How do you know I haven’t listened to the other side?

Have you?

Also, you are making your own assumption about it not being racism based on equally weak foundations.

I am just unable to call an entire institution racist without knowing what was said and who said it. I presume innocence, sure, but only because I feel impartiality is more just than quickly believing any accusation. If I’m wrong I will say so.

Get real, like being “worried” about skin colour is just an innocent pondering. Please.
You got the non-story right though. Who cares.

Get real. Without hearing the other side of the story you have nothing but the claims of a disgruntled family member who has openly admitted to mental health issues.

Yes. There are countless ways to deliberate and compromise that do not require legal intervention. Absent that I would have to relocate. And if you need laws to convince you to avoid spewing toxic fumes into your neighbor’s yard then maybe the society isn’t the problem.

We’ve learned that the family members of mixed race couples are not allowed to talk about what their children might look like. We call that “racism” in 2021. This is the biggest non-story of the year so far.

Pointing to oneself and recognizing this as a unity body requires an intersubjectively shaped concept of one’s body. Before looking in a mirror, a child’s model of their body is piecemeal. The reflection for the fist time shows the body as a unitary phenomenon, but it also requires that the child recognize that others see them in this way, from the outside in. Schizophrenics often lose the ability to know where their body leaves off and the world begins, and many brain injuries can change our sense of whether and how our limbs belong to us. Now can this be? It is because concepts concerning the unity of the body involve complex correlations of perceptions and actions in the world. The unity of the body is an achievement , not a given.

I do not doubt any of that. But no matter the child’s or schizophrenic’s model of his body, it’s there, visible, available, measurable, if not to him than to other bodies. I am just unable to doubt that.

Yeah. I don't know if you've noticed this in life, but just stating that something is the case does not constitute an argument. It tells us nothing at all of any shared use. This is a public forum. For discussion. It's not here to canvass opinion like some complex Gallup poll. Nobody cares if you think these things can be "acquired without appropriation, through common enterprise and free trade rather than force and coercion". The standard needs to be a bit higher than you just reckoning it. Hence the questions.

I'm asking you to demonstrate that it's the case, with examples. You know, like in a proper discussion.

I'm not asking because I want to double-check what you already think to complete my list of 'stuff NOS reckons'.

I didn’t think such a simple, common-sense notion about the difference between stolen goods and goods acquired through work and effort would be so difficult for a brilliant thinker such as yourself. Alas, here we are.

Sorry, I refuse to demonstrate that one can acquire his property through means other than theft. And I would argue if you need such a thing demonstrated you’re probably not fit for this world.

I haven’t heard of the research of extended cognition, but no I do not think we should include everything that goes into the lungs into the notions of self. There is not doubt we are situated in an environment, that we interact with it, use it and learn from it. But I do not think such a brute fact should imply our minds or cognition or some other abstraction extends beyond our body, as if I could locate my being in the water I drink. Again, I don’t quite know enough about the thesis of that theory, but the name is enough to cause me to recoil.

I don’t need to draw a contour around my anatomy when that contour is already defined by the surface of my being and the nature of my form. There is nothing artificial about this. All I need do is point to myself to confirm this, in my view.

My aim with the Hume quote was to show that the assumed pure
interiority of consciousness falls apart when analysed closely, because when we search for ourselves what we find is always reshaped by exposure to an outside. If you want to call that outside ‘physical’ then you’re maintaining a kind of dualism between interior and exterior. I prefer ‘phenomena’ or appearances’ to physical objects( as Nietzsche wrote, there is nothing behind those appearances) , because it indicates the indissociable reciprocal depends of interior and exterior, making mind embodied and embedded in a world , which itself is co-constructed by its relationships with embodied mind. In this view of mind-body-environment no clear-cut interior or exterior can be discerned.

I would suggest it’s not so much dualism as it is pluralism, the simple act of distinguishing oneself from the vast amount of objects beyond the self. In my own view the self begins and ends at the exterior surface, which can be discerned from simple observation and direct contact. It cannot extend any further outward or inward, and any notion of the self that violates this principle is illusory.

Depends on whether or not you can pay loan off on the tractor you couldn't afford in full, I guess. Technically many folks might be legally appropriating the product and labor of others through debt.
When the highly efficient firms come to price you out and your left with a mountain of debt, there will be no crying "force and coercion" as a consequence of free market action. Shit happens.

There will be no monolithic state to punish you for defaulting, just a mob of racketeers working for the transient emanation of their local government. Then you can just defend yourself with guns. Pow pow!

If that’s what I signed up for so be it. The point is I sign contracts, accept debt, and partner with others willingly and through my own free will, and suffer any risks thereby.

It’s true that we perceive all of the above, but the idea that we perceive “perceptions” and not the physical world is a step too far for me. This is the mistake of nominalizing, changing the grammatical character of an adjective or verb into that of a noun. Nominalizing allows us to construct scenarios where one will observe observations, perceive perceptions, be conscious of consciousness, as if these nouns represented things and substances.

You have access to nothing whatsoever outside of your own mentation.

Because nobody does. All things are experienced from the first person subjective experience. Unless you're claiming you do, in which case, that's something that carries a burden of proof.

Even from the first-person point of view we come into direct contact with the outer world. I think the burden of proof lies with those who claim otherwise.

I suggest that the Whole (Cosmos) is primary over its parts, that there is One (holistic). This is Monism.

What is a whole, a One, without a boundary? Without a beginning and an end? It’s not whole or one at all. Without the characteristics of finitude there is no such whole. Therefor there is no whole, no one, and the universe is many.

Well then how did you acquire the field, if not from the common? By what means was the water kept clean, if not by the efforts of others upstream? By what means did you acquire the seed, if not from the common? How has the soil maintained sufficient fertility to grow your seed in if not by the efforts of those who have come before you? By what means is the air kept clean enough if not by the collective efforts of those other who share it?

And that's just one grain of wheat growing.

Now do that for the computer you're writing on.

I don’t get how asking these questions is supposed to lead me to your conclusion. They don’t. All of the above can be acquired without appropriation, through common enterprise and free trade rather than force and coercion, as I’ve already stated.

Yes, your argument was nonsensical. Toiling your own field, planting a seed, watering the seed, and using the sun to grow wheat for flour is somehow appropriating the product and labor of others. Few greater absurdities have been spoken.

Yes because they are brainwashed but fortunately we are not longer being ruled by a military system who forces you to make evil things. Yes we are officials but in not so bad issues inside the diaspore of time we were born. Imagine born in XV or XVI century and kill random people because a king told you just to plump his power.

True, we should make the distinction between violent tyranny and it’s softer variations. But I think it’s something we should be careful with.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a prescient chapter in his book Democracy in America called “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear”. He describes what he calls “soft despotism”. It’s worth a read and as valuable today as it was then:

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest—his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people. Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free: as they cannot destroy either one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large that holds the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master, and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm#link2HCH0073

There are two ways by which one can acquire the means for his survival: through the products of his own labor or by appropriating the products and labor of others. I prefer the former and repudiate the latter. I don’t do this because some law tells me to, but because my conscience does. Therefor I afford him the right to his property, and will defend this right instead of violate it. If I wish to acquire his property I do so with common enterprise and free exchange rather than force and coercion.

So no, I do not think stolen property and plunder constitute rightful property and that one has a right to such property simply because he labored to steal it. After all, I’ve been railing against compulsion and appropriation this whole time.

This is why sometimes people give up about taxes, justice, public administration, etc... because it looks like governments build the institutions just to help their own interests forgetting the interests of the population.
So... the institutions are not bad at all. It is the selfishness of governors that poison everything they touch.

I’m not so sure about that. Good people will do evil things just because the law tells them to. They are no longer acting as men, but as officials.

the government are fully entitled to the products of all that labour.

That’s wrong and for the reasons I’ve already stated.

But... Whey they control us? Do not they believe in us? I guess it us noticeable that a considerable amount of rich people do not want pay taxes. I guess they are just somehow selfish but here we have the debate itself.

Are we really free with the money/income we earn each month? Because if we do not pay taxes the government will enforce us to do it. So we are not free at all. In this point, you are even more free buying a property than having the money in a bank.

All of the state’s institutions are directed towards preserving its own life, increasing its own power, and enlarging the scope of its own activity. Our lives, our power, and the scope of our own activity decreases in proportion. We become dependant, not independent.

At issue is not the right, but what constitutes your property. Is everything you acquire by any means yours simply by virtue of having laboured for it?

If so, then spoils of war and theft both result in rightful property.

As does tax. The government must undergo some work to acquire tax, no?

There are two ways by which one can acquire the means for his survival: through the products of his own labor or by appropriating the products and labor of others. I prefer the former and repudiate the latter. I don’t do this because some law tells me to, but because my conscience does. Therefor I afford him the right to his property, and will defend this right instead of violate it. If I wish to acquire his property I do so with common enterprise and free exchange rather than force and coercion.

So no, I do not think stolen property and plunder constitute rightful property and that one has a right to such property simply because he labored to steal it. After all, I’ve been railing against compulsion and appropriation this whole time.

I’ll check him out Tim. Thank you.



Maybe that’s where we differ. I believe one has a right to his property and you believe such a right can only be decided by the whims of a government. I believe property precedes law, is the natural extension of ones faculty and labor, and that to appropriate it is evil. So we disagree at the very first premise.

I do not think I acquire all I have without help from others, or that I do not require neighbors to cooperate for the better of our community. The idea that one should be forced to give a “small recompense” to some centralized institution instead of providing charity, labor, protection to his own community is selfish and lazy.

the existence of mind and ideas can't be doubted.

Both can be seriously doubted because every time we look we see nothing of the sort. The idealist still has the herculean task of showing us where the mind ends and the body begins, but has consistently failed to do so.

I do not see the state as a mutual insurance company, or as some social contract. I see it as a predatory institution devised as a means of control and exploitation. As Thomas Paine put it, it is at best “a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world”—and we’ve seen it at its worst. There is no check and balance, no right, or no constitution it is willing to nullify in order to protect its own interests and power.

Speak for yourself. I never entered in to it willingly. I have no other choice but to comply. Back to the herd.

Questions are points now? Did you know you can make arguments in other ways?

No I don’t advocate for denying the comforts you and entire generations of people have become dependant on, built as they were from the appropriation of other people’s wealth.

Is this your version of Socratic irony?

So if I take your car it's morally wrong for you to try and take it back if I don't want you to? God, it's like discussing with a three year old.

We’re talking about taking the fruits of someone’s labor, their money, their property, which I’ve said countless times. You’re talking about taking things that have already been stolen. It’s silly sophistry.

The problem with the assumption that tax is theft is that there's either a moral or legal right to pre-tax income. There isn't. The legal argument is clear, the law clearly prescribes your don't have a right to your entire pre-tax income.

Morally is incoherent too, because it assumes the market automatically leads to just outcomes. It quite clearly doesn't because economic transactions are representative of relations of power, not moral worth.

Governments have always given themselves the legal right to appropriate the fruits of their subject’s labor. The law clearly prescribes this, yes, and no one is arguing otherwise. So much for the legal argument.

The moral argument is that it is wrong to take something from another against his will. You either believe this or you do not. If you believe it is right for the government to take from another against his will, then you believe it is right to take from another against his will. It’s actually quite coherent.

It's not nitpicking, it's central to the whole issue. What constitutes property is defined by law.

20% (or whatever) of your wages legally belongs to the government because it is defined by law that it does. That's absolutely no different to the way in which the remaining 80% belongs to you - because it is defined as such by law.

You want to claim one is 'robbery' but the other not when they are of no different status at all.

This is more casuistry. I’m going to have to ignore it.

The answer is “no” by virtue of each specimen occupying its own space and time. Your copy is someone else.

What is this, an interview? or can you only speak in questions? Do I have to speak in questions too?

What can better avoid an argument than quibbling and nitpicking about the choice of words?

The problem with common/public goods and services like street lights, police or army is that anyone can freely benefit from them. It is practically impossible to exclude anyone from their use. That's why they are paid for with taxes. You can't buy them voluntarily like you would buy a car.

That is a problem, and because it is immoral to plunder another’s money against his will, it needs fixing in my opinion.

Given for free? When it comes to government, no goods and services are free. I would settle for piecemeal reforms that trend in the direction of liberty. I think a voluntary system where you pay only for the services you need would suffice.

The whole way in which you say about what philosophers speaking about, including self and consciousness, as arising from the the body is why I am raising the whole topic of having a physical body, and what this means in terms of experience.

Yes, but I was trying to go further than that and say experience, self and consciousness are the body. I wouldn’t say they arise from it, like a plant would from soil. I don’t think emergentism is accurate on the simple basis that absolutely nothing of the sort emerges from the body. That’s why I think we need a philosophy of the body.

Because that's how we vote on stuff like taxes, but you see taxation as a denial of your liberty.

Not even a strand of chewing gum exists between the premise and the conclusion.

I am asking to what extent the whole experience of having a unique, individual body is of significance as a social and personal factor in affecting our experiences and understanding, as a basis for understanding everything.

The body is our experience and understanding. It is our mind, our consciousness, our soul. It is the self, the identity, the free will. Much of what philosophers speak about is the body, whether they acknowledge it or not.

Well, you can vote for political parties that propose less common goods and less taxes to finance them but I guess you see democracy as a threat to your liberty too. I wonder what alternative would work for you.

Why would I see democracy as a threat to liberty? I wager you just threw that in there without thinking about it much.

What a stupid thing to say. If it's legal, it's not robbery is it? That's the point. Robbery is taking something you don't legally have a right to take.

Robbery is taking someone’s property by force or by threat of force. You can employ whatever euphemism you choose, but your objection is silly.

I suspect that if I mention something, like fly fishing, you’ll go and talk about laws against over-fishing, nets, licensing and whatnot. No, I get it: government is everywhere. It is virtually inescapable.

Statists like to mention roads but never war, famine, slavery, censorship, gulags, genocide. You will pass off the softest of despotism as necessary (because without them we wouldn’t have roads), while the hard ones needn’t be mentioned at all.