Why are all these topics on this board? Mainstream American politics is not philosophy, even political philosophy.

LOL #bernvictims TOLD, can't stump Trump

The question I'm interested in is this: given that coercion is part of what makes a bunch of humans hanging around into a society, how much sense does it make to have "minimizing coercion" as your big end-game? — Pneumenon

I think none. Given that painful truth, you have basically two broad options: (1) stick to your guns and deny that coercion is acceptable, and since all life is coercive, conclude that life is therefore unacceptable; (2) admit (in practice, if not in principle) that coercion is acceptable, and work toward coercing the world into a desired state (become a Muslim, or a liberal, or whatever).

I prefer the first route, but I think it's a matter of taste: whether you think your (nonexistent) visions are worth the (real) suffering.

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Also, while I see the rhetorical purpose of the taxation point was badly misconstrued, it still never ceases to amaze me how far people will go to convince themselves that something so obviously coercive as taxation is not coercive somehow. Why not just own up to it instead and admit you approve of coercion when it suits your world view? You're not going to think yourself out of contradictions, and straight up lying about them helps no one.

If your beliefs are the result of pre-determined causes beyond your control, they would be held by pure happenstance — Hanover

Read this claim over and over again until you realize that it's nonsense. I really don't want to discuss this, it's not what the thread is about and I never committed to metaphysical determinism anyway.

Which is exactly my point. You are left believing whatever it is that you must believe, including believing that you believe correctly. — Hanover

Which implies nothing about whether those beliefs are justified, correct, true 'only be happenstance,' etc. But this is derailing anyway.

I don't see why your thoughts being determined means their turning out a certain way is a 'cosmic coincidence.' Indeed put that way the claim is plainly ridiculous.

Why do I think the earth is flat? The same reason you think the earth round. It's because the laws of nature caused me to believe that. — Hanover

So what exactly do you think follows from that? Above you said this means that whether the beliefs are true is just happenstance. But this simply does not follow.

Whether your reasons are true would just be happenstance. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. — Hanover

That doesn't follow.

Also, I would like to point out that if you reject compatibilism in favor of hard determinism, and then complain that there is no free will and that everything is coerced, then you have to admit that your own thoughts of being coerced were in fact just determined. There is no coercion at all in hard determinism, there is just the natural flow of causality. — darthbarracuda

It doesn't matter whether my thoughts are determined or not to whether they're true.

I would say I'm a 'hard indeterminist' overall, but acknowledge (a) that certain local configurations for all intents and purposes can be modeled as hard deterministic, and (b) there may exist a certain kind of narrow freedom that arises in exceptional cases, but I'm not so confident on this point.

I'm certainly under a kind of pressure to continue to breathe, but I don't mind it. — darthbarracuda

Yes you do, hold your breath for three minutes.

You simply don't understand what I'm saying. You really don't. — Hanover

No, I understand, it's just a terrible argument. A variant of it is used by certain sort of religious apologists often. Not that that discredits it in of itself, it's just a really common thing.

You can't judge the quality of my argument if determinism is true. — Hanover

Why not? The qualities that make a good argument would be the same either way, all we have to do is look and see.

In some cases you are. In some cases, other incentives overpower that (in which case, one can't really be blamed for suicide in the sense that one can be coerced into that too, by how unbearable being alive is).

I'm interpreting this as meaning suicide is indeed not a viable choice. — darthbarracuda

What does that have to do with suicide? It was about breathing, etc. not being freely done because they're done on pain of coercion.

The rest is about how people instill incentives against suicide. That doesn't mean suicide can't be possible or viable -- I've assumed it is this whole time because people, after all, do it (but then often in great pain or duress because of the mechanisms that act against them).

I don't think I ever said that I can't find anywhere where I did, but you're free to point me to it if you find it.

Because you brought it up and so I responded.

Pretty sure that means that society/instincts are keeping us from killing ourselves (the "coercive establishment"). — darthbarracuda

It obviously doesn't, since I've explicitly included suicide among those possible actions.

The operative quote:

Unfortunately, life itself is such a coercive situation, since it is impossible to consent to being born, and all 'decisions' made while alive are within the context of that coercive establishment. — The Great Whatever

I was talking about birth the whole time. Everything I mentioned about suicide was in explicit response to you.

It doesn't matter whether my thoughts are determined or not, that doesn't affect the quality of the argument or my ability to think rationally.

Honestly, this argument is so bad I don't really think it's worth responding to. Sorry.

I'm not talking about suicide, but birth. If what I've said is right, suicide itself is also not really blameworthy or commendable, or the wrong or right choice to make, because it takes place also under coercive circumstances.

I wasn't talking about 'the Absurd' (whatever that is) or Camus at all.

I don't have an exclusive definition. 'Coercion' is an English word that it is not in my power to define. If you speak English, you presumably also know what the word means.

It is the contradiction between the body's will and the mind's will that leads to the Absurd. Is this the kind of "coercion" that you are speaking of, that the mind sees true that suicide is rational yet the body prevents it from annihilation? — darthbarracuda

No.

So everyone is free to kill themselves and should stop complaining about life being coercive, but literally anybody has the right (and moral entitlement) to forcibly stop you if they see you trying to?

Do you understand that your position makes no sense? Some rando on the street has more of a say than the person themselves as to whether they live or die? In what sense then do people's lives actually belong to them, and in what sense is the institution of life not obviously coercive?

I disagree; people do not see birth a a institution because they take for granted that it continues, has to continue, etc. It is not something within the public consciousness 'as an issue;' the notion that the mechanism and institution of birth itself might be questioned or even brought up is not really understood.

Those who think about birth seriously are in my experience (1) radical feminists, (2) racists (against race-mixing, etc.) and eugenicists, or (3) anti-natalists, including pessimists and fringe environmentalists, (4) people undergoing a pop-sci momentary scare about the earth being 'too populated,', (5) the Chinese government. Of these, only (1) and (2) question the legitimacy of the institution itself. The issue is not that this takes place in some special philosophical jargon (and if it did, it wouldn't matter), but rather that it is an issue accessible to ordinary opinion that does not receive much attention due to historical and biological pressures.

I think that, ideally, most governmental institutions and ordinary people would forcibly restrain all people from committing suicide if they had the capacity. It is generally not recognized that people have the right to end their own life (see the 'debates' on euthanasia).

In those cases these measures are not taken to prevent intentional death but rather accidental death; preventing intentional death is an addition. — darthbarracuda

You are wrong about this. Some companies, for example, mix oxygen in with the gas in helium tanks specifically to prevent the tanks for being used for suicide.

We generally agree that if one is in a coercive institution that restricts one's choice to such a complete extent that they have no non-trivial choices left to make on pain of violence, forcible restraint, etc. then they are not free in any interesting sense, as with going to prison.

I am simply pointing out that birth is such an institution, though people do not acknowledge this.

Not all places, though. And it's sad that suicide is illegal. In many cases these preventative instincts will stop you from killing yourself. But they are not 100% failproof in the way a jailcell is. You can actually commit suicide quite easily these days if you just sit in the garage with the car on and some classical music playing. — darthbarracuda

Actually, many cars no longer work for suicide, and people generally want to find ways to stop people form killing themselves (making helium tanks non-lethal, etc.)

Not always. — darthbarracuda

Suicide is almost always committed under great duress and in extreme pain.

No shit, I've been saying this since day one. — darthbarracuda

Okay? Then why are you arguing with me?

I never said any of those things. Why respond if you're not going to read what I write?

These are manipulating mechanisms but not inhibitory (coercive) mechanisms. They can manipulate you and make it harder to end your life if you do so please, but they do not prevent you from doing so (as evidence of the rising percentage of suicide rates). — darthbarracuda

In many cases, yes, they will physically prevent you from killing yourself if you try. Psychiatrists nd psychologists for example are entitled to have you interred against your will if you intimate that you are thinking of killing yourself, and suicide is also literally illegal in most places (with illegality always backed by force).

In addition the many unofficial social mechanisms that serve to shame, bully, threaten, etc. the suicidal are coercive in that they inflict large amounts of pain as a mechanism for preventing suicide or making it impracticable.

Finally, even if suicide were completely free, birth would still be coercive, because one cannot consent to it. The fact that it might be possible to undo does not make it any less forced (and much of the pain endured happens before it is possible to kill oneself).

If the gradation isn't significant, then it doesn't affect the argument in an interesting way. If you want a verbal dispute, okay, but I don't. Too much philosophy will do that to you.

There actually are coercive mechanisms keeping people alive to suffer once they are born, such as survival instincts, the general pain attending dying, guilt, shame and illegality of suicide (including censure from family members, government, and religion, sometimes threats of burning in hell for eternity), and so on.

You are simply wrong in your description; people go apeshit at the idea of suicide, and there are systematic and painfu pressures in place to keep the coercive institution going once in place.

What options worth the name does someone in prison have? Seriously?

I'm not sure why every other time you respond to me, you're basically not-so-subtley telling me to kill myself. It's rude.

Okay, there is such an incentive. If you don't do it, you literally die painfully. What more incentive do you want?

One one natural reading of the claim, it's a truism. On another, more contentious, reading of the claims, it is quite disputable. Your argument trades on a equivocation between those two readings, as I've already explained a few times. — Pierre-Normand

Maybe your problem is that you have a schizophrenic way of making claims: they are either philosophical or non-philosophical. But I don't see that as something that I have to answer for; rather you do.

If there is a reading that appears naturally to you on which such a claim is false, may I suggest that perhaps you can't read. (Or that the way you've been taught to read hasn't done you much good).

To force someone to do something that they do not want to do. — darthbarracuda

Okay, that says nothing about whether you 'mind' doing it.

What do you want me to say? That people in prison are free to go to the bathroom right when they feel like they have to pee, or several minutes after?

No no no, see, you are using the word coercive outside of its common usage, i.e. manipulating definitions to suit your argument.

A need does not have to be coercive if one does not mind having to satisfy it. — darthbarracuda

What do you think 'coercive' means, exactly? I'm pretty sure what you just said is not what it means.

Their freedom is restricted but not so much that it would be inhumane (at least it ought not to be) — darthbarracuda

We're talking about jail, right? Prison, rather?

you are not "coerced" into living at all. — darthbarracuda

Of course you are; no one choose to be born. It's not even possible.