I don’t think I’ve ever heard that sort of view being articulated before. — TheHedoMinimalist

To add to what SophistiCat said, it goes back to Plato's Theaetetus. To show that there must be more to knowledge than true belief, Socrates gives the example of a jury convinced of the truth merely by the rhetoric of a lawyer: only through luck did they arrive at the right verdict, and that doesn't look a lot like knowledge.

In your own example, luck didn't replace justification as it did in Socrates's example, but merely put you in a position to justify your belief (by allowing you to be taught). That's not what philosophers are talking about when they talk about luck in epistemology.

https://iep.utm.edu/epi-luck/

I thought there were too many of them.

done

Note: I've merged a few God threads together into this one.

This discussion was merged into Can God do anything?

This discussion was merged into Can God do anything?

It's in the text box toolbar see.



If you're typing it, you have to use double quotes around the username.

You broke it. — Gus Lamarch

Wrong. The original, «What it's "Legitimacy"», is nonsense.

Fixed, thanks.

One fact to notice is that actually the Russian Opposition to Putin aren't actually very Pro-Western, or at least aren't politically correct when viewed from the West. It shows the distrust or suspicion Russians do have towards the West. Nemtsov had been a deputy prime minister during the Yeltsin years and an outspoke critic of Putin, while Navalnyi I think hasn't held office. — ssu

As far as I can tell, Nemtsov was actually quite pro-West. For example, unlike Navalny he was against the annexation of Crimea, and supportive of Ukraine's closer ties with the West.

Looks completely farcical compared to putin's instrumental use of nationalism. — The Opposite

If I was a Russian liberal opponent of the regime I'd be troubled that the only guy I could support once attended far-right marches, and during the short war between Russia and Georgia referred to Georgians as rodents, and urged the government to take more drastic action:

Russia should take the following steps (at least):

1. Provide serious military and financial assistance to South Ossetia and Abkhazia (to the extent that Abkhazia is ready to actually fight in South Ossetia).
2. Declare South Ossetia a non-flying zone and immediately shoot down all aircraft that are in this zone.
3. To declare a complete blockade of Georgia. Stop any communication with her.
4. To expel from the Russian Federation all citizens of Georgia who are on our territory.

In the future, act according to the situation, but at the same time be aware that of course you really want to fire a cruise missile at the general staff of rodents, but the rodents are just waiting for this. — Navalny, 2008, through Google Translate

https://navalny.livejournal.com/274456.html

"Rodents" ("grizuny"), was a known ethnic slur against Georgians. He has since apologized for the slur but stood by the rest of it.

Generally it looks like he was somewhere around the xenophobic end of the Russian political spectrum, with a less-than-accommodating attitude to immigrants from the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

But as I've implied, I think this could be set aside in the fight against authoritarianism and corruption, and it's possible he has moderated his views. I'm certainly impressed by him at the moment. I'm not trying to cancel him as the pro-Putin tankies are no doubt spending all their time doing as I write this (I wasn't surprised to see the socialist Monthly Review peddling the idea that Navalny's return is a CIA plot).

As for Putin's nationalism, what exactly are you referring to? He's a pragmatist when it comes to issues of ethnicity, and more often than not emphasizes the multi-ethnic nature of Russia: one of the things he has always been afraid of is the country falling apart.

Plenty of information around. Just look for it yourself. Not that it's significant in the present context.

what are your thoughts on the protests? Did you join in? — The Opposite

I think they're entirely justified and I hope it has some momentum, although it's difficult to see how at the moment. And no, I stayed well away from the city centre. Getting arrested or kicked out of the country is something I want to avoid at all costs. Not only that but I don't feel like it's my fight, or maybe, I don't feel I know enough about it. I think on balance that Navalny is to be admired and supported right now, but his apparent past support of ethnic Russian nationalism isn't something I could get behind.

But that last point isn't all that significant here. Obviously the protesters were not nationalists in that sense; they were protesting against authoritarianism and corruption. Really it's just that I can't risk getting kicked out.

It might be relevant to put his photography, and perhaps even his attachment to Alice Liddell, in the context of a contemporary aesthetic movement or tendency, namely the Victorian cult of the child, "which perceived child nudity as essentially an expression of innocence". (source)

It might be naive to think that there was never anything erotic about this, but as far as I know there's no evidence that Dodgson sexually abused or assaulted anyone, or "engaged in lewd or sexual behaviour" as Wayfarer put it.

Has anyone watched this video by Navalny — The Opposite

Yep: as I write this it's had over 79 million views :grin:

I'm closing this.

Thanks, they look interesting. I don't know when I'll get around to reading them. Maybe others on the staff might want to have a look: @StreetlightX, @fdrake, @Baden.

Thanks Josh. On the face of it, something like a critique of mindfulness might have some potential, and personally I'm interested in phenomenology, but ideally, articles should be accessible to intelligent and curious lay-people, those who aren't familiar with the literature.

Or the more likely reason is you are defending a nutter, which seems popular in philosophy. — Darkneos

If only you had offered a criticism for me to defend him against.

[Moving this garbage thread to the lounge]

That still sounds foolish to me. Judging by his books it sounds more like the guy doesn't have a grasp on the subjects he talks about. Even his book is rife with logical fallacies. — Darkneos

If this is your own assessment rather than that of the philosophically illiterate one star Amazon review that you quoted, then tell us in what way it's foolish, why you think Gabriel doesn't have a grasp of the subjects he talks about (whatever that means), and point out his logical fallacies.

When Gabriel decided on his provocative title, he likely wanted to stimulate curiosity. It obviously hasn't worked in your case. You didn't like it and came here to attack what you assume it is he is saying. As I pointed out, you made a mistake. Own up to it.

Other than a few similar interviews, I've read the book, Why the World Does Not Exist, which uses the concept first laid out in Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology, which I haven't read.

In any case I'd need a refresher to discuss it; maybe I'll look at it again. (It could make a nice reading group too, especially in the way it might attract both analytics and continentals).

Up his sleeve he has indefinitely many fields of sense, I believe.

I'm not sure. Some kind of coherentism, I suppose.

I suggest reading that interview to get an idea of what he's saying.

Here's a quote from it:

Skepticism, the position or worry that we cannot really ever know anything, is completely unjustified... — MG

http://www.fourbythreemagazine.com/issue/world/markus-gabriel-interview

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/488577

Just work on your reading comprehension please.

I have no idea how you got that from what I said.

It just seems.....weird to me that some folks would do that? I mean doesn't that amount to shooting yourself in the foot more or less? Who are you talking to then? Why charge for your courses? Why tell this to anyone? — Darkneos

If you really want to know why Markus Gabriel says that the world does not exist, you should read his book, Why the World Does Not Exist, or one of the interviews in which he summarizes the argument, like this one.

Very roughly, he argues that existence applies locally and within domains, i.e., to each object against its background, not to some posited all-encompassing container object that itself has no background or domain.

Anyone thinking that...

It's just skepticism doing what it does best — TheMadFool

...is incorrect.

No problem Todd. Assuming you're on a desktop computer or laptop rather than a mobile device, to "hover over" is to position your on-screen mouse pointer over something, without clicking. I've indicated this in the image below:



The date and time isn't shown in this image, but if you position your pointer as shown, over the grey text that says "14 minutes ago" (or whatever), you'll see it.

And if you hover over the "an hour ago", "a day ago" or whatever, it displays the date and time in a tooltip.

I'd never heard that. It's great.

Is it because documentaries show reality as it is, which is fundamentally illusory, but never points that out? whereas Lynch shows us illusions and then shows us how these illusions are manifestations of something real? — samja

I think of it in terms of the common technique in writing: show don't tell. Like many other artists in their films and novels and poems and so on, Lynch is showing, and he doesn't tell us much at all. Whereas a documentary tells us what happened, and we feel appropriate emotions and gain insights only insofar as the narrative approaches the dramatic techniques of fiction, in fiction itself the artist is free to concentrate on what matters, which aims to be universal, to apply to everyone.

But what matters? I think often what matters to us, which therefore strikes us most forcefully as being more truthful, is some kind of direct representation of what people are like and how they feel; of their love, pain, joy, anger, creation and destruction.

Tolstoy was preoccupied with truth, and he said (something like) that the more he strove for historical accuracy in War and Peace, the further away he got from the truth. The parts of that book that strike one as most truthful are certainly not the parts in which he gives you his high-level, bird's eye account of the war of 1812. Rather, the truth is in his fictional world, in his observations of individual characters and relationships.

Unlike Tolstoy, Lynch is an expressionist, really only interested in character and relationships and mood--and more fundamentally just in feelings--so this kind of truth, the truth of how people like you and me feel, and why they do what they do, is what comes across strongest.

But I think Lynch goes further than most. His films feel truthful, to those who are responsive, because they show you pure emotion, and he dispenses with narrative simplicity or clarity. Often the way that truth is told in film and literature is by telling stories, but Lynch is somewhat different: either he places less importance on storytelling--using it as a convenient background against which to show us emotions and sensations--or he makes you work at making sense of the story (probably both).

But I don't think show don't tell is necessary for maximal artistic truthiness. Proust uses a hell of a lot of words to describe experience in meticulous detail. When I read it in my twenties it blew my mind because I never imagined that any writer could have captured those elements of life that I was familiar with but hadn't thought to explore or to share, and which I had probably come to think of as unique to me. The truth here is in the description more than in the dialogue and the drama (what there is of it).

Which is to say, there are several roads to truth. If you want to see what jealousy or impotence are, i.e., if you want to know the subjective truth of those conditions, then you can watch Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, or Eraserhead. If you want to know how China got from feudalism to Communism, a documentary or a history book is fine. But if you want to know how the Chinese people felt about what was happening, and what its meaning was, go for a story: an autobiography or a historical novel. But that scheme doesn't scratch the surface.

Yep

Nope

Nope.

Nope

I was notified just then, so it's working sometimes at least. I have a vague sense that there are some edge cases in which mentions don't work as expected, but I don't know what those cases are.

What could prompt the development of new cities? Surely every city has a breaking point where it is too costly to live there, and there isn't enough space? I have seen footage of some Chinese cities and I can't imagine a more crowded way to live. — TiredThinker

Building new cities from scratch is exactly what the Chinese have been doing. Beijing and Shanghai were too expensive for people to live in and too difficult to work with for developers so they built new ones, and they've been very successful.

Hello. Where have you been all our lives?

Enough said.