Tyler ’s Comments (group member since May 09, 2008)

Tyler ’s comments from the Philosophy group.

Hi Everyman --

But there is another usage of "rights" under which my right imposes a duty on somebody else. [...] if I have a right to health care, that means that somebody has to provide that health care. My right to health care is only worth anything if there is a duty on somebody else to provide health care.

Thank you for putting it so clearly.

How is it that the principles of "rights" go to the point where we assert rights which include the right to impose an affirmative duty on others?

My answer would be that if we don't impose a duty on others, then some basic right will be affected. For example, let's say we accept that everybody has a right to life. But in a purely capitalist economic system, somebody who lost his job or pension could easily die without help. At this point, an affirmative duty has to be imposed on others to enforce the right to life as inalienable. Otherwise, the right to life is conditional.

Hi Robin --

Foot's trolley car problem is a thought experiment intended to force us to take our moral points of view to an extreme to see how they hold up. In that sense, there's no particular outcome to it.

However, when this problem comes up it seems most people favor the alternative of running over one person to save four. Personally, I wouldn't do it, but if popular vote is the measure, that would be the outcome.

It turns out that the "trolley car problem" was invented by the philosopher Phillipa Foot several decades ago as a thought experiment. On a sad footnote, I read yesterday that she died this October 4th.

The book is Basic Teachings of the Great Philosphers -- I added it at top under "currently reading" so interested readers can click on it and see what it's about.

Hi Patrice --

To restate this, then, your point is that everyone has a right to safety, and it's the government's responsibility to enforce it.

So, logically, intimidation of the nature you describe is properly a safety issue. It's an interesting question why any government allows unsafe conditions to abound.

However it comes about, it has everything to do with personal freedom, so it makes sense to pursue it on this thread. What we are entitled to in terms of personal safety is a question that stands by itself. But lack of safety becomes an accidental property of homelessness, not a necessary one. That is, someone can be homeless without endangering another person.


If someone is not in their right mind, if they are on drugs or are alcoholics or mentally ill, it seems to me that the government must do something to insure that they do not freeze to death on the sidewalk...

This is a separate issue from the safety one, and it gets closer to the necessary nature of homelessness. Your point here is that the government is required to do something about this state of affairs. Do the other posters see it this way, too?

By separating the accidental from the necessary progress has been made, because we now see that what once looked like one huge, unsolvable problem has broken into at least two discrete problems.

There may be other issues tangled up here as well, so it's good to try to separate them out if we can spot them. That way, the seemingly intractable problem of homelessness may give way to some kind of solution.

Hi Everyman --

Perhaps we think we have free will only because we don't yet understand the natural cause-and-effect forces which cause us to act as we do.

I think when a child sees a leaf falling from a tree she concludes that it's alive, and the same thing for building blocks falling over. She sees them acting, but I'm not sure if she imbues them with the idea of free will in the same way adults think of it. But I don't know; I could be mistaken.

I agree with a universe of cause-and-effect (for philosophical purposes, quantum mechanics doesn't factor in yet). So what has to be the case is that free will, if it exists, must be an effect with some natural cause.

Many people believe that if we live in a world of cause-and-effect, that world must be a deterministic one due to the necessary nature of causation. I question whether this has to be the case when abstract thinking has evolved to a certain point.

The problem is whether thought has to be determined in the same way physical existence is.

Homeless people have rights in a sense? Hmmmm.

R.a. picked up on this and I noticed it, too. The discussion on this thread has been questioning limits to various forms of personal freedom. As a philosophical issue, it requires philosophical thinking. To think philosophically differs from ordinary thought, which is why people often spend a lifetime learning how to do it.

To treat this subject philosophically requires attention to an evaluative branch of philosophy known as logic. This includes standards for proper argumentation -- and argumentation is not the same as having an argument, venting or simply expressing an opinion.

R.a. states that eugenics is alive and well. I don't know what programs he has in mind, but it occurs to me that our economic system (that of the United States) ultimately bears down on those who don't fit into it.

The question, in terms of personal freedom, is whether homeless people have any rights. It's important to strive for objectivity regarding the problem, because I don't think we want to confuse essential and accidental characteristics of homeless people. As an example of what I mean, I, too, see homeless people congregating and blocking streets in American cities. But that's an accidental problem, not an essential characteristic.

So my first question is, What rights, if any, should homeless people have?

Second, if the homeless possess any rights, what is the obligation of government towards them?

Third, if the homeless possess no rights and they're such a nuisance, what exactly are we saying should be done with them?

There's no "required" reading here. The books I put up as "currently reading" are ones that have come up in recent discussions or make good basic reading, but they are suggestions only.

Matt's "Where to Start" thread has more suggestions, and if anyone knows a book they think would be a good introduction to philosophy, that would be a great place to mention it.

The "trolley-car problem," the way Sandel presented it first, said just that there was one person one one track and five on the other, and you were in a position to change the direction of the moving trolley.

Interestingly, you can add other things -- make some of them terrorists and others FBI agents, and that makes the situation more interesting.


On the other hand, what you have is a different problem in that case, the reason being that your knowledge of the people involved has changed. You might legitimately answer the trolley-car dilemma one way when you know nothing of the people on the tracks, and quite another in light of added information. It would be fine to have different responses because the additional information means the second scenario isn't the first one anymore.

Hi Robin --

Yes, I know in a sense homeless people do have rights, but it has become a societal problem which no one can logically remedy."

Why do you think the problem is logically unsolvable?

... hard determinism states that we are justified in holding people responsible only in order to influence future behavior. Does this make sense, Tyler?

That was the conclusion I had read, but what I don't remember is the exact line of reasoning behind it.

Hi Lou --

Do you have any suggestions on books and writers that would also be of interest.

For books that straddle the border between sociology, psychology and philosophy, I recommend The Construction of Social Reality by John Searle, and The Unconsious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul. Does anyone know of any others?

Hi Veronica --

Welcome to the group. You have good timing. It just happens that I was reading an article on Camus in Free Inquiry. The write-up focused on absurdism; the author was wanting to establish that had Camus lived, he may have emphasized art as a main response to absurdity. The contrast he drew between Camus and Sartre was thought provoking, too.

One question that comes to mind is that if determinism is the actual condition of the human mind, how do you hold people responisible?

I read an argument several years ago to the effect that determinism is not incompatible with holding people to account, but I cannot remember the line of reasoning. Does anyone here know how that argument goes?

Hi Lou --

Welcome to the group ...

I find Philosophy, psychology and sociology very interesting but feel I don't know enough about these subjects."

You might be interested in discussions about the development of morality and ethics because this is an area in which all three of those disciplines have important points to make.

Hi Nanette --

Does anyone know of any current philosophers worth reading?"

This book is about 15 years old, but have you read Gilles Deleuze's What is Philosophy? It gave me a perspective on modern thinking about the philosophical enterprise, and I found it more readable than much of what's out there.

I'm not sure I understand Nietzsche that well, so I'll shortly be reading The Affirmation of Life, by Bernard Reginster. I hope to get a clearer understanding from it about Nietzsche's approach to nihilism.

Getting the point across in a civilized manner is what's missing from public conversation these days, and, to pick up on your point, it's closely connected with the inability to reason philosophically.

More specifically, logic and proper argumentation are evaluative branches of philosophy. If people could simply learn the procedures for arguing properly, real communication would take place and clear understandings among people would be dramatically easier to achieve.

Hi Robin -- One of the attractions of philosophy is that learning about it does indeed help people develop their own personal philosophy, or life stance, as opposed to having it handed to them by others.

In early childhood education we tell the child what to think because she cannot yet think for herself. Our greatest problem as a society is that people are told what to think long after they're capable of thinking for themselves.

Welcome to the group -- I hope you'll enjoy the posts and add some yourself.

Philosophy fans are going to ask what it means "to choose" in your example.


Free will means the ability to do things but also knowing the ramifications of either doing or not doing what is expected of you, does this make sense?

That sounds like a definition of "responsibility," rather than "free will." However, your remark raises the question of what link there might be between free will and responsibility. Could there be some connection between the two?

Do you think there's a reality that's independent of each person's experience of it?