dsayers

It's funny how everybody would choose a sandwich over a sandwich and a punch in the face. Yet so many of those same people think that if sandwiches come with a punch in the face today, we couldn't have sandwiches without face punching. a) My ability to stay out of arm's reach of you has no bearing on you punching me being assault and therefor immoral. Tell your friend his house belongs to you and if he doesn't like it, he can move. I am certain he will reject your claim and rightfully so. b) You own yourself and people are not fundamentally different from each other. From this, we can universalize self-ownership to everybody. From this, we can determine that theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral. Therefore anybody that exercises ownership over their own body is bound by morality. Note that this is objective and universal. c) Violence is the initiation of force. It doesn't describe defensive force. Any discussion on the use of defensive force must include an initiation of force, not just a suspicion of danger. Also, proportion is relevant. For example, it would be unjustified to shoot somebody for strolling onto your lawn. d) Begging the question. "Government owns the land" is asserting a conclusion with no rigor. It's also anthropomorphizing a concept. Since taxation was mentioned, ask your friends if they would support you being thrown in a rape room for not letting a mugger steal from you. I would also remind them that while they are free to give away anything they own to whomever they choose for whatever reasons they choose, they cannot make this choice for you or anybody else.

Good point. I had thought of that also. I have a problem with consistency there too... Suppose instead the child's illness is not fatal, but could lead to some permanent damage if not treated. The solution comes with side effects that they believe to be worse than the illness's toll itself. In this case, they believe inaction is preferable to action, and not based on mythology. Or suppose the same situation, but the disparity between effect of action and inaction is slight, so they default to inaction out of religious belief? I'm really sorry if it seems like I'm moving the goalposts. I hate when others do that. I think it's important to reach a conclusion that is universal.

Hello, everybody. I wanted to introduce myself. I live in/among/around Toledo, Ohio, USA. I am this many *holds up both hands, all digits outstretched three times, then once more with only seven fingers outstretched*. I work as a private investigator who often does security work, which is advantageous as I watch others talk about police as if protection cannot exist without first stealing from the "protected." I also have an informal background in computers and light programming. When I'm not exercising my brain seeking the truth, I do some gaming and enjoying watching Netflix and such. The broad strokes of my life: My father was occasionally physically abusive and frequently used hostility in lieu of crossing the physical line. My mother spanked semi-regularly, including with leather belts and bare butts. They divorced when I was 3-4 and my sister was 1-2. They often used us as pawns to get at one another. They also inflicted Christianity on us. I first learned it was bullshit when I was about 14-15 and started giving my stuff away and talking to friends about living off of people's kindness, going door to door to "do God's work" and it was explained to me that literal translation was a bad thing. We were sent to government schools in an upper-middle class suburb despite being poor ourselves. I was isolated very early my first year and subjected to numerous tests. This made me feel like I had done something wrong by being smart. Later on, they even went so far as to stick me in a program called Severe Behavioral Handicap because the rate at which they covered the material was so slow, I couldn't sit still. Classic punish the child as if the system is pristine. Both my parents remarried. My step-mom was verbally abused by my father. She ended up being more of a parent than both of my biologicals combined. My step-dad was an older man. My mother dominated him, erased him, and used him to work for things they didn't need. In my teens, my mother switched to emotional abuse and guilt trips. And threatening me with my step-father even though despite being a runt, I could've taken him easily. My father became more hostile, though less physically abusive. He also put me to work as soon as he could get work out of me, which provided him with even more things to verbally attack me about. For the sake of brevity, I won't go into too many details about my adult life right now. Suffice it to say that over the years, I had been looking into politics, the Constitution, etc. I had frequented a couple anti-police sites including one that was led by somebody who wasn't confrontational and shared intelligent readings, which interested me. It introduced me to self-ownership, the NAP, and objective morality. I enjoyed Larken Rose's work and then found Stefan Molyneux. This was a year ago and I've been studying philosophy and working on self-knowledge ever since. I've shared my experiences with those in my life for better or worse and decided it's time I start interacting with y'all. I am a truth seeker and enjoy honesty. I hope to be challenged on my every imprecision, regardless of how small. I'm not afraid to speak with others and the better I am, the better I can help others understand that violence is what failed us. Or as Stef says, to expose the gun in the room.

I say look at the propaganda. When something is named by coercive people as "the affordable health care act," we can derive four things from the title alone: 1) It will not be affordable. 2) It will not promote health. 3) There will be no caring. 4) There will be no action (except against those that aren't complicit in being stolen from). I think the reason this is such a point of contention is because the name "intellectual property" frames the conversation as if property is being discussed.

This is one of the reasons I don't like the word "crime." Immoral is an objective consideration. If somebody exercises ownership over that which they understand belongs to somebody else, it is immoral. If the owner of the object chooses to forego restitution, that is their prerogative. I especially do not like the word "criminal." If somebody does steal a phone, provides restitution, and never steals again, what use is it to regard them as somebody who once acted immorally and has since made up for it? If a person drinks alcohol, gets into a car, and runs into other people, the alcohol isn't responsible. It may alter the person's mental agility, but they still made the decision to drink and drive despite ubiquitous information pertaining to the dangers. If a person smokes tobacco, acquires an illness as a result and dies, it cannot even be said that the smoker hurt other people. That they didn't distance themselves from a person who was self-medicating and/or killing themselves is their decision. When you befriend somebody, you're befriending their every action that could lead to their premature death. I'm not sure what was meant by the initial claim that smoking marijuana has effects on others.

Consider the scenario of a deathly ill child of religious parents who intentionally decline treatment for their child as to not interfere with God's will and/or to not compromise their faith by seeking natural solutions. Is this the initiation of force? A little while back, I argued that it was. I was presented with an argument that after much consideration, the best I could come up with was that it was too complex an issue to be able to make the absolute statement that it is the initiation of force. I considered the perceived outcome of action was preferable to the perceived outcome of inaction. Though I had a hard time being consistent with this since a person who knows the Heimlich in the presence of somebody choking isn't bound to saving the person. However, this binding does exist in the parent-child relationship. Again, I have a problem with consistency because it's logistically hard for me to ascribe the initiation of force to inaction. Even though I understand that tying somebody up and not feeding them is in fact killing them. Can somebody help me work through this please?

This is one of the problems I have with words like atheist (anarchis, non-aggression principle): It frames the conversation as if theism is the norm/origin and atheism the deviation (complete with negative connotation). I applaud your insight as to the dangers of labels putting people into boxes. So it's shameful to not eat a cracker, but not at all shameful to intentionally humiliate somebody who has not initiated force against another person? WWJD In my experience, there is no experience more horrible than being made to feel as if you have done something wrong when you aren't even aware such a thing is under consideration. Did you mention this to your friend whom you were there to support? I'm curious as to how that conversation might've gone.

Consistency. The dictionary. The sum of all matter and energy is constant. There is no beginning and end, which brings us to the consistency I mentioned. The proof of your senses. You know that those words could not appear without consciousness. You also know that you do not speak to that which you do not attribute consciousness. Atheism doesn't describe that which is within us. Also, it is not ignoring anything. That there's nothing to ignore is the point. You mentioned begging the question before, so I wanted to point out that this is begging the question. Consciousness is an emergent property of matter. You are asserting that consciousness can exist without matter when there's no evidence to support this.

I'm unclear as to what you meant by "lived up to their standard for love in regards to their children". This seems incompatible with the torture, assault, and abiding/threatening of the same you described earlier. I don't feel your mother gets credit for coming to you "concerned" about how you felt about the way you were raised. Unless she understood that it was wretched and genuinely interested in making it up to you, her approach is only revictimizing you for the purpose of not having to live with the consequences of her (in)actions. That is so wretched hearing about the will and the direct threat made against you. Such a tiny man that would take. In regards to the advice you're seeking, of course I couldn't know for sure as I'm not qualified and don't know all the details. I would say that short of violating the NAP, I wouldn't edit yourself for their comfort. Managing others is not your job and managing the emotions of your abusers is even less your job. If I were you, I would pose the question to my mother "what is love?" I would present my father with evidence as to the damage he did to you and do not spare sharing your experiences. If he cares about you, he will be disgusted with himself. If he's just a sadist, he will become enraged at the very suggestion that he needs to be considerate of your experience. The one thing I would revise is your desire to have them in your life. A while back, I had confronted my lifetime abusive father about his use of violence and how studying philosophy has helped me to see it for what it really is. He basically made it clear he wanted a relationship with the effects of my labor, not me, and that he rejected peaceful interaction with others. It wasn't the outcome I would've preferred, but a huge burden was lifted from me in knowing that I don't ALSO have to make efforts in that direction that will not make a difference. This is an excellent point to make. It can help to determine where a person is coming from.

Hello, all. I am somebody who only began the journey of self-knowledge a year ago after 36+ years of propagandized obfuscation of reality to serve the preferences of others. It began by trying to understand philosophy and psychology and applying them to my own life. I've evolved to the point of having thoughts of my own, but am still a babe in properly assessing the truth or Socratic disproof of these ideas. So I wanted to share one for scrutiny if that's okay. I hopped into my propaganda time machine and traveled back to the beginning of human existence in the presence of other humans beings. Apparently, there was a time before communication where it was realistic to simply club your neighbor to take his wife, pelt, mutton, what have you. Even though working together would be a much more sustainable prospect, particularly in a world they faced many dangers in as they hadn't yet begun to take control of it beyond the scope of their next meal. Anyways, it would seem that this evolved into people dominating each other. Like perfecting their ability to control the world around them via improved tools and techniques, they also tried perfecting their ability to control the people in the world around them. Even though their ability to communicate and the usefulness of working together would accelerate their perfection of tools and techniques. Fast forward to today and millenia of momentum finds that people still subjugate and accept subjugation. Now, early on in my exposure to the concepts of self-ownership, the NAP, and objective morality, I understood that the initiation of force was immoral and that that was binding, but I couldn't effectively articulate it in the presence of the assertion that people can (and will they posit) initiate force against others. As somebody who had half a decade prior gotten into guns and self-defense, my counterpoint was that initiating force against others actually threatens one own's survival. The hypothetical being that if I attack you, I need to kill you or else you can just come back at me with weapons or more people and that even if I did kill you, people might witness it or miss you and eventually come looking for me. I do not think that this is a flawed concept or even an unimportant one. However, it deals with calculations. The people arguing that we need violent government people pretend is moral to protect us from the much smaller assailant that everybody would understand is immoral, are used to people who cannot think. Therefore they feel people could not be trusted to make these calculations so considerately. Thus it has not been an effective argument. Not that I believe logic, reason and evidence can be used to dissuade somebody from a conclusion they did not arrive at via logic, reason, and evidence. I've since built on this concept. Incidentally, the year before I began pursuing self-knowledge, I had been thinking about my social station in life. I was not one for benign conversation or small relationships even before I could accurately identify what exactly I felt was important. Still, I was getting older and that can be perilous without some form of support network. It made me conscious of our interdependence on one another. Then after I began pursuing self knowledge and heard Jeffrey Tucker point out that there's no such thing as homemade ice cream, it became even clearer. Considering the two together, I've come to the conclusion that our interdependence is proof of peace as the default. I guess this is another way of saying free market. For example, I thoroughly enjoy having a computer, but am not willing to mine the various elements etc required to make one. Meanwhile, I can provide or help to provide goods and services more efficiently than those that do not provide that specific good and service, so I have value to the people I need to acquire the things I want but am unwilling to entirely make myself. Is the titular claim a valid one? Is it one that was invalid in the folk stories of humans living in caves that we are now enlightened enough to be able to sustain? Put another way, could it be said that there was a time that our desires did not outweigh our means, thus nullifying any dependence on others? I'm inclined to say no because you'll have a much easier time slaying a bear or even carrying a dead one with others than by yourself. Sorry for the length. I get overrun with people that think that the way you protect against immorality is to amplify it and place the amplified version in the hands of the few despite people not being fundamentally different. I've tried pointing out that all good, all evil, mostly good, mostly evil all do not benefit from a state. I think it would offer me peace of mind if I could logically prove that peace is the default and that those who didn't coalesce would become marginalized once we as a species begin to think on the whole. [EDIT] PLEASE be critical to the point of being what others might call nitpicky. I'm only interested in the truth, so any correction/clarification would be a welcome one. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. This part in particular was helpful as it assisted me in explaining why I was struggling with the false dichotomy. I can't thank you enough because you're actually helping me to learn how to talk. What do I mean by that? My journey towards self-knowledge has been so rewarding as it's helped me to put to words that which I seem to have a talent for understanding while being unable to communicate the understanding. It's made almost all of my life very isolating, forcing the choice upon me to either erase myself to fit or be erased by others. There is one point I could use greater clarification on. Examining the definition of terms was useful because I did view objective as true and subjective as being inherently bad as if it was a requisite of being false. Could you provide an example of an objective falsehood? I'm thinking about it and feel as if it's within my reach, but maybe an example can help me get there quicker.

Nigel, thanks for sharing. In regards to you frightening your grandfather, I view this as a lack of parental effort to help you understand what voluntary cooperation is. If they did not provide a model for considering others, how could you know that suddenly yelling in the presence of a sleeping person wouldn't be received as fun? Thank you for this clarification. I've made this mistake numerous times. Which is weird since even before gaining self-knowledge, I understood the value of addressing the behavior and not the person. @Lens: I took it as a caution against summarizing a person over one (series of) act(s). To say a person is immoral is to regard it as if it cannot be altered.

Ah good, then I get to stick it in your head http://youtu.be/PUKTgIK8DxA Hello from Ohio, USA. I'm ashamed at how often I take for granted how miraculous it truly is that from my couch, I can converse with somebody half the world away. Efficiency is analog, would you agree? Like in the couch example, a 2nd person might make it half as heavy to you. A 3rd person wouldn't necessarily be more efficient as the logistics of fitting a couch through a doorway with 3 people holding onto it can be problematic. Would you then say that "is optimally carried by 2 people" to be a property of "couch"? Can external factors even be properties of something? I think it would be erroneous to even say that "requires 2 people" is a property of "chess." You can analyze positions by yourself and you can get a computer to play it with you for example. I can't think of a single thing that one person couldn't do that many could, even if the act of doing so would be inefficient to the point of being described as prohibitive.

Maligns the use of reason while using reason to identify that discussing reason without understanding what reason is, is unreasonable. After putting forth defining words as a requisite to discussing them and citing the Oxford Dictionary, claims that "reality itself is perceived" despite Oxford Dictionary defining reality as "the world or the state of things as they actually exist". Some would say red is blue. Some saying something doesn't make it so. Spiritual means not of matter or energy. Real means of matter or energy. Christianity is predicated on faith. The ability to validate any of its claims would destroy it. Accepting two statements that are in opposition. Claiming to embrace the physical world as an illusion, yet authoring material in an attempt to influence said illusion. Speaking of reality as if it is up to us. Reason is not an answer, but a methodology for arriving at the correct answer. Religion dispenses with methodology altogether. Is 2+2=4 soft or coarse? How nice somebody is has no bearing on the truth value of their words. I don't hold it against him that he was propagandized into not thinking. However, he's talking about determining truth and reality, and from an unanswerable position to an unlimited audience. To do so responsibly requires incredible rigor.

It breaks my heart to read this. My whole life, I've felt as if the world was telling me I didn't belong. Once I discovered philosophy and began working towards self-knowledge, it turned out that the reason was that at my core, I understood that the propaganda was just that. As such, to learn so much of the world that was handed to me was false was immensely liberating. I wanted to ask you about your mention of working enormously hard at. Looking back, I've noticed that pretty much any conclusion that was just handed to me as a child without any proof or encouragement for examination was false. I'm not trying to project my experience onto you, but is it possible that what you credit yourself as working hard at was in fact somebody else just inflicting it upon you? I ask this because whether this is the case or not, if you're not taught to think and especially if you're punished for doing so, you cannot possibly hold yourself responsible for believing falsehoods. AND because if it was inflicted upon you, you need to credit them for that, including being angry that you were caged for no reason other than to suit the desires of others. Other than that, what do you mean by obsessions and worrisome thoughts? The anxiety that I experienced was knowing that now that I understood the truth, I am now responsible for my actions and decisions. Is that the kind of thing you mean? Or do you mean thinking you might not be able to see the truth through the lies while now realizing there is in fact a cloud of lies trying to block the truth? I personally didn't have that one. Once I thought of things in terms of ownership, it seemed as if so many things became simpler to work with. Then I realize that the abuse of my past has me seeking out simplistic answers, so I wonder if I'm settling for an "easy" out. I don't view this as debilitating though. It's an opportunity. An opportunity for me to get to know myself for the first time, which is exciting. I hope you're able to find this as well. The uncertainty means you're being honest with yourself AND that you grasp the gravity of getting things like dealing with complex social issues wrong. If our so-called leaders had that level of humility, we'd be a whole lot safer as a species.

Did he experience this from your end or just state it as if it is an incontrovertible truth? Does he have any business telling other people what to talk about since that is deeply personal to them and could be upsetting? But if your ideas are that the truth is important and that the more delicate the project, the greater the care required (parenting), why would he try to separate those ideas from you while cautioning against separating people from their ideas? Look, I don't know you or the guy, so take what I say with a grain of salt. What I do know is 1) If somebody tells you that you lack empathy, they could be trying to help you or they could be trying to erase you. 2) Your creation of this thread and consideration of the possibility of the validity of his claim is empathetic. 3) He utilized the above universality fails. Given these items, I would say it's more likely that his action was meant to manage his own anxiety in being connected to you while you are doing things that make HIM uncomfortable. The whole "you're not a parent" is such a goofy and desperate plea. Not just for the reason Slavik pointed out. It asserts that you need to be intimately involved with something in order to accept the latest technology regarding it. This literally bars all acquisition of knowledge from birth. The claim disposes of truth altogether. How does your sperm unifying with an egg have any bearing on 2+2=4? No, the only difference between being a parent and not is not being a parent means you can actually disregard the science if you choose to. Not the other way around.

Thank you so much for phrasing it in this manner. I fully understood the bunch of bananas analogy in Stef's Intro to Philosophy, but always had a hard time explaining it to others in a succinct manner. So many people willing to rally for violence against us all based on this fundamental misunderstanding of reality. The premise is false. Of course a single person could make a pencil. It would just be dramatically inefficient. That a couch feels half as heavy when twice as many people lift it is not emergent. Oh and curses to you for getting Rocking Robin stuck in my head every time I see your name

I agree with the consensus that if somebody is saying that, it's likely they did NOT do it for the other. As to the titular question: Sure there's such a thing. In the opening post, you observed that there's always something for the actor, but this can just be an effect of the action and not a motivation.

Interesting thing to think about. It begins with the parent-child relationship. That's the only way propaganda could ever convince somebody that even though the entirety of their adult life is voluntary interactions with other people, we cannot voluntarily interact with other people. It's the echo of the mindset that was inflicted upon them as children. It's so sad too because I talk with people all the time that speak as if they actually believe that without a gun pointed at their head, people would starve before seeking out a sandwich. It's as if they've never said to themselves, "I'm cold" and then put on a sweater. As opposed to, "I'm cold, so I'm going to point a gun at somebody that has a sweater." Or, "I'm hungry, so I'm going to point a gun at somebody that has a sandwich." Even though they never do this in their own lives.

Belief is conditionally dangerous. It is dangerous for as long as no effort is made to reconcile that belief with the real world. Since this period is dwarfed by the duration of the belief itself, I would argue that for the sake of efficiency, it could simply be said that belief is dangerous. Suppose ghosts exist. They will either impress upon our senses or they will not. If they do not, then it doesn't matter if they exist or not. If they do, then we can measure their existence. Either way, belief in ghosts would be meaningless. The way belief is dangerous is twofold. First of all, it is anti-rational in that it takes the place of an answer when the real answer has yet to be found and will no longer be pursued. Secondly, it's an indication of a logical disconnect. Either by way of "religions have always existed" and therefor it is "unkind" to question somebody's belief. Or by way of misapplying the "politically correct" act of tolerating that which you don't conform to yourself. Gender, race, and sexual orientation have no moral component and therefore have no justifiable reason for discrimination. Some might apply this general air of tolerance to beliefs even though the act of believing is either to reject reality or accept your own interpretations ahead of reality. In order for this to not be dangerous, it would have to have to NOT have implications beyond the person themselves. Between cultural parenting and most every public policy ever devised, the damage is far from localized.

Because self-ownership is universal. Religions and governments have made claims to which they have artificially attached a moral component in order to make the claims appear unassailable. As such, you have competing claims over what morality even is. Unbiased morality comes from the axioms of self-ownership and people not being fundamentally different from each other. This allows us to universalize self-ownership, which in turn defines immorality as that which violates self-ownership: theft, assault, rape, and murder.

As a result of abuse in my childhood whereby my father (mostly) expressed opinions as facts in an order to hedge against scrutiny, I've noticed that I have a tendency to try and sum everything up as rules. As I seek self-knowledge, I'm finding this makes it hard for me to really think for myself instead of just whipping out whatever little rule suits my bias. The question I've been struggling with as of late is: Is philosophy objective? As the pursuit of truth, I am inclined to say that it is objective. Since the pursuit of the truth can be flawed, I wonder if it is in fact subjective. Or if flaw is reason for scrutiny and revision which, once implemented, would lead to the truth again making it objective with misapplications being subjective. Thank you for your time.