Good observation. I do, and it does. I did have some really rewarding, good job experiences, but I didn't know how to make more of them happen. — Bitter Crank

Here's my analysis, as I'm still feeling insightful:

For someone who wants to be himself above all else, employment will be an oppressive, depressing, and anxiety filled journey. An intellectual response (albeit it impractical) would be to reject the entire enterprise and to demand the right to extensive personal liberty within the work context. The practical response would be entrepreneurship. Self-employment for a personal cause, that's where Hanover the high school guidance counselor would have directed you.

Alcohol?

Your lack of traditional masculine qualities (self-sufficiency, emotional resiliancy, sense of duty, work ethic) leads me to believe you lacked a strong male role model, if any at all.

Just another observation.

You're welcome. For the record, I don't see you as a troubled soul, just someone curious as to why you see and do things like you do.

It's like 2 am and I'm feeling insightful.

You consistently place employment as the source of your past unhappiness and that seems to define your world view in many ways.

Just another observation.

So there's some irony in saying the you in you doesn't exist yet you desperately want to discuss you. In fact, your wanting to hear from me about you is another example of this irony. You love talking about you, sharing your history, your concerns, your limitations, your day to day trial and tribulations.

No criticism, just observation. I'm my favorite topic as well.

No, just an observation.

And so our egoless poster creates a thread about himself so we can all discuss all that is him.

My first concern would be in getting a bill in Euros. I guess I can see if my bank will exchange dollars for Euros, but this is highly unusual and I'm not at all happy about it. We also use a period to indicate the decimal point and a comma to divide thousands. So, 120.000 Euros would be about $150 USD, which sounds reasonable. If what you meant was $120,000, well then that's a different story.

But I digress.

My ethical position would be that I would not hold the child liable for the repair. In fact, I'd have some problem holding a 21 year old responsible. It has to do with my maybe incorrect view that you assume a certain risk walking around with a Faberge Egg in your coat pocket and the fault is your own if something should happen to it.

You mustn't forget that even if these children are uninsured, the likelihood the person that suffered damages is insured against those damages himself in the Netherlands is huge. Every injury is covered by universal healthcare insurance, damages to cars are covered in instances where they were caused by others, etc. etc. We do like our insurances here. So the insurance company is generally left holding the bag since they cannot recoup the payment they made. — Benkei

That's what I was picking up on and what instigated my prior post. Your system appears less concerned about assigning responsibility and more about providing benefits regardless of fault. It's for that reason I suggested throwing out the private insurance and just making it a government run plan. I'd think that once you've added up your taxes and then thrown in your insurance payments, you'd have little money left to buy your herring treats.

In fact, here's another nice one: if there's an accident between a car and biker, the car always has to pay for the damages because they have mandatory insurance even if it was the fault of the biker. Again, the insurance company is left holding the bag on that one too. — Benkei

Insurance is a pooling of resources obviously, so the ones holding the bag are those who've contributed, which sounds like everyone. Those kinds of systems would seem to work best in homogenous, educated societies where there is a shared work ethic and value system. My guess is that internal opposition to your system comes from those distrustful of outsiders and concern that the common good is being disproportionately provided to those with lesser contribution. Of course, you likely call those people xenophobes, which maybe they are, but they might also be correct in prognosing an unsustainable system.

Then again, maybe I'm just talking about where I live, but maybe it's universal. I'd guess the latter.

If the "mental retardation" becomes the normal, we may be looked at like "out of place , hyperactive, abnormal, minority" even be put inside hospital and may be debated whether should we be allowed to vote.
Democracy can still prevail — Santanu

Sure, Planet of the Apes.

Finally, most everyone in the Netherlands has a liability insurance policy. If someone is insured for a certain act or failure to act, mitigation isn't possible. So on the basis of uninsured circumstances a person suffering damages caused by a child might have a problem recouping his losses but in reality this is mostly taken care of through insurance. — Benkei

What a terrible rule. Damages are damages, regardless of ability to pay. Why don't you guys just mandate liability insurance, go to a single payer system, have the government take it over, and then just redistribute the wealth according to need?

I suggest you spend an afternoon with a few people with Down's and try to tell them they are not allowed to vote. I think you might surprise yourself. — charleton

As to the question of whether someone with Down's Syndrome can vote, it varies by state (for a full breakdown: https://www.866ourvote.org/newsroom/publications/body/0049.pdf)

Generally, any one found mentally incompetent cannot vote, but whether that applies to those with Down's Syndrome appears to vary.

If the scenario is such that there are more number of "mentally handicapped" person than "mentally healthy" people, the definition of mental health will required to be altered. It may be that the what you are thinking of being mentally healthy is actually mentally handicapped for most. — Santanu

I'm not talking about a pandemic of mental retardation sweeping the countryside to the point where we've lost sight of our baseline of what constitutes normal intelligence so that the new normal is a dramatically reduced state of intelligence. I'm talking about District 1 having a mental hospital housing a large number of intellectually challenged people and those people being permitted to vote and alter the outcome of an election. While I can appreciate that "normal" is relative, we fortunately will still have enough people from outside that hospital that can remind us of what normal intelligence looks like.

As per definition of democracy it will go by what most people thinks. It does not matter whether it is "good or bad", "right or wrong". — Santanu

Unless the democracy places limitations upon what the public can decide, as in a constitutional democracy, like exists in the US.

Never said it did. You brought that into question. Rationality is not the basis of why we get to vote as of 18, or why we are considered adults. We are all (hopefully) rational a good decade before that. — Akanthinos

You brought up the rationality criteria, but it appears we both agree to its irrelevance.

Well, for starters, the discussion relates to a U.K law. As such, the Common Law basis is identical in both jurisdictions, and for the longest time, the highest instances were the same (the Chamber of Lords). Technically, the opinion of a georgian lawyer would be as if not more otiose than that of a canadian one. — Akanthinos

You miss the point. I wasn't saying it was irrelevant because Canada is an irrelevant backwater. I was saying it was irrelevant because the law has nothing to do with imposing liability on minors. In fact, everything you've said indicates that minors are a very different class altogether, offering support for why they ought be denied a right to vote and the like.

That's what rationality is in the eyes of the court here, and again the origin of the 7 years old as 'the age of reason'. Nothing to do with being an adult or voting. — Akanthinos

But that has nothing to do with a child's liability or a child being held responsible for anything. That has to do with when to impose vicarious liability on the parents. The parents are being held liable for the acts of their child, which clearly indicates under the law that the child has limited duties to the public and is being considered a ward of his parents.

And so what I said still holds true: the recognition of rationality on the part of a minor does not result in his being treated like he was the age of majority. Otherwise, the child would be being sued directly, but in this case, he's not being sued at all. His parents are being sued.

I'd also point out that vicarious liability laws for the acts of their minor children vary considerably by jurisdiction. In Georgia, there are different standards for negligent versus malicious acts, and they do not reflect the law as exists in Canada. Regardless, I don't see where anything you've said of Canadian law affects our discussion here.

I am not aware of any conditions under which a claim to the possession of a firearm for one's personal protection would not be justified. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Suppose someone kicks you in the head and you then punch him to get him off of you and he feels the need to protect himself from your retaliation. Would he be justified in using a firearm to fend you off?

You likely meant to say that you felt a firearm was always justified for self-defense purposes, not for being the instigator.

But wait, suppose I yell at you and you feel personally threatened, do you have the right to pull a weapon on me?

If we keep distilling this, the answer will be that you have the right to self-defense, but the force you use must be justified and proportionate. You don't get to shoot someone for shoving you in the arm. The idea behind gun regulation is that if you reduce the number of guns in society, your need to have a gun to respond to that gun will also be reduced..

Coercion is assumed when it comes to those lacking capacity, even if the persuasion is in good faith.

So there really needs to be a strong case to show that allowing the mentally ill to vote will actually (or at least with a reasonable possibility) lead to a bad outcome.

Besides, if we actually consider a real-life example of a ballot, the choice is usually going to be between a member of one party or the member of another, rather than some silly choice on what to spend all of society's money on. For the most part, the available options are reasonable (and even when they're not, you get sane people voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party, too). — Michael

This is a votes don't really matter argument. I'm just not willing to concede that. The choice needn't be silly. It could be very important and ideological. One sides wants to raise taxes to provide better public transportation, the other doesn't. It looks like it's going to go the way of higher taxes, so the Republicans get some vans and go to the hospital caring for the mentally handicapped and round them up, scare them into voting their way, and it swings the vote.

Your whole objection is based upon the idea that votes don't matter. Come up with your own example where they do, and in that instance, are you happy with the deciding votes being cast by those who don't know what they're doing?

The difference is that him deciding (and being allowed) to spend his inheritance on a scoop of ice cream will lead to him spending his inheritance on a scoop of ice cream, but him deciding (and being allowed to) vote in favour of spending all of society's tax dollars on a scoop of ice cream won't lead to all of society's tax dollars being spent on a scoop of ice cream, so it's a false analogy. — Michael

The distinction you point out is only due to the relative limited power of a single vote in a large democracy, resting upon the notion that a certain percentage of the stupid votes can be absorbed by a generally not stupid population. You can change the scenario to a district where there is a large home of mentally handicapped people who are swayed to vote by someone whose intent is to raid the public funds for his own pet project or you can place them all on a jury to decide someone's guilt. That is to say, your distinction is just an irrelevant detail that can be resolved to make the point that protecting the public from those who are clearly without the capacity to make their own decisions is good public policy, even if it violates some idealistic standard you're trying to impose without concern for practical impact.

This doesn't appear to me to apply to the right to vote since a vote cast for the 'wrong' candidate is unlikely to harm the individual as much as denying them this fundamental civic right can potentially harm them morally should they express the wish to exercise this right. (Also, since it's a right that they are unlikely to demand to exercise anyway, there is no downside to granting them universally). — Pierre-Normand

I think logical consistency would demand that if we believe the mentally handicapped should be protected from the decisions they impose on themselves, society should be protected from the decisions they attempt to impose on society. If a mentally handicapped person decides in favor of spending his entire inheritance on a single scoop of ice cream, society should not hold him to it. By the same token, if the mentally handicapped person decides in favor of (i.e. casts his ballot) spending all of society's tax dollars on a single scoop of ice cream, society should be afforded the same protections against him that he received for himself.

Nobody has said anything about police protecting "citizens".

What has been pointed out is that courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ruled that the government has no legal obligation to protect individuals. The only exception, the courts have ruled, is when there is a special relationship between an individual and the government, such as when an individual is in witness protection. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This is an odd post. You're distinguishing between "citizens" and "individuals" for some reason as if they weren't being used synonymously in the context we were both using them. I think it's clear that whatever duty the police have to protect an individual applies to citizens and non-citizens alike, meaning they can't decide to only protect citizens but instead watch all our visitors from foreign nations die on the street. Anyway, like I said, I don't follow what your post is intending to point out.

I never said, "Civil lawsuits are a way to regulate conduct", let alone the best way, only way, etc.

Your point is completely irrelevant. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

No, you've missed the point. The case cited that has caused you such consternation holds only that a citizen is limited in his right to sue the police, not that the police are unobligated to serve and protect the public. You can't sue the police if they fail to act, but that doesn't mean there are no other repercussions due to their failure to act and there aren't other means to assure you'll be protected from crime. If you admit that civil suits against the police were never meant to assure you will be protected by the police, then your concern over the case you cited becomes irrelevant as to the question of whether you'll be adequately protected and in need of self protection.

nah, children are considered "rational" "legally" from the moment they can be expected to understand that bad = no and good = yes, and that "x is bad is an instruction to be followed, basically. Before, the standard was 7 years old, which is where the "age of reason" expression comes from. Nowadays this is much lower than this, and 4-5 years old can be found "rational" in the eyes of the court. — Akanthinos

No idea what you're referencing, but our question wasn't when "rationality" was attained, and I've no idea how a recognition of rationality would result in a minor being treated like he was the age of majority. In Georgia (where I live), we adhere to a pretty standard rule that a child under 18 who wishes to sue must sue through his parents and he can only be sued through his parents. A child under 18 has limited liability in certain situations, and cannot be bound by a contract. None of this suggests that a 17 year old is inherently "irrational," only that he lacks the capacity to make such life changing decisions at an early age.

The UNCRPD section 12 distinguishes mental capacity from legal capacity, saying (in other words) that the lack of mental capacity shall not be grounds to remove legal capacity. So far only the Republic of Ireland is fully compliant with section 12 (in Europe anyway, not sure about elsewhere).

Th acquisition of legal capacity is a recognition of adulthood, regardless of how well people understand the world they live in. Being non-disabled is no bar to being an ignorant vote-savaging twat in any case. I'd happily be ruled by a bunch of bipolar people. — bert1

I'm not sure why you cite UCRRPD as authority when it's not accepted as an authority anywhere. The authority of the rule in Ireland (if it has adopted it) comes only from Ireland having adopted it, not from it having any authority on its own.

But, since what you said seemed incorrect (or, at best, a really bad rule) I did look it up (http://www.era-comm.eu/uncrpd/kiosk/speakers_contributions/111DV69/Dimopoulos_pres.pdf) and what this author says is that the rule says legal capacity should not be arbitrarily denied someone based upon disability, which simply means that mental capacity can be used to deny legal capacity if warranted under the facts and it's not denied arbitrarily. The absurdity of holding a severely mentally limited person liable under a contract he signed hardly seems like a progressive notion.

To the extent though the rule does mean that there should be no legal protections or limitations upon those who lack the ability to comprehend what they're engaging in, I am encouraged by the overwhelming rejection of the rule by the various European countries.

Isn't it mental capacity that distinguishes the child from the adult and therefore limits the child's right to vote? Why wouldn't that logic similarly serve to limit a mentally limited person's right to vote?

As you note, the rift between intellectualism and not seems to center on religion, with the religious believing intellectualism is but a lofty name for a dogmatically held and morally bankrupt value system.

There are federal marshals and the FBI and Homeland Security and I'd guess all sorts of other federal enforcers of federal law.

Sovereign immunity applies not just to the federal government, but also to states and counties, as they're all official subdivisions of the government. Municipalities are often treated differently.

Here's the thing, which could make for an interesting debate. Much of what I said about the right to bear arms being limited to protecting yourself from the government and not other citizens was rejected by the Supreme Court (5-4) in the most recent couple of cases dealing with the issue. I can't say I read them too closely, but it seems very wrong to me to interpret an item from the Bill of Rights as anything other than a check against government power.

Another interesting thing that is worthy of debate is whether the right to bear arms is an inalienable right. That language appears in the Declaration (not the Constitution), and the three inalienable rights noted are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those are general principles, not specific, so it would seem pretty odd to say that we all have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and guns. Whether gun ownership can be extrapolated from those general principles seems pretty much subject to the person interpreting and surely not something so patently obvious that it shouldn't be admitted that it is subject to interpretation.

I thought you were chiming in in agreement with the sentiment of the Banno post, so I recklessly assumed maybe you agreed with it. If not, then I wish I could give you back the few moments it took you to read my post and respond, but I'm afraid it's lost.

Do you really place the blame of the school shootings on the teachers for not being properly trained or paid? That seems to be such nonsense. I'm open to considering things beyond the personal struggles of the particular students (like societal pressures and the like), but it is doubtful that teacher pay has much to do with the shootings. In fact, the recent Florida shooting was by a non-student who had been expelled from school and who had a tragic childhood where he was orphaned and without any real direction.

Teachers are already paid, but to the extent they are underpaid, that has nothing to do with gun violence. If we paid teachers better, we'd just have better paid teachers exposed to gun violence. Nothing like using a crisis to work a pay raise though, which is simply to say that if teachers are owed a raise, it has nothing to do with the school shootings.

We could speculate for pages and pages about that. Among other things, one could take a functionalist perspective and say that for a society to stay together its members have to believe that they are being taken care of, and that the police serve that function. But that is another thread. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

No, what you're missing is the point that there are other ways to regulate conduct other than civil lawsuits. If the Peoria PD decides it no longer wants to protect its citizens, the police chief is called before the City Council and asked about it with hundreds of angry Peorians screaming about in the room. If the City Council decides to support the police chief despite his decision to not do his job, the next election won't go so well for the councilmen and the mayor. That's how it's done all the time, not through the filing of civil suits demanding damages. In fact, if there were a rebel police chief and city council, would they really care if the City of Peoria were required to pay its tax dollars to a damaged citizen? Would that really alter their behavior? It seems like in this example they don't really care about much.

And all this explains why the police do their job, which is the same reason that everyone does his job, which is that they don't want to get fired because ultimately everyone is accountable to someone.

I don't think there's any question that the police have a job description that if not met will result in firings, public outrage, reorganizations and whatnot. The law simply protects officers and departments from civil lawsuits. As a general matter, civil suits have limited regulatory function anyway, with their primary purpose being specific victim compensation. As I noted, there is a long history of sovereign immunity for a variety of purposes, so this rule is not that unusual. Also, the police generally do their jobs (with the typical complaint being with too much vigor, not a lack of it), meaning we don't really need more police oversight through the civil justice system. I really wish the anti-police folks would decide: Do the police enforce too harshly or do they twiddle their thumbs?

Nobody referenced to in this thread or directly contributing to this thread said anything about "vigilantism" until you brought up, let alone that it was the intention of the 2nd Amendment. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

You specifically brought up the right to bear arms, which was a reference to the 2nd Amendment. The title of this thread suggests an inconsistency between not protecting your right to bear arms and the state's lack of duty to protect you from crime. I was pointing out that there was no inconsistency because your right to bear arms, to the extent it exists, is not based upon the citizen's right to protect himself from other citizens, but only from the government itself. There are better solutions to solving the problem of inept police enforcement than deputizing the public to self-police.

The point is that if you are in danger the people who many are saying that other than the military should be the only ones allowed to have guns, the police, have no obligation under the U.S. Constitution or under the law in many states and cities to protect you. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

They are duty bound to protect you. The question is how you remedy a failure by the police. The case cited indicates it is not through the civil justice system.

Yet, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that civilized, free, liberal democratic states have the police and the military and that individual citizens, therefore, do not need guns, let alone have any moral/natural right to possess them. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't know that they have a single monolithic argument, but to the extent they are arguing you lack the right to have guns because there are police there to protect you, they have missed the point of the 2nd Amendment, which is that you have a right to own guns to protect you from the government.

But, again, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that no right for an individual to possess firearms has ever existed and, besides, you have the police to protect you. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

But again the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee you the right to protect yourself from citizens, only the government. Why would the Bill of Rights contain a provision protecting you against other citizens when the reason for independence was due to an oppressive government?

Correcting the state's behavior after the fact of you having no protection or ineffective protection that was involuntarily outsourced does nothing to address the fact that an individual's right to protection was not recognized when he was in danger. It also does not guarantee protection to anybody in the future. An individual's protection will still depend on the state deciding to be generous and do him/her a favor. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This is an argument from policy, asking what is the best way to handle the problem, which I don't have a problem with, but at least realize you're not now arguing from a position of rights. The question then would be: will we have fewer violent crimes if we arm the public than if we require reliance upon the police? If the answer is yes, then I'd be in favor of legislating freer gun access, but if it's not, then I wouldn't. On the other hand, if the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, then I wouldn't care about the policy reasons or the consequences. A right is a right. My hunch is that reduction of gun ownership will reduce violent crime. Call it a strong hunch.

The political block — Bitter Crank

Bloc.

Yet, with each new mass murder in the U.S. we have people from all over the world increasingly calling for civilians to be disarmed, for the indivudual's right to bear arms to be seen as a myth that never had any moral or intellectual foundation, and for only the police and the military to be allowed to possess firearms. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The basis for the 2nd Amendment is not to assure the right of vigilantism of every citizen, but to protect you against a tyranical government. If a police department is unresponsive or inept, corrective efforts should be made, but there's no reason to believe that civil lawsuits are the best or most effective way to regulate the police. Instead of paying off injured parties on a case by case basis, it seems like a state regulator would be better suited than occasional juries.

An egregious fact that is unconstitutional in spirit if not in fact. — Thorongil

What Constitutional provision is violated when the police fail to act?

The better argument is that sovereign immunity laws are assumed valid under the Constitution.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D12680%26context%3Djournal_articles&ved=2ahUKEwilyerfgbbZAhWBNd8KHXqSC0oQFjATegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw3ZO7y1WniYfIdSO-5fsve7

Generally speaking, governmental entities are immune from suit except to the extent the government permits themselves to be sued. Since democracies have no actual sovereign, the remedy for this supposed outrage is corrective democratic legislation. Understand that when you sue a democratic government, you sue yourself, which is why it makes more sense to change the laws you complain of.

The significant difference between the thermostat and the human belief is that the thermostat necessitates action, and in the human being belief doesn't necessarily result in action. One may or may not act on a belief. That's free will. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'd take this a step further and eliminate the issue of free will. I can have a belief without any behavioral correlate. I can believe I'm going to the store tomorrow and no one would ever be able to know it. A thermostat cannot have a belief without a behavioral correlate because there's complete identity between the behavior and the belief in the thermostat.

No, but then I don't really hold with phenomenalism in humans either. — Pseudonym

I can't make any sense of this statement.

If you wish to assert that "it's clear that something different is happening when I believe it's too hot and the thermostat switches on the furnace.". I'd like to hear an argument as to why you think that, I'm not going to just take your word for it. — Pseudonym

The thermostat isn't conscious, although I thought we've already been discussing that.

This is a philosophy forum, not a linguists forum, I'm not so interested in how the word is used so much as what we can learn from it. — Pseudonym

A meaningless distinction.

That's why I keep coming back to the question of whether there is any meaningful job being done by restricting the word belief to conscious creatures. What is it about consciousness that makes belief data different from any other data (such as that which is stored in the position of a bimetallic strip)? — Pseudonym

So are you admitting that there is a distinction between my belief and the thermostat's, yet you just don't think it's relevant enough to warrant it having a different term attached to it? If you're acknowledging my distinction, yet you just want to lump both as "beliefs," then we just disagree on terminology, not concepts.

What is it about consciousness that makes belief data different from any other data (such as that which is stored in the position of a bimetallic strip)? — Pseudonym

If consciousness exists in belief(1) but not belief(2), they are different.

A belief is an attitude to a proposition in some way, I think perhaps we can all agree on that (although maybe not). The question is whether there is any need for the holder of that attitude to be aware they are holding it. — Pseudonym

Is a proposition a linguistic statement? Are you now saying the thermostat has an attitude toward a linguistic statement? As best I can tell, all the spring does is expand, and that's what you call an "attitude"?

What differentiates a thermostat from the examples you give is that in the examples, there is no outside observer to whom the data is relevant. We're all quite comfortable with the idea that a computer hard drive contains data, it's all just diodes, but we call it data because the outcome is unpredictable to us. The ice in some way 'contains' the data that it's below freezing point, but that data was not unpredictable to us, the thermostat's data is. — Pseudonym

I don't follow any of these distinctions. The water freezes at 0 degrees and forms a barrier around our home to insulate us through the miracle of nature. I notice it does all that. Does the ice now have a belief it can insulate me? I can put mercury in a test tube and watch it rise with the temperature and use that for whatever purpose I choose, so now does the mercury have a belief? And if the thermostat exists in a house that no one enters, and the data it provides is relevant to no one, does it no longer have a belief? If I believe I'll have a ham sandwich for lunch, do I have a belief if that belief is irrelevant to everyone else.

I'm a determinist, so as far as I'm concerned, a person putting a coat on is a direct mechanistic consequence of the environment acting on their biological system. No different to the air temperature acting on the thermostat and causing it to switch the heating on. Yet at some point in time, we want to be able to say that the person 'believes' it is cold and it is this belief that causes them to put a coat on. — Pseudonym

And was it submitted that determinism was incompatible with having a conscious or forming a belief?

In order to be a cause, this belief must be a prior state of the biological system. More specifically it must be exactly that particular state which causes the coat putting on activity. If that state is what a belief is, then logically, that same prior state must also be a belief in the thermostat. — Pseudonym

This is an antiquated view of determinism, but regardless, it's irrelevant whether the thermostat's reaction and the human reaction are pre-determined. I've not argued that beliefs arise from an other world miracle substance.

Not at all, there are many perfectly rational people (myself included) who consider consciousness to be an illusion, that we are distinguishable from thermostats only in the number of such computations we can carry out at any one time. In fact, I would go as far as to say that, if we allow for some phenomenal emergence, then actually most philosophers of mind agree that our brains work in this way. There is nothing ontological to distinguish us from thermostats other than volume of data processed. — Pseudonym

Do you suppose thermostats have phenomenal states?

As I said, if you've already made up your mind as to what 'believe' should mean and what is apparently "clear" about the differences between the state of our brains when we believe something and the state of the bimetallic strip in a thermostat when is 'believes' it is cold, then what purpose is there to your involvement in this discussion? — Pseudonym

I guess having an opinion bars one from discussing that opinion with someone who has an opposing view? I do think it is very clear that your claiming that a thermostat has a belief is not how the word belief is used among speakers of English.

Indeed, and the thermostat, if broken, might turn the heating off despite 'beliving' that it is cold, but we would in both cases be equally able to judge that something has gone wrong. I'm still not hearing anything of this magical difference between humans and thermostats which actually makes any difference to the meaning and use of the term 'belief'. — Pseudonym

I don't get why you put belief in quotes unless you're using it in a strained figurative sense and not literally. My understanding of your thesis was that thermostats had beliefs in the literal sense.

Firstly, no we can't figure it out, but that's an entirely different debate and unnecessary herebecause, secondly you're talking here about consciousness (which I agree it is easy to see the thermostat doesn't have). You have yet to establish why you think it necessary for belief to be linked to consciousness. What job does such a restriction do to the meaning and use of the word? — Pseudonym

Empirically, no computer makes it past a few minutes in a Turing Test. A belief is a product of consciousness. A comatose patient doesn't form beliefs.

So what about insects, bacteria, unconscious people, philosophical zombies, AI... Where do you draw the line on what can have beliefs and why? — Pseudonym

Sure, when is a chair a chair. Some things are clearly not chairs and some things clearly are, but that I can't tell you the exact dividing line hardly means there are no chairs. But, back at you, the same question. When is a belief a belief? Does the tree waving in the wind believe the wind is blowing? Does the ice forming in the freezer believe the temperature fell to 0 degree Celsius? Does the grape crushed on the floor believe that people are heavier than grapes?

Apparently metal expanding and flipping a switch is a belief, so I'm not real clear why all physical reactions aren't beliefs.