This also presumes that the success of most non-minorities (white people) is tied to inherited wealth. I just think that's false, especially among the middle and working class. — Hanover

Success is relative though. You can be successful, but still poor in absolute terms. Studies seem to point in the direction that having wealthy parents is a significant advantage, because apart from the assets themselves, education and social status are also "heritable" to a certain degree. It's also difficult to argue with the proposition that, in the west, the lineages of White people had a lot more time to accumulate wealth without any major upsets to their property.

The real question isn't whether American society has a sordid history of racism (as it surely does), but it's to what extent is that history the real impediment to success today. I'd submit that race is not the critical limitation in today's society and that opportunity and success can and does fall to minorities without heroic efforts, although perhaps with some special effort. I don't discount the special efforts needed as irrelevant and not something that ought be eliminated, but they also shouldn't be exaggerated and suggested that all struggles or failures are owed to it. — Hanover

I don't disagree with that viewpoint in principle. But I do think too many people assume that equality of opportunity can somehow be established without ever looking at outcomes, past or present. People react with indignation to the idea that contemporary Americans should pay reparations for slavery. The reaction is understandable, but slavery does have a very real and direct effect on the wealth of the descendants of those slaves today.

"Privilege" has to do with ethics and if there is no objective morality then Is "privilege" a subjective term? — Harry Hindu

I think privilege describes (aims to describe) a socio-economic state of affairs.

Whatever happened to the idea of not shaming people for something they have no control over where or how they were born as? Hypocrites. — Harry Hindu

Whatever happened to the idea that ad-hominem is not an acceptable argument?

“White privilege” is white supremacy repurposed for the modern day. It’s the assumption that whites are somehow better off because of their skin color. — NOS4A2

That is obviously not the idea, but it's no surprise to see you rattle off more right-wing talking points.

So if we institute a race-agnostic policy to help all poor people, and black people are disproportionately poor, such a policy will automatically provide disproportionate help to black people, but only until such time as they are no longer disproportionately poor. We don’t have to do “reverse discrimination” to make up for past discrimination, because just helping everyone in need will automatically work out to that in effect. — Pfhorrest

While this is true, the specific problem that affects many minorities is that they, on average, lack inherited wealth. They had much less time, relative to the majority, to accumulate assets. This is difficult to equalise.

The whistleblower report was gossip, deep-state dinner theater. Zero first hand knowledge. It mentions names that Trump doesn’t, and even cites twitter and the NYT. It’s a CIA charade. — NOS4A2

Talk about uncritically accepting a story.

Meanwhile the rest of the world bled us dry and we became a shell of ourselves. — NOS4A2

This is another of Trump's taking points. I dont expect you actually believe this, but on the off-chance that you do: in what way is America "bled dry"? I thought the economy was doing great?

Sidestepping the question:

I recently read that there is not actually much historical evidence that the "tragedy of the commons" was a thing. That community owned land in England was not in especially bad shape, and that plenty of societies around the world have had communally owned land at some point during their history, without this apparently leading to some calamity.

Now I am not an anthropologist or a historian, so I cannot vouch for this view.

However, we should probably consider the option that humans, as social animals, are actually quite capable of dealing with the "tragedy of the commons" via self-policing, if the society is reasonably egalitarian (so that no-one can afford to anger everyone).

Our human traits are a product of natural selection, made for surviving and reproducing. If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? How similar are you to that worker ant who loses the queen? What should you do now? — Purple Pond

You could follow a moral framework that does not reference survival/fitness. Plenty of people today are not concerned (or at least profess to be so) with the proliferation of their genes. I don't know that there is any evidence that these people suffer some psychological damage as a result. I think humans are adaptable enough to find purpose outside of biology.

If course, in a literal doomsday scenario, things might be different.

premise 2 enjoys powerful support from our rational intuitions. So it appears to be a refutation. — Bartricks

You may have been over this, but what standing do rational intuitions have compared to rational knowledge?

We could argue that humans have a rational intuition that there are metaphysical forces shaping the physical world, that these forces have personalities, and that the world/time have start and end points.

All of these intuitions have been questioned by philosophers though. Is your rational intuition in the same category?

You do this all the time and it's annoying. You never answer questions. — Benkei

Answering questions is not in the interest of spreading pro-Trump propaganda. If he'd answer questions, especially questions about his view on policy questions, his agenda would be obvious and he could no longer pretend to be a rational observer.

How can you defend this guy? — Michael

It's not necessarily about defending Trump, but about keeping Trump in office so he can destroy the political institutions that the alt-right detests. The Bannon strategy.

Consider this premise: if I say something is true, it is not necessarily true.

Does that need justifying, in your view? No, it doesn't. It is obviously true - that is, its truth is manifest to reason. — Bartricks

Depends on your definition of truth, which is a contested term. But in ordinary language use, it's usually true.

imagine someone saying "ah, but what about a subset of things I say"

Okay - what subset? (And you can't invoke truth, of course, for that would be circular).

Identify the subset and let's test it.

Things you say on Saturday? Are things you say on Saturday 'necessarily' true just by dint of you saying them on Saturday? Nope.

And on and on. — Bartricks

Some statements that are true for the whole are not true for subsets. This can be easily shown:
"Not all animals have a placenta" is trivially true.
"Not all mammals have a placenta" is trivially false.

Justifications have to come to an end, otherwise nothing will be justified. What is the appropriate stopping point? When you have found that your view is manifest to reason.

It is manifest to reason that this argument form is valid:

1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3. therefore not P.

Now, that does not mean it is valid. But it does mean that in terms of justifying our belief in its validity, its self-evidence suffices.

If someone held that that argument form is invalid, then they would have the burden of proof. They may be able to discharge it. But note, in discharging it they too would have to appeal to some self-evident truths of reason, including the self-evident truth of reason that contradictions cannot be true.

So the currency of arguments is self-evident truths of reason.

Premise 2 is self-evidently true.

You want to deny it. Be my guest. But provide an argument. That is, show me that the self-evident truth of 2 conflicts with some even more abundantly self-evident truth of reason. — Bartricks

So, is it a self-evident truth that the currency of arguments is self-evident truths? I certainly don't think it is.

There is an epistemic difference between the form or arguments - in this case predicate logic - and their content. The form of arguments is given by pure reason and is, in this sense, self-evident. But the content of the premises can be anything, from a-priori truths to empirical statements. These are not self-evident, they need to be at least reasoned.

If you refuse to Reason the premises of your argument, your argument fails.

In this case, an argument can be made against the modified premise 2 as follows:

The only evidence we have of moral values in practice are the moral values of human persons. So, prima facie, Moral values are identical with the personal moral values of individuals. Therefore, it's not self-evident that personal moral valuings are not necessarily moral values.

So what is the way to establish the code translation? Please tell us. — god must be atheist

Context and non-verbal communication.

Coded language only works if there is preagreement on the code. Although I was a child once, I would never have guessed that "law and order" means "Relax, White Supremacists.". — god must be atheist

And what if someone deciphers the code, who was not a member of the group that originally agreed on it? Clearly, the coded language "works" for them, so there must be a way to establish the code besides express verbal agreement.

No, you cannot indict a sitting president, but the special prosecutor can conclude whether the president committed a crime. — NOS4A2

But you do not have to. Barr's comments confirm that there is a binary choice to make - you indict, or you don't. Mueller made that choice - he declined to indict. The reason he gave for this were procedural, and procedural reasons are sufficient.

The idea that Mueller, or any other prosecutor, needs to make his assessment of the facts public when a case cannot proceed for procedural reasons seems to be invented out of whole cloth.

For this to be true, some poeple must have told all supremacist whites, that "law and order" is a wonk-wonk nudge- nudge. Without explicitly agreeing on this, or explicitly discolosing this to white supremacists, the meaning would never be transmitted. — god must be atheist

So, If that is how language works, how do children learn the meaning of words?

If Nixon's code was indeed a code, it would have been leaked. But it was not. — god must be atheist

If it hadn't leaked, how would we be talking about it?

I didn’t mean that the special council convicted people of crimes. Only that they were determine whether crimes were being committed, ie conspiracy, obstruction, perjury etc. They can and do conclude that people commit crimes. — NOS4A2

This is fine as ordinary language use, but it's imprecise.
When a prosecutor determines that a crime has been committed, that means he thinks he has sufficient evidence to indict and prosecute.

You originally claimed that Barr "had to" issue a "verdict", and I still don't see any justification for that claim.

Under the presumption of innocence one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Because they could not conclude whether Trump committed a crime, he is still presumed innocent. — NOS4A2

He would actually still be presumed innocent even if they indicted him.

nstead their standard is “not exonerated”, a fake standard which is inimical to civil liberties. — NOS4A2

Who is "they"? Mueller was apparently aware that "not exonerated" is not something he can formally establish, hence he did not use those terms. Trump came up with the claim he had been exonerated, which is false. Presumption of innocence is not the same as being exonerated.

The statement Mueller did make in front of Congress was a careful one, that only referenced his conclusions. Prosecutors can and do conclude whether or not the evidence is so weak, or the counter evidence so strong, that it seems certain that no crime has been committed. In such a case, the subject of the investigation may formally be exonerated, which is merely a public statement, which doesn't have any legal standing and isn't binding, to the effect that there is no reasonable suspicion they committed a crime

Uh yeah. The special council was determining whether crimes were being committed, and in fact determined many crimes were committed. — NOS4A2

He determined there was sufficient cause to suspect those crimes were committed, hence the indictments. But a prosecutor can not go further than to indict someone, and being indicted isn't proof you have committed a crime. Similarly, not being indicted isn't proof you haven't.

Under the presumption of innocence, only a court of law can establish definitively whether or not someone has committed a crime.

The courts determine innocence and guilt and sentencing. — NOS4A2

So, a court does not need to determine whether or not a crime has been committed in order to determine innocence and guilt?

Law enforcement such as the DOJ determines whether crimes are committed. — NOS4A2

Err, no. That would be a violation of the presumption of innocence. And "Law enforcement" is too broad anyways, since it includes the police, which is not a judicial organ. The DOJ straddles the boundary between executive and judicative.

What? The point of a court is to administer justice. — NOS4A2

And for criminal courts, that means to determine whether a crime (as defined by the law) has been committed by the accused, for which the accused is guilty.

The DOJ is to determine whether crimes have been committed and to prosecute those crimes under the principles of federal prosecution. — NOS4A2

It's probably more accurate to say that the DOJ exercises oversight over the different prosecutors, whose job it is to investigate and prosecute possible crimes.

It's the job of the courts to determine whether crimes have been committed.

None of that means Barr "had to" step in and deliver a verdict.

The Attorney General had to step in and issue a verdict because oddly the Special Council wouldn’t do it, which is why Barr wrote “no obstruction” in his letter to Congress. — NOS4A2

Why does an investigation "have to" issue a verdict?

But no, for Mueller worshipers, “not exonerated” is their new burden of proof. All they needed was a little authoritarian claptrap in order to assume guilt. — NOS4A2

What is it that you like to say? Ah yes - pure fantasy.

Identify a subset then - a subset of your values - and let's see if it works. — Bartricks

Ok:
1. If being morally valuable is one and the same as being morally valuable to me, then if I morally value something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If something is morally valuable to me, it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, being morally valuable is not one and the same as being morally valued by me.

Premise 2 requires justification, as it is essentially what you mean to establish, i.e that me valuing something as a moral value is not sufficient to establish it's moral value.

It also refutes any subset of human valuings that you may care to try and identify moral values with. — Bartricks

No, because premise 2 doesn't work for those subsets.

Edit: which is to say the justification for premise 2 would be a matter for debate, defeating the purpose of the argument.

And it refutes all subjectivist views bar mine. — Bartricks

But no-one claims that:

being morally valuable is one and the same as being valued by me, — Bartricks

That would imply me liking cats more than dogs is a moral stance, but it clearly isn't. What this argument establishes is trivial.

It’s not evidence of their guilt either. Investigations such as Mueller’s are not designed to prove innocence or exonerate anyone; they are to prove guilt. This is simple due process. — NOS4A2

Simple due process is that courts establish guilt. Investigations establish the facts and whether or not these facts are sufficient to indict.

What did he say of the President of the United States?

“If we had had confidence that the president had clearly not committed a crime we would have said so.”

That’s a perversion of of the presumption of innocence. Mueller’s standard is completely unknown to the American legal system. It’s fake, phoney, a sham. special counsel regulations require the special counsel to follow DOJ rules, which includes the presumption of innocence. — NOS4A2

What nonsense. If the presumption of innocence prevented an investigator from establishing anything other than guilt and innocence, how would they establish the probable cause you're so keen on?

A prosecutor can tell you the degree of suspicion they have. That's not a violation of the presumption of innocence.

Yeah, that's valid, like your other superman example.

Again, the Ukrainian president brought up Gulliani. — NOS4A2

Because Trump had sent Guiliani to talk with Zelenskyys assisstant beforehand. Or do you think the two just randomly met?

Nothing about an investigation in regards to Giuliani. — NOS4A2

Nothing except the entire context of that part of the conversation. As this sentence towards the end illustrates:
" I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it."

But it's par for the course for you to focus on individual sentences in order to obfuscate the actual communication going on.

You left out that he specifically said “so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great”. So not only did he not mention Guilliani in relation to Biden, he was speaking about working with the Attorney General.

How will you spin that? — NOS4A2

I think it's unlikely he'd want Zelenskyy to only talk with Guiliani about the DNC server, but not the Biden investigation. I can think of no reason he'd want Guiliani involved in one investigation, but not in the other. It's not like Guiliani is a technical expert related to one of the topics but not the other.

I didn’t ask for examples of the media word-policing. — NOS4A2

"Whatever facts conflict with my worldview are merely media word-policing"

The Ukrainian president brought up Guilliani and the investigation. Trump only said he would get Guilliani to call the Ukrainian president. — NOS4A2

And also that it would be great if the Ukrainian president would talk to Guiliani. But you're right that the Ukrainian President did bring up Guiliani.

Here’s the Biden sentence. Where does it mention Guilliani? — NOS4A2

It doesn't. I don't think it's necessary to repeat "and also speak with Guiliani about that" in every sentence though.

But see, you're already busy doing exactly what I outlined above. Focusing solely on the transcript, and not the things implied by it, while intepreting all of Trumps statements in the most positive light.

So rather than noting that Trump sent his lawyer to Ukraine beforehand, and then followed that up with bringing that topic up again - immediately after Zelenskyy talked about military aid - on an official congratulatory phone call, you merely note that Zelenskyy brought up Guiliani. But according ot the whistleblower complaint, the only reason Zelenskyy immediately thought about Guiliani and mentioned him was that the phone call was only part of a concerted effort.

To me the relation is obvious, it depends what morality and ethics are founded on. It may be sentiment, reason, 'reality', ideology, society, some .org, brainwashing etc. The more we know, the more shaky these foundations are. — lepriçok

This doesn't really make any sense to me. In my opinion, only a false morality could be shaken by knowledge.

Also, there is a psychological factor - power perverts character, and technology is power. — lepriçok

This saying is based on some truth on a personal level, but there is no evidence our modern, technological societies are, as a whole, more perverted than past societies. Quite the opposite.

Also, we have here the dichotomy faith vs knowledge. Morals has a divine source in its origins - first we have human gods, then heavenly gods, finally GOD. Knowledge promotes logical destruction of these, along with all other arguments. Then we have only left the self preservation instinct, which is erased by mass media in the contemporary society. The result is the dumbing down of an average consumer and arrogance of our masters. — lepriçok

Not everyone agrees morality has, or needs, a divine source.

Arguably therefore, it might be more appropriate to frame the free will question in a more reduced and specific form such as, ‘Do human beings possess a capacity for moral autonomy? — Robert Lockhart

I do think that this is an important angle, because it makes explicit the connection between freedom and morality.

I am not sure Why this relies on the idea of objective morality though, especially since I do not know what object such a morality could be referring to.

The other two examples are not the type of accusations I was talking about. The media’s whining and word-policing do not quite rise to that level.

Comey deserved to be fired and it was a good thing he was fired. — NOS4A2

Haha, ok then. "Give me examples! No not those examples!"

You also asked this:

What was inappropriate in the transcript? — NOS4A2

Using a call, made in your official function as president, to ask a foreign leader to meet with your personal attorney to discuss investigations, the topics of which you also personally specify.

Trump fired James Comey on the advice of Sessions and Rosenstein. Given the recent IG report on Comey’s careless behavior, it seems it was the right call.

The rest are media accusations, not rising to any meaningful level of concern. — NOS4A2

Trump himself admitted publicly he fired Comey because of his role in the russia investigation.

I guess you concede the other two examples though. So do you admit your hasty generalization?

A simple counterexample would suffice and I will admit my hasty generalization. — NOS4A2

Trump was accused of firing James Comey because of Comey's role in the investigation. Turns out that was true.

Trump was accused of personally writing a letter in Trump Jr.s name, which contained several false claims. He initially lied about this, then later admitted it.

Of course there is the entire Cohen business, which Trump lied about, only to be contradicted by Rudy Guliani on TV.

Anyways, @Michael @3017amen

In light of the content of the Whistleblower complaint, the content of which has of course been known to the White House, the decision to release the transcript of the call now makes much more sense.

Because of the sequence of reports, we are invited to read the Whistleblower complaint in light of the transcript (rather than the other way around). This way, it can be made to look as if the transcript represents the maximum extent of any wrongdoing hinted at in the complaint. And since the transcript contains inappropriate, but not obviously criminal behaviour, the defense will concentrate on shifting the limits of appropriate presidential behaviour and obfuscate the intent behind it, as has been done before.

So basically, I suspect the plan is to discredit the complaint as unjustified exaggeration of the transcript.

That’s hilarious. — NOS4A2

You find it hilarious to observe the separation of powers and respect foreign sovereignty?

3. The allegations against the president have been persistent since the beginning, and persistently wrong or unproven. — NOS4A2

Attention readers, this is a false statement. In fact most allegations regarding Trump's behaviour were objectively true, but because intent is harder to establish than the objective facts, and because of constitutional limitations, he has not been formally inducted for any crimes.

By moral values I mean ethics in scientific research, the lack of which causes disrespect to life. Also, political, economic, and social power that technologies allow to accumulate and the following inequality, based on the ideology of technological supremacy, or technofascism. — lepriçok

But how are the ethics of scientific research related to the amount of knowledge? It seems to me the ethics would be the same regardless of the level of technology, all else being equal.

There's no single scenario, I see a lot of possible dangers. Mass suicide would mean stupidity, bigger problem would be mass murder, downfall of civilization and extinction, as in mutual destruction deterrent technologies.

Also, the mentioned disrespect to life would open gates to technologies that do not value human beings, introduce technological slavery into society and create techno-fascist dictatorship. As in genetics, neuroscience, eugenics etc. — lepriçok

I think we'd need to look at specific technologies in order to determine the danger they pose given current political and economic circumstances.

Humanity already has the means to destroy most of civilization. The bigger danger lies probably less in some new technology that allows you to enslave minds, and more in A.I. perfecting well known techniques of manipulation. That technological cat is out of the bag though.

As long as an approach is effective and non-contradictory, it could be called rational? — Rufoid

I wouldn't make such a definitive statement. My few words were just a brief, back of the envelope kind of description.

What I meant to hint at is that "rationality" can be understood rather broadly, and this broad understanding would include, for example, avoiding known biases in human thinking (e.g. confirmation bias) assessing the weight of evidence and possibly making moral assessments.

Brexit is in the past old political tribalism will return. — Tim3003

Arguably, allegiance to a party is less tribal than allegiance to a person. Power in tribal societies is based on personal power, whereas parties represent more abstract values.

The reasons are the degradation of moral values — lepriçok

What would this follow from?

the danger of technological disasters, adverse effects to life of artificial fields and materials — lepriçok

Those dangers are heavily influenced by political and economic factors, so I think it's difficult to make an assessment solely based on scientific advancement.

It's possible there are "suicide pact" technologies that inevitably lead to doom, but such technology would only be a danger on it's own if it were unpredictable, which means we cannot base any prognosis on the possibility.

What is the highest possible level of scientific achivement, before things going south to us? Is it possible to avoid this fate? — lepriçok

Assuming there are no inevitable suicide pact technologies, unless we manage to wipe ourselves out relatively soon, I think humanity stands a good chance of surviving for a long time. What we evolve into in that time is difficult to say though.

So, do you think there is a meaning of rationality outside the narrow procedural sense? Or would you use a more general term like "reason"?

If we take the scientific method as an example, would you say the method itself is rational, or merely that we can rationally apply the method? And if the method is not itself "rational", then how do we describe it's justification?

This kind of brings to mind arguments over "objective" morality and the is/ought gap. What often stands for said objectivity is some consistent reductive procedure for deciding moral questions - even if, in a deductio ad absurdum, the procedure were as arbitrary as examining bird entrails. — SophistiCat

Interesting association. I disagree with calling it "objective", but it is connected to rationality. I have said elsewhere that I think the difference between mere preferences and moral statements is that the latter are reasonable, that is that they're open to some intersubjective process of checking their internal structure on the basis of shared human mental structures. That would be an application of reason. Is rationality a correct, which is to say internally consistent for humans in general, application of reason?

Suppose I believe in making decisions based on which kind of bird I see first thing in the morning, and that I believe this due to my own unpublished scientific research.

Is this an irrational belief? — Rufoid

Rationality is a fundamentally contested term, so it's difficult to give a clear answer.

In terms of purely instrumental rationality, it's not irrational. In terms of rationality as a more general faculty of applying your mental resources in an effective (for solving problems) and non-contradictory manner, it probably is irrational.

What you've done there is change my argument to a different one to fit your agenda - the agenda of showing my argument is invalid at any cost. — Bartricks

In what way are my examples inadequate, precisely?

So, are moral values - moral valuings - identical with my valuings? To express it a different way: is 'being morally valuable' synonymous with 'being valued by me"? — Bartricks

It's not, because the things that are "valued by me" include more than just my moral values. One is a subset of the other.

that what I am saying is that if moral values and my values are one and the same, then if I value something it must be morally valuable, because 'what it is' to be morally valuable just is to be being valued by me. I mean, that's the thesis under consideration — Bartricks

So, to be clear, is the thesis that "my values" and "moral values" are identical in a strict sense? Every member of "my values" is also a member of "moral values", and vice-versa?

Or merely that every moral value is a personal value, but not the other way around?

Premise 1 says "If P, then Q"

P says "if moral values (all of them, not some of them) are my values (so, if being morally valuable is one and the same as being valued by me).

Q says "if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable"

It is true. Not false. True. — Bartricks

It's true if all and only Moral values are my values. I.e. all of my values are moral values. Otherwise it doesn't follow.

Well, what is 'not Q'? If Q is "If I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable" then what is the opposite of that?

This: "If I value something, it is NOT necessarily morally valuable". And that's what premise 2 says. — Bartricks

If Q is "if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable"

Then not Q is: "If I value something, necessarily it is not morally valuable".

Edit: I edited the part above since my earlier version may have been wrong.

Your sentence is not a case of "not Q", because Q could still be true: If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable, but it could be.

All you have done is change my first premise and then show me how arguments with different first premises are invalid. What was the point in that? — Bartricks

I have merely changed the name of the variables:
Moral values - men
my values - mortals
I - Socrates.

Validity can be assessed irrespective of the name of the variables.