Echarmion

I get the sentiment. The focus on the Mueller investigation as America's saving grace has been annoying, and so is the constant attention to Trump's p...

Not necessarily. Parents don't have unlimited rights to act on behalf of their children. Or they don't need to have such rights, in any event. By addi...

But since there are a number of fairly intelligent and well read members on this forum, their opinions should have weight to you. Especially since you...

I'd say the above quotes from the Mueller report pretty clearly indicate that Trump would have been indicted for obstruction of justice if it hadn't b...

And I just quoted the relevant section of the justice manual. It says that in order to commence prosecution, the prosecutor must "believe" that the pe...

I started another thread on this so called "doomsday argument" a while back. We weren't able to reach a definitive conclusion, but there seems to be a...

I actually checked the justice manual, and could find no support for this view. The section that Mueller refers to in his report reads: In light of th...

Except the things I wrote. You're welcome to point out any factual or other errors you happen to spot. I am not keeping you from using Google yourself...

The effort wouldn't be commensurate with my investment in the topic.

Unfortunately, you are the only one here who thinks so. Good point. I concede that reason self-checks when we are crafting an argument in our minds. B...

A pet peeve of mine, but "burden of proof" is a legal concept designed to solve situations of non liquet. It's not a general epistemological principle...

I didn't actually admit that. I only admitted that moral values are not identical to the entire set of values of any one of us. Because, obviously, th...

I don't believe there is insufficient evidence for it. I just don't have sufficient rigorous and presentable evidence. I am not a sociologist and have...

By ignoring what happened after slavery ended, even though it was a continuation of racist policy. Fair enough. I don't have sufficient evidence on ha...

That it's connected to slavery and the openly racist ideas and policies that preceded and followed it. You think it's impossible to establish a causal...

You're taking the claim unreasonably literally. In any event, it is connected to slavery. For one, racial segregation was an outgrowth of slavery, the...

That's not a contradiction. The situation didn't end 150 years ago (if we are talking about the US). It ended perhaps 60 years ago, at best. Until tha...

As superflous as any descriptor. "White privilege" is "white" because, historically, white people were indeed better off because of their skin color.

I don't need to argue that, because that's not the argument. The argument is that some people are better off by virtue of having been in power in the ...

Essentially, I'd consider everything that can be derived from synthetic a priori conclusion knowledge. Descartes "I think, therefore I am" would be an...

Success is relative though. You can be successful, but still poor in absolute terms. Studies seem to point in the direction that having wealthy parent...

While this is true, the specific problem that affects many minorities is that they, on average, lack inherited wealth. They had much less time, relati...

Talk about uncritically accepting a story. This is another of Trump's taking points. I dont expect you actually believe this, but on the off-chance th...

Sidestepping the question: I recently read that there is not actually much historical evidence that the "tragedy of the commons" was a thing. That com...

You could follow a moral framework that does not reference survival/fitness. Plenty of people today are not concerned (or at least profess to be so) w...

You may have been over this, but what standing do rational intuitions have compared to rational knowledge? We could argue that humans have a rational ...

Answering questions is not in the interest of spreading pro-Trump propaganda. If he'd answer questions, especially questions about his view on policy ...

Depends on your definition of truth, which is a contested term. But in ordinary language use, it's usually true. Some statements that are true for the...

Context and non-verbal communication.

And what if someone deciphers the code, who was not a member of the group that originally agreed on it? Clearly, the coded language "works" for them, ...

But you do not have to. Barr's comments confirm that there is a binary choice to make - you indict, or you don't. Mueller made that choice - he declin...

So, If that is how language works, how do children learn the meaning of words? If it hadn't leaked, how would we be talking about it?

This is fine as ordinary language use, but it's imprecise. When a prosecutor determines that a crime has been committed, that means he thinks he has s...

He determined there was sufficient cause to suspect those crimes were committed, hence the indictments. But a prosecutor can not go further than to in...

Err, no. That would be a violation of the presumption of innocence. And "Law enforcement" is too broad anyways, since it includes the police, which is...

It's probably more accurate to say that the DOJ exercises oversight over the different prosecutors, whose job it is to investigate and prosecute possi...

Why does an investigation "have to" issue a verdict? What is it that you like to say? Ah yes - pure fantasy.

Ok: 1. If being morally valuable is one and the same as being morally valuable to me, then if I morally value something necessarily it is morally valu...

No, because premise 2 doesn't work for those subsets. Edit: which is to say the justification for premise 2 would be a matter for debate, defeating th...

But no-one claims that: That would imply me liking cats more than dogs is a moral stance, but it clearly isn't. What this argument establishes is triv...

Simple due process is that courts establish guilt. Investigations establish the facts and whether or not these facts are sufficient to indict. What no...

Yeah, that's valid, like your other superman example.

Because Trump had sent Guiliani to talk with Zelenskyys assisstant beforehand. Or do you think the two just randomly met? Nothing except the entire co...

I think it's unlikely he'd want Zelenskyy to only talk with Guiliani about the DNC server, but not the Biden investigation. I can think of no reason h...

"Whatever facts conflict with my worldview are merely media word-policing" And also that it would be great if the Ukrainian president would talk to Gu...

This doesn't really make any sense to me. In my opinion, only a false morality could be shaken by knowledge. This saying is based on some truth on a p...

I do think that this is an important angle, because it makes explicit the connection between freedom and morality. I am not sure Why this relies on th...

Haha, ok then. "Give me examples! No not those examples!" You also asked this: Using a call, made in your official function as president, to ask a for...

Trump himself admitted publicly he fired Comey because of his role in the russia investigation. I guess you concede the other two examples though. So ...

Trump was accused of firing James Comey because of Comey's role in the investigation. Turns out that was true. Trump was accused of personally writing...