EclecticIdealist

If we define knowledge as a belief in that which is absolutely true which is absolutely justified, then knowledge is impossible about anything beyond self-existence and conception or the formation of ideas. If on the other hand, we take the position that knowledge is belief in that which is true which is reasonably justified, then knowledge is a matter of relative precision, just as truth is a matter of relative precision. Knowledge then is an approximation of truth that is reasonably justified in being believed. One will never have absolutely certain knowledge, one will only have varying degrees of relatively certain knowledge. An absolutist would of course consider such beliefs to be unjustified, and therefore, not knowledge; however, I believe there is utility in using the term knowledge to refer to a reasonably justified, relatively certain belief in that which is approximately true.

Actually, I'm arguing for the Ultimate Ideal of what some of the Founding Fathers envisioned, not what the majority of them actually wanted with America. The majority of the Founding Fathers actually wanted a lassiez-faire government to go with their lassiez-faire capitalism. Some envisioned this occurring in conjunction with slavery, whereas others did not. Given the fact that the world is dominated by Nations with governments, I do not see a way for any Nation of significant size or possessing significant resources to exist without some form of National Government and ability or arrangement with another Government for their National defense against aggressing foreign powers. Perhaps you can enlighten me to how such a Nation might exist for any significant period of time without any National Government in today's Geo-political environment?

I see. So if a parent knows from past experience that their young child is prone to throwing a violent tantrum, kicking and screaming, biting and scratching, etc,; then you can't really fault a parent for violently slamming the child to the floor when their child does not immediately comply with their lawful commands. While parents have extraordinary power over their children, they've also voluntarily accepted the responsibility of raising their children, even if their children are violent, disobedient, or otherwise misbehaving in a manner the parents dislike. Sorry, I ain't buying into the notion that Police and other government employees exist in a different moral sphere than the rest of society. Unless you can make a compelling argument for the case that you have the right to do exactly what the police did to Alton Sterling, I'm going to consider your argument nothing more or less than support for statism. As previously mentioned, my complaint is very much less about what the officers may have felt compelled and thereby justified to do once they had Mr. Sterling on his back on the ground, but rather, their escalation of violence towards him in violently taking him down to the ground in the first place. It is my understanding that police were first called to the scene on the report of someone saying Mr. Sterling threatened him with a gun (perhaps he brandished it, perhaps more, we don't know). Given this fact, I consider the actions of the police officer to be dangerously reckless. His actions not only endangered his own life but that of his fellow officers, and bystanders. The proper response would have been to get Mr. Sterling to comply without engaging him physically the way the officer did. The proper response would have been to patiently wait for Mr. Sterling to turn around and spread eagle on the car or against the wall in a physically compromising position while one of the officers pats him down and removes any weapons (which they had reason to believe he might have on his person). If they imagined him to be a significant threat (which they should have, believing he might have a gun), they should have approached him with weapon or weapons drawn and processed him. If Mr. Sterling refused to follow their instructions, they should simply have waited until he did or found a less dangerous means of subduing him than wrestling him to the ground. The Police Officer did not make any real attempt to resolve it in a safe and peaceful manner; he instead chose to initiate the use of force against Mr. Sterling which ultimately lead to the man's death. This quick and dangerous escalation of violence, particularly against black men and other minorities which so often results in their deaths is what upsets so many in the Black community (and in my opinion justifiably so). While I'm appalled that such escalations in the use of force appear to happen at higher rates against minorities, particularly Black males, I would be just as upset were the victim White, Hispanic, Asian, or any other ethnicity. The overarching problem, in my opinion is not so much a racial issue (although there is ample evidence to suggest race often plays a factor as to how cops of all racial backgrounds behave towards black and hispanic suspects) as it is a police violence issue.

Just as a system can be coopted to spread disease and subsequent destruction, it can also be used to spread antibodies, vaccines, antibiotics, and nutrition that can augment and support the natural immune system. The same is true of the "memosphere". Furthermore, destruction of corrupt, decadent, and decaying structures is necessary to provide the nurturing environment that will sustain healthy, new growth; so do not be dismayed that many of the corrupt and decadent aspects of Western society are being threatened if not in fact risk utter destruction. Instead, consider focusing your efforts of using the memosphere to promote the spread of healthy memes that may germinate in receptive minds. Study and learn from the effective, destructive memes to learn how to infiltrate the minds of those that may be initially less receptive to such beneficial memes. Realize that a positive or beneficial meme is of little use or worth if it is not sufficiently attractive to be entertained and adopted by the masses. This will mean focusing on the appealing aspects of the "medicine" (It's cherry flavored) and minimizing the fact that it's expensive and may cause temporarily unpleasant side-effects.

What makes you think the officer who took Alton Sterling to the ground in such a violent and forceful manner, escalating the violence in the confrontation was not abusing their delegated authority in acting as a "peace officer"? Did you even consider the irony in calling the violent person who shot Alton Sterling a "Peace Officer" instead of the title they use for themselves, "Police or Law Enforcement Officer"? The encounter was anything but peaceful from what I saw. To call him a "Peace Officer" is to abuse the sensibility of anyone with a command of the English language. One cop basically assaulted Alton Sterling when he failed to immediately comply with his orders. The cop unprofessionally escalated the use of force to violence rather than attempting to gain his compliance in a more patient and peaceful manner. I realize this sounds ridiculous to the authoritarian types who believe police are justified in any use of violence to obtain compliance. For this reason alone, the cop should lose his badge and gun. Given the officers had reason to believe that Mr. Sterling was indeed carrying a gun on his person when they confronted him, it was highly dangerous and unprofessional for the police officer to attempt to bring Mr. Sterling to the ground in the manner that he did, risking not only his own life and safety, but that of his fellow officers and various bystanders nearby. Once Mr. Sterling was on the ground, however, I believe it to be inappropriate to second-guess the officer's or officers' actions in shooting Mr. Sterling as neither camera angle shows Mr. Sterling's right arm or whether he was indeed attempting to reach into his pocket or otherwise grab the gun which he was carrying at the time of the altercation. Pending further investigation, into the shooting and any other possible video evidence from an angle showing Mr Sterling's right arm once he was on the ground on his back, I believe it to be premature to consider this an outright murder as many are calling it; neither can I rule it out as some are wont to do, but as it stands, the evidence is insufficient to call it murder in my opinion. Nevertheless, I believe the video evidence is clear that it was unprofessional, police violence which endangered many lives and led to a man's death.

Any claim to "real anarcho-capitalism" is immediately ended the moment you (or any other) as absolute monarch, dictator, or despot over your land is considered to have absolute dominion, and ownership over anyone and everyone you allow to dwell upon it under any agreement for any length of time. No longer is it anarcho-capitalism, now it becomes de facto feudalism and the only thing that has changed is that you are temporarily lord and king of your land until someone stronger than you declares it to be their land, and you their property. Property is not the basis of liberty no matter what the misguided anarcho-libertarians might say. Universal Individual Sovereignty is the supreme ideal for any that value absolute liberty. It is inherently so; it is a tautological definition. If you wish to maintain an anarcho-capitalist society, it must be based upon the principle of Universal Individual Sovereignty. Property rights must always be subordinate to Liberty if one is to preserve Liberty; otherwise the poor, the weak, the unintelligent, the misfortuned, the deliberately oppressed, will all becomes slaves to the strong, the rich, the intelligent, the fortunate, the oppressors, the powerful. You can be a Propertarian if you so choose, but don't go fooling yourself into thinking that as such you're an anarcho-capitalist. Such anarcho-capitalism would only be a means to your end, one way or the other.

No, I do not have it backwards. You may need to read more carefully if you wish to understand what I'm claiming without assuming that I have it backwards. I am not talking about making changes to what is (reconfiguring the universe or your conception of it), I am talking about rationally inferring that something should be or should not be a particular way based on such conditional relationships For example, the notion that if one wants to know what is true, one ought to follow reason and evidence to discern it is an objective truth. "One should want to know what is true," is NOT an objective truth, but a matter of sentiment that cannot be rationally inferred from the objective truth that "one ought to follow reason and evidence if one wishes to discern what is true." I am not rejecting the validity of normative standards, but I do dispute the claims of normative statements being objective truths rather than collectively held subjective preferences. For example, most people prefer to engage in nonviolent cooperative efforts of mutual benefit, but some do not. This objective fact does not change the nature of the collectively held preferences from being subjective, collectively held sentiments to objective truths. Thus, my basis for telling you to change your behavior is the presumption that you wish to adhere to a particular, normative standard of behavior and my belief that I know what adherence to that standard entails.

If you maintain that you can exert your will in absolutist terms within your property, no person that does not have a death wish or is not grossly self-destructive could ever be persuaded to venture onto your property. The idea absolute authority over others when on one's property may be Kingly, but it is certainly cannot be deemed ethical or moral by any rational sense as it condones anything that one might do to another that might knowingly or unknowingly venture on such property, and does not in any way preclude the taking of greater amounts of territory by mere assertion.

Perhaps some women have had such shity experiences from men that they have learned to apply the shit test and most modern men fail. This type of woman has always been around, she's not a new creation of modern society. One need look no further than Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" and a number of his other plays to recognize this fact. It's not about neo-Feminisim, it's about female self-empowerment and the war of the sexes. It's about a strong, self-assured, self-made woman whose proper partner is a man to conquer the world with, not boy in need of mothering. Don't get things twisted and mistake feminism for female empowerment. Unfortunately, all too many modern women mistake feminism for female self-empowerment, as there isn't a large, strong female self-empowerment movement to counter the modern, emasculating, anti-male neo-Feminism which seeks to dominate men rather than partner with them as equals.

Governed by what, whom, and in what manner? People should be governed by reason. People should be governed by principles. People should be governed by morals. That's simply poisoning the well. When people do not govern themselves through reason and morals, then they are being governed by emotion, sentiment, and initiating the use of force and deception. In short, they are engaging in immorality. When they have abandoned reason and morals, appealing to them with reason and morals will not work. One must meet force with force or succumb to it. Again, only if they are asserting that they will not control themselves by reason and morals. Of course they prefer violence (or deception). They choose it when they abdicate reason and morality. It is not a contradiction. Check your premises if you think it is. At least one of them will be false.

Actually, yes it does. Simply because someone is on your property does not give you unlimited sovereignty over them. I'm rather shocked that you are even making this claim. I really think you need to re-think this. That is correct. But in no case would it be considered assault if you require a person to leave your property and they refuse to leave voluntarily. it would be the defensive use of force to forcibly remove them from your property. Again, as long as they are on your property voluntarily and are able to leave at will, then you are at liberty to require they give up any property you deem necessary for any reason. Failure to return such property when they voluntarily leave would be theft. If they are at liberty to leave and refuse, and the force necessary to remove them from your property results in their death, then this cannot be considered murder. If such level of force was not necessary and cannot be considered necessary, then it would be murder as the level of force resulting in a person's death was greater than what was necessary and reasonable to defend your property. Again, if there is consent, it is not rape. If there is no consent, it's rape. If the person understands that as a condition of being on your property they must submit to sexual intercourse, and they are free to leave at any point, and they are capable of making an informed decision to stay under such circumstances, then they cannot claim rape if they are given the option of staying and engaging in sexual intercourse or leaving. No, they do not. They still apply whether the territory is neutral or not; the dynamic is simply different when the territory belongs to an individual who has the right to require a person to voluntarily abide by their rules or leave, or when the territory is neutral and they have no such right to make such demands. No, they are not above all else, they are only above the non-owner's right to demand different rules of voluntary conduct while remaining on the owner's land. The owner's right to control such property does not overcome the rights of another to their life, their liberty, their property, their personal safety or bodily integrity.

The Burden of Proof is yours. Prove that you can infer an ought (should/prescriptive or should not/prohibitive relationship) solely from an is (existential relationship) using only reason. I'll give you until the end of your life (or mine whichever ends first) to do so. If you wish to pretend that the Burden of Proof is not yours, I refer you to the principles of informal logic. If you wish to ignore the principles of informal logic, please let me know, as courtesy to me, so we don't waste each other's time in a pointless discussion.

Strawman - claiming I am purporting to speak for others or attempting to make my opinion seem factual when I am not. I merely stated my opinion that I do not consider you to be humble, and my speculation that others on this board likely share this opinion. Strawman - attributing an argument made by oneself to others. I did not preach humility, I merely pointed out a claim that I judged to be at odds with demonstrated behavior; you know, like claiming to be humbled while not demonstrating humility or any of the other qualities of character you claimed or attributed to yourself--acting self-defensive over someone challenging the claim of humility and projecting your own behavior onto them rather than enjoying the correction and adoring the people who do it for example.

Interesting. The humbling does not seem to have lasted. Humble is definitely NOT a word I, or likely anyone reading your comments on this message borard would use to describe you. I believe you're self-deluded. YOU might believe you enjoy being corrected because that's how a humble person would feel but you demonstrate time and time again that you don't enjoy it, especially when you believe the person doing it is wrong, and you get irritated when people do it to the point that you cannot allow the arguments you consider to be wrong or mistaken to stand or fall on their own merit, and instead insist upon attacking the person's reputation with the intent of eventually muffling or silencing the person that is challenging your worldview, including your self-conception. Then you'd do well to work on holding it for yourself. Otherwise such people will flee from your hypocritical inconsistency of demandiing from others what you are unwilling to do yourself. I'm sure you see it that way, but in reality, you address people when they're challenging your world-view, or when they are judging your behavior by the same yardstick that you arrogantly judge others with. What you consider to be "sub-integrity maneuvers" you engage in yourself, responding in the same reactionary way with emotion, doubling down, etc that you see others do which demonstrates your own pridefully hypocritical lack of curiosity or devotion to truth. No, you didn't read any of it because you're a self-deluded hypocrite and a liar. And hopefully the rest of the people on this board will come to see that too and neg your reputation the way you do others who disagree with you.

Fear is the mind killer. Until you overcome your fear of coming to grips with a situation, you will not be able to see it clearly, which will make it impossible to process it emotionally. You were a cult member from the age of 14 until the age of 22. You allowed others to define your identity, values, and morals. At 22 you awakened to the fact that you'd been allowing others to define your identity and the choices you would make. In truth, you went through the years of adolescence and young adulthood without getting to experience it on your own self-defined terms, but instead on the terms defined by others. You say you long for emotional connections with other women. Might I suggest you long for HONEST emotional connections with who you are rather than the person you were being as a cult member. You clearly find your wife to have many great qualities, but you also indicate that because you married her when you were involved in the cult, you have a negative association with her. - Do you have, or have you developed, an honest, emotional connection with her since abandoning your role as cult-member? - You say you "cannot maintain the amount of enthusiasm it takes to have a good relationship" with your wife. Do you honestly believe this would be the case with other women as well, or is this just the case with your wife? Is the amount of enthusiasm necessary in order to play the role of cult-member husband to your wife, or is there something inherently challenging about the relationship with your wife that has nothing to do with your previous cult-member husband persona? - You have said that you are certain that if you were not already together that you are not the man your wife would choose today. Is she the woman that you would choose today? -Have you tried marriage counselling to help each other work through your very significant change in your loss of religious belief? - How open are you to being with her if she were to have no demands on your believing something you no longer believe?

You can't get an ought from an is through reason alone. If all policy is to be based on the weight of evidence, then where will the morals of the government come from?

Yes, that's right. Most people treat selecting the supreme Executive Officer of the Nation as importantly as selecting the Student Body Class President in High School. Most also look at his job as being similar as well... getting the most "goodies" from the Powers that Be for the masses as they possibly can. The vast majority of Americans are woefully politically ignorant and apathetic.

This just sounds way too consequentialist to me and not really a basis for a moral system.

The reason America is not mentioned in "end times writings" is that the authors of such books were ignorant of the Americas, as they were of most of the rest of the world. Their knowledge of the world was limited almost entirely to the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. They had some knowledge of Mesopotamia, some knowledge of North East Africa and Asia Minor, and even less knowledge of the Southern-most regions of Europe.

Naturally, the self-preserving solution to such a problem is to proactively spread the meme of self-interest over the interests of the state among the collectivist population as quickly as possible. or Realize that the cooperative self-interest serves not only one's own self-interest but the self interest of another; or in other words, like-minded individuals need only cooperate to stave off the crush of the hordes of socialists.

What it should have said is, if you use your computer to access a site controlled by the government for the express purpose of engaging in criminal activity, the government will attempt to install spyware on your computer to identify you in order to use such information to establish probable cause for executing a search & seizure warrant against your computer used to access such site and any other computer electronics or storage media that might be used pursuant to such criminal activities. Not worried about this case, unlike other cases. If on the other hand, the government was using access to government controlled websites (or any other entity's webiste(s)) for any non-criminal purpose as an opportunity to install such spyware, I would DEFINITELY object. If one has committed a crime, it is not unreasonable to in the moment employ reasonable and prudent measures to identify precisely WHO committed the crime and what items may be used to establish the guilt of the individual. It is essentially the same as following a masked bandit back to their hide out immediately upon robbing a bank and seeing who they are when they take their mask off.

This is a question that I believe requires a bit of clarification. First, I regard the term moral and ethical differently. I consider moral to be the collective sense of right and wrong held by a society; whereas I regard the term ethical to be the individual sense of right and wrong. As to the reason why one might be moral, I believe depends greatly upon the individual's ethical maturity. Behaving morally is generally a matter of pragmatism, as one's moral behavior, lack of moral behavior, or immoral behavior is what primarily determines whether one is deemed by society to be a good person, a bad person, or neither good nor bad, and consequently how society engages with and treats one. One might adhere to the morals of society to avoid punishment and to perhaps obtain a reward. This is not actually behaving morally, rather, it is adherence to moral behavior. Behaving morally entails acting because society deems it to be good, not because of what one hopes to obtain or avoid from such adherence. If one is behaving morally, one is necessarily conforming one's will to the moral judgements of society, not merely the consequent rules. One essentially considers it ethical to unquestioningly adhere to the external authority of the majority of society. Behaving morally is not the same as behaving ethically. In some instances, an individual's sense of ethics may be at odds with society's sense of morals. In such an instance, one may be forced to choose between behavior one deems ethical but society deems immoral on the one hand, and behavior one deems unethical but society deems moral on the other hand. One may still adhere to morality on the premise that society's moral judgement may be deemed superior or more reliable than one's personal ethical sense. One is essentially adhering to the external, collective ethical judgment of society out of a sense of distrust of one's own instinctual or internal ethical judgment, or out of a greater sense of trust for the collective ethical judgements or others. I recognize that such a notion runs contrary to the notion that many have that there exists an objective standard of morality or ethics. While I believe that there are objective, empirical phenomena or facts which inform our ethical and moral judgments and consequent behavior, I believe these to be inherently diverse and subjective in much the same way that personality types are diverse and subjective and individuals have various personal preferences in the realm of aesthetics. I believe that ethical priorities and judgements are likewise diverse. I believe we choose to be ethical because of the psychic conflict or pain we feel when we do not, and the harmony, peace, or content we feel when we do. One would adhere to UPB for much the same reason that one would adhere to morals. Either one judges UPB to be superior in some manner to one's individual ethical sense (if they are in conflict), or one chooses to adhere to UPB because one is part of the majority who shares or otherwise agrees with the ethical evaluation of the UPB. I believe we do this to avoid the psychic pain of discomfort and disharmony one experiences naturally when one's actions are out of alignment with one's beliefs about what is right or wrong, good or bad. That is simply what we do, how we make decisions. We evaluate behavior according to our sense of ethics, morals, and their utility in helping us in our avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure. Many of our choices involve delaying gratification (acquisition of pleasure) by submitting to temporary pain and discomfort in anticipation of an eventual, greater amount or degree of pleasure, or the avoidance of significantly greater pain. And yet, all of these preferences are ultimately calculations informed by our previous successes and failures in avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure; in sating our desires.

Again, this presupposes that communism is practiced by our alien neighbors in the Galaxy, and that they would not simply regard human beings as an inconvenient infestation on one of "their worlds" and simply eradicate us as we might eradicate a colony of ants, termites, or other insects inhabiting "our living space". If the borg did decide that "[our] biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to [their] own." we would doubtless have very little choice in the matter. just as in this world, when it comes to oppressive, totalitarian regimes, Individual "Resistance is (usually) futile."

I believe you hit the nail right on the head.

Funny how some religious people seem incapable of distinguishing between pedophilia and homosexuality but have no such problem distinguishing between adultery and homosexuality. So many Christians professing discipleship who evidence none of the "fruits" one is expected to observe in such a disciple, such as love for one's neighbor as one's self, patience, long-suffering, forgiveness, condemning the sin but not the sinner, and so on. All too many Christians want to assert their moral authoritarianism, they just need to pick the right sinners. And apparently, being straight, white, and Christian means you shouldn't be the victim of hate, bigotry, violence, or ridicule; according to such modern day Pharisees, such sentiments are reserved only for the modern day Samaritans (Homosexuals), Philistines (Muslims), and Heathens (Illegal Alien Migrants and Immigrants).