Man, I wish the poor would stop whining...Follow

You've conflated the requirements for existence with an ethical judgment about an existent. Please try again in the morning.

It seems to me a gross abuse of terminology, then, to call such a contrived condition a "state of nature". I would hope that a "philosopher", a "lover of wisdom", would appreciate the importance of selecting appropriate terminology.

For many other species, asocial existence is the natural state; not for **** Sapiens sp. sapiens.





I have zero of many things. Historically, the difficulty was not in understanding the concept of zero, but in understanding the concept of zero as a numeral.


Edited, Apr 22nd 2008 6:08pm by BastokFL

NONE! Jesus... I can't make this more clear. You should have been able to predict this answer as, not only a logical consequence of my other principles, but from direct quotes from numerous other posts already.

Not only that but you've contrived your thought experiment so much that even by your own standards just about the only natural right left is free speech. You sure as hell don't have the right to property (because there IS no property); you don't have the right to guns (because there ARE no guns); you don't have a single flipping thing from the bill of rights because there is no one to even grant you...

**** it's just not even sensible to talk about rights for an individual. It quite literally does not make sense, not in the colloquial way that like.. peanut butter and fish doesn't make sense: this robustly doesn't make sense; the word itself has no referent; the term is void of any and all meaning.

Hell, let's assume that you're right for the hell of it and see what happens. Take the short period of time of you being the last person on earth in which you enjoy a hedonistic paradise before you get mauled by a rabid squirrel or zombie or something. You have perhaps a total of one right by your definition: you have the right to kill yourself. Then again, that is completely incompatible with what the "classical liberals" protecting goddamn vegetables and vilifying mercy killings and whatnot.

You've painted so many epicycles into the glorious tapestry of republican apologetics that you've not only marginalized your conception of "rights" into near nothingness, but also left the alternatives as something unpalatable to all but the most selfish and conceited bastards.



I know of two positions which grant access to knowledge of zero (or nothingness). The first is to negate the existential quantifier of a statement. If Ax means "X likes apples" and (3x)Ax means "there exists an X such that x likes apples, then ~(3x)Ax means "it is not the case that there exists an X such that x likes apples" which is the same as "nothing likes apples" (also known as something like (x)~Ax)

The second position is Heidegger's... and I won't pretend to fully understand it.

Neither have **** all to do with Locke's political philosophy. The first directly contradicts you're analogy, and the second is well... strange.

So you would be unable to say whatever you wanted?


Holy Cow! It's not that difficult of a concept. Free speech. Means you can say what you want. Period.


Not even going to go farther with this today. You've apparently been properly "educated" alright...

Right, because making an argument for the transcendental conditions of possibility for the existence of rights in the first place from scratch is more indicative of brainwashing than some dude who can do nothing but (incompletely) quote an old stinky philosopher: makes perfect sense.



I'm not honestly surprised. You're only 300 years behind the times.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2008 10:49pm by Pensive

OMGOSH are the poor still whining?!

They ought to be muted at birth.

That's not the point though. The point is that you have that freedom. Even if no one is around to hear you.

We're not debating whether there's value to having that freedom in that specific case. What's at issue is what rights/freedoms you have "naturally" without any one else to give them to you. Freedom of speech is one such freedom. Whether you gain benefit from using it or not isn't the point. We're simply determining whether you have the "right" to say what you want without someone else around or not.

And the answer is: Yes.


Contrast that to a "right to free medical care". Regardless of whether the medical care helps or not, you don't get "free medical care" unless someone else is around to give it to you. I'm simply trying to establish a very basic distinction between those two types of "rights".

One set are things that you have all by yourself. No one gives them to you. They can only be taken away as a consequence of joining a society.


The other set does not exist unless you join a society. They can only be given to you by society.


You guys are trying to over analyze this.

Um...


The argument is that you can't equate a "right to free medical care" with a "right to free speech".


Figure the rest out yourself if you're so bright...

Sure. But all arbitrary constructs are not identical, are they? Even non-arbitrary ones aren't. Hamsters and water buffaloes are both mammals, yet one arguably makes a better house pet, right? You'd never say to someone: "Since you're ok with having a hamster as a pet, it's wrong of you to not want a water buffalo as a pet".

To convert to the abstract: The Theory of Gravity, and the Big Bang Theory are both theories, yet I think we can count on specific aspects of one more then the other, right? No rational person would argue that if someone believes in gravity and gravity is a theory, that they must also believe in the big bang, since it's also a theory.

The fact that two things share a label in common should not be used by itself as an argument that if someone agrees with one, they must agree with the other. Yet earlier in this thread someone argued that it's wrong of me to deny a right to free medical care since it's a "right", implying that if I believe that rights are important and should not be denied to people, that I *must* apply that to this thing called "free medical care", which they are labeling as a right.


Context is everything. I'm debunking that argument. Discussing the legitimacy of a claimed "right" is pretty darn significant in that context, wouldn't you agree?


You list of "agreements" is more or less correct.




Yup. We disagree there. We'll leave it at that though.



Do you? Because your stated support for abortion rights, and the specific position you took with the Terri Schiavo case would seem to be in opposition to what you just wrote. Or does "regardless of the cost to them in personal comfort", not include the discomfort and difficulty of a pregnancy and caring for an infant? Does that not include a husband's discomfort and cost to care for his comatose wife? Apparently also, "regardless of the social status of those other people" does not include the unborn, nor women in comas...


Seems as though the criteria you're acting on isn't exactly as you've stated above. I could state my own theories as to what your real guiding ideology is, but that would just further distract the thread.





No. The rest of this thread is people really not understanding the position I'm taking here. You least of all. Which is strange, since I've only repeated it a half dozen times now. It hasn't changed since the first time I said it.


What part of: You can't make an equivalence between a right to free speech and a right to free medical care because they are not the same types of "rights", is confusing to you?


What part of: "Free speech is something people have naturally and can only be taken away by others, while free medical care is something people don't have naturally and can only be given by others", is confusing to you?


These are really obvious and simple observations. There shouldn't be *any* confusion or argument on these things. Yet for some unfathomable reason, it seems like there's this huge opposition to accepting those very simple facts.


I can only assume this opposition is not because the facts are untrue, or unprovable, or complex, or even poorly stated. The opposition is purely because if you acknowledge those facts, it takes much of the weight away from the argument for something you (and many others on this forum) want. It's like a small child refusing to agree that candy isn't as healthy for you as vegetables.


And it's equally transparent...

Granted.

I'll still make the point that the key differentiation between us on this isn't the goal, but the method. I don't believe that this goal overrides the aforementioned right to property. Of course, you've already stated that you don't believe in one, so that's pretty much where we are at there.

I guess my main point here is that it's wrong then to ascribe to someone like me motives of uncaring (or even "evilness") because I don't think it's right to take property away to provide for this. My motivation is not based on wanting to deny those people the ability to obtain medical care (for example), but based on the desire *not* to deny others of their property.

That may seem like a minor point, but it's pretty significant IMO. It's terrifically easy to simply paint conservatives as unfeeling bastards who want poor people to suffer. But that's simply not the case. As I've stated many times, I think that the right to property is more important in the long run, even for the poor. Without that right, they can't ever cease to be poor. I believe that by both denying a right to property and pursuing a right to have one's life preserved and extended "regardless of the cost", the ultimate result can only be authoritarianism. Because in my opinion, that's the only kind of state that can do both of those at the same time.

So yeah. IMO, it's significant to make that opposition position known. And I'll keep making it as long as I have breath (or fingers in this case) to make it. In a thread titled "Man, I wish the poor would stop whining..." this would seem to be incredibly relevant, right?




And that's where we really disagree. I think it's not just important, it's the most important part of this debate. Because as long as we think the choice is purely between "helping the poor" and "not helping the poor", it would seem to be obvious which is the right choice. But once you realize it's really "helping the poor at the expense of our own property rights", it's a whole different debate, isn't it?


Hence, it makes a whole lot of sense when applied to the context of modern society. It *must* be applied. People have to know what the cost of what they're demanding is. And despite your statements to the contrary, I really don't think most people do. You may be perfectly ok with denying a "right to property", but I really don't think most people, even most of those people arguing for free medical care, would agree with the removal of that right.


For that reason, I tend to believe that most people simply don't realize that the removal of that right is exactly what we're really debating here. It's not about the medical care, it's about the cost. Again. That's why it's critically important to bring that cost up over and over and disagree when my position is painted as simple uncaring for others less fortunate then myself. It's really not. It's never been.

At the risk of repeating myself (and us going around in circles again):

Because one is preventing you from doing harm, while the other (providing medical care at other's expense) is forcing someone to provide a benefit.


You do understand that there is a fundamental difference between a law stating that it's illegal for me to take someone's lunch money away from them, and a law requiring me to give that person lunch money, right? One is preventing you from harming someone, the other is requiring you to help someone.

Those are two radically different things, and despite your insistence to the contrary, I think that most people support strongly the former set of laws, but tend to balk at the second. The reason is pretty obvious IMO. It's pretty clear that I should not be allowed to take from someone else. It's a basic concept that everyone can grasp and is imminently "fair". It's also self regulating since the restriction on me is limited to simply *not* doing specific things.


But the same can't be said of a law requiring me to help someone. Where does that end? It seems equally obvious that you can always find more things that I could do for someone else that will help improve their lives. Your children will certainly be better off if they receive music lessons, and art, a nice car for their 16th birthday, etc... There has to be some point at which we say "enough is enough", but once you dismiss property rights, there is no limit.


And that's a huge problem IMO.

And for the record, let me point out that this is *exactly* the sort of equivalence that I was talking about earlier. You're making exactly the flawed argument I talked about. Which makes me wonder if you really do "get it" as you claim.

You're saying that it's wrong of me to support one sort of protection, but not another. In the process, you're implying an equivalence between the two things protected against, and the rights being curtailed to provide that protection. More to the point, you can't understand why I would be ok with one, but not the other.


Let me say this AGAIN: The difference is whether the protection requires that I *not* do something to/for someone, or whether I'm required to do something to/for someone (as you yourself said earlier). I am in support of the former as a matter of course. In all cases of the latter, great care must be made to balance out the "cost" of doing that required thing.


What escapes me is that you can write the words showing you understand that these are different things, but then seem to be utterly incapable of actually applying that understanding. If you get that they are different, they why is it so hard for you to see that this is the very criteria upon which I'm treating them differently? It's why I'm ok with laws restricting my right to punch someone in the nose, but *not* ok with a law requiring that I pay for the medical costs for someone who has an injured nose. From an external point of view you could say that both prevent pain and injury, but from the viewpoint of individual rights, those are entirely different situations.

The difference is whether the protection requires that I *not* do something to/for someone, or whether I'm required to do something to/for someone (as you yourself said earlier). I am in support of the former as a matter of course. In all cases of the latter, great care must be made to balance out the "cost" of doing that required thing.

Now wait a minute. That's contrary to your views on me paying for a proactive war.