I do not question that Palestinians have a tough go at the hands of Israelis, but have they not earned it many times over? — tim wood

It's almost amusing that you can ask this bigoted question and then complain about being the target of invective.

Yes Apollo, I know all of that, but thanks for the neat summary.

As a result, text books published decades ago are not always entirely up to date and this may lead to new data being dismissed as "conspiracy theory". — Apollodorus

Yes, but even among the newer books there's a big range in the interpretation of the new information, especially with regard to the Lenin-as-German-agent idea.

In fact, the events of February and November 1917 — Apollodorus

I'm being a bit pedantic here, but ... if you're going to apply the Gregorian calendar to the October revolution, then to be consistent you should call the earlier one the March revolution.

In any case, historical evidence suggests that there was some foreign involvement in bringing about the two revolutions. This does NOT mean that Western powers “controlled” anything. Only that they supported the groups that played a key role in the overthrow of the czars. — Apollodorus

This is quite reasonable, although I don't think that foreign involvement was decisive in bringing about the events. I think it would have happened anyway, under the political and social circumstances.

Otherwise, I would probably dispute your characterization of the revolutions, but I don't want to get into it here. Basically I don't have any huge disagreement with the main thrust of your post. Originally, I thought I was seeing merely the influence of Russian state propaganda about the revolution as foreign plot, but maybe your view is more subtle.

It's not my problem that you refused to delete it. If you're not happy with it, then just close it. No need to stress out and show you care. It's really no big deal. This is just a thread. Sorry to disappoint you.
Obnoxious? Wow! — L'éléphant

Okay, I'm sorry I called you obnoxious. I just wish you had responded more amiably when people quite reasonably asked for evidence. Carry on.

There's a popular conspiracy theory in Russia, especially prevalent among Putin supporters and often promoted by the state media, that sees the 1917 revolutions, especially the October revolution, as part of a foreign plot. You seem to be saying something similar. The "Society of Friends of Russian Freedom" that you linked to seemed to be a group of liberals and social reformers, which perhaps did not represent a significant portion of the Western elites.

The primary foreign involvement on the side of the Bolsheviks was German, but it was minimal. Germany funded some of the revolutionaries because it was at war with Russia, but they had no influence or control over the movement.

And obviously, once the Civil War really got going, Western capitalist states intervened on the side of the Whites: Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

EDIT: I just noticed that in another post you made a distinction between February and October, stating that Western capitalists supported the former but not the latter. Fair enough, my mistake.

Crabtree and Woodley are researchers. They use science to do their work. Not speculation. — L'éléphant

And yet you have presented nothing but speculation. You eventually found someone who agrees with you but still cannot come up with anything. You haven't even read the papers. The quote about Crabtree gives no evidence that intelligence has gone down, only a possible reason why it might. This thread is really bad, partly because of your obnoxious manner. I'm reluctant to delete it only because people have put some effort into writing posts.

If you had not pretended that there was evidence, and had instead been open about being entirely speculative, the thread would have been better.

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Socrates in the Republic argues that true philosophers do not want to rule, which is partly why they should. In these rulers there would be no "fascination for power". Or so the argument goes.

The fact that you're saying, "From your not knowing that the capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila it doesn't follow that it isn't true that it's the capital," demonstrates that you're not following my point. Obviously not knowing the truth of a statement, doesn't mean the statement isn't true. It just means that you have no justification, or no epistemic right to claim it's true. Any claim, without some kind of justification, is a claim that can either be true or false, not just true, as some want to say about Moore's propositions.

Knowledge entails truth, by definition, so if knowledge entails truth, then Wittgenstein's attack of Moore's use of know is also an attack on the truth of those same propositions. — Sam26

This is very curious. First you show that you understand knowledge, but then completely undermine yourself.

I have followed your point perfectly well, and here you demonstrate your continued misunderstanding. My example was just to show that an attack on a claim to know a proposition is not necessarily an attack on the truth of it. You agree with this at first, regarding the ordinary empirical statement, but then fail to apply the same understanding of knowledge with regard to hinges.

So this needs some additional argument:

Knowledge entails truth, by definition, so if knowledge entails truth, then Wittgenstein's attack of Moore's use of know is also an attack on the truth of those same propositions — Sam26

I asked you to argue for this, but you didn't. Seppo has dealt with it already, and very clearly, but I'll put it in my own words too. W's attack of M's use of "know" is not an attack on the truth of those propositions; it's an attack on the applicability of justification. If M cannot be said to be justified, he cannot be said to know. Knowing requires truth, as you point out, but it also requires justification, so you can attack the claim to know by pointing out the lack of--or rather, the inapplicability of--justification, without attacking the truth of the statements. This is what W is doing.

By the way, this interpretation, which is an interpretation I primarily arrived at on my own, is confirmed by other philosophers, who have arrived at the same interpretation. This doesn't make the interpretation right or wrong, but does, I think, show that it certainly seems to follow from one's reading of the text. — Sam26

Can you point me in the direction of the relevant philosophers and their work?

:party:

Paleolithic philosophy forums may have been just as stupid as far as we know from the little evidence we have.

Unless the OP can cite evidence for the primary claims, this thread is a non-starter. I'm tempted to just close it.

The study and article linked to in later posts do not "suggest we are becoming less intelligent".

But it's obvious. From your not knowing that the capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila it doesn't follow that it isn't true that it's the capital. To question a claim to know is not "by extension" to question the truth of what is claimed to be known.

Things are somewhat different in the case of hinges, but you haven't shown relevantly how. How does it follow "almost by necessity"?

:rofl:

It was true that Stan had two legs, even before there was any question about it.

If W. is saying that Moore's use of know is senseless, then by extension truth is included, for what are we talking about, if not the truth of Moore's propositions. — Sam26

This is incorrect. W is talking about the claim to know, and your "by extension" isn't supported. It's precisely because we can say that the statements are true that there is an issue about whether Moore can also know them.

What else would knowing mean in Moore's context, if not, that his propositions are true? — Sam26

What else? Knowing is more than truth, it's justification as well.

So, again, when W. attacks Moore's propositions, he is not only attacking the use of the word know, but all that goes along with it, including truth and justification (repeating for emphasis). — Sam26

You haven't made an argument for this. It doesn't follow. It's also clearly not what W is saying. I was hoping not to have to get into exegesis.

It would be like asking, while coming up with a rule in chess (as the game is invented), "Is it true that bishops move diagonally?" It's just a rule. It's not about true or false. Now later, in a given context, you can speak of the truth of a rule, but note this is only after the rule has been established. — Sam26

But hinges already have this kind of status. It makes sense to ask "Is it true that bishops move diagonally?" I don't understand why you've introduced this temporal dimension. We were not talking about the moment of hinge formation (and I wouldn't talk of such a thing anyway).

The rule that bishops move diagonally is a kind of ground for the game, a bedrock statement. It has nothing to do with truth. — Sam26

Again, this doesn't follow at all from anything else you said. Bedrock statements, as all statements, are true or false.

You can ditch truth only if you also ditch belief itself. That is, you can't take the route you're trying to take without abandoning the concept of belief.

not having a real Russian tradwife like another particular member presumably does — The Opposite

As far as I can see this is just your prejudice about Russian women.

However, I commend you for this:

Upon initially going through this thread I felt like insulting those I believe to be backing Putin [...] however, this ultimately gets no one nowhere. — The Opposite

:up:

This kind of history is totally absent from almost any mainstream discussion on this topic, the latter of which is slavishly regurgitated by people on this forum, among others. — StreetlightX

And yet they make a hand-wringing show of being concerned, worried, etc. It's hard to stomach. Liberals :roll:

It's not going to happen, and I think it's a bad idea. I'm not going to bother saying why, partly because I think it's obvious, but also because there is no clear and serious argument here in its favour.

Yes. Hinges are not known, not because they are not true or false, but because they are not justified. That is, justification is not what we do with hinges.

The book is about certainty. Particularly, it's about those certainties that we hold to be true before we go on to know things. These certain beliefs do not stand in need of justification; justification here can never be as unquestionable as the belief you're trying to justify.

But I think I do understand the confusion. What is a belief? How can we talk of propositions (or propositional attitudes) that we somehow "have" but which we would never think to state, that obviously do not, as entities in the head or whatever, form an epistemic foundation for our knowing? If we can talk of such a basis then it is in the nature of ways of acting in a particular form of life. It's difficult to assign truth to something that really only exists as a set of practices.

The answer I think is to recognize that a belief just is a post-hoc rendering of these behaviours--and attitudes, in the sense of orientations--in the form of statements. To say that someone has a belief is not to say that they have an individuated statement-shaped object inside them. And yet, to talk about certainties and beliefs at all is to talk about statements/propositions.

And the fact is that we can and do pick out and individuate statements that we believe, that are true, even though it hadn't occurred to us to think of them before. I am certain that here is one hand and that the Earth did not pop into existence the moment I was born. These are true statements.

Make sense @Sam26?

It's as if we have these propositions existing in some metaphysical realm that are true, but we don't know their true. We can say that of facts, but not of truths, which are just claims by themselves that can be either true or false. — Sam26

A fairer response to this...

As far as we can talk about the existence of propositions, then yes, they exist when they're stated, or rather, they're part of various language games. Statements are made about things we don't know, and those statements are either true or false (if they're sensical). That is, some of them are true, whether we know them or not.

Nope, you've got this wrong.

there are facts that are unknown — Sam26

If I'm interpreting you correctly then you're agreeing to this. But this is to say that there are true statements that are not known. It's saying the same thing.

How could you say it's true if you don't know it? — Sam26

I can't say it's true, but it might be true. I think you need to look at this again.

It's as if we have these propositions existing in some metaphysical realm — Sam26

No, this is coming from you alone.

"It might be true that there is life on other planets", an everyday, conventional thing to say, is to say precisely that "there is life on other planets" might be true--not that it might be true in the future, exactly at the moment when we find out.

It's just how the concept works in the language.

I can't make any sense of the idea that there are propositions that are true, but I don't know if their true — Sam26

You would deny, upon seeing said boulder, that one of these is true?

The weight of the boulder is 5000 kg
The weight of the boulder is not 5000 kg

Before you tell me that we don't normally talk like that etc., try this one: there is life on other planets. It could be true as far as we know. If it is, then it's currently true but nobody knows it yet.

We sometimes seek to prove statements to be true. This doesn't make any sense without this concept of truth. Your position implies that a proposition becomes true only when we come to know it, which seems confused.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Cool.

:up:

a paywall kept me from reading the whole thing. — frank

I caught it before the paywall kicked in. Anyway, sushi's video pretty much covers it, and even though it's from 2015 it's remarkable how much it all still applies.

Is there some overlap between political realism (from the article) and realpolitik? — frank

Yes, in internal relations they use the term realism or political realism now for what I was referring to as realpolitik. I'm not sure there's much difference. Maybe it's theory vs practice, respectively.

There is a good deal of information here on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 — I like sushi

Good video. This article in Foreign Policy from a few days ago makes the same points:

Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis

It seems the most reasonable assessment, and this is from American academics. It goes back to what I was saying over a year ago here, that there's a basic disconnect between the (ostensibly, at least) ideologically-driven American foreign policy and the Russian realpolitik.

I can't find it in the change log. When did you post it? Was it a discussion thread opening post, or a post in someone else's discussion? If the latter, which one?

I can see a couple of your posts about free will here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10364/libets-experiment-and-its-irrelevance-to-free-will/p2

:up:

I'm always totally willing to pretend to listen to the masses.

Sorry Tiff, I don't get it. Sponsoring people? Betting?

Well unless someone can make a case for a subscriber-only area, I don't think it'll happen.

The "Swear Thread" is what made me become a Sponsor and then I made donations as I lost bets to Hanover — ArguingWAristotleTiff

This isn't helping your case. :grin:

We already have social areas, and we're not desperate for a new fundraising solution, so I guess I don't really see the point. What is it that makes you want to see the return of the Green Room? You haven't really made a case for it.

Ah, green as in dollars? Finally it makes sense.

I guess you mean a subscriber-only section of the forum. Well, it's an idea. Not sure about it.

Thanks to our several generous members, subscriptions usually cover the cost all right, and when they don't it's like you say: I channel my porn funds in this direction (it's good clean healthy porn btw).

I don't know what a Green Room is in this context, or how it would help raise funds. I remember seeing one on the old site but I didn't know what it was.

Yes, one of my favourites too. I don't mind that he's different from Chandler's Marlowe.

Kind of feels like lots of people fear the big questions. They have trouble as we all do with the humdrum stuff so thinking about our significance as a people is just too much to think about. — TiredThinker

In my experience, most people who address the big questions are bores. Much more interesting and original are those who take up a unique stance on "the humdrum stuff".

I only know one other book of his, Michaelmas, which I also loved — Srap Tasmaner

I read and enjoyed Budrys's Who? after being haunted since childhood by the memory of the film adaptation starring Elliot Gould.