:up: :up:

Read one of his books once. He was good on Kant. Not so much on contemporary philosophy. And irritating politically. On his death, however, seeing as new conservatism has embraced vulgarity and ugliness and is currently pissing all over decency and, dare I say it, "traditional values", there is reason for some reflection among the left at the loss of those like him.

Baden is saying the black lady's testimony is unreliable. It didn't sound unreliable, but ok. — frank

Not in all respects. There was some solid stuff in there. The Daily Mail is for example a horribly nasty right-wing rag, Boris Johnson is racist, black people aren't well-integrated into the British establishment, and the stuff about class she briefly touched on is also cogent. But she's creating a narrative about the reasons for M and H's recent decision based on speculation along a certain angle for consumption by a certain market. And the hosts take this, exaggerate it, and run with it in a somewhat sensationalised way, which she's happy to accommodate. Similarly @fishfry has his own speculative narrative built up from his interpretation of the facts (and for some reason is even more inordinately sure of himself). So, genuine concern over a genuine issue or poking the market for profit? Mixed bag at best.

As for British v American racism, the history differs, but I don't see any clear division there. The majority of the myriad forms of expression of this ugliness span both sides of the Atlantic imo. Though if someone has a bit more meat to put on the opposing argument, I'll bite.

@ArguingWAristotleTiff Something that gets lost in all this argument of whether Soleimani was a bad enough guy to deserve to die is that Trump executed nine people in that attack including an Iraqi official. It wasn't just Soleimani. Even a half-arsed ethical argument should attempt to question the justification for killing the others too. But you won't find one MSM outlet doing that. Nor have we been talking about it here. Why? They were presumably real waking talking people with lives and families too before Trump blew them into little pieces. And if there was no imminent threat (which now seems the case) that was murder, right?

Yes, the MSM mood was, from the start, predominantly celebratory re the relationship. In a stupid patronising way, but, whatever, they were making money. Which seems to be the primary motivation for this piece too. The second that M and H announced the step back, there was an editor somewhere saying to himself "Can we get a race angle on this?" and another "Can we do a Meghan-the-man-eater thing here?" and another "How about the spoiled-ungrateful-brat take?" Whatever sells. There are enough factoids out there to piece together a narrative convincing enough for some media target market to swallow it. Which is not to say there's not an element of truth in any of the stories, just that they're consumer products parasitising a hapless couple who are themselves parasitising the British taxpayer and sensibly (in my view) want a break from the whole sick shitshow.

I'm sure Teller has plenty of value to offer the site. — Baden

After seeing your latest OP on Gwyneth Paltrow, @Teller, (now deleted for low quality), I am wavering. OPs are not supposed to be a couple of lines on something that just jumped into your head. Try this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7110/how-to-write-an-op and please make a little more effort.

@Teller is absolutely welcome, but un's comment was apt. Not a big deal, I'm sure @Teller has plenty of value to offer the site.

(And by the way, many of the worst characteristics of politicians, such as being dishonest, he does display while lacking their best ones, such as knowledge of how to run a country.)

I think the problem people have with Trump is the way he behaves, period. Not behaving like a politician sounds good, superficially, seeing as people generally don't like or trust politicians. But behaving like a vulgar ignorant sexist scumbag can't be excused because it's not the behavior of a politician. Just like any piece of human garbage doesn't get a pass for not being something.

This discussion is about the US vs Iran; maybe you can repost your question in the dump Trump thread.

Great art is largely unappreciated by the masses and bears shit in woods (until we cut all the trees down to make Danielle Steele paperbacks). C'est la vie. Get on with it and consider it a privilege to be ignored. Less distractions and more time to write.

Don't you have anything better to discuss? — unenlightened

:lol:

Couldn't be happier that Trump has decided to "stand with" the Iranian people rather than kill them in large numbers. Let's hope it stays that way.

Fair enough.

Your analogy is very wide of the mark. A better one would be your boss shoots your wife and you then shoot someone who calls at your door in the mistaken belief they are your boss.

Imagine if they had nuclear weapons. — Punshhh

Yes, Trump has achieved two things for them. 1) Given them an excuse to restart their nuclear program and 2) Shown that he's not willing to go to war over it. The winner here is the developing Russia/China axis with Iran and North Korea as untouchable assets harassing and undermining US interests.

The development of full deterrent-level nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran? Until they get them apparently. :grin:

Whatever, I'm just happy no-one is dead in a horrible war today. Let's all drink champagne and sing Kumbaya until Kim nukes LA.

Right on. This guy's moves make Baldrick look like a n00b.

I also like his cunning plan of fooling Kim Jong-Un into thinking America didn't want North Korea to have nuclear weapons when all along he planned on them becoming an unassailable nuclear power.

No, he planned it all from the start. He knew Iran would fire dozens of missiles at an American base in retaliation for his attack and these missiles would happen to cause no casualties, so he would be able to avoid starting a massive horrific war. He's clearly a genius.

I reckon I'll just walk across this busy road blindfolded and when I don't get hit by a car that'll prove what a good idea it was.

The veneration of dumb luck? Apt.

In fairness, you take a lot of flak on Trump from just about every angle and manage to stay remarkably good-natured about it, which is admirable. And with 15 small businesses, I imagine you have headaches enough on your plate.

At the moment on Iran, I'm at the thank-fuck-nobody-else-had-to-die stage. Hope it stays like that for the forseeable.

The likelihood is he's guilty of execution-worthy human rights abuses, yes.

Give me an ideologically neutral definition of "terrorist" that you're prepared to test American leaders against and then let's do that.

Ok, he's not a terrorist then.



I sympathize with him because I compared him to scumbags like Trump and Bush? Are you serious?

If anyone wants to argue about war crimes in the context of America vs Iran, I'll give you ten American atrocities for every one Iranian. Despite that, I'd take America over Iran as a better overall country under most metrics. It's just that only a complete fool would claim the US is morally superior in terms of its military activities.

The American military has tortured and sponsored torture and the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and elsewhere. You think because they don't do it to "their own people" that makes them morally superior?

I'm waiting for the moral argument that justifies killing Soleimani rather than Bush or Trump that goes beyond they're American and he's not. I don't think you have one. Prove me wrong.

Are noted terrorists "assisnated" or are they killed? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

He helped the US fight the Taliban. He also fought ISIS, Al-Nusrah, and Al-Qaeda in Syria. He was a high-ranking military official of a sovereign nation. He was doing his job the same way your generals do. That includes supporting insurgent groups, something the US has been doing all around the world for the past couple of generations. That doesn't make him a good guy, but if you want to designate him a terrorist, you'll have to apply that to Reagan, Bush, Obama, and Trump, the latter who killed him in what much of the world outside your bubble considers an act of terrorism (illegal under international law in the absence of evidence of an imminent threat). So again you're failing the basic test of even attempting to get beyond your bias here. First step, give me an ideologically neutral definition of 'terrorist' and accept the consequences of who falls under that umbrella.

I'm not a pacifist; sometimes the use of military force is justified. The main point I'm making above is that a moral argument would require looking at the full context in a neutral way. I don't expect that here. Strategically, things are simpler, your move should strengthen you and weaken the enemy (at least relatively). And I don't think killing Soleimani achieved that for the Americans. Though the damage on either side has thankfully been limited.

If someone assassinated Bush Jr for his part in the Iraq war, would you consider that justice? What about stormin' Norman? Does he deserve to die? And can't we do away with Trump for his betrayal of the Kurds? Or is your rule that only American lives matter (because you can be sure that most Iranians have exactly the same view only in the inverse). For me as a neutral military leaders are in the same broad category⁠—people whose job is to kill in the interests of their country. Is there some reason I should think differently? You have to take a step back from your position on one side or the other to make a convincing moral argument. Otherwise, we're just talking about strategy, which is fine, but let's make that explicit.

On your first day in McDonald's, you learn to flip burgers or you're out. That principle of employee competence might be worth applying to the most important job in the world. On the rest, I defer to 180 except to add the context of America dumping the Iran deal and imposing sanctions (more today). Trace that line. The Iranians are no innocents but there are reasons for their behaviour which could be dealt with in ways that don't put your own people at such extreme risk.

If Trump doesn't start a war (has this huge weak-dick moment) you'll be for it. — ssu

He's chosen the weak dick moment. Probably he was given little choice by those who know better.

Trump is an ignoramus who knows nothing about international or military affairs. There is no 'there' there behind the stupidities apparent in his interviews and his rallies. He wasn't even aware attacking cultural heritage sites was illegal. He indicated this himself in his most recent comments. Let that sink in Tiff. The commander-in-chief of the most powerful army in the world knows less about military affairs than the average man on the street. At least this time he has had the sense, after being put in his place by the Pentagon and others, to shut up and back off. He needs to leave this stuff to the experts in future.

Iran gave Trump the finger, but did it in a smart way. They've called his bluff with a direct and open attack on US military forces, but done it in such a way that Trump has virtually no support internationally for further action against them. So, if he doesn't retaliate after all his bluster he'll look weak and be diminished. If he does, he'll be starting a war that no-one, including Americans, want, that none of his tradiional allies bar Israel will support, that everyone will blame the US for, and that America will lose in the same way it lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stupid strategic mistake about to be punished.

Risky to make bluffs that have your own guys contradicting you, especially when those guys are the ones you'll need to rely on for military action. Might play well to a certain crowd at home, but it's likely to embolden your enemies. We'll see how it plays out, but the US is looking more dazed and confused than tough at the moment.

Stupid of Trump to threaten terrorist attacks on cultural sites. Even the Pentagon told him to fuck off. If he's trying to unite the world, including his own armed forces against him, he's succeeding.

I'll concede your empirical claims: senses come before concepts and socialization in humans is necessary for survival. Concepts being linguistic is not an empirical claim, but a philosophical one, and likely one that demands strained definitions. — Hanover

Fair enough. The ontology of concepts is thorny.

I often grasp issues and then spend some amount of time trying to precisely articulate them. — Hanover

My claim regarded early cognitive and linguistic development. You've already developed beyond that stage, so you have a linguistic and conceptual background that provides an explanatory basis for your articulations. Newborns don't. So, your personal experience isn't necessarily relevant.

What is the empirical evidence for this assertion? I'd think a dog understands what is his and what is not, which means he knows himself from the other and he has no langauge to say "get away from my food" other than his bark and bite, which is langauge in a broad sense I guess. — Hanover

To get the claim straight, I don't deny all forms of self-awareness in animals. Some (not dogs though) pass the mirror test. What I deny is a self-construction, a self-consciousness, that is an ability to conceptualise a self, that, for example, one can imagine taking different courses of action etc. As for the self only making sense in context of the other, I consider that be a matter of definition. I can't make any sense of the idea of a self without an other any more than I can make sense of "North" without "South". The concepts are semantically interdependent.

Going nuts isn't the same as losing one's sense of self. — Hanover

Maybe I should have said "losing one's mind". If you lose your mind, you're not yourself are you? In fact, we even say of people that "they're not themselves" when they're suffering from relatively mild cases of mental illness. To put some more bones on this, there have been actual scientific experiments putting people through the "ultimate torture" described in the OP and they've had to be stopped very quickly due to the participants suffering severe hallucinations and other reality-distorting effects. As our sense of self is strongly correlated with and arguably completely dependent on our sense of reality, I consider that to be strong evidence of dissolution of the self due to social deprivation.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds

"... the most alarming effects were the hallucinations. They would start with points of light, lines or shapes, eventually evolving into bizarre scenes, such as squirrels marching with sacks over their shoulders or processions of eyeglasses filing down a street. They had no control over what they saw: one man saw only dogs; another, babies.

Some of them experienced sound hallucinations as well: a music box or a choir, for instance. Others imagined sensations of touch: one man had the sense he had been hit in the arm by pellets fired from guns. Another, reaching out to touch a doorknob, felt an electric shock.

When they emerged from the experiment they found it hard to shake this altered sense of reality, convinced that the whole room was in motion, or that objects were constantly changing shape and size.

...

The researchers had hoped to observe their subjects over several weeks, but the trial was cut short because they became too distressed to carry on. Few lasted beyond two days, and none as long as a week."

suggesting the dissolution of the self when someone is removed from society? — Hanover

That one re the OP (the other is true too though).

Also, don't you think a newborn has a sense of self prior to his having any conception of society? — Hanover

A "sense" of self vs a "conception" of society is an asymmetric comparison. Developmentally, senses come before conceptions by definition as concepts are linguistic. Anyhow, a sense of self can't develop without some form of social contact. In fact, babies just die without social contact (even for newborn monkeys, experiments have shown that social contact is prioritised above food, for example). So, the way I see it, following Vygotsky, the social world the child experiences happening around it becomes gradually internalised and that becomes the basis of the self and self-consciousness. The child internalises interpersonal interactions, which gradually become intrapersonal self-relations.

And what is meant precisely of "social"? — Hanover

Contact with others.

If I'm raised by a pack of wolves, can they give me a sense of self? — Hanover

Not in the sense we understand it. But you might conceivably live at least.

What if I raise a dog? Can her sense of self come from a non-dog? — Hanover

I guess, but again, it wouldn't be a "self" as we understand it. Our world, including much of our self-relation, is defined linguistically. A dog can't have the concept of self.

Can the "other" be a tree, where my society of trees offers me an sense of self? — Hanover

No. Although I recommend a long-term experiment involving you and the local maples to fully verify this.

I'm not saying that a person born alone won't be terribly confused and likely incapable of survival, but I wonder if he wouldn't know of his own independent self. — Hanover

What would there be to know? The self only makes sense in the context of the other. For a start, no other, no language, no self concept. So, you're left with some kind of awareness maybe but no construction of the self.

Once I was in New Orleans and I paid $2 to see a wild scantily clad Cajun woman, supposedly captured in the bayou, maybe raised by gators. She seemed unstable from her mannerisms, but, at the same time looked no different than an average college girl with a really terrible solution to paying her rent. I think she had a sense of self, but maybe a diminished sense of self worth, likely from the way the gators treated her. — Hanover

You should probably write a paper on that. Maybe use toilet paper, so that when your study gets rejected you still have some use for it.

We didn't really get to why the self would dissolve without any social contact. Usually, it's simply put that people go nuts. But that sort of amounts to the same thing.

You've concluded I know nothing about the Middle East because I didn't ask you what you meant about something? You're an odd one. And I'm pretty sure everyone involved in the conversation understands that Iran has been inciting sectarian violence there. You'll need to come up with more than that if you want to contribute something to the discussion. And leave the silly face-saving ad-homs at home. They're not remotely credible.