"If you wish to stay out of jail, you pay them whether you believe it right ot not"
Nope. If my wish to avoid jail is weaker than the principle I wish to defend by withholding taxes, then I will not pay my taxes. If the relative strength of value judgement is reversed, then I will pay them.
"Governments ultimately rely on punishment and force. Deadly force if needed. And you die whether you wish it or approve it or not"
No argument there, but it does not speak to this issue.
"once you are in jail for non-payment, you cannot "voluntarily" leave"
An act not done would be neither voluntary nor involuntary. I cannot voluntarily jump over the moon either; nor can I involuntarily make such a leap.
"Bearing the consequences of breaking the law is not voluntarily. The law will force them on you whether you like it or not.?
The actions of the law belong to them. Your actions belong to you.
"This is sophistry you are pushing, Solon. If gov'ts believed that, they would not pass laws providing punishment for tax evasion"
They pass the laws for those who voluntarily DON'T pay their taxes...not for those who DO.
"Tell me: If someone steps out of a car, puts a gun to your head, and tells you to get in, do you consider that you get in "voluntarily"
No. I believe that such force is immediate enough, and so restrictive of all rational alternative choices, that reasonable and prudent people (such as in a Court, for instance), would hold that the act was involuntary.
FROM
Message 18145132
"Ah! Then breathing and eating are voluntary. In fact, everything is "voluntary". We're free! Free at last!"
Very astute: the question of free will versus various forms of determinism has been an ongoing polemic since the atomists. Our discussion assumes the minimal model that moral distinctions may be made even if choice is illusory.
Yes, it may often be reasonably said that many actions are voluntary under one or another description. It is important to start with that understanding because the whole idea of moral responsibility hinges upon the fulcrum of voluntary action. Aristotle was saying this back when you and I were carefree boys. :-)
Thinking that all actions that are "requirements" are involuntary simply misses the point. There are many "requirements", both under and outside formal law--but such do not speak to intentionality, or inform whether or not they are voluntary.
Aristotle believed that all acts were voluntary except those flowing from substantial ignorance or stemming from extreme force. For instance, you ask me to pull a switch to turn on a light, and I do so, but in doing so I electrocute a person you had wired to the circuit. My pulling the switch was voluntary, but my killing of the person was involuntary as based on ignorance. Again, I may have decided not to pay my taxes because I desired the opportunity to publicly challenge an unjust provision. This would be a voluntary choice--one I am able to make because I am not being prevented from reasonable alternatives. If I HAD been truly forced to pay my taxes, then I could not NOT have paid them. Therefore, both alternatives are examples of voluntary behaviour, and thus behaviour about which moral opinion may attach.
There are innumerable examples of influential or even coercive determinants to behaviour outside of the law proper, but they seldom rise to the level of invalidating responsibility. For instance, your wife may threaten to leave you if you refuse (let us say) to accept a bribe from her best friend as regards a contract you have some authority to grant. Her leaving would be a severe consequence for you--more painful in your mind than a couple of years in jail.
Now, let us say that you accept the bribe, and let us decide that you get caught and charged: do you think the Court will yield to your defence of coercion, and acquit you of responsibility for the reason you claim the act was involuntary? No, I don't think so, either.
But I do agree that there is a degree of both ignorance and force which may truly vitiate responsibility. Thus we have involuntary manslaughter--involuntary because based on ignorance of the details necessary for the intention of killing.
Even when there is the appearance of severe negative consequences for acting or failing to act in a certain manner...these consequences may be entirely incidental to the motive and will to act of the person. I have already instanced this by reference to murder, and to the many other evils that decent people avoid on the basis of their own value judgements...and regardless of the incidentals of how indecent and disturbed individuals are to be punished.
Pretend you are in a canoe with the water pouring over the stern. You are carrying a 500 pound chest of priceless gems. Unless you put them overboard you will drown. You decide it is still less valuable than your life so you pick it up with one hand and you toss it overboard. Is this an involuntary act forced by circumstances? No. Because it was not forced. It could have been your (overweight) daughter instead of precious stones. But you would not throw your daughter overboard. You would either jump over yourself, or you would meet your end together. If you did throw her overboard, would the Court entertain your rationale that it was an involuntary act because of coercive circumstances? No. I don't think so, either.
"This is sophistry you are pushing, Solon"
You flatter me with your kind words; but I assure you I lack the requisite grandiloquence to take such rhetorical flight. The Sophists were highly honoured in Greece for their silver-tongued oratory: for was it not said they could make the true appear the false, and the false the true? Such mastery of language was a gift of the muse; it was sought by many but attained by few.
Athens did not permit of lawyers for self defence. Instead, people hired Sophists to address their cause in Court and to demonstrate their persuasion through their flowery flights of mesmerizing oratory. They made black earth into clouds and the ocean into green meadows. And they made the hottest fire as raindrops.
Your erstwhile judgement notwithstanding, I do not deign to approach such exalted levels. I am a simple man--plain and unadorned. There is one across the way, however, who has a goodly tongue, one whom I quite admire, and believe to be worthy of your esteem and honour. He is not truly a Sophist, but it is not for lack of any rhetorical skills, I assure you. But then, I have no doubt at all that you remain fully apprised of all that is worthy and deserving within your wise and perceptive compass...<g>
That was fun...;-)
Seriously, I think both and I are very much sophists in many ways. Absolutists...and centuries of Monotheism...have contributed to unfair ridicule; yet they were the wisest men of the time--and perhaps they remain so today...<G>
Their scepticism was excessive, but they brought Greece from myth to reason...but not to science. The Supreme Sophist was Socrates who claimed never to have acquired any actual knowledge, but history generally does not wish to place him in their company. Yet in many ways he epitomised the influx of rationalism into the Grecian world...
Here is (some of) the truth of the matter...
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