[wittysense]

...

This response is exactly the problem: "Live and let live." In the face of anarchy, this is not a mature or safe philosophy to hold for oneself or to recommend to others.

You have to understand that we are talking about (A) a legal system and (B) a moral system. We generally have moved away from absolutist moral systems, thus becoming more "error prone" there. At the same time, we all fully admit to the _belief_ that morality is "fuzzy" or "vague." So we allow for interpretation. However, no one will say thus vagueness entails a lack of any coherent system all together. So, they deduce that it must come from some supernatural substratum. Whatever. Belief in whatever you want in terms of metaphysics, but we are still in agreement about the phenomenological structuring of morality: it is underpinned by our capacity to agree or disagree. The moral system is available in virtue of our capacity to go one way or the other. Of course, the only "response" to a moral nihilist is to "slap" that person.

That's all within the framework of morality. What happens when we say it is METAPHYSICALLY impossible for there to exist disagreements at the LEGAL level of critical thinking? So ASSUMING that morality is the bedrock of legal systems, we're suggesting supervenience of properties related to the "spooky" properties that belie moral disagreement. Thus, legal systems (assuming the parasitic nature of the legal on top of the moral) become "error prone" and by John Mackie's argument: essentially erroneous.

We admit that law can be an artform. Who wants to allow for Dadaist lawyers ?

"That's a-legal" is just a can of worms, and you hackers are going to fuck it up.

[oleganza]

How exactly can I "fuck it up" if I simply refuse to participate in someone's schemes and refuse to violently intervene in anyone's affairs (unless I have no choice in self defense, but I don't justify violence in self defense - I tend to avoid being in such situation in the first place)?

How can peaceful (even ignorant) people fuck things up? Unless they pull the trigger, it's someone else who is to blame. E.g. one who pulls the trigger.

[pekk]

You are just keeping your own hands clean, for appearances.

[oleganza]

Could you please expand? Do I make a crime anywhere here? In legal framework or in the framework of your own ethics.

[wittysense]

No guns or triggers are involved when they draft these laws or play these very critical decisions at an international legislative and economic level.

Guns don't sell guns.

[oleganza]

You didn't answer my question. How I "fuck things up" exactly?

Laws don't kill, right. People do. I point out that people kill only because they believe that law is "good". I point out that assumption and highlight how dangerous it is.

[wittysense]

Crimes of reasoning occur before any bullets are fired.

[oleganza]

If it's not mature, what's you suggestion?

"There are evil violent people in the world. To protect from them we must allow violence only to a selected group of people and disallow to everyone else." I wonder who will end up among these people.

Will you point a gun at me if I don't agree with your theory of law and justice? If I withdraw my income and do not obey your laws? (Provided I don't make any threat on you directly or indirectly.)

[wittysense]

Planned Economies, Post-scarcity anarchism.

Alain Badiou, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky. The only reason we're all seemingly fucked is because the U.S. DID a decent enough job to lock down knowledge and disseminate according to their time tables.

I'm not going to answer your thought experiment. I've been through it too many times. Go read HLA Hart. Go read Donald Dworkin. If all you can think in terms of is coercion, you are NOT in a good spot intellectually to deal with these problems. "So what if I hold a gun to you?" is so demonstrably non-critical, HLA Hart had to write a book "The Concept of Law" in order to demolish it with VERY, VERY, VERY boring to read, DRY analytic philosophizing.

Stop feigning dissent, and actually start reading.

[oleganza]

You seem to hide an answer to my simple question into "go read these sophisticated books".

Again: if I simply don't agree with you and don't give you a penny from my peaceful income, will you point a gun at my head? Will you endorse someone to do that? Yes or no?

[wittysense]

??? I wouldn't. But clearly these governments will.

We're getting muddled here. Stop asking "me" as if you are asking me, this user: wittysense. Whatever I personally would do is irrelevant, and the answer to your questions are NOT easy. They don't come easy. You don't just get the answer to these questions in passing in line at a coffeeshop, dude. And no one is calling these books with positive, pompous, bourgeoisie descriptors.

I said DRY. BORING. ANALYTIC. BORING. I didn't have fun reading this crock of shit, and I don't think I'm cooling on behalf of it. But talking about "what if they point a gun at me" premisses is so uncritically off the mark, and absolutely not at all even the beginning stages of how these people are thinking at an international or federal level.

The only way we can avoid fucking it up is by giving ourselves the opportunity to understand the conceptual schemes they are using. They use these schemes to produce vagueness and unclarity which results in MISMANAGED human lives (people shooting people because they follow orders) which results in SOMETIMES carnage and death. Yes, sometimes people just mug you. Shit happens. We're talking about GLOBAL if not effing INTERGALACTIC surveillance.

THIS is not a "shit happens" scenario. We need CRITICAL THINKING. May I say "critical thinking" without seemingly advancing some posh 1% tone? Everyone agrees with critical thinking. I am here trying to point you in the direction of those people who have given us critical thought on concepts like "amorality" and by analogy "alegality."

I'm [not] going to teach it to you. I had to read it myself, and I am quite confident I am not WAY of the mark. I can say "I have a degree in philosophy from a top school" but that won't convince anyone of my points. So I'm not arguing in that way. I'm telling you that "I have a degree in philosophy" at least affords me the telling of which authors one should read. Have SOME faith in that. Or just bloody a Google search. "Error Theory" "amorality" -- my typings here are DENSE with connected keywords.

"What if the President points a gun at you?" is the obvious response. It is RADICALLY different from "What if Joe points a gun at you?" You're asking the latter. I'm underlining the former. Why are they different? Why is one representative of this debate and the other not?

[EDIT: Some of my typos are so bloody self-defeating.]

[kshatrea]

I am totally going to have to ask you to define "we". All your talk, your speech here has an ambiguity based on your definition: "we" are all not the same. For e.g. your last question seems rhetorical; you feel that Joe and the President are not different. "My" answer is simply this: I can kill Joe in self-defense if he threatens my life; I cannot kill the President. Try to kill a cop in a threatening situation and you know the police force will come down on you harder. There's anecdotal evidence to prove it. Are you going to deny that?

Oleganza's question is simple: If I disagree with your morality or legal system, what would you do about it? If your answer is to say that I shouldn't ask you but read a book, then your value to me in a mutual free society is quite low and of course I don't intend to live at your expense. Therefore, I reject your "we" and "everyone" since those words imply consent, which I most certainly have not given.