If I take the water bottle from you, have I forced you to do anything?

In the language you are using, are "force" and "coercion" the same thing?

Also, this question.

wait, so you are making a comparison between "acts of nature" and human choices? That they are exactly the same thing? Although I might agree with you, I dont think it gets you to where you want to go. I think that ends the discussion as much as you claim my bad definition of economics does.

So, for example, my hair is forced to be blond? I am forced to circulate blood around my body?

You are defining everything as force.

I'm curious neeeel, if you are a reductionist about government, are you a reductionist about property rights as well? That is, am I in some way coercing or acting aggressively towards you if I walk into the house where you typically sleep and take the computers and TVs there and put them into my home?

"Exactly" the same thing? Nope. Just that there exist forces that drive behaviors in a way that may or may not be coercive, still depending on how you're using those words.

Nope. I don't need to go "all or nothing" as you've done.

I think your heart is forced to beat. Whether hair color is "forced" depends on whether you can change it.

You might be doing this. I'm not the one insisting on the all-or-nothing approach to language.

Original Position seems to be stepping in the same direction I am.

there are forces outside our control, therefore ostracism is coercion? I dont follow your reasoning.

Plus, I dont think I have ever heard anyone use coercive to describe things like breathing, or the weather.

Its a good question, and has perhaps highlighted where I might be hypocritical. So, I dont think property rights exist, BUT, I can see that its a useful concept, that it could be the basis of a free, open , uncoercive society. I dont want to have to constantly be defending stuff from other people, for example. So, I support property rights, while still understanding that they dont exist. Perhaps its the same for people who use "government" as a concept.

Why not just answer the questions as they're asked? It would be far more efficient and helpful rather than simply speculating and trying to make a strained representation of an argument that hasn't even been made yet. I'm still waiting to hear about how you want the terms to be used.

You only seem to be responding to about one out of every three or four posts, and usually not even answering the questions being asked. This doesn't look good for your willingness to engage the conversation, and feels a lot like more avoidance.

What entity (imaginary or otherwise) is the authority to grant property rights? Whose responsibility is it to defend and define them?

Im not answering all the questions because there are loads of them, seemingly going in lots of different directions. I am trying to keep focused on one thing, your assertion that ostracism is coercion.

Also, your last post contained no questions, but I responded to it

So, there are forces outside our control. How do we get from there, to ostracism is coercion?

there is no entity. again, I realise that property rights dont actually exist , and that any definition I use is arbitrary in a way. It is my responsibility to defend my property.

the definition, thats more difficult. Not everyone is going to agree on what property rights mean, and if they cant agree, then there is no basis upon which everything else rests.

I think the problem here is worse than you're giving it credit. If you accept the no aggression/coercion principle as a foundational moral claim and reject property rights as real, then your attempts to prevent people from taking the computers and TV from the house where you sleep are themselves an unjustified form of aggression. Your claim to "own" these electronics is you making up a story based on imaginary things called "property rights" about why you are allowed to be violent towards people to protect your "property." But you wanting these objects or feeling "ownership" over them wouldn't justify violence on this view (Just as people feeling you have a "duty" to pay taxes to the "government" or someone wanting the money other people have also doesn't justify their coercion or violence on your view.)

Seemingly. But I need to know how you're framing things. Especially your use of language as you've bounced back and forth between the concept of "force" and the concept of "coercion" a couple times, including trying to characterize various statements using one or the other.

Tell me how you're using the words "force" and coercion.

I didn't say you weren't responding to *anything*. But just go back and look at the questions that have been asked and have gone unanswered.

Tell me first how you understand coercion and force. So far, your only clear concept of "force" is "gun to the head." You have not clarified coercion at all. Also, are you anti-coercion?

All definitions are arbitrary in a way. That's not the point. You mean *something* (whether real or imagined) when you use the term.

But it's not actually your property. So you have no real responsibility to defend it. And if I go up and take it, I'm not taking it from you, because it was never yours to begin with. You've just got some illusory concept of property rights. That bottle of water is just a bottle of water. I want it. I'm going to take it. If you get in my way, you've now committed an aggressive act towards me, trying to prevent me from performing a free action. Whether that's force or coercion, it seems to be against your principles to do that.

I don't care about whether "everyone else" agrees on anything. But this statement, we could probably never come to the conclusion that the earth is round (since I'm sure there's some flat-earth-ist out there somewhere).

And I don't even care if language in general can't be agreed upon. You mean something when you use the terms. Even if you can't define it to the finest point, you have at least some concept that you're moving towards.

Again, you're really playing the role of a noncognitivist by just pretending the words are meaningless despite the fact that others (and apparently you) use them in a meaningful way.

I think breaking up the blocks has always been the point!!

I have always said I would vote for Mickey Mouse if it would accomplish that.

Has neeeel said he thinks these terms are meaningless? Or is he more like an error theorist who thinks they don't refer? FWIW, I don't really see the parallel to noncognitivism. Noncognitivism (whether theological or ethical) doesn't imply an unwillingness to continue using the relevant terms nor, in my experience, do most noncognitivists think we shouldn't.

The problem with this view imo is that the job of the Presidency is both very difficult and very important. The attitude you are describing here is like saying you don't like how the local hospital is run so you think they should fire all the doctors and instead have paramedics and veterinarians perform the surgeries.

What I am saying is I am 100% sure that the level of corruption in the political class is at a level that ppl like you and I will never know the enormity of it. It is ironic that folks on a site that revolves around online poker can not understand the bigger picture here(Sheldon). It is characters like this and many others who have put our weak lawmakers in a corruption stranglehold that has to be countered. When I do agree that Donald Trump is not Ideal for President of our Country I also know that his over inflated ego is exactly what we needed to counter this problem of the relationship between lawmakers and lobbyist. As I said it is my hope that Trump disrupts the political blocs INCLUDING the GOP.

If I believed that in some way all the doctors were compromised then I would have no choice but to let the next most experienced individual have a go at it.

The parallel is specifically with theological noncognitivism in the form that has been presented in this forum, where the underlying claim is that the word is meaningless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theolo...noncognitivism

My criticism on this level is very specific to trying to "brush off" any attempt at meaning:

I'm okay with agreeing for the purpose of the conversation that property rights don't exist. But saying that the definition is "arbitrary" invokes something a bit heavier. By making the term devoid of meaning, it's stepping into that theological noncognitivist space where it's not possible to actually discuss it because it doesn't mean anything anyway.

The "not everyone can agree" approach is also similar to the noncognitivist approach. "Since everyone has a different concept of God, it's pointless to talk about it."

There's also a leftover aspect of frustration with his definitions when he gave his definition of economics as "the study of uncoerced and coerced interactions between people" (which reduces to "the study of all interactions between people") and doesn't really reflect what people mean by economics. His unwillingness to assent to meaningful definitions is really the thing I'm pushing back against here.

I would only assent to this if the way in which they were compromised made them worse the next most experienced individual.

The type of mentality you've put forward is kind of why people listen to medical advice from celebrities and not from doctors.

yes, I agree