Michael

So you don't see a problem with a majority who decide that slavery is acceptable?

The majority doesn't have the right to oppress the minority.

Because it isn't just a domestic issue, it's a human rights issue. We are rightly concerned when other countries oppress their citizens.

Should they also get to decide whether or not that act be repealed so that they can decide if they want homosexuals or black people in their communiti...

Should they also get to decide if they want homosexuals or black people in their communities?

From what premises?

If jamalrob is now Jamal and Hanover now Hanoverrob then you should become Hanover.

If we've only ever experienced one then how could we know which it is we've experienced? Obviously if there was a noticeable difference between realit...

Twitter doesn't impede your right to speech. The existence of Twitter doesn't take away other methods of expressing your opinion. Start your own blog ...

I'm here to help.

The recent Texas law doesn't allow for abortion even in the case of a child being raped, and only allows it up to the detection of a fetal heartbeat, ...

Which will disproportionately affect the poor, pushing them further into poverty (or death). 22 states have laws against abortion already on the books...

So I guess their expenses should be paid for by taxes? Although by which country? It's headquarters are in the USA, so I guess it's American taxpayers...

I would add a further claim such as: It is acceptable to refuse to hire someone for expressing morally reprehensible opinions And of course there are ...

Many contracts include provisions regarding conduct, and social media companies include terms of service for the same. So I assume you accept that Twi...

As I have mentioned before, for the sake of argument it is legal to fire the employee for expressing such an opinion. We're not discussing legality he...

No, the general principle is: An employer has the right to fire an employee for expressing morally reprehensible opinions I then apply this principle ...

The right to not be required to accept another person's labour and the right to not be required to give money to another person.

We're not talking about legal rights but ethical(?) rights. The argument often made is that we have a "natural" right to speech and so laws against sp...

I'm not saying that they should fire them. I'm saying that (depending on the opinion) they have the right to fire them. If they express the opinion th...

Here's a question for "free speech absolutists": should us moderators be allowed to ban accounts that only post in some other language than English?

Ask them, I'm not an authority on other people's psychology. I don't need a "way out". No, the act of expressing that opinion is sufficient grounds fo...

I believe that public expressions of a person's opinions does matter to people. Nowhere have I said that private opinions should matter. I also believ...

How do you get from "employers ought be allowed to fire people for expressing certain kinds of opinions, like Nazism" to "other people's private opini...

I've never said that private opinions should matter to me so your question is irrelevant.

They don't lose their right to free speech. I'm saying that an employer ought be allowed to fire their employee for being a Nazi and that Twitter ough...

Let's say X is "is a thing within the universe." P1. If everything within the universe is a thing within the universe then the universe itself is a th...

Ah, the old "ignore our legal reasoning if it implies things that I don't want it to." :roll:

You don't walk over a fact, but walking over a floor is a fact, and is so even if we don't think or talk about it. It's an extra-linguistic activity, ...

Then it's not clear what you're arguing. Because it seems to be that you're arguing that all facts are institutional facts, which would then mean that...

There's nothing special about the words "element", "proton", or "79" such that they behave any differently to the word "gold". Just as it's a use-ment...

That's a use-mention error. If by "gold" we mean "an element with 79 protons" then my statement that "that we are what maintain the meaning of the ter...

But this isn't relevant to Searle's distinction. That we are what maintain the meaning of the term "gold" isn't that we determine whether or not this ...

This is the most relevant part of the quote: A brute fact is a fact that does not depend on human institutions to satisfy our (arbitrary) definitions;...

Brute facts are facts that do not depend on human institutions, institutional facts are facts that depend on human institutions. That the material in ...

@"Isaac" @"Streetlight" Regarding my repeated accusations of a use-mention error, it appears Searle has something to say about it to:

Searle accepts both realism and conceptual relativism. Although perhaps the issue is that Searle's account of realism differs from yours? He defines e...

Institutional facts aren’t fiction.

No, brute facts are defined as facts that don’t depend on human institutions like language.

This.

Yes. See above.

Or the meaningful "this is less dense than that." But the meaningfulness of the statement is irrelevant to the distinction. As he says: Regardless of ...

We don’t need to identify something for it to exist.

Things don’t need to be distinguished from other things to exist.

The concept of paper doesn't exist without people but paper exists without people.

The emphasised part is a non sequitur. That he can create such a rock isn't that he does create such a rock. You might as well ask "can a two-armed ma...

Neither do I, which is why I don't understand why Isaac thinks that we can turn lead into gold by changing the meaning of "lead" and/or "gold". That's...

A reductio ad absurdum against the first, highlighting the use-mention error that Isaac repeatedly makes: P1. There is 1 red pill and 1 blue pill in a...