Koroviev

I definitely agree with this, however, at some point you need some formal instruction if you want to become really good on something and there seems to be a lot of good resources if you know where to look. I've been really excited about the first philosophy link I posted it seems to be geared more toward teachers but because of that you get a lot of research into how best to teach things like critical thinking etc. which is really helpful especially for a topic like that. From there I was linked to Kahn Academy's philosophy section and although I'm not usually a fan of Kahn Academy their philosophy and critical thinking courses seem to be pretty good so far for getting the basics at least. https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/wi-phi/critical-thinking

I don't see what the point would be of a moral proposition that was not pragmatic? Thought experiment maybe but would any answer change anything about the way you, or anyone else lives? Isn't it just like saying there's a rock outside of our universe that we could never sense the presence of or know anything about. I mean sure there could be, but who cares.

Right but isn't that a self defeating argument because if the meanings of all words and concepts are based off of shared experiences and that which comes from a shared experience cannot "prove it's own given" then even that argument can have no meaning. Therefor, at least some words must have an objective and consistent meaning

Does anything matter in a few billion years? Does it matter in a few billion years if I murder someone today? My point is how is this helpful...at all? It's just like trying to talk about morality for animals, it only applies to humans.

Another thing I was just thinking about was the difference between literal meaning and conversational implicature. Literal meaning being the conventional meaning assigned to those words. Conversational implicature being the information that is conveyed in a particular conversational context. Although the conversational implicature may change on a case by case basis the literal meaning stays constant aside from being added to or adjusted over time due to cultural influence and/or (over)use of slang.

I just found this one: http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/ Really good stuff on critical thinking (I'm about halfway through that module so far). Obviously Stef's series is a must watch.

Right, I suppose someone else could control your limbs and I definitely agree that there needs to be a fundamental acceptance of property rights. I guess the question then becomes if someone else can control your arm at any time without your permission do you still own your arm? If the person controlling your arm commits a crime who's responsible? All sorts of MKultra-esque scenarios come to mind, but that's besides the point. However, UPB still stands because if someone took control of your arm without your permission that is immoral because initiation of use of force, infringement of property rights, etc., etc., or if you gave control of your arm away voluntarily and did not have provisions ensuring they wouldn't use it to commit a crime well that's still immoral on their part but you're still to blame as well, at least a little. So, a revision of my prior statement would be that no one could control your arm without the initiation of the use of force or voluntarily allowing for control over your arm, thus property rights. The initiation of the use of force to control your arm infringes on property rights therefor it is immoral, thus NAP, thus UPB.

As my wife and I are getting ready for our first child this is definitely something we've been discussing as well. Going into it we know one thing for certain, we do not want to have to lie to our kids. So the question then becomes can you have a "magical" christmas without lying about santa. At least to us this seems like it would be very doable simply by focusing on family rather than bribing our child to behave so presents will magically appear (or they'll get to go to heaven). Why does there need to be a "real" santa at all? It can still be a wonderful story, and if you want, they can get just as many presents as everyone else just from their parents. It also seems like it would make the holiday less stressful since there'd be less sneaking around playing santa. I do like your strategy though, Brucethecollie, because everything is way better if they come to the conclusion themselves.

Aren't all discussions of ethics debates about axioms? Unless you consider ethics to be subjective, but it would seem like that would bring on a whole host of other issues. With UPB, at least the way I understand it, Stef is proposing that morality can be derived logically thus removing the need for a ruler (church or state) to inform the people what is or is not moral. It stems from the fact that there are indeed property rights since no other person can control another's body. The proposal is that since there are property rights then it would be immoral for someone to infringe on those rights without permission and outside of self defense. When something is said to be moral what that means is that it is universally preferable since morality pertains to all people just like all things with mass are subject to gravity, and it is preferable since morality is the choice to be "good". UPB itself is a framework for judging whether or not something is moral based off of property rights and thus the NAP. A) I agree that this seems like the "is from an ought" conundrum however, the difference is you could never say someone else ought to control my arms since no one else can control your arms. The thing that makes someone else controlling your arms (without permission and outside of self defense) wrong is they are, or would be, removing your right to control your own arms since you both cannot be controlling them at the same time. Therefor if someone attempts to control your arms they are being immoral since if they succeed you no longer have property rights over your arms. I haven't quite gotten there yet but apparently FDR 148 talks more about this http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/148/the-ought-to-challenge-morality-does-not-exist-in-reality B) how can something be good for the society and bad for the individuals that make up the society? I don't think this claim has ever been made. What has been said is that all things with mass are subject to gravity therefor if something has mass and is not always subject to gravity then gravity is invalid or the thing is invalid. Just as since morality is universal all people are subject to it no matter where they are, what they are wearing, or how many of them there are. Great points, hope this helped some!!

Ok, great! I was hoping not and after your conversation with Stef I'd assumed not but I just wanted to make sure you were aware of how it was coming off from the other side of the interwebs. Is that argument fundamentally different from saying that the argument for UPB is weakened because people may interpret different words in different ways? In other words the meaning of words is neither abstract nor rational, consistent, etc. and can only be derived from the way they are used by other people.

Meh, it seems to me like another way to put men and women at odds through political correctness. It does not leave any room for women to be mistaken and places all of the fault on men even though it's easy to see that women do a lot of these same things (usually more often than men). Like most other things these days it sets a double standard where it's ok for one group (women) to do something but as soon as another group (men) does that same thing it's bad and negative toward the first group. Rules to live by (AKA how I interpret this article) 1. Don't compliment women on being better than other women 2. Don't criticize your female friends' choices (especially relating to clothing choices!) 3. Don't criticize female strangers' choices (especially relating to clothing choices!) 4. Gender biased language is bad! (especially when it refers to women) 5. If someone interrupts (or corrects) a woman they think what that woman saying is worthless 6. Women are allowed to think some things about their bodies are unpleasant but men are not 7. Donald Trump is a jerk for calling Hillary shrill 8. Gender biased language is derogatory to women, even when it's referring to men

I have to be honest this, and a lot of your other posts are feeling very trollish. Just want to put that out there and a lot of it has to do with the tone of your replys. However, I feel like you're trying to make a good point and I did enjoy your conversation with Stef so thanks for that. It seems like you know a lot more about this that most of us amateurs so I wanted to try to simplify your main argument to make sure we're all on the same page. Please let me know if I misunderstood or missed anything.

Good thinking! I'm always looking for new things to learn.

Wife just got home from student teaching apparently there's a movement going around that says you're not allowed to praise kids anymore because it might be discouraging/offensive to the kids who don't get praised. Just thought I'd share...welcome to America!

My wife is going through one of the many public school teaching programs at the moment. She's in her last quarter of classes and started student teaching in March last year. She's also worked at a private Catholic elementary school on and off for about 2 years. I can tell you from experience the % of teachers who show up for the paycheck is way higher than you'd believe. Even a lot, not all, of the "good" teachers can be heard talking about how much they hate this kid, or how awful that class is. From what I understand the student teachers are way worse too. Many of them couldn't think of anything else they wanted to do with their college career, cant figure out how to do some of the simplest things (did I mention it was elementary education) and have to be reminded of things like showing up on time, dressing nice, and showering (there's almost no men in the classes....). The really expensive private catholic school "teachers" spend most of their time on Facebook or pintrest instead of interacting with the children then baby their favorites and punish anyone else. Even one lady we know somewhat personally who just got a job at the catholic school, after going through montessori training, walked into the kindergarten classroom my wife works in halfway through the year tears down all of the decorations and gets rid of over half of the kids' favorite toys. The Tonka trucks just reminded her too much of guns. It's REALLY scary when you get a chance to peek behind the curtains.

No one actually wanted to run a small business or anything did they? Oh! I know lets start a business where we can just steal money from our customers whenever we don't make enough money to cover us going on vacation for 16 weeks out of the year

I'd suggest giving up on their society and try to bring others into yours

Good Luck Kaz. I hope some day you read back on this and see the nonsense you are putting out. As I've said I think you have some good ideas they're just based on some really terrible ones. I'm sorry you've invested so much money, time, and effort into something so immoral but I really do hope you can see the reality at least before it's to late for your children. They will not speak Chinese unless you teach them Chinese. The research is there, and been there for over 60 years now, all you have to do is listen.

Ugh, I'm really sorry you were put through all of that those situations are never fun. My first thought reading through was "well that's high school," which I'm sure you'd have absolutely loved to hear, but as I think about it really the only difference between that and after high school is the amount of time you're forced to spend with people like that. They don't go away and the only way it seems to get easier is that you get a little better at catching those types of people sooner. Deep down I'm certain she can sense that you're destined for great things and miles beyond any of her other "friends" but unfortunately because of the way a lot of people are raised (ntm societal influences) it's the assholes that get all of the attention, especially in high school. I don't know if you want advise or not but the whole be as nice as you can to people when you first meet them then treat them the way they treat you has helped me a lot. All you have to do is be yourself and recognize when people aren't reciprocating that niceness, if they do, great, be the best person you can for those people and hold on to them. If not well you just have to cut those people out. If it helps, I'm a bit jealous that you've found this community so much younger than I did, it would have saved me a ton of heartache and made thing so much more clear. Best of luck and welcome to the boards!

Great post! On the Intro to Philosophy series I can't agree more. It's a must visit if you haven't gone through it already.

yeah I came across those same items when I was looking. Basically from what I understand they are trying to fill the predatory loans niche that the banks got out of after 2007-2008. Going after first time buyers and extremely risky loans and taking advantage of FHA and Ginnie Mae in order to make big bucks on their end.Other things I've seen is often they're scams, you give them a bunch of money up front then "issues" begin to come up, you get massive interest rates way over 5%, and usually there's a balloon payment that if you're not ready for they'll take your house. All around seems like something you'd want to be REALLY careful about. I agree and do all of my stuff through CU's, although unfortunately there seems to be a push from the gov to get rid of most if not all of them :/ I work with a lot of different small banks and CUs and more and more seem to be disappearing every year. I talked to the guy last night and they're pretty set on doing it. It still baffles me how some people can be so willing to get into so much debt on top of the massive debt they already have. Especially with something so sketchy...

Dude, I can't tell you your life but from what you've said YOU'VE had a traumatic childhood, underage drinking encouraged by your dad, yelled at, hit terrified, who knows what else. We agree that corrupt politicians should not be in power it's been said over and over and over again. We're saying the system is based on the use of force and therefore immoral, while you're saying well let's just get different people to stand behind those guns. There's just no such thing as a politician who is not corrupt because the system itself is corrupt there's no way to get around that and I'm sorry you don't see it.

What do you guys know about these companies? Movement Mortgage seems to be one of the larger ones. This couple I know just went to some first time home buyer meeting in a hotel and now they're getting an FHA loan and moving in at 0% down? I mean I'm all for free market and staying away from banks but could this be legitimate? Can anyone explain to me how they actually work?

wouldn't being pro peaceful parenting, anti welfare state, and...well anti state be more effective than trying to find some magical state program that will fix the crappy state programs? What if you didn't have to pay for Shaniqua at all? *note: if this was sarcasm apologies I completely missed it