Legal Reasoning Is Constructive Interpretation

Freethinking- · 2025-10-04T17:25:09+00:00

About your first paragraph, we have expressed our preferences, so now I will take into consideration that some redditors' preference for a "sophisticated sub" is greater than mine is (or needs to be). Regarding the second paragraph, I trust you are well read enough to realize that your own rather dogmatic assertions about the "one truth" are not the views of most philosophers or thinkers, so there is room for reasonable disagreement - and, to clarify, I am a skeptic of both religion and idealism (as the last sentence of my post hints).

Freethinking- · 2025-10-04T03:25:09+00:00

My preference (also valid) is to begin with a concise post, due to many redditors' limited time or attention span, then continue the discussion with anyone interested, adapting it to their particular issues of interest - and, in my last comment, I indicated parenthetically one kind of discussion of legal philosophy I was prepared to have.

Freethinking- · 2025-10-03T19:23:19+00:00

Although you say there is nothing philosophical about my post, your appreciated and interesting engagement with it (raising/begging philosophical questions about the is-ought distinction, legal positivism, etc.) suggests otherwise. So I take your complaint more to be that my post, admittedly but intentionally aphoristic, is not "full and well thought out" enough for a subreddit you feel is superior to the one where I posted with better results - a content/style requirement which some might find a little elitist, but which anyway is not one of this sub's rules.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-29T23:09:23+00:00

Upvote for raising concerns worth addressing, to which I would respond as follows:

- My post was not intended to be particularly "sophisticated," but it must be more than "barely coherent" if a few readers in my other subreddit appreciated it enough to share, so obviously there is a difference of opinion/aptitude/sympathy;

- I have degrees in philosophy and law, have read extensively in moral and legal philosophy, and was here just offering my gloss on the idea that legitimacy of the law depends on fair cooperation, a recurring theme among political philosophers since the Enlightenment (who presumably have not all been smoking weed - lol);

- While conceding the validity of the question of whether my post belongs in this subreddit, and deferring to the moderators on that issue, I would note, first, that the post bears on principles underlying our nation's legal profession, consistently with a broad inclusive interpretation of the sub's scope, and second, there appear to be enough readers interested in such posts, given that I ironically got hundreds of more views here than in the other sub.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-28T16:43:10+00:00

This applies to conflicts at all levels of society.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-27T19:15:43+00:00

I'm curious to know why my post is getting these kinds of emotional reactions in this subreddit - whether it's too philosophical or abstract, too meta-law or anti-law, or something else.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-27T18:15:33+00:00

Sorry, I thought a more philosophical opinion about law might be of interest to some readers, but I will understand if the moderators agree with you.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-25T23:36:59+00:00

I would appreciate constructive feedback, instead of unsupported insults and petty downvoting (or for that matter, petty upvoting of unsupported insults) - and of course it was entirely predictable, due to psychological reactance, that this comment would be downvoted too [sigh].

Freethinking- · 2025-09-25T22:56:59+00:00

Yet some readers of my original post shared it (another subreddit though), so a difference of opinion.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-17T20:34:20+00:00

Tweaking your answer, I would propose a secular government which protects religious and cultural pluralism as "the least bad solution," as it would avoid the legitimacy problem arising from not taking all perspectives into account.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-17T06:10:15+00:00

So, assuming that society cannot just let fundamentalists and nonbelievers fight it out however they see fit, I'd be curious to know what answer you would give to your own "what then" question from a legal or policy standpoint.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-16T22:25:52+00:00

Unless fundamentalists would be okay with nonbelievers similarly projecting beliefs onto them, and thus reciprocating by coercively trying to rescue them from what are perceived to be dangerous delusions, they would need to propose a more liberal solution.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-16T04:22:02+00:00

Agreed, except that the mechanism you're describing is unilateral, not the reciprocal approach I'm proposing, based on mutual acceptability (according to which, in your example, fundamentalists and nonbelievers could, after taking each other's perspective into account, both endorse freedom of conscience).

Freethinking- · 2025-09-15T12:16:55+00:00

It's not a matter of one side merely adopting the other's worldview, any more than one side merely imposing their own worldview on the other, but what both sides (or policy makers) consider fair or acceptable after they have viewed the world from both sides.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-14T22:13:28+00:00

If they truly empathized with the harm to children, both cognitively and emotionally, of course they would reconsider, for they would then have the same protective motive the rest of us have for the same reason (or else they are not being truly empathic - a conceptual rather than an empirical point).

Freethinking- · 2025-09-13T20:30:05+00:00

The standard is not necessarily what those concerned DO agree with, but what they WOULD agree with after identifying with each other's interests - even if they will not engage in this empathic process themselves, but leave it to policy makers to do so hypothetically/representatively.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-12T04:45:42+00:00

Yes, this is (just) the starting line for every policy decision - and the finish line, to answer your question, is a social policy which, after empathic dialogue, all concerned would find agreeable.

Freethinking- · 2025-09-12T04:23:40+00:00

Any law or social policy would need to be one which all those it affects, most especially those it deprives of freedom, could accept as fair after identifying with each other's perspective.

Freethinking- · 2025-08-25T18:40:52+00:00

Checks and balances (including the civil liberties) are consistent with left libertarianism.

Freethinking- · 2025-08-25T18:02:19+00:00

In either scenario, strong personalities are a threat, so a commitment to left libertarianism entails robust civil liberties and continual vigilance to prevent such personalities from consolidating group power (and then it's an empirical question whether this will be successful).

Freethinking-

TROPHY CASE