When we refer to natural rights that are not recognized by the law, I think the only thing we're saying, for any practical purposes, is that they should be legal rights.

A few things to consider:

1) A law may exist but it may not be enforced. On the flip side, an action may be legal but there could still be dire consequences for performing it in a given society, e.g. how blacks in the American south had to conduct themselves towards white women during the Jim Crowe era.
2) Other organizations outside of the government often do enforce - and enforce strongly - e.g. the mafia, the KKK, hell's angels, etc. In some societies the police were either weak, ineffectual, or corrupt and turning to the mafia was your best bet at recourse.
3) The grievance could just be aimed towards an autocracy, and what we're really aiming towards here is regime change not a legal change. An autocrat may ignore the laws or change them at whim.

Enforcement is a human affair, it's not just a direct implementation of the law.

I don't accept that nature somehow manifests rights to which all are entitled.

I honestly don't know whether natural rights exist but the sake of the discussion I'm just running with it.

What you think are natural rights may be legal rights, or they may not. What you think are legal rights may be natural rights, or they may not. That's because they're different.

Yes, something could be a natural right but not recognized by law and therefore not enforced by any sort of governing body. It could still be enforced in other ways though and I think we'd both agree that there can very easily be consequences for something even if it isn't illegal. Police aren't the only ones who can mete out repercussions.

I feel like we've gotten sidetracked a little, here was what I was originally responding to:

I voted "no" because I don't think it appropriate to speak of "rights" that are unenforceable. or the violation of which is without recorse. There are legal rights, but there are no rights that should be legal rights, which, I think, is all that "natural rights" are (unless they're legal rights).

Enforceability is extremely important and when I hear about a natural right - say, right to life - being unenforceable it should cause one to immediately ask "how do we enforce this?" not "I'm not going to recognize these rights because presently we're not capable of enforcing them."

Inalienable/natural rights such as life and liberty are first - atleast in the Anglo-American tradition - recognized as such and then enshrined into law. I can't think of any natural rights that aren't recognized by law. Even if there were no laws whether something is enforceable or not is just a question of the social reality or practical politics at the time, i.e. whether you can garner support or arms etc.

Whether the right was recognized or enforced, or recourse granted, would depend on whether others choose to recognize them, or enforce them, or see that recourse is granted. They may, or may not. There isn't anything that requires them to make any particular choice.

Eh, a policeman is duty-bound to "serve and protect" and takes an oath swearing to uphold these norms. People in society don't just exist as free floating, independent entities that have complete freedom of choice in any given interaction. In healthy societies the police owe the public at least some level of protection or at least recourse.

Law provides a mechanism which identifies a right and provides for its protection or enforcement regardless of what others are inclined to do or not do, with the power of the state available to be imposed if necessary.

Right, but the actual enforcement part comes from an institution which has its own culture and set of norms. There's an initiation process for anyone who wants to enter that lifestyle and a deep history there and standards to uphold.

Even if we aren't entitled to anyone's enforcement or protection, we could still have a discussion about how to acquire that. I feel like we're missing the point with this talk about entitlement though; people could - and have - banded together as a common cause to rectify infringements on natural rights.

My question was with your original statement that it's not appropriate to speak of rights that were unenforceable which confused me a little. Enforcement is a human endeavor, and when I think of natural rights the first things that come to mind are right to life and right to not be maimed for no reason. Our entire police system exists to either prevent or - if not prevent, then at least provide recourse for theses crimes. Even if there was no police force you still have families and maybe tribes.

I don't understand this. Many natural rights just are legal rights across the globe and many natural rights are enforced by governments. Even if there was no government there could still be consequences for violating someone's natural rights whether they're in a legal, written document or not.

If we take the definition of "natural law" as "a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct," then I would see natural law as referencing an absolute standard necessary for all human beings.

What would your thoughts be if we broadened this standard a little and took the emphasis away from "unchanging moral principles" to more like "the source of morality or goodness as located in nature, i.e. something natural." I know you may very well have the same thoughts - that we need a creator, and that's a perfectly reasonable position. Maybe the creator could be Gaia or some "mind of nature" or something weaker.

While we can pretend that these moral laws are "self evident," clearly they're not because there's nothing specifically we point to to show what that evidence is.

I think there is an element of self-evidency even if it's not completely universal. Imagine if you lived in a close knit village and there was a terrible murder involving a home invader going into a neighbor's home and killing the family. Everybody would be horrified, with perhaps a few exceptions but I'd argue these people are missing something (analogous to how someone just might not recognize good music, perhaps.) In the case of the murder, the investigator and the policeman enter the home as the first responders and they see and grasp the wrongness first hand (you may take issue with this, but it seems at least like a reasonable start to me.)

It's only after this has happened that the philosopher comes in and reasons that the act was wrong because, e.g. it "failed to maximize happiness" or the murderer treated his victim "merely as a means" or something else that seems kind of ridiculous.

I've noticed that women can really get into the nitty gritty of it, but around my friends (late 20s-early 30s) we don't really talk about it. Come to think about it, it's been years since I've talked about it with male friends. Especially since a lot of them are married now, it's just not a great conversation topic. When we were in our early 20s it was much more prevalent but nobody cares now that you're having sex with someone or dating someone and it can be a faux pas in some situations. It sometimes seems weird to me when straight men turn the conversation sexual when the crowd is only other men.

tl;dr: it;s not the sex is inappropriate or offensive, it's that the actual social context of carrying on a discussion about sex can be kind of weird.

Very hard to believe that he meant that. He's been expressing frustration and disillusionment with the forum lately, so to me, it sounds like another fuck-this-place-ban-me kind of thing.

He was disillusioned with the forum because we weren't all praising his work and calling him the second coming of Russell or Wittgenstein, which he believed himself to be. Not the first time someone's used their intellect to (sort of) mask an inner rottenness. Honestly, I've been engaging with him for 6 months and while I've had deep philosophical disagreements with other members Pfhorrest was just in his own category of unbearableness.

I'm honestly thrilled about this one and I stopped engaging Pfhorrest ages ago because he is not at all a reasonable person. I could have seen from a mile away that @I like sushi providing him a reasonable, well thought out critique would have set him off like this. You do not criticize his baby. I just love how beforehand he was like 'hey why are we all here?' 'why is nobody providing responses to my work?' 'does anyone here actually like philosophy or is it only me?' Anyway, thank you moderators.

I'd honestly scrap the word 'confidence.' It's not about confidence. You're looking for a justification, and I'm no mathematician, but I'd look towards math if first and foremost if you're looking to ground your beliefs in something. There is such a thing as a mathematical equilibrium, and personally I make use of this when it comes to decision making in games.

If we frame the idea of 'absolute truth' or whatever in the context of something - say, a game - I think it becomes a little easier. The problem with this discussions is that we don't really particularize them and as a result everyone gets confused and it turns into a mess. If you were to actually particularize it and ask about, say, absolute truth or objectivity in the context of game strategy the discussion becomes a little more honed and insightful.

Fans of that old game enjoyed having some new game content to play, and some of those fans enjoyed creating such content themselves, and both of those subgroups of that fandom checked out and gave feedback on my project, and eventually a lot of us ended up collaborating and creating something far greater than I could have all by myself in a vacuum.

Yeah, that's a game. I wouldn't think it's a problem to find game testers or people who'd want to try out some mod, but reading and providing feedback on relatively dense philosophical papers is just a different ballgame. You know as well as I that good philosophy requires serious concentration, and with your work I know that I'd have to go through other parts of your system if I wanted to either critique or gain a better understanding of one part. People enjoy playing games; good philosophy is serious work.

But I still get the impression that most people here aren't interested in the same kind of big-picture philosophy-as-a-whole thing that my interest is all about.
— Pfhorrest
Your implication may be correct that this forum is not frequented primarily by academically-trained philosophers, but mostly by amateur & self-taught thinkers like me. Your interests, and I assume your training, are directed toward very abstruse & abstract topics. But many posters here use the forum to share gossip about politicians and viral pandemics, instead of pondering Liberty/Ethics/Justice, or the Viral Memes of Sophistry.

I think topics pertaining to ethics and liberty and justice do actually gain a lot of traction. The thing is - and this isn't targeted towards you - but philosophers aren't laying out entire systems anymore that aim to cover basically all topics. Philosophy - at least academic philosophy - is very concentrated. I think if you really want someone serious to go through your manifesto you're probably need to pay an expert philosopher for it. Even people with degrees in philosophy aren't going to take time out of their own day to read through pages of technical material and write up critiques.

There's a few posters here who I like hearing from. There's also a few posters who are likely/possibly educated philosophers who hold PhDs or an MA in the field and I like hearing their input. There's definitely some very intelligent people on this forum regardless of whether they hold advanced degrees or not. I also like that there's sometimes drama. When 90 day fiancee starts to slow I can always come here.

A lot of our "disagreement" comes down to how you describe actions or individuals. It's like we both see a beautiful garden and I say "think of the billions of insects which have died in here and the flowers which were forced to grow by the laws of nature."
— BitconnectCarlos

Yes, there is that too. Accepting it or not.

I think the idea of the laws of nature is an interesting comparison here. Lets say I took the position that if X is subject the laws of nature then it's better off not existing. Just curious, would you personally agree with this? Lets say I argue that the laws of nature impede on the autonomy of the being and probably involve some inevitable degree of suffering. Why do you confine your position only to humans? I wouldn't be surprised if chimpanzees and other forms of primates have some rudimentary society/"public face" that they need to put on.

It's not angry or not angry. It's "is" this the state of affairs or not?

Our "disagreement" is with the attitude more than it is with the facts. You seemingly really, really don't like the system of production & consumption that exists within any society.... to the point where you seemingly want to stop people from being born. I don't know what to say to that.

First off, the goal is to align people with production and consumption.

I could challenge you on whether society actually has a goal. I fully accept that economics plays a large part in life, but to say that THE single goal of society is production and consumption is taking things a little far IMO. People have goals. Communities might have goals. A culture could certainly have a goal. A religion could have a goal - these goals are found in authoritative documents. As far as I know there are no authoratitive documents concerning western society, which is already extremely broad. Sure we have laws... but in terms of day-to-day life? Let me know here if I'm missing something.

they have been inculcated so as to be a laborer in it- keeping a third-party entity going and developing attitudes to best do this

Have you ever considered that someone finding a job they love could lead to the fulfillment of the human being? Why do you describe someone loving their work as just them being inculcated by society instead of fulfilling some form of self actualization? My brother for instance has his own small business. He's his own boss, and he makes objects out of clay on a pottery wheel. He likes what he does. Apparently by your description though he's just a mindless worker bee who's been inculcated by the system into liking his work. Clearly he doesn't have any agency.

A lot of our "disagreement" comes down to how you describe actions or individuals. It's like we both see a beautiful garden and I say "think of the billions of insects which have died in here and the flowers which were forced to grow by the laws of nature."

Ad hom and you haven't paid attention to my arguments.

I have paid attention to your arguments I just don't think our "disagreement" is over anything factual....it just seems to be over attitude which I wouldn't call a real disagreement. If I'm angry over some state of affairs and you're not are we really in a genuine, philosophical argument? It's not an ad hom either but I don't want to get sidetracked.

It cannot be avoided, and it certainly should give pause to know you will be creating a new individual to simply be used as such for labor and production and perpetuating consumption, production, repeat.

Oh, the terror....a child will probably have to get a job someday. He will be targeted with advertisements and treated like a mere consumers by society! Lets ensure that he never gets born.

Your doing crossword puzzles, reading that novel, taking that vacation, going to bars and restaurants, going to that concert, travelling the world are all just ways to distract and blow of steam (and are just elaborate forms of consumption)

Some people like their jobs and this is too broad in any case and doesn't account for every single human on Earth. You think someone who's financially independent and has retired needs to constantly blow off steam? How about the people who actually like their jobs? You portray humanity like everybody is a miserable worker bee. Plenty of people don't need to blow off steam.

We are here to produce, consume, blow off steam (which amounts to more production and consumption), and repeat.

Well, that's just like, your description, man. I say we are here to find love, have religious/transcendental experiences and find connection.

And then I would just say, what's the point of science and technology in and of itself? Because you like reading about it and discussing it on a forum?

Among others, because it can help with diseases and disabilities. I have a feeling if you had chronic pain or some other disability - not always one involving pain - lets say tourettes - you would find research on this front meaningful. A cure could revolutionize your life.

And I've answered this type of argument before too:

Are we really even having an argument? You basically just have a jaded attitude which you justify to yourself on a cognitive level with the idea that "well, everyone's done this stuff nothing is novel...." You act like you've already done everything a billion times. Have you ever even had an experience that you considered meaningful?

Even if you were convinced you were right on this one, why do you care enough to spread your ideas? Isn't it just repeating the cycle?

Procreating a new person is simply feeding more people to the round-and-round socio-political-economic system.

So that's all it's doing? We're just feeding more people to be ground up by the machine called society?
Because that's the whole of human experience, right?

Go on an international trip. Go explore some ancient ruins. Go take some mushrooms in the woods somewhere. Go to a rave. Go take a jog on a beautiful day in a beautiful park. Fall in love.

I implied that your example of "goals" actually might fit under the social control factors that lead to certain outcomes.. mainly production and consumption.

Sure, I can accept that increased production and consumption is the upshot of these "social controls" or "social goals"... whichever one we want to call them. I think another upshot would probably be the happiness of the individual. I wouldn't be surprised if people with stable jobs and a partner + kids had better mental health than single, unemployed individuals. I think to view the upshot only in terms of economics is basically what Marx did.

So that would be a straw man you are building to assume that is the case. Suffering certainly is the core of the argument, but it doesn't just end there.

I'm not really arguing with the explicit intention of discrediting antinatalism. I engaged this thread to talk about society, not antinatalism. I think I've already talked about antinatalism with you anyway. Earlier I think you accused me engaging in bad faith and you would be right in one sense - I would be engaging in bad faith if I explicitly sought to argue with you on antinatalism, which I have no intention of changing stances on. Don't waste your time with me here if your intention is to change minds. I would engage you on society/social issues which I'm a little more open to and of course other topics. Regardless, the point of discourse isn't just to change minds; It can also be to flush out ideas and see if we can poke holes in some. I usually don't engage people with the explicit intention of changing their mind. I want to see if my ideas have problems or if maybe they have an interesting take on something that I can incorporate into my own ideas or explore further. I think that's much more productive.

Right now, I wouldn't really consider antinatalism one of my candidate ideas. I don't think my refusal to seriously engage this subject makes me a "bad guy" or "close minded" either. If it does, then if I were to engage you on any given topic you'd be required to be open to changing your mind about it which I think is practical absurdity. Nobody should be seriously open to changing their mind about literally everything.

Why be cosponsors of this kind of absurd perpetuation at the cost of making a new sufferer (a person who can experience suffering) in the first place?

As mentioned, I don't really feel like getting into a discussion about antinatalism. Do you have anything to add concerning my answers to your questions on society?

This means we indeed want more people to keep the system going. But this is just a vicious absurdity of perpetuation. Keep it going to keep it going to keep it going.. Who cares if people suffer and have negative experiences in the process.

I think suffering is just baked into the human condition. We could have the perfect society - whatever that might mean - and we'd still have suffering. Regardless of how society works, people die, people get sick, there's disability, there's injury, pain, mental illness, you name it. Suffering is part and parcel of the human condition.

And you can think "well, we ought to strive to eliminate all suffering and since I guess suffering is just part of the human condition then I guess we need to eliminate humans" but this is dogmatic thinking, in my opinion. While most humans generally strive to eliminate suffering - it does seem to be a common moral intuition - taking the elimination of suffering as the sole moral standard to me just seems arbitrary and dogmatic. It seems more sensible to me to say that it's one value among many. There are even lines of thinking that take a more lackadaisical attitude towards the subject of suffering. If that was the sole goal of morality couldn't we just go around painless executing people who were suffering?

Ok, so what else do you think are the goals of the society?

If we're talking what I'd consider mainstream American society - and keep in mind America is extremely diverse - I would have to say the main messages are graduate high school, find a stable job, and get married/have kids. I should mention that these are largely middle class values. The poor and the rich are sort of in their own little worlds.

2) What are the social controls in place to make this happen?

Keeping up with the Jones', for one (the natural human tendency to compete.) Also the pressure to not disappoint your parents or friends. At least those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head although there are probably more.

3) Are society's goals at odds with the interests/rights of the individual?

They may be or they may not be. It's iffy in my mind to talk about the individual's struggle with some abstract "western society." It makes much more sense to me to talk about an individual's struggle with an actual existing community. Some small towns in the US are known for being more close minded or rigid than others. Towns and communities call certainly impress values on individuals, and I think that deserves more attention than an abstraction we can western society. Personally, I've lived in rural Texas and consumerism/commercialism you tend to be stressing just isn't that present there. The pressures are different.

Education, the market system itself, marketing, the government, attitudes of the working/middle class, media, and almost everything can provide evidence. If you need me to pull articles to see this, then you definitely are arguing from bad faith.

Lets examine two claims here:

"Western society is largely concerned with wealth, production, and consumption." - Ok. I think most people would find this reasonable. Note that this is true in other cultures as well.

"All services in western culture are ultimately concerned with making people better producers and consumers above all else whether the service providers recognize this or not." - This claim takes one facet of life (production & consumption) and elevates it above all the rest. That's why I cited my sex example. I wasn't intending on actually arguing it, I was citing it as a parallel to this type of claim.

Similarly, drinking 8 beers may be due to thinking you will get plastered and have a good time, but it functions to blow off steam so you can get back to work and produce and consume your daily living items.

I feel like you're just viewing everything through this one lens. I could be equally dogmatic and say "the real function is to get you loosened up so you can have a better shot at having sex and procreating." There have been theorists who view everything through the lens of sex.

But most importantly, sex can lead to procreation which means making more people who can produce and consume.

I could say that people go out and get wealth and consume to heighten their sexual prospects even if they don't realize it. See, once I start making claims about things which aren't really provable it becomes difficult to have a discussion or an argument with me.

So part of my premise is occupations like pastors and therapists are Western society's way of making people well-adjusted (or feel meaning enough) to keep producing and consuming.

I don't know how I would be able to disprove this statement if I were to try to attack it. There are plenty of therapists and religious leaders who are not materialistic. I think if you were to ask these professions in a survey whether their goal was ultimately to produce better consumers and producers the overwhelming majority would say no. But then you could just say "well it's still true, but they don't recognize it."

I can accept that economics and wealth plays a very significant role in our society. But so does sex. So does physical appearance.

Anyways, the question was, what is society trying to do here? Our goal as a society is to increase production and consumption. Thus, when we are born into the world, we are not just here to "pursue happiness" or any other self-interested act really. As far as the public is concerned, it is how much production and consumption we can provide. Not having children will prevent them from contributing to this goal of being laborers and consumers.

Maybe if you asked a businessman that would be what he says is the goal of society. If you asked a pastor or some other religious leader he'd probably give a different answer if you asked him about our social goals. If you asked a therapist or mental health expert he'd probably frame the issue in his own way.

Yes, if you have children they'll be subject to people's expectations.

It's still your choice. Yes,this is all social control. Society rewards what it wants out of the individual.

...I guess it depends how you define social control. If someone provides a service for a paycheck and that paycheck allows the one who provides the service to put food on the table and a roof over his head then I'd be more inclined to call that providing basic necessities. If you want to call it social control fine, but then I guess everything is social control.

So what are we trying to do here?

Could you clarify what you're asking?

But then there is humans. You can choose to leave work in the middle of the day and never come back. You can choose to do any number of things. You are radically free (as the existentialists might say) to do any choice you want. Yet we choose to do what we do.

Now these choices do not come from out of nowhere. We decide to keep working because we are enculturated through social controls and internalizing values from society. We think it will look bad. We lose status. We can't find other ways to survive.

I cannot just leave work in the middle of the day and never come back. I would be AWOL and subject to arrest. Other people would lose their paychecks and means of buying food or their ability to save. If you lose your job many people wouldn't be able to afford groceries or daycare or car insurance etc.

If you're at a point where you actually have that independence you need to ask yourself "what do you really want to do?" It's not always clear, and it's different for different people so I don't really prescribe. My dad is one example of that type of person - he has his own small business and he could retire and stop working but then he'd be kind of lost. He actually likes what he does and it keeps him occupied. I'm certainly not going to tell him that he needs to stop. His work has become a part of him, and I think that's fine.

The reality exists and the teacher passes it down.
— BitconnectCarlos
No. The future does not exist as reality but as possibility. Sartre called it the nothingness that is within being. It is beautiful.

I wasn't talking about potential futures here in terms of exploring potential variations. I was talking about an evaluation of the actual position (i.e. evaluating the board as it is.) This is a crucial skill because even if you have deep foresight into potential variations if you can't evaluate the position afterwards it's kind of useless. A layman and an expert will evaluate a position differently. Chess teaching is often the expert helping the layman grasp a higher version of that reality (what's really going on on the board.)

I'm not trying to say that.
First of all, you have too much confidence in the absolute exactitude of chess computers. The possibilities for the development of the Sicilian Defense are endless. At one point in the '85 confrontation between Karpov and Kasparov the Whites played Bg2. Experts disagree as to whether this was a basic error or why. Neither do the chess computers. Therefore, if the best solution exists it is not in anyone's brain, artificial or otherwise. We have two options: whether it exists as a mere possibility of a current set of conditions of a conventional symbolic system or it exists in another world.

I wasn't talking about chess computers being able to solve perfectly for every position on the board. I'm not saying that there's an objectively best first move or best move in every position. I was simply saying that the patterns and geometry inhere within the game whether they are recognized or not.

Imagine this: A universe where no one understands the 4 move checkmate. White gets the first 3 move sequence a billion times, but he never grasps that he can take on f7 and the game is over. The solution doesn't exist in anyone's mind and therefore.... doesn't exist? But the second someone does grasp it he hasn't discovered a pre-existing possibility (because discovery implies that it was there all along)... he has made it a truth because he, the subject, has grasped it. That's how I would view something to be a 'subjective truth.' It would make sense if I were to ask you what your favorite color or food was.... not about something concerning an external reality like a chessboard.

We have two options: whether it exists as a mere possibility of a current set of conditions of a conventional symbolic system or it exists in another world.

A move sequence can certainly exist as a possibility. These possibilities can be evaluated and a solution can be found. It's easier in some cases than others.

Don't forget the notion of evaluating a position just as it is. A certain position can exist on a board and it is likely experts and laymen will view it differently. It's up to the experts to provide a greater understanding; that's basically chess teaching in a nutshell. The reality exists and the teacher passes it down.

What kind of objectivity are you talking about? You seem to believe that even if humanity, the planet, the galaxy and the known universe disappeared, the Sicilian Defence would still exist. Is that so? In what kind of reality?

That's not what I'm saying. The sicilian defense is the sicilian defense merely by convention. It's just what we call 1.e4 followed by black playing c5. You could call that opening any number of things. Naming that the sicilian defense only helps us talk about chess/a common opening.

I'm saying patterns and geometry inhere in the game. It doesn't matter if the players don't see it - it's still there. There was certainly a time when players just didn't grasp certain patterns but now that certain players (minds) do grasp them we'd say that these patterns were discovered, not invented. In other words, they didn't just spring into existence when they were first consciously grasped.

That's basically what I mean by "objective." If you want to argue that everything is mind-dependent and ultimately dependent on some type of universal mind that grounds all existence that's fine with me and your view is credible to me.

Really? What is better? For some 'better' is winning in the shortest amount of moves possible. For others 'better' is the ingenuity of play. If you mean 'better' as simply winning the game, then isn't that merely the performance of a logic that is fundamentally a subjective framework? Winning a game invented by humans; whereby the semantics and rules are collectively agreed upon, acting as a kind of subjective constraint.

"Better" is about winning games. If I ask you who is the better tennis player - you or Roger Federer I feel like there wouldn't be this kind of confusion.

I'd like to keep the focus on chess strategy. I know the rules were invented and sometimes even changed over time. But when we talk about chess we're not talking about chess as it was played in the 1500s. I shouldn't have to specify that.

There are better and worse strategies - in other words, strategies more apt to win games and strategies that perform poorly towards this end. This can be demonstrated repeatedly in real life to point where no one even argues it anymore.

Also keep in mind that "invented" doesn't mean "subjective." The English language was invented and evolved over time, but if it were truly subjective then I could use it or write it however I wanted and it would be fine but that's not the case. For something to be subjective the truth resides 'in the subject' which is not true for the English language or chess strategy.

I would say that strict objectivity is possible. An example would be chess strategies, or even just strategy in general. No one argues that humans are better players than computers nowadays; computers just have the better strategies and this has been demonstrated repeatedly to the point where it's no longer even an argument.

I'm aware that chess is a construction, or, in other words, an invention. Yet the strategies within chess are objective - they exist regardless of whether a mind grasps them or not. The physical component of chess isn't relevant either: Chess can be played without a physical board and without physical pieces. In a nutshell, chess or war or poker maybe "constructions" or "inventions" but the strategies utilized within these frameworks can either be better or worse and this is not a matter of subjective opinion.

For example, when discussing physics, we're not interested in simply defining what "work" or "heat" mean out in space, so to speak. Likewise, we keep our "gut feelings" and "personal" semantics out of terms like being, mind, nature, universe, reference, event, meaning, etc.

Yeah, different fields use specialized, technical language. The difference is these terms are often heuristics (in other words, they're more just useful concepts for helping us understand other concepts as opposed to a statement about the nature of ultimate reality) or they're just little unique quirks within the field (in the military we use all sorts of weird language but again, no one takes it to be a reflection of ultimate reality.)

The difference in a nutshell is that philosophy often claims to be a reflection of ultimate reality - and when you use words like "mind" you're already seemingly presupposing non-physicalism (you could have just used "brain" which everyone understands) and you're invoking a concept that I don't even know how to approach that is your way of making a claim about ultimate reality - it's a little tyrannical, if you think about it. Definitions in themselves can be a little tyrannical it often comes down the nature of these definitions - i.e. whether one claims they are a facet of ultimate reality or not.

There's got to be some answers to deal with the underlying, long-term issues. The crisis right now is certainly overshadowed by the many cases/deaths occurring. But when this is all done, is ANYTHING going to change regarding how these diseases start in the first place? Certainly, it is great to have better emergency action if a contagion spreads, but how about preventing as much as possible the origins of the contagion?

I don't think we know how to just prevent viruses in the first place. Honestly, the bulk of my knowledge from this subject comes from this two minute video on the origins of the virus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clNkJGqTIJo

I don't work in healthcare and I'm not going to pretend to be a medical expert. It looks like we could approach this from two angles: Either speeding up the approval/creation process for new vaccines or from curtailing human-animal contact. I suppose we could take steps to regulate human-animal contact but realistically we're talking about people's livelihoods and pets here.

I think trade embargoes and such can be enforced perhaps? Shut down wet markets or higher tariffs? Or, perhaps UN third-party sources monitor the monitoring of the trade. Guidelines and enforcement could be overviewed.

Sure, we could do a trade embargo in protest of a cultural practice. I think that's fine. In the case of China the disease arouse from wet markets and the some of the animals being used there. In any case sanitation has always been a problem and it's not clear how to fix that. Sure we can talk about regulation, but we're talking about countless of these markets all across the world in both rural and urban areas. I don't think we can just shut down wet markets because that's how millions of people earn their living.

I think it's a pitfall of globalization; what at one point would have been a localized health threat is now a global pandemic.

1) Is it right to ask another culture to change its practices, when those practices affect the health of the whole world, or would this be just cultural insensitivity played out as public health missionizing?

It's fine to criticize cultural practices even if the harm were only to be localized to that culture or society.

It's not just about having the idea though; it's about our actual ability to implement it. Sure, we can tell the Chinese to stop eating bats. Maybe the CCP is even on board with the idea, but how does this then filter down to municipal governments? How strict will enforcement be? What is the history of this cultural practice in China and how deeply is in entrenched? Didn't another epidemic originate from a pig?

It's more fruitful to take the focus away from whether something is okay in the abstract to instead ask "how is this issue best addressed in a way that can keep intact the pride and dignity of the culture we're asking the change from and how is it best approached?" and this is just speaking to cultural criticism in general.

________ is the opposite of pragmatic, but not in a pejorative way, just a way that means something like analytic/abstract/idealistic?

("Theoretic" occurs to me, but elsewhere I pair that with "Strategic", so I don't want to reuse that here too).

Personally, I would use theoretic as an opposite of pragmatic. I would never pair theoretic and strategic as opposites. The opposite of strategic would be, if I had to think of something, unthinking or reflexive (meaning - acting on reflexes) or short-term thinking or impulsive maybe. Honestly, I know it's boring, but unstrategic or poorly thought out work well here.

Good strategy often involves months and months of theoretical planning - take military plans.

My question remains: How can you enjoy with the repulsive passages of a great writer?

Because he's a really good writer. I'll tell you what I enjoy most about him: He's able to flush out different ideologies/viewpoints through certain characters in a thoroughly honest sense. Other writers try to do this but it just ends up being propaganda. What I really like about D is that I never felt like he came in with a set conclusion in mind and he wasn't trying to push an ideology on the viewer; instead he just lets the characters interact with the world in their own unique, but honest way (in that it's true to their nature/beliefs.) I'm talking about the Brothers Karamazov here.

Speaking of Dostoevsky, the "abstract system" that claims to have an exact answer for "everything in this world" is science.

In Notes from Underground the main character - who is not Dostoyevsky, it is kind of a crazy existentialist shut-in - rants against this type of thing and I generally took it to be rationalism - not science. He also certainly has in mind certain utopian political systems.

Do not confuse Dostoyevsky with the narrator in Notes from Underground. He is, again, flushing out a viewpoint like he does with his other characters.