"Would you consider the Gulf and Iraq wars to fall under the definition as you understand it, for example?" — Baden

Absolutely. — Thorongil

As Bitter points out:

Maybe we actually learned something from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (not sure we did, though). It's one thing to smash the state; it's something else to create a civil society out of the chaos — Bitter Crank

Sadly, sometimes the most humanitarian thing to do is to not intervene.

I saw the Bosnia example mentioned and it fits for me. It's one of those terms though that could be subject to, shall we say, strategic deployment.

I don't think it's unfair to be a bit suspicious of the term "humanitarian military intervention" @Thorongil. Would you consider the Gulf and / or Iraq wars to fall under the definition as you understand it, for example?

Yeah, I was just joking really. :)

Oh, the reveal worked. I was looking for unreveal.

I like the way you drew the bottles. And you have me wondering why you made her face that colour.

Where's the unreveal button?! ;)

OK, a couple of options so far then. If someone wants to contact Philosophy Tube, go for it and let us know what he says and/or if anyone has a vid they've made (even partially completed) PM me a link or post it here and we can consider putting it on a channel we set up ourselves. As I said, I think a presence on Youtube is a good idea and worth pursuing.

I like the idea. We could have a combination of collected philosophy videos plus whatever members were willing to put together themselves. Have you made any videos yet you could let us take a look at then maybe we could get the ball rolling?

Hanover was our guiding light, of course. Now there's a true visionary. — jamalrob

Excuse me while I take shelter to avoid the imminent tsunami of Hanoverian ego.

This is what you get with a species of self-deceptive apes for whom the appearance of morality is more important than the reality. Moral hypocrisy is baked right in. I'm not even sure society would function without it.

(Incidentally, I presume this is getting worldwide attention because the Russians or Syrians and not the Americans did the bombing).

+I agree with everything @Benkei said.

Moderation is relatively light here in my view. In fact, to my knowledge, you are the first person to complain of it being too heavy.

On a related note from Robert Wright in The Moral Animal:

"...the feeling of moral "rightness" is something natural selection created so that people would employ it selfishly".

I agree that race is irrelevant, but that doesn't go against the standard meaning of "Jew": the Jews are an ethnic group. And to be anti-semitic is to be prejudiced against Jews. — jamalrob

I would say "ethnic group" is the best way to describe Jews too, but then what is ethnicity? Within ethnic groups you can have shared ethno-racial as well as ethno-religious (and various other) characteristics and there are those who believe Jews exhibit some of the former.

e.g. from http://www.jpost.com/Enviro-Tech/Jews-A-religious-group-people-or-race

'“Jewish” was never a category for race in the US Census, Ostrer notes, even though genetic studies “would seem to refute this..."'

The idea of a race is a bogus category. So there is very little point trying to pretend that "semitic" means a thing it don't mean. No one self identifies as "semitic" in the racial version of the meaning."Antisemitic" is a word used by people who think "jew" is a viable category against people that don't like 'jews'. — charleton

I don't follow the logic here. For example, whether race exists or not, racists exist, and they're a real problem. Also, you don't need to go down this route to make the point in the second paragraph. There are real anti-semites out there and the accusation of anti-semitism is also sometimes used for political purposes. It's not like there's any mutual exclusivity here.

Edit: Seems to take 10 or so seconds to appear in the results. — jamalrob

Worked pretty much automatically for me.

Excuse me for a second while I recover from the metaphor...

Anyway, as a cursory look through the thread should reveal, old PF seems to have been abandoned by Porat and co.

If you think I was implying evolution happens purely by chance or something along those lines, you haven't fully read or understood my post. In fact, I would essentially agree with this:

Under neo-Darwinism, the requirement is that there is no systematic mechanism of variation. That is all "chance" and "randomness" mean in this case. — tom

Apart from the fact that there is no force of gravity in GR. Instead objects follow geodesics in space-time in the *absence* of a force. — tom

What a silly nit-pick. I didn't use the word "force". General relativity is a theory of gravitation. The notion of gravity is obviously essential to it.

Also, if you invoke "chance", though I'm sure you only have a vague idea what you might mean by the word, you are proposing that Evolution and General Relativity are incompatible theories. — tom

No, I'm clearly not doing that.

Evolution does not require "chance", rather it demands no systematic mechanism for variation exists, which by the way, maintains the theory's compatibility with GR. — tom

I was using the word "chance" in the sense it was invoked in the OP referring particularly to random mutation (as opposed to design or other forms of directedness) as the major cause of variation. I hadn't got on to your posts yet, but I will in due course.
.

Democracy is a religion. Voting is a religious ritual. — Mongrel

It's more fun though. I think that's why we we're doing it. Anyway, ain't broke, no need to fix it (unlike real democracies!).

It is evident that chance, is understood by many to be play an important part in the evolutionary process, especially in relation to genetic mutations. But chance is not necessarily integral to evolutionary theory. If we consider the evolutionary theory of Darwin's predecessor, Lamarck, we find a theory in which behavioural habits are the cause of physical variations. Due to the close relationship between behaviour and genetic disposition, speculations such as Lamarck's would be extremely difficult to falsify, or verify. Darwin opted for a scientific, objective theory, which stated the facts of variation, without speculating as to the cause of variation. Modern proponents of Darwinian evolution posit random (chance) mutations as the cause of variation, and this is directly opposed to Lamarck's position of habituation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Lamarck was wrong about the basics of evolution. Darwin was right. Epigenetics is an interesting addition to modern evolutionary theory that demonstrates that Lamarck's approach was not entirely misdirected (although there's no consensus on the significance of epigenetics to evolution or whether it can even truly be considered Lamarckian) but the discovery in no way invalidates neo-Darwinism according to which chance genetic mutations are a necessary ingredient of the evolutionary process. And no respected scientist in the world would claim it does.

I believe that the art of husbandry demonstrates to us that physical variations are most likely not the effect of chance. Domesticated plants and animals evolve in ways which are desirable to us, not in ways dictated by chance. If we had to wait for random mutations to produce the desirable changes which have resulted in the many varied domestic species, we would still be waiting. No, these changes were actually caused by human manipulation rather than random mutations which were selected for by those who were practising husbandry. — Metaphysician Undercover

Chance mutations in domesticated plant and animals provide a pool of genetic variation from which human agents select desirable changes. It's not clear to me why you think that random mutations accreted over time through human selection are not enough to produce the changes we see in husbandry. It sounds simply like an argument from incredulity, and your alternative that we produce the mutations from which we then select makes no sense to me. Can you explain?

We find this in human evolution as well. Philosophers, religious leaders, moralists, have long ago produced ethical principles, which were followed religiously by human societies. Consistently adhering to such moral principles, over centuries of time, has produced the disposition of well-mannered human beings which we take ourselves to be. The substance of the issue is not that we cause ourselves to be a certain way, by trying to be that way, but that we are trained to select for desirable individuals in our breeding practises. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's hard to unpack what you are trying to say here but we are genetically virtually indistinguishable from the humans that were around before philosophy and religion developed as disciplines. And a quick look at the recent violent history of the 20th century should dispel the notion that we are somehow less genetically disposed to savagery than we were previously. Also, we don't on the whole select for more "desirable" individuals in our breeding practices where "desirable" means well-mannered. As a crude approximation, men select primarily for physical attractiveness in terms of sex and females for status.

Now the principle of natural selection is where Darwinian evolutionary theory is really deficient. Survival is defined in relation to a species, or variation of a species, not in relation to the individual. This places survival as a function of reproductive capacity rather than as a function of an individual's capacity for subsistence. The conclusion which should be drawn from this, is that the behaviours, and physical traits, which are selected for, are the ones which are conducive to reproduction, not the behaviours and traits which are conducive to survival. Reproduction is more substantive as an element of evolution than survival of the individual is. This means that the substance of evolutionary change is to be found in those physical traits and behaviours which prove to be desirable to a reproductive partner, or in the case of asexual reproduction, desirable for reproduction in general. Instead, Darwinian evolutionary theory concludes with natural selection, or survival of the fittest, which states that the substance of evolution is survival, rather than reproduction. This is an invalid conclusion. Continued existence of a variation or species is dependent on its capacity to reproduce. Nature does not select which variations will carry on with the act of living, by selecting the fittest, through natural selection, the reproducing organisms make this selection themselves, in the act of reproduction. — Metaphysician Undercover

As has been pointed out already, this represents a serious misunderstanding. Suffice to say that the mechanisms of sexual selection are well understood and covered in modern evolutionary theory.

The notion of "chance" within evolutionary theory is simply a myth. It is a myth propagated by the scientific community in its refusal to face the difficult subject which we know as the facts of life. Rather than accept the facts of life as real brute facts, the scientific community would rather hide behind the myth of "chance". — Metaphysician Undercover

The notion of chance within Darwinian evolutionary theory is as much a myth as the notion of gravity is in Einstein's general theory of relativity. And the attempt to deny its essential role is honestly not worthy of serious discussion (unless you want to completely ignore the science). What is worth debating for a variety of reasons is the extent chance plays in evolution. That's a huge area though and probably too much for one thread.

Got a 2nd for the first time with philosophy forum (no quotes) on local Google, which, as old PF is presently inoperative, is pretty much as good as first.

>:)

On Bullshit - Harry Frankfurt

Yeah, by honesty I just meant he speaks his mind even if what is contained within is BS. I don't think he really knows the difference. In that sense he's not calculating, as JC isn't.

Corbyn's charm relies on the fact that he has reinjected the quaint ideas of "principle" and "honesty" into mainstream politics. Sort of like Trump except the Don relies entirely on the latter novelty. Given that I'd be wary about "freshening him up" in any way. It may be an overly short ride from speech doctors to spin doctors.

.

Don't underestimate the possibility that rich kids can be incredibly stupid and wasteful with their investments and then quickly get tired of them and move on to the next exciting thing — Paul

This. I don't think Porat ever came close to understanding the value of what he had with PF or how to nurture it. The best thing would be if he sold it on to someone of a less commercial and more intellectual persuasion.

He was talking about Owen Smith not JC.

Now 3rd for philosophy forum on my local Google (.co.th, with and without quotes).

Oh yeah! They're suicide bombers too! The first ones, the original inspiration, and true cause of all subsequent terror events! They hate our freedom, materialism, and "unlived" knowledge. They must take it upon themselves to awaken the world by destroying the things we care about. — Wosret

Hmm, have you been overdosing on Manga again, Wos? ;)

Explanations notwithstanding, I agree with @andrewk. I understand the point but the presentation puts me off. The feeling that the teaching character is arrogant doesn't jive with my sense of what spirituality is all about. On that score, it brings to mind some of the darker uses of Zen such as when it was taught during WWII as a means to help Japanese soldiers overcome their aversion to slaughtering the enemy.

I like the look of the Sloterdijk. I'll have a look for something else to add. If anyone else has a paper on their mind, now is the time.

That would be my analysis too. The whole point of the anti-Corbyn crowd is that they hate the left because they think it will cost them power. They know though that the membership is largely left so a bit of pandering is necessary.

Seconded. (I thought about moving that it occurred on the 6th of June at 6 minutes past 6, but we may not get away with that one).

Wosret is suffering from time bias. — Nils Loc

Or just betting on a Trump presidency.

Loving the vibe here. Here's some classic British thrash from a fantastic band that most people never heard of.



-------------------------

Twisted minds that work as one,
They plot your destiny.
You stand and watch your only son,
Deprived of dignity.
Contempt and hatred all you feel,
Devoted loyalty.
A wound you know will never heal.
Doubting integrity.

You sent him out to pay the price.
Did what you thought was best.
You sent him out to be a man.
Almost laid to rest.
Unseen powers that deal the cards,
Faceless homicide.
A bitter rage you can't reveal,
Because of stupid pride.

What you want ain't always good for you.
It;s just the way the balance swings for you,
Balance swings for you.

Have no conscience, feel no pain,
All you need's a flag.
No glory now, the switch is made,
Uniform to body bag.
But after all, did you see the truth?
Find the real war?
What you want ain't always good for you.
No cause worth dying for.
What you want...

------------------------------

Interesting. I note that the Guardian is running with the "Corbyn is a bully" line coming from the Owen Smith camp. There may be some genuine concerns there but I can't help suspecting it's desperate tactics to get some traction in a race that looks lost almost before its begun.

Edit: And today it's leading its Corbyn coverage with a story about his aides supposedly illegally entering an MPs office.

Once again, you elide the difference between intending to kill civilians, and accidentally killing them; Islamist terrorists do the former, and Western militaries do the latter (with rare exceptions, e.g. the My Lai Massacre). — Arkady

Or Dresden, or Hiroshima. Or any of the other actual important deliberate mass killings of civilians since then that have been planned, ordered and/or supported by western military powers.

It's quite possible Porat tired of trying to sell cleaning products to the crowd over there and has offloaded the site. If so, I hope he's offloaded it to someone who actually cares about philosophy. It's always been clear to me that he never did. Alternatively, he's doing some kind of a revamp. Anyway, in lieu of PF's return, I declare us the undisputed centre of the online philosophy universe. ;)

PF going down is nothing new, so I expect it's short term. In any case, welcome, bienvenue, and failte to all homeless thinkers who knock on our doors 8-) .

But what I want to ask you is 'Are goodness and decency a form of incompetence?' — unenlightened

It's in most cases likely to be a handicap at least. A (political) leader's function is to inspire and convince not only the general public but the members of his own party of particular courses of action. Being good and decent are not leadership qualities at all except in so far as they make a leader more inspiring or more convincing. And when it comes to the machinations of power, that advantage is generally far outweighed by the loss of strategic options a moral leader suffers in comparison to an amoral one.

Or is it rather the case that a good and decent man cannot compete with an amoral power seeker? — unenlightened

Not one that's a good actor.