WasatchMan

I question your empathy for posting this video. That video is clearly a passive aggressive attempt to shame people for taking a strong ethical stance on hitting children. If you think that it brought humor, or lulz, into this community than you clearly have a problem empathizing with this community.

IMO the confusion is coming from how you are wording the question. Violence as such has no ethical position. The philosophical position is that the initiation of violence is immoral.

The NAP can be directly derived from one of the most foundational axioms: the law of non-contradiction.

Its called self defense which is completely ethical and transferable.... Yes there are fuzzy boundaries, but such is reality.

If you discovered a different formula to make tires better I would recommend you try to seek compensation and value by selling your skills as an innovator, which is a rare and valuable skill to have. I am guessing this doesn't come about with trial and error by continually tweaking the mixture until the optimal properties are arrived at. If this was the case, it would have likely already been discovered because technicians could be trained to go through the same process. Therefore, the real value you posses is the ability to extrapolate principles, not that you discovered one tire formula that is better than the existing ones. The bio-chemical mixture of the tire exists in nature. You discovered it in nature, but you cannot own natural phenomena. This would be like Einstein saying he was the owner of General Relativity, and anyone who uses this natural phenomena owes him money. In a free market you could make everyone that buys tires from you sign a contract that they cannot use the tire in order to reverse engineer the formula. Then you could hire a legal tea, and try to sue anyone that violated this contract. However you could not go after someone who independently discovered the formula, because the formula exists in nature, not in you. At the end of the day, all this worrying about others using your ideas is going to take away from you creating more ideas. The same energy that invented a better tire formula can be spent finding other innovations, instead of protectionism to make sure you receive the exact amount of fair compensation for your work.

Another fine altruistic action from the state, proving yet again, if there was no state who would feed the homeless? [90 Year old minister receives a visit from the Crips (aka the boys in blue) for dealing food to the homeless, which everyone knows is turf long been claimed by the gang] http://youtu.be/gRF6Sc71jYY

To me this is like saying, Leonardo DiCaprio dies at the end of Titanic every time I watch it, therefore determinism.

UPB does provide it's premises in the section "Arguments and Universality": If I choose to debate, I have implicitly accepted a wide variety of premises that are worth spending some time to unpack here. Premise 1: We both exist Premise 2: The senses have the capacity for accuracy Premise 3: Language has the capacity for meaning Premise 4: Correction requires universal preferences Premise 5: An objective methodology exists for separating truth from falsehood Premise 6: Truth us better than falsehood Premise 7: Peaceful debating is the best way to resolve disputes Premise 8: Individuals are responsible for their actions UPB also contains 5 proofs under the section "UPB: Five Proofs". Here is the first one in syllogistic form: 1. The proposition is: the concept "universally preferable behavior" must be valid. 2. Arguing against the validity of universally preferable behavior demonstrated universally preferable behavior. 3. Therefore no argument against the validity of universally preferable behaviour can be valid.

What I would consider in this situation is that your apprehension towards marriage is an aesthetic preference, not a ethical one. Whether you are right or wrong about the risk of marriage, your friend has made the decision to take this risk. If you do trust that he understands the risk that he is taking, and that he has chosen a women that should minimize these risks, I would recommend that you find a way to put your aesthetic preference aside for now and support your friend and celebrate their choice with them.

This is some pretty 'old hat' as they say. God is a logical fallacy by definition, philosophy proves he doesn't exist, not science. Science only tests what DOES exist. If you were ever able to identify something as god, it would no longer be god, by definition.

A lot of great answers here. To me a way to sum it up is, marriage is a public commitment to monogamy for the sake of a long term relationship, children, and a family. IMO marriage is not as much about removing the need to trust someone, since that is still needed, but more about communicating and agreeing to a long term commitment. Communicating these things may seem like a little thing in life, but little things are big things. Also, I don't think a legal contract is necessarily required for a marriage, however it may be prudent given the long term commitment req'd to raise children if that is your goal.

"Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go." - Ayn Rand

Search "accuracy" in google, then click images. Tell me what you see...

This is not true. Any intro to physics class will use an arrow hitting a bulls eye as a way to explain accuracy. Accuracy is how close the arrow is to hitting the bulls eye, not how close you are to the bulls eye compared to someone else. The shot of the arrow analogizes the prediction of the theory, the bulls eye represents actual experimental results.

But who will build the roads? (for once this question make sense)

How do you compare one theory against another? Reality. The whole comparison is based on the ability of one theories predictive capability vs. anothers. To say one theory is more accurate than another is exactly like saying one theory better predicts phenomena in reality than another. There is no other standard if you believe in objective reality. [edit]: I think an example may be needed here. The accuracy of Newtonian gravity was not determined by comparing it to Relativity, experimental evidence discovered the accuracy of Newtonian gravity to be limited well before Relativity was ever imagined. Relativity was determined to be more accurate because it more closely matches the results of experimental evidence. Furthermore, the accuracy of Relativity is known to not be absolute through experiment, however there is not as of yet a more accurate theory of gravity than Relativity to compare it to. Reality is the only external measure to gauge accuracy. [/edit]

I am not sure I follow this. The accuracy of a theory is determined by its predictive capability. Its predictive capability is determined by setting up experiments specifically meant to probe how well the theory is able to predict the outcome of the experiment. Theories are only compared to one another based on which one has a better predictive capability, and is therefore more accurate. In other words, the answer to the question "accurate compared to what?" is "reality", where reality is the standard of "absolute accuracy".

You misunderstand me, I don't think a fetus is a person. I was just trying to point out that fetuses were being referred to as "persons" and "babies" (and "children" for that matter) without anyone making the argument, or saying that they assume, a fetus is a person. I worded it the way I did to facilitate discussion, not to say I actually see the position.

I agree, and don't think it is deliberate (I tried to think of a better word than manipulation myself, but couldn't). I just think it is an important distinction to be clear about because the premise completely changes the calculation.

One thing I am observing with this thread is that everyone seems to agree that a fetus is not a person, but the language of "person" and "baby" is still being used when trying to argue against this idea. I can see that there may be an argument that a fetus is a person, but unless you want to make that argument, or at the minimum concede that as your assumption, using that language strikes me as manipulative.

I would recommend watching this video because I find it relevant to this discussion. A lot of people are confused by what science is and I think this video might help with developing a better perspective on it. The accuracy, and more precisely "precision", of a theory is determined empirically by testing the limits of it and finding where the theory deviates from reality.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you, and that was what my line of questioning was trying to get at. However, as I have pointed out, I am not 100% on what moral rights a foetus's do/ought have. Given that, I do think a lot of people who have commented do have the right perspective that it probably shouldn't be considered immoral to not abort, but it would their preference that you do.

I think the easy answer to this is math. Physics is very easy to test and quantify with mathematical relationships to a level of precision that allows hypothesis to be easily verifiable (i.e. you can hit it with a hammer). Sorry, I understand that I am kind of talking circles with this, but to me it is incredibly self evident that physics is demonstrable to a much higher level than something like ethics. Quoting myself above: Or to quote Stef: “Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.”― Stefan Molyneux I think the truth would benefit from a methodical discussion of boundary conditions. I don't think that boundary conditions mean that a principle is not universal, it just means its has a logical scope, and I do believe boundary condition exist.

I am not terribly concerned about being able to measure morality, because I don't know if that is possible or even how much value it would provide. I think some utilitarians tried that at some point and weren't too successful with it. Boundary conditions wouldn't typically have anything to with numbers, but logical statements describing limits or exceptions to a larger logical construct, like the NAP. Like in one the examples above, you would describe the NAP as the principle that sates that it is immoral to initiate the use of force, with the exception that you have to have the capacity to understand the NAP in order for your actions to be considered immoral.

Yeah, I think you are probably right. Not aborting does not pass the coma test, and therefore can't be considered immoral. The only argument (and it is pretty weak) I can see where you may be able to get a positive obligation is that becoming pregnant doesn't just happen out of the blue or when you are in a coma. If you take the examples of people who know their offspring will 100% get down syndrome before even conceiving (lets say this is true for the sake of argument) would them procreating anyway be considered immoral? If your answer to this is "yes", then it seems to come more down to the morality around a fetus. Because if it is immoral when the sperm and eggs are separated when you know the outcome, then we are in fuzzy territory once conception has happened. In other words, the positive obligation is derived from the choice to create a human being. I am not comfortable knowing the morality around a fetus, or when a fetus can/should/ought be considered a human, so I can't make a firm stance on this now, and tend to agree with Lars. Would you care to educate me why? Or is that a dictate? It might turn out to be a bad argument, as this great discussion here I think has just about flushed out, but I really don't see any glaring fallacies.