On Government

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
341

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

You argue against Kant, you’re going to get Kant.
I hated the way he writes, but he was brilliant.
Synthetic a priori judgements demand strong, undefined evidence? ← I demand evidence that this statement is true.
There is a litany of evidence. It’s just a matter of what do you want to know…
[/quote]

Again, if you are going to try to refute a professional philosopher’s argument on a topic that you don’t halfway understand, the bare minimum required of you is that you read the argument in full. (It’s telling that you don’t seem to realize this.) Then you’ll at least have a full picture…that you’re years’ worth of study away from being able to grasp, let alone deny.

No vague, inapt “there is a litany of evidence” line (you don’t even know what kind of evidence you’d be looking for, and you certainly don’t know how to find and present it) is going to allow you to escape from the problem you’ve created for yourself here. You spoke with certainty on an issue you had not investigated – (do you realize that there are dozens more nominalist arguments I can offer up? Do you think anybody thinks you’ve read them, let alone are able to refute them? I’ll save you the mystery and tell you: Nobody does, and rightly so) – and this is the cardinal sin of argumentation.

Worse, you’ve now been confronted with your inability to justify the silly, ignorance-born certainty you insist on tossing around like a shit-flinging monkey at the Bronx Zoo…and you’re insisting on clinging to it.

In other words, this discussion has taken a turn toward cheap parody. You go ahead and tell anybody who will listen that you “don’t believe premise 2 follows” from premise 1, which is a declaration of your nearly appalling, fundamental ignorance of logical argumentation’s most basic workings…and nothing more. (Do you actually expect to grasp, much less grapple with, a professional philosopher’s advanced, peer-reviewed, published work when you don’t understand Logic 101, bare-bones, introductory, day-one-of-the-semester material like how premises and conclusions work, or what ‘follows’ means?) You go ahead and do that. I won’t be participating, however.

Edited[/quote]

I attacked the premises. And you didn’t even address them. Do you concede? On page 13. Before you quip on my stupidity at least look at my critique.

Why are you so hell bent on painting me a caricature? You flat stopped answering questions and discussing and went on, again, another personal attack, completely unjustified. Why?
Why won’t you just answer the questions I asked?

The questions on the table yet unanswered by you are:
What is existence?
What is truth?
Do abstract objects exist in the absence of a mind?

Why will you not answer these questions? Rather than go on a tirade.
Shall I go and get some published tretis in a discipline you’ve never been trained in and thrust it on you? Is that the way we want to go?

Rather than constantly trying to prove to me I am stupid, just answer the questions, engage in discussion? You want me to admit I am stupid, that’s easy. I am a fucking moeRON!
Happy?
I bow to your genius. Now answer the fucking questions…

342

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:

its a paraphrase, not a quote[/quote]

No, it’s a direct quotation of someone else’s paraphrase.[/quote]

clearly, but as near as I can tell the quote was already attributed to Kamui, IIRC he used this summary before
[/quote]

Lol. I never wrote that much on this board. And certainly not like that.

FYI the only part of this post that can be attributed to me is “Kant wins [again]”.
I said that, as a joke, in an old thread.

[/quote]

Yes but your were right when you said it.
Do synthetic a priori judgements demand great evidence? What kind? What constitutes evidence?

343

[quote]pat wrote:

I attacked the premises. And you didn’t even address them. Do you concede? On page 13. Before you quip on my stupidity at least look at my critique.

[/quote]

You don’t have a “critique.” You are not even moderately proficient in basic propositional logic. You said, of the argument quoted, that you didn’t “believe premise two follows” from premise one, when in fact premise two is not intended to follow from premise one (they are, in conjunction, intended to lead to a conclusion, which would be said to follow). It is clear that you don’t know how logical arguments even work–as it was when, in the recent past, you did not understand the distinction between a valid and an invalid argument.

Given all this, and as I’ve already said, this thread has become parodic.

344

analytic = true by definition
synthetic = true by “matters of fact”

a posteriori : justification does rely upon experience.
a priori : justification does NOT rely upon experience, but intuition.

So synthetic a priori judgements are necessary but not necessary by definition. They does not comes from our concepts, but from the a priori structure of our minds. Our “intuition”, in Kant’s terminology.

Kant believed that the propositions of arithmetics and geometry were synthetic a priori.

But that’s Kant theory of knowledge. And it was more than two centuries ago.

Since that time, this conception has been challenged many times, from different angles and with different results.
For example, Frege thought that only the propositions of geometry were synthetic a priori. Not those of arithmetics.

Now, if you want my position…
i think that a debate about natural rights should start with “define right”, not with “define nature”.
I mean, skepticism is fine in theory.
But in practice, no one is a real skepticism on these matters. And those who are happy to play the role of the skeptics are often just hidding their game and their agenda.
It’s nothing more than a diversion.

Jack : “I believe your victims have a natural right to not be raped and killed”
Jill-the-psycho “Oh really ? Show me those rights then, and show me the solid foundatiosn of your perfect epistemology. If you can’t, you’ll have to give me my get-out-of-jail free card”.

Thanksfully, it doesn’t work in a trial.

345

[quote]kamui wrote:

Jack : “I believe your victims have a natural right to not be raped and killed”
Jill-the-psycho “Oh really ? Show me those rights then, and show me the solid foundatiosn of your perfect epistemology. If you can’t, you’ll have to give me my get-out-of-jail free card”.

Thanksfully, it doesn’t work in a trial.
[/quote]

Indeed it doesn’t, and indeed I’m thankful.

Still, it doesn’t seem like you have great deal of confidence in your ability to evidence one of these “natural rights.”

Again, it is not the skeptic’s problem that his opponents insistently affirm the existence of something they refuse to evidence. And i’m not talking about perfect evidence or perfect certainty. Surely there must be something for you to stand on.

346

Forgot about this thread, and haven’t read past here, and likely won’t, lol

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

Why can’t it be instinct?[/quote]

Because instinct proves the “right” you all have been arguing can’t be proven.

[/quote]

How so?[/quote]

You’re born with instinct correct?
It is a “natural” happening?
Can we agree we have an instinct to survive?

347

Jack: “Natural rights exist. literally.”

Jill: “Why do you say that?”

If Jack can’t answer, or won’t because he thinks Jill is making an illegitimate request, the conversation deserves to end there.

348

[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Genes are driven to survive and replicate. They will drive an organism to achieve this end - sometimes at the expense of the organism. That DOES NOT mean anything is a “right”. [/quote]

lol, so… Living things are literally programed, by nature/god/the big bang/whatever you want to call it to survive, to live…

and programed to protect the fact it is living.

But, your contention is that organism has no right or entitlement to do so? So essentially, the programing the organism is born with, and can’t really ignore to any degree in large populations, is, well, just some random happening that has no bearing on the rational mind of those organisms capable of comprehending it?

Why are you bringing up morals? Or is this in response to someone else?

Didn’t I just get shit for saying the same thing, lol?

(Not that I have a problem with you using the phrase.)

349

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Forgot about this thread, and haven’t read past here, and likely won’t, lol

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

Why can’t it be instinct?[/quote]

Because instinct proves the “right” you all have been arguing can’t be proven.

[/quote]

How so?[/quote]

You’re born with instinct correct?
It is a “natural” happening?
Can we agree we have an instinct to survive?

[/quote]

Yes indeed.

And we can agree that the best way for me to ensure, in the modern industrialized world, that that instinct of mine is satisfied is for me to support the universal assumption that we all have a natural right to be free from the deliberate harm of other sentient humans.

If you want to make it any more than an assumption, we will disagree until somebody offers some kind of evidence.

350

Oh, I suppose i could quite effectively defend a catholic understanding of Jean Bodin’s concept of natural rights if i wanted to.
But i’m too old but this kind of exercise in style.

I never said i believed in the existence of “natural rights”.
For the record, i do not.
In fact, the only element of the concept of naturalitty that i really care about is “non arbitrariness”.
I don’t even care about universality.

The non-arbitrariness of rights doesn’t need to be evidenced. Because the very notion of an arbitrary right is self-contradictory.

351

[quote]kamui wrote:

The non-arbitrariness of rights doesn’t need to be evidenced. Because the very notion of an arbitrary right is self-contradictory.

[/quote]

This depends on our (arbitrary) definition of a “right.” Or are you claiming that there is one correct definition of a “natural right”? What, then, do you say this is?

352

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

If you want to make it any more than an assumption, we will disagree until somebody offers some kind of evidence.[/quote]

So your stance would be accurately portrayed as the following:

"We have the instinct to survive, it comes from a natural place. However this instinct has no bearing on conceptual understanding of whether or not we are entitled to have what this instinct provides.

We are given something by nature, and nature programs us to protect it, however this agreed upon chain of events can’t be used to prove that it happens. I need evidence to prove what I observe in nature and describe in non-physical terms."

353

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

I attacked the premises. And you didn’t even address them. Do you concede? On page 13. Before you quip on my stupidity at least look at my critique.

[/quote]

You don’t have a “critique.” You are not even moderately proficient in basic propositional logic. You said, of the argument quoted, that you didn’t “believe premise two follows” from premise one, when in fact premise two is not intended to follow from premise one (they are, in conjunction, intended to lead to a conclusion, which would be said to follow). It is clear that you don’t know how logical arguments even work–as it was when, in the recent past, you did not understand the distinction between a valid and an invalid argument.

Given all this, and as I’ve already said, this thread has become parodic.[/quote]

Well, you didn’t look at it. I gave the intial cursory view, then more detailed review which you didn’t read. All you want to do is attack. You don’t want to discuss, you don’t want to answer questions, you just want to attack me personally. That’s gay. Fuck you good riddance. Play your silly games with somebody else. You are on ignore from now on.

[EDITED]

354

[quote]kamui wrote:

analytic = true by definition
synthetic = true by “matters of fact”

a posteriori : justification does rely upon experience.
a priori : justification does NOT rely upon experience, but intuition.

So synthetic a priori judgements are necessary but not necessary by definition. They does not comes from our concepts, but from the a priori structure of our minds. Our “intuition”, in Kant’s terminology.

Kant believed that the propositions of arithmetics and geometry were synthetic a priori.

But that’s Kant theory of knowledge. And it was more than two centuries ago.

Since that time, this conception has been challenged many times, from different angles and with different results.
For example, Frege thought that only the propositions of geometry were synthetic a priori. Not those of arithmetics.

Now, if you want my position…
i think that a debate about natural rights should start with “define right”, not with “define nature”.
I mean, skepticism is fine in theory.
But in practice, no one is a real skepticism on these matters. And those who are happy to play the role of the skeptics are often just hidding their game and their agenda.
It’s nothing more than a diversion.

Jack : “I believe your victims have a natural right to not be raped and killed”
Jill-the-psycho “Oh really ? Show me those rights then, and show me the solid foundatiosn of your perfect epistemology. If you can’t, you’ll have to give me my get-out-of-jail free card”.

Thanksfully, it doesn’t work in a trial.
[/quote]

It might work in some trials.

355

[quote]kamui wrote:

analytic = true by definition
synthetic = true by “matters of fact”

a posteriori : justification does rely upon experience.
a priori : justification does NOT rely upon experience, but intuition.

So synthetic a priori judgements are necessary but not necessary by definition. They does not comes from our concepts, but from the a priori structure of our minds. Our “intuition”, in Kant’s terminology.

Kant believed that the propositions of arithmetics and geometry were synthetic a priori.

But that’s Kant theory of knowledge. And it was more than two centuries ago.

Since that time, this conception has been challenged many times, from different angles and with different results.
For example, Frege thought that only the propositions of geometry were synthetic a priori. Not those of arithmetics.
[/quote]
Which is what I had thought. So how can stringent demands of evidence be made for the synthetic a priori.

I think we were working toward that definition.

356

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

“We have a natural instinct to survive. However, it is not logically necessary that we are entitled, by virtue of some non-physical dictum, to the survival which we are instinctually impelled to seek.”
[/quote]

Changed around and shortened.

357

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

The non-arbitrariness of rights doesn’t need to be evidenced. Because the very notion of an arbitrary right is self-contradictory.

[/quote]

This depends on our (arbitrary) definition of a “right.” Or are you claiming that there is one correct definition of a “natural right”? What, then, do you say this is?[/quote]

Definition are not arbitrary. They may be conventionnal, but that’s not the same thing.

I do not own a, nor the, definition of right. It’s immanent to the language (game) we both use.

As i said earlier, you only need a dictionary.
Mine said that a “right” is what is conform with or conformable with the rule of justice, law or morality.

And it said that “arbitrary” means “determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle”.

I conclude that right and arbitrariness are mutually exclusive.

358

[quote]pat wrote:
Well, you didn’t look at it. I gave the intial cursory view, then more detailed review which you didn’t read. All you want to do is attack. You don’t want to discuss, you don’t want to answer questions, you just want to attack me personally. That’s gay. Fuck you good riddance. Play your silly games with somebody else. You are on ignore from now on.

[EDITED][/quote]

Gay?

359

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

“We have a natural instinct to survive. However, it is not logically necessary that we are entitled, by virtue of some non-physical dictum, to the survival which we are instinctually impelled to seek.”
[/quote]

Changed around and shortened.[/quote]

Either I’m confused or you’re saying that something that happens, you acknowledge happens, doesn’t really happen, because you don’t like the way people describe the happening?

360

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

“We have a natural instinct to survive. However, it is not logically necessary that we are entitled, by virtue of some non-physical dictum, to the survival which we are instinctually impelled to seek.”
[/quote]

Changed around and shortened.[/quote]

Either I’m confused or you’re saying that something that happens, you acknowledge happens, doesn’t really happen, because you don’t like the way people describe the happening?[/quote]

What I am saying is this: “I have a natural, physical, subjective instinct to survive” does not logically entail that “I have a natural, non-physical, objective right to survive.”

If when you talk about a “right to life” you are actually talking about an “instinct to continue living,” then our argument is semantic, and I think you would benefit from a terminology less suggestive of quasi-religious (or wholly religious) superstition.

If, on the other hand, you’re talking about a non-physical ukase which objectively entitles you to live, then the onus is on you to show that this thing exists, however you’d go about doing that.