No need to repeat the entire argument. This was plenty. What does it mean? Is it English? If you are your mind, then I can substitute "Bartricks's min...
No, a life is a life, in my book and the law's. In law, you're either guilty or not guilty of committing a particular act you are forbidden to. There ...
Oh, I see. I thought it was the other thing. But, no, I was not trying to suggest that lockdowns were the reason the eventual death toll was lower. Yo...
Not at all. I was not accusing you of being cavalier, but suggesting that you could be taken that way if you weren't pretty careful about how you comp...
So the key word there is "innocent" right? I don't think we classify lives as "innocent" and "not innocent" in our legal system, so I'm not sure how t...
You just have to find a way to say that without sounding like this: You can argue that lockdowns were a mistake because they don't work. But I wouldn'...
Rights might be different because the situation is unique. You do not have a general right to take another's life, or even a lesser right to harm them...
Well it's not like you can do controlled trials; we'll only ever have so-called "natural experiments". I don't know what the overall evidence is eithe...
That is correct. Perhaps the mother of an unborn child does indeed have a unique right to kill that child, even supposing that what is inside her is a...
That was not my question. My question was whether a mother might indeed have something like the patria potestas, absolute authority including the powe...
That is correct. She may, or may not, have exactly such a right and it may, or may not, be limited. Pregnant women are unique in a way we cannot prete...
Oh that's much less abstract! Anyhow, I'll leave you to it. I like Wittgenstein, but I've never enjoyed Wittgenstein exegesis, so this is not the righ...
That's plausible, but you're forgetting that the situation is unique. Maybe it does grant a unique right. Maybe not. But now at least it's clear that ...
That's quite appealing, but terribly abstract. There are constraints on or expectations about what sorts of resemblance you generate, and the generati...
I didn't say that it does. I only said that it is an unusual situation. I cannot protect or infringe upon the rights of the person inside without prot...
But you do recognize that this situation is unusual, don't you? Pregnancy is the only situation in which one person's body is entirely contained withi...
Lockdown is a complicated issue. On balance, I expect you're right that the duration of the lockdowns was at least partially due to how we half-assed ...
What do you say to this, @"Isaac"? I looked, and when we were discussing Andrew Pollard's contention that "anyone who's still unvaccinated at some poi...
This is clearly the right starting point. (I don't agree that it answers the question, but I'm not sure the question is a good one.) No it does not. I...
@"NOS4A2" And if so, how is the State to determine who is infected? Does your right to bodily autonomy, ahem, immunize you against being tested by an ...
Sure. But it's not about "have to"; your claim was that the State has no right, no authority to do such a thing. (Sorry, but the curiosity is killing ...
I've spent way too much time in old logic textbooks. Some of them introduce this sort of thing rather casually -- "You know about assigning variables ...
Because to you that would make our society unjust, and you don't want our society to be unjust. You're one of us; you just express it as if you're not...
I think the interest of society is invisible to you, because what you describe is no society at all, but the proverbial war of all against all. I do n...
You're right that we have a right to bodily autonomy; that sets the bar for state interference high, but not infinitely high. The US Supreme Court has...
So do I, insofar as I speak English. Proving it about someone else's usage takes a bit of legwork, that's all. If shame is one of the options when you...
I still say your whole approach to this conversation is screwy. The expectation on our side is that you provide your reasons and explain how you justi...
None of which can be addressed by an intervention that takes a total of about half an hour of your life, none of your money, and with no other changes...
What's clearly missing from this list is "compelled" and friends. (Wittgenstein exegesis holds little interest for me, so I'm not going to chase up wh...
Yes. I'm guessing someone in a think-tank somewhere was damn pleased with themselves when they had this idea. (And somebody in the Texas legislature g...
Surely Congress has the needed authority under the commerce clause. <ducking> In all seriousness though, there is a conundrum here: how to make a just...
Yes I thought of that but then deliberately didn't think about it, because that puts you -- taking "you" as whoever's making a decision here -- back i...
Here's one way of bridging ye olde is-ought gap -- dunno if it's all that persuasive. As I've mentioned, one of the curious features about vaccination...
You are right to think that causal explanations do not provide rational justification for a given belief. (We have to agree to table perception though...
I have some sympathy with this view, at least if we dial back the optimality a little and just assume we're learning organisms that get better at bein...
The answer I want to give is that this is clearly false: I don't only have access to (1). And then I give the example of having an idea for a chess mo...
This I think I need a little clarification on. -- I have thoughts, but it's easier to ask. This is the main point I hadn't been clear on. Even in case...
I suppose that's fair. I was a little feisty about it, but I tried to indicate that I'm not sure it's an issue worth anyone's interest, not in the for...
I'm so indifferent to the issue I don't even care if you call me a "compatibilist" (as people have Strawson). Isms are junk, suitable only for doing c...
Meant to respond to this idea. No. The only things I want to capture by using the familiar word "rationalization" are that they are rational -- they d...
Sure, I get that. And if the thesis of determinism is true, then some of the things I say, and some of the things you could reasonably claim are presu...
And evidently don't need one, as you just said. It's still a fact that I do. Maybe what I say causes your beliefs to change or fails to; maybe you eva...
The "fixed" part is just empirically false, but can't I believe that my beliefs are fully determined by my state and my environment, rather than a mat...
Not wild about this argument. Or maybe I just don't quite understand it. Is the idea that psychologist's claim is self-refuting, or are we just callin...
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