You really don't know how the Presidency is supposed to work, do you? I'd give you the School House Rock version, but I think it'd fall on deaf ears. Any President powerful enough to, single handedly, do what you want, is no President, but a Tyrant.
Ok, some people care about other humans that they don't know.
Just because I don't feel the need to boss others around and make choices for them, doesn't mean I don't care about others. I think everyone should wear their seatbelt. It is stupid not to. It really sucks when people die from preventable causes.
But at no time, do I consider my feelings of caring, a valid reason to run peoples' lives for them. I can implore people to wear their seatbelts. But I cannot, ethically, force people to follow arbitrary safety rules, when they are hurting no one else.
As a sociopath you probably have problems understanding much of human behavior, but just consider people consistently act in what you might consider strange ways.
As a sociopath, you probably have problems understanding why personal freedom should be respected, but just consider people consistently act in what you might consider strange ways.
Do you honestly feel the only reason to have seat belt laws is to reduce the cost of socialized medicine?
Yes, the only reason we have seat belt laws (for adults), is because of the increased accident-related costs. Why else would we have them? If someone wants to do something risky and stupid, more power to them. But if I am the one picking up the tab for the consequences, why don't I have the right to restrict such behavior?
Does the loss of life angle mean nothing to you?
Not really. Freedom to live my life in a manner of my choosing means so much more. If people want to do things which risk their lives, that's their right. Who am I to tell anyone how much risk they can take? If I weren't paying part of your hospital bills, I wouldn't care what you did to yourself.
Well, I'm sure even today's private insurance companies rate people based on predisposition of their race towards diseases.
When private insurance companies are paying for your health care, the worst they can do is jack up your rate, deny claims, or not insure you at all. But the government has the power to do anything. Look at helmet laws for motorcyclists, seatbelt laws, and the myriad of others, which serve no purpose but to reduce the socialized cost of health care. Imagine what laws will be passed when the government is picking up all of the tab for everyone's health care, all in the name of reducing costs.
I seem to remember there is some jewish birth defect or something that is relatively common, etc.
I'm pretty sure that's just common sense. I don't see how philosophers can take credit for common sense.
If you don't think about it further or refine the process based on experience, then yes, it is just common sense. One aspect of philosophy is an attempt to define, structure, and analyze the implicit knowledge we call common sense.
If you base your science on unstudied assumptions, which is what common sense is, how can you have any faith at all in the legitimacy of the conclusions you draw? Philosophy seeks to shore up the foundations of science through study, thought, and observation.
animals truly could not learn by trial and error, then what I said would be trivially true; animals make some mental/instinctual prediction and whether it comes true or not determines whether they survive. Rats and plenty of other animals have been shown to learn by trial and error, however.
My point was, that animals, even rats, who can learn by trial and error, are not capable of analyzing their actions. They don't choose to learn by trial and error, its instinct. But humans make the choice to learn by trial and error.
So philosophy means just thinking about stuff? Then you're right, it's extremely useful, and we need more people thinking.
Yes. This discussion we're having about the nature of science, that's philosophy. Pretty much any time you're talking about science, you're talking philosophically. Philosophy doesn't have to be huge theoretical artifices spun from nothing, or complex and vague analogies like Plato's Cave. Why science works is a philosophical topic.
But that choice was made using science, not philosophy.
How so? You have to make a value judgment. Unless you are telling me you have a scientifically justified code of ethics (which would be huge), you had to decide what you value without science. Without that value judgment, you can't do science.
Philosophy is about what "I" am rather than about what "it" is.
If that's what you think philosophy is, you are completely misinformed. Philosophy encompasses metaphysics(what is), epistemology(what I know), ethics(what should I do), aesthetics(art), and politics(how to live with others). What we are talking about falls clearly into the metaphysics and epistemology categories.
If your species survive because you act a certain way, that is not philosophical, but trial and error, ie. scientific. No matter what you think...
Humans are the only animals capable of thinking deeply about their actions. If you think most animals are learning by trial and error, you are incorrect. Humans are the only animals who are capable of enough self-reflection to analyze our actions in such a way. We have to decide how to act; for most animals its simply automatic. Don't you think we should think about it? Or, should we just go on instinct?
You can test the scientific method with the scientific method.
You sure can. But, it seems a little circular. If you trust the scientific method to tell you whether the scientific method is valid or not, you probably should trust it for physical sciences. I don't see how that really confirms anything.
Easy. Which process yields the most useful results? Rank them accordingly.
That's called pragmatism. Its a school of philosophy. See that? You just used philosophy to determine how you should go about doing science. See, its not so scary.
Except of course the obvious continual success of science in explaining the natural world.
You just made a philosophic choice when deciding how you define scientific success: "explains the natural world". You could have chosen anything. Why that?
(Disclaimer: I don't know what exactly you mean by "external" or if you have covered this by "non-arbitrariness")
I meant that the universe is "external" of one's own consciousness; that you are a part of it, not the other way 'round. Non-arbitrariness is the assumption that the universe doesn't change the rules in a random or non-deterministic manner between experiments.
You only have to repeat experiments until you can rely on the outcome enough to survive and reproduce.
That's a philosophical statement. You made a philosophical choice to make survival and reproduction your standards. You didn't have to pick that. You could have said anything at all. But, no matter your standard for induction, you had to make the choice, one way or another. And you did that using philosophy.
I pick up the rock, I drop it, the rock falls to the ground. I pick it up and drop it again, and again it falls to the ground. Etc.
How many times do you have to repeat that before you can come to the conclusion that the rock will fall to the ground whenever you drop it? That's a philosophical question. There is no way to develop a theory from a finite series of observations, without using induction. And I don't see any reason that you should accept the principal of induction without some philosophizing.
When you say "the scientific method," you're sweeping under the rug a whole collection of methods, all of which have been tested and modified for centuries, many of which have been discarded along the way when something better comes along, and which vary greatly from field to field.
How can the scientific method be tested and modified without some external framework in which to value them? How can you evaluate which method is "better" without some way to rank them? To do this, you need a philosophical underpinning to make that value judgment.
As I replied to another poster in the thread, this is the default assumption based on our experiences from infancy, and there is no reason to assume otherwise.
Just because it is the default assumption, doesn't mean its correct. Should we be limited in all our endeavors, to the basic and oversimplified infantile way of thinking? Are you saying its not even worth thinking about?
Philosophers' axioms may make sense to them and to people who think like them, but they fail in general applicability.
I don't know what it is you think philosophers do, but just randomly creating axioms is not it. Philosophers are constantly comparing the results of their theories against their perceptions, and modifying them if need be. You are grossly oversimplifying the practice of philosophy.
There have always been a subset of philosophers who spend their entire lives counting the angels on the heads of pins; but there is real, important work being done on many issues. The philosophy of science is just one example. You have no way to judge whether your "scientific method" is worth pursuing without philosophy; even a philosophy as basic as your common-sense approach.
Philosophy starts with axioms. Science starts with observations.
No, science starts with the acceptance of the scientific method as a way to determine the "truth". It presupposes the accuracy of our senses, the non-arbitrariness of the universe, and even the notion that there is an external universe to study at all.
While many philosophic systems rest on axioms, those axioms are not arbitrary. They are invented, or discovered, because they logically explain the experiences of the philosopher. Philosophers use the scientific method to determine the axioms which underlie their systems. Without philosophy, there would be no way to argue that the scientific method was valid at all.
It is the intent of the amendment to protect citizens from such actions, and the fact that we use images or voices, instead of ink on paper, doesn't change the original intent of protecting citizens from politicians.
In my opinion, the government shouldn't be able to tap your phone at all, even with a warrant. There is no section of the Constitution which grants the federal government this power. All the fourth amendment does is to give the government limited powers of search in certain, well defined, areas (persons, houses, papers, and effects).
I think it's clear that, if phones had existed in 1789 when the Bill of Rights was passed, wiretapping would have been forbidden without a warrant from a judge. That is the spirit in which the constitution was written.
I agree that wiretapping would have been illegal without a warrant, had the technology existed; the text of the fourth amendment would have included wiretapping specifically. But I don't think it makes sense to base an entire justice system around guessing what the men who wrote the constitution would have done. They are laws, written laws. The only meaning we should be looking for, when trying to interpret their scope or applicability, should only be the words on the page.
If we don't like what we see when we read the Constitution, we should change what it says; not invent a new way to interpret 200 year old words.
Just because paper was the specific medium of physically storing and transporting information at the time does not mean the protections granted should extend solely to that specific medium.
Why? Just because some of the properties of paper are reproducible through phones or computers, doesn't mean that there aren't substantial differences, which should be respected. Why should the same, 200 year old, amendment apply equally to both?
In my opinion, far too much bad legislation and jurisprudence has come from our lawmakers using a very flawed analogy: mail==telephone==internet. We have tried to shoehorn new technology into our constitutional framework, with mixed results. Why are we so dependent on unelected judges to tell us what the constitution means? We should take the power back, and actually change the wording of our constitution when technology renders it obsolete.
The 1978 FISA law was clear that you needed to obtain a warrant. President Bush did not and thus was in violation of the law.
I'm not arguing that what he did was legal, only that the Constitution is silent on the issue of wiretaps. So I can say those actions were illegal but perhaps not unconstitutional.
Postal mail falls clearly under the "papers" category in the constitution...
If it is so clear, then why did it take until 1878, in the case of Ex parte Jackson, for the Supreme Court to decide that postal mail was protected by the fourth amendment? Your reading of the Constitution, though common now, was not always so common.
I think you'd have to look at the Why we have the protection from the government, rather than the strict lettering of What protection we have.
Its hard enough to get anyone to agree on what protections the Constitution offers, let alone why those protections are there. When the public abdicated their responsibility to maintain a relevant Constitution, and gave that power to the Judiciary, we started down this path.
If you just look at the What, then it reminds me of traditions where everyone does something a certain way, but no one knows why it is done that way.
If the American people ever forget why the government's power is limited by the Constitution, we'll soon have a government which reminds them.
By extrapolation, it is not unreasonable to assume that, had the Founding Fathers envisioned telephones and e-mail, they would have included them in the 4th amendment as well.
I don't think you can leap to that conclusion quite so quickly. Postal mail was around then, yet they left that out of the 4th amendment.
We can go around and around, trying to guess what the founders meant when they wrote the Constitution, or we can change the Constitution to say exactly what we want now. When we try to derive intent from the limited text of the Constitution, we end up in the situation we are in now: judges end up twisting and contorting the actual wording of the document to fit the times. We should be interpreting it as written, and changing the text of the document as the times change.
I do not support overactive gun control and may even support an amendment that includes individual gun ownership, but the idea that the Constitution does as written is ridiculous.
The Constitution does specify the individual's right to owns guns. The Supreme Court just said so. Unless you ignore the last 200+ years of American judicial practice (since Marbury v. Madison), the Constitution means exactly what the Supreme Court says it does.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... Wow... Just, wow.
You really don't know how the Presidency is supposed to work, do you? I'd give you the School House Rock version, but I think it'd fall on deaf ears. Any President powerful enough to, single handedly, do what you want, is no President, but a Tyrant.
Ok, some people care about other humans that they don't know.
Just because I don't feel the need to boss others around and make choices for them, doesn't mean I don't care about others. I think everyone should wear their seatbelt. It is stupid not to. It really sucks when people die from preventable causes.
But at no time, do I consider my feelings of caring, a valid reason to run peoples' lives for them. I can implore people to wear their seatbelts. But I cannot, ethically, force people to follow arbitrary safety rules, when they are hurting no one else.
As a sociopath you probably have problems understanding much of human behavior, but just consider people consistently act in what you might consider strange ways.
As a sociopath, you probably have problems understanding why personal freedom should be respected, but just consider people consistently act in what you might consider strange ways.
Do you honestly feel the only reason to have seat belt laws is to reduce the cost of socialized medicine?
Yes, the only reason we have seat belt laws (for adults), is because of the increased accident-related costs. Why else would we have them? If someone wants to do something risky and stupid, more power to them. But if I am the one picking up the tab for the consequences, why don't I have the right to restrict such behavior?
Does the loss of life angle mean nothing to you?
Not really. Freedom to live my life in a manner of my choosing means so much more. If people want to do things which risk their lives, that's their right. Who am I to tell anyone how much risk they can take? If I weren't paying part of your hospital bills, I wouldn't care what you did to yourself.
Well, I'm sure even today's private insurance companies rate people based on predisposition of their race towards diseases.
When private insurance companies are paying for your health care, the worst they can do is jack up your rate, deny claims, or not insure you at all. But the government has the power to do anything. Look at helmet laws for motorcyclists, seatbelt laws, and the myriad of others, which serve no purpose but to reduce the socialized cost of health care. Imagine what laws will be passed when the government is picking up all of the tab for everyone's health care, all in the name of reducing costs.
I seem to remember there is some jewish birth defect or something that is relatively common, etc.
I think you're referring to Tay-Sachs disease.
Wait until the US has some sort of universal health care, and immigration from India is outlawed as a "cost cutting measure".
I'm pretty sure that's just common sense. I don't see how philosophers can take credit for common sense.
If you don't think about it further or refine the process based on experience, then yes, it is just common sense. One aspect of philosophy is an attempt to define, structure, and analyze the implicit knowledge we call common sense.
If you base your science on unstudied assumptions, which is what common sense is, how can you have any faith at all in the legitimacy of the conclusions you draw? Philosophy seeks to shore up the foundations of science through study, thought, and observation.
animals truly could not learn by trial and error, then what I said would be trivially true; animals make some mental/instinctual prediction and whether it comes true or not determines whether they survive. Rats and plenty of other animals have been shown to learn by trial and error, however.
My point was, that animals, even rats, who can learn by trial and error, are not capable of analyzing their actions. They don't choose to learn by trial and error, its instinct. But humans make the choice to learn by trial and error.
So philosophy means just thinking about stuff? Then you're right, it's extremely useful, and we need more people thinking.
Yes. This discussion we're having about the nature of science, that's philosophy. Pretty much any time you're talking about science, you're talking philosophically. Philosophy doesn't have to be huge theoretical artifices spun from nothing, or complex and vague analogies like Plato's Cave. Why science works is a philosophical topic.
But that choice was made using science, not philosophy.
How so? You have to make a value judgment. Unless you are telling me you have a scientifically justified code of ethics (which would be huge), you had to decide what you value without science. Without that value judgment, you can't do science.
Philosophy is about what "I" am rather than about what "it" is.
If that's what you think philosophy is, you are completely misinformed. Philosophy encompasses metaphysics(what is), epistemology(what I know), ethics(what should I do), aesthetics(art), and politics(how to live with others). What we are talking about falls clearly into the metaphysics and epistemology categories.
If your species survive because you act a certain way, that is not philosophical, but trial and error, ie. scientific. No matter what you think...
Humans are the only animals capable of thinking deeply about their actions. If you think most animals are learning by trial and error, you are incorrect. Humans are the only animals who are capable of enough self-reflection to analyze our actions in such a way. We have to decide how to act; for most animals its simply automatic. Don't you think we should think about it? Or, should we just go on instinct?
You can test the scientific method with the scientific method.
You sure can. But, it seems a little circular. If you trust the scientific method to tell you whether the scientific method is valid or not, you probably should trust it for physical sciences. I don't see how that really confirms anything.
Easy. Which process yields the most useful results? Rank them accordingly.
That's called pragmatism. Its a school of philosophy. See that? You just used philosophy to determine how you should go about doing science. See, its not so scary.
Except of course the obvious continual success of science in explaining the natural world.
You just made a philosophic choice when deciding how you define scientific success: "explains the natural world". You could have chosen anything. Why that?
(Disclaimer: I don't know what exactly you mean by "external" or if you have covered this by "non-arbitrariness")
I meant that the universe is "external" of one's own consciousness; that you are a part of it, not the other way 'round. Non-arbitrariness is the assumption that the universe doesn't change the rules in a random or non-deterministic manner between experiments.
You only have to repeat experiments until you can rely on the outcome enough to survive and reproduce.
That's a philosophical statement. You made a philosophical choice to make survival and reproduction your standards. You didn't have to pick that. You could have said anything at all. But, no matter your standard for induction, you had to make the choice, one way or another. And you did that using philosophy.
I pick up the rock, I drop it, the rock falls to the ground. I pick it up and drop it again, and again it falls to the ground. Etc.
How many times do you have to repeat that before you can come to the conclusion that the rock will fall to the ground whenever you drop it? That's a philosophical question. There is no way to develop a theory from a finite series of observations, without using induction. And I don't see any reason that you should accept the principal of induction without some philosophizing.
When you say "the scientific method," you're sweeping under the rug a whole collection of methods, all of which have been tested and modified for centuries, many of which have been discarded along the way when something better comes along, and which vary greatly from field to field.
How can the scientific method be tested and modified without some external framework in which to value them? How can you evaluate which method is "better" without some way to rank them? To do this, you need a philosophical underpinning to make that value judgment.
As I replied to another poster in the thread, this is the default assumption based on our experiences from infancy, and there is no reason to assume otherwise.
Just because it is the default assumption, doesn't mean its correct. Should we be limited in all our endeavors, to the basic and oversimplified infantile way of thinking? Are you saying its not even worth thinking about?
Philosophers' axioms may make sense to them and to people who think like them, but they fail in general applicability.
I don't know what it is you think philosophers do, but just randomly creating axioms is not it. Philosophers are constantly comparing the results of their theories against their perceptions, and modifying them if need be. You are grossly oversimplifying the practice of philosophy.
There have always been a subset of philosophers who spend their entire lives counting the angels on the heads of pins; but there is real, important work being done on many issues. The philosophy of science is just one example. You have no way to judge whether your "scientific method" is worth pursuing without philosophy; even a philosophy as basic as your common-sense approach.
Philosophy starts with axioms. Science starts with observations.
No, science starts with the acceptance of the scientific method as a way to determine the "truth". It presupposes the accuracy of our senses, the non-arbitrariness of the universe, and even the notion that there is an external universe to study at all.
While many philosophic systems rest on axioms, those axioms are not arbitrary. They are invented, or discovered, because they logically explain the experiences of the philosopher. Philosophers use the scientific method to determine the axioms which underlie their systems. Without philosophy, there would be no way to argue that the scientific method was valid at all.
It is the intent of the amendment to protect citizens from such actions, and the fact that we use images or voices, instead of ink on paper, doesn't change the original intent of protecting citizens from politicians.
In my opinion, the government shouldn't be able to tap your phone at all, even with a warrant. There is no section of the Constitution which grants the federal government this power. All the fourth amendment does is to give the government limited powers of search in certain, well defined, areas (persons, houses, papers, and effects).
I think it's clear that, if phones had existed in 1789 when the Bill of Rights was passed, wiretapping would have been forbidden without a warrant from a judge. That is the spirit in which the constitution was written.
I agree that wiretapping would have been illegal without a warrant, had the technology existed; the text of the fourth amendment would have included wiretapping specifically. But I don't think it makes sense to base an entire justice system around guessing what the men who wrote the constitution would have done. They are laws, written laws. The only meaning we should be looking for, when trying to interpret their scope or applicability, should only be the words on the page.
If we don't like what we see when we read the Constitution, we should change what it says; not invent a new way to interpret 200 year old words.
Just because paper was the specific medium of physically storing and transporting information at the time does not mean the protections granted should extend solely to that specific medium.
Why? Just because some of the properties of paper are reproducible through phones or computers, doesn't mean that there aren't substantial differences, which should be respected. Why should the same, 200 year old, amendment apply equally to both?
In my opinion, far too much bad legislation and jurisprudence has come from our lawmakers using a very flawed analogy: mail==telephone==internet. We have tried to shoehorn new technology into our constitutional framework, with mixed results. Why are we so dependent on unelected judges to tell us what the constitution means? We should take the power back, and actually change the wording of our constitution when technology renders it obsolete.
The 1978 FISA law was clear that you needed to obtain a warrant. President Bush did not and thus was in violation of the law.
I'm not arguing that what he did was legal, only that the Constitution is silent on the issue of wiretaps. So I can say those actions were illegal but perhaps not unconstitutional.
So then segregation is legal? Because the Supreme Court said it was in Plessy v. Furgason.
As reprehensible as it was, yes, segregation was legal and constitutional at the time; right up until it was found unconstitutional by a future court.
Postal mail falls clearly under the "papers" category in the constitution...
If it is so clear, then why did it take until 1878, in the case of Ex parte Jackson, for the Supreme Court to decide that postal mail was protected by the fourth amendment? Your reading of the Constitution, though common now, was not always so common.
I think you'd have to look at the Why we have the protection from the government, rather than the strict lettering of What protection we have.
Its hard enough to get anyone to agree on what protections the Constitution offers, let alone why those protections are there. When the public abdicated their responsibility to maintain a relevant Constitution, and gave that power to the Judiciary, we started down this path.
If you just look at the What, then it reminds me of traditions where everyone does something a certain way, but no one knows why it is done that way.
If the American people ever forget why the government's power is limited by the Constitution, we'll soon have a government which reminds them.
By extrapolation, it is not unreasonable to assume that, had the Founding Fathers envisioned telephones and e-mail, they would have included them in the 4th amendment as well.
I don't think you can leap to that conclusion quite so quickly. Postal mail was around then, yet they left that out of the 4th amendment.
We can go around and around, trying to guess what the founders meant when they wrote the Constitution, or we can change the Constitution to say exactly what we want now. When we try to derive intent from the limited text of the Constitution, we end up in the situation we are in now: judges end up twisting and contorting the actual wording of the document to fit the times. We should be interpreting it as written, and changing the text of the document as the times change.
I do not support overactive gun control and may even support an amendment that includes individual gun ownership, but the idea that the Constitution does as written is ridiculous.
The Constitution does specify the individual's right to owns guns. The Supreme Court just said so. Unless you ignore the last 200+ years of American judicial practice (since Marbury v. Madison), the Constitution means exactly what the Supreme Court says it does.