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Echarmion

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I don't think the SC will necessarily do what the GOP wants. But if there was unambiguous support for Trump's claims from the party leadership, togeth...
December 09, 2020 at 07:07
The nice thing about appointments for life is that once someone is on the SC, they effectively have their own powerbase and are independent from whoev...
December 09, 2020 at 06:40
The perverse thing here is that via the logic that fulfilling your contractual obligations is moral, the CEO can put morality on it's head by simply r...
December 08, 2020 at 21:19
We could have started doing any of those things at any time, and of course plenty of people do try to do their part. However many of the issues you na...
December 08, 2020 at 21:15
Space exploration isn't really something that requires a continual rise though. In a way, it would actually benefit from a shift away from continual g...
December 08, 2020 at 18:02
Lazors! We have humans traveling in space right now, so I don't really understand the argument that it's impossible. It'd take very long to get to any...
December 08, 2020 at 17:58
That depends on what you refer to as causes and effects. If you're talking about events as they're understood in everyday language, then yes, a single...
December 04, 2020 at 18:15
Your phrasing here already assumes that consciousness and the ability to perceive aren't physical, hence they need to he created by the physical. But ...
December 04, 2020 at 15:51
This is slightly tangential, but the laws that humans make are not like the laws of nature. The laws of nature do not "constrain the universe". They d...
December 03, 2020 at 16:40
The real inauguration will be at the Four Seasons...
December 03, 2020 at 16:36
But whence the web? That is, we'd have to suppose that mutually observing observers just are, without any temporal process. But this isn't true for an...
December 03, 2020 at 07:44
What about the perceiver themselves? If everything is physical and If to be physical is to be perceived by something, how is there something to percei...
December 03, 2020 at 07:20
What seems to be missing from your view is that - at least according to a materialistic view - what you describe as "intelligence", be it in a virus o...
December 03, 2020 at 07:11
Why not? Clearly we can predict how viruses act generally to for medical purposes. From a physical perspective, a virus is of course very complex, but...
December 02, 2020 at 20:27
What all definitions do is define things in a certain context. That's why you'll generally find multiple meanings for a given word in a dictionary. De...
December 02, 2020 at 18:42
Why would I do this if I have no purpose in mind? I don't see how the result could be useful. But by adding excess kinetic energy, you obviously chang...
December 02, 2020 at 17:46
It would be useful to first know why you want to define free will. That is, for what kind of consideration is it necessary to establish whether or not...
December 02, 2020 at 09:31
The question I'd ask is whether this still is a market. Common definitions of markets are very vague and generalised, but they're usually distinguishe...
December 02, 2020 at 08:44
Stats for which country? That the middle class is, broadly speaking "in trouble" has been a common theme for years. Whether or not the middle class is...
December 01, 2020 at 22:06
But that doesn't seem related to the freedom of the market. Or, rather, since I don't really know in what sense a market could be free, the proper sta...
December 01, 2020 at 21:54
I think the mobility issue now is less that people cannot move upwards from middle class, but that you're more likely to move down than up and, once d...
December 01, 2020 at 13:56
What would a "truly" free market consist of, given that, historically, markets are state creations?
December 01, 2020 at 11:42
Well, what I argue is that it's problematic to make the distinction between yourself and others in this way. Neither the sentence "others must be more...
November 30, 2020 at 18:26
No, I am referring to the general idea of thinking about human interactions as governed by opposing, atomistic intentions such as self-interest vs. al...
November 30, 2020 at 14:34
The whole idea of "absolute altruism" or "true selfishness" is somewhat strange. It seems to presuppose an atomistic view of both persons and their in...
November 30, 2020 at 13:18
The question is why you'd think freedom, in a social sense, is the absence of rules. For one, the very nature of a rule is that it assumes you're free...
November 30, 2020 at 08:45
Freedom is rather central to our moral systems though, so I'd argue more than just commerce is at stake. Is it? Doing nothing is already a value judge...
November 26, 2020 at 08:11
Can't we just use the most common definition?
November 25, 2020 at 22:05
This usual conception is bourgeois in origin though, and it shows in the way it frames social relations in commercial terms. That is as a system where...
November 25, 2020 at 19:20
I recognise this is tongue-in-cheek, but I think this isn't entirely absurd. Or rather, it hints at a real problem with defining freedom as the absenc...
November 25, 2020 at 17:37
Kant doesn't talk about benefits or disbenefits when establishing the groundwork for the CI. And it's also important to consider that the CI is not a ...
November 25, 2020 at 16:54
In that case, you have found a contradiction. The maxim that everyone should marry who they choose, including children, includes a contradiction becau...
November 25, 2020 at 09:10
But an ideology never actually has complete control over your thoughts. Ideologies don't permanently turn people into zombies. The abstract ability to...
November 25, 2020 at 08:18
The German authorities could just arrest the King, apparently he likes Bavaria a lot. Could imprison him in Neuschwanstein until he repents, or drown ...
November 25, 2020 at 06:43
The core idea behind the CI is to dissolve the boundary between yourself and "others" by imagining yourself to simultaneously be every other person. O...
November 24, 2020 at 13:57
It's sounds a bit paradoxical, true. But the relation between the categorical imperative and freedom is not a means - ends relationship as with hypoth...
November 24, 2020 at 11:12
But acting in accordance with the CI is something you do, for yourself. It's not framed as a divine mandate you have to follow. Kant invites you to us...
November 24, 2020 at 10:07
Yes, but only you know what your maxims actually are, and you must decide for yourself what is and is not the right decision. There is no higher autho...
November 24, 2020 at 09:48
The categorical imperative does not account for cultural differences. It's fundamentally a personal stabdard, it's supposed to help you make your own ...
November 24, 2020 at 09:31
The categorical imperative deals with maxims, not individual choices. The most obvious maxim to satisfy the categorical imperative seems to be that, b...
November 24, 2020 at 08:16
The usage of the word illusion in this context strikes me as strange. What is it an illusion of? If the experience is "real" but doesn't involve any q...
November 22, 2020 at 15:02
Like which ones? And because you think that, the government are fascists?
November 20, 2020 at 10:59
I don't see these similarities. Where are the brown shirts, where is the blood and soil rhetoric? Who are the people singled out as aliens for their e...
November 20, 2020 at 08:44
Well, I think the strategy that I think is faulty is outlined in this paragraph here: For one, while accurate for the US, several European countries h...
November 18, 2020 at 19:21
As much as @"StreetlightX" striding around on the world's highest horse to berate everyone annoys me, I think he has a point here. You're correct when...
November 18, 2020 at 09:36
I don't see why this is the only way to resolve the conflict. One might simply accept that there is no "absolute" authority on moral question, because...
November 17, 2020 at 15:19
That depends of course on just what you consider the popular notion of morality to be. Two observations I'd make in that regard are: a) morality usual...
November 17, 2020 at 12:05
Why should this prediction be believed this time around, after it has failed so many times before? The presumed population "explosion" has in fact alr...
November 15, 2020 at 11:35
Letters are a much later step. Language developed as spoken language first, and that's what you're thinking in. First of all pictures are abstractions...
November 15, 2020 at 10:06
There is a type of word that has "inherent" meaning, onomatopoeia. Similarly, hieroglyphic writing has "inherent" meaning because you understand it us...
November 14, 2020 at 21:54