@pierra you are changing the subject however. The subject is not about consumerism. But that is the economic theory that you have now introduced. It is a non sequitur. Also known as a red herring. Fallacy.

@leo you believe it can be changed. That dos not mean it can. Touche'.

So you @ssu are regurgitating the minority dissent on the SCOTUS in Heller.

You should confess your sins up front when you sin like this.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf

You @sir2u should look into Deism. You can google it. Wiki has a great explanation.

Deism is the concept embraced for the Philosophy God of the Romantics.

Somebody explain to me how I can add @baden to my iggy list and ignore all his comments. He is a dedicated Sophist who uses Sophistry and lies with every exhalation of his mouth. He now has at least two strikes in a row against him. I am sure a third is soon forthcoming.

Thank you for that. I think.

I believe that idiots should be free to say whatever they want.

But I feel a moral obligation to refrain from paying them any lip service for it.

In response to your response with Romantic Philosophy, I concur in your comment that humankind (male and female) is responsible to be stewards of the Earth. This is the Biblical message from the Tenakh where Moses states God had said He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden Earth to dress and keep it.

Futilely wasting precious resources on reversing climate change is a terrible waste not conservation.

I would buy you a drink and/or coffee if I could. We all owe you a drink at least for your purely philosophical refutation of @Kranky's extremist skepticism.

You cannot change it. Neither can the insects change it. Nor any other creature on the Earth can change it.

Trying to change something that cannot be changed is an exercise in futility.

The Peoples' Republic of California has laws that you cannot bear your guns in public. They also have one of the highest crime rates in the Nation. So your foolish notion does not work for self defense in public.

The 2nd Amendment was instituted to facilitate the Body Politic in defending the Constitution and the Nation from tyrants. However it has mostly seen its main application in self defense against crime on the streets such as robbery and murder.

Nations like Australia and England that have managed to rid their islands of guns have simply promoted knife crimes.

Yet another strawman fallacy. You are also a Sophist and a very bad boy.

You are a very bad boy. You just used a big fallacy called putting words in someone else's mouth. Also known as a straw man.

So let me correct you:

Born and bred in the USA should leave the USA if they cannot support the U.S. Constitution including all the amendments.

And you had best square your act away and stop using fallacies. You are a Sophist.

We have pheasant and grouse and quail but no turkeys here, no. I have only hunted such birds while on backpack trips with my Colt Woodsman 22LR pistol for food. So that is not very often. But a choice experience when it happens.

I too love Native American philosophy.

The most fundamental principle of it is "No man can tell another what to do." This is way different than anything that has come out of Europe or Asia in philosophy.

I wear my clear polarized ski mask as safety goggles whenever I am dealing with the homeless so that they cannot spit on me or at least not into my eyes and upper face.

So I do indeed know what safety goggles are.

My view of extinction of a species is that all is as God wills it.

My view of the human function in existence on Earth is that if God wills it then there is nothing we can do about it.

The Earth is God's footstool. We humans only occupy it.

There have been several Ice Ages over the past millions of years of Geological Time. Our modern Science has proved it to us.

The warming scenario that we are presently within is simply the other side of the Ice Age coin.

Warming seems to me to be perfectly normal and completely unavoidable by the insects and humans that occupy God's footstool here.

Lots of Africans will starve as that continent becomes warmer and dryer.

We should therefore come up with a treaty with the Russians and Chinese to invest more in Africa to save the peoples (plural) there from annihilation.

My solutions to problems are practical not idealistic. Fighting climate change is idealistic and a flawed strategy.

My solutions result from my Romantic Philosophy of the God Of Philosophy -- the Prime Mover of Aristotle and the First Cause of Aquinas.

If humans were not the top predator on the Earth then next in line would be the other apex predators like orca's, elephants, bears, lions, tigers, wolves, and so forth. That is not such a bad Earth -- probably a better one. But for some reason the God Of Philosophy has put humans in charge. However I do not believe we humans can change climate change. It seems to have been changing about every 10 thousand years on its own without human intervention in the past.

Those of us who are not concerned about climate change simply believe that the ants, termites, and humans on the Earth cannot stop climate change one way or the other.

Those of you who are concerned about climate change simply believe in the modern mythology that they can.

By "ancient democracies" you must mean Athens and some of the other city states nearby it.

These ancient democracies did not possess the U.S. Constitution with its many checks and balances against tyranny (or as you say, monarchy).

Ergo I suspect that your comparison/analogy is flawed and that your notion is therefore in error.

…"conventionally" is a populorum fallacy. You ought to brush up on your Aristotle reader.

Almost the same thing however.

Every POTUS from Reagan to Obama has exported American jobs. Only now has one (Trump) finally tried to reverse that process.

Thomas Jefferson as POTUS was an isolationist moron. Had he been POTUS in the 1930's and 1940's we would all be speaking Japanese by now and worshipping Shinto and the Japanese emperor.

… Remembering also of course that Philosophy involves thought experiments whereas Science involves physical experiments.

So far @Bitter-Crank is the winner of this debate on purely philosophical grounds.

Bravo !!!

@Bitter-Crank you have nicely articulated a corollary to Descartes.

You are the winner.

Aristotle would be proud. Ok now I want to know who is your own favorite philosopher?

Any body part besides and including the hand would work in this kind of experiment.

This is yet another proof that pain ultimately teaches us that we are actually alive.

You have become an extreme skeptic. This is unfortunate since Skepticism is a flawed philosophy.

There are actually many, many things you may be quite certain of, however you are probably too afraid to experiment scientifically and find out.

For example, if you step in front of a semi truck moving at 60 miles per hour you will most certainly be struck and killed. So what is it about the next life that you are so afraid of such that you are too afraid to put your skepticism to the acid test ?!

On a less sinister note, you can perform any action and be quite certain that you were the performer of that act. Descartes uses thinking for example. Cogito ergo sum. I think (an action) therefore I am (exist).

Descartes nailed the final nail (his action) into the coffin of extremist Skepticism.

You should review and refresh your readings (an act) about Descartes.

All these things have been cinema-tized in science fiction movies.

Got any ideas that are original and unique?

Every silver lining has its cloud. And every toy or tool can cause injury if improperly used.

While I am neither for nor against the personal ownership of assault weapons, now that this particular genie is out of the bottle everyone must also have an assault weapon of their own to be able to defend themselves from everybody else. And everyone must also have the legal right to carry them in public to defend themselves in public. Especially true during these times of Islamic Jihad against the non-Islamic world.

The same is true of any kind of weapon or tool, such as machetes, knives, baseball bats, hiking sticks, tomahawks, hatchets, spears, arrows and bows, slings and sling shots, cars, trucks, pots and pans, boiling water, bar stools and chairs, etc.

Sometimes it is necessary to hide things from your children actually.

God must have a good reason for hiding from us.

We should therefore trust in God and not blame or prejudge Him/Her/Them for what He/She/They do/does.

All of philosophy is based on emotions where you love that which seems logically true and hate that which is illogical. Love and hate are emotions. This foundational basis must not be overlooked.

I agree that there is a line where you must reject emotional appeals. But you cannot reject absolutely all emotions because philosophy is based on them as well.

Thank you.

For a more Romantic twist on this issue and my response, I would have to say:

"God created all mankind.

Samuel Colt then finally made them all equal."

I am putting you on my "Smart List" for now.

The way I handle this problem myself and also recommend to others is the instant that you mention any technical term or word that requires a deeper understanding of its meaning is then to stop and define it right then and there, before you proceed further with any other sentence. While this may not be the only solution it is the one I recommend and use myself.

You have a rather broad definition of ad hom if you think tone is a part of ad hom. Only if you take it personally I guess. But then you could just also be overly sensitive, in which case it is more about you and not about definitions at all.

The saying goes in philosophy that Augustine was a Catholic version of Plato. And that Aquinas was a Catholic version of Aristotle.

This is because Plato was very romantic about God. This is rather remarkable and was radical in ancient Athens which is and always was a very religious city. Back then Athens had many gods.

Aristotle was more logical, however even he noticed that the movement of the planets, comets, Sun and Moon must all have been caused by a Prime Mover.

You are a mathematical philosopher. It is very common for philosophers also to be mathematicians. Bertrand Russell was a classic example. My high school senior year math teacher was also a mathematical philosopher. So they are everywhere in philosophy.

There is a rich heritage of Catholic Philosophy which culminates in San Tomas Aquinas. His "proofs of God" are the cornerstone of Catholic Philosophy. I think you would like reading about it. You can easily google it. It is very well known.

You are a Christian philosopher. You lean towards God's Grace therefore you lean towards Protestant Philosophy. I admire Protestants because of their immense faith in God. That's what I think you are -- offhand.

Here is a Socratic answer:

1. Democracy is best.

2. For democracy to work citizens must vote.

3. To vote everyone must vote for someone.

Ergo you must choose the lesser of two weevils.