Billie M Jones

Thanks, Reg 🙂

Laughs, you added that the owners flatulence acted in a Pavlovian way by training the horse to over-react and rear up at all similar sounds.

I am sure an argument for proximate cause could be made for the supplier of whatever culinary delights the owner enjoyed despite knowing they caused him flatulence.

Or the car driver for not maintaining his car adequately, enabling it to backfire. The horse of course had input through it’s reaction which unseated the rider. The ambulance driver chose the hospital to which the rider was going. To a degree, he’s a link in the sequence chain. The hospital allowed the rider-patient to become infected – per…[Read more]

Proximate cause is the fulcrum of the insurance industry. One of the sample narratives which challenged the learner to pinpoint proximate cause, went something like this:-

A car backfires

A horse shies and tosses its rider

The rider breaks a leg in the fall

The ambulance takes the rider to hospital.

The rider contracts a virus from another…[Read more]

No you cannot know what consequences are going to be. You can assume and/or predict but you cannot know. That is an essential motivation for taking deontological ethics seriously. You can very likely know the consequences of dropping a large object from a high distance. You cannot know the consequences of lying. There are simply too many unknowns.…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Speaking of Vivek Ramaswamy, his campaign died in one interview by Mehdi Hasan.

Do you believe that enough people trying to listen to that mess of overlapping dialog could actually understand most of the questions and answers? Vivek does that all the time, and I wonder if fast talking while looking more confident than a used car…[Read more]

I think that all moral systems deal with actions and consequences. Consequentialism (a highly problematic approach in my opinion) obviously deals with consequences more. I would not characterise deontological systems as focussing on one more than the other. It is a fairly unique system, quite different to the others in many aspects and it includes…[Read more]

Deontological ethical systems (especially some more modern versions of them) of which Kant’s ethical system is an example, is the strongest ethical system there is. While it is not always practical (and no one ever said it isn’t) it demonstrates quite clearly that moral laws are formulated for a reason and breaking them (even in anticipation of it…[Read more]

This should become an interesting states’ rights vs their political parties’ issue. I haven’t researched the possibilities yet, but I wonder if the only meaningful judgement in constitutionality might come from SCOTUS. While Trump hasn’t been convicted, what powers DO a state’s executive branch have over political party behaviors?

Isn’t such…[Read more]

Jake, are you comparing being a Muslim with being a Pedophile?

I mean, burning nylon is problematic, unless you are really desperate for a cheap, toxic and short lived high. Though I would say paint thinner might work better?

I am not against people having the right to burn books, flags or symbols. But it is obnoxious. If you don’t like the book or flag, throw it out or recycle it. Burning it is pointless hooliganism.

I have a problem with people who call someone who criticises ideas from Islam or Judaism or policies within Arab countries or Israel as “Islamophobic” or “Anti-Semitic”. We should be able to criticise ideas, especially those which assault the dignity of others or encroach on the basic rights of people.

However I don’t believe that this means…[Read more]