny, that's very nice of you. What the actual fuck is going on in the US currently? — Shawn

Where I live, it's the same. Any pocket of affluence requires very little government oversight. Such is Sweden. If you have one homogenous class, no warfare.

How do you explain the fact that it works, Hanny? It's all documented, researched, and backed by the Swedish krona. — Shawn

Because their population is absurdly responsible and competent. Being a politician there is like coaching a team of all stars. They're going to win regardless of who's in charge.

Scandinavia has one of the most lax crime system ever, and they don't get away with a lot, neither in terms of taxation. Here in the US, it's such fucking lunacy, that I am baffled and wondering if I should move to Sweden. — Shawn

This is the Swedish Fallacy, a logical fallacy I've discovered. It's the argument that since it works in Sweden, it can work anywhere. The truth is that everything works in Sweden. If they decided to turn their prisoners into legislators and to pay everyone to shit on the sidewalk, it would somehow increase the GNP.

When someone does something wrong, we feel as though they should be punished. What is the deeper point towards punishment if everyone mostly feels it is wrong. — Shawn

Everyone doesn't think it's wrong. The deeper point for it, and for all you want to know and more and retributive justice:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-retributive/

The neighbor is super credible. She's a lifelong Democrat and a Biden supporter. — Baden

She has no bias due to her being a Democrat and lifelong Biden supporter, but those factors also point to her having no brain. I'll call those a wash, acquit Biden, and vote for Trump, which was where I was going to end up anyway.

What are your thoughts about mysticism and what experiences have you had when you’ve honestly and genuinely tried to engage with others who try to espouse their thoughts and ideas about/within ‘mystic’ ... er ... ‘methodology’? — I like sushi

The mysticism I have a limited introduction to is kabbalah, which entails finding hidden meaning in biblical texts. The study is typical of other Judaic study in that it involves textual study (in partucular, the Zohar). That is to say, it's an organized study and doesn't suffer from the nebulousness you describe and if you asked someone for a discussion of it, you'd be given all sorts of study materials.

The object of kabbalah is likely that of all mysticism, which is to find meaning in the world. Specific to orthodox judaism, they believe in the divine nature of the Torah, this leading to deeper analysis of the text (including counting the times a word is used or noticing the order of letters in deciphering meaning). That is. If God said these things, every mark and dot must be impregnated with infinite meaning.

And that leads to the next step, which is to state that each event in the universe was created for a higher purpose, and the kabbalah of life would be to decipher (or at least recognize) the meaning behind each blade of grass blowing in the wind.

the presidents in that video were democrats. — frank

Don't politicize the end of the war! Just go out in the street and throw off your top hat beneath the ticker tape.

THE WAR IS OVER!!

Return to work.

Does anything truly matter? We all know our world is inherently meaningless. But let's imagine that we happened to find some irrefutable meaning in this world. Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Objectively yes, but from a philosophical perspective, I'm not sure. Meaning is always relative to some framework. From my philosophical standpoint, no reality truly matters. Truth is just truth. — Cidat

There are two directions one can use to decipher the world. We can begin at the beginning and extrapolate forward or we can begin at the end and extrapolate backwards. The first looks at the first cause and sees the second, the third, the fourth, and so on, and with that, we explain our current existence. The second looks at the final goal and it asks what each step before it did to achieve the final goal.

The first approach is a causal explanation and the second a teleological one.

We don't know the first cause nor the final goal.

I'd submit that either approach is equally valid then, accepting then that each event we experience today either had some mysterious origin or it has some mysterious goal. I choose the latter approach because it imbues meaning in the world, and I submit it is as equally logical as a causal approach.

It's considered inappriopriate for a man to talk nastily about sex, consider how people would think if a girl does that…. — ttjordy

You're reporting on either your personal norm or what you perceive as a cultural norm, but what you say isn't universally accepted. Women and men speak the same where I'm from.

You listen to a recording of a symphony (or any other "complete" piece of music). You push pause to grab some water, then come back and push play. You finish listening to the recording.


Did you hear the entire piece? — Moliere

Yeah, you heard the entire piece but not in one setting, so it's different if you heard it in one setting. It's probably an irrelevant distinction, but I suspect if you took 800 breaks so that it was so disjointed and so much time elapsed that you couldn't formulate it as a single piece in your head, it'd be relevant.

It's like if I watched the entire Game of Thrones over a few days versus if I watched 20 seconds a week for several years and then declared I had seen the whole thing.

I knew a guy who told me he hiked the entire Appalachian trail, which seemed less impressive when he explained he had done it over the course of many years, taking a different section each time. It was still a feat, but much less than someone who set out for many months and finished without a break.

India, seems to be being carried out in a way optimized to protect the interests of particular classes and ignore the interests of others. — Baden

Yeah, the caste system creates far more injustices than just inequitable coronavirus treatment.

have been told and I think it too by the way I can be very obsessed with sex. I tried to talk about it in therapy, but apprently there was no room for that kind of addiction. Immature babies… so there is definitely frustration into the lines I write from my part. My apologies. — ttjordy

I don't follow the comment about the unavailability of therapy for sex related issues. Maybe you just had the wrong therapist.

Nobody cares, except for your sexual partners, and maybe some of your friends. This is what Baden was talking about: it's a sign of self-obsession that you think we're interested. In fact, my first reaction to your OP was that you were here just to talk about your sex life, and disguised this with a discussion about ethics — jamalrob

It's always hard to know. There was at a class at my university that others told me about that explored the meaning of pornography in society, which required a bunch of 20 year old students to watch graphic videos from time to time in class. It was taught by a female professor.

The idea that these students (and the professor) transcended their personal sexual drives and were actually engaged in objective academic study was comical to me, especially then and pretty much now.

That's not to say there's nothing to say academically on the subject, but I wasn't buying it. So I do get what you're saying., but my response typically is the opposite from yours, which isn't to disengage from the bs, but to jump right in and make mockery.

Anywho, enough of this talk. Time to roll off top my sister and get ready for work.

The way you talk about sex is too stupid to be considered seriously, so you escape the admonition. You're welcome — Baden

When you talk this way, I just want to hold you delicately against my bosom, wipe your tender tears with my tongue, and slowly hate fuck your bowels until you fall fast asleep.

Want stupid sex talk, I'll give you stupid sex talk.

You're welcome.

I think people who talk a lot about sex are boring, vulgar, and self-obsessed — Baden

I totally know this was intended for me.

In philosophy we are taught a mnemonic to help ensure our writing will be as clear, concise, and unambiguous as possible: to write for an audience assumed to be “stupid, lazy, and mean”. — Pfhorrest

You spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on style. The old saying that it's not what you say but how you say it is ultimately wrong. It's what you say. There is no good way, for example, to serve a shit sandwich, dress it up as you may.

Wittgenstein and Kant, for example, didn't win their adherents from their mastery of form and clarify. If you have something of brilliance to say, it's brilliance will be deciphered from the chunks if your only way of speaking is to vomit it out.

If you've found the cure to cancer, please don't withhold it from us until you've figured out the poetry to say it.

And so please do note: you submitted a tome for our digestion in another thread and no one engaged you in any of its substance, but they quibbled over your use of conjunction and split infinitive.

If you want to get meaningful feedback, I'd suggest you point to whatever section of your book that you think made some headway, and then pay attention only to those criticisms that address its merits. You can figure out how to add polish later, but, especially for philosophy, substance matters over form.

Sex is an interesting thing. When I was married, it was frequent and normal I suppose, and then I got divorced and all of a sudden I was thrown back in the mix. It seems very much easier to find partners and partners are much more willing at this age (late 40s, early 50s). You get to the point where it feels like a waste of time if it's not going to go anywhere. It's just not worth the effort of all that's involved for it to culminate into a few days (or even weeks or months) of fun just to move on to the next one. It's not that I feel dirty, immoral, or anything like that. It's just kind of stupid. At first, it was like "wow, this is what rock stars must be doing," but I suppose they are much younger and it matters more to them and it's part of a lifestyle that doesn't appeal to me.

But I'm not at all hesitant to talk about it, and I'll confess to having done things only so that I could tell my friends my crazy exploits later. Not terribly mature I guess, but we're having an open talk here.

Sexuality is really just part of life, and I do think it's silly not to be able to talk about it. I will admit though that those times I've been with someone I cared about, I saved the details for myself. It seemed disloyal to do otherwise.

l

Perhaps some people are proud when they get caught in a sex act or must speak of their sex life in any detail, but I wager the common response is shame and embarrassment. — NOS4A2

Maybe just my circle of friends, but embarrassment doesn't usually attach to sexual conduct, but more so to lack of sexual partners and the suggestion that because you can't find a partner, you're somehow deficient. I don't believe that at all, but recognize that is entirely a product of lack of very specific social skills and perhaps timidness. Self worth is often too associated with how one fares with the opposite sex and that only exasperates the problem because lack of self confidence is what paves the road to that lack of success.

I think boasting of one's exploits is a way to show your confidence, even though it may be lacking. I also think finding more and more partners is a way to prove to yourself your own worth, which, of course speaks to lack of confidence. Maybe I do that sometimes. I do try to be sensitive when speaking among friends about various exploits or whatever, in realizing it makes some uncomfortable due to the sensitivity of it and others due just to their lack of such experiences.

But there's no mystery here. It's all about finding just one person to share your sexual experiences with and discussing them (or not). If you have that, it seems pretty insignificant whether you are open or closed in your discussions about sexuality to the general public.

If you're asking whether I have the sense of humor of a 15 year old boy all these decades later, yes, yes I do.

If utilitarianism dictates that the greatest policy of ethics is to minimise suffering, wouldn't the most ethical position be the extinction of all existence — JacobPhilosophy

It's to maximize happiness, not to minimize suffering.

Anyway, at the barber now. Been a long time since a haircut, but they're opened back up finally. Gonna ask that they use dirty scissors to help build my immunity.

When I visited Vancouver in the 1980's with my family from Seattle, I noticed how far more cleaner the city was to US cities. And even Seattle was quite nice too. — ssu

That whole area is nice. It's really rainy, but really green. I prefer the mountains of the northwest, until winter.

Wasn't referring to you specifically but making the point that what's important is what a rational response is not what's 'authoritarian', 'panicky', 'being terrified' etc. These are efforts in my vote to skew the debate — Baden

I see hyperbole as just a way to make a point and not so much as an effort to mischaracterize and mislead.

I live in the capital of British Columbia, Canada. — NOS4A2

Vancouver, such a lovely city.