This interpretation — tim wood

What interpretation? I don't follow what exactly you're trying to attack now.

Your response was to David Solman, whose interest was laws to make guns less accessible. — tim wood

Yes, and?

As a composer of both metal and lyrics, I often incorporate philosophical themes and ideas, though not always self-consciously. However, as song lyrics are a form of poetry, and poetry is not the same thing as philosophy, I cannot agree that metal lyrics are a form of philosophy.

By the way, conforming to a prearranged list of topics and instructions from a WikiHow page is not very "metal." Most metalheads I know, including myself, would laugh at such a thing. Compose what you want, conventions be damned.

Of the best introductions:

Short: Will Durant.
Middle length: Anthony Kenny.
Long: F.C. Copleston.

Not sure to what purpose you gave those quotes.

but that they're not existent as phenomena — Wayfarer

I take your use of the word "as" here to indicate that they do still exist, but in a manner different from other things. That seems obvious to me. My concern was that you might say that such things, because they are not what you take to be "phenomena," do not exist at all.

And that Platonistic understanding was the consequence of a very long critical tradition of philosophical analysis, which has been mostly abandoned since the Middle Ages. That is because nominalists were practically victorious over the scholastic realists, and this has had many consequences. It affects the way that culture itself understands the nature of reality; it tends to make us instinctive scientific realists, even if not consciously. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is one bit of reverse Whig history that you and I agree on. The nominalists haven't won the argument, however, merely the battle for adherents among professional philosophers. I might make a point about this, though, which is that it's strange to see a Buddhist in opposition to nominalism. One of the reasons that holds me back from Buddhism is its hyper-nominalism. Perhaps you have another take, but I've never encountered a Buddhist who isn't a nominalist, either in the primary literature or in person, besides apparently yourself. I think idealism is compatible with Buddhism, and in fact regard the Yogacara school as idealist, but idealism, in itself, is not necessarily opposed to nominalism.

You spoke of "bearing arms." That means carrying them, not just having them. — tim wood

Yes, I can carry and own them. The Second Amendment reads, "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms...."

Do you claim a right to carry, absent threat? — tim wood

Yes, that's why the argument is one of principle, not utility.

Are you confusing buying guns with having guns? The suggestion was that buying should be tightened up. Getting guns away from folks who have them is a whole other problem. — tim wood

I don't know what "the suggestion" is to which you refer. Some here have suggested an outright ban on all guns, while others want more gun control of various kinds and degrees, some of which I have agreed with and some not.

Now, are you one of those that "interprets" the 2d amendment as affording you as an individual a "right" to have a gun? If so, please share with me how you get that, from the amendment. — tim wood

I am. The grammar of the Amendment makes it clear. As the majority opinion in Heller reads: "The Amendment's prefatory clause announced a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause's text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms." A court of appeals also wrote: "The Amendment does not protect 'the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms,' but rather 'the right of the people.' The operative clause, properly read, protects the ownership and use of weaponry beyond that needed to preserve the state militias."

And you apparently decline my invitation to consider natural rights more closely. — tim wood

More condescension.

Maybe I can persuade you to, if you're of an open mind - if it's closed you're unlikely to be persuaded of anything. — tim wood

I think I have already shown the openness of my mind, as I just got done explaining how I changed it on this very issue. You, on the other hand, have given me no evidence that your mind of a similar nature. In the future, if you care at all about persuading the other side of either your views or your sincerity, to insinuate of your interlocutor that he is not of an open mind on the basis of no evidence, while providing none that you are yourself, is a poor way of going about it.

And hence my question: whether you misuse "bearing arms" or you just want to carry your weapon. — tim wood

I don't understand the question. I am arguing that there is a right to bear arms. I don't myself have to bear arms to acknowledge and defend this right. If it wasn't already clear, I don't own any firearms and have no desire to own them at present, but that has no relevance to the argument I'm making.

Because how could carrying a weapon be within the horizon of a natural right unless you are at all times threatened with like force? — tim wood

The question is incoherent. I don't have to be threatened in the immediate moment for there to be a right to bear arms.

You want to carry a gun (yes?) — tim wood

No. I want, and in fact have, the right to own and carry one.

How do you get that from the principle - the natural right? You're not at all times subject to the threat of lethal harm, are you? In short, your claim of a right to "bear arms" calls for additional argument beyond the principle. What is that argument? — tim wood

I gave a couple versions of such an argument earlier in this very thread, but not to worry, I don't expect you to have gone back and read the whole thing. I might not formulate it in precisely the same way now anyway. Since we apparently agree that we have the natural right to self-defense, the missing premise you're looking for is that I have the right to adequate, effective, and reasonable means of self-defense. This includes firearms.

Most rights (I cannot think of an exception), while they may be expressed in positive terms, are in substance negatives on what others may do. — tim wood

I agree.

Perhaps. Maybe we should go for "scientisticists." Bit of a mouthful, though.

It is the view of adherents of Scientism, a type of adherent for which I have yet to find a satisfactory individual noun, since Scientist is already taken and denotes something good. — andrewk

I would call them positivists.

As I said my approach is heuristic, not systematic. I'm trying to sketch out some of the ways in which the terms have different dimensions of meaning. — Wayfarer

Alright.

It seems like one result of your distinction would be that something could be real and not exist or could be and not exist, which is surely absurd. Am I wrong? I want to say that the statement "the chair is" is equivalent to saying that "the chair exists."

so the law needs to change to make it less accessible — David Solman

So tell us your plan to change the law so that sane, nonviolent gun owners are not stripped of their guns while mentally ill, violent individuals are. I'm quite certain everyone, including those evil people at the NRA, would be in favor of such a law if it existed, so if you've discovered the magic formula, by all means share it with us.

Under the US Constitution, there are three unalienable rights, to secure which all the others are surrendered to civil authority. The rest are alienable. — tim wood

You are misinformed. The Declaration of Independence, which does not hold the same legal status as the U.S. Constitution, lists three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution assumes these rights but does not list them. It provides a Bill of Rights, most of which are based on the aforementioned natural rights, including the Second Amendment.

You mention, "bear arms for the purpose of...." Why "bear arms"? Why not, "have a gun available"? Or are you so at risk where you live that you must carry? — tim wood

Do you not know what the words "bear" and "arms" mean?

But a natural right to a gun for that purpose? That's a different right, and by no means a natural one. — tim wood

Right, it's a different right, but grounded in the natural right to self-defense. I've since edited my comment to make that clear.

Perhaps you might think some more about natural rights, what they really are. — tim wood

Please do not condescend to me in this way. It sours the discussion enormously. If, like Banno, you don't care about such things, then I probably won't respond to you in the future.

I don't see how this part of Schopenhauer is relevant. I claim that Kant's way of deriving the phenomenon/noumenon distinction is not valid, though Plato's is. As Schopenhauer likes to say, the right conclusion, from the wrong premises ;) — Agustino

Fair enough. But I thought you were now a realist. Do you reject Kant's conclusion or only his premises? You seem to recognize here that a rejection of Kant's premises doesn't therefore entail that realism is true.

If space was real, then transcendental idealism cannot hold. — Agustino

True, but that's a pretty big "if" in my opinion.

What do you mean it doesn't mean the model is accurate? If that model makes certain predictions (such as light bending around massive objects) and we go out there and test that, and the test confirms the predictions of the model, in what sense is the model "not accurate"? — Agustino

What I mean is that models can be empirically adequate, in that they can fit what we presently observe, but then by definition they can say nothing about what is unobservable, such as space itself. You can postulate a mind-independent physical space as empirically adequate, and I can accept that it is, but that doesn't oblige me to believe in such a thing in the slightest. For that, you need separate philosophical arguments. Appealing to scientific theories is insufficient.

On the one hand, for ethical reasons: it simply is unethical because it is untrue. On the other hand, because it simply doesn't work anymore, people can see through it. It won't get the left anywhere. — Agustino

It's also ironically creating and abetting the very thing they most loathe: white identity politics.

I have felt a shifting of the sands that I stand on in regards to this topic, so I am very interested in what you change you have found. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I said this over two years ago: "Gun policy: Ban the private use of arms, or else abolish the second amendment, or else enforce stricter laws."

I still don't much care for guns or "gun culture," and I view hunting as positively immoral unless done for survival. What I have come to understand is that there is a natural right to self-defense by means of arms, whether in terms of defending oneself, one's family, fellow citizens, or even country. It is not merely a legal or positive right brought into being by constitutions and legislatures, it can only be recognized or not by them, and so it isn't something that can be abolished without committing an injustice, even for the sake of some other hypothetical good. I am not a utilitarian. I also reconsidered the empirical evidence related to gun crime and mass shootings, but it is primarily for the principled reason just described that I changed my mind. Or rather, since I had already been convinced of there being natural rights, it was a matter of realizing that to be consistent, I had to allow for the natural right to self-defense by means of arms. Naturally, this isn't to say that there should be no reasonable limits on the kind of firearms that are suitable for self-defense.

The question is gun control, not gun "takeaway." To those opposed to gun control: are you opposed to any and all gun control? Why waste time on rhetoric. Of course everyone wants some gun control, unless you're crazy. (No gun control whatsoever? Really?) That leaves the questions, how much control, to what purposes, under what circumstances.

Any person who cannot work within this framework is essentially unreasonable. Gentle reader, which are you?

When enough people are reasonable, then shall the discussion progress. — tim wood

Well said. I agree.

What is 'real' is another matter. I understand this to denote real numbers, logical, scientific and natural laws and principles, and so on. — Wayfarer

These are examples, not a definition.

It is touched for the Kantian if the transcendental aesthetic falls apart. For the Platonist, yes, it does remain untouched. — Agustino

You're missing the forest for the trees, or perhaps for what you regard as a few dead trees in the Kantian forest. Here is Schopenhauer, from which I derive the thought you quoted of me:

What Kant says, in its essentials, is the following: "Time, space, and causality are not determinations of the thing in itself, but pertain only to its phenomenon, insofar as they are nothing but our cognitive forms. Since, however, all plurality and all arising and passing away are only possible through time, space, and causality, it follows that they too attach only to the phenomenon and in no way to the thing in itself. Because, however, our cognizance is conditioned by those forms, the whole of experience is only cognizance of the phenomenon, not of the thing in itself; therefore, neither can its law be made to apply to the thing in itself. These assertions extend even to our own I, and we are cognizant of it only as phenomenon, not with respect to what it may be in itself."

But now Plato says: "The things of this world, which our senses perceive, have no true being whatsoever: they are always becoming, but never are; they have only a relative being, all of them existing only in and through their relations to one another; one can thus just as well call their entire existence a kind of non-being. They are, consequently, not even objects of any real cognition. For the latter can be only of that which has being in and for itself and always in the same manner; they are, by contrast, only the object of opinion occasioned by sensation. So long, then, as we are limited to perception of them, we are like men who sit so tightly bound in a dark cave that they could not even turn their heads and, by the light of a fire burning behind them, would see nothing but, on the wall in front of them, shadowy images of actual things made to pass between them and the fire; and even of each other, indeed of themselves, but would see only just the shadows on that wall. Wisdom for them would consist in predicting the succession of those shadows as learned from experience. What, by contrast, can alone be called truly existent, because they always are and never become nor pass away, are the real archetypes for those shadowy images: they are the eternal Ideas, the original forms for all things. No plurality pertains to them, for each is in its essence only One, being the very archetype whose copies or shadows are all named after it: individual, transitory things of a given kind. Nor does arising or passing away pertain to them, for they are truly existent, never becoming nor perishing like their constantly vanishing copies. (In these two negative determinations, however, it is necessarily contained as a presupposition that time, space, and causality have no meaning or validity with respect to them, and that they do not exist within the latter.) Of them alone is there thus any real cognizance, since an object of the latter can only be that which has being always and in every respect (and so in itself), not that which is while it again is not, depending on how one views it."

That is Plato's doctrine. It is obvious and in need of no further demonstration that the inner sense of both doctrines is entirely the same, that they both describe the visible world as a phenomenon that is in itself nothing and has a meaning and borrowed reality only through that which is expressing itself in it (for one of them the thing in itself, for the other Ideas), while to the latter, to what which is truly existent according to both doctrines, all and even the most general and most essential forms pertaining to that phenomenon are altogether foreign.
— Schopenhauer

there is empirical observation that confirms such geometries to be the case. How is it possible for them to be purely fictitious given that this is the case — Agustino

I don't think so. Einstein's model of the universe, for example, makes use of certain non-Euclidean geometries, but that doesn't mean the model is accurate. Astronomers don't know for certain whether the universe is Euclidean or non-Euclidean.

While I think space is a priori and that non-Euclidean geometry fails as an objection to its a priority, I might add, in line with my thoughts here, that I don't think much metaphysically rides on whether space is an a priori feature of the mind or an a posteriori physical entity of some kind. This isn't to say that endeavoring to determine the truth of the matter on this issue isn't interesting or important, but rather that it doesn't affect the basic idealism I hold to which distinguishes between reality and appearance as captured by Plato's Allegory of the Cave, or between the thing-in-itself and the phenomena, in Kantian jargon. This, to me, seems to remain quite untouched.

Hi Freud, you're going to have to substantiate those claims, especially in light of this: http://www.newsweek.com/fear-death-atheists-religion-dying-afterlife-believers-575496

Slow down when typing, fellas. Do you not see the caps lock screwing up your messages?

Where? — Moliere

In a multitude of PMs to Agustino and in the big thread he made a while back. My current thought is this, I suppose: there is no problem if non-Euclidean geometries are purely fictitious. I think they are, for they were "discovered" by fiddling with axioms, not from empirical observation.

I doubt you could change your mind. — Banno

In fact I have. On this very subject.

Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur. So right back at ya, Banno the bullshitter.

It's not arbitrary. Semi-automatic rifles are different to semi-automatic handguns. — Michael

It is arbitrary. And you're right that they're different, but different how? There are handguns more deadly than a semi-automatic rifle at the kind of close range Cruz was operating at.

Then ban the guns that are more dangerous as well. I honestly don't understand the problem. You don't seem to mind the ban on assault rifles (or do you?), despite the fact that would-be killers can simply choose another gun. — Michael

I mind because this would be a de facto ban on guns. Semi-automatic weapons (particularly handguns) are the most manufactured and purchased form of firearm. The people buying them aren't mass murderers either, so you would be confiscating the guns of nonviolent citizens, some of whom require them for self-defense, which means that you would be risking people's lives. As I say, there are trade-offs to every action chosen.

I'm saying that if gun control will reduce the firearm homicide rate then there's a good case for gun control. — Michael

And I'm saying that if defensive gun use prevents crime (which it does), then there's a good case not to adopt strict gun control.

Why not? Surely it's better to not have someone shoot at you than to be able to return fire at someone who is? — Michael

Most of the people who do the shooting that comprises gun crime don't possess their guns legally. So your plan would disarm the person being shot at while failing to address the person doing the shooting. This is why I said there are ways to reduce gun crime without introducing new laws that just take away guns from nonviolent, law-abiding citizens. One way is better enforcement and policing, i.e. enforcing the multitude of gun laws already on the books.

And why can't it be done as well? — Michael

Because that would be to unjustly punish those who've done nothing wrong.

Kant's notion of a noumenon, at any rate, is confused. He talks of the noumenon causing the phenomenon, which is nonsense, since causality is a category of the understanding, and hence can only apply to the phenomenon. — Agustino

This is the standard and, I might add, Schopenhauerian criticism of Kant: that he claimed the noumenon causes the phenomenon. But this is an error so obvious and egregious that it offends the principle of charity greatly to assume a philosopher of Kant's caliber wasn't aware of it. I think he was and that the contradiction you impute of him here is only apparent. If causality is an a priori form of the understanding, then we cannot but conceive of the noumenon causing the phenomenon, even though such a relation may not obtain in reality.

Haven't looked at the rest of the thread, as it's beating a very dead horse. I've said my piece about space.

Your refusal to see the facts is self-serving crap. — Banno

The facts are that anyone who disagrees with Banno on guns must love guns more than children? Find something better to do than such low quality trolling, dude. Good grief.

You'll notice I didn't deny said peculiarity. As I've said before, those numbers need contextualizing. Gun crime (notice also the pivot to this topic, as opposed to mass shootings) occurs in and among highly concentrated geographic areas and demographics, so the U.S. is not actually less safe than the other countries on that list generally speaking.

Nirvana fallacy. That it won't stop all isn't that it won't stop some. And surely doing something is better than doing nothing? — Michael

Two can play at this game. That defensive gun use by private citizens won't stop all crime isn't that it won't stop some. Surely we ought not to ban them, then?

You're saying that because gun crime will just be replaced with non-gun crime, it isn't worth doing something about gun crime? — Michael

No, I'm saying it isn't worth stricter gun control laws. There are things that can be done about gun crime that don't involve strict gun control laws or an outright ban of guns.

If they're just to make certain types of weapons illegal, like semi-automatic rifles, — Michael

You're either displaying your ignorance here or just being crafty. To make semi-automatic rifles illegal would require making virtually all guns illegal, as most handguns are semi-automatic. Otherwise, banning certain semi-automatic rifles would be aritrary. Would-be killers would simply choose another gun, and there are several more powerful and dangerous than the AR-15 and its variants.

close loopholes in internet sales — Michael

Sure, though it depends on what they are.

increase the legal age — Michael

Maybe, but increasing the legal age doesn't always lead to a decrease or more effective use of what is being regulated.

have restrictions on risky groups (like the mentally ill) — Michael

Fully agreed. There is definitely a case to be made that Cruz's background ought to have prohibited him from acquiring a gun. He ought also to have been flagged as a mental health concern as soon as warning signs appeared. He liked to kill animals, for example, which is pretty strongly correlated in the literature with harming human beings later on.

Pretending that the issue is not peculiar to the US is disingenuous. — Banno

This is precisely the slide I mentioned. Are mass shootings peculiar to the U.S.? Perhaps, but not mass casualty attacks, which brings us back to the strange notion that mass death by gun is somehow worse than mass death by other means.

Mad bastards. Time to love your kids more than your guns. — Banno

Ad hominem.

They have. QED.

Name a country where guns are illegal that have this problem. — David Solman

What do you mean by "this problem?" Mass shootings? The obvious response is that mass casualty attacks have continued to occur in countries with strict gun control laws. Despite cries of being a red herring, unless you think mass death by firearms is somehow worse than mass death by other means, then in the wake of attacks like the one under discussion here, we should be focused on reducing mass casualty attacks. Passing stricter gun control laws will only make it harder for nonviolent, law-abiding citizens to acquire firearms. It won't stop all future mass shootings or mass casualty attacks. And again, if stopping those isn't your goal, then you don't really care about solving the problem and are only concerned with winning an ideological war due to a peculiar anti-gun pathology.

It's so frustrating that people just blame everything else other than the gun. — David Solman

Guns don't magically sprout legs and shoot people. They require human beings with certain motivations to pull the trigger. It's a cliche but it's true: guns don't kill people, people kill people. Guns are merely a means of killing people. An effective means? You bet. But so are homemade bombs and poisons, as is ramming planes through buildings, driving trucks into pedestrians, etc. I doubt you are in favor of banning the legally obtainable raw materials that go into making homemade bombs and poisons, or planes, trucks, etc.

Virtually all the MSM. Wayfarer's post above smacked of it as well.

What will Mueller discover? It turns out it's exactly what I anticipated. I love how those who peddled hysteric charges about Trump and his campaign are now downplaying, backpedaling, and subtly changing their narratives.

okay so we should just let it happen either way? suicide or murder. it's still a problem — David Solman

Some problems can't be solved without creating or exacerbating others. Your question is hopelessly naive, as if it's easily in our (whoever this plural determiner is) collective power to simply let or not let bad things happen in the world. I assume you mean more gun control laws, but as I have gone over many times before, I fail to see how a law will stop any and all such cases of mass shootings. The most proximate cause for the present shooting is the FBI's incompetence. There were also dozens of phone calls to the police about the boy and dozens of visits to his home by sheriff's deputies, and yet no action was taken. But of course, it's all due to a lack of "better" gun control laws.

This doesn't obviate the issue. — Maw

Yes it does, inasmuch as the claim I was responding to is false.

The number of alleged virtue ethicists so far is somewhat surprising. I put that, but only because I don't know what else to call Schopenhauer's ethics.

I marked theism but had in mind "lean toward," as I do lean more toward it than atheism.