For example, "Res ipsa loquitur, coming from him, simply means "you're an idiot". — Gnomon

The person who wrote that needs no defense from me - or anyone (and to anyone who tried he would likely just tell to get out of the way). But the plain bald fact of the matter is that if you do not know what it means, then your education is lacking. And not only just because you don't know what it means, but also because you don't seem to recognize that it's meaningful, or that you can easily look it up. It also means you're unfamiliar with books that commonly have comments in them in Latin, Greek, German and so forth. So while it does not say, "You're an idiot," you yourself have instead said, "I'm an idiot," and apparently proud to be.

Here FWIW, a definition of Deism
deism
noun: a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe.

And it matters because the founders of the US, many of them, were Deists - not to be confused with being Christian. The informal schoolboy understanding of which being that some creator(s) - God if you like - made the world and then went off to other projects, never looking back. And this in turn an echo of wa-ay ancient pre-Biblical Middle-Eastern beliefs in which the Gods made the world and the people in it for amusement - and then decided to drown them all in a great flood because they were noisy and interfered with the gods' sleep.
(Source, and worthwhile on its own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-YL-lv3RY&list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyuvTEbD-Ei0JdMUujXfyWi ).

It means 'homeless'. — I like sushi

No. it means the person who is a bum, thereby likely homeless. But not homelessness itself. Still, I think I think I can guess what you meant.

...the possible reemergence of the clochard in the form of mobile devices... — I like sushi

"Clochard" is a new word to me. I had to look it up .Maybe you should, too.

Will technology replace the home? — I like sushi

Depends - per usual - on definitions and understandings. If as is said, "A house is not a home," then what is a home? Or another way, what is a home as a home when it is at home functioning as a home, so to speak? Without knowing what a home is, and for whom and how, sense is going to be elusive.

Above I have asked the OP to start to define his terms. He hasn't done it. I submit for general consideration that his statements, lacking clarity - and perhaps willfully so - are without sense.

Ok. We can plod - for a while. What do you mean by "existence" in P1. "Series" is an abstract term; do you mean the Universe is an abstract term? What is a series of events? What is a series of entities?

The thing-in-itself does not meet the criterion of susceptibility to sensation hence is not real. — Mww

I invite you to reconsider. That, or this a high short lob for you to smash back.

In one of the translator prefaces to Kant - maybe or not Beck - he observes that the ding an sicht is more usually ding an sicht selbst (dass): from thing-in-itself to thing-in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself. A difference that makes a difference. To be maybe too brief, it seems to me the obscured question with a confused answer is to the nature and accuracy of the details of the sensation. That a dass is sensed - perceived - cannot reasonably be doubted. What can be doubted is the accuracy of the correspondence of the perception to the dass itself. Hence the dass is real. We just - as scientists - have to be mindful of how we talk about it; as ordinary folk, not so much.

This is the irresistible force of logic butting its head against the immovable object of reality. Because reality and logic are different worlds, it won't do to just throw words around. They, the words, have to be well-defined so that at least at first they seem to be applicable in both. So your first problem is your words. Your second is your presuppositions: each of your propositions contains at least one that is unclear or questionable. Those being done, then we may look at the argument itself.

Just for example, everything that is in a sequence has a starting point. A circle is a sequence. A circle has no starting point....

(Praying, I guess, is the only thing I can do now :confused: ) — Eros1982

No. You can vote. And it is both stupid and ignorant not to. Is that you? Are you both stupid and ignorant?

If you think you're making any kind of statement by choosing not to vote, the only one you're actually making is the one in the paragraph just above. If any other statement, there are far better ways to do it.

Alas, you're quite right. But it's not because Roe is bad, but because it's enemies so unprincipled.

I agree the Roe-Wade decision was a pretty poor basis for such things. — Banno

And how so? Have you read it? It seems to me well-legged on history of law, balance of concerns for health of the mother and at approximately quickening/viability the health of the unborn child, and implied constitutional rights to privacy and bodily autonomy. And explicit law is a bad idea, except perhaps for frogs that might want such a thing, but as was said to them more than two millennia ago, "be careful what you wish for!"

A first cause is logically necessary — Philosophim

Because it is presupposed. And a good and useful presupposition it is, too. And of course because presupposed, logically necessary for any system in which it is presupposed. But is that the way the world works? And it seems to be for our local ordinary world. But if we stretch into into areas governed by either quantum mechanics or gen. relativity, it's all not quite so simple.

An early problem is to say with some rigor exactly what a cause is, if we're goin to talk about causes - and that not-so-easy. Next, there are descriptions of the very small of what seem to be effects happening before their causes. And in general relativity, what comes first and what comes after can depend on the speed and direction of the observer.

What's left is simply the effort to make sense of perceptions, to have a template, or a model, or a description that works, and the idea of cause-effect is a good model. But the idea breaks down at the extreme - or the language or both.

Which leads otherwise sensible people to talk nonsense. But we shouldn't here in a setting, a philosophy site, where participants presumably abjure nonsense and self-contradictory ideas. Like unmoved movers and uncaused causes. Better to say we don't know. And that at least leaves the door open to what will no doubt be an account far more interesting and compelling than just mere nonsense.

So, yes. Logically necessary, which given the subject is just no necessity at all.

If everything simply exists without known cause, then there is no moral implication. — Brendan Golledge

Well, you can interpret the moral implications however you want. — Brendan Golledge

This is because of Geodel's theorem, — Brendan Golledge

"...and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe."

Using ChatGPT like you would a news article or an academic citation is now grounds for a warning. — fdrake

Just for clarity, in this respect ChatGPT bad, news articles or academic citations good. Right?

You can insist that a caterpillar is not a butterfly. I shall insist that a caterpillar is not yet a butterfly.... We call this the life-cycle of the butterfly, choosing the final stage to identify the life-cycle, which is somewhat arbitrary, but not incomprehensible. This is why there is so much argument about abortion. — Ludwig V

And of course you are completely right, in the context of life-cycles and what is expected and anticipated.

But the distinction here is between what is and what is not. Or in your terms, what is not and what is not-yet. And I think you might agree that the getting from the not to the state of being the not-yet, the process, is a without-which-not of the not-yet: it doesn't happen, no not-yet.

The zygote, embryo, foetus is not yet a baby, child, or person - unless you want to abuse language and sense. Imagine your car doesn't run. You take it to a mechanic. He looks at it and tells you it's fixed and demands payment. You remonstrate that obviously it is not fixed; it does not run. And he replies that it is not yet fixed, therefore it is fixed, and you should pay. Such the problems of reifying what isn't.

Does this mean a pendulum swing to an opposite extreme, no stop in the middle? Of course not. The interest in the not-yet is real enough and acknowledged as reasonable everywhere. Contracts are based on the coming of the not-yet. But no reasonable person confuses the not-yet with the actuality. And so the sensibilities of the two, of what is and what is not-yet remain separate, or should.

And those who would confound the two are always found to be confused, in their thinking, in their conclusions, and for some in their actions - the price of non-sense.

Vanity to suppose to know anything about God! And among the problems with attempts is the attribution of absolute qualities of omni-this and omni-that, failing to note that they can lead to contradiction. Which ultimately does not matter because it's all man-made.

I'd appreciate it if we're going to have a back-and-forth if you'd give at least "the cold respect of a passing glance" to what I said, and not what you want to suppose that I said. If you don't it's a waste of time, which I do not feel like wasting.

You might also inform yourself as to the process of a pregnancy, what happens. And you might even give some consideration to what it is that is inside the womb, instead of what you want it to be.

And you might also be a bit more thoughtful instead of being just an ignorant knee-jerk. Education, even self-education, can be a powerful thing, You might try it.

but a future person — Ludwig V

Small point, en passant: this is one of the traps possible, at least in English and no doubt in other languages. Informally we get to talk about future this-and-that, and usually we know what we mean. But the point is that there is not any such thing. Thus the caterpillar is not a butterfly, nor an egg a chicken.

That "Reply obj. 2" is some reply! Near as I can tell, it's petitio principii. Which, if the thing being begged is also an axiom, is not a fallacy. I find the problem at deducing causes from effects, and separately, the causes deduced from the effects.

The emotional overtones of "foetus" and "baby" are very different and are being used to gain rhetorical advantage in the debate. Participants in the debate are indeed playing games with words. — Ludwig V

Now we're nearly in agreement. My bias is still such that calling an unborn child a "baby" lends it attributes it does not have, while calling it a fetus, itself perhaps reductive, is nevertheless accurate. The debate has constrained usage and most dictionaries are sometimes not helpful in understanding all usages.

All I asked was what the differences are that make the difference. — Ludwig V

These the topic of many posts and threads here. Germane for us, imo, is keeping in mind that pregnancy is not-so-much a thing as a process. "Fetus," "baby," or a number of other terms tend to obscure both the fact and significance of (the) process - which being obscured and then ignored makes fools and worse of all. That's one reason Roe was pretty good law; it attempted with some success to acknowledge the process in the law. And it's worth noting both that abortion would not be an issue but for the intrusion of people for whom it is really no part of their business, and that the history of abortion in the US is mostly that it was not an issue.

The usual legal standards are quickening and viability. Not being a doctor I understand these to be, roughly, kicking and ability to survive outside. Legal rights, traditionally, while they exist in potential, are only realized in live birth. So much for law.

Reality is that at and near the beginning of the process, there ain't nothing that corresponds to any usual notion of a person - the development of those characteristics being gradual over time. So the difference that makes a difference is that the pro-life goal is to save something that is not yet, a potential, something that does not exist.

And the "great thing of us forgot" are the rights of the mother. By what logic or argument of worth is she deprived of any right over her own body? Further, the right of the mother is in every sense real, the "rights" of a fetus artificial and contrived.

Bottom line, it comes down to competing interests - leaving aside what those interests or their merits exactly are. There is no comprehensive argument - yet - legal or moral or political to entirely put the subject to rest. Except perhaps following the universal pandect to mind one's own business, augmented by letting personal decisions rest with persons and medical decisions with doctors.

All of which, in consideration of which, leads back to Roe as, again, pretty good law. it acknowledged competing interests, attributed merit, acknowledged medical reality, and gave good guidance for timing - not a bad day's work for Blackmun and the court - they should do even a fraction as well today!

Above I asked you if you thought a caterpillar is a butterfly. Or even if the contents of an egg are a chicken. Pro-lifers seem to think they are, which given that they are not, is an example of what I call vicious.

I must be missing something. What are the differences that need to be recognized? — Ludwig V

To start with, that they are not the same thing, ergo different; and different, ergo not the same thing. If you cannot tell any difference, I submit to you that you have serious problems. If you can tell the difference, then think about those. If a fetus is a baby is a child is a person, then a person is a child is a baby is a fetus. Right? Wrong? You're just playing games with words, and since I don't reckon that you're actually playing, I must assume you're serious, which makes you vicious. Just exactly as I would be if I mislabled you for nefarious purposes of my own.

If you have an argument to make, don't make it by equivocation.

Aquinas responds to the objection by noting — Leontiskos

My gosh there's a lot in this. Please consider laying it out in a bit more detail? E.g., "animal," in your syllogism is the essence of both dog and warm-blooded, the latter two being existences? And thus this sample syllogism not an example of an argument/proof by cause-and-effect?

By the heavens, you made me forget we're brothers, making me think you're New Hampshire! Certainly from the OP we can see he is angered, "I personally resent it bitterly."

I'll only add that if as a presumably thinking, presumably educated adult you have never been angered by something you heard in church, then either the drugs are working or you're not paying attention or not listening.

Can we get some perspective by considering a related but different issue? — Ludwig V

:100: Good points all, imo. Um, a qualification:

A human foetus and a human baby are the same individuals being described in different ways. — Ludwig V

With this I disagree. They are different things, their differences being in part recognized by differences in description. One may become the other - but being and becoming very different, yes?

And I've more than once wondered at the failure of the extension of protection to sperm and egg. By what logic are they excluded - beyond the overwhelmingly bluntly obvious?

A human foetus — Hallucinogen

You apparently have no knowledge of what a fetus is in any sense that justifies the use of the term. As to differences, here are just two of many. inside/outside, viable/not-viable - and they're all substantive differences. In your view is a caterpillar a butterfly? In misusing the language you are committing to belief opposed to fact and knowledge - which it (also) appears you are prepared to ignore.

A given law in a given country existing at a given time doesn't — Hallucinogen

Didn't say they or it did. I did say I thought Roe was good law, and I said why I thought it was good law. For more on that you can read the case; it's not a hard read.

OK, so you can't give a single example of a mother dying unnecessarily as a result of lack of access to abortion, — Hallucinogen

Not cant, won't. It's there for you to find, and that not difficult at all. And for you to take take the won't as can't simply says you're only concerned with your beliefs - don't bother you with facts.

In-as-much as it appears you have given this no real thought, and likely no original thought of any kind, I ask what the source of your beliefs is - and in-as-much as they're merely beliefs, maybe you can enjoy them more privately, or at least in public be more reasonable.

But yes, my assertion comes from a perspective and that perspective has a cultural background. — BitconnectCarlos

Pulling teeth! So your judgment of M-M-L-J, Acts? And nothing else in the NT? is anti-intellectual from your perspective? Is there anything about your perspective that we should consider or think valuable?

I read the first five books as what I call exemplary stories. As to supernatural elements, I don't buy them, but apparently they did, and that matters. In any case, imho, not anti-intellectual at all, but requiring what any literature requires, a "suspension of disbelief." If you (choose to) goggle at the miracles or the resurrection, then likely whatever else those books have to say may well be lost to you. Which leaves the reasonable question, is the science of the NT all that matters to you? Rhetorical; I suspect it does mean more to you. So why bother with "anti-intellectual" about something not intended to be "intellectual" - and that was not intended for you as audience in any case?

But what's the justification for this? At what point does a foetus become a baby, and what's the relationship responsible for making the difference? — Hallucinogen

Are suggesting there is no difference? There are a whole host of differences; just for the heck of it, why don't you try a list of them and see just how long it is. I thought Roe v. Wade was good law. Three divisions of nine months: first, abortion ok, second, maybe ok, third, probably not ok. In ignoring difference, you remove the issue to matters of belief - and on what basis (then) do you protect yourself from the applied weight of my beliefs?

Could you give an example or point to statistics? — Hallucinogen

No. Read the news. Do some research.

A point not often made: all facts are historical facts. That is, a fact is a proposition that presumably with sufficient accuracy describes some state of affairs. That means that any discussion of facts, where "fact" is not well-defined - and in most contexts it is - cannot easily arrive anywhere until that work is done, and the intended meaning made clear.

Why is the bodily autonomy of the baby — Hallucinogen

There is a clear difference in this thread - and elsewhere - in the language used by folks. For pro-life it's a child or a baby or a person. For pro-choice it's a fetus for an important length of time. I think language matters, and it matters because the differences that language either elucidates or obscures matter. Obscurantists can be detected (also) by their hiding from the natural and reasonable consequences that would follow, their claims being true. Of course in some states in the US, some are putting their money where there mouths are, and mothers are dying that shouldn't, in addition to other horrors.

Ok. Another way. Do you assert the Gospels are in-themselves anti-intellectual? Or do you merely assert that you find them so, being agnostic as to whether they are or are not in-themselves anti-intellectual? My point being that while you and I might very well find them so, that is not to say that they were intended or understood to be so. By Gospels I mean the New Testament, but at the same time I do not exclude the Tanakh.

Unless you change and become like a little child you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. — BitconnectCarlos

Non-sequitur. Try answering the question. Try thinking before you answer.

The gospels are a fair bit anti-intellectual — BitconnectCarlos

They are, or you find them so - not the same thing.

It seems like just a list of headlines of people saying silly things, — Count Timothy von Icarus

What exactly, please, do you mean by silly?

Children say things we often think of as silly, which is nothing less than our in-a-word unthinking dismissal of what they said. The only non-adults I know of that say silly things are those absent sense or people trying to be humorous. After all, in the last, say, 125 years at least through current - never mind before that - a lot of people said, have said, are saying very silly things. Care to consider how much harm was done and is being done by those "silly" things? Care to reconsider your "silly"?

Not a joke, although it would take more than this obnoxious OP — T Clark

My question was sincere and specific. What offended you so much?

Smug, arrogant crap. Makes me want to vote for Trump just to piss you off. — T Clark

I did not detect anything false or untrue in the OP. What offended you so much? Or were you trying to make a joke?

Whoda thunk we'd have our own Cassandra. Welcome to Mycenae.

Twelve pages and I do not pretend to be able to follow all the math. A succinct report would be nice from anyone inclined to provide. Has it been established that the existence of the continuum is strictly a matter of definition (as I suppose), thus existing or not existing depending on definition within this-or-that context? Or does it demonstrably exist or not exist in some other, absolute, way.

Or is the discussion mostly about definitions themselves?

And you appear to hold them as somehow an optional add-on. As if morality stored in that tent over there, and maybe we go get some and maybe we don't and just pass on by.
— tim wood
What part of what I wrote makes you say this when I'm only discussing one specific presumed moral right? — Benkei

In light of these factors, a moral right to income cannot be reasonably held. Instead, it is merely a legal right. — Benkei

Where is morality found when societies accept ludicrous riches and abject poverty at the same time? — Benkei

Good question. My view is simply that if we all want to have the kinds of systems and benefits that we-all seem to want to have, then we all implicitly accept the consequences of those systems, adjusting and refining as we go. And while it is clear that there is a lot of adjusting and refining to be done and probably always will be, still, it seems the best system is some kind of capitalist/democratic system.

But if labor has only a legal and no moral right to any of the fruits or benefits of its labor, then how does anyone else have any moral right to it? Or is it all an amoral exercise. My own view is that far from there being anything amoral, it is instead all moral. The catch being that the right and wrong of things is not always easy to work out, nor always possible to work out in any absolute sense.

merely to waylay the notion of moral entitlement to income merely because you did the work (moral right would require additional justification). — Benkei

The genus of right is claim, the species distinguished as being in some sense absolute - hoping here to avoid any tangents on "absolute."

Question: can there be a right that is not either directly or indirectly a moral right? It seems to me that all rights are at least in some part moral.

So what is moral? To be moral is to be a good both in and for itself and beyond itself.
A moral right, then, would be a claim, absolute in a relevant sense, to a good that is both good itself and beyond itself. A doughnut, then, being good but probably not good in any long term sense, but an apple being both a good and a good beyond itself.

And here I detect a difference in our understandings: I hold moral rights to be universal and always present - even if subject to discussion as to details. And you appear to hold them as somehow an optional add-on. As if morality stored in that tent over there, and maybe we go get some and maybe we don't and just pass on by.

In my thinking is Kant and his imperatives, in particular that if imperatives collide, then for that purpose the better is chosen and the lesser falls away. This resolving issues between conflicting "absolute" moral rights.

My argument, then, is that I have a moral right to possession of what I earn, both for the immediate good, to me and mine, and also for the greater good of all enjoying the same right. This not an absolute claim to all and everything I earn, because there are conflicting obligations we all have as members of communities that also have to be met.

Being older, mine has evolved. Which implies that different people at different ages in different cultures may have different understandings. It seems to me that we're all (radically) alone, not one big collective island of humanity (pace Donne*),but each separate, individual. Love is the effort to bridge and connect one person to another. Why? Ultimately because it feels good and is good, for well-being and health of all kinds. We're all creatures that function in part with and through internal feedback. Love is a way of adding feedback, from self and others. As such, it seems to me, the essential ingredient is trust. We must trust, and the object of our trust must be trustworthy. And from trust, be (able to be) open and share.

Which in turn implies that love is not always going to happen for/between particular people. Then the accounting has to recognize cost, that what has been already spent is a sunk cost, and the person is probably best advised to move on. Lots of people make accommodation for lacking love - and maybe have to - and call that "love." And maybe there's good in that. But it's not love, and in respect of love, it is instead slow death. But to return, the without-which-not is trust.

*John Donne, Meditation 17.