Isn't this like asking what "set" means in the general, not in the particular, and being unable to offer the same meaning for "set" in the examples of:

1. Andy Murray won every set
2. He set the table
3. The set of all odd numbers has the same cardinality as the set of all even numbers
4. The Sun set at 8:00pm. — Michael

Your example offers 4 entirely different uses of the term "set," where there's clearly a similarity in the way I used "truth." In each instance, I used "truth" to reference the accuracy of the statement, although the accuracy of each statement was measured differently in each statement, or, as Banno pointed out, it was the justification that varied.

Speaking of dignity, are we. Good bye again, this time for good. — ernestm

You're a fraud, and I don't mean that as an ad hom. I mean that you pontificate about so many subjects, but you aren't able at all to really respond to any real question about what you're talking about. You therefore create the initial appearance that you have something to say, but in short order it becomes clear that you can't do anything but cut and paste, and most often just citing yourself. You even resort to name calling when really called down on something. I think I was referred to as an Assad like baby killer or some other stupidity.

I've gone so far as to enumerate questions and ask for enumerated responses from you just so I could avoid your spilling thousands of words onto the screen, but that didn't happen. Now you've excommunicated me, but I think anyone who might have read my post that motivated your conduct would be a little confused as to why. For that reason, I've written this post to clarify why. It's because you're a fraud.

Is it the case that I have an obligation to act towards X in a certain way solely because X has a "right" to be treated in a certain way? That would require quite a multiplicity of rights. Perhaps I should act in a moral way for reasons which don't require that I assume the existence of rights which cannot be infringed. — Ciceronianus the White

I have a right to be treated with dignity and you have a duty to treat me that way.

And we can make it more clear than that. If you kidnap me and hold me against my will, you have violated my right to live freely. Such would be the case regardless of what the law is.

I think I do have a right to be treated with dignity though, and I'd hold that regardless of whether the government agrees or whether the government affords me redress. It's for that reason it's a quibble, even if there are instances where right and ought vary.

Instead of moderating this thread, maybe respond to the fact that you pontificated on Jefferson's opposition to the death penalty despite the fact that he explicitly stated he was in favor of it, and, if you get a chance, explain why abortion is permissible pre-viability, despite there being no way to infer the viability criteria from natural rights theory.

You say that because you insist that there is no other way to define natural rights other than the way Locke did, which isn't directly related to this post either, considering your question was who was the smartestest, Hamilton or Jefferson.

As I recall, our conversation left off with your explaining that the death penalty was inconsistent with the natural rights expounded by Jefferson and Locke, despite them saying otherwise, thus making you more an expert in Locke and Jefferson than Locke or Jefferson.

You hold the distinction of being one of the few people I've met here who actually fail the Turing Test from time to time, simply reciting text in response to various questions and then reciting insults when called out on your inability to respond to questions.

I think it's more appropriate to say we should or should not treat another person a certain way, rather than he/she has a "right" to be treated or not treated in a certain way. — Ciceronianus the White

That's a quibble really. I think it makes perfect sense to say "I have a right to be treated with dignity" as much as it is to say "You should treat me with dignity." I also think that enforcement can take on many forms, from legal enforcement, to military action, to negative feedback, to ostracism. If you treat your wife, for example, in a manner unacceptable to her, she has a whole slew of methods to enforce the way she think she has a right to be treated.

There is no quandary presented, though, unless you think it necessary that the creator or governor of the immense universe thinks, or has somehow mandated, we creatures living here have certain "rights" or has granted us such, in order for there to be moral conduct. — Ciceronianus the White

If it isn't a quandary, what right do the women in Saudi Arabia (for example) have to be treated equal to men? A. there is no enforcement mechanism, and B. there is no higher good demanding such equality.

Please don't deprive Baden, he spoke impetuously. For me, just give him one more chance to drink of your wisdom.

I know. It's a mystery how something so incoherent can be a centerpiece to a belief system.

As has been mentioned, in Christianity, the Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit) is considered to be one being with three different 'faces'. As you said about Mormonism, some denominations of Christianity choose to interpret the Trinity as three separate beings. — Javants

This strikes me as a very non- Mormon comment. I'd expect their response to be that you've chosen to misinterpret the meaning of the trinity.

Could the same not be true about polytheistic religions, without being explicitly stated? In other words, all the Gods of that pantheon are, in fact, just the different personalities of the same God, which are being perceived as different beings. — Javants

I suppose you could say that if you were hell bent on modifying other people's beliefs to make them compatible to your own.

Those cultures which are not monotheist don't believe in God, do they? — Metaphysician Undercover

Funny you should ask this during Passover, which celebrates the Jew's exodus from Egypt. So the story goes, the Jews were held in slavery by the oppressive pharaoh and not until God exacted 10 plagues of increasing severity did Pharaoh relent and release the Jews. The whole story can be found at Exodus chapters 7 to 11. Read it carefully. The purpose of God's (the Hebrew God) plagues was not to prove there was only one god, but to prove he was the most powerful god of them all. That is, his plagues showed his supremacy over the Egyptian gods. This makes clear that these ancient Hebrews were not entirely monotheistic, but were actually just of the opinion they had the best of all gods. It also shows that the Egyptians also believed in God, despite having their own inferior god. To be sure, though, their belief was more empirical than faith based, considering they experienced the plagues first hand.

Another example is Mormonism, although I claim no scholarship there. My understanding is they treat the trinity as three separate entities, thus causing some to claim they are a polytheistic religion. It's less important whether they are ultimately polytheistic than whether one can hypothetically believe in God and be polytheistic. It seems one could, especially if one held that the father, the son, and the holy ghost were 3 different things. I do know that Mormons find the concept of the trinity as set forth in Catholicism and most of Protestantism to be incoherent nonsense.

I don't think we need a notion of non-legal rights in order to maintain that governments and laws are bad. — Ciceronianus the White

Non-legal rights are just another way of saying what morality requires, but I don't see the quibble over whether to call them "rights" or not is significant. We typically speak in terms of our moral duties to others, which would imply the other person has a certain right to be treated a particular way, and none of that implicates law.

I personally find it difficult to maintain that God says I--or anyone else for that matter--should be allowed to do, etc., something, — Ciceronianus the White

Such is the quandary of the non-religious in offering a foundation for morality in every instance. I'm not suggesting that God is necessary to be moral, but removal of some higher authority from the equation does make it difficult to explain why your moral beliefs are more correct than another's.

Regardless of where you think these higher order duties derive, I suspect that you find them to exist absolutely. That is, a government that passes a law killing all of a particular hair color would be wrong, and they'd be wrong for their violations against those people. If you set forth what rule it is that you believe is being violated, then you are declaring a non-legal rule which trumps legal rules. This higher order rule is, for lack of a better term, a natural law. In fact, I would assume your fidelity to right and wrong in a non-legal sense is higher than your fidelity to legislatively passed law, as the latter you realize is the just the best work of a group of lawmakers, as opposed to the former which is the way things truly are.

But can't there be an unjust government and unjust laws? If so, it seems the government and laws are being judged by a higher authority.

Isn't that fundamental to the idea of "God", that there is only one God. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, many cultures don't accept monotheism. It's even arguable that Christianity isn't monotheistic entirely, especially Mormonism.

She lives on through the seeds of kindness she sowed during her life.

3. Charity is immoral. — Baden

What the good Ms. Rand said was that charity wasn't a moral virtue, not that it was immoral. That is, you are under no obligation to give, and you're not considered good if you do give, but you are not actually immoral if you give. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/charity.html

See what you did here? You started a conversation about Ayn Rand, just like she wanted you to.

Obviously, the societies of the time have something to do with the characteristics of their God, but I was interested in knowing what you thought about the idea of there actually existing only one God, which is identified under different names/personalities across all global religions. — Javants

The problem is that many societies don't accept that there is only one god. How can there really only be one god that is identified across all societies just by different names when a single society might identify a half dozen gods all having different abilities?

I'm going to go with redundancy. — Banno

That doesn't answer the OP though anymore than did Ernest when he itemized the different types of truth. As Ernest begged the question of "what is truth" by simply telling us different sorts of truths, you beg the question by simply telling us that "truth" adds nothing to the meaning of a proposition. You are not arguing obviously that "truth" adds nothing because it has no meaning, but that it is redundant to what already has been said. So, accepting fully that "it is true that the snow is white" is equivalent to "the snow is white," what does "true" mean?

And don't avoid the question by saying that "it is true" means "the snow is white," because I'm not speaking in the particular, but in the general as to how "true" is to be defined.

And this is significant it seems because it you can't offer the same meaning for "true" in the examples of:
1. It is true it is snowing,
2. It is true the sun will rise tomorrow, and
3. It is true 2+2=4

then we might have 3 entirely different truths. To define truth as "that which is" (or similar) moves this discussion farther into the metaphysical and asks whether that state of being of 2+2=4 is at all similar to the state of being of it snowing. I don't think it is.

I'm a generous fellow. — Banno

True.

He wasn't ridiculing you for suggesting there were exactly 3 forms of truth, but for suggesting there was more than one truth.

There's not, but were you able to decipher the meaning of truth by the presentation of the sub categories of truth? I wasn't. At best, I was provided an encyclopedic statement of truth subtypes where I could then begin drawing my own conclusions as to what they had in common that made them all truth.

At any rate, your interpretation of his post as ostensive is generous. I took his post as a statement that there were 3 seperate truths, without a necessary overlap that distinguished them all as truth. That interpretation wasn't suggested in his post anywhere.

Interesting dissertation on the types of truth, but ultimately non-responsive to the OP. The question was what is truth, not what are the types of truth. Should I ask what pasta is, I wouldn't be requesting an itemization of the types with an explanation of the distinctions between penne and linguine, but I'd like to hear about flour and water.

And that's the truth.

So, to clarify:

I asked: Why do you say that Locke's theory of natural rights prohibits the death penalty when Locke himself specifically said it didn't?

You responded: I refuse to talk to someone who likes to kill beautiful babies.

Might it be you don't really understand natural rights theory, so when called upon to defend it, you simply reiterate the text of the theory, and when relentlessly pressed, you resort to name calling? I mean this is a philosophy forum after all, which doesn't mean you just get to assert theories, but you actually have to offer some support and defense of them.

I take this as the stage theory:

As I sit here typing, my existence is infinitely small in terms of space and time and the only thing I can say is that this experience, which includes not only of me typing, but of countless other extraneous experiences (like what I just ate, the temperature, my knowledge of my family, my drive in this morning, etc.) is all that is me.

So here I am at T-1 with experiential state E-1 and then there is someone else at T-2 and E-2. We'll call T-1 at E-1, person 1, or P-1 and then T-2 at E-2, P-2. So now we have P-1 and P-2 eternally existing simultaneously, as time is eternal and not sequential. That means what we really have is P-1, P-2, P-3.... all simultaneously existing. We have no reason, of course, to believe that P-1's experiences are at all similar to P-2's. What we have are an infinitely large (or finitely massive) number of people spread out throughout all of eternity with fixed thoughts at a fixed moment thinking that thought forever and ever.

My objection to this theory is that it sure as hell seems like I have thoughts that change over time and not that I'm stuck in my single thought. The concept of change seems impossible under an eternalist theory because there is no becoming, just existing.

1. You stated that the death penalty violated natural rights in opposition to Locke, the person cited for your authority on natural rights. 2. You offer no explanation for why any punishment would ever be valid under natural rights. 3. You offer no explanation for why viability offers a cut off for when abortion is illegal. 4. I am generally opposed to abortion and seek no justification for it.

No. Natural law does not allow for the death penalty. — ernestm

Yet Jefferson was specifically in favor of the death penalty. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendVIIIs10.html

As was Locke: At the end of the opening chapter of his Second Treatise of Government, Locke describes political power in the following terms: ‘Political Power then I take to be a Right of making Laws with Penalties of Death, and consequently all less Penalties, for the Regulating and Preserving of Property, and of employing the force of the Community, in the Execution of such Laws, and in the defence of the Common-wealth from Foreign Injury, and all this only for the Publick Good.’
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1344457

Did Locke and Jefferson get it wrong?

Under your logic all punishment would be invalid. Imprisonment is a removal of liberty, a natural right also.

Can you acknowledge that a right without a remedy for its violation is no right at all? If I have the right to possess my car but no right to stop you from taking it, what does it mean to have that right?

The taking of life in self defense is also against natural rights. There exist plenty of means of self defense which are not lethal. — ernestm

I'm considering a hypothetical where there in no way of self defense other than that which is lethal. You can't change the hypothetical.

I answered the question on abortion three times now — ernestm

Nope. You said viability was the cut off date for permissible abortions. Why is that the case? Do you no longer hold that position?

So you are a cad searching for any method whatsoever to kill beautiful babies, and are just as morally destitute as the Syrian Assad terrorists with their poison gas. — ernestm

And despite thinking this conversation couldn't get any stupider, just like that it did.

Over and over you miss the point. We can all agree as to the idea that there is a natural law, inalienable, and bestowed by God, and we can all agree as to the significance of that, but that hardly means there will be agreement as to what that law is on a non- abstract, concrete level.

For example, does natural allow for the death penalty? Does nature forbid the taking of life absolutely, or does it permit it under certain circumstances? What about in cases of self-defense? It is entirely possible that a liberal and a conservative can arrive at different conclusions, yet both insist God is on their side. The inability to determine what natural law decrees is a Philosophy 101 objection, yet instead of trying to offer a response to it, you act like it doesn't exist.

And that was issue with abortion law. You have never offered any explanation for why natural law attaches only to viable fetuses and not pre-viable ones, as if viability is a God given framework that coincidentally defines personhood and that was discovered in 1973 by Justice Blackmon as describing when a State's interest begins and ends.

That is, modern legal positivists, such as Hart, attempt to do away with promulgation from natural law to constitutional law entirely. And that is frequently taught in law schools now, almost to the exclusion of any other legal theory, because lower courts are expected to act entirely within the US legal code. — ernestm

The distinction isn't between natural and constitutional law, but it's between natural and positive law. It's entirely possible to interpret the Constitution in a natural law way. There is not a consensus regarding the best way to interpret the Constitution, but law schools typically embrace those Justices who have offered creative interpretations based upon general priciples of justice instead of those who have insisted the text be strictly construed. That is, law schools tend to be liberal leaning.

While lawyers inside this nation are rather blithe to the implications of that now, the USA has no authority to interact with other sovereign nations, internationally, if the foundation of natural law is removed, and the USA becomes no more than a rebel insurgency that the world should eliminate. — ernestm

If what you mean by "natural law" is absolutist, non- relative moral principles, there most certainly hasn't been an abandonment of that in US society. The battle between the left and right in the US is ideological, with both sides arguing their principles are right.

I'm not sure if you're purposely evasive or just not following the question. We all understand you shouldn't abort a person. The question is when does a fetus become a person and why. Your previous answer directly implicated Roe v. Wade, which provided viability criteria for when abortions were permissible. However, that criteria has nothing to do with personhood, but has to do with State's rights versus maternal rights.

You've claimed that natural rights theory ought to guide us in all abortions decisions and you've criticized American Constitutional jurisprudence for its failure to adhere to natural rights theory, yet you rely upon that same criticized jurisprudence for your basis for allowing certain abortions.

This is to say: natural rights theory offers us no practical way of determining when abortion is acceptable, so we must fall back on Constitutional theory for an answer, which creates an internal inconsistency in your position.

You didn't answer. You never do. In fact, my last question enumerated questions with the request you provide enumerated responses. As anticipated, you didn't do that. What you did is repeat your dissertation on natural rights theory, offering no indication that you have any ability to defend it by responding to any question critical of it. Your defense is to just declare yourself an expert and state any criticism arises from ignorance. It's intellectual fraud.

Again, entirely unresponsive. Quoting long passages of some paper you wrote is a waste of space.

What you've not responded to is:
1. Why viability defines personhood under natural rights theory;
2. Why states should be given the right to decide when abortion is appropriate but not the federal government under natural law theory; and
3. How can you argue that rights can never be legitimately denied and still maintain a criminal justice system?

Enumerate your answers 1, 2, and 3 or instead admit you can't respond because you lack the intellectual discipline to organize your responses to the questions asked.

In accordance with the laws of nature and God, the child is still accorded natural rights. — ernestm

This begs the question entirely and it is unresponsive to the entirety of this discussion. The question is "what is a child"? You have argued a fetus is a child when it is viable, which is simply an adoption of the Roe v. Wade analysis. The bottom line, which I've argued all along, is that natural law does not define personhood. It simply affords certain rights to people, whoever they may be. For that reason, you cannot assert that natural law answers the question of when abortion is acceptable or not, except to say that it's not acceptable when the fetus is a person, but you have no idea what a person is. That is, natural law is not helpful in figuring out when to abort or not.

In accordance with the theory of natural law for a peaceful society, it cannot ever be the choice of a human being as to who should die. — ernestm

And yet this isn't true either. You may be personally opposed to the death penalty, but this simply does not follow from a natural right analysis. We have all sorts of natural rights aside from the right to live, including the right to liberty. Surely you're not suggesting that no person can every have their liberty restrained, as in being imprisoned, for a crime they've committed. The point being that rights can be denied after due process of law, including the right to live and the right to be free. That is, you can have all sorts of rights, but they can be denied. If you don't accept that, then you'll have to explain how you expect to restrain people who violate the rights of others.

That is the definition of it, that is the theory, and there's no amount of constitutional debate that makes any difference to it. — ernestm

Your shying away from Constitutional analysis isn't based on the fact that natural law trumps the Constitution, but it's based upon your woefully limited knowledge of the Constitution and prior Supreme Court rulings. That is, you don't want to argue the Constitution because you accept your inability to respond to the Supreme Court citations you'll receive when you offer a misinterpretation. At any rate, you need to explain why you dispense with Constitutional theory yet you adopt the Roe v. Wade viability analysis and try to tie it in to natural law, despite the fact that the Court never said that viability was chosen as the abortion criterion because it was faithful to natural law concepts.

Capitalism is essentially economic terrorism. — Bitter Crank

Putting a concise summary at the conclusion of your post was helpful. Thank you.

Therefore, once a fetus reaches the age of 21 weeks and 5 days, at which point it can live independent of the mother, it must be accorded natural rights. — ernestm

Natural rights theory doesn't mandate defining personhood at viability. Here you just adopt the Roe v. Wade reasoning. A fetus at the age cited has only about a 20% chance of survival by the way. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability&ved=0ahUKEwiuyOy8lZLTAhVFYiYKHWq0Ao4QFggcMAE&usg=AFQjCNHKM7UyjCNU3l1bMRAZ7CEc3ERzTw&sig2=XVx2DO16vVxU_ddy6YdK9Q

we are still arguing about who can own muskets to repress slave rebellions. — ernestm

Except we're not.

Personally I feel that children not conceived under free will would not be accorded the same rights to birth, but I understand there are those that feel differently. — ernestm

I thought that natural rights theory answered the question of who a person was and who should be afforded rights? Why do you now withdraw from your all encompassing theory and present your personal opinion, as if there is no answer?

in other cases I cannot see a clear justification, and again there are people who disagree with that. So it should not be federally mandated and should be under the control of the States, within the broad guideline that the right to an abortion should not be automatic, but be required to be justified under some cause of duress. — ernestm

What does federalism have to do with natural rights? Are you now suggesting that the 10th Amendment check against the federal government is a dictate of natural rights? I understand that you believe there are areas of disagreement regarding abortion and they should be submitted for democratic decision, but I don't follow why you think state legislatures are more principled than federal legislatures on this point.

You consistently do not respond to the substance of posts and use every opportunity, regardless of content, to drone on about your supposedly perfect understanding of natural rights. Have you noticed that?

The decision was wrong, if you understand Jefferson's theory of natural rights. — ernestm

The question being addressed was what the legal dispute centered around, not what you think it should center around. Your comment asserted what the debate was in fact over. My response was pointed out that it was in fact not.

Regardless, you current comment is incorrect for two reasons (at least). 1. The wrongness of Roe v. Wade is weighed by how correctly it interprets the Constitution, not by its fidelity to natural rights theory. It strikes me that you wish to impose natural law as some sacred rule of construction on the Constitution, and perhaps you even want to discard the text of the Constitution and simply infer what natural law might require. Regardless, that rule of construction is highly idiosyncratic (aka one you just sort of made up), and not one generally (aka not at all) accepted.

2. Natural law theory does not mandate any particular definition of "person." It's just as consistent with a natural law theory to accept that life begins at conception as it does to say it begins at viability or at birth.

Regardless, no one (that I am aware of) suggests that the abortion debate is just a tug of war of competing interests between two different people. That is, it's not like everyone admits the fetus is a person just like the mother, but mom has the right to kill her kid while unborn, but kid also has the right to live while unborn, so the grand compromise is to let mom have the right to kill her kid for 6 months but then give the kid the last 3 to live without fear of murder. And then to say that this result is somehow the consequence of natural law theory (to those few souls intelligent enough to understand it) is just to add an additional layer of nonsense to this discussion.

not quite right. The debate is over the woman's right to liberty over her unborn child's right to life. — ernestm

Exactly wrong. Roe v. Wade held specifically that the unborn child was not a person: "All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn."

That is, the unborn child is not a person and therefore has no rights at all.

As the Court stated with regard to third trimester abortions: "For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother."

That is, the State has the right to promote life in the third trimester by prohibiting abortion regardless of the wishes of the mother unless the mother's life or health is in jeopardy.

There are therefore two interests being weighed: (1) The mother's and (2) the State's. The fetus' rights are not weighed at all. The distinction is critical. If a particular state chose to allow 3rd trimester abortions to viable fetuses, it would not run afoul of the Constitution.

For example, there is the conflict between pro-life and pro-choice positions. Both sides believe their views necessarily true by intuition, but have reached totally opposing conclusions. — ernestm

I don't agree. From a legal perspective, the debate centers around the woman's right over her body versus the state's right to regulate. From a philosophical perspective, the debate most often centers around the concept of personhood and when the fetus gains inherent rights. Regardless, the abortion issue no more centers around intuition than any other issue.