Why is coercion bad?

Economics Political Theory
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181

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
check the premises, as I stated several times. If the premises are true, the conclusions will be true.
[/quote]

Yes, you do say that a lot. Too bad you don’t do it. How can you check your premises?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
This is nice rhetoric. That’s all I can say about it.
[/quote]

Because you enjoy skirting the crux of the issue. Does not the analogy apply? Why not?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
I am expected to believe that I am engaging in appeals to revelation.
[/quote]

We both are. I’ve said that already.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Perhaps incense worship is something you enjoy engaging in. Fine, whatever, lovely. But some people may not share your taste, and so you might try to stop pretending that everyone who disagrees with you is just another “follower”.
[/quote]

I think a blood vessel just burst in my eye. I am at a loss. Truly. How is this not EXACTLY what I’ve been saying to you??? Check it out,

"Perhaps (logic worship) is something you enjoy engaging in. Fine, whatever, lovely. But some people may not share your taste, and so you might try to stop pretending that everyone who disagrees with you is just (engaging in a fallacy, and therefore wrong vis a vis ultimate truth).

You’ve just won the argument for me. Thanks.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Because there is nothing conceivable that does not fall under the domain of those laws.
[/quote]

That demonstrates our limited ability to imagine concepts, becuase of the fallibility of mere mortals that you mentioned previously. Why are you projecting your ignorance upon the world, rather than just admitting to that ignorance? You already have in other posts.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Anything that exists exists as itself and is not simultaneously itself and not itself. If you doubt this, try and disprove it.
[/quote]

Consider it done.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
By definition, there is no way a plant could exist as both “plant” and “not-plant” (unless you’ve done some innovative scholarly work of which I’m unaware showing that it can). I can explain this concept, but I can’t comprehend it for you.
[/quote]

Again, you fail to consider that you are the one defining things, drawing imaginary lines in the sand of your consciousness.

What is a “plant” other some random name you’ve assigned to an illusory amalgam of matter, you consider (for no good reason) to be a “thing”, a neat little quanta seperate from the “dirt”, and the “sky”, etc. You made it up! It’s all in your head!

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
All the statements from me you quoted were arguments, not assertions (with admittedly the exception of the first one). You were too hasty in your reply and didn’t notice. This is yet more testament to the failures of the point-by-point method. Not conducive to very rigorous thinking.
[/quote]

No, they were assertions based on faulty premises. If not, please quote some of my assertions, because if those were “arguments”, then all my “assertions” were too.

Big paragraph in the middle is all assertions, or at the least question begging. How are you sure that what you experience is any more or less “real” than a schizophrenic? How do you know who is “right” and who is “wrong”?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Let me tell you something; if you are “offering contrary hypothesis”, you are making claims of truth. Each of us is making a positive claim about the world and bears a burden of proof… you are just committing the age-old skeptic’s fallacy of asserting as an absolute truth that there are no absolute truths.
[/quote]

OK, then if my argument is,

“We are both full of shit.”

Prove it wrong. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Guess I win. Good match, kid.

182

My argument for ultimate ends rested on the axiomatic premise of human action. This premise is self-evidently true. I really hope I don’t need to explain why that is at this point, unless you are going to try and argue that I don’t exist.

I know you’ve “said already” that I “worship” logic. You can “say” it all you want. That doesn’t make it true. No matter how many times I try and tell you why I accept the rules of logic, you ignore me and continue to shout “LOGIC BOT LOGIC BOT”. Is this what buddhism and psychoactive drugs do to you?

Consider it done.
[/quote]

Are you serious? Are you really being serious? Nevermind the fact that whether or not “god” exists is highly contentious in itself and certainly not established by a Wikipedia article. Every argument I’ve heard for the existence of god has always insisted that logic doesn’t apply to him because he is outside reality. This doesn’t even come near to rebutting me.

I asked you to try and “disprove” the law of identity in order to help you understand that there are no alternatives to the truth of the law of identity. It can’t possibly be false because it’s part of what it means to exist. Of course, I now realize that getting you to understand anything I say is a futile project.

The only truth is that there is no truth! Existence doesn’t exist! Self-contradiction, over and over again. Language is imperfect but that’s no reason to toss it out the window.

Like what? I thought you didn’t believe in logic? How can my premises ever be “faulty” if there are no logical laws? You’re just stating your aesthetic preferences and trying to impose them on me.

Who cares? Schizophrenics don’t exist. It’s all in your head. You made it up.

I would recommend consulting this.

Only one of us is full of shit and it isn’t me. You’re just trolling at this point. You aren’t serious and this is a waste of time.

183

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
This premise is self-evidently true.
[/quote]

As far as we can tell. Big deal. That doesn’t make it any more True than a Terracentric model of the solar system was in the 15th century. It is the same problem demonstrated in the Asimov essay. We may (or may not) be moving closer to Truth, but we aren’t necessarily there yet. That is what I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
I know you’ve “said already” that I “worship” logic. You can “say” it all you want. That doesn’t make it true. No matter how many times I try and tell you why I accept the rules of logic, you ignore me and continue to shout “LOGIC BOT LOGIC BOT”. Is this what buddhism and psychoactive drugs do to you?
[/quote]

You missed the point. I was attempting to demonstrate the similarity of our positions.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Every argument I’ve heard for the existence of god has always insisted that logic doesn’t apply to him because he is outside reality.
[/quote]

That is definitely the stupidest thing you’ve said so far. You are so blinded by your own dogma it is insane. You are a zealot. You are so certain that only the logical can be “real” or “true” or “exist”, that something that is beyond your reckoning must be removed from reality (i.e. un-real, fake, false) in order to obey the asinine rules you’ve set up for yourself(and therefore, the whole Universe, and God too). That “argument” that God “exists” is saying he doesn’t “exist”. It is literally an argument against God, not for God!

In order for logic to be applicable at all, you must assume duality. God as a concept is an omniscient, omnipresent, consciousness of which everything is part of, yet is nothing in and of itself. God is supra-logical, since there is no if-then, or true-false, or any other kind of distinction to be made when discussing It.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
The only truth is that there is no truth! Existence doesn’t exist! Self-contradiction, over and over again. Language is imperfect but that’s no reason to toss it out the window.
[/quote]

Quit being a twat. A plant is a made up categorization for observed phenomena. A “plant” as you care to describe it, is never the same thing. At every instant, This “plant” in a constant state of flux. It is never the same “thing”, ever. Hell, think of your own body! Some broccoli in there from '93, some roast beef from last week. Constanly forming new cells from new input material, and sloughing off just as much every second, millisecond, nanosecond! And when we die? This “thing” you’ve chosen to classify as a unit, a quanta, a discrete “thing”, fades out, becoming a billion, a trillion a google of more “things”.

“Poor man, you have wheels in your head!”

I’m going to pull a tunk, and not actually read the linked page. Could you just tell which one of your rules I’m breaking?

I’m not trolling. I’m being genuine, but I’m sure that is completely irrational (and therefore, false) over there on Vulcan.

184

No, the action axiom is rather different from empirical hypotheses that we try to assess through the scientific method. When we attempt to discover the shape of the earth or learn anything about the natural world, we are trying to discover causes, the effects being given to us. We attempt to control for all irrelevant factors through repeated experiment in order to construct an accurate model of cause-and-effect that hopefully approximates reality. Of course, the very nature of the scientific method implies that we can never be certain.

With human action it is much different. We already know what the cause is through introspection. We know that man acted purposefully using scarce means to achieve his desired end. This is as evident as the sum of 2 and 2. There’s no uncertainty involved. Praxeology 101.

Believe that if you want. It’s pointless trying to get you to see my side of the issue. I don’t see what’s so controversial about saying that everything that exists exists as itself and nothing else. It’s beyond me why one would need to be a zealot to point that out, unless the “2+2=4” school of philosophical thought are wacky fanatics too. I side with Gottlob Frege, that this law is a very basic necessity of the world around us and denying it is madness itself.

Yeah, that’s what I meant. I wasn’t clear.

…so, what? Nowhere is it written that it couldn’t be in the nature of a thing to change.

Nah, being genuine is just your aesthetic preference. I don’t care. Do what you like. This is all one big hallucination anyway, and you don’t exist. “Leave your sandals and your mind at the entrance.”

185

Jackson, perhaps tunk is at least entitled to a more “viable” version of reality than others that have been run over by dinosaurs, bears, elephants, locomotives, and buses which they had chosen to perceive as imaginary (as in “not real”) – over millions of years of evolution? Even if tunk, you, I, and the bus are all “illusions”, mere avatars in God’s iPad, some “illusions” seem to be “here” typing and crashing into things, while others are, well, not. Why don’t you go stand in front of a bus and check your type?

186

Tunk- Seeing that you are one of the few people here who agrees with me on an objective morality, do you also see Non-Aggression as simply axiomatic?

And could I ask you a favour? Could you summarize/link to the the important ancillary points of objective Non-Aggression you have made in this thread? (I have not had time to read through it all). Thanks a bunch!

PS- Did you find my arguments for our case too simplistic, dogmatic, etc.? Am I missing anything really important?

187

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
We already know what the cause is through introspection. We know that man acted purposefully using scarce means to achieve his desired end.
[/quote]

What is “man” in this passage?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
I don’t see what’s so controversial about saying that everything that exists exists as itself and nothing else.
[/quote]

Because the way you are using “everything”, “exist”, “itself” and “nothing” rather crudely. It’s like I said about the plant. Nothing we observe is ever the same. It is never a “thing” that “exists” in the way you are using those terms. There is just one continuum, like the surface of the ocean. We are just naming the waves as they come up, and roll back. They can’t be said to have a “beginning”, or “end” in any truly meaningful sense. Norr can they be truly considered “discrete” from the ocean itself.

I know science appeals to materialists, so maybe Wigner’s friend may be a better way of explaining how these “things” as you so casually assume to “be”, are dependant on the observation and the interpretation of the observer.

LOL, you are so right. What was my ultimate end again? I forgot. Could you remind me of what I’m supposed to do?

188

[quoteuser=“z1235”]
Why don’t you go stand in front of a bus and check your type?
[/quote]

Good one. Never heard that before.

As I’ve said (over and over and over), you guys could very well be right. All I’m saying is that you could also be wrong. Frankly, I’m afraid, but that’s a hang up I’m working on..

[quoteuser=“Matthew 17.20”]
Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
[/quote]

189

All I’m saying is I (an “illusion” which is not “you”) wouldn’t be betting that I’m wrong. I may be arguing from ignorance but not one of these “illusions” has ever been run over by a non-imaginary (“real”) bus and “existed” afterwards to tell the story “here”. Now, it is possible that they had gone to become avatars in God’s iPad2 (“over there”) but the risk is (chances are) they’ve simply gone nowhere and, personally, I like it “here” too much to find this out. The risk/reward just isn’t working for me. I mean, “me”. Sorry.

190

Why wouldn’t you bet you are wrong?

191

I didn’t mean to say that I wouldn’t bet that I’m wrong about everything. Just about the type of “real” (or “imaginary”) a bus going 80mph may be. Just not worth the risk, and I have a feeling (intuition) that my ancestors have equipped me with the tools (brain, right neurons at all the right places, intuition, genes, whatever) to be relatively good at playing these odds, on average. The ones who sucked betting, don’t have ancestors today “here” (in God’s iPad) to tell their stories. Maybe they are all up there in iPad2, iPad3, or whatever, but I doubt it and, as I said, it’s not worth finding out for sure. Makes sense?

192

Not really. What are you basing your odds on?

193

Pure intuition. Gut feeling. But also, the risk/reward equation is different for everybody. For me, who quite likes it “here”, the risk (of not beeing “here” in iPad anymore) is not worth the potential “reward” of finding out if being hit by a bus would transport “me” to another “there” (iPad2). Not even close. But that’s me.

194

Fair enough.

195

@Jackson LaRose

There isn’t much point of substantial disagreement between us. “Man” is the conscious actor with the capacity of reason (i.e. the ability to symbolize and hypothesize) who deliberately chose a goal and acted to gain it.

I think that things exist. Yea, surely this is the most outrageous and vile statement ever made. According to you my position is thrown out of the water by the fact that things change. Yes, I stand entirely refuted – if it weren’t for the possibility that it might be in the nature of a thing to change. Ultimately this merely reduces to a mere issue of taxonomy and categorization. The principle of identity still holds, despite your efforts.

Oh boy, Schrodinger’s cat, a thought experiment merely meant to illustrate the absurdity of literal interpretations of quantum mechanics models. The cat is still either alive or dead, since these alternatives are mutually exclusive. And this is true independent of the observer.

I don’t see how the fact that people disagree on the truth means there is no truth. Should we toss physics out the window because Einstein disputed classical mechanics?

Read a book?

@RD

I don’t see how this syllogism establishes moral objectivity. I see the point of moral objectivity as being able to justifiably perscribe that human beings should do certain things. Generally, you can only perscribe certain means if the agent in question holds a particular goal, e.g. if you want to do well on the test, then study. This is a problematic hypothetical imperative. If there is a goal we all hold, however, then we can universally perscribe certain means to that goal - an assertoric hypothetical imperative.

So I don’t see the NAP as axiomatic. Rather, I think it can be perscribed as a means to human goals. That’s to say, since every human being is involved in a pursuit of his or her flourishing, everyone implicitly gives their approval to a legal order in which certain fundamental freedoms are protected, rights to personal sovereignty and private property. These two rights ensure a certain domain of action in which everyone is free to pursue their goals without interference. On the basis on which you grant these rights to yourself, you also grant them to everyone else, since you possess them not because you are Mary or John, but because you are human, i.e. a member of a set of rights-possessing beings.

196

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
There isn’t much point of substantial disagreement between us.
[/quote]

Except that you are still convinced that your pet deductions are better for me than my pet deductions

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
if it weren’t for the possibility that it might be in the nature of a thing to change.
[/quote]

Wouldn’t it then become a different “thing”?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Ultimately this merely reduces to a mere issue of taxonomy and categorization.
[/quote]

Heh, I know. Mainly your belief that your categorizations are the categorizations, which I contend as not necessarily True.

As far as the physics thing is concerned, I had intended to illustrate how “things” do not “exist” in the sense you are assuming they do, making the theories you construct using those definitions inherently subjective to you, rather than universally applicable.

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
The principle of identity still holds, despite your efforts.
[/quote]

Why?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
I don’t see how the fact that people disagree on the truth means there is no truth.
[/quote]

GAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! That isn’t what I’m saying! That’s what you think I’m saying, or it is the straw man you would prefer to do battle with.

What I’m saying is,

“People disagree on the Truth. There is no way to determine which concept of truth is the actual Truth, without being God.”

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Read a book?
[/quote]

LOL, OK. Seems a bit dry though, might have trouble keeping with it. Better stock up on some of Rand’s choice attention aid. Who says drugs are bad?

197

Of course I’m convinced of the truth of my deductions. I wouldn’t be arguing otherwise. And a thing that changed would obviously not become a different “thing”, since by changing it is fulfilling its nature.

Except I don’t hold such a belief.

Except you didn’t demonstrate that. What you did was say an obvious truth, that observation is relative to the observer. That doesn’t refute the action axiom because the action axiom isn’t an observation.

Why?
[/quote]

Because it’s a self-evident and necessary truth that no quibbles about definitions and semantics can overturn. You don’t need to be omniscient to grasp it.

Whether the book is dry is a judgment that obviously can’t be made until one reads it. I couldn’t care less about Ayn Rand personally. Tara Smith’s book is useful because she takes her ethics and makes something philosophically intelligible out of them. You won’t need drugs unless your attention span is abnormally short.

198

[quoteuser=“Jackson LaRose”]
Mainly your belief that your categorizations are the categorizations, which I contend as not necessarily True.
[/quote]

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Except I don’t hold such a belief.
[/quote]

Than how could you possibly speak to Objective Truth?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
That doesn’t refute the action axiom because the action axiom isn’t an observation.
[/quote]

Man, this again. OK, so you don’t like the “can’t conceive of cognition without prior observation” (my previous angle when you brough it up), huh? OK, let’s try this,

Why does man act?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Because it’s a self-evident and necessary truth that no quibbles about definitions and semantics can overturn. You don’t need to be omniscient to grasp it.
[/quote]

I disagree.

OK, that book is in the queue.

199

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
Except I don’t hold such a belief.
[/quote]

Than how could you possibly speak to Objective Truth?
[/quote]

I don’t think we are using the word “categorization” the same way. I don’t actually “categorize” much; rather, I only insist that things can be categorized via the law of identity. The only category I actually employ in my argument is “man”.

This could mean one of two things.
a) Why does man happen to feel a particular motivation at any given time to accomplish some goal? That I couldn’t tell you. It’s a matter of psychology.
b) Why is it in man’s nature to act to gain and achieve goals? There, my answer would be because man, as a living being, has an ultimate goal, his life, that gives rise to the ability and need to value and pursue lesser goals.

Ok, you disagree about self-evidence. Let’s leave it at that, then.

200

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
I only insist that things can be categorized via the law of identity.
[/quote]

Categorized versus what criteria, or standard?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
The only category I actually employ in my argument is “man”.
[/quote]

Could you please explain why you consider “man” a category, but you do not consider “plant” a category?

[quoteuser=“tunk”]
a) Why does man happen to feel a particular motivation at any given time to accomplish some goal? That I couldn’t tell you. It’s a matter of psychology.
[/quote]

Or Mises,

“The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness.”

Yes?