: You are, according to youWrong work :(
: It doesnt. If you accept it then it becomes part of you. Accepting it is your choice. Same with voting and not intiating violence (well come to that)
No, because I cannot have a full choice in my identity, I didn't choose to be English, male, Northern, Working class (wayyyy bad choice if I did...). We co-create our identities from our envirobnment, and our environment should contain should structures as to facilitate and help in self-creation.
: Not showing is way of judging.
No, because in court you have the option of Saying 'Not Guilty' if you have no faith in the system.
: Thats where it falls down - your peers, whom may outnumber you and act in your disinterest.
Then I accept that, but I can have faith that overall *we* are in control, and decisions are subject to *our* reason and values.
: Hence you understand why it is "thinkable" that people consider jury service, when compulsory, as no less than slavery. it proves that its no good (in eyes of many people) by being compulsory.
Again, thats, I think, an effect of the positivity of the state. However, I think that the very failings of law are reason to engage in the Court to protect ourselves.
: It is - and it shows why representatives are counter interest (they can *only* be interested in themselves as per what I wrote below)
I agree, representative democracy suck Goats (some theorists of representative democracy think they're self-interest is a Good thing, certainly hegel thunked that...).
: There is, you have just chosen how you will react in the given circumstance - you are the one who initiates the action, it belongs to you.
No, I haven't chosen anything, I act in accordance with my weltangshauung and personality, but sometimes events happen faster than choices- and I never choose not to waggle my willy...
: You are speaking of choices differently. If you curse when the brick lands it is yours, your action and your consequence. "I didnt mean to" is no excuse, your action is selected and undertaken. The choice may appear automatice, it remains yours.
It remains mine, but the illusion of a rational self activating, selecting choices, etc, is still an ilusion.
: Kant wraps himself up a little with his various imperatives. Responsibility is self, if you walk past the fellow and he dies then you understand your relation to it (not as cause, but as foregoing an opportunity to help). Self directed action and consequence, regardless of the particlar mix of what influences the self direction to direct.
But what is the nature of that responsibility, of that self? Surely what you are describing tehre is a self co-eval with Moral Law. If we were to take a classic liberal individualist appraoch, we'd have to ask if it were in the self inetrest of the individual to stop and help (a rule-utilitarian would be needed here). For that individual a Positive state would be required to enforce their duty, but for an individual coeval with moral Law there is no such need nor dissonance. We come, I think to the nub of my argument here- you rely a lot on Morals and values, morals and values are the State. The individual recogbnises themself in that Law.
: It does not require an authoritarian state to support the non-aggression principle in action.
I would suggest that if the individual is motivated by pure self interest (as above) then it would be, if the individual is enveloped in moral Law, then no, I doubt we could ever have a truly atomised society, but its a matter of trend really...
: *I* being what you are. I being the receptacle of your values.
The recepticle, but not the source, and not the sole justification, the end in itself of my values.
: Then, following the logic of a non-aggresion principle being necessary to personal liberty a victim may freely and rightly seek to preserve that liberty by shooting you.
And if they don't have a gun, are we down to simple might equals right now?
: You mean not free of threat against your values. No one will be. Not in any kind of anarchy I might envisage, not in a nightwatcman state and not in a global socialist collective where your values are inexpressable, unseperable from every other person - except it would happen, 6 billion individuated *I*s cannot be a *we*.
I don't expect total uniformity (Bob forbid!), but I do suggest that a core set of values can be found that work...given teh right social structure...
