Rick Horton

Look. I see right through all of your insults and passive aggressiveness. I'm just going to give fair warning that if you want to keep heading down that route, I will not be passive aggressive. I'll straight out make it honest and we'll just have a real knock down drag out cut down match. Is that what you want, because I'm about to change it into that if you don't quit behaving like this. I don't need anybody's permission but my own to go that angle with you if you keep going, so I'm giving you fair warning that if you do this passive aggressive thing again, the reaction will be your cause. I really don't come here to hear passive aggressive dudes grow balls from behind computers and feel that I somehow should just take it without paying you back, and then some... You want to talk about issues, fine, but you want to exhault yourself above me, I won't pretend not to notice.

^^^Passive aggressive, "and" insults....^^

I return your argument. If I slap you for making that argument, will you understand it is a type of loving discipline? It shouldn't traumatize you. I'll only slap you a little, it won't cause severe pain. It will be an expression of my love for you as a fellow person. We have a bond of care between us, so it's not some kind of huge deal. I don't want to discipline you, but you don't seem to understand how much danger your argument puts you in. Don't you see? I need to slap you for your own good. It doesn't mean you're any less of a person or that I don't like you. It just means I cannot reason with your young mind (as it cannot rationalize danger), and you need to be slapped into not making this argument again. It's not abuse. It's not assault or rape. Associating assault with something like a small, harmless slap is wrong to do. /thread If you slapped me, I'd kick your ass, but you aren't my parents. You don't have any bond with me, you don't pay for the clothes I wear, and you don't feed me, or put a roof over my head, throw me birthday parties, take me to school, care for me when I'm sick, take me for Icecream, and all of the other things my parents did. There is no understanding or relationship outside of this forum between you or I. You CANNOT take the parent out of the equation, and you can't put yourself in the role of a parent. You can't put me in the role of your child. These associasion games are stupid. If you can't understand why slapping wrists of your child, or spanking, is okay then don't spank. It's not abuse though. It's sick that you don't have an appreciation for what abuse, "really" is. But don't put yourself between a family, because you're supposed to be an anarchist, not a statist, although in my family a statist has no authority to involve themself in how we do things in it, either. well judging by how hostile some of your posts can be, and how you have a knack for projecting your own passive agressiveness on other people (I've seen you do it twice by now)--it is clear to me now that your own physical damage as a child has had adverse affects on you to be as confrontational as you are right now. Despite of how well you try to defend your parents and justify their actions, you fail to recognize how much of your arguments actually have anything to do with what I've said or what Arius said, but much more to do with unloading your real pent up agression towards your parents for treating you the way you did, thus externalizing it on us anonymous internet folk. But what do I know? Your parents did provide for you with all the things you listed, so I am not in the business of demonizing them, especially if my gripe is with you. Or should I say not you, but your continual ignoring of my base arguments--meanwhile all this time I have been adapting some of the reasoning your provided that has got me to second guess some of my own firm beliefs--you simply reject all that I say as false without considering any of it. For instance you say that a simple hand slap is NOT abuse, and although I don't agree with you on that, it does let me consider if the extremity of physical pain caused CAN actually make the different between good parenting and abusive parenting. All I'm trying to tell you is that although a hand slap isn't as bad as full out beating the shit out of a kid, it is still a violation of the child's sense of physical safety and comfort, and that of course does affect them mentally, whether they acknowledge it consciously or not. Is it so much for you to take that in consideration so that our argument can take on more progress, instead of circling back and forth to a dead horse you've beaten to a pulp? Now I can't expect you to tell me I am right about anything I've said, especially since you do seem firm in your beliefs and I respect that, but I do wish you would at least consider some of the arguments I brought forth. Ya know, instead of writing them off as icky and gross because it makes you uncomfortable that I compare child abuse to adult rape. ^^Passive aggressive post.^^

Who thinks parents are The State, in families? I'm not sure, and I can't find it yet, but did Stefan do a show about this? It's interesting to me that parents could be called The State, in a family.

I return your argument. If I slap you for making that argument, will you understand it is a type of loving discipline? It shouldn't traumatize you. I'll only slap you a little, it won't cause severe pain. It will be an expression of my love for you as a fellow person. We have a bond of care between us, so it's not some kind of huge deal. I don't want to discipline you, but you don't seem to understand how much danger your argument puts you in. Don't you see? I need to slap you for your own good. It doesn't mean you're any less of a person or that I don't like you. It just means I cannot reason with your young mind (as it cannot rationalize danger), and you need to be slapped into not making this argument again. It's not abuse. It's not assault or rape. Associating assault with something like a small, harmless slap is wrong to do. /thread If you slapped me, I'd kick your ass, but you aren't my parents. You don't have any bond with me, you don't pay for the clothes I wear, and you don't feed me, or put a roof over my head, throw me birthday parties, take me to school, care for me when I'm sick, take me for Icecream, and all of the other things my parents did. There is no understanding or relationship outside of this forum between you or I. You CANNOT take the parent out of the equation, and you can't put yourself in the role of a parent. You can't put me in the role of your child. These associasion games are stupid. If you can't understand why slapping wrists of your child, or spanking, is okay then don't spank. It's not abuse though. It's sick that you don't have an appreciation for what abuse, "really" is. But don't put yourself between a family, because you're supposed to be an anarchist, not a statist, although in my family a statist has no authority to involve themself in how we do things in it, either.

This is definitely not a good comparison, given the child's cognitive development and overal experience of the world. Children are not "little persons" (like they are seen in old paintings) who process hand slaps and abuse in the way you seem to believe. Children will internalize abuse as self attack, and their dependency to the adults in their lives is an actual psychological experience of unity with them, not some sort of political or social landscape where they must be given "respect". All forms of abuse, conscious and unconscious result from this fundamental lack of empathy, which is very sad and unfortunate. What evidence do you have other than Stef's podcasts to support this? This is quack talk. Don't water down abuse. Everybody talks about self knowledge as if it was an abstract. I wasn't always a grown up. I had some spankings when I was little, and some hand slaps. It didn't traumatize me. There is a bond of care with good parents and they show so much love that a little hand slap is not some kind of huge big deal. It's not abuse. It's not rape. I know for me it was just a discipline tool. I never felt it to be a sign that I wasn't liked, loved, or that I was less of a person. A hand slap, or spanking should never cause severe pain. If it does, THEN it's being done wrong. When done right, it is just a way to prevent a toddler from doing something he doesn't understand is dangerous again. You can't always reason with children who are too young to rationalize danger, but you can give a little hand slap or spanking to stop a child from doing something dangerous when they are about to. Then they relate that little spanking to the situation and don't do it again. Like running into traffic, or touching a stove top. It's not abuse. Abuse is very different, and associating abuse with something like a small, harmless handslap is wrong to do.

Shame is not the only way to control people. There has never been anarchy. As long as people aren't equal there will never be.

Yeah you're right, a hand slap is not abuse. In the same way, grabbing a random woman's ass is not rape. They are both gateways to possible abuse in the future if the perpetrator feels that they can get away with it on a regular basis. Although they are definitely not their more extreme counterparts, they are still violiations of a person's physical comfort that does cause psychological damage. Comparing slapping hands to rape is disgusting

You should read your posts. I have. You said reality is nothing more than the senses. You said if you do not experience something, then it "isn't reality". Do you claim to sense the past and all real people now? You did not say memory was accurate, you said it was not. But how would you know that it's not accurate? For that matter, how do you know what "works sometimes" are things that work in your reality, given that you say memory is inaccurate and you demand certainty for reality to exist? I am thinking now you don't want to learn. My positions are flawed also, but I try. You keep saying that I've said things that I haven't. First you have to reread everything I've written before we can go on, because I think you're confusing yourself. How can you teach me something that I'm telling you? I wasn't asking for clarification on my own philosophy so I don't know how you can teach me something if you don't understand what I've written. More than that, you've read your own projections of what you think I'm trying to mean right over my actual words which haven't said one thing you keep saying I've said. I mean that's a big no no in philosophy discussion.

In this case I don't care whether or not memory is accurate, just that you believe there is such an idea of "accuracy" of memory. If you accept that your memory has some measure of accuracy (zero or otherwise) suggests to me that you can in principle compare your "real" memory to something else that is also considered by you to be real. You seem to deny that the past is essential to this discussion, or that existence of the past is in some doubt. Large enough doubt anyway to consider the past unreal to you. In that case, is not the very idea of "accuracy" of memory in equal doubt, just as the senses are insufficiently real indicators of this unreal nexus where everyone you do not currently sense might live? It makes no sense for you to say the past, and people you do not currently see, are all unreal, but somehow your memory of such things is somewhat inaccurate. Those things are unreal (being in the past which is unreal) so accuracy of memory should be a meaningless idea. Perhaps if you admit accuracy of memory has no meaning to you we can go from there. Who said the past isn't real? Who said that people aren't real? Who said that memory is accurate? It seems to work for me sometimes, and other times I can't remember. When I can remember something it helps me do stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation Manipulation is emotional coercion and is abuse. Quite right. Let me be more precise..."a grown-up bully on a philosophy forum" Am I the "passive aggressive little fuck head..." you called me in the other thread? You call everything abuse.

It is not my aim to be disagreeable. I congratulate you for being skeptical of things you cannot sense. I think "sense" means more than you believe it means (memory and all the deductions of the senses). I feel there is something wrong when you say your memory is real and you accept it as sometimes faulty (how would you know that), but an objective outside reality that can be shown with arbitrarily high chance of existence is not accepted by you as real. I cannot say it is faith, but it seems like a similar unprovable choice. Your memory is sometimes faulty or it's not. The same goes for our deductive powers that indicate external reality. How can you say memory is real and external reality is a fictional? I say "fictional" not because you deny such existence, but because you are clearly denying that it deserves the word "reality". Who said that memory is correct? It's real, but not accurate. Who said that external reality is fictional?

abuse is always abuse. But a minor hand slap is not abuse.

So you're the schoolyard bully on a philosophy forum. I was never that type. Outright coercion is usually not a desirable solution to problems. Not because it is immoral, but because the backlash is too intense and hard to control. Using force is not manipulative exactly. A manipulator convinces his victims that he is acting in their interest, that he loves them, and that they should love him too. I do not think I was disrespectful in my post, so what is the point of the name calling? Don't mind him. He's always like that...

So you're the schoolyard bully on a philosophy forum. This isn't a school yard, and we're all growed up, so I don't think calling him a bully is cool, or called for.

That is moral nihilism, and I agree with it entirely. It's the epistemological, existential, and ontological forms of nihilism that I find problematic (though I find them less problematic than, say, objectivism). Good thread.

Opinions aren't fact. Opinions affect behavior. Different opinions lead to different behaviors. His behavior is not random, nor is it imaginary in the world. Therefore his opinion is a reflection of a certain amount of every population. Meaningful discourse is always possible, but when somebody doesn't want to listen to another side, it will break down of course. You can have meaningful conversations with people that have different morals than you. You can have peace with people with different morals with you. You can't have peace with people who wont listen to you. There are always those people who say you aren't worth listening to, and those people are the ones who secretly rule in that way over others.

Since this sentiment exists in humanity, there will always be a State. I disagree. In my experience most statists are actually moralists who have been convinced that the state is a moral good. I would argue that the morality used to justify statism is little more than a thin veil over the will to power (whereas the morality of objectivism is a social anesthetic to make inferiors less of a burden on superiors). "Inferiors" and "superiors" in what way though? The free market tends to favor those who are superior at making money. What about those who are superior at other important things, such as nurturing or offering emotional support to family, which are often unpaid positions? Just as an example. The point is that "inferior" and "superior" are pretty broad judgments of an entire human being, especially when they may only refer to one's ability to create a lucrative product or service in a market economy. Also, why can't we aim for a balance in which there can be some room for competitive people to seek some advantage if they work for it and play by the rules while also offering some baseline of safety from complete exploitation? Honstly, that was an unfair criticism I made. You guys here deserve better than that kind of insult, so I apologize. To answer your last question, why not do as much as possible to remove the potential of others to exploit me while maximizing my own ability to exploit? As a collective agreement what you said is reasonable, but why wouldn't I break the rules of that system anytime I could get away with it, or try to put myself in a position of authority within the system so I can manipulate it to increase my own power? Either way you cut it, there will be people who increase their own power because they excel at it. There will be people who exploit other people, because they excel at it. There will be people who control and rule because they find leverage. Historically it's always been the case. And because of that, they are the State, whether people want to call it that or "not". A rose by any other name. There have always been rulers, and there has never not been those who rule, so believing somehow there will be a society without rulers is religious because it hasn't existed in any life form. The strong, or smart, or most deceptive, or most adaptive always rule. They always become the rulers. So no matter what a person, or people wish, doesn't really matter. The best we can do is to try and do what we can to make our own lives happy. Trying to change humanity into something undoable is fantasy. That doesn't interest me.

You say "certain of" your senses. But what is certainty? Is it not reduction of error? That two things being equal, when compared, become more and more indistinguishable to your senses? To say your sense is certain, what are you comparing them to? I can only assume you mean you sense something, and later on you sense it again (and compare it to your memory of the first time, if there is such a thing as "first" time) and say "gee this is repeatable sensation" and it is now more "certain" that your senses match (What do they match? Your memory of your senses.). But if the repeatability gives certainty, then wait by your window and look for a bluebird. Mathematics is repeatable. A dream might be repeatable. And when I do a physics experiment and send my results to you, and you compare to your experiment, somewhere there is repeatability going on. But if you suppose the results of my experiment are relayed to you and match your results but the reality of them matching is "uncertain", but the sensation of a bluebird is certain, what are you using to distinguish between these two kinds of belief? I say imaginary because it could be the case that your memory is slightly less reliable (a dream can sometimes be remembered) than an exchange of repeatable experiments combined with the off chance that everyone is a real sensation of unreal beings who probably exist in some unreal nexus but you can't say for certain. Maybe I'm just off today, but I don't see a disagreement, or am I reading this right? I agree with what you said, but maybe I'll read this again later. Long day at work, and I need a little nap.

Since this sentiment exists in humanity, there will always be a State.

Why is it, when there is some small chance of uncertainty with regard to real existence outside your experience, you discard our common reality in favor of your own sensory reality, while at the same time the inaccuracy of your memory is a thing you accept and tolerate? When you look at the moon, it exists in your experience, and you retain memory of it, but you will say it might not exist right now. If there is possibly no ordering of events, then it might be the case that you have made some conclusions and the feeling you have that they are based on prior experience is only imaginary. So why accept such a conclusion? I mean, I don't really understand the problem. I'm much more certain of my senses than I am that I am about reality beyond my experience. Because there's no way to prove it. But there's no need to disprove or prove anything in my experience because I do experience it. Whether it's true or false, it's still there. But beyond that, who can "really" say. I never said anything about imaginary. I don't know why you said that, because it makes a huge difference in how you perceive what I'm saying. I can see why you have problems with what I'm saying if you keep projecting what you think I mean into what I'm actually saying. There is no need to prove you as real because you are having a real impact on my reality. Therefore you are a real subject of reality. At least the one I'm experiencing. Beyond that, nothing is provable, and there is uncertainty since there is no evidence that can prove anything beyond what I experience.

Actually, I find Arius' arguments are the most succinct and to the point of the responses you've gotten. He said it, I said it. You are equivocating. Oh, but you say you are not equivocating? Houston, we have a problem... Yeah. He said it. You said it. You are both wrong, lol. And neither of you have made a rebuttal, OR your own argument. Is it too "hard" to do?

I'm not equivicating. At all. You don't seem to be able to advance an argument, with me. Other members have, but I don't think you've advanced a single argument when discussing with me, so it's a little bit boring. I'll wait until, and if, you advance an argument of your own and back it up before I discuss this topic further with you, Arius. I'm not feeling it.

Yes that is true. Accessing memory happens in the present. But do you distinguish between memory and current (here-and-now) sensory input? If you do distinguish, isn't that admitting to an ordering of events? If you do not distinguish, how do you currently sense (or remember) that your memory is reliable or true? I don't know. I'm not saying there is an ordering of events. I don't know for sure if my memory is totally accurate, but it seems to work for me.

re·al·i·ty [ree-al-i-tee] Show IPA noun, plural re·al·i·ties for 3, 5–7. 1. the state or quality of being real. 2. resemblance to what is real. 3. a real thing or fact. 4. real things, facts, or events taken as a whole; state of affairs:the reality of the business world; vacationing to escape reality. 5. Philosophy . a. something that exists independently of ideas concerning it. b. something that exists independently of all other things andfrom which all other things derive. __________________________________________ There are numerous definitions, and my observations are totally valid as far as the dictionary is concerned.