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Cake day: March 17th, 2024

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  • “Sure, but so what?”

    Well, for starters, you’ve just conceded that your supposedly objective moral framework allows someone to acquire exclusive ownership of an entire planet simply by thinking about it first.

    And your defense is that people might boycott them if they refuse to share? What does someone’s reputation have to do with the moral legitimacy of their ownership?

    You also claim that “someone HAS to have exclusive authority over everything.”

    Why? A government official approving a building permit doesn’t own the building. You’re conflating ownership with decision-making authority and presenting another unsupported assumption as objective logic.

    But here’s the real problem:

    Your entire philosophy supposedly rests on the principle that nobody’s will has objectively greater value than anyone else’s. Yet you’re arguing that my desire to own Mars at noon gives me moral authority over someone who desires it at 12:01, along with every future generation of humanity.

    Why does my desire suddenly carry greater moral weight simply because it occurred first?

    And before you say “because I owned it first,” that’s circular reasoning. We’re questioning what makes that ownership legitimate in the first place.

    You keep responding to requests for logical justification with additional assertions about how you think society should function.

    That’s not deriving morality from logic. That’s constructing a moral framework around your preferred assumptions.

    So let’s make this incredibly simple: What principle of formal logic establishes that the first person to desire exclusive control of something gains a moral right to exclude everyone else?

    Because so far, your objectively derived theory of property rights seems indistinguishable from calling dibs and declaring it a universal law of morality.


  • Well, I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to actually concede the Mars example.

    “Fundamentally, if you are the first person to ever desire exclusive authority with all of Mars, then Mars is your property.”

    That’s genuinely remarkable.

    So according to your philosophy, someone can establish exclusive ownership of an entire planet simply by thinking about owning it before anyone else does.

    No occupation. No use. No labor. No agreement. No interaction with the property whatsoever.

    Just desire and chronological priority.

    And somehow you’ve convinced yourself this is an objectively necessary conclusion of logic rather than an arbitrary rule you’ve invented.

    Consider what that means.

    If I was the first person to desire exclusive ownership of Mars, every future human being would apparently be morally obligated to respect my claim. Even people who have never met me, never agreed to my ownership, and have absolutely no reason to recognize my authority.

    You’ve effectively established that my desire can generate obligations for other people without their consent, while simultaneously claiming that your entire philosophy protects individuals against the imposition of another person’s will.

    How did my private desire acquire moral authority over everyone else’s future actions?

    You still haven’t answered that question. You’ve simply asserted that being first is what matters.

    But why?

    Chronological priority is an observable fact. The moral authority you attach to it is not.

    And this brings us back to the problem you keep avoiding.

    You say:

    “I never said you needed to respect anyone’s will. I said it’s illogical not to.”

    Okay. Demonstrate the logical contradiction.

    Suppose I acknowledge that your desires have no greater objective value than mine, recognize that you don’t want your property taken, and nevertheless decide to take it because doing so benefits me.

    My behavior might be immoral under your ethical system, but what proposition have I contradicted?

    I’ve made no claim that you want your property taken. I’ve made no claim that my will possesses objectively greater value. I’ve merely pursued an outcome you oppose.

    Where is the logical inconsistency?

    You appear to be confusing three entirely different propositions:

    • An action is logically contradictory.
    • An action violates a particular moral principle.
    • An action produces undesirable social consequences.

    Those propositions are not interchangeable.

    You then spend several paragraphs discussing religion, transgender identities, geopolitics, and people threatening to murder children.

    None of that establishes the missing deduction.

    Nobody here is advocating murder. Nobody is arguing that assault should be permissible. And nobody has suggested that people should be allowed to murder your children.

    Questioning the logical foundation of your ethical theory is not an attempt to justify atrocities. That’s a spectacular non sequitur.

    In fact, I agree that consent and nonaggression are extremely important moral considerations. I just don’t pretend that my agreement makes them mathematical theorems.

    And your claim that society cannot coexist without your particular philosophy is another unsupported assertion. You’ve moved from claiming your principles are logically unavoidable to arguing that they produce preferable societal outcomes.

    That’s a completely different argument, one that requires evidence about consequences rather than appeals to logical necessity.

    The irony is that you repeatedly criticize other people for constructing moral systems around arbitrary assumptions, while your own framework relies on an assumption you have never justified: that an earlier desire for exclusive control creates a legitimate property right.

    You haven’t eliminated arbitrary moral premises. You’ve selected your preferred premises and declared them objective.

    So we can skip the next five paragraphs about how terrible murder is. We agree.

    Let’s address the actual philosophical question:

    What rule of logic establishes that being the first person to desire exclusive control of something gives you a moral right to exclude every other human being from it?

    Not a moral intuition. Not a practical argument about social stability. Not an example of something we already consider wrong.

    An actual logical derivation from your original premises.

    Because so far, the only thing you’ve conclusively established is that under your philosophy, someone can become the rightful owner of Mars by calling dibs.

    And I’m struggling to see how that’s less arbitrary than the moral systems you’re criticizing.


  • I think I see the problem now. You’re confusing a moral principle you personally endorse with a conclusion that necessarily follows from logic.

    Your entire philosophy appears to depend on three claims:

    1. Nobody wants their own will violated.
    2. Nobody’s will has objectively greater value than anyone else’s.
    3. Therefore, nobody should violate another person’s will.

    Except 3 does not logically follow from 1 and 2.

    I can acknowledge that you don’t want your will violated, acknowledge that your will has no objectively demonstrable superiority over mine, and still decide to violate it.

    You can call that immoral. You can call me selfish. But you cannot call it logically contradictory without introducing an additional moral premise establishing that I ought to respect your will.

    You’re attempting to derive an “ought” from an “is,” and you’ve simply skipped the step where you’re supposed to justify it.

    But your theory of property rights gets even more interesting.

    You claim that ownership requires two things: wanting exclusive authority over something and not violating anyone else’s will to obtain it. You then assert that whichever claim existed first takes precedence.

    Okay. Let’s test that.

    I hereby declare my desire for exclusive authority over the entire surface of Mars.

    I’ve violated nobody’s will in making this declaration, and my desire predates the desires of any future Martian settlers.

    By your stated criteria, I’ve satisfied both requirements for ownership.

    When the first settlers arrive, are they violating my will by occupying my property?

    If not, why not?

    What additional requirement have I failed to satisfy, and more importantly, where did you logically derive that requirement from your original premises?

    Because this illustrates the fundamental problem with your “logical order of operations.”

    Something happening first doesn’t establish that it has moral authority over something happening later. That’s an additional normative rule you’ve introduced without justification.

    You keep using examples of murder, rape, and theft because those are cases where your conclusions conveniently align with moral intuitions most people already share.

    But demonstrating that your framework agrees with conventional morality in obvious cases doesn’t prove your framework is logically necessary. It doesn’t even establish that your principles work consistently in less obvious cases.

    And the funniest part is your insistence that I “already agree” with your philosophy because I supposedly have no logical choice.

    No. I can agree with your conclusions about murder, theft, and consent without accepting your reasoning for arriving at them.

    That’s not a contradiction. It’s an elementary distinction between the validity of an argument and the truth of its conclusion.

    So here’s what I’d genuinely like you to demonstrate:

    Can you derive your principle of nonaggression, and your rule that earlier desires establish property rights, using only your two original premises, without introducing any additional moral assumptions?

    Because until you can, you haven’t demonstrated that morality is objectively dictated by logic.

    You’ve described your preferred moral framework, assumed its foundational rules are true, and then mistaken the resulting consistency for proof.

    That’s not a logical derivation. It’s circular justification with extra


  • What exactly is this “logical order of operations” you’re referring to? Can you define its premises and demonstrate how you draw your conclusions from them?

    You also declare that “public property is a misnomer” without offering a single argument to support that assertion. There is quite a large body of legal precedent that says otherwise.

    Your entire response seems to consist of declaring your opinions to be fundamental truths, wrapping them in unnecessarily convoluted language, and then insisting that anyone who disagrees doesn’t understand logic.

    That’s not logical reasoning. That’s intellectual posturing.

    I’d be genuinely interested in seeing you express your argument as a set of clearly defined premises and a conclusion. Preferably without using the word “logical” as a substitute for actually demonstrating logic.