I was criticizing you for using them in place of an actual argument.
Nice try, but here's what you actually said:
quote:
Wow, you sure can use big words. Unfortunately they don't add up to anything. I showed you why the pen analogy did fit as I wrote it, using a very simple semi-symbolic logic example. You didn't address it at all and instead asserted the above.
If you don't understand the terminology, and it would be pretty embarassing for you not to understand set terminology when
you were the one who started using analogies about sets, it's no wonder you don't understand how I've just refuted your argument. Like I've said, go back and read it again. I'm not sure how I can dumb it down for you any farther.
But you didn't explain and you didn't detail.
Absolutely I did; you just haven't understood yet. Go back and read it.
Now deal with the argument I made, by offering NEW information, not new words.
I've already dealt with your argument, Holmes. There's no need for
me to present anything new. It's up to
you to present something new, something besides shadow and evasion.
Yes I understand the words, that's why I can recognize you are not addressing my argument.
It's
because you think I haven't addressed your argument that I
know you're not understanding what I'm writing. It's quite simple.
If you are claiming that you cannot tell what forms of experience we share to make up our shared reality then you cannot claim to be a scientist or follow science. When asking the question of if X killed Y, there is only a certain amount of NATURAL phenomena that one can appeal to for evidence.
And what, exactly, is that amount? Time after time, Holmes, your argument is revealed to be nothing more than an appeal to your own personal subjective guess about what is likely and what is not.
Sorry, but I need a greater standard of proof to have the state kill a man who might be me. I'll accept that standard for just about everything else except for that. Arbitrary? Sure. Why not?
You remember the difference between natural and supernatural right?
Actually, no, I don't. Are you thinking of somebody else? The "supernatural" is actually completely meaningless to me. It's a word that means nothing, because what it purports to describe is nonsense - a distinction that is no distinction.
It described our shared world according to natural mechanisms we obtain from experience.
But we don't obtain the
natural mechanisms. We obtain generalized approximations of them. The best we can always get, in your system or any other, is approximations of reality, not reality itself.
And, sorry, but once again, I want more than that if we're going to have the state execute someone who might be myself. Apparently you don't. That's fine with me. But you'll pardon me if, when faced with arbitrary moral choices, I occasionally make different ones than you.
That doesn't appear to be something that you're comfortable with. I suggest you get the hell over yourself.
And no my responses do not bother me because they are forthright and not evasive.
You've absolutely evaded almost every one of my points, by either referring to it as "not an argument", erroneously asserting that you've "already answered it", or outright ignoring it altogether. Absolutely nothing about your posts is forthright; the proof of that is how long they are, and how often we completely miss each other's point.
If you were forthright and not evasive, you wouldn't have to post so much garbage.
And by the way your overuse of the word assertion is starting to get annoying.
Boy, it just drives you crazy when people use the precise word to describe what they're talking about, doesn't it? What is that, exactly? Like you're so bad at writing with clarity and precision that you just can't stand it when other people do?
If the best attack you can level against my posts is that my words are long and I write with precision, we're done. You've already lost.
I asked HOW can a person be coerced to do such a thing if they really don't want to?
You've never had someone make you do something you didn't really want to do? You've never volunteered to do something you wouldn't otherwise want to do, because something worse might happen to someone if you didn't?
If you can't understand how someone might be coerced in this situation, then I submit that you possess a staggering lack of imagination and wisdom.
You are arguing that there is some sliding scale of evidence based on importance, and that because death is so important only a scale which denies all evidence as possible is sufficient. That is pretty convenient and as I have already argued makes little sense.
It makes perfect sense, and, additionally, it's how everyone, including you, make decisions and carry about their activities in the real world. Moreover it's perfectly represented in our legal codes, as evidenced by the sliding scale of evidentiary requirements as you rise up from things like traffic citations -where often little more is needed than the officer's word to convict you; to civil/business law - where the standard is the "preponderance of evidence"; to criminal courts - where the standard becomes "beyond reasonable doubt." Is it really so unreasonable to suggest that the scale goes up even further, and that for the application of the death penalty, we might apply a standard of "beyond
all doubt"?
Unreasonable? "Makes little sense"? Makes perfect sense, in fact, and it's the way that you and me and everybody else already lives, as proven by the evidence from our legal codes which I have just outlined.
Absolutely perfect sense, unlike a single one of your posts in this thread.
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