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Isaac

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In legal terms, yes. How's that related? We're talking about what ought to be, not what currently is. The existence of a threat to the state is not in...
August 08, 2022 at 09:29
I don't see how that has any bearing on the argument. I'm not denying that states go to war. That doesn't make states people or 'selves' so it doesn't...
August 08, 2022 at 07:32
So the Ukrainian fighters are not good people? It seems pretty self-evident they think they can improve their society by killing the Russian invaders....
August 07, 2022 at 21:37
I don't think war is necessarily unjust. I don't think it was unjust to go to war against the Nazis, but I do think the bombing of Dresden was unjust....
August 07, 2022 at 21:33
Care to attempt an argument, or are we at the stage of exchanging arbitrary preferences? Oh and the argument was whether using conscription to defend ...
August 07, 2022 at 19:02
.... Obviously, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. That it can be a useful tool doesn't in any way imply that it is a necessary one. We t...
August 07, 2022 at 15:34
Right. And what point in the thread confused you into thinking anyone needed telling this? Who was it you thought was making the argument that conscri...
August 07, 2022 at 14:34
Not my question.@"_db" asked it in the opening post. It's only being reiterated now because of @"ssu"'s and @"Olivier5"'s Herculean efforts to deflect...
August 07, 2022 at 08:18
My post wasn't really about what the solipsist can claim. I mean, I can claim to be the king of Spain. We're engaged in philosophy here and like any o...
August 07, 2022 at 08:14
I mean why pick it out? Do we have epistemological hat-denial, where I make the claim that we can't have knowledge of hats? 'Other minds' has been pic...
August 07, 2022 at 07:39
How is this any different to saying that knowledge of anything is impossible?
August 07, 2022 at 07:33
Oh, and... Bollocks. A self-governing people did, in the past, in France muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship h...
August 07, 2022 at 07:30
So what? Who cares? The question (the one you keep dodging) is "ought they?", not "can they?".
August 07, 2022 at 07:24
...exactly the historicist argument]... Then bringing it up is irrelevant to the discussion. It's insufficient justification to say "conscription help...
August 07, 2022 at 07:14
Firstly, you've completely missed (or more likely ignored) the argument against historicism. That it happened once is not sufficient evidence to suppo...
August 07, 2022 at 06:58
Yeah, the "this is the way it played out once so that's how it must be" argument is pretty poor. If I tried to produce a paper supporting a theory bas...
August 07, 2022 at 06:29
I should imagine you've better things to do with your time! Personally, a company with that many flagrant derelictions of its duty of care has lost, f...
August 07, 2022 at 06:23
So, having established in what circumstances conscription works. In what circumstances is it just?
August 06, 2022 at 15:20
Then morality is just an arbitrary set of rules. If the outcome isn't relevant, then why act that way. You might as well say it's 'moral' to put a pin...
August 06, 2022 at 15:12
Pathetic. In other news you'll be delighted to hear that in addition to slaves, Zelensky is bolstering his army with convicted torturers and rapists.....
August 05, 2022 at 17:11
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights (several different measures availa...
August 05, 2022 at 12:25
Of course you doubt it. Your Facebook feed tells you all Ukrainians are superheroes and anyone denying that is a Russian propagandist. Hang the facts.
August 05, 2022 at 12:04
It isn't. Yes.
August 05, 2022 at 10:13
Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in t...
August 05, 2022 at 07:43
If you suggest that whatever the majority think is right gets to override the minority, then you, by necessity, deny the authority of something like h...
August 05, 2022 at 06:16
Your entire response was... There's nothing to straw man there. You've literally said "The majority usually trumps the minority" that's a word-for-wor...
August 04, 2022 at 21:45
So your idea of democracy is that absolutely anything the majority decides to force upon the minority is morally justified? No human rights? No consti...
August 04, 2022 at 19:39
When you read the word 'unwilling' what happens in your brain? Does it just go blank? Does it struggle for a bit before giving in? I'd love some insig...
August 04, 2022 at 16:15
How do those atrocities have any bearing whatsoever on the relative ability of citizens to influence peacetime governments? Honestly. You can't just a...
August 04, 2022 at 12:41
Read the next paragraph. The make up of a government (Zelensky or Putin, to put it simply) is of little relevance to serving the population's interest...
August 04, 2022 at 11:41
Sure. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11721-015-0103-0 https://hal-lirmm.ccsd.cnrs.fr/lirmm-01598654/ https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...
August 04, 2022 at 09:12
Where? I just checked back over the last few pages and can't find any such exchange. I don't always read the whole thread, if there's points you've ma...
August 04, 2022 at 08:46
To a point, yes. The benevolent despot thing is just about the conflict between individual narratives and the slightly chaotic effect of peer conformi...
August 04, 2022 at 08:42
The use of conscription constitutes the evidence. That's the whole point of the OP (@"_db" will correct me if im wrong). If the government were concer...
August 04, 2022 at 08:24
The latter is extremely unlikely. When non-voters are surveyed, either apathy or disillusionment are cited. A preference for dictatorship is vanishing...
August 04, 2022 at 06:38
It's an analogy. I thought it might help. Clearly not. Whether 'discovery' is the act of finding a new pre-existing object, rather than the act of chr...
August 04, 2022 at 06:29
True. Yep. Exactly. Not to mention the fact that they had their hands tied in that decision by the constraining circumstances placed on them by other ...
August 04, 2022 at 06:21
Proportional representation I can totally get behind, and I think a lot more people would choose to vote if we had it. Mandatory voting isn't somethin...
August 04, 2022 at 06:07
That's what I meant by looking out of the window (metaphorically). I'm not a hermit, we don't live lives insulated from politics. If there were 40% of...
August 03, 2022 at 21:56
I'm not suggesting there isn't a worse way. Do you really go about your daily business, read the newspaper, look at the world around you and actually ...
August 03, 2022 at 20:37
You should re-read 's excellent reply here. It sums up the idea in developmental psychology terms very succinctly.
August 03, 2022 at 16:25
All things we name are such groupings. The tree is a group of cells, the cell is a group of organelles, the organelles are groups of molecules, the mo...
August 03, 2022 at 16:23
Well then he's 8 words ahead of you and he's not even started. 11
August 03, 2022 at 12:09
I don't see how the answer to this question isn't determined entirely by what we mean by 'exist independently of us' and what we mean by 'as they appe...
August 03, 2022 at 11:34
Cool. Nearly there then. Just a few billion more exploitative products and services to go.
August 03, 2022 at 11:21
Go on...
August 03, 2022 at 11:17
Absolutely. Bruce eh! An American singer, songwriter, and musician. He has released 20 studio albums, many of which feature his backing band, the E St...
August 03, 2022 at 08:52
I've no idea what point you're trying to make. All of the settlements under those agreements were legal and made years after the 1938 laws were repeal...
August 03, 2022 at 08:25
It unambiguously isn't. Try taking your state to court for theft on the grounds that you don't think it's property law is what it ought to be and see ...
August 03, 2022 at 07:44
I agree. The tricky part is in how we judge that danger. The problem being that fighting a war is bloody dangerous, so the alternative has to be prett...
August 03, 2022 at 07:32