This thread follows on from exchanges in the Donald Trump thread.
If you want to, you can look under tim wood 'Comments' for detail. — Amity

Is there any other poster than tim doesn't figure is a liar or a troll, though?

Of course they could, but the sun 'could' explode in the next three seconds, we 'could' all suddenly lose the ability to read... But we don't act as if that were the case. We act with a presumption of expected result based on our theories. We presume consistent patterns will continue to be so until overwhelmingly contradicted by evidence to the contrary. So why shouldn't we treat plausible beliefs in the same way? — Isaac

Unlike the sun, you can never observe the way the person's beliefs match up with what they say.

But the question is whether or not they're lying, and whether or not you can tell, not whether or not you're worried about it. Most of the time I'm not worried about climate change or cancer, but I'm not on the fence about whether or not they're real. — S

I'm not on the fence about whether people can lie. Just whether we can tell that a particular person is lying . . . not that it matters much to me that we can't tell, as I noted.

It's not normally something I'd worry about.

I might go, "Wait--you believe what now?" And if they persist saying whatever it is that caused me to react like that, I'd just go "ohhhhkay."

No need to worry about whether they really believe it, really.

What? Wait, if this some sort of subtle practical joke, given the title, then hats of to you. — S

In other words, there are some beliefs that you'd say that particular individuals couldn't actually hold.

I don't think that. Even if the person doesn't have a history of saying things that are crazy, they could believe something crazy now.

You don't think that people can have some beliefs?

If I told you that I'm on the moon right now with Chevy Chase, would you believe me? Would you think that I was mistaken? You'd think that I was lying, wouldn't you? — S

How would I know that you don't believe that you're on the moon right now with Chevy Chase? You could be crazy.

You're not distinguishing between liar, lie, and lying. — tim wood

? No need to, really, unless you don't understand grammatical permutations. "Liar" is the person telling a lie, the lie is what they're uttering that's different than what they believe to be the case, and "lying" is the act.

It's very difficult to tell if anyone is lying, really, because you need to know that what they believe to be the case at time Tx is different than what they're claiming to believe at time Tx. That requires knowing their mental content, contra their expression. Obviously that's not something we can really do.

It would seem that all our rights really amount to is a kind of social agreement to respect certain feelings that are more or less universal in the culture. I don't want you taking what I feel is my stuff. And you don't want me taking what you feel is your stuff. So let's agree not to take each other's stuff and let's make it a rule that one's stuff is not to be taken by someone else.

That about sum it up? Would anyone disagree with that? — petrichor

I don't agree with it, really. Some rights are about that, obviously, and that may be rather common, but not all rights are about that (whether we're talking about legal rights or "broader" moral rights).

A feeling, especially if it is not shared by everyone, seems a poor justification for a universal claim and a restriction of behavior that you want to impose on everyone. If you are making the claim that everyone ought to abide by this claim, you seem to necessarily be making some sort of objective claim. — petrichor

Whether it's a good or poor justification is also subjective. If you are prone to believe that this stuff is or can be objective, then you're more likely to think that subjectivity is not a good base for it.

If you realize that this sort of stuff can only be subjective, then you'd realize that it's foolish to expect anything else.

People have to live so that they're interacting with each other--social interaction is necessary. We're obviously going to prefer that people act in some ways rather than others. And there's obviously a need to not just have anarchy, because someone would take control by force anyway, and then no more anarchy. So obviously we'd rather people behave in ways that we prefer. That's what a preference is, after all.

When you say they are wrong, aren't you making an objective claim about what is right or wrong for everyone? — petrichor

No, since I realize there are no such things as objective ethical judgments. Ethical judgments are something that we do as individuals.

Suppose we find an example of a historical culture in which men feel that their wives and children belong to them, and that therefore, they have a right to kill them if they see fit. Suppose this feeling is strong. Suppose the adult women even agree with it. Clearly, in our culture, most of us disagree with them. Who is right? How do we decide? — petrichor

There isn't an objective right or wrong when it comes to ethics/rights.

How we decide is that we intuit how we feel about it (not just a shallow or "surface" or off-the-cuff feeling, but intuiting how one feels about it "deep down," or "in one's core.")

If we have rights in an ethical and subjective sense, then why wouldn't it be true or the case that we have rights (in accordance with the aforementioned interpretation)? Your query or objection or whatever your point is still doesn't make sense to me. — S

Having rights in a subjective sense simply amounts to an individual feeling strongly enough about a moral stance that he/she feels it should be inviolable in principle no matter what.

Different people can feel that way about different stances.

He wasn't asking there are individuals that feel that way about each side of antinatalism--obviously there are.

Life has meaning, to you, if you create a meaning for it.

Meaning/purpose is something that we do as individuals.

If you want to try to unbreak the egg though, feel free. I have no idea how to unmerge. — Baden

It's probably too much of a mess now. Petrichor would need to start another thread. Maybe it would help to make it more general than just the context of antinatalism.

It seems to be a trend lately, by the way, that people will start a bunch of threads that are just slight variations on the same thing, sparked by a discussion in some other thread.

So, for example, we recently had a bunch of different free will threads.

I'm guessing that's what you were referring to re the judges remarks? The judge said that Choudary's comments "encouraged" and "influenced." Are we to take the judge to be using "influence" in the sense of "cause" (but not "force," whatever "cause but not force" is supposed to be)?

Subjectively, rights are moral stances that you feel strongly enough about that you feel they should be inviolable in principle no matter what.

No, you're a loony, out there, outspoken, fringe view kind of guy. — S

And?

Er, I guess to an uber-conformist that's a bad thing?

Too bad everyone wasn't jumping off a bridge in your neighborhood.

I asked him about rights realism because he was framing his discussion in terms of rights. — Terrapin Station


Since rights aren't exclusive to ethical realism, that makes no sense. — S

He was framing it in terms of whether it's true or false, whether it's the case, that we have such and such right, where he clearly wasn't talking about what present laws are in a given locale.

Atheists can easily appeal to the moral sentiment common to us all. — S

<----definitely not what I'd be doing, but I'm not a rah-rah conformist like you. :-p

What of it? I'm not a realist on rights, and I'm the one who made the claim. There's no contradiction there because obviously as an ethical anti-realist, I abide by an interpretation of rights consistent with that stance. — S

I'm confused that the thread got merged, especially when the other thread specified that he didn't want to get into the typical antinatalist stuff.

Anyway, I can't find what would have been the initial post of the other thread that I responded to . . . it seems like maybe petrichor changed it when it got merged into this thread. I asked him about rights realism because he was framing his discussion in terms of rights.

It comes across to me like he's expecting you to have an intuitive reaction against the idea of some people being exposed to some speech.

What if we're not realists on rights?

The possible deeper consequences of freedom of speech.

*Albert Einstein mentioned very clear that heart intelligence makes you intelligent. Not your brain. Before you can speak your mind there needs to be a perfect balance between your heart and mind.

It has a long history. For centuries talking out loud was a privilege . . . — Roel

Maybe this post could have been less focused and had less to do with freedom of speech, but I'm not sure how.

Your request for me to effectively spoon feed you actually offends me. — S

extended things occupy some space and any - any - region of space is divisible. — Bartricks

Any region of space is divisible per what? That's not the conventional wisdom in the sciences.

Maybe try cranking down the attitude a bit until you get to a point where you don't figure that everyone needs to look up simple terms of art?

I wouldn't say that a distinction that hinges on "beings" versus "beings of beings" makes sense without a lot more explanation.

What's hard is learning that arguments aren't just simple instantiations of modus ponens, or even necessarily deductive.

Or don't take the advice. It doesn't matter to me. I just thought you might have a goal of wanting to persuade people who don't already agree with you. But I guess not.

So , dispensing with all of the attitude nonsense, which isn't going to help you in any way, you need to realize that some people are not going to accept some or all of your premises.

If all you have in support of your premises is arguing that they're self-evident, then you're basically always going to be preaching to the choir. (Assuming that you're getting simple stuff like modus ponens right after you state your premises.)

You can do that, of course, but I don't know if there's much of value in it. (Unless it simply makes you feel better about yourself or something and that's really the point.)

Otherwise, you need to find more nuanced, creative, fruitful ways to deal with the fact that your premises might be rejected. Simply insulting the rejectors, framing things as if the people rejecting premises are morons who are vastly inferior to your "philosophical expertise," etc., won't do it if your goal is to persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with you.

And if no one would state that, then arguing against it is arguing against a straw man of course.

"I'm skeptical that anyone would state 'If I am morally responsible, then I have free will' without actually running into that person" isn't random on any conventional definition of random. But I guess you're using some unusual definition.

Randroids kind of argue like that, too.

I did make an argument. I don't accept your premise. It's fallacious. You have no support of it except for the brashness of "It's self-evident if you're not a moron/not insane." We'll get nowhere like that.

Your style is basically asshole with a lot of attitude. It's kind of pointless to pretend that I'd have a fruitful discussion about philosophy with that stereotypical personality. It sucks that the Internet is full of that, but there it is.

Get back to me when you hit puberty.

And you made an irrelevant point in response. — Bartricks

I don't know if it's irrelevant. I'm skeptical that anyone would state "If I am morally responsible, then I have free will" without actually running into that person.

If you're not religious you should be. You have their argumentation skills.

Premise 1 is self-evidently true. It is not self-evidently true to those with limited powers of reflection, of course, or to cats, or the insane. But it is self-evidently true and it is appealed to by all of those who engage in serious intellectual inquiry. — Bartricks

So your support is basically, "Either you accept this without question or you suck."

Great argument.