so every universe that isn't deterministic is a universe of free will? It doesn't even need life or consciousness in it? It's free will even if there's no beings in the universe who have a will?

Huh? Free Will deals specifically in the realm of animal decision making, not the behavior of billiard balls.

Can't wait to hear proposals on how government services should be paid for.

if I didn't know any better, I'd be inclined to think China rejects the science of climate change

Well, Xi Jinping is a chemical engineer by training.

I disagree with pinning bodily autonomy (i.e., consent) vs. right to life principles against each other as absolute principles; as they are not, andin one instance it could be that consent matters more than the right to life and in another it could be vice-versa. It is not productive nor correct to use either of these principles in an absolute manner.

For me, culpability is a principle which, when applied, determines the woman's right to consent as outweighed by the woman's obligation to amend the condition she has put this life in (albeit a new life). She, when consensually having sex, gives up, in the event that she gets pregnant, any relevant consideration of consent.

However, when she is not culpable, it becomes a question of consent vs. the de facto duty to rescue, which is going to revolve around the potential risk/severity of unwanted bodily modifications of the rescuer

I don't disagree with your bolded statement as written, I would just add: matters to whom? Sounds like you're supposing the government, I'm siding with women with the advice of their medical professionals. I have no problem if an individual woman decides that her fetus' right to exist is of more value to her than her right to bodily autonomy.

Your opinion that the type of relationship between a woman and her partner raises or lowers her right to bodily autonomy is an unpopular one that I happen not to share, though I'm sure a significant minority of folks would buy into it. What are your thoughts on the obligation of the medical community to use public health resources on treating the effects of smoking? Is the "culpability" of the patient in creating their medical problem germane in that instance?

But the definition of a fetus by the state changes depending on who terminates the life of the fetus.

If it's a woman's action that terminates the fetus, then that's legal. But if it's another person, it's homicide. The fetus has two ways of legal existence, concurrently

Which is likely of interest in the Legality Forum, here in the Philosophy Forum the adult woman had autonomy over her body and thus could consent to medical procedures on her body (as men can as well). The implications to other entities of her medical decision were hers and her doctors to consider, not the state.

There is no universally accepted definition of free will. My definition of free will is a will that is free from determinants and constraints. I clearly don't have free will because my will is both determined and constrained by my genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. I clearly have a determined and constrained will instead of a free will.

True, it is easier to define what Determinism is and just say, Free Will is not that.

To me, Determinism is believing that antecedent state A leads each and every time to resultant state B, never C. Free Will is believing that antecedent state A can lead to resultant state B or C.

I'm not posting here to argue for or against abortion. I want to just explain something that's irreconcilable about pro-abortion and anti-abortion societies.

When someone announces the pregnancy, her whole circle celebrates: there's formal announcement, there's gender-reveal (shown in theaters, no less), there's baby shower-- when I was a kid I thought they literally bathe the pregnant woman in front of the guests) then there's the birth, and finally the christening where food and gifts are used to celebrate this important occasion. Following this, a lot of legal rights accrue to the baby: the mother could be prosecuted for drug use while pregnant, the baby has the right to be taken care of and not neglected, and of course, if the baby dies at the hands of the parents or any member of their society, there's homicide or infanticide.

Meanwhile, within the same society, the pregnant woman can decide to terminate the pregnancy without any reason required. Because in the pro-choice stance, it doesn't matter whether the fetus growing inside is the woman's own flesh and blood. She is not held accountable morally to spare the fetus just because it's her own blood. This is what it means by her-body-her-choice. The fetus has no right to use the woman's body to grow to full viability. At any given point during the pregnancy, the fetus doesn't count as an entity. Note that if you're one of the guests in a baby shower, you're celebrating the woman, not the fetus inside the womb.

Then here comes another puzzling thing. Suppose a woman decides to terminate the pregnancy and made an appointment with a doctor two weeks from now. Suppose that an intruder attacks the woman and kills her and the baby before the appointment. The state can then charge the intruder with double homicide -- never mind that the woman doesn't' want the baby and is about to terminate it. Depending on what country or state in the US you're in, killing a pregnant woman is double homicide

Not a puzzle. A woman's bodily autonomy does not transfer to a murderer. Just as a person headed up the stairs to throw themselves off of the roof and is killed by a murderer, no one is "puzzled" by the state charging the perpetrator.

"Touching" in common use (as in this thread) does not mean occupying the identical space, it means exerting pressure on another object.

The woman (and man) are to blame for the condition of this new life, which is fragile and needing of nourishment and care; because they decided to engage in an act which reasonably can be inferred to result in a pregnancy. How are they, under your view, not to blame for getting pregnant?

I have clarified that the fetus' life is more important than the woman's life in the case that she is culpable for their condition (i.e., consensually had sex). I do not think that the fetus' life is always more important than the woman's life. Within the context of consensual sex, it seems as though you also disagree with me here--as you envision the woman's health as always more important than the fetus': even in the case that the woman is to blame for that fetus' condition. We could start there if you would like

Actually the competing interests are the woman's bodily autonomy (not importance) vs the fetus' right to exist. Autonomy exists equally as a concept regardless of the type of relationship between the woman and her sexual partner.

Abortion is always wrong. It's not complicated

A commonish, yet minority opinion.

Though in cases, such as this one which features competing interests it is expected that some folks will find one argument more to their liking than the other. Therefore why it is pure bravado to use terminology such as "always" in such cases.

Thank you! However, the ability to practice skepticism may not be possible for some people. There are countries that raise their people to be dumb and deprieve their ability to be skeptical so that their rule can be secured. Under such circumstance, these govenments may cut out and limit the free flow of information to create a place that resembles a digital prison so to maintain the mind prison. I wonder how a person under such a condition, once gets enlightened, can form a healthy belief system and know what to believe.

In my experience you are exaggerating the influence of governments and not addressing the far more powerful influence of corporations. "Governments" sound scary, but are basically bureaucrats (who have job security and little real power) and elected officials (who are likely to be out on their ear in the next administration). Corporations, OTOH are run by folks who have billions of incentives to manipulate your spending patterns and hundreds of millions of dollars to buy people and technology to accomplish their goals.

Well, if one can be 100% certain of essentially anything, right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, as long as one is convinced you're right, then this thread dissolves into an essentially meaningless question, since the answer is: just about anything.

Yeah, so let’s just forget about it and relax. That’s worked wonders so far.

This is an existential issue. We could use more thinking, not less.

Well, this problem (like most problems involving humans) isn't an issue of not figuring out what to do, it is a problem of actually doing it.

From my perspective. I agree that the world looks flat to me when I am at home on Earth but it won't look flat if I was on the International Space Station.

Exactly. But more importantly the term "100% certainty" is consistent with being in error, as long as one is certain one is right, even if you're wrong.

Just don't overdo it.

Good one!

(rimshot)

There is such a thing as overthinking an issue.

I've had a full life. Getting fuller every day. Every extra day is a blessing, make the most of it.

100% certainty from whose perspective?

I can "know" with 100% certainty (from my perspective) that the world is flat.

However from the perspective of the International Space Station I'd be 0% accurate.

Certainty of factual accuracy of a subject is a comment on one's opinion concerning the subject, not an actual evaluation of the subject itself. In other words a simpleton can be 100% certain that the world is flat or the moon is made of cheese. In fact in a practical sense, the degree of a person's certainty is inversely proportional to their wisdom and life experience.

Why are most not suited for it, and to what degree are they not suited for it?

Because most value family, home and stability (at least some of the time) more than freedom, excitement and adventure.

Young folks are on average more drawn to freedom etc since they're developing their persona, separate from their family's.

Well your commentary on "personal Jesus" is exactly correct, since gods exist inter-subjectively, every god of every religion is, by definition personal. Of course most religions maintain sacred texts, in which their gods appear, but gods don't exist in texts, they exist in the (personal) minds of their believers.

Has the economic anarchy of capitalism produced the current status quo of 2/3rds of the world living below the poverty line?

Uummm... in a word: no. The percentage of wealth owned by the top 10% is essentially the same during the 1400s (a bit more than a century before capitalism was invented) and now. The only times when the top 10% had a major decrease in their percentage of wealth owned was during the Black Plague and the WW1/WW2 eras (one before capitalism and one during it).

Nemesis was the Greek goddess of vengeance, a deity who doled out rewards for noble acts and punishment for evil ones. The Greeks believed that Nemesis didn't always punish an offender immediately but might wait generations to avenge a crime. In English, nemesis originally referred to someone who brought a just retribution

In ancient Greece, my guess is there was no expectation that a formal justice system would provide justice. Thus the need for a metaphysical entity to step in, perhaps long after your death. In other words no physical justice and no (true) metaphysical justice. A perfect scenario for personal justice.

You can only properly be said to "know" something if it is true. Otherwise you allow folk to know things that are false, and our use of "know" becomes inconsistent

Exactly. You agree that "know" and "true" can only be linked retrospectively (after truth has been verified) or in other words they aren't linked prospectively (my original point).

Thus in Real Life (which is experienced prospectively) , better to decouple any connection between the two concepts.

To most travel means: vacation. Which implies your normal life is work, family and home. Nomadic "travel" is not that, and frankly most are not suited to it.

Everyone "knows" they have made a mistake AFTER it has been discovered. But ten minutes BEFORE their mistake has been pointed out could be exactly the situation you are referring to. How can you tell the difference?

You know things that are not true? I don't think so.

What you can be said to know is true. Otherwise, you don't know it. Been that way since at least Theaetetus

Your comments are accurate if (and only if) you define truth as one's own personal truth, not a generally accepted truth (which most define it as).

Anyone who has ever made a mistake "knows" they put their car keys in the drawer, only to (in truth) find them in their pants pocket. According to you, the "knowledge" that my keys are in the drawer is true only because it is my personal "truth" (meaning closer to belief or opinion). Most folks feel that knowing the location of my keys is closer to belief and the true location of them is unrelated to what I believe or "know".

But Chinese women and Indian children and African men work twice as hard for a tenth of the pay, and their governments, sufficiently lubricated with bribes, are not too fussy about what you spill on the way out. So all the garden gnomes come from China and the American Guild of Gnome Crafters is sleeping on the street

Alas, you are conflating the concept of money (an imaginary way of equating the relative value of various goods and services) with capitalism and multinationals/globalism.

That's the starting point, but by extension, as you pointed out, the overall point is that we cannot know anything definitively ever. Thus she doesn't know he owns the car in the first place, even though she thinks she does and she is correct.

It just starts with a flagpole for demonstration purposes.

Given all of that, it's then relevant to ask what we mean by "true" when we say that "Jenny knows something" is true. Or if we can say it at all

Well, within the context of a philosophical discussion, the meaning of "know" has nothing to do with truth, it refers to understanding and memorizing the content of one's perceptions. Truth, OTOH deals with the relative comparison to a Gold Standard. The selection of the particular Gold Standard is subjective, thus introducing an amount (ranging from large to quantum level) amount of subjectivity to "truth".

This reminds me of Theseus paradox, more specifically, an example given by the philosopher Daniel Gilbert (I think).

If Dan shows Jenny his blue Mazda, and then Jenny is asked if she knows what car Dan owns, and she says "Yes, I know, a blue Mazda". That's one thing.

But consider that 2 weeks goes by, Dan get's in an accident and total's his Mazda.
He then goes out and buys another blue Mazda.

Jenny knows nothing of this, but later, she is asked if she knows what car Dan owns. She says "Yes, I know, he owns a blue Mazda".

The statement "He owns a blue Mazda" is true, but is the statement "Yes, I know" true

I disagree. In the first instance Jenny was told by Dan that he owned the blue Mazda he showed her. She believed what he told her (likely for good reason), and as luck would have it, her belief happened to be true. But she didn't have enough information to know that he owned the car.

In the second scenario, she continued to believe Dan owned the blue Mazda that he showed her. Now her belief happens (through no fault of her own) to be in error. However through blind luck (and her casual syntax) he happens to own a different blue Mazda, thus her statement is true. Similarly, she still doesn't have enough information to know that he owns the car she was shown, let alone the new car, about which she knows nothing.

UBI helps reduce money/currency to nothing more than a means of exchange. It would remove its power to create a majority underclass of poor people and it would much reduce or remove the ability of a rich and powerful few, to control a poor majority mass

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree that an idea superior to money can't come along or that UBI isn't a good idea. However, neither would be possible without passing through a time period where humans developed the inter-subjective concept of money.

Some of them made the mistake of clumping themselves into walled cities and setting up lords and bosses to trample all over them, and whom they joined in trampling all over everybody who didn't live the way they did - in debt, alienation, fear and bondage. Modern civilization was a very costly experiment, and it has failed; at this very moment, it's tearing itself and the planet on which it stands to pieces

Well like most opinions, it depends on whose perspective you view the scenario from.

I'm doing great and can't honestly come up with a past that puts me in an overall superior present. Of course I am not naive enough to not appreciate that (actual) history did not have those who ended up losers in the relative game of life. Chief among those being initial hunter-gatherers who converted to agriculture and those in the following millennia. But luckily (for us) past generations have already paid that initiation fee. We're free to reap the rewards of technological advances that continuing at the hunter-gatherer stage would have never realized.

No doubt other, less consequential mistakes have been made along the way. But never developing the concept of money would not in my opinion have lead to a superior current state, though I appreciate others disagree. BTW those are some mighty fine homemade shoes you're sporting there...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a Universal Basic Income require, you know... income? I'm interested to learn how income exists without appreciation of the concept of money. Money, of course being a mental concept, not a physical entity.

Why does one need to acquire things? The earliest clothing was made by the wearer or a member of their community. The earliest writing appears on cave walls and roadside rocks, accessible to all. Could have just carried on in the same spirit of sharing.

Why should that be so? Canoes, bows, teepees, rugs and beautifully beaded leather footwear can be crafted without using a single gold sovereign or dollar bill. Why are books an exception?

I truly don't understand your first sentance. Of course that's my Modern human bias showing, but you can't write your sentance in this thread without acquiring a phone or computer. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you don't have the skillset to make your own electronic equipment.

True, humans could have stayed in the hunter-gatherer stage or even the most primitive agricultural stage by eschewing the concept of money. Of course large cities, nations and corporations would not have been possible in the absence of credit, which would have been unthinkable without the concept of money.

Books require investment in printing presses. Publishing companies similarly require investment. Nope, handwritten pamphlets is pretty much going to be it for you.

Humankind had two very good inventions: clothing and writing, and two very bad ones: money and religion

And how, exactly does one acquire clothing and pamphlets (books being almost impossible to manufacture in the absence of a modern style economy) in the absence of the concept of money?

The tricky thing here is that there is a legitimate disagreement about whether vengeance is equivalent to (commutative) justice or is only a synecdoche. In that conversation, which I was also a part of, there seem to have been at least four options:

Vengeance and justice are the same thing
Vengeance is a part of justice
Vengeance is any form of retaliation
'Vengeance' is a pejorative and nothing more ("I am not willing to tell you what I mean by vengeance, only that I consider it to be bad")

When the parties resist disambiguation the wagon is inevitably stuck in the mud, going nowhere

Yeah that ended up being a reasonable conversation... once the ground rules (definitions) were identified.

I believe the OP meant your third definition, as I did. Most posters used the fourth one, at least initially.

I don't agree that vengeance is an umbrella term in any sense. I could understand why different interpretations of the concept add to the complexity in a way that's somewhat similar though

Well, I guess I meant that I use vengeance as a specific term (which it is) in conversation with those who use it as an umbrella term (synonymous with "justice").

Or you could say trying to pin down an essence will hide the fact that the term is half of a whole that can't stand independent if its opposite

I don't disagree, though in my experience while masculinity is "opposed" by femininity, it is more useful to view them as opposite poles on a broad spectrum, rather than two sides of a dualist paradigm.

This was, relatively speaking, an outsider to your field?

I'd heard that "ethicist" is a profession now. Was their expertise helpful? Can you describe that for us a little?

This was in a medical context. The head of the Ethics Committee was trained in medical ethics, but was a practicing MD, though his medical expertise was rarely called upon, whereas his ethical chops served as proxy ethical "training" for the rest of us who were not trained. That is, he corralled our thoughts and kept us from straying off course.