Why I'm Pro Choice

None, autodidact. I didn't ask because I doubted your knowledge, I asked because institutionalized knowledge about philosophy has long gone bad. Usually all the courses center around existentialism, which seems to be pretty much your position. So I would like to know in which institution you were taught.



My god, you read Plato like Popper did. My condolences for your brain.



No, I said it started with them, not that it stopped by them. And by the way, not only because its “modern” that it is “superior”. On my view, from XVI century onwards mainstream philosophy didn’t advance much, on the contrary, many popular philosophers only walked backwards.



If Plato and Aristotle were wrong (substantially rather than details) then all philosophy is wrong.



There isn't 100% certainty even in mathematics for that matter. I'm pretty much aware of Popper's work, but to say there isn't a Truth is to say there isn't a Reality. I'm echoing sentiments of classicists. And kinda awesome that you cite christian philosophers without citing the biggest and most important of them all, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Probably because you don't agree with him, as he was the one who developed the concept of Natural Law over Aristotle's work, from which the concept of Natural Rights stems from.



A Privilege is a permission, and in most legal connotations, a protection by means of immunity (Law of Privilege for example). The word “Privilege” itself brings the connotation that there is something different than the norm, that its on a better position in regard to the norm, the norm does not apply. A guarantee is an assurance. Assurance that something will be held or done. A legal right can be a privilege under the perception that you only can do things if the government permits you to do it, that is the government which “gives you permission” to do it. Which would imply that you could not do something before the government said so, which is clearly wrong (do I need to explain this too?).

While a legal right as a guarantee speaks for the nature of legal rights. A legal right is nothing but the guarantee that something won't be intervened or should be done by someone else (duties to others). Removing the concept of guarantee from the concept of Legal Rights there would be pretty much nothing left. To say a Legal Right is not a Guarantee would be the same as saying that all children have the “Right to Education” but no one has the obligation to educate them. Every Legal Right will delegate a necessity upon another.

To say abortion and the ability to choose it is a Legal Right as proof that abortion is a legal right is kind redundant isn't it? It's exactly what we're discussing here, the discussion is not the proof.



Locke 101? Are we talking about the same Locke? John Locke? The Father of Classical Liberalism?
The same man who wrote Two Treatises of Government and on the Second Treatise argued that Property (ownership over external objects) is a Natural Right? The same man who argued that as soon as you execute Labour (an action) over a natural good (a good with no previous owner) you're automatically the owner of it by your action? Where does the concept of Natural Rights infer that you can claim Ownership over the Ownership of others? Isn't that against the whole concept of Ownership? You really didn't understand that the control over your body grants you ownership over it, and it is that ownership that grants you your natural rights, meaning that no one can claim ownership over your body as its not a natural good because it already has an owner.

And to say ownership is a legal right would be the same as saying eating or pooping is a legal right. Ownership is a concept found in the physical nature itself, or do you believe animals have no sense of territory?

As soon as there is something as “Me” automatically there is something as “Mine”.( And no, I'm not talking about the psychological "me")



And you clearly is not accompanying the discussion as you probably didn't read my position in this issue on the other topic which made you necro-bump this topic in the first place, so here is goes:

“The feminist argument has the problem that no matter how much freedom a woman has over her body, she does not have rights over the bodies of other human beings. If the fertilized egg is in fact an human life the fetus is its body, from its life, not hers. Even though the fetus will depend on her body to live, it's body is it's own, and so only the law of first aggression can justify the killing. If the fetus development does not threat the physical well being of the mother, she does not have to right to kill it, as she would not have if it was any other human being outside her body.

Feminists think a woman has the right to terminate consciously a pregnancy, even if its a human life, because, as they say, “it is leeching on her body, she has the right to choose how other beings will use her body”. It draws a comparison with a parasite, another being with its own body that is dependent on someone else's body, and as anyone obviously have the right to kill a parasite that is dependent on one's body even if its not threatening the host's physical well being, a woman can kill a fetus because it is leeching her body too. To begin with, a fetus is not a parasite, if it is an human being rights apply differently. Second, a pregnancy is not a disease. A disease is when the body doing something he shouldn’t be doing normally, a pregnancy certainly doesn’t enter in that definition. And third and most important of all, it completely ignores the line of causality, one of the essential principles to define a right. The lines of causality of both a fetus and parasite are the opposite of each other. The parasite exists as a being before the host can have any interaction with it. It's the parasite who will have to act, to do something, to enter in the host's body. The parasites instinctively act, as a being, to depend on someone else's body. The line of causality starts first on the parasite. In a pregnancy the line of causality is reversed, specifically because the being did not exist before the “host-parasite” situation. It's not the act of the embryo that resulted in this situation but the opposite. It was the act of the woman (sex) which caused the creation of the human being and forced a host dependency situation (pregnancy). Its her own act, with her own consequences. The host condition is her responsibility to care, not her property to command. That is the point most of feminists miss about pregnancies.

Of course, if the act that caused the pregnancy (sex) was not on her own, that is, was not willing, the line of causality doesn’t start on her and so she is not responsible of her situation. In this case, to me, she is liable of abortion even though it is a human life inside her, as she is not liable of her situation. If abortion is chosen, I believe the charges of homicide should be put on the rapist together with the rape charge, as he is liable of the pregnancy condition alone.“



It would be a fallacy if the point to show the consequences would be to show how bad they were, which is clearly not the case when I'm only showing that the implications of the rights as privileges are not true to our reality at all, meaning that if the consequences don't follow, the premises are wrong.

And it is slavery because you don't truly have a freedom of your own. Your freedom starts to be a concession (a permission, privilege), so whatever you do with your “freedom” you do under the concession that you can do it, and that freedom can be taken away by the same arbitrariness that took a part of it in the first place, regardless if you agree or not, so it is no freedom at all. Or do you believe that slavery is controlling EVERY aspect of a slave's actions? If none of your freedom is innate to yourself but rather on an other you have no genuine freedom at all. Only the concept of a Natural Right can grant you freedom because its the only one who give absolute right of action over your body regardless of external beings.



Do you have reading problems? I said it is rooted on christian belief (it started based on christian beliefs), not that it is a christian movement.

And because you found christians that are pro-abortion that means the belief system can be pro-abortion? Do I need to cite every major christian scholar proving that you cannot be christian and pro-abortion at the same time and if you are, you are an hypocrite? And how does that stand out over the opinion of the majority of the christians by faith?



Are you coming with the old Popperian critique that Plato supported totalitarianism? Seriously? Another one that read just the Book IV and not his whole work? And just how can you not give credit to one of the most intellectually and historically influential books of Philosophy and Political Sciences?



Well, for someone who didn't read Saint Thomas Aquinas works about Aristotle's works you really can't see that he founded the bases of the Natural Law. I'm guessing you did not read Cicero too? And yes, if right is a Privilege the freedom of though can also be taken away, as it has been in many totalitarian societies. Of course you still had the capability to think whatever you wanted, but if the government knew you thought something he said you couldn’t think about you would be punished. They did persecute thoughts, they just didn’t have a precise tool to verify it. And I hope they never do.



Well, that depends on what you think is Western Philosophy today.



Oh, given your perception of The Republic I bet you don't.



Do you really think that a Natural Right grants you invincibility? Every right, Natural or Legal, can be violated, I can't see why a right should grant you immunity. Do you think that by Natural I'm talking about wild nature? Pure materialism?



What does the legal right to take the custody of a child out of the parents proves?

And the Capacity to Act in “defiance” is no capacity at all because again, with an incomplete cognition in regard to the human complete understanding his defiance has no Substance (his act of defiance is not an act which he comprehends). Do I need to show the whole Hans-Hermann Hoppe treatise on the subject or they already taught you about this one in the university?



Because the ocean is an space, if you truly managed to control the whole ocean you would be the owner of it, but for that you should have to control the whole world, so you can only control portions of it. You also work on air and so far I have not seen anyone claiming ownership of the whole atmosphere, only portions of it, because no one has controlled the whole atmosphere so far. The same goes for the oceans. Just because you can't have the entire land space on earth, doesn't mean people can't have portions of it either (just like we do, duh. You don't know what a territory is?).

And also, in the case of the oceans in specific there's a whole international treatise imposing restriction over the oceans by means of legal rights, it just proves how legal rights can violate natural ones.



The point of my argument is to show that a prison is meant to protect society, not to shackle it. It's meant to violate the rights of those who have violated the rights of others, it's still under the first aggression principle.



I beg to differ.



Again, do you really think that by natural I'm talking about physical nature? Seriously? Have you really read Plato and Aristotle or read just as history of philosophy?

We don't take them away, they're still there, they're just being violated. Or do you believe that if I steal a property from you I took away the right to that property from you? You don't have right to that property anymore?



Are you aware that “person” is a vague concept that will change from point to point don't you? Person and human being are not synonymous under your dictionary (and many others, I'm sure) but can pretty much be under many others too. Personhood is still a heavily debated topic on Philosophy and Political Sciences, that's why I used the concept of Human Being because the concept of Natural Rights are connected to the concept of Existence. Or are you going to play the existentialist card?

You can indeed violate the right of life of another human being, but that isn't to say the right didn't exist in the first place. That is, again, your perception that rights are only legal (and therefore arbitrary), which is exactly what is being discussed here, you're inside circular thoughts.



Yeah, you really think I'm talking about physical nature.



By logic.



And is the DNA distinct from the sick's DNA in its entirety? As far as I'm aware it is just a mutation, a transformation dependent solely on the host's DNA and nothing else, it is by no means distinct. It's not an human being in the same way a lung is not an human being, it is just a part of it.



What does being an influential philosopher have to do with being a good philosopher?

I consider him a bad philosopher for the same reason I consider Machiavelli a bad philosopher. When saying something right he was the philosopher of the obvious, when saying something out of the obvious he would trip and fall over his own logic.

And I would love to give my full explanation for why I believe Thomas Hobbes is a bad philosopher, but if I could do that without going off-topic I certainly would have done it in my previous post. But if you want a very ridiculous short resume: his premisses were wrong, the Homo homini lupus est principle which creates the bellum omnium contra omnes state.



Between the Classicists yes, it is a form of consensus.

You seem to not have understood Locke's argument (as you haven't understood Plato's and Aristotle's Work). Ownership is an agreement when transferring ownership from one person to another, not while claiming it from natural goods, you cannot have an agreement with physical nature. He makes it very clear that Property is a natural right and not simply a pragmatic or consensual rule. He used the word Labour in a very wide sense, where homesteading is not dependent entirely on transformation of natural goods but just on the first use (possibility of action) regardless of what that use may be. You also read Locke under Popperian views and completely disregarded the works of other libertarian thinkers like Rothbard?

And there isn't a concise list because the number of rights the natural rights grants is a chain reaction so it gets hard to define what is a truly natural right and what isn't. For example, some classicists argue that Freedom of Expression is no Natural Right as it can only be truly free under your own property, out of your property it might require the permission of someone (as for example planting an anti-abortion banner in your property would constitute a violation of your property). That's why the list will change from source to source and thinker to thinker and no absolute concise list exists, the only rights that are permanent through all these lists is the right to ownership over your own body and the right to property itself (which is the natural right). I told you already where they come from, if you cannot see that is really not my problem, you haven't studied enough.



No serious student of philosophy(or political science for that matter) would go on saying things on your tone with only one semester of study. I have studied it for 10 years and still don't go saying things I'm not completely sure. I have not just studied Plato or Aristotle works but almost everything pro and against it, I know where the status questionis is. You on the other hand didn't even understand what the word "nature" implies in Philosophy, didn't understand Plato's work, did not follow up Aristotelian studies, seems to have been unaware of the concepts of Natural Rights before this discussion came along and I'm guessing that you even didn't read Locke's work in its integrity but rather learned about it over the works of others and not himself, as already in the beginning of his Second Treatise on Two Treatises of Government he starts with his depiction of State of Nature and understanding of Nature Law (which have been first formulated under Aquina's studies over Aristotle's Work), for which later Locke himself argues that property predates government and society exists with the purpose to protect property, not to create it. Seriously, this is ridiculous, are you trolling with me? You don't seem to have studied Locke AT ALL. Let me guess, you think Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had all been overcome too?. That's exactly why young pupils should not go on making assertions about things, they believe what they know is all that needs to be known and are completely unaware of the status questionis principle.

And no, I believe in Natural Rights because they have been logically concluded under the works of many philosophers. I'm not making that up. If you or your friend have not studied them, then that's not really my problem. To use that as proof of your claims would be Argumentum ad Ignorantiam.

I would recommend checking if Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss are on the list of studies from your course, and if they are not, I would start to seriously doubt the competences of your teachers.

I don't think I'll be responding to you anymore. I could go on a looooong post about how what you say is nonsense about how logic dictates we have natural rights and that if Aristotle and Plato were wrong on anything then somehow it logically follows that ALL modern philosophy is wrong(seriously, platonic metaphysics, you got nothing from that?) accusations I've never read people that I HAVE read before(Thomas Aquinas is actually a favorite philosopher of mine, right below Wittgenstein and Pascal...maybe above Kierkegaard I dunno), and all that. But what you essentially said is, "I'm not educated in the matter but I'm self taught for over 10 years so I know what I'm talking about."

There's a youtuber by the name of Nephilimfree that declares he doesn't have a college education in biology, but has "been researching on google for years" all the science of biology and thinks he can debate scientists and defeat them as to whether or not creationism is true(he's on the creationist side btw).

So you'll have to excuse me as I take your statement that, to me essentially reads like "I don't agree with the philosophy universities teach, so they're wrong and I'm going to do my own thing" declare you have a closed mind, and wish you a good day.

By the way, something to bear in mind: The entire history of philosophy can be summarized as a long time period in which people got things wrong.

So to say that Plato and Aristotle proved anything that's used today as if it's inarguable fact is to demonstrate you don't know what the hell you're talking about. They were even debunked on subjects in their own days, or haven't you read Diogenes?

Again, to quote Plantinga in reference to philosophical arguments, "None of these, I think, even all when added together could be adequately considered to be a proof. If a proof is something which cannot be rejected rationally. Which isn't saying much because there isn't anything so stringent in any subject in philosophy."

I would like to know where did I say that if Plato and Aristotle were wrong about anything it would follow that all modern schools were wrong.

“If Plato and Aristotle were wrong (substantially rather than details) then all philosophy is wrong.“

I said that if they were substantially wrong rather than on details, if they were wrong on the core concept which sustains all of their thinking then all philosophy would be wrong as it was those two (with Socrates) which created the basic dualism to all history of ideas. I do not deny that Plato, Socrates and Aristotle got some things wrong but that doesn't mean that they are “wrong” (as you have claimed yourself, “Plato and Aristotle were wrong.“ which you conclude from your understanding of Plato's Republic and The One, which is a fallacious critique. Not even pointing out that to put Aristotle on the same view over this subject is ridiculous as Aristotle had been critical many times about the Forms of Good)



Curious that the concept of Natural Laws and Right are strange to you then.

My accusations come from the appearance that you have not read them over basic assumptions of their work (Locke's Second Treatise for example).



Talking about Plato, Aristotle and Natural Laws? I certainly have read more about that than you.



And what does he has to do with me? Did I say I have been using Google or Wikipedia as my source for 10 years? But ok, if that's what you want to project then I'll play too: 1 2

And speaking about science, I don't truly know anything about Evolution vs. Creationism or Biology in Depth, but to assume there is a “consensus” over all scientists in this topic is wishful thinking. The same was said over Anthropogenic global warming and has been proved very wrong. “Science” is not an homogeneous institution.



Are you aware that many influential thinkers didn’t even have a diploma, do you? Nor were well received in the academic fields of their time and despised the status quo of the academy.

And its curious that you assume that my critique of the modern mainstream academy is only a opinion for which I don't have any reason behind, that it is “close minded”, without even searching for a confrontation with my reasons in the first place. Do you really think I just have a grudge, a butthurtness, an emotional bias towards the academy?



A very childish summarization that would be.

If you want to summarize the history of philosophy then no better than Arthur Ocken Lovejoy, the intellectual historian who founded the field we know today as History of Ideas, to do it:

“The History of Philosophy is a collection of footnotes from Plato and Aristotle”
So this time I'll not try to guess anything, I'll just ask sincerely: Have you read Arthur Ocken Lovejoy academic work? (oh my god, how can I be using an academic work? Don't I hate the academy? Isn't that hypocrite? Oh no)



They sure were confronted, but debunked? By Diogenes? Really? How? Where? To which degree? Just because Diogenes presented a contrary position? Regardless if that argument was sound of mind? I find so ironic that you cite Diogenes in this discussion because the Stoics were one of the first to ever talk about some kind of Natural Right by denying slavery and affirming the ownership over the body.

Those three (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) would confront and disagree with each other (and had debunked each other on some subjects) all the time. And talking about distinction, Plato would side with Socrates and oppose Aristotle. All the history of ideas is divided by this primordial dualism. If you want to discuss that in depth I wouldn't mind at all now, the topic have clearly gone off-topic already as you have resigned from the discussion.



I certainly couldn't expect more Relativism from the Analytical School.

To comprehend that statement of mine we would need to discuss epistemology, which I don't think you would want to so I'll reciprocate and not waste my time either unless you show some kind of commitment to this discussion.

If you don't want to discuss about philosophy in general that's fine, but I would like to see what is your argument over the Natural Right as even Locke would in some sense agree with it, rather than just see you just leaving over your own ego.

I was pro-choice from the get go because I am not about taking away reproductive rights from women.

I've cooled down now and have decided to address you again. Much as a mistake as it may be. Let's go through this point by point.
1. Plato was substantially wrong about metaphysics.
2. Aristotle was substantially wrong about how physics works.(an impetus carries objects so far that it drops vertically to the earth
3. They were both wrong about the world's relation to the sun, "Well it looks like the sun revolves around the earth so..." (Wittgenstein)"And how would it look the other way around?"
4. Aristotle held a rigid separation of action from production, and his justification of the subservience of slaves and others to the virtue – or arete – of a few which justified the ideal of aristocracy. As a virtue ethicist who follows neo aristolian ethics, I find that I must disagree with his conclusion.
5. Both pre date a vast array of logical thought that didn't come until after they were long dead, which describe far more accurately reality(I.E. Fuzzy logic and modal logic)
6. Both were fantastic philosophers, and I won't at all begrudge them of this, especially since they worked prior to the invention of modern scientific methodologies and empiricism. But they were wrong. About many. Many things. Not just details. They didn't just get a few details here and there wrong...they were wrong. The same way Newton, was wrong, and Einstein refined his Theories, and are then better than Newtonian Mechanics. Does the fact that Newton was wrong mean that gravity cannot possibly work? No.
7. What I claim, most importantly, and pertinently to this discussion in particular, was the idea of natural rights. I'm sorry, but they're wrong. Please provide the logical proof which is supposed to prove we have natural rights. I guarantee either a fallacy, or unsound premise.



I do not find them strange. I only find it strange that anyone seriously believes in them anymore. They are wrong.



Well you couldn't possibly know that but whatever.



An article which contains the refutations of its premises within its description. Fun.



...So you're a Global Warming denier too. Wonderful. By the by I'd like to point out that there IS a consensus among scientists on evolution (95% of scientists agree evolution's a fact, that's enough to establish a consensus) and also Anthropogenic Global Warming isn't the term, it's Anthropogenic Climate Change. It's not been proven wrong either. That's a lie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

It's still the consensus on that as well. But apparently you believe you know more about the subject than the experts and can claim it's totally untrue. Funny.



That's about as useful an argument as saying ,"Well Issac Newton was a creationist." Who cares that they didn't receive diplomas? It just means whatever they got right, how little it may have been, is all the more impressive. Most of the recent philosophers who have had any impact on philosophy as a whole claim a wide array of degrees in their subjects. For good reason.



I see no logical reason to reject academic training. It's produced the finest minds of the past century.



Considering I got it from my philosophy professor, I imagine he'll have a few words to say about that.



No, I haven't, But I and my professors apparently find him to be incorrect. Of course, you probably don't care, they're all a part of the 'academy' you seem to have a distaste for. Glancing over his bio though I find it funny that he was a McCarthy sympathizer. Not saying he's wrong about the other subject because of that...but I'm curious as to why you would cite him as a good source.

Also it's Ockven, not Ocken. Just a minor spelling mistake though, nothing to be upset about.



As far as how, recall Socrates' formulation as to how to taxonomixally describe man. A featherless chicken. Diogenes' rebuttal to this was to strip a chicken of its feathers and throw it on the ground and declare, "Here is Socrates' idea of man!"

Quite the badass of philosophy if I do say so myself.



Well of course Plato sided with Socrates. Popular historian belief is that Socrates was nothing more than a puppet of Plato's expressed in his own writings. I like how you keep referring to 'primordial dualism' in jut about everything you talk about. Must be why you dislike Hobbes. I myself don't believe that dualism in just about any subject adequately explains all that much. Aside from how it's used in science( Subject v Object, hypothesis v refutation, wave-particle duality) I find the term has little utility.



That's just a laughable statement. It's not relativism, it's anti-absolutism. Which of course doesn't at all necessarily(and in Plantinga' case, certainly doesn't)include that there is no truth.



My epistemology is philosophical, metaphysical, and methodological naturalism. What's yours?



I believe Bentham can say it better than I. I quite enjoy his work, especially on vegetarianism. Such a wonderful philosopher..."The question is not can they think, but can they suffer?"

http://www.ditext.com/bentham/bentham.html

While our founding fathers may have established that they believed in inalienable natural rights, philosophers at the time found this...rather silly. Indeed even Jean-Jacques Rousseau would say that these rights are totally unnecessary in the first place, let alone existent.

It's not so much the premise of Natural Rights that you're rejecting, but rather the definition of Natural Rights. IE: Rights that were endowed upon man, seemingly out of nowhere or by a foreign religious entity.

And you know, I'll agree with you here: I reject this definition of Natural Rights, these rights were not endowed out of nowhere, or by some entity. However, these rights are naturally placed upon Man. How so? Because these basic rights(IE: Right to free speech, to privacy, etc) are the basis of which a society is formed. As I mentioned, men have rebelled, fought and died for these rights. Against the aristocracies that, as you mentioned, did not believe in the rights of mankind.

What takes these rights away, isn't necessarily man himself, but the violation of his fellow man(You and 42 have concurred to this). We are the arbitrators of rights, but we don't have the right to take these rights away. If we did, said violations would not result in a punishment of any sort.

The "naturalism", is a sense of natural order that we've come to accept in the 21st century. Or would you disagree with the basic fundamentals of Western Society as we've come to know them today?





The Global Warming debate is far from over, and the Copenhagen scandal is a big reason why. You simply cannot fudge the numbers to make your own argument and then proclaim that said argument to be legitimate. If done in the Academia circles, it would receive a big 'no-no' from fellow intellectuals. And part of the reason such fallacy and corruption takes place, is the beneficiaries.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8392611.stm

This is why I'm thankful to people such as Anonymous. In their fight against corrupt billionaires, paux-"intellectuals" collaborating for a quick buck, Copenhagen failed miserably and they couldn't get a deal done.

Oh, and just to be sure: No one's denying our impact on our environmental atmosphere. But what people have the right to deny, is the absurd notion that industrialization is the reason for the Sun flaring up some thousands of light years away from the earth's surface!

It's akin to the thought that, we must be the only beings on the solar system. Or to the 18th century thought of the world being flat. How much scientific research has been done on non-earth related impacts to 'Global Warming'? How about the storms in Jupiter increasing?

Weather, is an element beyond our control. To act as though we can control it, or impact it indirectly, isn't even an intellectual thought. It's an arrogant presumption.






An impact on Philosophy? Weren't you the one who argued due to the abstractness of philosophy, that no one could have an impact on philosophy? We can uphold thinkers as men(and women) who have revolutionized thought on a certain subject or field, but they didn't improve the "philosophical" field of study any.

but I agree with you on Philosophy's subjectivity and abstractness. So why would
you turn away from your former(correct) position?

Also, because of Philosophy's subjectivity, it means that whether or not Newton, Plato, etc got diplomas, it doesn't take away any more or less from their philosophical achievements.

They've advanced the thought process of man, we've merely advanced our progress further. Would you disagree?







I would agree with you, I've learned a lot in my short time in Online University courses and I continue to learn everyday. But, you are an intellectual like me correct? You, too, must understand how close-minded Academia at times can be.

In order to score the high grades that we do, we have to show a clear understanding and comprehension of our instructor's directions, thoughts and ideals. But, in order to evolve as philosophers, we must keep our own perspective and our own philosophical visions of the world.

Even, if we end up being as flawed as Plato is in your mind, our flaws will prevent the next generation's mistakes.



Earlier, you stated that the fact that Einstein, et al. are acknowledged philosophically as intellectuals even as they weren't accepted by Academia is proof of what great accomplishments they achieved, even if very little. If you believe that statement, then why your attacks on Ockven simply because he was a McCarthy Sympathizer?

With the popularity of the Occupy Wall Street movement, one would argue that McCarthy had a point. It wasn't so much as a 'Soviet threat', but this country has indeed accepted Leftist ideology, whereas formerly it was a centrist-state.

I haven't read Ockven, so I won't defend or attack him. But I will defend an intellectual being attacked, simply due to his political views. That was just low, Lundi.





This rebuttal was in hyperbole, ignoring Socrates's deeper political meaning. Did Socrates seriously think man was physiologically a naked bird? Of course not. What Socrates meant, was that man is often fragile, even more so than that of the chicken. Hence, stripping a cowardly animal of even it's own futile defenses.

And it's been proven to be true here in America. We haven't had a presidential nominee or candidate not from the Republicans or the Democrats since, what, the Whig Party?(Which might as well have been the JR. Republican). We live in a theocratic dictatorship and we don't even know it :D.


So no, I don't think of Diogenes as some badass of philosophy for the above example. He actually misunderstood Socrates's meaning entirely.





You point out how it's used in Science, need we reference to Matter? Particularly, how there's Anti-Matter? Part of the reason I disagree with the Humanist train of thought(IE: We're all one and the same) is that it denies our biological existence.

The masucline-feminine duality of existence is the system for which all animals, mammal or amphibian are born through and live through. There are of course, some animals that don't need a female counterpart, but nevertheless the female is still born in those species of families.

You simply cannot eliminate one part of the equation, without the other suffering. Singularity is a metaphysical concept that doesn't match up to the physical reality of duality of genders, people, animals, and even physical matter.






Anti-absolutism is a great philosophical approach to life, but there are some things we have to hold in absolutism. The value of human life, the need for continuing progress as well as a moral code. These things have allowed us to live to this point, if we should abandon them, we risk our own extinction.

The fact that I would support a Kira-like system, is proof of my belief in anti-absolutism as well. Just because a criminal has a human body, doesn't equate him to human society in my mind any longer. In prison, he feeds off the law-abiding taxpayer, in society he does the lawabiding citizen sometimes fatal harm.

He's a parasite on the face of the earth, and as such needs to be eliminated.




Metaphysical? What's your definition of metaphysical? Do you concur to the concept of a sense of energy or some kind of force inside of the human body? Could this be constituted as a Soul? If you concur to such, then why do you hold a pro-choice ideology? As Energy is matter, and even the zygote itself as a biological existence holds that same energetic existence.

I believe in the metaphysical plane, it's one of my main reasons for being pro-life. There's a greater sense of purpose and meaning out there, and our lives aren't bound by the physical alone. When we leave life undetermined, that's truly a tragedy for mankind.






And Mr.Rousseau would be proof of the type of philosopher who was wrong in human history. Ask the Christians being persecuted in Iran, if they'd rather live in a Western civilization? Or those who fell at the hands of Stalin?

The Magna Carta is one of our greatest lasting legacies on this planet, the declaration of independence etching it in stone as the platform for one of the world's brightest beacons for modern development.

When Bentham says "The question isn't, can they think", that means he acknowledges that they can think. If they can think, they can feel. And if they can express their feelings, they can feel pain and thereby suffering.

So, psychologically I hold Bentham to be incorrect.(For my part, I'm a meat eater).
I think whether they suffer or not is irrelevant. The law of nature is survival of the fittest.

If one day, there's a species greater than we human beings, we too shall fall pray to that everlasting law.

"If you're strong, you live. If you're weak, you die."-Makoto Shishio.

I believe abortion is morally wrong, but I don't think it should be made illegal.

Religious entity or naturalistic process

If only one person in the world exists, the only rights they have is the rights they give themselves.



And as such, these rights are nothing more than that which is granted to people via tradition and society. Glad you agree with me.



If we don't have the right to take these rights away, then what prevents us from doing so? Doesn't appear to be anything other than...other people not wanting us to.



Depends on the 'fundamentals' you speak of.



No one's saying the sun is flaring up due to our industrialization. As far as those hacked emails, they actually didn't do anything. The emails didn't reveal any sort of fudging of numbers. Here, I'll provide a video explaining.





Climate change most certainly isn't something we have no power over. We cannot CONTROL it, no, but we can certainly influence it. This is totally off topic so...yeah.



I'm confused as to how someone revolutionizing thought in fields or subjects in philosophy doesn't count as having an impact on philosophy. I think Wittgenstein has had the biggest impact on philosophy(arguably some people prefer Karl Popper)in the past century. He's the foundation for current thought that many of the problems we face in philosophy is due to the fact that everyone uses language differently, not that we truly disagree about a wide arrange of things, but our language prevents us from reaching agreements. He's also one of the foundations against absolutism, saying that to claim to know anything absolutely is as ridiculous as to say you doubt something that seems for all intents and purposes to be the fact of the matter.



With that last statement, no. However I don't agree that all philosophy is purely subjective. There's a lot of commentary as to objective states of reality in philosophy, and the utility of epistemology is perhaps the best example of this.



If by close minded you mean they regularly reject ideas that have been discarded as having no evidence, or that they reject ideas that have no support, and prefer to only stick to ideas which have some level of empirical and logical support, then sure. But I wouldn't call that close minded. Close mindedness means that you're not open to new ideas, which is very far from the truth. That's the foundation for modern academic philosophy, everyone disagrees with everyone and constantly argue back and forth. But one of the unwritten rules about being a professional philosopher is that you MUST be open to cogent argument. If you cannot think of a refutation to an argument, then you MUST admit you find it persuasive. To reject that rule would be close minded.



I don't know about you, but from my training I've found that the professors don't, and in fact refuse, to instill their own personal ideals into the students. They much prefer to simply state the history of philosophy on the subject they explain and allow the students to come up to their own conclusions, and so long as a student isn't way off the mark(such as believing platonic metaphysics has some merit) they're encouraged to go through with it.



So long as the flaws are pointed out, which is the job of academia in the first place.



I only mentioned that because I found it rather silly of a stance. That being a communist, in his own words, necessarily means that you should be ejected from any political standing you have, because being a communist, somehow includes that you're not open to new ideas and compromise. To me, this is simply submitting to the vilifying of alternate political points of view. Communism doesn't include any of his critiques as part of its tenets. I'm not a communist, but I know people who are...and that couldn't be further from the truth.



Leftism doesn't = communism. Just saying.



Well that's your right. But again, as I said in the original post you quoted, I don't consider this to be a valid logical reason to reject his credibility, but I do consider it a huge error to be scrutinized, and as such I'm justified in being skeptical of his views.



That's actually my mistake, he didn't say featherless chickens, he said featherless bipeds. And as a result of Diogenes' critique, Plato admitted it was an incomplete description and revised it. So...yeah. And no, we don't live in a theocratic dictatorship. North Korea does. America is SOOOOOOOO not North Korea.



As I said, I accept duality as used in science. But I don't accept it in just about any other field. I don't see anything here disagreeing with that.

As far as humanism considering us all one and the same, I think that's a gross oversimplification. As a Secular humanist I would like to point out that we accept that there is a need fr both males, and females, and that there ARE differences between them, just as there are differences within the groups. What we advocate is that everyone be treated equally and fairly, judged on their merits and demerits individually instead of culturally. Biologically we believe that people are made of the same 'stuff' as each other. That is, we're all comprised of DNA, skin, brains, blah blah, all of that stuff. Not that we all have penises, or we all have vaginas or something like that.



As far as I'm concerned, the idea that we must at least hold the value of human life, and the need for progressing our moral code as absolutist is a misnomer. What instead I think you mean to say here is that those are axioms by which we ought accept to live in a cohesive society. Not that they're absolutely true, but that arguing against them brings nothing fruitful.



Metaphysical naturalism holds that all properties related to consciousness and the mind are reducible to, or supervene upon, nature. Broadly, the corresponding theological perspective is religious naturalism or spiritual naturalism. More specifically, it rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are part of many religions.

I went ahead and copy/pasted that from wikipedia, as I'm rather inarticulate.

In any case I don't think what you consider to be 'metaphysics' is what metaphysics actually are. Metaphysics is simply the attempt to answer two basic questions about reality: "What is there?" and "What is it like?" Metaphysical naturalism is to place things that are beyond purely empirical inquiry as the questions we're asking. Such as what is it that makes something good or bad.



I should clarify, Mr. Rosseau didn't mean to say we ought not have these rights, or that these rights aren't necessary to have, but the concept of INALIENABLE rights is superfluous, and if we would call the same rights rights we establish to ourselves via law and consensus, it would be just as good.



The declaration of independence is a declaration of war.



The point is that we don't hold value in thing's ability to think philosophical thoughts and perform calculus and all the things humans are capable of doing with our higher thinking capabilities. Take someone with Down Syndrome. It can be said that a fully grown horse is more intelligent than a person with Down Syndrome, or even a baby. So then why is it not ok to kill a baby or a person with Down's Syndrome but it's ok to kill a horse? The horse is smarter, and can feel pain just as much as the others. A pig squirms when they're being restrained, squeals when its cut into, expresses vast arrays of pain. So then, what is the justification for ignoring these very obvious indicators of pain? I see none.



I don't think you know what survival of the fittest means.



And he was strong(arguably the strongest) and died.

"One thing that is truly frightening is the ever imposing omnipotence of death. Be you weak, or strong, intelligent, or not, everyone will eventually die. There are no exceptions." - Betrand Russel.

You got worked up over what people say about you in a forum “philosophy” discussion? Really? Ok... Since you seem to be a little more committed to this discussion let's start discussing Philosophy seriously (well, I'm not sure if that will really happen...). I've read all of your post and will as usual divide it by pieces to reply, but I can clearly see that we have some disparities over our understanding of philosophical terms (no issue on this. Many philosophical terms will vary from philosopher to philosopher, one's understanding about these terms will depend on the philosophers one is accustomed to), and for that I'll clarify here some basic philosophical assumptions first because we clearly had some problems before when I was talking of apples and you were treating it as if I were talking about oranges, so this time I'll make my premisses clear so you can understand what I'm talking about when I use them. Secondly, because its impossible to discuss philosophically without them. It is impossible to ratiocinate without assumptions and it is the duty of a philosopher to reduce them to the minimum so he can later find the essences, the principles.

A. Metaphysics
1. Metaphysics is the science of supreme necessities which cover and subordinate all others.

2. Necessity (from nec cedo, to not cede) is to be, that which cannot “not be”. Necessity is the impossibility of the otherwise.

3. Lies on the Metaphysics the study of possibility as such and impossibility as such, as well as the many gradations and modules of possibilities, which when read quantitatively will be Probabilities.

B. Axioms
1. An axiom is a self evident proposition.

2. Self evident proposition is a proposition in which its contradiction cannot be formulated under a logically unequivocal proposition.

3. Every proof is based on self-evident principles.

4. A principle can only be or not be self-evident. You can't “take as” self-evident a principle which is not. In other words, there can't be principles hypothetically self-evident (although there can be, obviously, principles which are hypothetically true).

5. The psychological conditions which permits the perception of a principle's evidence can change from human being to human being, therefore the sentiment of certainty has nothing to do with the self-evidence.

Period. These are my basic assumptions of thought.



Plato never talked about metaphysics in specific, it is a term coined much later, so I'm assuming you're talking about platonic realism. And so my question is again, how much wrong? I never denied that Plato made mistakes in his thoughts but how much does this mistake weight so to you're able to say “he was wrong” (which I understand that you mean they were substantially wrong, wrong in the base of their philosophy, since no philosopher or thinker ever got everything right it would be ridiculous to assume one is wrong because he didn't get everything right...). For example, in Socrates the division between the Conceptual and the Existential aspects of entities is only a technical division, it is no true division on itself, but only a methodological division made to organize knowledge, it is only an artifice through which Socrates tries to understand a more valuable aspect of reality itself. In Plato, this separation of aspects goes further. Plato emphasizes the conceptual aspect as being reality itself while the existential aspect is seen as some kind of fabric of appearances which hide the true reality. This is an abyssal difference between the two. To say that it is more valuable, in a search for the truth, to look at reality by a certain aspect is one thing. Another thing is to say that this aspect is reality in itself and the other aspect, if not completely false, at least partially illusory. In Socrates the division between these two worlds had a methodological sense, a gnoseological purpose, in Plato this separation is ontological. An methodological precept tells us how we should treat the entities, a ontological principle affirms what it really is. And obviously, I would be completely out of my mind to defend that this transformation from methodological to ontological is right. Plato was clearly wrong in this view of entities. The methodological separation only says its more valuable to look at reality by a certain angle, not that reality can only exist in that angle. This is the wrong doing of Plato's metaphysics. But to use that as proof as that Plato metaphysics “is wrong” would be completely tasteless. It would be a complete disregard to what metaphysics truly is, Plato's mistake is more epistemological than metaphysical in itself, which doesn't change what his metaphysical concepts means. He would argue as if the conceptual aspect was the real and disregard the existential aspect as real, which only implies in a mistake in regard to reality than a mistake in regard to metaphysics. So I would ask you to explain again, how wrong? So far, given your understanding of the Republic, I've only seem you making faulty assumptions of Plato's metaphysics.



So, because Aristotle was wrong about physics (actually, about many societal relations and biology as well), would imply that he was wrong about everything? That the core concept which Aristotle constructed his whole work is wrong because he was wrong about physics? This is ridiculous. To say he is wrong in a given subject is one thing, to say “he IS wrong” is completely different. Aristotle's work is not only about physics. Or only about politics. Or only about literature. To be able to say “Aristotle was wrong” rather than “Aristotle was wrong about...” you have to understand the whole Aristotelian work and see that the base premises in which he builds everything is wrong. His faulty assertion in given subjects only imply in faulty conclusions over the consequences of his premises, not that the premises in which he treats everything are in itself metaphysically wrong.



None of these analytical modules can overrule the metaphysical science, so I really don't understand what you're trying to say.



Obviously not, as Newton only tries to quantify gravity, not explain its existence. Whats your point?



I already presented and you ignored! What the hell do you want me to do? To give a class for you about philosophy? You just say “they are wrong” but you don't explain why they're wrong. I showed you my premisses which gives my consequences, you ignore the premisses and judge the conclusions based on other premisses of your own instead of judging my premisses themselves, how do you expect to even understand what I'm trying to say?

And kind of awesome that you treat the concept of natural rights as if it were a completely new idea, that is so new that its incumbent to me to give the onus of proof, completely disregarding the status questionis and the almost millenarian philosophical tradition who tried to defend the concept (Plato, Aristotles, Heraclitus, Seneca, Thomas Aquina, Francisco de Vitória, Dominico de Soto, Francisco Suarez, The whole school of Salamanca, Hugo Grotius, John Locke, Christian Thomasius, Christian Wolff, Johannes Messner, John Finnis, Samuel von Pufendorf, Ludwig Julius Friedrich Höpfner, Lysander Spooner, Johann Christoph Hoffbauer, Gottlieb Hufeland, Karl Anton von Martini, Gottfried Achenwall, Murray Rothbard, Adam Friedrich von Glafey, Franz von Zeiller, Gustav Radbruch [after the end of the war in 1945], Jean Barbeyrac, Oliver O'Donovan, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Saint Agostine, Leo Strauss, John Henry Newman, Ronald Dworkin, Ayn Rand, Gottfried Leibniz and so many others jurists and legislators) while the denial of Natural Laws is pretty much a modern invention. It centered on Jeremy Bentham (which shared the very Rousseaunian lack of anthropology understanding) and David Hume skepticism with the Hume's Guillotine (and of course, pretty much all of the modern school that followed Descartes till modern days). And even Hume's Guillotine have already been dealt with in Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty and Hesselberg's Hume, Natural Law and Justice. None of the two sides hold the onus of proof, the question is so far advanced that it is incumbent to both to show the proof of their own views.



Again, for Christ’s sake, why they are wrong?




Given your interpretation of the republic, yes I can at least deduce.



Exactly. That's why no serious student should use google or wikipedia as primary source. That's the joke. :)



And so do the creationists with the concepts of Intelligent Design, they don't deny the evolution, they just point an ultimate source. So yeah, I wouldn't call that a consensus over Evolutionism vs Creationism, but I confess that I don't truly know how is the status of this subject. So I won't argue with that.

On the global warming though I definitely can. And obviously no one defies the concept that mankind can change the climate, its kinda obvious that we can influence it. But to say we're aggravating the global warming, that we're are the source of a substantially stronger global warming is just ridiculous, and over this subject, it was said that the recent global warming had a lot of human influence on it, that's why people would call it anthropogenic global warming. I don't deny global warming as you think I do ( “So you're a Global Warming denier too”), this is ridiculous, global warming is a natural phenomenon, how can I deny something like that? I say that the weight mainstream academy (IPCC and so on) gives to the human influence on the climate is too much. If you want to discuss that here I wouldn't mind too, but it goes completely off-topic in relation to abortion.



More impressive? Because they didn't have a diploma? Do you know what the hell a diploma is?
A diploma is just a document asserting that given institution recognizes competences about a certain subject in a given individual. Obviously they'll give a diploma to whoever manages to complete their courses, as to them, the course gives an individual such capabilities, but that is again, dependent on their own judgment of competence. If their judgment, whatever it may be, is faulty or unprepared what weight does their recognition have? Do you really believe the academy is always right? This is ridiculous, it goes against the very history of academic science. The academy have been wrong many times, and its not always from inside the academy that the correction came, many times it came from outside critic. Being inside the academy doesn't grant you certainty over a given subject. The academy itself exists only as a form of consensus, as the consensus will change from time to time, the academy changes from time to time, the academy is by no means the proof of righteous knowledge. Not because someone is inside the academy that he is right and not because someone is outside the academy that he is wrong. That's the point. There are many ways to learn about the world, university as institution is just one of them. My critique of mainstream academy today is the passion which holds modern philosophy as the only and the one righteous philosophy with no space to discussion at all, Kant's understanding of metaphysics is pretty much the general rule inside the academy today.



In regard to philosophy? I have to say the academic consensus (the modern school) is very misguided.



And?



Oh god, this will change to McCarthy revisionism...

Ok, since you find him incorrect without even knowing his premisses and clearly show a bias on reading him let's use another academic who you probably will have a better association. Alfred North Whitehead and his treatise on metaphysics Process and Reality.

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.“
(obviously by Plato he includes Aristotle too, since he is Plato's pupil)

I would also to make a correction to myself. In my previous post I wrote that Lovejoy said “The History of Philosophy is a collection of footnotes from Plato and Aristotle”, but “from” is wrong, it is a mistranslation of mine, the right word would be the one used by Whitehead, “to” instead of “from”, so what Lovejoy said was “The History of Philosophy is a collection of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle”. Whitehead also studied the History of Ideas and came pretty much to the same conclusion, and since he has an incredible influence in the analytical school I believe you might know him better than Lovejoy. (which proves you're more of a philodoxus than a student of philosophy)

You see, that is a relevant correction.



This is not.



Really? Do you call that a debunking of Socrates?



Popular historian belief? You really don't know what I'm talking about. Obviously, when you analyze from different angles you will see different things. I can for example completely reverse what I said by showing that Aristotle was more close to Socrates than Plato. Plato was characteristically more of an Homo Politicus than a pure Homo Theoreticus. In his Seveth Letter he admits that the objective of his works is the State reform. Under this view we can see that Aristotle differs from Plato and gets much closer to Socrates by his complete lack of ambition to interfer in the order of his world. No political master plans to reform his time, both of them were more of an Homo Theoreticus than an Homo Politicus. To Aristotle the most dignified occupation for a man is the search to know, to comprehend. He would put the theorical (theorical comes from the verb theorein which means to look, to see, to contemplate) activity to such a high degree that, in his understanding, it was the only activity of God itself. In this way, I can clearly draw that Aristotle would be more close to Socrates and oppose Platos than Platos side with Socrates and oppose Aristotle.

But this is not what I was talking about before (not even considering that regardless how Plato used the Socratian figure in his works, it's still a support). My distinction comes from the study of History of Ideas (that given your ignorance of Lovejoy's works I believe you know little about), and for that you have to understand the concept of unit-ideas. Since you don't seem to know anything of it, I would be just wasting time here to explain that in depth to you. So I'll just give a very raw distinction that maybe you can grasp on. Aristotle would try to find an unity on the real and make the distinctions inside the real itself, like an organism which have multiple organs his entity is not on the organs but on the organism itself. While Plato and Socrates would both make a separation, one methodological and another ontological, of the real and divide the entity of reality in aspects.

I won't even comment much further on your view of duality, it is just completely ignorant of philosophy... Degrees (gradations) are later consequences of duality, not the opposite.



And what is the opposite of absolute? Duh.

Much of the analytical school is grounded on uncertainties given the earlier influence of logical positivism. It took decades for the analytical school to even recognize the metaphysical, only recently after William Quine's attack on analytic-sintetic distinction that something started to appear. Such school of thought is pretty a much a breed that was born when universities tried to impose scientific methodology on philosophy itself and I dare to say that even to this day they hold little comprehension for metaphysics (Anthony Flew's shift to Aritotelianism is still today seen as some kind of betrayal).



Metaphysical and philosophical is kind of redundant isn't it?
Mines is simply Aristotelian.



“The question is not can they think, but can they suffer?"
What does this have to do with anything in this discussion?

Bentham does more of a critic of Natural Rights in the judgment of the founding fathers (which is unarguably very Augustinean by the citation of a creator) but he shows little proof to counter the notion of a natural right as understood by Locke. He goes on to show:

“[...]there are no such things as natural rights -- no such things as rights anterior to the establishment of government -- no such things as natural rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal […] We know what it is for men to live without government -- and living without government, to live without rights: we know what it is for men to live without government, for we see instances of such a way of life -- we see it in many savage nations, or rather races of mankind; for instance, among the savages of New South Wales, whose way of living is so well known to us: no habit of obedience, and thence no government -- no government, and thence no laws -- no laws, and thence no such things as rights -- no security -- no property: --liberty, as against regular controul, the controul of laws and government --perfect; but as against all irregular controul, the mandates of stronger individuals, none. In this state, at a time earlier than the commencement of historv -- in this same state, judging from analogy, we the inhabitants of the part of the globe we call Europe, were; -- no government, consequently no rights: no rights, consequently no property -- no legal security -- no legal liberty: security not more than belongs to beasts -- forecast and sense of insecurity keener -- consequently in point of happiness below the level of the brutal race.”

Which argument is that? It is the good old anthropological argument. People in the past “didn't respect” property, so, property didn't exist before government. It's a very childish understanding of human history. Of course that there are many examples of societies before government that would make Karl Marx proud, with complete disregard to property and lots of communal goods or societies with no morals which would act like savage predators towards each other. But to use that as proof of the arbitrariness of rights is just naive. Anyone knows that to formulate a common principle based on anthropology all societies should have the common trace, which is not the case in regard to property. Many, many societies had the concept of property before the concept of State or government. This is just completely absurd, to argue there is no concept of property before the government would be the same as to recognize that there isn't the concept of stealing before the government, as one depends on the other. Which we can clearly see by the antique cultures that this is not the case, the concept of stealing is very clear and very important in many cultures born before the creation of a central government. This question of property is a central question in human morality and ethics, that's why so many religions deal so profoundly with it. And in regards to property, many of them point to a converging point which indicates a tendency in the human nature pretty much like the savage men no respect for property does. In other words, the premise destroys itself, it is no argument at all.

This argument is grounded in a confusion in regard to basic philosophical understanding. It confuses Natural Law with Law of Nature, as if both were the same thing. The argument is that, if there was such thing as natural right, the laws of nature should protect the natural right and forbid its violation, and as the laws of nature don't forbid that, then there isn't Natural Law. As a man have the capability to simply go and take food from another man's hand, and the laws of nature do nothing to impede it, there is no Natural Law. It's a very naive understanding of metaphysics. Under this pretext, if something as god (an architect of reality) says Thou shall not kill but It does nothing to prevent men to kill each other by the rules of reality or creates a world where animals have to kill each other to survive, Thou shall not kill is no metaphysical law, abstraction is an impossible feature and therefore just an culturally arbitrary rule. The degrees of possibility implied on the duality of be becomes inexistent so its kinda obvious that to them the very concept of possession is non existent and merely an human creation, despite that the very concept of possession and domain is an axiom in the physical nature itself.

Not even pointing out that government itself doesn't have the monopoly of granting rights, it just gives a guarantee by a social contract that if a right is violated or attempted to be violated, the violator will be punished, the government also does nothing to prevent the violation of rights, it just assures that the violators of those rights will be punished if they violate it, not that it will prevent the violation. To call for the laws of nature disregard to impossibility as such as proof of the inexistence of natural rights is, at minimum, an hypocrisy.

Bentham's argument is, to me as an Aristotelian, completely naive of metaphysics and human history.

And on a site note: This whole arguing started over my tentative of correction in regard to your notion of rights, which is just a point. Even if you manage to affirm your notion that no natural rights exist, you would still have to deal with my Pascalian calculus on abortion, that so far you seem to just be ignoring.

*sigh* no, you silly person. I was worked up with how you keep asserting some sort of knowledge, some sort of inarguable fact of philosophy that's been 'proved' by Aristotle and Plato, as if everyone should simply agree with this idea of natural rights or there's some sort of bias involved. I'm not frustrated with what anyone thinks of me, I get enough neg reps in yet continue posting. It's sophistry that makes me angry.



Your definition of metaphysics seems to me to be a mash up of teleology and ontology rather than anything I'm actually familiar with that's metaphysics specific. So you've got me confused.

B. Axioms
1. An axiom is a self evident proposition.

2. Self evident proposition is a proposition in which its contradiction cannot be formulated under a logically unequivocal proposition.

3. Every proof is based on self-evident principles.[/quote]

You had me until 3. Modern proofs, and indeed even proofs used in the time of Aristotle and Plato are and were subject to empirical scrutiny. There are very few self-evident truths. I mean, come on, solipsists exist. And I don't think they're solipsists because they want to be cool and edgy and rebellious.



You know, even in Aristotle's time h realized this, "either/or" type of logic is grossly insufficient o establish that by which we're trying t establish things. That's why we have developed new and improved logical scales that include ore than just binary positions.



Well then we have some problems, because I don't agree with all of them. Including that last one. If something is self evident, then it must be something that cannot be escaped. Take Socrates and the Sophists when he was asked the question, "Why use reason?" Because, as Socrates pointed out, "To even ask the question is to presuppose reason. In order to reason that you ought not reason, you must use reason."



Plato never talked about metaphysics in specific, it is a term coined much later, so I'm assuming you're talking about platonic realism. And so my question is again, how much wrong? I never denied that Plato made mistakes in his thoughts but how much does this mistake weight so to you're able to say “he was wrong” (which I understand that you mean they were substantially wrong, wrong in the base of their philosophy, since no philosopher or thinker ever got everything right it would be ridiculous to assume one is wrong because he didn't get everything right...). For example, in Socrates the division between the Conceptual and the Existential aspects of entities is only a technical division, it is no true division on itself, but only a methodological division made to organize knowledge, it is only an artifice through which Socrates tries to understand a more valuable aspect of reality itself. In Plato, this separation of aspects goes further. Plato emphasizes the conceptual aspect as being reality itself while the existential aspect is seen as some kind of fabric of appearances which hide the true reality. This is an abyssal difference between the two. To say that it is more valuable, in a search for the truth, to look at reality by a certain aspect is one thing. Another thing is to say that this aspect is reality in itself and the other aspect, if not completely false, at least partially illusory. In Socrates the division between these two worlds had a methodological sense, a gnoseological purpose, in Plato this separation is ontological. An methodological precept tells us how we should treat the entities, a ontological principle affirms what it really is. And obviously, I would be completely out of my mind to defend that this transformation from methodological to ontological is right. Plato was clearly wrong in this view of entities. The methodological separation only says its more valuable to look at reality by a certain angle, not that reality can only exist in that angle. This is the wrong doing of Plato's metaphysics. But to use that as proof as that Plato metaphysics “is wrong” would be completely tasteless. It would be a complete disregard to what metaphysics truly is, Plato's mistake is more epistemological than metaphysical in itself, which doesn't change what his metaphysical concepts means. He would argue as if the conceptual aspect was the real and disregard the existential aspect as real, which only implies in a mistake in regard to reality than a mistake in regard to metaphysics. So I would ask you to explain again, how wrong? So far, given your understanding of the Republic, I've only seem you making faulty assumptions of Plato's metaphysics.[/quote]

...I didn't think this was really an issue that was hotly contested. Pretty much everyone has abandoned what we currently coin as "platonic metaphysics" where "the good" is something that can be plucked out of the ether and examined and observed, same with love, and all the other things Plato thought were just kind of hanging around in the air. Also, since you seem to have a totally different understanding as to what metaphysics is than me, I don't think your critique by claiming that I'm not taking about his metaphysics is going to convince me of anything...because what I'm criticizing and what you consider me to criticize are two different things.



I never said they were wrong about everything, but thanks for painting my position dishonestly as something it's not. I appreciate having a straw man put up of my position. It makes me really want to continue this. I'll tell you what.



I agree, why are you arguing points I never made?



No, it's not. Within the context of our conversation you were saying that Aristotle and Plato PROVED that natural rights exist. I am saying they're wrong. You are for some strange reason conflating the fact that I called them wrong with, "They're wrong about EVERYTHING THEY EVER SAID." That's retarded, and to me seems like deliberate obfuscation.



Again, why are you arguing something that I'm not arguing?



And as I understand the term metaphysics, the term, "Metaphysical Science" is totally confusing to me as well.



That people who we base a lot of current thought on(we still teach newtonian mechanics in high school after all) can in fact be wrong, or inaccurate about what they said about something, yet we can claim them as a base to work our current models of thought on. Which is what we're doing with the ancient Greeks.



Ok, you're being silly here. I've provided references to other philosophers as well as have provided my own reasoning why I find your 'proofs' to be unpersuasive, and you're calling everything I did as just saying 'they are wrong'. That's rather dishonest of you. I have not seen a logical proof from you, merely a thesis on what you believe to be the case, that from my perspective holds no water.



Nobody's denying natural laws. All I'm saying is that I don't think we naturally have rights a priori human cognition of establishment of rights. In other words, I accept natural laws in the sense of the scientific laws. But not the political laws.

For all of our existence great minds have defended some very silly positions, including the ideas of "Elan vital" or "mind body dualism" or "geocentric theory' or 'Lamarckian evolution' really there is a long list of silly ideas that great minds have attempted to defend.

I'm not treating the concept of ntural rights as something completely new. I'm treating it as long abandoned by the majority of people who know what they're talking about and that the onus is not on me to prove that they exist, as I'm not the one making the positive claim that they do. And I have rovided much justification as to the idea that they in fact do not.



So after you poison the well by saying, "Pfft, the critics didn't know X, therefore their critiques are bad." you essentially say we ought to do what I've been doing all along. Asking you for sufficient justification while providing my own reasons for not accepting the conclusion. Have you been asleep or something this whole time?



I've been over it a lot with you. It's so hypocritical for you to complain that I'm just not listening to you and that you've provided the proof and the logic and blah blah blah but I'm just plugging my ears and going, "Nope I don't believe it!" When that's clearly not the case. I've provided other philosophers plus my own arguments in the past posts and in the one that you're quoting right here, so to constantly ask for it when you know it's there is dishonest as well. You don't have a good track record with this conversation, is it any wonder why I wanted to end it where I said?



I'm encouraged to use wikipedia as a starting point, that google scholar and wikipedia are fantastic places to look for more data, so long as you continue onward and check out the sources for that data. Also, considering you're self taught, and I actually AM a student, I would figure...I dunno, you have no right to tell me what a'serious student'ought and ought not do.



Deening on the creationist. There's still a large amount of young earthers out there,and there are plenty in the ID camp that don't accept evolution either, Jonathen Wells being a prime example among them.



As Kenneth Miller put it in his 1982 debate with Morris, "I'm a creationist too. We all are. We just have different ideas as to how everything got created. Some people think it was created purely naturalistically, others like myself include supernatural elements in places science cannot possibly examine, and others like Morris...within 6 days 6000 years ago. But the consensus among scientists is at least one of the first two..the third one, not so much."



I'd rather not, let's stick to natural rights and abortion. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that pretty much EVERYONE who are bipartisan-ly supported to watch the climate and determine these things ALL agree that global warming is occurring and that humans are a root cause of the current uplift along with all the papers and evidence I've seen about it pretty much solidify that it's the case for me. I've not seen anything valid thrown against it. So there's that.



Are you seriously knocking PhD's? I'm having a hard time taking you seriously yet again, as you essentially just admonishing the idea of diplomas is just alien to me. It's about as useful as saying, 'anyone can be good at it, a diploma's just a piece of paper, it means nothing!' And yes, I know you didn't say those words but that's how it comes off to me.



The academy argues with itself, so that would be silly of me to assert.



Which would be why I never said it.



And they're usually proven wrong by other academics. Not s self-taught Joe Blow who read a lot. So yeah.



Can you give a list of examples of non-academically trained individuals critiquing the academy, and the academy admitting to being wrong due to these critiques?

Because right now you just...sorta...said that. As if I should just accept your word for it.

Being inside the academy doesn't grant you certainty over a given subject.[/quote]

No but it gives you adequate training to understandthe subject, the history of the subject, the implementation of the subject, and the ability to critique it with your new ideas.



I call bullshittery. There is no more competitive thing than trying to publish a new idea in philosophy. There are snipers waiting EVERYWHERE to shoot your idea don if they find a single mistake in anything you say. And the snipers aren't all on the same side either.



If the academy changes its mind on something, that's what I would like to call being open minded. Which seems to be what you're claiming they lack.



No, but if someone has academic training I have good reason to trust their knowledge on a subject than someone who does not.



And it's currently the best too.

This is like someone saying, "Science isn't the only way to look at the universe." Yeah, that may be true...but it's the best we've got at the moment, so propose something better.



There is way too much wrong with what you just said. So I'm just going to say some things I've observed within the academy that totally goes against your viewpoint.

1. Modern philosophy is RIFE with discussion, heated discussion and debate, while at the same time maintaining an open mind to cogent argument(as is a standard most philosophers must adhere to to be taken seriously)
2. My first professor that taught me what metaphysics is(which is contrary to your own belief on what it is) believed Kant was a revolutionary in the field, but by no means is he the standard. The Categorical Imperative, for example, is widely criticized as being rather insufficient. Not just among my professors, but among my fellow students as well. In fact I went INTO philosophy finding Kant to be convincing, and was convinced that this wasn't the case DUE to my academic training.



Well that's your opinion.



I really think this is just childish. "Your summary of philosophical history is childish because I prefer this other one." (Me)"Well I got it from a professional philosopher." (and so too did you with your own) (You)"And?" Seriously, how is it that your way is the only valid way to look at the history of philosophy?

It seems to me your critiques against the academy, that they're not open to discussion and it's all group think and they hold a consensus on all the issues and hold particular people to be the standards for modern philosophy like they're greek gods or something seems to apply far more to you than anything I've observed within my training.



I didn't say I found him incorrect, though I'd be happy to say I find his summary of philosophy to be incorrect, and that Plato and Aristotle, while they began the thinking that led to further philosophy, are in no way the greek gods of thought you and others are trying to portray them as.I'm open to the idea that I could be wrong and that their summaries are more apt than I give them credit for, but so far you don't do much to support them, you just say, "Here's a guy that agrees with me!" While I've been pointing out that much of what these greek philosophers put forth has either been widely expanded upon far more than they ever got to expand, or discarded, as the case may be with platonic metaphysics.

I would also to make a correction to myself. In my previous post I wrote that Lovejoy said “The History of Philosophy is a collection of footnotes from Plato and Aristotle”, but “from” is wrong, it is a mistranslation of mine, the right word would be the one used by Whitehead, “to” instead of “from”, so what Lovejoy said was “The History of Philosophy is a collection of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle”. Whitehead also studied the History of Ideas and came pretty much to the same conclusion, and since he has an incredible influence in the analytical school I believe you might know him better than Lovejoy. (which proves you're more of a philodoxus than a student of philosophy)

You see, that is a relevant correction.[/quote]

I like that you think I'm just somebody who's out for the glory just because I don't know someone you do. Really shows the amount of thinking you put into your conclusions. Regardless, none of that supports their conclusions, so to me, it's not really all that relevant.



Well considering Plato conceded that the definition was in fact insufficient and revised it thanks to Diogenes, I would think so.



Duality generally leads to bad philosophy, like mind body dualism and logical positivism.



Are you aware of WHY logical positivism was abandoned? In no small part it had to do with its admonishing of the addressing of metaphysics. That's in part why the predominant view that has taken over logical positivism's place is naturalism. So...yeah, I'm going to deny that they hold little comprehension for metaphysics. It's a recognized useful tool for analyzing reality. Also, I love how you play the 'either/or' game with me again by saying, "What's the opposite of absolute?" Not absolute. That's what the opposite is. It is NOT 'relativism'. The fact that there are uncertainties doesn't mean that 'everything's relative'. This isn't some postmodernist school of 'everyone's right to some degree' that shit was abandoned back in Socrates' days.



Just something I enjoyed from his work. Nothing more.



Bullshit. There is absolutely no need to form a common principal based on anthropology using a common trace of all societies. As a matter of fact, that would be what you would need to do to establish a 'natural right'. The fact that we CAN'T do this is an argument in my favor, not you.



What are you defining as government? Because I'm fairly certain Bentham isn't speaking about modernized governments of his time. He speaks of completely anarchistic societies, and I know not of one anarchistic society with a cohesive construct of laws and property rights or anything of that sort. If you have a list, I'd love to see it.



Quite the caveat there...does that mean that there WAS a government, just not a 'central' one?



Well that came out of nowhere.

1. There's a question of property that is intrinsically tied into the questions of human morality and ethics.
2. Religions deal with this.
3. Human nature tends towards being savage men with no respect for property
4. Therefore the argument that we don't come about these rights naturally defeats itself.

...If we don't come about these rights naturally, then it WOULD follow that human nature tends towards having no respect for property. You're confusing me.



If a god were to say "thou shall not kill" and doesn't do anything to impede things from killing each other, and indeed makes a world where killing is required for the continuance of life, then "thou shalt not kill" in fact doesn't give anyone any rights, positive or negative. Also, I love how you think that 'they' believe that posession is non existent, when nobody has argued that at all. In fact, since Locke came about with Social Contract theory to explain how property rights work...it's pretty well accepted among just about everyone. But to call that natural law, and not a law that we, as humans, agree upon by consensus is silly. Even Locke explained that natural rights aren't enough. That humans had to come up with civil society to resolve conflicts civilly with government help.



...The government...does nothing...to prevent rights from being violated. Alrighty then, that seems to run counter to just about everything I've observed. The fact that punishment occurs and that deterrents are installed I think is doing something to prevent rights from being violated. They don't render it an impossibility, but they certainly have the ability to take rights away from people, which isn't something you can say of nature.



Well that's nice, but I haven't seen you sufficiently debunk it.



Really that should be what we're focusing on. If you want to start a seperate topic to discuss natural rights further that'd be better. As this is about the abortion debate. I don't know what your 'pascalian calculus' is, so of course I haven't addressed it yet. You haven't addressed any of my arguments in favor of being pro choice in this topic either, so whatever.

So what is your argument in favor of the pro-life side?

Sorry for the late response, had a trip on weekend.



My certainty makes you angry? Sophistry? Do you think I'm trying to convince you with eristic or show myself around here? We're probably the only ones reading this discussion. And my certainty does not come without basis. I have not just read Plato or Aristotle six months ago and went to the internet asking people to debunk me. I've studied philosophy for many years. I also had my phases, I also thought once that Descartes and Rousseau were geniuses, Kant was a revolutionary, Wittgenstein was the brightest mind of XX century, that Marx was ok and Keynes was a master of economy, that illuminism was great and we had many incredible living philosophers going on. But I did not stop in there, I studied further and had to bitterly admit that I was wrong about these people. I did not read just what the academy says its ok to read. I see no point in this, I don't study philosophy so it looks good on a curriculum or as to use it as working tool, I study philosophy because I want to know, I'm curious, I find it interesting. I have no master plan to use my knowledge to get a job in a university or state career, I study because I find it awesome. If a teacher or a PhD says to me it isn't worth reading Mises or Bawerk screw him, I will waste my time and read it anyways (to later find out the teacher was in fact wrong and many times that he was in fact right, but the point being, I did it on myself). And I obviously won't stop studying here, but I think I've studied enough to be certain about some things. My arguments for natural law, rights and what I say about Plato, Socrates and Aristotle do not come without basis, its not an idea of my own, its the work of many other thinkers and they have been contested (to prove a failure of a critique later).



No, but I can definitely say they're insane.



Again, depends on what you're talking about. Aristotle, obviously, as the formulator of analytics, recognizes that a binary position is unprepared to judge objects in certain levels (being also the formulator of metaphysics he also recognizes that there are some things which are binary). But I'm not judging abortion on this level, my judgment over abortion are consequences of deeper levels and those are indeed binary.


Exactly, that's the point. What you feel to be self-evident or not doesn't matter, this is what point 5 clarifies. For something to be self-evident its contradiction cannot be formulated under a logically unequivocal proposition, it cannot be escaped. It just points out that whatever the hell you feel, you believe as self-evident is not proof of its “self-evidenceness” itself. What are you disagreeing from?


You mean the same thing you did when you wrote “I could go on a looooong post about how what you say is nonsense about how logic dictates we have natural rights and that if Aristotle and Plato were wrong on anything then somehow it logically follows that ALL modern philosophy is wrong[...]”



What the hell. When did I say they proved the concept of natural rights for sure? My commentary regarding Plato and Aristotle was just this, a commentary, because they obviously didn't deal deep with this subject (Natural Right is a concept derived from Natural Law but not the same thing). I said Plato created the concept of a Republic (in a commentary regarding the implications of rights as privileges) and Aristotle forged the bases for natural law's and rights (6th paragraph, post 3,349,766) , when I said “Aristotle proved natural rights” in the first paragraph of post 3,349,766 this is obviously a figure of speech and I'm obviously inferring that he founded the bases for which such hypothetical proof can be presented (one example, Thomas Aquinas reading of Aristotle). Are you reading each one of my paragraphs as if they were completely unrelated to each other?

You, on the other hand, presented a Popperian interpretation of The Republic and followed with “Plato and Aristotle were wrong” (or at leas that Plato was wrong).

“Plato did a lot to contribute to what we call modern philosophy, but as far as politics and laws and morals go, he got a lot of shit wrong. Here's some things he said.

1. Children should be taken from their parents and raised in creches.
2. There ought to be a Philosopher King chosen from the guardian class.
3. There ought to be an authoritarian dictatorship.

Did you think that the concept of rights and the discussion of such stopped 2 thousand years ago? We're kind of...advanced past them by a very wide margin.

There's also the strange and long abandoned concept of Platonic metaphysics, where Plato thought there was a physical substance literally called "The Good" that is in the world that we encounter.

Plato and Aristotle were wrong.

And as far as anything being 'proved' within philosophy, you demonstrate a lack of understanding as to how any epistemology works. Except for mathematical proofs, there's no such thing as a 100% airtight sound and valid proof of anything in philosophy. There's always a chance for error, no matter how good an argument is. And I'm echoing sentiments of christian philosophers who wish they could prove god existed like Alvin Plantinga and Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal(who was a mathematician, literally the best of his time and possibly of all time).”

And considering the possibility that your line didn't follow (as Aristotle doesn't have anything to do with the Republic, he was actually critical of the Forms of Good, it would be very stupid of you to say that Aristotle was wrong because of the Republic), that you were just saying they were wrong but not connected to your previous point, you – again – didn't say why they were wrong, you just said it after the exposition of an interpretation of Plato and moved on. Which leaves it completely open to interpretation (even more considering that Plato and Aristotle didn't explicitly prove, agreed or disagreed with the concept of Natural Right by themselves, so to say “they're wrong (about natural rights)” is non-sense and I was not literally claiming that they proved natural rights).



Because to be wrong as a thinker is different than to be wrong on a subject. Of course to be wrong on a subject he needs to be substantially wrong on that subject, but to be wrong as a thinker (which you implied when you said “Aristotle was wrong” rather than “Aristotle was wrong about”) he needs to be wrong on everything that sustains his thinking (that's what I imply when I say that they're not substantially wrong, that they're not substantially wrong as thinkers, not on certain subjects), not only certain subjects. That's the distinction between saying “X is wrong” and “X is wrong about”. Your phrasing is just naive. I cannot say I debunked Karl Marx, proved Karl Marx wrong, because he was wrong over women' studies. To debunk Karl Marx as a person I would have prove wrong communism, his take on history of mankind, his take on economics, society and all the core thinking of which his ideology stands on, if I prove wrong a cooking recipe by him I cannot simply claim “Karl Marx was wrong” because of it. In the same way I cannot say “Bertrand Russel was wrong” because I proved his studies on mathematics were wrong. Mathematics is not the core thinking of Russell. This presentation is a very naive presentation of philosophy. No philosopher got everything right, simply because he got something wrong on a peripheral subject of his thinking won't make him “wrong” as a thinker. And since you just said Plato and Aristotle were wrong followed a presentation of a subject completely unrelated to abortion it's fair to assume Plato and Aristotle were wrong is a commentary unrelated to the issue of abortion and natural rights (even more when you acknowledge that none of them actually proved or disproved anything on the subject by themselves, so it would be ridiculous to say they were wrong in the subject when they don't even have their own explicit saying on it)



Because that's what you're inferring, you just not realizing that.



Because you think of science only as a methodological institution, not what the word itself implies. Science comes com scientia which just means knowledge. Metaphysical science is simply the metaphysical knowledge.


Certainly Newtonian mechanics (which are basically Euclidian) can be used to quantify gravity at the Earth's crust and provide a very simple way to understand how things works in our daily life, but to understand gravity in its most deep and detailed aspects it is certainly wrong. If I want to make something that looks like gravity I can use newton's mechanics, but if I want to understand gravity itself I certainly cannot. I don't think Aristotle was wrong in his primary understanding of metaphysics (he is the founder of it for Christ's sake).



So far, you only provided Bentham on your last post (and a commentary regarding Rousseau). Aside from that, you provided a faulty understanding of The Republic, a lack of comprehension of Locke's view on property, a confusion between Natural Law and physical nature and a bunch of quotations from your teachers and philosophers from the analytical school that speak more about your view on philosophy than your view on Natural Laws and Rights.

I'm not trying to persuade you, I'm just trying to prove a point, if the proof doesn't persuade you then there is really nothing I can do. My line of logic can be easily resumed (and it is not the only line I defend actually) that if you have a natural possession over your body you have natural rights over it. If a fetus have a natural possession over his body, obviously the mother can't have the right to abort it.
So far, your only complaint about it is denying the natural possession by claiming Ownership is a “legal thing” and that if there was a natural right reality should impose a rule to prevent its violation.



That's the point, you only see Laws of Nature, not Natural Laws.



And how do you separate the people who know what they're talking about and the people who don't? By an institutional paper? That's why I said you're more of a philodoxus than a student of philosophy.



No, I'm saying that to use their arguments when other people had clearly debunked their arguments is non-sense. That's why a student should focus on the status quaestionis.



Yes, that's what one should do, if they're aware of the status quaestionis. But you seem to have stopped by Illuminism, you (and much of the academy) are not aware that their claims have been refuted, as you're also unaware that some argumentation presented against the ancient greeks have been refuted back as well like this popperian view of yours which Popper presented in The Open Society and Its Enemies was refuted by Leo Strauss' History of Political Philosophy, which is actually just developing further The Republic as it was understood by Cicero. Popper understood very little of platonism, actually, and I believe that this argument was put to an end in Levinson's In Defense of Plato. Regardless of this fact, the prestige Popper gained inside academic circles by his works on epistemology and methodology, causing the death of Logical Positivism and revival of Positivism in the Post-positivism, was so that much of mainstream academy distaste for Plato comes from him and his peers. Obviously I'm not dis-considering a lot of works critic of platonism released after the 70s, mainly Paul Benacerraf's What Numbers Could Be, which probably have more influence on the academy today than Popperian views themselves, but Platonism is itself cyclical in acceptance by its very mythopoetic nature. I, for one, find the critics on plato's mathematics senseless. Plato's speeches always were dialetic, rethoric and mythopoetic and the best interprets of platonism (Paul Friedländer, Julius Stenzel, Paul Shorey, Giovanni Reale , Eric Voegelin and many others) show that the use of geometry and mathematics till a certain point by Plato was more aesthetic and hermeneutic than logic (he wasn't even familiar with Analytics at the time). The geometric figures were not logic models of argumentation but symbols which would facilitate the rise of imagination to the world of Forms. To criticize Plato realism with metaphysical mathematics is non-sense under this view. Which just proves how much of the academy is close minded to Platonism today as we can see by the way you talk about platonism, probably because they still grasp on the popperian critic of the ancient greek and don't read or don't consider the other works of many other philosophers and philologists which I presented above. If a student comes to the class defying the teacher's notion of Platonism, even if the student is grounded on respectable philosophers, it won't matter, the teacher won't give him much of the benefit of the doubt, as this notion isn't accepted by his own academic peers, by much of the bias from the academics themselves (if you're a postpositivist you certainly know what bias in the academic field means).



Again, I have track, but so far you presented so much of faulty conclusions in regard to Plato, Locke, Natural Law and History of Philosophy and so on that I find hard to see any substantial counterargument of your own against Natural Rights. Your main argument is a methodological naturalistic one: nature permits the violation of such rights, so such rights don't exist (which in regard to true metaphysics - not Spinoza, Descartes, Wolff, Kant metaphysics - is just naive).


Yes, that's what I implied when I said “primary source”. Wikipedia or google can be used as tool to find other sources, not be a source itself. Are you just reading my comments while mentally forming any kind of rhetoric against it without even understanding a sentence?



Are you seriously claiming an autodidact is not a student? That I simply sat on a chair and thought enough till all knowledge appeared on my head? To read a philosophy book is to study philosophy, a student is a learner, the one who studies. Not just the one who goes to institutional bodies to study under institutional methodology.



Well, Intelligent Design is a form of Creationism which can acknowledge evolution, so as Miller pointed in this passage, the discussion isn't over, but then the discussion couldn't be called Evolution vs Creationism anymore, and speaking about methodology, there is no way methodological naturalism will bow to such idea as intelligent design, so thinking more about it, its a lost battle for the ID supporters. Again, I admit, I have very little knowledge on this matter.



Yeah, I certainly have seen lots of papers pointing the otherwise, but this is not the place.



And what does coming off to you have anything to do with it? I do not deny the value a diploma can have, I deny it as proof of value a thinker has. A thinker has value in his thinking, not in his documents. Such document can mostly give an indication, because again, it depends on the quality judgment of the institution itself, if it was not for that, a university in Zambia could argue with the same weight against Oxford, or Cambridge or Harvard. A diploma has a lot of weight in most of exact sciences, not so much of the same weight in Humanities, specially in philosophy. If it wasn't for that I would have already applied for a diploma myself.



I'm obviously talking about academy in the field of philosophy. And most works discussed in the academy were not released under academic methodological papers but as an outsider book, which are later analyzed by academics themselves. To require an “academic training” to be a philosopher or student of philosophy would be the same as to require “academic training” to be an artist or student of art, it makes no sense. If the academy would “discuss between themselves” only, then all works should be submitted to a re-evaluation to see if they are inside the norms of academic methodology to be proven valid, rather than just acknowledge that the matter of discussion which the academy of philosophy uses to start a discussion is not in essence “academic”, just the discussion of it (and many times the discussion is pretty much sterile, leading to another outsider book and not academic paper to deal deeper with the subject). But the discussion would be non-existent without the outsider book. That's what I mean. If it was not for that, Karl Marx could not even be regarded as philosopher as most of his work came under books and journalistic articles, not academic papers. University of philosophy doesn't make philosophers in the same way university of arts doesn't make artists, it makes at most, teachers and commentators of philosophy but not “professional philosophers”.


Open mind is a degree of acceptance to new ideas, the consideration of ideas as ideas themselves, and considering much of the academy takes years if not decades to accept certain ideas as a consensus, I find hard to call that open mindness.



Seeing how modern academics are trained to read Plato and many other philosophers, I don't think so. Even more considering you barely have space to contest it.



Two words: Peer Review.



”Usually” is a common occurrence.



As I said, it is mostly an indication, but not a proof of understanding.



No, that's like saying you can achieve the same level of academic knowledge without going to the academy itself, which I'm pretty sure is a possibility.



This more proves what I said than counter it. I'm not saying Kant is played as an undefiable god, I'm saying his premisses are taken for granted and are “revolutionary”, that his critics on metaphysics are taken on account and much of it accepted, despite that Kant's critics on metaphysics and understanding of Subject-Object duality makes no sense and he was in fact wrong. Actually, the whole concept of subject-object duality makes no sense since Descartes, and even though modern philosophy is filled with discussion, what modern philosophy itself represents today can't be contested. If I come to a class with these proposals I certainly won't be given the benefit of doubt till I pass their course, learn to think like them (regardless if that thinking is correct or not) and then release a bunch of papers that will have to be peer reviewed to have any weight in the academic methodology and since very few people give the benefit of doubt from the very start it would be even harder to break such consensus, probably taking many years till various other academics read the idea by itself and not by its documents and start to consider it when I actually had a very solid basis when presenting the idea on the first place. That's why to destroy a consensus in the academic field takes so much time and it is so resistant to it, by definition the opposite of “open mindness”. If you know the history of academic science you know how many years and effort it took to discard logical positivism.

Actually most of the “academically trained” individuals that I find these days are unaware or simply don't want to read half of the authors which I know of, and when I say to them that a serious student should read at least 70 to 80 books per year and know how to read in at least two more languages than not your own they call me “insane”, that I'm “exaggerating”, that I cite “too many unknown authors”. This too me just proves how “well trained” the students are coming out of universities these days. They sometimes get so baffled by the idea of reading “so many books” that they find it impossible and want me to prove by showing pictures of my library and so on, it is just ridiculous.



You didn't understand what I meant with “and?”. My “and” was a response to when you said “I imagine he'll have a few words to say about that.” So, I want to know what are his few words. You don't show a book which I can read, a line of thought or anything, you just said he said that and he would have some few word to say about it, so... “And? What are his few words? I'm waiting.” That's what the “and” means.

And again, I believe no one has more weight on this than the guy who created the field of History of Ideas itself and studied a lot about it. If your, so far anonymous, teacher and his peers debunks this, I would like to know how and why he proposes that the history of western philosophy is “a long period which people got things wrong”.



But to understand his summary of philosophy you have to understand why and how he got to that, and for that you have to read his works, if you said you find his summary to be incorrect without even knowing his premisses you are saying nothing else than a personal opinion.

I don't “give much” to support because I was just presenting a counter view to your notion of history of western philosophy supported by people who actually studied it seriously. Kind of awesome that you accuse me of argumentum auctoritatis when you're first doing the same with your teacher.

And I ain't portraying the ancient greeks as gods (again, that's just what comes to you, under your own judgment), I pretty much acknowledge they're not when I acknowledge they got a lot of things wrong.



I won't repeat myself, just read again what I said about debunking Karl Marx.



If you apply duality to everything like a child yes, but duality is the source of the analytical modules so I don't see a reason on your take on it. To analyze a system, as more complex it gets more values you'll have to attribute to it, but when disentangling its complexity and going deeper and deeper on its essence you'll find a source that is dual. Even modern physics, with so many complex concepts like superposition, ultimately you find a point where they have to say “this is, this isn't”.



Yes, I'm pretty much aware of it, and by no means I said it was because of metaphysics. What are you complaining about? I said that given the early influences of logical positivism in the analytic school, it didn't consider metaphysics seriously, not that the logical positivism was itself destroyed because of the critics to analytic-syntactic distinction. You're really reading my statements emotionally.



The opposite of absolute is not absolute which is by a more strict definition, relative. “I think it is, but it might not be”, falsifiability, not absolute. It is just a methodological assertion of proof, not the understanding of it. I'm not saying Plantinga is a relativist, I'm saying the way the analytic school deals with its finding is relative in essence (in contrary to many other schools that assert knowledge as they are). As I said earlier, the analytical school is pretty much philosophy under the boundaries of scientific methodology.



I was actually writing a very a long and detailed answer about this, but half-way through it I remembered you said your take on metaphysics is different from mine, so my explanation to natural rights and why Bentham was wrong on this subject would be incomprehensible to you. And since you just said that your take on metaphysics is different from mine without really showing yours I'll abstain from commenting this section till you show your take on metaphysics. Then we can try to find a common ground for us and continue this argumentation, if you concur.



I haven't addressed it because first my argument on it draws them all ineffective and second, I was just trying to correct your take on natural rights.

And my pascalian calculus is – again – at the other topic which made you necrobump this topic on the first place. But since the discussion changed to such philosophical discussion I'll make another presentation of it to accommodate this discussion.

Abortion is ultimately a moral question because nobody – till now – managed to prove, with absolute certainty in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4, if a fetus is merely a living organism or an human being. Such interminable debate, where none of the sides manages to get out victorious, is the very proof of a legitimate question about the humanity of such being. Even science, as a methodological institution, can't provide a solid basis for this debate, as science can't provide certainty by its very principle of falsifiability and therefore can't provide irrefutable proof in this subject (as it stands now). Actually, the uncertainty that exists in science in what to consider life and what to consider species already draw the concept of certainty strange to it. That's why most pros use a juridical and political rhetoric instead.

However, the problem with the juridical and political approach is that such legal definitions are only this, definitions, they do not answer the question whether the being is only an extension of someone or an human being by itself, and even when faced with a definition of human being hard to escape, they drag the discussion to the definition of personhood, another legal and arbitrary definition.

The question of personhood is senseless because it is intuitively out of the concept of homicide which is not a legal concept by itself. A homicide will be intuitively an homicide in or out of the legal system as the definition of an homicide (from homicidium, homo = human being + caedere = to kill) is by itself an human being killing another human being and so what constitutes an homicide is not the legal concept of personhood but what one can define as an human being. And if one of such definitions encompass a fetus, abortion would constitute an homicide regardless if the legal system considers that a person or not, as personhood is only a methodological, and not ontological, device of the legal system. It speaks on what to treat as legal human, not what is an human. The hypothetical depiction of a fetus as an human being but not a person would actually portray an inconsistency in many legal systems, as even though the fetus is not a person, homicide would be still a crime and so a legal paradox would be formed on abortion, probably forcing the legal system to abolish homicide as a legitimate crime and put another crime in its place, the “personicidium”, which puts into question another problem. If the concept of human being is not the issue but is transformed in a social and legal convention as personhood then nothing would impede that a posterior convention revokes the first conventions of personhood and puts another in its place in accord to what is politically convenient, like denying personhood to people with mental retardation, handicaps, to certain ethnicity, homosexuals, too old, too young and etc, as it happened in many societies in the past. The concept of personhood is too vague, arbitrary and circular to deal with the issue of abortion.

The definition of an human being is in fact the central issue on abortion as its what would transform an abortion as simple medical procedure to an homicide regardless of the judgment of the law. And as nobody managed to find an ultimate and irrefutable conclusion to what is and what is not an human being, such debate is endless. But this is where the legal question of abortion can be clarified under a simple calculus. The equation is simple as such:

1)If abortion, in our current capabilities of comprehension, has:

a)50% chance of being an homocide

and

b)50% chance of being a trivial medical procedure

then

2)To bet on the first as real and later find out that the being was not in fact human would constitute a lost of potential and unnecessary grief, from the past in regard to the future.

3)To bet on the second and later find out that the being was in fact human would constitute a manslaugther (unintentional homicide), but homicide regardless.

So

4)As the gradation of damages would be higher on 3 than 2, then it is more viable to bet on 2 as we don't really know whether or not the being is in fact human.

From this, the legal question of abortion is transformed from a endless ethical-metaphysical debate to a universal consensus firmly established: there is no defensible advantage or disadvantage, no real or hypothetical benefit to thirds which would justify the risking of a human being's life.

To bet on the 3 would be to risk an human life on the pick of heads or tails. Between a precaution and a longshot when the human life is on the balance, what would you choose? Who of us could identify himself morally righteous to shoot with a weapon on the blinds if this shot has 50% chance of killing someone? I believe that with that, the legal issue is solved till a real proof of the fetus's humanity is found.

As for the “legal paradox” such position could find, like the right a woman might have to her own body, I presented my own opinion on this in some posts above, so I won't repeat myself.

[color=#2e1a6b]Nope


[color=#2e1a6b]Holy ****
I have to read about 15 books per year at my highschool, and it's torture for me. I'm really jealous of people like you who enjoy to read; learning's probably much easier.

I'm really upset with myself with how little I'm able to follow this debate. I've read Plato's republic, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbs, John Locke, and a few others, yet these concepts seem new to me (except for Hobbs and Locke). I just started philosophy 1301, but I have no intentions of getting into this field. I love thinking and arguing, but I just don't have a passion for this; politics are much more important to me

42, your posts are probably the most intelligent forum posts I've ever seen. I would say that I'd like to be as smart as you, but after realizing how much you read... I'm giving up on that. I can't read like you can, but I love to participate in and observe debates. I hope you stick around here for awhile. In the meantime...

My god, can't believe I didn't notice the reps hahaha. I thought we were the only ones reading this (except for the mods, which is their job anyways) since these wall of texts are not well received by forum communities. Nice to know there are people paying attention to this discussion :)

Well, getting a little off-topic, 70 to 80 books is a soft-cap but a cap regardless. It implies in something like 1,5 book per week. It isn't really a quantification but just a guide and it is something you achieve with experience. When I started studying my mental fatigue hit in only after 2 hours of reading per day. I was reading slower too. But in regard to philosophy, the more you read the more you get interested about it and the more you want to read, its a slippery slope of reading. I probably didn't even read 20 books in my first years, and that is normal, resilience to mental fatigue is something you get simply by reading, and you shouldn't force yourself, I haven't. Now I'm in that point that reading 5 hours per day feels natural and actually it is getting hard to find something interesting to read, back in the old days at least I had an index and had to wait books to arrive home, now not so much (and the money you spend with it!). And obviously this isn't something as linear as it looks, some book are well written and some are not, some are brief, some are so immense that are divided in many volumes, so it is really mostly a guide, something to give you a sense of size.

And obviously, you won't bear to read anything if its not interesting to you, that's why one shouldn't force himself on the book, but go on his own pacing (learned it the hard way).

Thank you for your reps, I plan to stick around as long as it takes for fakku to fade :)

Haha, my sentiments mirror Lelouch's. After seeing you in that "is the world overpopulated" thread, I can't help but admire your debating prowess and dedication to knowledge.