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It's been a couple years since I did one of these, and with the uncertain future of the site there is unlikely to be another from me... Might as well do one last one for old times sake.
So, ask me anything!
My previous ones may be found at:
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Personal
Kagan got back to me. The questions I sent are in bold, followed by Kagan's reponses in plaintext.
1. What is your favorite color?
Alas! I do not have a favorite color.
2. What are the strongest arguments against the existence of a soul? Does general anesthetic prove that there is no soul and show that consciousness is solely dependent on the functioning of the brain?
Let's suppose that to believe in a soul is to believe that there is something nonphysical about us, something that is distinct from our physical bodies, something that thinks and decides, and feels and so on. The central argument against believing in the existence of a soul, I think, is that there is no compelling argument for believing in a soul! That is, the burden of proof, I think, falls in this case on someone who thinks that we should believe in such a thing. We don't normally go around positing things without good reason, so is there a good reason to believe in a soul? If not, then we should tentatively conclude there is no such thing. To be sure, there could be an argument for souls. It would be a different matter, for example, if we needed to posit a soul to explain something that we all agree needs explaining. (This is like positing atoms which we cannot see, so as to explain chemical reactions, and so on, which we can see.) And there are arguments that have been offered along these lines by various people. But I think the proposals are not convincing (we can explain the phenomena in question as well, or better, in strictly physical terms). And in the absence of good reason to posit the soul, we shouldn't do so. (This is the same sort of thing as saying that while there could be Martians, we have no good reason to believe in them, so shouldn't posit them until we have compelling reason to do so.)
Some think that explaining consciousness requires positing a soul. And I suppose I would agree that physicalists (who think we are merely physical beings) don't yet have an adequate account of consciousness (the fact that our mental life has a subjective qualitiave aspect, e.g., the ability to feel pain). But it isn't as though soul theorists have an alternative account either! Merely saying, "souls explain consciousness" isn't really offering any kind of explanation. So I don't think consciousness gives us a convincing reason to posit souls.
At the same time, I don't think that things like the fact that anesthetic can cause us to lose consciousness give us reason to deny the existence of a soul either! Dualists (people who posit nonphysical souls as well as physical bodies) have almost always been "interactionists," holding that the body and the soul interact with each other and can cause changes in the other. Thus, for example, they think that my soul can cause my body to do things (like type these words), and that my body can cause my soul to experience things (like seeing the tree outside my window). So the fact that anesthetic can cause the person to fall asleep won't trouble most dualists. They always thought there could be interactions of body and soul like this.
3. Do you believe that the p-zombie thought experiment has any plausibility to it? If so, then what separates a zombie from a non-zombie is metaphysical, since both have the same bodily equipment that, to our knowledge, enables consciousness, yet one lacks a "true first person perspective" anyway. If you and I are beings who exist on a metaphysical plane, then how is this distinguishable from having a soul?
I am guessing by a "p-zombie" you have in mind something that looks and acts just like us, but has no mental life, in the sense that it has no "consciousness"--feels no pain, doesn't experience the color blue, and so on. Most discussions of this sort of creature assume that they have beliefs and desires, just that it doesn't feel like anything "on the inside" to BE such a creature. (Why the name "p-zombie"? I am guessing this is meant to be short for what sometimes gets called a philosophical zombie, to distinguish it from the kinds of zombies shown in horror movies!) Can we imagine such things? Well, it sure seems so. (Although things immediately get tricky, because we aren't always imagining what we think we are imagining. So are we REALLY imagining such zombies, or just thinking we are?) I take it that we can do something that we think is imagining a body that behaves just like our bodies do (speaks, acts, etc.) but has no inner conscious mental life . That is, it feels no pain, and so on, though it behaves like us: it avoids flames and sharp objects, it knows that such things are dangerous and harmful, and it and will SAY that they are painful, and so on. If this is indeed what you mean by a p-zombie, then I think we can imagine such things existing (in some possible world or the other). The harder question is what follows from this mere conceptual possibility, the apparent ability of our mind to imagine such creatures, to conclusions about what is actually logically possible, and what is metaphysically possible, and what is physically possible, and so on. David Chalmers, who most famously argued on the basis of such thought experiments, thinks that we can derive all sorts of surprising conclusions from the intelligibility of such cases. I disagree, though getting into the details is beyond the scope of a short answer like this.
Of course, I do think the following: since I think WE are conscious, I take it that anything that has the VERY same physical components as we do, living in a world with the same laws of physics (and chemistry, and biology, and so on) as we do, WILL be conscious. But for my money, I don't see how this shows anything about the existence of a soul. (Neither did Chalmers.) It just shows that in a world where the laws of nature are the same as the ones in our world, physical things like us will be conscious. But I don't see any argument for a soul here. This might just be a fact about what physical things of a certain sort are like in a world with laws of nature like ours.
4. Do you believe that it is possible for there to be a universal set of ethics, a right and wrong without god existing, and if so, what would do you think it might look like?
I do think it possible for there to be a universal set of ethical rules, objectively true, valid for everyone, and so on, even if there is no God. I argued for this in a conversation I had once with William Lane Craig (who claimed that morality requires God), which can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm2wShHJ2iA I suppose this is another case where I would put the burden of proof on someone else. In particular, on someone (like Craig) who thought that we need God to have morality. I can't see why we should believe this. After all, one can have a reason to move one's hand from a hot stove, even if there is no God to make that true, right? But then, why can't we also have a reason to help someone ELSE move THEIR hand from a hot stove, even if there is no God? Obviously, a quick remark like this can't show very much, so someone who wants to hear me spell out the idea a bit more fully can check out the discussion I had with William Lane Craig. But my own view is that morality does NOT require the existence of God.
Of course, beyond this, there are any number of other worries one might have about the very possibility of an objective morality. I actually don't think the worry about God being required for morality (so what if there is no god?) is the most pressing. I discuss a number of other such worries in a book I published last fall, called Answering Moral Skepticism. One might wonder about what moral facts would look like, and how they could fit into a scientific world view, and whether belief in evolution gives us reason to be skeptical about our moral intuitions, and doesn't the extent of moral disagreement give us reason to be skeptical, and so on, and so forth. It took a book to state and respond to those worries, so sadly I don't have the time to try to lay out these arguments here.
As to what specific moral views I believe in, broadly speaking I accept what gets called a "consequentialist" morality, according to which the morally right act is a matter of bringing about the best possible outcome you can --roughly speaking, making people as happy as possible, and avoiding hurting them (counting everyone equally, indeed counting animals too). Of course there are a lot of details that need to get worked out, but that's the basic idea. However, I hope it is clear that one can accept quite different moral views from this consequentialist one, while still agreeing with me that morality doesn't require the existence of God. One could, for example, be a "deontologist" --thinking that some acts are wrong even though the results are good overall--that other features of actions are morally relevant besides the consequences of those actions--and still think that morality doesn't require the existence of God.
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Philosophy
Shelly Kagan is a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is best known for his writings about moral philosophy and normative ethics. In 2007, Kagan's course about death was offered for free online. This led to him publishing a book on the subject in 2012. Kagan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. His lectures on death can be found here.
Kagan has generously offered to answer questions and to have his answers displayed publicly. Please be considerate and try not to ask surface-level questions that could be answered with a single google search.
I will stop accepting responses in 48 hours on April 30, 2024 at 5:20pm CST. When Kagan responds, I will post a follow-up thread with his answers.
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Philosophy
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and an anarcho-capitalist. He is the author of more than eighty academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy. Most notably, Huemer has written a paper on immigration in which he argues that states are not ethically justified in preventing foreigners from entering their borders and a paper on gun rights in which he argues that gun ownership is a prima facie right that ought not be infringed on by a simple utilitarian calculus. Huemer has also written almost a dozen books.
Dr. Huemer has generously offered to answer questions and to have his answers displayed publicly. Please be considerate and try not to ask surface-level questions that could be answered with a single google search.
I will stop accepting responses in 48 hours on April 10, 2024 at 8:40pm CST. When Huemer responds, I will post a follow-up thread with his answers.
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Politics
Huemer got back to me. The questions I sent are in bold, followed by Huemer's reponses in plaintext.
1. In many common conceptions of an anarcho-capitalist society, people can act collectively if they choose to do so. They can create a community and agree on rules. They can pass that land to their kids under the condition that their kids follow those same rules. What is the difference between doing that on a micro-scale with a neighborhood and just at a nation-state level?
I am unsure what you mean by "the difference". Is the question about important differences between HOA's and governments?
HOA's are a real phenomenon, which has actually arisen voluntarily. Nation-sized HOA's, however, have not voluntarily arisen, nor is there any plausible way that that would happen. So that is one difference between HOA's and national governments.
Another interesting difference is that real HOA's face meaningful competition. If a person does not like the rules of one HOA, it is very easy to avoid that HOA and live in another neighborhood or housing complex. This does not require leaving behind one's family, friends, job, and culture; learning a new language; or getting the permission of some other nation-state. This makes competition among HOAs much more meaningful than competition among national governments.
I am not sure, but I think the question may have been suggesting that the people in one generation can create rules that restrict the use of their land for all future generations. I think this is not legitimate. I think any future generation would be free to alter the rules of the HOA or even to abolish the HOA, and earlier generations cannot do anything to prevent this.
2. What should (not does but should) stop individuals from committing crimes?
Every individual should voluntarily respect the rights of others due to their understanding of morality. However, if (as is the case in all known societies) some individuals refuse to respect the rights of others, then someone else (such as private protection agencies) should deploy force to stop the rights-violators.
3. If someone got sick from a meal or beverage, as it had different ingredients from what was displayed in the packaging, how (other than virtue signaling and boycotting) could they achieve retribution and deter companies from continuing this practice?
The individual could bring a lawsuit against the manufacturer. The plaintiff and the defendant would go to one of the private arbitration firms to have their dispute resolved. The private justice system is described at greater length in chapter 11 of The Problem of Political Authority, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1137281650/.
However, in real capitalist societies, lawsuits over product disputes are very rare, because companies almost always resolve customer complaints satisfactorily without a lawsuit (also because lawsuits in the current system are extremely expensive). I have virtually never had a company refuse to fix a problem. Indeed, empirically, companies bend over backwards to accommodate even unreasonable customer demands.
This particular scenario is also particularly improbable. Companies do not generally poison their customers. No business plan starts with, "Step 1: Feed our customers stuff that makes them vomit..."
4. Any given community would presumably have disputes with other communities, not only with lowlife criminals and small terrorist groups. So you'd need a standing army to defend your community, unless you first eradicated war entirely, which somehow sounds far more implausible than even anancap. Now then, having standing armies around, or else be occupied by the standing armies of other communities, what is going to prevent them from ending the anarchy by pulling out a little something called a military coup for their own benefit?
I have never had a dispute with another community. I have lived in several different neighborhoods in my life. None of them has ever had a dispute with another neighborhood. I am not sure what sort of dispute this question is imagining. However, if your HOA somehow has a dispute with another HOA, they would resolve that by going to arbitration, just as in the case of any other dispute. They would not raise an army and declare a war. If my HOA board somehow gets filled with crazy people and declares that we're going to attack the condominium building across the street, I am not joining that war. And neither, I believe, will any of my neighbors.
5. What are your thoughts on the brain drain that occurs by America stealing all of the brightest minds out of 3rd world locations? For example, if Javier Milie and his supporters had immigrated to the United States, they would currently not be in Argentina fixing their society.
Human beings own their own brains, and they have their own lives to live. They are not resources at the disposal of other people. You can't force someone to live somewhere they don't want to be just so that the people there can extract value from them. That's a form of slavery.
It's also extremely harmful to the world. If Sergei Brin had been forced to spend his life in Russia, Google would not exist. He would not have somehow overthrown Putin and converted Russia into a liberal, capitalist democracy; his life would just have been wasted. Of course, Brin is an outlier in terms of talent. But the qualitative point applies widely: the overwhelming majority of people can realize their potential vastly better in a society such as the U.S. than they can in a Third World nation. In some cases, the amount of value one can produce may be thousands of times greater.
6. How do asymmetric regimes affect the immigration issue? For example, the WTO makes free trade largely reciprocal and limits the scope of trade wars between member states. But there's no agreement of this kind for immigration. If Country A restricts the flow of migrants from Country B, is it acceptable for Country B to have an equivalent policy toward citizens of Country A?
If you learn that one of your neighbors recently beat up one of the neighborhood kids, is it okay for you to beat up another kid, in order to achieve symmetry? No; two wrongs don't make a right. If country A commits a rights-violation, this is not fixed by country B committing another rights violation against someone else.
In reality, immigration pressure between pairs of countries is mostly one-directional. It barely matters if Mexico prohibits Americans from migrating to Mexico, because hardly anyone would want to do so. It's still a rights-violation, but a relatively small one.
Taking into account, in addition, that immigration benefits the receiving country, the question is a little bit like: "If my neighbor shoots himself in the foot, should I shoot myself in the foot too?"
7. In regards to laws regarding immigration, there's been talks I've heard of a wall around the borders to strengthen that security just like having a fence up around perhaps your residential property in the name of security, why does this not suffice as an ethical justification?
Anyone may put a fence around their own property. But they may not put a fence around other people's property. Donald Trump doesn't own America, nor do the 535 clowns in Congress, nor does the government. So they may not put a fence around it. In general, you can choose not to interact with some group of people if you don't want to, but you cannot declare that no one else in your society may do so.
It seems, by the way, that many people are unaware that there is already fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, across all of the likely crossing points. That was built during the Bush administration, long ago.
8. Since 2019, literally all employment growth has gone to immigrants. Is this evidence that immigration reduces employment and saturates the US economy?
Oh no! Immigrants are doing productive work to support themselves? At the same time, more native-born Americans are sitting around in their parents' basements watching porn? Clearly this shows how diabolical the immigrants are.
In seriousness, no, there is no phenomenon of "saturating" an economy. There isn't a maximum amount of work that can be done; the amount of work increases with the population. That's why, when the population doubles, you don't wind up with 50% unemployment.
Concerns about employment are particularly misplaced at a time (like now) when the unemployment rate is within half a point of the lowest it has been in the last 70 years.
Granted, the people who just decided that they don't want to work aren't included (you have to be seeking work to count as "unemployed"). But if Americans don't want to work, that's hardly the fault of immigrants.
9. The universe: chance or purpose?
No one knows why the universe is here or why the Big Bang happened. If it has a purpose, that purpose isn't apparent (it doesn't act as if it has any purpose that we can discern), but that doesn't show that it doesn't have one.
It probably isn't merely chance, though. That is, there is probably some good explanation of why the universe is here, whether or not that involves someone's purpose.
10. I have seen your list of favorite bible verses. Do you have any favorite Quran verses you would like to share as well?
Here are three scary Quran quotes:
Sura 4:34: "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great."
5:38: "As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise."
9:5: "And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush."
11. What are your views on Uncle Ted (Kaczynski) being seen as a folk hero by many?
That shows the insanity of our culture.
12. Could animals be philosophical zombies? If possible, could this be used as an ethical justification for eating meat?
You can't conclusively prove that animals are conscious, so it's theoretically possible that they are zombies. You also can't conclusively prove that any other people are conscious, so it's theoretically possible that other people are zombies too. But this theoretical possibility doesn't make it morally permissible to torture a person; nor does it make it permissible to torture an animal.
13. You have argued that many current government restrictions, such as gun control, are unjustified. Many people on our platform would like to debate with you on this to understand your positions better. Would you be interested in a text-based debate on our platform with one of our top users? I understand that you are very busy and have many commitments, so we could set the time for each argument to 1 or 2 weeks so that there is less time pressure.
I'd rather not, as I feel that I've done enough for now.
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Politics
I told them I would be quiet but I am still being threatened about releasing a document I already destroyed. They are still using the clown to gaslight me. I don't give a shit anymore.
The government is lying to you. Left and right is an illusion. They are coming for all of us who do not have the light.
Ask me anything. I don't give a fuck what they do anymore. Everything gets revealed now.
Also I am not suicidal. I do not plan to kill myself. I love living and. Would never ever kill myself.
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Personal
I've got such a rich history I could probably do a long series of these organized by themes. However, I'll let you all decide where to take this. Please ask me anything.
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Personal
I haven't done one of these in a while. Ask me anything.
I may even answer.
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Personal
If I don't want to answer, I won't answer.
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Personal
Hey guys. I barely use this site anymore but I'm currently quite bored and maybe we can learn some more about one another. Ask me anything.
(This will probably flop but that's alright)
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Personal
Any questions DART users? Ramshutu gave me the idea. Might as well give it a try.
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Miscellaneous
This seems to be a thing, so why not.
Ask me anything.
I reserve the right to refuse to answer or to tell you that wild zontars will never drag that information out of me. However, unless you all ask profane questions or try to seek out personal information, I will do my best to answer your questions.
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People
I don't know if this is the right section, but whatever. I am aware that I have no presence on this site, but ask me questions if you are bored.
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Personal
I am taking a break from the site because it is becoming a distraction. Obviously it just going to be a temporary break. I have done numerous things to increase my ability to focus. One is eliminating TV, and almost eliminating social media. Sure youtube is getting the cut next, but I need to take extreme methods to grab a few minutes extra here and there. Anyway Ask me anything. Pretty self conscious about coming across as a narcissist with an "I'm taking a break post" so made an AMA. I probably will return december 14th for the dart presidential elections but only briefly. Normally I just disappear but have been commuindicating privately with more people so this is for them
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Personal
Ask me anything :)
Especially interested in questions related to Judaism and politics.
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People
Remember, I have an AMA.
Ask me stuff there.
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DebateArt.com
This one is another AMA
I hope this one is more focused on my creative aspect
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Personal
Hi there. It's been a while since I last done an AMA, so I thought I would do one here. To be clear, this is not an official moderator AMA. No question is off limits, though I reserve the right to plea the fifth.
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Personal
It's gotta work sometime, right?
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Miscellaneous