Jot

Is this what NVC does to you? The caller was nervously laughing every time Stefan pointed out how he was not making any arguments, only stating conclusions.

That is how I kinda got here. First started with the atheist, skeptic movement which got me interested in philosophy, then I found Stefan.

Have not seen a thread this interesting for at least the whole past year or so...thank you for putting in the time to create it. For starters, I would like you to clarify this. "Topics such as, how many times a week should you have sex or is it okay to drink alcohol don't come up. These are, catagorically speaking, aesthetic questions" Why would be these aesthetics questions? Why would the frequency of sex even be a question with any moral dimension at all? "The man might justify his behaviour with these complex theories such as it is moral to bet more when a woman is nearby because it makes her feel good and that is an exchange of value, or some other weird theory like that." Again, why do you think this has anything to do with morality?

What is funny is that looked at only from this perspective communism looks like it has the moral edge over democracy.

What is up with all of the Fight Club references lately?

Yeah, it's alright.

Comfort is only a small part of what the therapeutic process should provide. In order for someone to be someone else's therapist, that person needs to have a good amount of knowledge of psychology and therapy practice in general and unless someone does not make it an explicit goal for himself to become knowledgeable of these things and spend a lot of time pursuing them I am really sceptical of how good of a therapist one is this was not the case for her. How knowledgeable is her of therapy? Or maybe it can be done even if she is not trained and I am not seeing how...

You might wish to check your definition of the term: rhetoric. In logical debate rhetoric are linguistic constructions which "attempt to persuade a person or audience that a particular statement is true or false, regardless of whether it actually is true or false". You did this here, what I am quoting now is a rhetorical construction: "...but somehow this is not akin to being held up by robbers or pursued by robbers or slavers." Here you are not putting forward premises that conduct to a conclusion. You are rhetorically saying "but somehow" as if you have already proven that my position is false. I see, so one can brave the privations of war lords be held up by other robbers, or one can escape into the wilderness in the hope of never being discovered and bothered attempt to elude the pursuit of other robbers or slavers, but somehow this is not akin to being held up by robbers or pursued by robbers or slavers. There comes a point where it's simply more prudent to deal with the initiation of violence with retaliatory violence. An argument is made up of premises that lead to a conclusion. Show me your premises and the conclusion in this fragment.

you are subjectively right (joke)

Rhetoric is not making any arguments. If you want to sustain that moving to a place with really bad conditions is the same thing as being held up by robbers present your argument. Rhetoric adds nothing to the validity of your position. I agree completely but this is irrelevant to the argument I made. As long as there is any place one can go where he is not subsidizing the state my argument stands unchallenged. How bad those places are is a whole different discussion.

This is pretty disgusting to me. You're talking about getting stolen from as if that's a valid form of avoiding being stolen from. The argument I was talking about was the one that challenged the shop lifter analogy being accurate. The analogy would be accurate only as long as the state gave you as much opportunity to escape it as a mugger does, which I argued that this is not the case because you have the means of leaving the state fairly easily (even if cumbersome) without the risk of getting shot but a mugger does not give you that choice. So the State isn't threatening you just because it takes longer for that threat to come to fruition? I never argued that the state is not threatening you. I argued that the threat is not immediate and avoidable if one leaves the state. What is your null hypothesis? You seem to be going to great lengths to believe that people do not pay taxes under threat of violence. Every aspect of the state is predicated upon the initiation of the use of force. Taxes are paid under the threat of violence. I never argued against those. My challenge to you was only that not all threats of violence are the same in respect of their avoidability. I will give you the best analogy I can come up with at the moment: Imagine leaving in a cage with a bunch of people. The cage has a door which is locked. Inside the cage a group of few people claim ownership over all the other people and also claim to own the land on which the cage is built on. In order for the cage to continue existing it needs money. The money is taken from people through taxing their labor. However, individuals inside the cage have the option of leaving the cage if they wish through acquiring certain acts and documents which can be acquired fairly easily. Now, is it not the case that choosing to remain inside the cage and giving money to the rulers of the cage is immoral? Is it not the case that in order to maintain one's moral integrity one has to leave the cage? This is what I have been talking all along.

I think at this point it is important to have in mind the progress of the argument. 1. jpahmad "made the claim" that as long as one participates in the state's revenue collecting system one is also immoral and is not in a position to "call people out" on behaving immorally (voting) as long as one subsidizes the state when he has the option not to. (At least this is what I extracted from here: (post 30) "dsayers has a mental block when it comes to recognizing that one does not have to participate in states revenue collecting system." 2. Your counter-argument was that one is not behaving immorally (through subsidizing the state through paying taxes) as long as one does so under the threat of violence: (post 31) "...under threat of violence." (This is what I wanted to challenge. The fact that this threat of violence is avoidable (through leaving the country) and not immediate (unlike the case in one is mugged) one is still making the choice to partake in the continuation of the state through paying taxes when he does not have to since one could leave it (even if as a result of a cumbersome process). 3. In post 35 you made the shop lifter analogy, if this were an accurate analogy to how the state collects money then I would be proven wrong on the fact that state violence is avoidable, not immediate and escapable. However, if this analogy is not accurate my above challenge remains untouched. To defend my position in post 40 I made the argument that was set out to prove that your analogy was not accurate thus my challenge would still remain. Every back and forth between us since was debating the accuracy of the analogy.

I am expressing my personal sentiment against holding someone responsible for killing another person while under threat or duress of losing their own life. I consider the person threatening their life to be the morally culpable person. I would not consider the person faced with killing another to be morally culpable for murder... at most, involuntary homicide/manslaughter (3rd degree murder). I would not consider a person not under threat of duress to be in the same predicament, or someone who is faced with a life/death situation where the "force" acting against them is non-volitional (i.e., force or nature,) Alright, but this is not an argument... Where? Some places in Middle East and Africa I heard, some regions of Somalia I think. Even if there were no countries there would still be the possibility of going into an unlived region where no one comes to you to tax you.

From a moral standpoint, you can't really be held responsible for the act of self-defense by killing another innocent person, even though it's a very disturbing situation. -> Provide argument. It is not a matter of two separate activities, but rather a villain forcing you to act as their proxy. Indeed. I think that I mischaracterized his position there due to me not taking his mugger scenario literally and instead thinking of it as an analogy to the state. My apologies. I agree with this point here, although the prospect of leaving the country you're in to go to a place there is no government is next to impossible, and so the suggestion is more than a little disingenuous. I did not suggest that he should move to other country, my argument was meant to show that there is choice, whether good or bad...this was beyond the scope of the argument. The situation is more in line with attempting to choose which mugger you want to give your money to. Irrelevant to my argument since there is the choice to go somewhere where there is no state, once again I am not suggesting that anyone should do that. Why? On what do you base this claim that the State will not even try to stop you? What do you think passports are? And forfeiture "laws"? And customs/border patrols? Saying that it will not try to stop you was inaccurate indeed, sorry for that. However, I do not think this affects my argument because the State offers you the possibility of acquiring a passport and all the procedures involving leaving a state (which are cumbersome but can be done fairly easily), a mugger gives you no similar choice. On what do you base the claim that the State is not threatening you 24/7? I think this was inaccurate as well. What I really wanted to say was that the State is not making an immediate threat, which leaves you the possibility of leaving it before he will come after you. The State does not come knocking on your door demanding money out of the blue without your knowledge that they will come at some point, after repeated notices. A mugger does not warn you before coming. You have plenty of time to escape the State and go somewhere else before it comes for you.

This is not a logical axiom thus we cannot say that this must always be the case. Each case should be analyzed on its own. Why am I wrong?

To me, it makes no sense to hold moral ideals above one's own existence because without that existence one has no capacity to be moral. So if someone holds a gun to your head and tells you to kill someone, the act of you killing that person is not immoral because it makes no sense to hold the moral ideal of not initiating force against an innocent person if you would end up dead otherwise? Plus the coercive agent is the initiator of force without which you would never participate in the immorality he has generated, which removes any culpability from you. This is the pet favorite excuse all abusers use, the reason I stole from you is because I was stolen from, had I not have been stolen from I would have never stolen from you, thus I am not culpable of stealing from you. If someone mugs you, he is responsible for the coercion and theft; he is responsible for what he uses the money for, not you. Paying your taxes under threat of force is the same in that regard. Voting is giving the mugger the gun and the social reinforcement that there will be no consequences for his immorality (to a certain extent). I am not sure how good of an analogy this is...paying your taxes is not similar to being mugged because: When you are being mugged the threat is presumably immediate and unavoidable, your only option is to give the money on the spot or risk being killed, there is also no escape from the situation. However, the state does not hold his gun to your head 24/7 and demands that you pay him on the spot otherwise he kills you. You have plenty of time to leave the country and go to a place where there is no government. The state will not even try to stop you if you want to leave it but a mugger might kill you if you do so. This is why I do not see how you are analogizing these 2. Where coercion is present, choice is not. The person engaging in the coercion is taking the choice away. As you pointed out later choice is present even in the face of coercion. Consider a scenario where you work as a cashier for a convenience store. Somebody walks in, points a gun at you, and tells you to empty the cash register into a bag and give it to them. If you comply, you are not stealing from your employer, the robber is. I realize that literally speaking, you do have a choice. You can refuse, you can fight the robber, etc. A reasonable person would also comply. If that is the victim's "choice," they are not responsible for the consequences/immorality of that choice, because choice had been forcibly taken from them as evidenced by the fact that they would not have taken the cash were they not under the threat of violence. Tyler H made the same analogy, I will copy paste the response I gave to him where I expressed why I do not think the State is analogous to a mugger. Paying your taxes is not similar to being mugged because: When you are being mugged the threat is presumably immediate and unavoidable, your only option is to give the money on the spot or risk being killed, there is also no escape from the situation. However, the state does not hold his gun to your head 24/7 and demands that you pay him on the spot otherwise he kills you. You have plenty of time to leave the country and go to a place where there is no government. The state will not even try to stop you if you want to leave it but a mugger might kill you if you do so.

If an action is immoral does this justify indulging in it even under the threat of violence? Excuse me if this is a mischaracterization of your argument, that is how I see it though...

You cannot read either, add this to the list.

I do not know if you noticed but FDR community has a very high standard for integrity, empathy, curiosity etc. You continue to display the opposite of all of these through your comments. Also being snarky does not fly really well on here.

If we suppose for a moment that the self-defense argument in regards to voting is valid and sound (when it comes to this election), would this cause you to turn your position to 180 degrees and say that voting Trump was a wise act? Would you have encouraged voting in that case? I raised this question because this is where I think you fundamentally differ from FDR's Trump supporters, they argue that voting Trump was self-defence and you argue that voting cannot be self-defence.

Before addressing this thread I recommend people take a look at his downvoted comments on this forum. I do not know if it is that weird you got banned there...being a manipulative douche seems enough of a good reason to me.

It feels in congruent with the difficult task of actually accepting fault. It's not an easy task someone can smile at you and remind you of, it a real life relationship as opposed to a bite sized YouTube video, you would want someone more sympathetic to tell you where you may be wrong. Would you mind explaining what you meant here? I find the phrasing confusing and I want to make sure I understand exactly what you mean. At the same time, as an adult, when you become aware of your PAST victimhood, there is the temptation to hold on to that as your present life and get attached to that. I do not think that this temptation is intrinsic, though I think this might be a general trend due to the feeling of helplessness and fear a lot of people experience when they start examining their past. But this would be by no means a good argument for avoiding that PAST. Of course I sympathize with victims of child abuse, an am aware of all the negative effects ACE can have on someone's development--but once you become aware of how much of a disadvantage your childhood has given you, I think it does become all up to you whether or not you make something more of yourself. Exactly. And this was my criticism towards the approach that segment of life coaches/motivational speakers employ. They do not encourage or even mention what you said above. If you watch the video again, she doesn't say that everything is 100% your fault. I rewatched and indeed she does not directly say that but the first time I watched it I think I got the impression that she said that because towards the end she says "find the areas in your life that are not working and figure out how you CAUSED that or ALLOWED that". To me this sounds no different from it is 100% your fault. This is also the statement that bothered me the most in the whole video. Even if I try hard to make the most of this statement it still hits me as victim-blaming. What a 15 old who was sexually abused by his parents or someone who was abandoned as a child in a foster care etc...is being told this? That his life situation in that moment is either due to him having caused the situation or that he allowed it to happen? Would it not be the case that the state in which he finds himself is mostly other people's faults, rather than his/hers? Not everyone is dealt an equal hand of cards. People should indeed take responsibility for that which was their fault but I am afraid that statements like "your life is not working because you either CAUSED it not to work or you ALLOW it not to work" are more likely to make people believe that even the things which were not their fault, are their fault.

I once heard: "Do you know why people underestimate the value one could get from books? It is because they are cheap."