Hannibal

Maybe, but having an excuse doesn't legitimise the action. I've since been given a heads-up on why people may be reacting in a way I view as harsh. I haven;t looked into it deeply because i'm not interested in judging the guy. Not that other;s necessarily shouldn't be though.

While i'm on an Ayn Rand vibe... "In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win." Hold on... 1) That logic is very broken. You say natural observations can't be used as evidence because we might then think its natural to have sex with children, yet at the same time you claim that homosexual is not natural. Based on what evidence? 2) Your religious views are evil. It's not really fair to post a rant on your first visit because someone said something against your irrational faith, and against your irrational views on homosexuality, and then to complain that you don;t want to debate either. 3) I don't respect your disagreement with homosexuality. What makes you think that I or anyone else should? Opinions aren't worth respect just because someone holds them. I respect peoples desire to talk about their opinions in order to understand and validate them, but a bullshit opinion will always be a bullshit opinion. Look for karen straughan on youtube for a very good source.

I'd even go so far as to say that neither are ad hominem, in the spirit of the meaning. It's not really useful to equate an insult to an ad hominem. The logical fallacy of an ad hominem is that one uses an attack against the person in order to attempt to attack the argument. Insulting a person for the purpose of causing insult is not really an ad hominem in that sense. Saying that an argument is stupid, in order to express the idea that that argument is, in fact, stupid isn;t ad hominem either. Saying that a person is a silly fat stupid face, and therefore his argument is wrong, is ad hominem.

If your love is unconditional, then I would suggest that it's not any kind of meaningful love. I.e the kind of love you feel towards a family member by default, purely because they are a family member. Love is about sharing values, and as pets aren;t able to hold values, other than material values (as a generalisation), i would say that you don;t actually love your pet in any meaningful sense. "love" is a very broad term, and your kind of love falls under that label somewhere, but we could really do with another word to distinguish between the different kinds. -- Ayn Rand.

This is weird. Why are people being so aggressive? And why is NVC bullshit? I think some people are too keen to see themselves as born again psycho analysts. There are lots of damaged people on these boards, and one of the trends i've seen is the tendency for damaged people to find philosophy, and suddenly feel that they are the intellectual masters of the universe, even though they mostly talk bullshit. Geez... this guy admits to a real problem, explains a technique that he feels has helped him, and you guys go nuts at him for hurting his kids, even though he explains that his problems are due to wanting to protect his kids. Shame on you. **edit** ... I'm making these comments without any view of the guy;s previous post history. It just occurred to me that someone could talk about "this NVC bullshit" because someone has some kind of history with it. In isolation, this thread seems really horrible.

Having faith is crazy, by definition right? So this guy was a crazy guy, and he acted crazy (admittedly because you were pretending to be a fellow crazy, and got the script wrong ). Don't worry about it. You are talking about the faith whereby a baby that doesn't live long enough to be baptised is condemned to limbo, because he/she was born with sin, without even understanding what sin is. I grew up in a family with a Roman Catholic mum, an a father who thought it was all bullshit, but agreed to let her raise us as catholics (and admits that in crisis, he would ask whatever god there might be to save his kids - fair enough). We went to church now and then when we were very little, but after that we just went through the catholic school system (in UK btw). I didn;t really understand it all at the time, but now I understand what all the rituals are about. I went to a christening recently, i think the first one i've been to. They did an exorcism. Crazy shit! I'm not belligerent by nature, and I'm happy going to friend's church weddings (often just to keep granny happy), but I'm not compromising on my values. I tell my friends that they are advocating evil thing I'm always tempted to tell said granny, when the subject arises, that her faith is evil I think it serves no benefit to someone that old though, and would be a nasty thing to do. Just mentioning all of this to reassure you, as someone who understands the rituals (often better than the acolytes themselves - e.g., people VERY often think that the immaculate conception is about Jesus' mother being a virgin) that it's all just batshit crazy, and to not care about what the batshit crazy people think.

I agree. Logic is an observation of reality, and reason is the application of logic. "Conversely, I only have to decide that something is my responsibility, when it requires me to invest time/resources that I would normally invest in my prior interests." So what happens when something that is your responsibility also is considered to be someone else's responsibility, and you both see very different outcomes? For example you see it as your responsibility to harvest the crop so that it goes into your belly, while another sees it as his responsibility to see that the crop goes into his own belly?

My childhood was pretty good. Great compared to lots. I was smacked very occasionally, and mollycoddled a little too much for my liking (when a person enjoys freedom, too much attention can feel more like being smothered). And to pick one single problem in your response - a man in a coma IS VERY different to a sleeping animal. When the man wakes up from his coma he will be capable of moral agency once again. An animal will NEVER be a moral agent, by definition. The problem I have is that you persist in insisting that the ability to reason has nothing to do with morality, yet will not provide any kind of reasoning behind your alternative idea of what morality is. I ask again, why do we need a concept of morality? baby steps - lets just answer this question first. That's not an ad homonym. Exactly. The concept of a right is reciprocal by definition. Cruelty to animal is still immoral, on a personal level (i think at least), but rights are entirely different. Lets not put any species at all on top. Lets instead look at the genesis of rights, and reasoning behind moral principles, from which we derive rights, to start with. It's not about reason because you don;t see to be interested in reason. Empathy has nothing to do with rights. You are making the mistake of substituting empathy for reason when analysing the application of individual rights. Empathy is a personal thing. Rights are a social thing. How do I create a new post per reply? Instead of packing all of my replies to other posts into one single reply?

Both. Now the focus tends to be on theft of IP, but behind that there is still a violation of contract. You don;t sign your signature, but it's the same as the contract that you implicitly agree to when you park in a clearly signposted car park.

And I never implied that you had. I'm simply explaining the origins of rights, and how those origins mean that they cannot apply to animals. You keep clinging tightly to an assertion with regards to animals possessing rights, but make no attempt to support your assertion with any kind of logic. This is why I'm outright stating that you don't understand what you;re talking about, because you don;t seem to be able to provide any reasoning, let alone sound reasoning. Please don;t take that the wrong way if it sounds aggressive - It's just that we've used up pages of dialogue and you've declined to provide any kind of reasoning at all.

The validity of copyright and the fact that IP is a contradiction in terms, are not mutually exclusive. This is a big mistake which I think all of the above posts are making... 1) Non-scarce things are not ownable, as already highlighted. To own a non-scarce thing (like "IP") is a contradiction in terms. Fine. 2) Copyright is not dependant on the concept of IP (although it may be in our current legal framework). Copyright violation, in a word where IP doesn't exist, is not theft. It IS, however, fraud. Why is it fraud? If you buy a cd you agree to a contract whereby the sale is contingent on you promising not to copy and to not distribute any copy. So the copier is engaging in fraud. What about the guy who receives the copy? When a thief steals a car is is obviously determined to be a thief. When someone then knowingly buys that car they are complicit in the theft. I don;t know what the differences in the law are in the US/UK, or wherever, but whether it be receiving stolen goods, conspiracy to steal, or whatever (depending on the details of the circumstance), the second person is complicit in the crime. When someone engages in fraud, and someone else conspires to commit that fraud, or knowingly takes advantage of that fraud to the detriment of the victim of that fraud, then they too are complicit. I imagine in a world where IP isn't legally recognised that it may be difficult to enforce copyright infringements very far down the chain - it gets hard to analyse the whole situation to judge if a person really is complicit. That, however, doesn't stop copyright from being a perfectly valid, and enforceable concept. And I imagine that it wouldn;t be too problematic to prosecute the immediate copier, and those next in the chain of complicity. I should mention that I used to write off the concept of copyright as being dependant on IP, but in a conversation with Agalloch, who i think lurks around here, he managed to get e to see the truth. The key for me was to abandon thinking of it as theft, and to concentrate on the fraudulent element.

You're comparing apples and oranges, and saying that they are the same because they are both fruit. The source of rights and morality comes from the nature of apples, not from the nature of fruit. You need to provide some reasoning to back up your case before you can reasonably expect anyone to give it serious consideration. You need to explain why you believe that morality and rights come from fruit, rather than apples.

Have you read Atlas Shrugged? I don;t think going Galt is as simple these days though. To answer your question, the rationale for becoming the best at what you do is pride, and pride is the source of real human happiness. If your job hobby/whatever is creating value, increasing the quality of life for yourself and/or those around you, then for someone who values life the creation of wealth and happiness should bring great pride (look at a caveman - your default state - and compare that with the lifestyle you create. It's all by deliberate choice and effort). Why do I strive to be the best I can be even though that just makes more money for the state? because despite having a chunk of my wealth-creation wasted, there is still a net gain as far as I'm concerned. If that were ever to stop being the case, then i'd stop being productive. If you think about it, these kinds of discussions aren;t happening in other countries where the people are so poor that just surviving takes up all of their attention. The relatively huge wealth I have gives me the freedom to consider the evils of the state, and how they might be undone.

It's not really something that's especially of interest to me, like asking me whether i think red is better than blue, if you get my meaning. What is of interest to me is value, and I am my own highest value. All morality stems from that, as it should stem from yourself as your own highest value. Where the moral values of all men, who choose to live as men, overlap, we have rights. Animals may value food over rocks, but they aren't capable of holding moral values. Without those moral values there is no overlap, there is no free exchange of values between men and animal, and therefore no animal rights. Some humans may not possess any values which we wish to trade, but they have the capacity to and in the interest of consistency and non-contradiction they are still afforded the same rights. Man is considered man because of his nature as a man, despite the degree to which that humanity is realised. Animals do not possess the attributes of humanity that give rise to human rights, and therefore should not be afforded such legal rights.

Ownership is an essential concept if men want to live as men; without it we would be living like cavemen. The enormous wealth that we are able to create, which we can see all arounds us in everything which contrasts cave-dwelling life, is the product of man's rational mind, guiding his actions. In order for man to invest his time and effort he must be sure that the fruit of his labour will be accessible to him in the future. Without that guarantee his efforts would not be rational, and he wouldn't waste his time & effort. This is why the concept of property and ownership is inherent in man's nature. Even the tribal peoples you talk about will most certainly embrace the concept of ownership when confronted with another tribe which seeks to appropriate the first tribe's food stock. We can see how essential the concept of ownership is when comparing the economic prosperity of countries with strong property rights, against those with weak property rights. Given that ownership is axiomatic, and essential, i don't see significance in the rest of your distinguishing between owning and taking responsibility. The bad things you mention have absolutely nothing to do with ownership, and everything to do with a wilful disregard for objectivity with regards to morality & law. Each of those bad things you highlighted could be applied to a situation where people took responsibility instead of owning, as a poster already mentioned above. I also see no problem with regards to ownership leading to owning people - this is only a concern when the concept of ownership, why it exists, and therefore what it actually is, is not understood. This is no different from the argument for love being an irrational thing, and therefore potentially damaging. The concern that love is damaging is red-herring, obscuring a more basic misunderstanding of what love is.

I don't think the necessarily have a different meaning. Your definition is good enough for me right now, I just don;t think sentience directly has anything to do with the argument at hand. I have no idea how you can get to this conclusion... If i suggest that the law exists to protect men's rights, which i also said is the right to live free from coercion (NAP), then the question doesn't make sense. How can one enforce the single right that men have, by violating the single right that men have. Sure, it's the same thing. If men must be free to use their minds to live and prosper, then the product of their minds must also fall under the same protection. Taking another man's food, which is a product of his free and reasoned actions, ends in the same result as preventing him from freely harvesting that food in the first place. Freedom of the mind is meaningless without the freedom to act on it, and therefore nullification of the free action is the same as nullification of the free thought. No you mustn't. An infant is not a moral agent, and so he is not treated as a moral agent. This is why children aren't legally responsible for their actions (at least where I live). Children are/should be afforded as many of the same right as men are, because they will one day become a moral agent, just as a comatose man will (hopefully) one day awaken to become once again a moral agent. We expect & hope one day to trade freely with this grown-up child, and we expect a mutual observation of the NAP, so it is in our interest to afford the proto-man as many of the rights that a grown man has as we can, while considering the child's safety. No. You are choosing an arbitrary delimiter (sentience) when it comes to measuring universality. How did you arrive at the conclusion that this was the correct distinction? Why? You need to lay out the reasoning which leads you to this conclusion. Otherwise it;s no better than saying "because God wills it". This is why you need to first ask yourself why we even need morality in the first place? Only when you understand what purpose it serves can you then decide what is moral, and when and to whom it applies. Rights are the result of the application of moral principles in a social context. Those border line animals play no role in a human social context, which is why it makes no sense to grant them rights. It could, of course, still be immoral to mistreat them; but this is immorality in a personal context, and rights only make sense in a social context. Ayn Rand's explanations, which i;m paraphrasing, are very compelling and are the only ones which are objectively provable (hence the name Objectivism). There are articles and things on objectivist organisation websites which talk about things like animal rights. I'm not sure if Rand ever explicitly explained why animals do not have individual rights. It's implicit in her explanations of why men do.

"Do you accept that animals can feel pain?" Sure. "Also, my understanding of "rights" is granted just by virtue of being alive and sentient. Why? What is the difference between alive/dead, or sentient/dumb that suddenly makes rights important and worth having? There is no such difference because the real source of rights (and the only thing which gives the concept any meaning) comes from values & reciprocity, as i mention below. "I don't consider "law" to be a valid moral construct." I certainly do. Law is the manifestation of men observing each other's rights. Rights are a product of ethics, and morality is a set of shortcuts to ethical principles. Therefore objectively valid law, that exists to protect men's rights, is morality in action. "What do you mean by "rights?"" There is only 1 real right (to live free from aggression ie. NAP), and all others are logical consequences of that. As men our only tools for survival are our rational minds. The only thing that can stop us from using (or at least being able to choose to use) our minds to pursue a happy and prosperous life, is force. Therefore when we take morality into a social context we agree that no man may use force against another, as we value life and must be free in order to pursue it. The concept of a right makes no sense without the expectation of reciprocity in its provision, and consequently animals cannot have rights when they are incapable of grasping the concept, let alone observing those rights.

Ok... this isn't what you're asking for, but it's what I'd say about you behind your back, so it's what I think is the truth: If you suspect that you're doing this to avoid the difficulties that come with being a christian, then I would say that you really need to abandon your faith. How can you think clearly and rationalise this thing out when your very moral fibre is based on lies, superstition, and a desire to pass off self-responsibility (primarily responsibility for thinking for yourself)? If you embrace truth, and make reason your guiding light through life, answering these kinds of question will be so much easier, assuming that they would even need to be answered in the first place! You're trying to resolve some kind of internal struggle - to resolve a contradiction where you believe that sex before marriage, for example, is wrong but you can't explain why, other than an invisible man in the sky said so. Your body, and your mind and it's experience with life is tugging at you and telling you that it doesn't make sense, yet you must cling onto the idea because you;re emotionally invested in it. A mind free from contradictions is just that - free. No one can enslave your mind other than yourself. Free your mind and you'll find that self-pride that comes with it, and a man who is proud of himself doesn't destroy his own body.

This is a mistake. The science of ethics is a man-made concept and exists to aid us in making choices, with regards to behaviour & values, which yield the greatest benefit to us, with the ultimate goal being happiness. This means that keeping a cow as a "slave" cannot be be immoral in and of itself, because a slave cow is no less useful to us than a free one, and a slave cow may actually be very beneficial to us. It might make sense to say using force against a cow is immoral because it displeases you, and that's the reason I think fox hunting is immoral - because I don't think it's healthy for the human psychology to get pleasure from killing/destroying. This is very different to supposing that the NAP applies to cows or foxes, though. Animals have no rights whatsoever, as the source of rights is reciprocity. We recognise that being free from coercion is good for us all, without contradiction, so we establish the NAP as a right (i.e. to live according to it). This is strengthened by the knowledge that men free from coercion are more productive, and that men create value for other men in the process. Rights, like the NAP, apply in 2 directions. Cows and sheep are incapable of even understanding the concept, so they cannot hold any rights. The idea of giving (clue is in the word 'giving') rights to animals makes no sense - it happens because it pleases us, but they aren't real rights; they are really entitlements, just like 'rights' to education, etc. I think this is the problem. I don't think you have a proper understanding of what the science of ethics is. The science of ethics is, as I named it, a science. It requires the ability to reason, and as such animals can't participate. Assuming that you meant that it applies the other way around, i.e. human ethics regarding the treatment of animals, then I still think there is a problem because ethics, in that sense, also applies to creatures without free will, dead creatures, trees, lakes, beer and cake. How we interact with all of these things affects our ability to live the best way we can. I understand that we are typically concerned with interactions with other beings, because those are the kinds of interactions that we want to police, but to me your indication that free will is the source of rights, or ethical consideration, points to the root of the mistake.

This needn't be as difficult as it's made out to be... Firstly, parents cannot own their children because that introduces the problem of determining when a child stops being a child, and therefore stops being owned, and as someone must own themselves in order to own anything, children must at some point stop being owned otherwise we'd all be the property of someone else. This is just 1 issue, but its simple enough to abandon the idea right away. So how do we reconcile the issue of childrens rights, and the fact that we have to make them do/not do stuff? 1)What is morally good is that which aids man in living as a man. That's a simple and detailed enough definition. If you don't agree then ask yourself why do we even need a concept of morality in the first place? 2) On this basis we have rights, which are all derived from the fact that for men to live as men we must all be free from the interference of other men that prevents us from achieving that end. While a man may behave immorally to himself if he chooses, we prohibit that immorality when used against ourselves. This is potentially applicable to every single person without contradiction, and so we have a universally accepted principle, or a "right". 3) Children do not have all of the rights that an adult has. To do so would be contradictory as we've already noted that morality exists to guide us in promoting the living of lives, as men; If a child had an equally absolute right to live free from coercion, that child would invariably die and the human race would become extinct. This means that parents may use coercion to protect their children until the point that they can look after themselves. No more. 4) Clearly there will come times where the lines aren't easily seen, and mistakes will be made. This does nothing to invalidate the moral principle, and if the principle is only violated in those unclear and difficult times, then it would hardly be an issue worth worrying about. To suppose that a parent can own a child seems a very strange idea. It's no different from the idea that white men could own black men. On one hand w man and a woman "make" a child, on the other men and women labour to catch a black man. The only reason it's even considered is because of confusion about the applicability of rights to children. As I've alluded to already, if you want to understand the philosophical basis for property rights you should first ask yourself why we need a moral code in the first place. When you see that a moral code is a codified set of shortcuts to ethical principles, and that the purpose of ethics is to reason on our behaviour so that we might live the best lives we can (as life is an end in itself - the alternative makes this thread and forum redundant), and that the way we live the best lives we can is by living as men (our ability to reason - and therefore alter the environment around us, and to trade and cooperate - is what sets us apart from animals), then you'll see that in order to maximise our humanity and live as long and as comfortable as we can, with as much joy as we can, property rights are essential. Without property rights we'd all be living like cavemen. So now we can get to the fine details about what does and doesn't constitute property, and we'll do a better job knowing why we're even asking the question in the first place.

Look on mises.org. Lots of good revisionist history there.

I don't understand #3. In a price coordinated economy, as a price rises, demand falls and supply increases. This applies to labour too. Price floors on labour leads to unemployment. In addition to that, when a price floor is set, then there is less incentive for employers to hire the workers who's productivity matches the old, lower price. Instead they are more likely to hire workers who's productivity matches the price they are forced to pay. As such, price floors on labour leads to higher levels of qualification demanded to perform the same job that would go to a less qualified person if a minimum wage didn't exist.

Rand's self-interest is rational self-interest. Ofcourse not wanting to be murdered sounds pretty rational to me - that was probably not the most useful example Arius could have used, but it's not anti-Rand. Rand's idea of self-interest is inseperable from rationality. Otherwise it's self-indulgent self-destruction.

What? Have it sit in a closet? Yeah, If I'm spending money on something that I will never be able to use and just stick it in a closet never to look at it again. It would be like if I bought Picasso paintings because they appreciated in value. But I can't go to the store and buy food, clothes, or emergency medical aid with a painting. I would have to sell the painting for paper money at some point to benefit from having it. That's my problem with people who talk about gold as a store of value. Eventually you will have to sell it for paper money to get use out of it, and all the paper money you spent to get it in the first place could have been used to fix up your house, or pay off your car, or buy food, etc etc. I think the question was aimed at the turning it back into paper money part What's the weird issue you've got with selling your gold when you want to liquidate it? That's kindof the point, lol.

I don't understand the post. Objectivity is dependant on the object - i.e. what is. Subjectivity depends on the subject, i.e. a particular interpretation of what is. icecream is made from milk - objectively true. icecream is tasty - subjectively true or false. I think icecream is tasty - objectively true or false. I don't understand what you mean by whether "an object/subject divide actually exists". It's just a language construct to describe a logical concept. I might be wrong, but I think you have a common misunderstanding of what objectovity/subjectivity actually is.