Athias

I mean, what do you want me to elaborate on? Do you want me to give examples?

I don't see how. Why must this idea be a presumption?

To Truth!

-logicae

I don't need to rationalize it independent of my mind, it is necessary for my mind to have thoughts at all.

I don't think you understand (if you do there's no point in me giving an individualist principle in particular); I am not saying that you don't have a set of consistent principles (I actually think you do), but I am saying that not all people have multiple principles rather than a single set of totally categorical ones. So, from another argument I was having with Tarik: I believe both in not using people as means to ends and maintaining a functional society. But sometimes people will have to be used to maintain a functional society. So, in that case I will have to assess whether one principle outweighs the other or the other way around, and part of what I'll use to make that judgement will be the circumstances of the situation. 

I could give you the option of accepting terrible conditions because I know that you're extremely poor and you will take what you can get. However, if you have a decent amount of money, I can't use your wealth (or lack thereof) against you because if I give you the conditions I gave the poor version of you you'd just say no to the job.

I'm incentivized to do this for a variety of reasons, some of which are honorable (feeding my family), some of which are for the sake of maximizing my profits, but the only thing standing in my way of doing that is concern for my fellow man (which I don't think you believe in outside of not violating the rights of others). I'm not necessarily an evil person for doing it and it might be that I didn't even consider that what I was doing may have been wrong, but the act is not good. 

Well a playing field can always end up okay if people act ethically within an unequal playing field, but when a rich business owner and a poor worker are in negotiations one of those people typically has a lot more power than the other (usually the rich business owner) and can engage in practices what are favorable to them at the expense of the other (the worker).

Really any situation where someone has to accept harmful or horrible circumstances in general is not good. The question is whether it'd be practical or ethical for the state to interfere with that playing field. 

What principles?

the individual is sovereign in his or her own governance, being able to choose his or her own associations, being able to act in his or her own interests, and bear the fruits of his/her skills, talents, and labor.

And so you believe that capitalism is the system in which people get used the most? Er....

Someone's existence or some other property that is substantially significant that is theirs being used as a means to an end when they ideally would not consent to that.

It is implicit in the concept of "mind" that there is a space within which it must exist and time within which it may think. Even if this illusion cannot interact with the real space and time, and my mind is projecting this reality as the grand illusion, that doesn't take away from the fact that there is necessarily a space and time external to my mind, within which it can have thoughts at all. Even if I'm a brain in a vat, that necessitates the space of a vat, and time within which to have the thoughts.

Time and space are things we can know to exist A Priori, as necessary for a mind to even exist and have thoughts in the first place.

Therefore, if I have a mind, and I know that I am having thoughts, then I know that I am having thoughts within space and time.

This is essentially just the nuclear argument. If your position cannot be substantiated then just blow up all knowledge so that you can claim the next persons argument is just as bad as yours.

We trust our observations to collect data about reality because we have no other choice.

It’s a result of practical necessity.

We assume the validity of logic because because  we have no other choice.

Any attempt to validate or invalidate logic requires the usage of it, thereby presupposing its validity. There’s no way around that.

The fact that these concepts exist inside of our heads does not mean that anything else which takes place inside of our heads belongs on equal footing.

This is only true assuming that you only take into consideration one principle when deciding whether a situation is ethical or unethical. If I have multiple principles that conflict in a certain circumstance, that circumstance will inform me of how I choose which principle to favor more. You might "feel" right if you have a bunch of absolute principles/categorical imperatives that never conflict with each other, but they don't make your position right. 

Not necessarily. He might be in a situation where assuming responsibility for someone else may harm him, his family, some other thing of importance. The point is is that it is regrettable that the situation had to come into existence in the first place. 

I don't even know if this is true. Regardless, the bigger problem with your argument is that you're equating all unequal playing fields and implying to me that I have to believe that either they're all acceptable or they're all unacceptable. 

So you are suggesting that the same problems would arise in any other system?

I just believe that people are generally not tools. You can simultaneously not use someone as a tool and not be nice, accommodating, or willing to assume their burdens either. I guess, to clarify, that you could say that using someone as a tool and those three other things are inversely proportional, but I don't believe that everyone has to make everyone else's life amazing. 

uhuh, and the fact that an author agrees with your conclusion is supposed to do what?

There are books against anarchy too Athais. 

Could you cite the paper instead of merely suggesting it?

I'm not going to research your proof for you

I want you to present it. If I was less busy perhaps I would look into it myself, but I am, and I don't have the time to read an entire book - just give me the evidence and proof that your interpreting it right.

So, I'm not trying to say that 90% of people here are transphobic (because I haven't done any quantities and controllable studies into what people think of trans people),

but I can say that a good deal of people exhibits implicit transphobia here.

Second of all, and to the actual point, implicitly being bigoted in any regard, is the outcome of a behavior imprinted onto you by society - for example - assuming a black person simply walking alone at night is "suspicious-looking" or supposing that women inherently "love to cook and clean", those sorts of things.

Here we see another example of that, presuming that, the reason gender dysphoria is a mental illness, is because a person falsely believes that their gender isn't what they were borne with.

To equate this perception to another mental illness for clarity, people who are depressed have a false sense that they are worthless - and to the people I am referring to (implicitly transphobic people) that is the same sort of false sense that people who have gender dysphoria have, except, no - not quite. Gender dysphoria is not seen as a mental illness of "delusion", but of extreme discomfort. It is the fact that their body does not match up with their gender that causes dysphoria, not the other way around.

You see - gender dysphoria is not inherent to transgender people - the fact that they have a different gender identity is not the necessary cause of this mental illness, it is the discomfort that some feel as a result that their body doesn't match with their gender. For further evidence that the fact that you can't take a DSM to be automatically correct in some of the specifics of its diagnoses (as research is always growing) - let's all recall the DSM's view on homosexuality in edition three, shall we?

Good question.

Perhaps all we can know about the individual is that we are. But certainly it is sacred.

If I'm an employer employing someone who is not doing well financially, I could be doing well or less well financially. If I'm doing well, I might just be an asshole and want to milk as much money from this guy as I can while still getting him to work for me. If I'm doing poorly, I might need to pay this guy under crappy circumstances to feed my own family. Either way. Although, like you say, we both technically have decision making power in how this arrangement plays out and what ends up happening, I can use the threat of the alternative (that is, what happens to each party if the agreement doesn't work out) to make circumstances that would be ideally undesirable seem desirable in comparison. Whoever has a better/less bad alternative to the deal working out can probably leverage that power more. And I am incentivized to use the threat of the alternative because I need or want more money, usually. Whatever the employer's motivations are to use the employee and vice versa, it is not hard for situations to work out with someone getting used, or the agreement just falling apart altogether. I don't necessarily blame anyone for using anyone else in this situation given that it's so complicated, but it does ask* the question of whether this circumstance ought to have happened in the first place. 

Similarly, take the situation of employees leaving an employer who is doing poorly. Because he is doing poorly, they are incentivized to indirectly cause him to do even worse so that they can earn more. In this case and the above case, the employees might just be leaving this guy under a bus for a little more money or desperately be in need of it now that their source of income is all fucked up. I don't know if it would be accurate to say the employees are "using" him in this situation given that what they did was not a premeditated "use" but rather a reaction to circumstance, but either way these people have to fuck over this guy to get paid more. This also happens in the reverse, where companies have to lay people off to stay afloat. Once again, I don't necessarily blame anyone for harming anyone else in this situation given that it's so complicated, but it does ask* the question of whether this circumstance ought to have happened in the first place.

I am far from optimistic or idealistic about what the socialist/non-capitalist alternative would be (I've flirted with socialism but never really committed to it) because that may have a host of other problems. I haven't heard you talk about why you disagree with my ethical views, but hopefully you can see that capitalism at least has some conflict with my views opposing the instrumentalization (if that's a word) of people. Hopefully that makes some sense. 

I'm right,

No I AM RIGHT

Saying you are right is not an argument.

Oh yeah? Well did you know that THIS IS true? That is proof of your INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY!

No. Let me repeat, I am right.

It seems to me you are DELUSIONAL. I am NOT ANGRY.

'It seems' is not an argument. The clouds look nice today, I have stated to you the reasons why. If you choose to ignore that, it is your issue.

I have not IGNORED anything, I exposed your fallacious thinking and showed you that a blogger I like said the clouds are HIDEOUS TODAY.

Are you actually serious right now? Seriously - my god you can be daft -- the fact that the system itself is not CONTROLLED by the state, does not mean that the state itself IS NOT capitalistic. 

It's a fairly simple principle - if a government encourages capitalism, does everything it can to protect it, and has the precise same goal as capitalism THEN THAT GOVERNMENT IS EFFECTIVELY capitalistic. Like.. its such a simple idea, and your semantics are getting rather old. 

If there is no way to enforce your own will over another individual - if we are focusing on individualism - then there is literally no way to PROHIBIT anything - there are no guarantees about literally anything -by the mere definition of individualism - its kind of ironic how you fail to see that given your argument regarding capitilsim 

I'm going to summarize why I believe what I believe here because right now these lines of argument are becoming very large and inefficient. Also, the parts of this conversation where you  ask me why people have positive obligations to other people are the most foundational. 

Every individual is worthy of moral consideration. Their life, as a whole, cannot be rendered subservient to other people's lives because it's very possible that they only experience their life and then the rest of everything is oblivion. Thus it's vital that they don't spend this small and deeply important period of time as a tool for other people who are equal to them. You may not consider this "individualism", but it at least has a nexus with individualism focused on the individual's interests over the "greater good". This "side-constraint" allows us to create societies where everyone is considered (at least ideally). 

Thus, the moral consideration afforded to each person's life makes up a large part of the basis of the obligations that people have towards each other. People, even if they do not "violate" per se individual rights, have obligations not to use them as tools or means to a end and not make it harder for them to leave their own valuable lives. That's why I believe that businesses have obligations to treat people at least fairly well, and why capitalism, as a system that does not impose that standard, is a flawed system. It allows people i.e. corporate entities to use people as means to ends in environmental cases, in cases of employment, etc. These are not the *only* values I have, but it's an important part of the way I think about ethics. 

Based on how "individualism" is currently defined, you are probably more of an individualist than me, and so I would be curious why you only care about maintaining contracts, consent, non-aggression, etc. Because that is the difference between our two views. 

Um... you realize that the Union states were ALREADY SLAVE FREE? Right? You realize that slavery was abolished as a general practice informally by the Pittsburg addressed, and officially through the 13th amendment. You don't appear very well versed in history, only in misinterpreting it to agree with your biases.

And simple - because PROFIT does not care for what is ethical - it's that simple - there is no inherent framework in profit that makes any ethical declarations - and since the core goal of capitalism is profit  -  yeah - it follows easily. Capitalism - whose goal is profit - was the direct motivation for slavery - and yes - capitalism can and does influence and motivate governments, you claim it to be a tautology, but fail to actually explain how - only assert that it is the case. 

Again - you merely stating something to be the case isn't evidence of anything.

My point is that capitalism - the only standard which one can have without the "STATE" isn't giving any ethical considerations - which is my point individualism has no standard which prohibits mass unethical practice. 

You do realize that the REASON for chattel slavery was the profit right?

Are you that ignorant of basic history

governments are MOTIVATED by the profit of capitalism

and they take on those economic theories (ya know - because the government enforces laws regarding economic theory)

which hurts people.

Your argument is wholly ignoring the actual facts: "Oh my god! The government ONCE allowed chattel slavery."

That's the thing IT CHANGED and then prohibited others from doing it - which is a moral good - in contrast - the only way capitalism would change is if it was no longer profitable

there is no care more any level of ethics - if capitalism is the only standard applicable, there is no ethical standard, period.

it was a government MOTIVATED by capitalism, so how you see government, I see capitalism. 

Government changes - its values, its principles

capitalism will always be about profit, that is the bottom line.

Of course not - but it allows widespread correction of moral wrongs GENERALLY - so - without government - black people would still be enslaved

If you know what I meant, then you know what I meant by this:

You are correct that if the orthodox intellectual concept of individualism is applied consistently as the only part of one's moral calculus then you oppose compulsory taxation

And so it is obvious then that we are in agreement and should move on from semantics.

Like I said: 

I am not an individualist in the typical sense because I think there are some circumstances where the use of force to violate individual rights is justified. However, I do agree that people should not exist as means to an end 

Part of the driving force of individualism is that it rejects that people's lives are subservient to groups and interests. This is something I tend to agree with.

What bothers me about individualism is the rigid set of ethical principles it has become. Individualists like you broadly consider any use of initiatory force against an individual as impermissible but completely ignore any maltreatment of individuals that does not employ the obvious use of force (i.e. my business example). People are used in very similar ways if the aforementioned business used initiatory force to gain workers or it didn't, but somehow the former is a great violation of individualist ethics whereas the latter is totally permissible.

Well that's a problem with individualism.  

One participant in the aforementioned business-worker interaction would ideally not consent to the deal, but they have been put in circumstances where they have to.

Consent in an ideal situation is obviously different in circumstance than consent in a non-ideal situation.

Corporations can neglect to treat workers better when they are reasonably able to. That is immoral. They don't cause death physically, but through a chain of events set off by, for example, the ending of a professional arrangement, people end up dying. 

No, but I imagine that would be the prospects for many of them. 

How much choice do you have when you are dead or working under shitty conditions and with shitty payment for doing so? The corporation is responsible for these conditions in that they, as the people with power in the arrangement, chose to make the conditions as terrible as they could without dis-incentivizing people from working for them. 

They're allowed to emit dangerous chemicals into the air, the ground, etc. How much they're allowed to do that depends. 

Because, again, you are not understanding - its more than just physical ease of access -its also an ease of "ethical" access - they know they will be punished  - which is a type of access - how can you get away with it.

According to the sexuality I was bringing up? You know? Referrring specifically to seuxality in one of the labels of attraction? Kinda like homosexual and heterosexual definitions? Also  - I have went out of my wy since the OP post to talk about how yes- there are indeed a lot of asexual people in how you would regard them, but there are asexual people in this regard too - just like how heterosexuality and homosexuality is TYPICALLY defined as an attraction towards a gender, asexuality is TYPICALLY defined as not being attracted to anyone, you can throw a fit with Zed all you like about how it doesn't reach your arbitrary standards, doesn't meant that its good objection.

First of all - you seem to completely have missed the point of me being up grocery stores, like utterly failed to interpret basic messages - you know how there's an aisle right next to the cashier? Yeah? That's what I was talking about accessibility equals more people doing that thing that they have more access to - no governments do not magically get rid of crime, but the fact that it is less accessible makes it happen generally less. Which... again - is basic stuff. 

Zed posted a non-topical definition - the application of sexuality is a label of attraction - that is how sexuality of a label of an individual works.   

The mere presence of a government constitutes order, it being practically effective or not is beside the point, its the principle of the matter. In a place where there is no order over one another,

there is no way to actually deal with crime -

thus - these thing happen more.

Furthermore... what? Its called marketing strategy, capitalism? I thought you liked capitalism?

Anywho - I believe the government OUGHT to protect people In grocery stores from capitalistic advertising, but guess what? Because its a GOVERNMENT, there's a process there- you know, that way there is a system to let other's have their voices heard. 

That's too simple. However I'd agree that corporations are at least empowered to fuck up the planet under capitalism, and it's not like they never use that power. 

If you don't like the term extreme, maybe substitute "politically radical". I am hoping that you are, in good faith, confused by what I mean by "extreme" rather than trying to poke holes in the immaterial words I use for its own sake when you know what I'm talking about.

You are correct that if the orthodox intellectual concept of individualism is applied consistently as the only part of one's moral calculus then you oppose compulsory taxation. But few only consider individualism in their moral calculus. 

If I am interpreting your question correctly, inaction does not "produce" harm. It allows it to continue, which is unethical. It does not "violate" individual rights per se, like I've said. 

It does not violate individual rights if you define individual rights to be the use of initiatory force against someone. But it does treat people's lives as means to ends, and preventing people from becoming resources is the part of individualism that is actually good. 

I mean, they could go out of a job and starve.

But starvation vs. terrible conditions are not good options for the workers to have. In some sense they actually have less of a choice because both options lead to the same fates.

If you only treat individualism the way Libertarian philosophers treat it (which is restricted to opposing initiatory force), you fail to account for situations like these where agents can restrict the choice of other agents and do things that are unethical without using initiatory force.

Necessarily speaking - if there is no state there is literally nothing stopping people from doing more crime, and in general, whenever something is easier to do - people do it more.

Grocery stores have known this for years, apparently, they are way ahead of all of the super-duper intelligent people here. 

Not to mention that in capitalist societies corporations are always in some way empowered to fuck up the planet and thus can kill people in a multitude of ways 

An extreme position is not necessarily illogical; I respect the viewpoint of people who oppose taxation. But it's fairly clear that more people would support an individualist viewpoint in the organ donor example than in the taxation one. 

Maybe "violate" is a term specific to actions but both action and inaction can create circumstances where individuals are disregarded or harmed. There is an immoral nexus between action and inaction, though they're not fully equivalent.  

Corporations can take advantage of people in numerous ways dependent on their circumstances. Profit is a powerful motive, and when people can use others as gears in a machine to make profits they sometimes will and sometimes will not. For example, if a bunch of employees have no other options and have to work for a company, these people are essentially at the mercy of the organization;

they can be worked to death, starved, etc. without any initiatory force being used. 

Killing someone, stealing something, raping someone - etc etc - we are trying to maximize the benefits from individual interactions? No?

It seems to me

unless you can guarantee that everyone in a given population cares enough to not do crime, crime will exist, and more of it 

Individualism is shallow philosophically, it is basically the idea that opposes Utilitarianism which noone has usually heard of.

You're probably a little bit of an individualist if you agree that we should not kill two innocent people and then use their organs to save three others. By contrast, a more extreme individualist position is that compulsory taxation, even if it has a low impact on those being taxed, is morally unacceptable regardless of what the tax dollars go to. Those two statements sound (and are) radically different, but they're both extrapolations of the same ethical logic. 

Also, most individualists believe that you can only violate individual rights through the use of force and action, but I believe you can violate individual rights without obvious uses of force (this happens in capitalism) and you can also do it via inaction (i.e. you don't make the minimal effort to pull a guy who's having a seizure out of shallow water where he'll drown). 

So what one "ought" to do is decided entirely by each individual? Regardless of its logical consistency or sustainability?

Nope-  a consensus CAN be like that - however the "scientific consensus" is composed of all of the theories, laws, and hypothesis which are most strongly indicated by the evidence. You can assert otherwise, but you'd need to actually prove that (and you have a tad bit of a hard time actually presenting evidence).

Um... because given the definition of other sexualities- sexuality IS limited to attraction. 

Perhaps most famously (or infamously I suppose) touted by Athais in the DART discussion

but to be honest I know very little about the ideology aside from the very basics, so I'm doing what I always do when I'm curious about something - ask - what is Individualism?

What makes it consistent?

What makes it inconsistent?

How is it pragmatically helpful?

How is it better than x or y? Etc, etc..

And do you know what that consensus is made of? " controlled and substantively reproducible observations" just like literally every other field

Nor does feeling good constitute the entirety of sexuality. The act has variable consequences, both physical, spiritual, and emotional. To qualify that one or another is either primary, or not, and effective, or not, is inconsequential to the fact that the act occurs, and can have variable consequences. It seems to me that is what Edge is saying, and that's all he's saying,  and there's no right, wrong, or indifferent to different people about it. It is variable for each individual.

Edge, good post and topic.

you've made appeals to your own rationale, but no, you have not pragmatically separated the fields.

The mind is nothing more than an emergent property of the brain, psychology is necessarily neurology (see now I'm making the claim you thought I did previously) - and as such - each claim made is based on the consciousness and its principles which are NEUROLOGIC 

No - I have not said they are the same - I have said psychology is BASED on neurology.

Because neuroscience goes off of the exact same principle, how you ascribe something being a "soft science" is how ALL science is. 

Wrong - the metrics that are "normal" are simply what has causally been proven to be most healthy for the average of humanity -

which is the EXACT SAME WAY that lots of things are measured.

Why is one thing being subjectively measured and claiming to be quantifiable any different than any other thing?

Answer: It's not - you have a specific bias against psychology 

Just as everything else, it is based on the interpretation of observation, solar flare spots are subjectively measured, it has to do with a metric supplied,

you don't like the metric of measuring behavioral responses.

Because all of that is BASED in neurology, that's how ALL Psychology works necessarily.

It does have quantified conclusions because you can quantify behavior ande use neuroscience to hold up conclusions, its rather a simple thing.

Something being sexual is a general description of intercourse

sexuality is a specific label for individuals regarding attractions

I object to anarchy ergo chaos and the new texas recommended law of open and carry.  Especially if open and carry has no limits as to;

What? Yes of course its rape - again - sexuality DOES NOT MATTER when it comes to rape. I actually did respond to you I said: " An asexual person can indeed rape other people - would it be of sexual attraction? No"

you were the one who attempted to try redefine asexuality

shifting the burden is typical of you though, so I don't know what I expected

"soft science" as you say us based on neurology, psychology is much a "soft science" as cosmology is.

That is to say not at all - yes emotions are "subjective"

but being subjective does not mean that it can not be qualified

nor does it make it somehow "inferior" to what you would call hard science.

All science is based on interpretation of observation.

the difference is that we have less ways to numerically quantify emotions, though we are getting closer.