Philosophical Vegan Forum

BrianBlackwell wrote: ↑Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:21 am Don't be fooled into thinking that Bernie's different:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBIKP4W50-I

NonZeroSum wrote: ↑Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:47 am What an idiot that interviewer, so cringeworthy.

BrianBlackwell wrote: ↑Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:15 am I suppose I can say, "Hey, I give you the right to dominate me", but this doesn't actually grant a moral right to dominate in the truest sense, because the agreement is essentially voluntary, which is not domination. In any case, one person clearly can't voluntarily agree that the chosen person can dominate others who have not voluntarily entered into the agreement -- that's just ridiculous. I never gave implied or expressed consent to be dominated by police and government, so even if the rest of the country did, that does not apply to me personally,

Kant argues that insofar as you are a rational being, you must act under the idea of freedom. And a free will is one that is not determined by any alien cause—not determined by any law that it does not choose for itself. If you have a free will, then you are not, as Kant puts it, heteronomous. But Kant claims that the actions of a free will must be determined by some law or other. We have already looked at the argument for this in 4.4, the argument against particularistic willing, which shows that the will must always determine itself in accordance with some universal law. Since, if you have a free will, you cannot be heteronomous, and yet you must have a law, then you must be autonomous—you must act on a law that you legislate for yourself. And Kant says that this means that insofar as you are rational the categorical imperative just is the law of your will.

To see why, we need only consider how a person with a free will must deliberate. So here you are with your free will, completely self-governing, with nothing outside of you giving you any laws. And along comes an incentive, let us say, a representation of a certain object as pleasant. Being aware of the workings of that incentive upon you, you have an inclination for the object. And that inclination takes the form of a proposal. So the inclination says: end-E would be very pleasant. So how about end-E? Doesn’t that seem like an end worth pursuing? Now what the will chooses is, strictly speaking, actions, so before the proposal is complete, we need to make it a proposal for action. Instrumental reasoning determines that you could produce end-E by doing act-A. So the proposal is: that you should do act-A in order to produce this very pleasant end-E.

Now if your will were heteronomous, and pleasure were a law to you, this is all you would need to know, and you would straightaway do act-A in order to produce that pleasant end-E. But since you are autonomous, pleasure is not a law to you: nothing is a law to you except what you make a law for yourself. You therefore ask yourself a different question. The proposal is that you should do act-A in order to achieve pleasant end-E. Since nothing is a law to you except what you make a law for yourself, you ask yourself whether you could take that to be your law. Your question is whether you can will the maxim of doing act-A in order to produce end-E as a universal law. Your question, in other words, is whether your maxim passes the categorical imperative test. The categorical imperative is therefore the law of a rational will.

Inclination presents the proposal; reason decides whether to act on it or not, and the decision takes the form of a legislative act. This is clearly the Constitutional Model."

NonZeroSum wrote: ↑Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:36 pm ...if you want anarchism to have mass appeal you have to effectively self-legislate better than the state... I don't find the voluntaryist approach useful in that much of the bank rollers of those movements are oligarchs who make inordinate money off the sweat of other peoples labor then hide their money abroad so they don't have to pay in for schools, hospitals and roads of said workers.

BrianBlackwell wrote: ↑ It's the same old "philosopher's bane" of trying to get the sleepy-eyed masses to understand and embrace the most basic logical concepts. There's a poor track record here, but it is the only solution that actually solves. As for people taking advantage of these ideas for their own benefit, this is always a risk (all evil comes disguised as good intent), but one who actually grasps the ideas of anarchy cannot be fooled for long. I would speculate that a move in this direction on a worldwide basis is an inevitable result of man's progress in the realm of consciousness, but just how long this will take (or if we will survive long enough to see it through) is anyone's guess.

NonZeroSum wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2017 12:34 pm Well thank Zeus we've got you around to read the tea leaves and tell us what prophecies await, self ownership and arbitrary right to not be harmed by your arbitrary in-group, what could possibly go wrong.

Red wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:05 pm Is Bernie gonna run in 2020?

PsYcHo wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2018 11:09 pm He would be a fool to run in 2020.

He had the support of the (Democrat/left leaning) populace in 2016, but as soon as Hillary won(stole) the democratic nomination, he stopped being "for the people!!" and veered straight to "for the establishment who stole the election from me, (who likely would have beaten Trump), but you know, just vote for Hillary now!" .

What little credibility he had is gone now. If he sold two of his three mansions though, he could afford to mount a decent campaign against whatever masochists wishes to go against Trump in 2020.