bugzysegal

What's the best way to spread anarchy? Adversarial arguments? Explanations? Discussions? Socractic interrogation? Blogs? Burning trashcans through windows(j/k)? What kinds of arguments do you find most convincing? Pragmatic or moral?

"fact=fact because reasons. So it's not just presenting two sets of facts and expecting the other person to intuit them as similar, but providing explicit reasons for why they are similar. Someone can counter by providing reasons why the facts are not analogous in a relevant way, or directly attacking your reasoning for their similarity. By making your reason for comparison explicit, you give them something they need to refute or weaken before furthering their position." This is plain English. My little bit about the class I'm in was superfluous background. Where is there any ambiguity in the other part of the statement? I'll break it down: "Fact=fact" <--- the listing of two set of circumstances "because reasons"<----the way in which the facts relate to each other relevant to the point you are trying to make For example, when concerning the mental state of pilots. Planes are like cars (fact=fact) because both can carry passengers and in their operations risk the lives of others (because reasons). Therefore pilots, like motor vehicle operators, should not increase the risk to others by being intoxicated when they fly(full argument). You can attack the facts as being dissimilar in a relevant sense, or the reasoning provided after as being faulty. An example of what not to do is this :planes are like cars therefore pilots should not drink.

"Unwanted" being necessary, not sufficient...in strictly logical terms.

Excellent! Debate settled.

Actually "A bachelor is an unmarried man" technically carries no new information, and there is no derivation deductive or inductive....definitions are tautological....for example 2+2=4...at least in that I'm on this guy's side. Keep in mind, I don't believe in UPB, but for entirely different reasons. What if you broadened "unwanted" into "unwanted action that impedes my autonomy" Your looking at me does not impede my looking, not looking, or any other part of my ability to do what I want with my body/property. This seems to strike closer to what Libertarians strive for. I think I've heard it called the Pareto principle : all actions are permissible so long as they are compossible with other's ability to act. Oooh in looking up "Pareto" to double check my usage, I found this paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_paradox.

I'm like on the opposite side of this debate in another forum lol (trying to defend it anyway) You admit singular quantum events are truly random though correct? I think that would satisfy the question. It's nice to think that events out of sight will not affect life, but then there's things like the heat death of the universe and fusion reactions ceasing in the sun ending life in the solar system. Who knows what consequences the randomness of quantum events could have....really though who knows? If their are any physicists....now would be the time. We should get a resident physicist to moderate this whole section.

My arguments are inductive...or more precisely questioning the foundations of deduction. Foudational philosophy works like so...axioms + deductions =philosophy. This jabs at that middle part. it's reasoning, but not of the deductive kind. It's just pointing out that when we reason deductively, we take causality for granted. You can add this into your list of axioms, but that means you've abandoned trying to justify your use of deductive arguments. I can't find the posts, don't know if they are under review, but whatever. I'll restate analogous examples that are real world. There is a person seeking to contract with a doctor, who has no other recourse because they are in need of immediate medical attention and this is the only doctor within an area that would be able to help in time. (Nobel v. Williamson)The doctor (who is aware of these circumstances) when only held responsible under voluntarism, can be in no way held morally culpable for refusing to take the contract. Social contract theory says that doctor could say that the doctor should be obligated to act and that the patient (or estate if that person dies) should be able to recover damages. (Cotnam v. Wisdom) A doctor preforms a sophisticated surgery on someone who is unconscious, without someone who represents their estate asking him to do so. Voluntarism says that person(or the estate if they die) who receives medical attention is under no obligation to pay the doctor for their materials and services. Again the majority of people find this extremely problematic and think that the doctor should receive payment, with social contract theory being the background of their reasoning. If you don't think these are a problem, consider that they are foundation to the biggest debates in legal contract reasoning. Oh, and guess what, freedom of contract is by no means a new concept. Sure you can defer to the principles despite intuitions, but that seems a bit overzealous. Oh and to provide further context...the doctor in Nobel. v Williamson had treated this person for years, but there was no explicit term in any contract or verbal agreement stating that there would be continued service. For whatever reason, the doctor didn't treat that person. Maybe the guy eyed up his wife....no idea. The motivation is irrelevant so long as it's not contractual.

Legal reasoning (in addressing common law which is based on past cases) uses argument by analogy to a great extent. I'm literally taking legal writing right now and the formula for application of the law is fact=fact because reasons. So it's not just presenting two sets of facts and expecting the other person to intuit them as similar, but providing explicit reasons for why they are similar. Someone can counter by providing reasons why the facts are not analogous in a relevant way, or directly attacking your reasoning for their similarity. By making your reason for comparison explicit, you give them something they need to refute or weaken before furthering their position.

Gotcha. I suppose my challenge went only as far as your comment on neutrality.

My point is that there is no reason there couldn't be such a moral edict, not that there is such a difference. So basically "there must be a moral distinction between types of things, for a moral prescription to distinguish differential treatment" is itself not self-evident. You can take it as axiomatic, but axioms are not necessarily true....That's not to take away from its possible usefulness, but we don't have to grant it. Also I'm just jumping in this debate since it seems thats where the current is taking us. If you have some answers for problems with voluntarism...I'd be especially keen to hear those.

Ok Im going to refer you to the following http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Mea The reason I do so is there is no way I would equivently represent these views. Thats why philosophers get paid the big bucks. It's all pretty layman, but if you need clarification I'll be happy to answer any questions (to the best of my ability, I only took one class on this subject). You don't need to read the whole thing. Just sections 3.3 and 3.4 are of particular importance. Especially the "family resemblance" portion of colideas relating to one another. So instead of generalizing ideas to broad swaths of other ideas, instead ideas relate to one another in a group like fashion... Like family resemblance. This bears particular importance on the idea of universalization. If we shouldn't generalize concepts to all other concepts...the methodology of UPB and the principle of universalization seem deficient.

Yeah I feel like quantum physics is a valid example, mostly because the randomness he's talking about is widely recognized as such by the scientific community. Its not like you are pulling a Deepak Chopra and extrapolating consciousness or some b.s., but just the randomness bit.

Oh also, "whenever you come accross one" refers to your action to all other people, and by its wording excludes the self.

Saying there is no moral distinction assumes what people fit into the moral class. So someone who is a lethal threat to you may be among the class of people who it is ok to kill, but this assumes acceptance of the following: rights to act extend no further than they impinge on anothers right to be free from force. A violation of those limits allows a forcefull response. This reflects our intuitions, but is it based on some further reasoning?

Murder is classified, in that it is the killing of the class of people who it would be unjust to kill. I think this person you are arguing with is placing emphasis on unjust and asking "how can we be sure anyone's definition of 'unjust' isn't arbitrary, or that everyone's isn't arbitrary?" What of the prescription "You ought to murder any blue eyed person, whenever you come across one." Such a prescription is not impossible to uphold at all times is it? I may vaguely remember this from UPB, but not how it was hashed out.

In advance, that post was aimed at teabagger.

I was incensed. You were being dismissive. If you don't think so, fine. Modal arguments are not my forte, but for this I don't think I need to be a master logician. A doctor is an unconscious person's only chance at survival and they operate. Does that person (or their estate if they don't survive) owe that doctor payment for their services and materials? Social contract theorists have no problem saying yes whereas voluntarism does. Some doctor is a persons only immediate chance of survival. That person asks for the doctors standard contract in that situation and the doctor is aware of the severity of the situation. Voluntarism allows for the doctor to decline without penalty. Social contract theorists might require compensation to that person or the surviving family. These cases are not hypothetical. They happened. Case 1 (Cotnam v. Wisdom) Case 2 (Nobel v. Williamson) EDIT: This was actually aimed at Teabagger but we have since resolved it. But the questions still stand.

So what's the consequence for your mathematical schema? Is neutrality as elusive and necessary as "0"?

Seriously? I got downvoted on my last post? I merely restated my contention along with providing a historical example of empirical skepticism. That's balls.

What if your book is redundant? Books are supposed to contain novel ideas. Not to be a dick, but if you're writing a book, especially on philosophy, you should make sure you're not repeating old work. You can do that with a ton of research and use of databases go a long way. Your best bet is to do a lot of that, then consult a person who's field that is to make sure your ideas (right or wrong) aren't hashed out in long settled or ancient debates.

I agree for the most part. Actually I think the very last sentence in my reply is the most difficult to counter. "Is axiomatic behavior itself random...or does it not make sense to apply random or deterministic to these axioms?" The idea of taking quantum events as being axiomatic, would take away from the appropriateness of applying words like "random" "deterministic" "logical" or "irrational." They simply are.

I would agree....but those scientists would point to the fact that we can calculate these probabilities with great precision. This precision allows us to view a pattern like behavior of QM, despite individual instances being wholly unpredictable. So I'd imagine they would say that despite the fact that no knowledge of the set of initial conditions will allow you to make a prediction, you can make an accurate prediction of the outcome. Is axiomatic behavior itself random...or does it not make sense to apply random or deterministic to these axioms?

Harris incorporates randomness into his determinist theory. Not arguing he's right or the subject at all, but that argument is out there. It's a quick video/read if you'd like I can PM it to you or if you want the quick and dirty I can excerpt just that portion of the argument and PM it. (It's quite clever) More to the general question though, I've seen people (physicists) argue that not even quantum mechanics is random due to the fact that we can determine probabilities of quantum events in aggregate, despite not being able to predict individual events. Also I've seen a great many people make the opposite argument with the same premises essentially. I think it's a framing issue and largely conceptual as those before me said.

What's really confusing is that some infinities can be bigger than others!

To your first point, we are arguing by analogy. Science, like ethics cannot support its own foundations. Your final conclusion makes no sense whatsoever. I can amend a hypothetical, because it's hypothetical. None of your questions have any baring on an ethical theory that revolves solely around voluntarism. You're not giving any real threatening arguments to contradict the notion that these are problems for voluntarism. Let's just say that the owner doesn't want to open the window/let him break it. Your ethical theory says this is not immoral. Problematic. The two doctor situations I gave you are real and you've been silent about them. Thank you for marginalizing me. That is really helpful, I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Hume's master argument against causation is what spurred Immanuel Kant to "awaken from his dogmatic slumber." It goes like this. In the past, the future has resembled the past. Therefore, in the future, the future will resemble the past. There is a missing premise, therefore the previous argument is invalid and causation cannot be deductively proven. I'm sure you have heard the same thing with swans and whatnot. You might sum it up by the sentiment "everything's inductive."