Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 3:33 amWho guarantees a right? It is one thing to say I have a right but unless someone or something guarantees a right, it is meaningless. If neither a personal God or a government guarantees a right, what IYO does?
You do. Your life, liberty, property are yours: defend them.
Does Deism consider conscience as learned knowledge acquired in life (a posteriori) or remembered knowledge which always existed (a priori)? In Genesis 2 for example the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil existed before Man was put into the garden. This means that the duality of good and evil is a necessity and knowledge of it is a priori knowledge and not something we create through reason. Is this in accord with your conception of deism?
Conscience is with you from the start. You don't learn it, you have it. But it's useless without reason. A compass is no damn good if you don't know what it or what it's tellin' you.
Good, you have your own ideas of Deism which means you've thought on it rather than just accept it.
This is probably true for anyone who calls himself deist. Deism isn't exactly a well-known
religion. It has no holy book, no holy men, no places of worship...and no coffers to fill. Deists don't go door-to-door spreadin' the
good news. Airports lack a contingent of deists chantin'. Seems to me: anyone who is a deist had to go lookin' for it and had to think about it.
But you must have thought on natural rights and what gaurantees them as well as the difference between the ACTION of free will and the REACTION to desire. It seems to me what we call free will is just an indoctrinated reaction to a desire. Have you experienced the difference?
Well, as I say, your life, liberty, property are yours; you are your own. As I say...
henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 5:16 am
Instinctually, invariably, unambiguously, a man knows he belongs to himself.
He doesn't reason it, doesn't work out the particulars of it in advance. He never wakens to it, never discovers it. It's not an opinion he arrives at or adopts. His self-possession, his
ownness, is essential to what and who he is; it's concrete, non-negotiable, and consistent across all circumstances.
It's real, like the beating of his heart.
A man can be leashed against his will, can be coerced into wearing the shackle, can cringe reflexively when shown the whip, can be born into subordination, but no man ever accepts being property, and -- unless worn down to a nub, made crazy through abuse and deprivation -- will always move away from the yoke when opportunity presents itself.
Not even the slaver, as he appraises man-flesh and affixes a price to it, sees himself as anything other than his own.
Take a moment or more, consider what I'm sayin' here, research the subject. Your task is simple: find a single example of a man who craves slavery, who desires to be property, not because he chooses it but because it's natural to him.
While you're at it, find a single example of fire that freezes.
I expect you'll be as successful with one as you will be the other.
Ownness (a man belongs to himself) is a fact (a true statement; one that jibes with reality).
Now, morality is all about the rightness or wrongness of a man's intent, his choices, his actions and conduct, as he interacts with, or impinges on, another. Seems to me, the validity of a morality rests solely with how well the assessment of wrongness or rightness agrees with reality, or with statements about reality.
So, a moral fact is a true statement; one that aligns with the reality of a man (not his personality, or opinion, or whims, but what is fundamental to him,
ownness).
Can I say
slavery is wrong is a moral fact?
Yes.
To enslave a man, to make him into property, is wrong not because such a thing is distasteful, or as a matter of opinion, or because utilitarians declare it unbeneficial. Leashing a man is wrong, all the time, everywhere, because the leash violates him, violates what he is.
As for free will: fundamentally all that means is one
chooses, not as mere reaction to what has come before, or even as response to what happens now (though both past and present can figure into it), but for reasons one susses out for himself. These reasons may not be good ones or right ones, but then free will isn't about common sense or wisdom. More technically, free will (agent causation) is about man bein' an agent, a cause, a beginner, bender, and ender of causal chains. More esoterically, man is the wildcard; in a determined universe he is undetermined.
Man is a composite thing -- spirit & substance -- his mind (spirit) intermixed with his flesh (substance); he is both equally. You might say these are his higher and lower natures. His substance grants efficacy in the world and anchors and constrains his spirit, which grants identity, intention, etc.
As for the guarantee: I'm fond of this line of pulp writer Robert E Howard...
He (God)
dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?
Now, I don't think God is indifferent or prickly as Howard suggests, but He is absent and expects you and me and him and her to stand up. Each of us is a point of creative and causal power: we ought exercise ourselves in the world. Self-direction, self-reliance, self-responsibility: these are a man's birthright. This
passivity TPTB lay on each of us is unnatural, and why so many of us are crazy as a shithouse rat.
I've rambled enough for now.