• Ukraine Crisis
    I seriously doubt it. Putin has never met Dugin and never referenced him.boethius

    Nevertheless Following the murder, Putin became “seriously interested” in Dugin. He sent him a telegram of condolences, and has since encouraged the administration’s contacts with the philosopher. It was one month after Daria Dugina’s murder, on September 30, that Putin first used one of Dugin’s favorite slurs: “the Anglo-Saxons” (in the sense of the presumed Anglo-American hegemony in the West). A Kremlin insider explains this as a direct result of Dugina’s death — and the way it was exploited to show Putin that “the enemies” are attacking “the upholders of traditional values,” those values being, of course, very dear to Putin. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/11/03/hawkish-times-need-hawkish-people

    We were first told the sanctions would compel powerful oligarchs to overthrow Putin any day ... any day. Dugin is an ersatz replacement in that narrative.boethius

    Sure, there is not even a single grain of truth in what they write. Putin's elite supporters are happy more than ever after the glorious retreat from Kherson. And "everything is going according to plan", right?
    BTW you too stop spreading Western propaganda [1], the withdrawal is not an embarrassement at all: The Kremlin remained defiant Friday, insisting that battlefield developments in the Kherson region in no way represented an embarrassment for Putin.
    https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-kyiv-europe-moscow-7dcca261a8af0641f9a3c11cc7f644b0


    [1]
    For all the embarrassment of the withdrawal, thousands of troops drowning or being permanently cut off would be far worse and immediately people would be ridiculing the Russians for not knowing the risks and taking the necessary measures!boethius
  • Gettier Problem.
    I'm afraid I don't have any ideas about where we should go next.Ludwig V

    We could put some effort into clarifying the notion of "justification" according to an internalist epistemology. In that sense, I think "justification" is a normative term, not a descriptive one. Additionally, justificatory practices vary depending on the genesis of a belief and they have different degrees of reliability (which also means that we distinguish "valid" from "sound" applications). Since our beliefs are fallible, our knowledge and justificatory claims are fallible as well.
  • Gettier Problem.
    You've shown a penchant recently for not answering questions posed to you.creativesoul

    Well due to our past exchange I don't trust your way of framing problems.

    Does "there is a cow in the field" follow from mistaking cloth for cow?creativesoul

    Yes but there might be some catch in the term "follow" (between perceptual belief and propositional belief there is not narrow logic linking).

    Does the act of mistaking cloth for cow serve as sufficient reason to believe and/or state "there is a cow in the field"?creativesoul

    Yes but there might be some catch in the term "sufficient reason" (between perceptual belief and propositional belief there is not narrow logic linking).

    Does mistaking cloth for cow warrant concluding that there is a cow in field?creativesoul

    I take "warrent" as a synonimous of "justify". As I pointed out we must agree on the notion of "justification" to discuss further the issue. In any case, I wouldn't claim "mistaking cloth for cow warrants concluding that there is a cow in field". I would claim "mistaking cloth for cow explains the belief that there is a cow in field"
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪neomac
    Huh. So much for Dugin. (I think he is mixing up Frazer's The Golden Bough with Bellow's Henderson the Rain King - not that it matters in this context.)
    SophistiCat

    On a hill at Bomma near the mouth of the Congo dwells Namvulu Vumu, King of the Rain and Storm. Of some of the tribes on the Upper Nile we are told that they have no kings in the common sense; the only persons whom they acknowledge as such are the Kings of the Rain, Mata Kodou, who are credited with the power of giving rain at the proper time, that is, the rainy season. Before the rains begin to fall at the end of March the country is a parched and arid desert; and the cattle, which form the people's chief wealth, perish for lack of grass. So, when the end of March draws on, each householder betakes himself to the King of the Rain and offers him a cow that he may make the blessed waters of heaven to drip on the brown and withered pastures. If no shower falls, the people assemble and demand that the king shall give them rain; and if the sky still continues cloudless, they rip up his belly, in which he is believed to keep the storms. Amongst the Bari tribe one of these Rain Kings made rain by sprinkling water on the ground out of a handbell. (The Golden Bough - J.G. Frazer)

    I read this passage you cite several times, but I don't see where is he calling to execute Putin.boethius

    Agreed. But Dugin's complaint might sound now more ominous than ever to Putin.
  • Gettier Problem.
    I don't understand what you mean by the de dicto (or de re) way(s) of reporting beliefs. I do know what di dicto and de re mean. Can you please explain?Ludwig V

    I and Creativesoul had a very long exchange about his views a while ago so I’m reusing here expressions I clarified there (and without worrying too much about standard usage).
    To make a long story short, “de dicto” belief-attributions refer to belief-attributions relative to a certain believer’s p.o.v. For example, in “the farmer believes that is a cow”, the subordinate clause "that is a cow" is rendering the farmer’s belief content exclusively according to the farmer’s point of view in the given circumstances.
    In the case of “de re” belief-attributions, we refer to belief-attributions independently from a certain believer’s p.o.v. . For example, in “the farmer believes that piece of cloth is a cow”, the subordinate clause "that piece of cloth is a cow" is rendering the farmer’s belief independently from his point of view because the piece of cloth wasn’t identified as such by the farmer. Indeed, we have linguistic tools to non-ambiguously render “de-re” belief attributions: e.g. “the farmer believes of that piece of cloth that is a cow” where “of that piece of cloth” is referring to something outside the p.o.v. of the believer as rendered by the subordinate clause “that is a cow”.
  • Gettier Problem.
    How does the "there is a cow in the field" follow from mistaking cloth for cow? How does mistaking cloth for cow serve as sufficient reason to state "there is a cow in the field"?creativesoul
    Not sure how to understand your questions, but I could say that there are 2 conditions to take into account: 1. perceptual evidences 2. justificatory practices. So e.g. the fact that available evidences fit enough into a cow-shape perceptual template, plus the fact that no other justificatory practice more reliable than judging by habit is applied may suffice to explain the mistaken belief.
  • Gettier Problem.
    Do we agree that at time t1, the farmer believed that the cloth in the field was a cow, but he does not know that?creativesoul

    I agree to the extent we can derogate to the de-dicto way of reporting beliefs, as explained.
  • Gettier Problem.
    the summary is altogether mistaken nowcreativesoul

    @invizzy apparently he changed his views.

    Are we in agreement that the farmer sees a cloth and mistakes cloth for cow at time t1, but he does not know that?creativesoul

    Yep.
  • Gettier Problem.
    his contention looks different from the one you are attributing to him.

    His claims concern how we (including S himself) ascribe beliefs to some S at time t1.
    Consider this case:
    • At time t1 S would say "that is a cow"
    • At time t2 S realizes that he was wrong at t1, and will correctly say "that is a piece of cloth"
    In this case, Creativesoul would claim that we (S included) must now revise S's belief attribution at t1, and instead of saying "At t1 S believed that is cow" we must say "At t1 S believed that piece of cloth was a cow". In other words, "At t1 S believed that was cow" is a wrong belief-attribution report, while "At t1 S believed that piece of cloth was a cow" is the only correct belief-attribution report.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    If you disagree with his conclusion I couldn't care less, because you're not qualified to judge the validity of his conclusion.Isaac

    I don't care about Tyler Cowen’s conclusions either. I'm just questioning what you can infer from it wrt your claim that post-war reconstructions is "a corporate opportunity to 'screw everyone'". Indeed he's article is not focused on the contribution of the private post-war corporations e.g. to the Italian reconstruction at all (as the studies I linked are)! And given his liberal position, I guess he would not agree with your claim either [1].


    No. One couldn't. Not unless one is a qualified economist.Isaac

    I disagree. To distinguish the scope of the studies I linked wrt Tyler Cowen’s article, and related main findings one doesn’t need to be an expert. It must be enough educated and read the articles carefully (especially if one wants to draw inferences from them).


    [1]
    Notice also that your original claim required just a single counterexample:
    It's a pattern repeated over and over - War -> reconstruction requirements -> corporate opportunity to screw everyone.

    I can't think of a single example from history where that's gone well for the inhabitants. Can you?
    Isaac
  • Gettier Problem.
    Is that what counts as a valid reply/answer these days? That may count as an answer to some people, but others can plainly see that it does not answer the questions that it should.creativesoul

    Let's try something else then: explain to me upon what grounds are we claiming that the best time to proceed our driving is exactly when green light occurs, rather than at whatever other time we feel like driving on.

    I've shown how that practice has been found wanting, lacking, and begging for truth about the farmer's belief at time t1.creativesoul

    Maybe you tried. To me without success.

    Upon what ground do you accept the farmer's self-report at time t1, when he was wrong about what he saw and believed about that, and reject his report at time t2, when he is correct about what he saw and believed at time t1?creativesoul

    It depends on how you construct your thought experiment: if you surreptitiously project onto your fictional character your belief-attribution method (as you did with Jack) then I would make the same objections. If he's committed to an absurd belief-attribution method that he applies to others, that method doesn't become more plausible just because he readily applies it to himself. At best, that can show that he honestly believes in its effectiveness.
    If you do not project onto your fictional character your belief-attribution method , then de-re belief attribution can be successfully worked out, if there are enough contextual assumptions shared by interlocutors, but only as a tolerable derogation to the standard method of belief-attribution, not as its replacement! Indeed also those contextual assumptions are based on the standard method of belief-attribution about other interlocutors' beliefs [1]!

    [1] Example: If A tells B that C believes that piece of cloth is a cow, A is (reliably?) assuming that B believes that there there is a piece of cloth and not a cow.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Why would I care in the slightest about your assessment of the Cowen article? If I want an economist's critique, I'll ask an economist, not some nobody on an internet chat forum. You're not qualified to say to what extent Cowen's conclusions are reasonable.Isaac

    Why would I care in the slightest about your assessment of my of assessment of the Cowen article? You cited Tyler Cowen to support your claim. You assessed an expert source as good enough to support your claim or question mine, even though you are no expert. Now I'm claiming you are wrong also based on the source you yourself cited.
    Your questioning my expertise is unjustified. If you have teeth issues you go to a dentist not to a gynecologist, I suppose. Why is that? Because you are supposedly enough well educated to distinguish a gynecologist from a dentist, even though you can hardly be called an expert on any such matters or even an expert at distinguishing gynecologists from dentists, right? And if you are not enough educated, you can still learn these kinds of assessments from other educated people who are not experts either.
    The article main point is focused on policies and the conviction that Marshall Plan’s related keynesian recommendations weren’t effective (liberist, pro-free market policies were!). It’s not focused on the contribution of the private sector to the Italian reconstruction with the money of the Marshall plan at all! But that's what's relevant for my objection to you, and what's should be relevant for you to counter it.
    To distinguish the scope of my studies wrt Tyler Cowen’s article, and related main findings one doesn’t need to be an expert. It must be educated enough and read it carefully.


    I made a point about post war reconstruction being always an opportunity for profiteering, you said that wasn't true because of the Marshal plan.Isaac

    I didn’t claim anywhere that the Marshall Plan was everywhere a success, my exact words were: “If your claim - more charitably understood - refers only to corporate contributions to reconstruction as such, then one must take into account the Marshall Plan after WW2”.


    To maintain that critique you have to show that it is not possible that it's true - ie that no experts think that.Isaac

    If you want to start claiming my position is actually wrong, or untenable, then we have an asymmetric argument. To support my position I only need to show it's plausible. To support yours you need to show mine is actually impossible.Isaac

    These are false alternatives. One could simply argue that his position is more plausible than yours. That’s what I’m doing.
  • Gettier Problem.
    Strange answers to very straightforward questions.creativesoul

    Here is a more straightforward answer: we all learnt to report S’belief at t1 based on what S says at t1. That’s the practice. Now you claim that we should revise this practice because it doesn’t make sense to you for whatever reason and therefore we should attribute S’belief at t1 what S or we know at t2 about S's belief at t1. In conclusion, your belief attribution method is based on knowledge attribution. I find incoherent this conclusion because knowledge presupposes belief, so the workflow must logically start with determining belief first, and then knowledge.

    I was hopeful that there was a bridge when you mentioned "perceptual beliefs", but that notion turned out to be rather empty it seems. All belief is existentially dependent upon physiological sensory perception(biological machinery), including those that are arrived at in the 'other' ways you mentioned. Thus, I found that rather unhelpful for adding any clarity.creativesoul

    It depends on what you want to clarify. I wanted to clarify the notion of justification. So to me the notion of justification applies differently based on the genesis of a given belief.
  • Gettier Problem.
    I have the impression that you forgot who I am. I reviewed at length your approach a while ago and I also addressed the kind of questions you are asking now. We practically disagreed on everything.

    If we are going to go with what the farmer would say, upon what grounds are we claiming that the best time to do that(to go with what the farmer says) is when the farmer is wrong about their own belief, rather than when they become aware that they had once believed that a piece of cloth was a cow(rather than go with what the farmer would say when they're right about what they saw and what they believed about what they saw)?creativesoul

    Briefly, when belief-attribution is incoherently based on knowledge-attribution, the other inconvenient is that one should update belief attribution every time there is knowledge update. The other inconvenient is that if X and Y disagree on what constitute knowledge but they agreed on what S believes according to the current belief-attribution method, yet they would report S's beliefs differently according to your belief-attribution method, multiplying the beliefs S has and probably failing to even understand each other.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Yet what you've provided is evidence that some people think "it was not just a corporate opportunity to "screw everyone", because to some extent and in some cases it succeeded". I already knew that.Isaac

    Not just some people. Some experts and that's not all. Probably you missed a couple of things about the expert you cite, Tyler Cowen (as much as you did about Mearsheimer). His article “The Marshall Plan: myths and realities” is a critical view of the Marshall Plan from a liberal (if not Neo-liberal) and anti-keynesian point of view and the conclusion is that the right liberal free market policies and not central planning policies recommended by the US were the main factors to boost growth [1]. So the first fun fact is that while you were insinuating my neo-liberal fundamentalism ("Unless you're fresh out of high school or you've been raised in cult of fundamentalist neo-liberals") yet you cited an expert whose views about the Marshall Plan (or in general [2]?) are more in line with neo-liberal views then mine. In other words, he would credit the post-war growth to the properly freed market forces than to the central planning that the Marshall Plan implied!
    The other issue is that Tyler Cowen’s article doesn't offer any in depth study of how the Marshall plan worked in the case of Italy[3] (like these studies did: https://books.openedition.org/igpde/14777 [4] , http://www.giorcellimichela.com/uploads/8/3/7/0/83709646/marshall_plan_draft.pdf [5]), especially wrt the role of private corporations which is relevant for my objection to your idea of post-war reconstruction as "corporate opportunity to 'screw everyone'". Besides, in his closing remarks, while praising the role of good free market policies vs keynesian central planning, Tyler Cowen added: “In most cases, this phenomenon was encouraged by European leaders themselves, such as West Germany's Ludwig Erhard and Italy's Luigi Einaudi, rather than by outsiders.” Yet the fun fact is that Luigi Einaudi himself argued in a long interview: “The Marshall Plan is indispensable for the recovery of the Italian economy” [6]


    [1]
    U.S. advisors urged Italy to undertake a coordinated public investment program and extensive Keynesian aggregate demand management policies. In 1949-1950, American officials finished a study of the Italian economy without mentioning stringent migration controls across municipalities and rent controls, perhaps Italy's two worst pieces of economic legislation. Once again, the recommendations involved Keynesian macroeconomic poilicies

    Policy makers and aid proponents should no longer view the Marshall Plan as an unqualified success. At best, its effects on postwar Europe were -mixed, while its impact on the American economy was negative. The basic problem with foreign aid is that economic growth is not a creature of central planning and direction. Growth is the result of individual initiative and enterprise within a sound legal and economic framework. Government can only supply the framework. Anything more will result in the well-known problems of central or socialist planning: the impossibility of rational economic calculation, the creation of perverse incentives, and the stifling of entrepreneurial initiative, among others. Foreign aid programs always will be plagued by such problems.

    In most cases, and certainly in the case of the Marshall Plan, the government-to-government character of foreign aid encourages statism and central planning, not free enterprise. The best way to promote free markets in other countries is to allow their businesses to trade with the U.S. without government interference. This freedom of trade includes not only exporting and importing, but also lending, borrowing, and labor emigration and immigration.


    [2]
    Israel still has some problems with living standards and income inequality, but it is a classic case of neoliberalism — at least in the economic sphere — mostly working out as planned.
    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-06/israel-s-economy-shows-that-classical-economic-theory-still-works?leadSource=uverify%20wall


    [3]
    Italy, moreover, seemed to be seeking market solutions for some of its economic problems but was actively hindered by ECA administrators. The Americans in charge of the ECA in Italy continually were expressing concern about the Italian governments's "excessive" attention to balanc-ing budgets and controlling monetary expansion. U.S. advisors urged Italy to undertake a coordinated public investment program and extensive Keynesian aggregate demand management policies. In 1949-1950, American officials finished a study of the Italian economy without mentioning stringent migration controls across municipalities and rent controls, perhaps Italy's two worst pieces of economic legislation. Once again, the recommendations involved Keynesian macroeconomic policies.

    [4]

    A provisional conclusion on the impact of the Marshall Plan, therefore, must be that :
    - it made a significant contribution to the investment effort of the Italian steel industry in the Reconstruction ;
    - it allowed Cornigliano to become the leading firm in the market for thin flat products, thereby establishing the newly formed alliance between Fiat and Finsider at the forefront of Italian manufacturing industry ;
    - it allowed many small private producers to reequip themselves and thus participate in the rapid growth of electric steel taking place during the Fifties. The Sinigaglia Plan, therefore, attained only partial success in reorganizing the industry, which also meant that the feud between State-owned and private firms dragged on.


    [5]

    In this paper, we have examined the effect of the Marshall Plan on the Italian postwar economy. The modernization of transportation systems was associated with (i) an increase in agricultural production despite a decrease in the number of agricultural workers, (ii) more widespread adoption of modern agricultural machines, and (iii) an expansion of the industrial and service sectors . These findings indicate that, in addition to influencing Italian institutions, the Marshall Plan had beneficial effects on local economic development. Within each Italian macro-region, the amount of ERP reconstruction grant money had a profound impact on the economic growth of otherwise similar nearby provinces.


    [6] https://loccidentale.it/il-piano-marshall-indispensabile-al-risanamento-delleconomia-italiana/
  • Ukraine Crisis
    you'll know full well that a wide range of solutions have been proposed which are neither government controlled nor corporate profit engines.Isaac

    Like what? Name a couple of these solutions.


    Your claim was that the Marshall plan countered my position. To do that it would have to have been a) constituted of corporate reconstruction contracts, and b) an unquestioned success. It was neither.Isaac

    Well the original idea I was addressing was about post-war reconstruction as "corporate opportunity to screw everyone". To question it, it's enough to prove that the post-war reconstruction supported by the Marshall plan was not just a corporate opportunity to "screw everyone", because to some extent and in some cases it succeeded. Besides I do not understand what is so specific about "corporate reconstruction contracts" that can not be applied to the Marshall Plan, since grants and loans in the end trickled down to the private enterprises involved in the national reconstruction. For example, this article (https://worldcrunch.com/business-finance/-2657196800) talks about "Rebuilding Ukraine" with something like a Marshall Plan. Among the examples of Marshall Plan success that were cited there was this one:
    The Italian economic miracle was notable for such features:
    • restored monopoly: monopoly companies (Fiat, Edison, Montecatini etc.) had priority in receiving loans and financial aid under the Marshall plan, which led to the capture of foreign markets by Italian monopolies and an increase in industrial production;
    • the agrarian reform of 1950-1955: the redemption of land allotments with an area of more than 100 hectares by the state and their further sale to citizens in installments;
    • Italian supply of materials for the production of U.S. military equipment during the Korean War (1950–1953).
    Result: Italy had fully recovered from the war by the early 1950s, and industrial production tripled between 1953 and 1962. However, in the late 1960s, the monopolization of the economy led to corruption and inequalities in the development of individual regions of Italy.

    (where Fiat, Edison, Montecatini are big private corporations)
  • Ukraine Crisis
    The Marshall Plan was a US government loan instrument.Isaac

    More grants than loans.

    It was not a corporate reconstruction contract, which is what I was referring to with Bayer.Isaac

    You mean it was centrally planned? Yet the private sector was significantly involved, e.g.: Also established were counterpart funds, which used Marshall Plan aid to establish funds in the local currency. According to ECA rules, recipients had to invest 60% of these funds in industry. This was prominent in Germany, where these government-administered funds played a crucial role in lending money to private enterprises which would spend the money rebuilding. These funds played a central role in the reindustrialization of Germany. In 1949–50, for instance, 40% of the investment in the German coal industry was by these funds. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Implementation)
    Washington’s official commitment to Europe also encouraged American private industry. Some of the big corporations had investments and production facilities in Europe whose expansion and modernization they were now more prepared to consider. Other firms, with a strong dollar in their hands, similarly contemplated attractive participations in European companies that were looking for American technology, new production techniques, work organization, management, and
    marketing.
    (https://www.learneurope.eu/files/8113/7509/5720/Plan_Marshall._Lecciones_aprendidas_s_XXI.pdf)

    BTW, and more in general, if both central planning and corporation initiative are always a way to screw people, what's left for you to hope for?

    A congressional report on the plan later concluded that

    It is, for example, difficult to demonstrate that ERP aid was directly responsible for the increase in production and other quantitative achievements ... assistance was never more than 5% of the GNP of recipient nations and therefore could have little effect.
    Isaac

    That's reported in the section dedicated to "Critiques of the Marshall Plan" which are all taken into account. But the real conclusion is significantly different:
    Accomplishments. While, in some cases, a direct connection can be drawn between American assistance and a positive outcome, for the most part, the Marshall Plan may be viewed best as a stimulus that set off a chain of events leading to a range of accomplishments. At the completion of the Marshall Plan period, European agricultural and industrial production were markedly higher, the balance of trade and related "dollar gap" much improved, and significant steps had been taken toward trade liberalization and economic integration. Historians cite the impact of the Marshall Plan on the political development of some European countries and on U.S.-Europe relations. European Recovery Program assistance is said to have contributed to more positive morale in Europe and to political and economic stability, which helped diminish the strength of domestic communist parties. The U.S. political and economic role in Europe was enhanced and U.S. trade with Europe boosted.

    So, even if we shouldn't overestimate the immediate and direct economic impact of the Marshall Plan, there isn't enough to support the idea that the Marshall Plan was just a "corporate opportunity to screw everyone" either.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    You could throw in the whole of Europe after WW2.Olivier5
    Indeed, I took just the most notable examples to me.

    Hence: "It looks like a tautological claim. On a charitable reading" — neomac
    What?
    Isaac

    You wrote: "War -> reconstruction requirements -> corporate opportunity to screw everyone"
    Now if your claim - non-charitably understood - refers only to corporate contributions to reconstruction that, as you would say, "screwed everyone", then claiming "I can't think of a single example from history where that's gone well for the inhabitants" is practically a tautology: there is no corporation that didn't "screw everyone" in a set of corporations that were selected precisely because their contribution "screwed everyone", obviously.
    If your claim - more charitably understood - refers only to corporate contributions to reconstruction as such, then one must take into account the Marshall Plan after WW2. Not surprisingly, Chomsky commented (in "The Umbrella of U.S. Power"): “the generosity was largely bestowed by American taxpayers upon the corporate sector, which was duly appreciative, recognizing years later that the Marshall Plan “set the stage for large amounts of private U.S. direct investment in Europe,” establishing the basis for the modern Transnational Corporations, which “prospered and expanded on overseas orders,... fueled initially by the dollars of the Marshall Plan” and protected from “negative “developments” by “the umbrella of American power.” (The former citation comes from the U.S. Commerce Department in 1984, the latter from a "Business Week" article, in 1975).
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Hence: "It looks like a tautological claim. On a charitable reading"
  • Ukraine Crisis
    It's a pattern repeated over and over - War -> reconstruction requirements -> corporate opportunity to screw everyone.

    I can't think of a single example from history where that's gone well for the inhabitants. Can you?
    Isaac

    It looks like a tautological claim. On a charitable reading, the example would be: Germany, Italy, Japan after WW2.
    If further "reconstruction" doesn't necessarily presuppose war, then I'd include also ex-Warsaw Pact states and Soviet-Union Republics that joined the West (i.e. through NATO and/or EU) after collapse of Soviet Union.
  • Why Correlation Does Not Imply Causation
    It is precisely because correlation implies1 causation that it's important to keep in mind that correlation does not imply2 causation. It's not banal, as Bartricks has claimed.Jamal

    I'd agree (except that "implies2" != "entails" see below)

    By the way, and roughly speaking, I think implication in logic is something that happens within statements (if then), whereas entailment happens within arguments, that is, between sets of statements and a conclusion.Jamal

    I agree on that too, but I would elaborate further as follows. The notion of "entailment" has broadly to do with semantics, while "implication" in formal logic is just a certain type of truth-functional operator (namely expressing a certain combination of truth conditions as in the "material conditional"). So when we deduce a conclusion from some premises (like in propositional logic by using logical connectors like "if/then", "and", "not", "or", etc.), one can claim the conclusion is "entailed" by the premises, when the truth-functional meaning of the logical connectors (independently from the actual/full meaning of the terms they combine) ensures the truth of the conclusion. In conclusion, while the "entailment" expresses a semantic link between terms, "implication" doesn't express any such link.
  • Why Correlation Does Not Imply Causation
    I'm entailing that you are a troll.
  • Why Correlation Does Not Imply Causation

    "Implication" as in "material conditional" corresponds to a certain type of truth-functional relation between the antecedent and the consequent:
    nHexOd2buy2EfAZa83vhf984Pv9KBtP5QpJO

    Accordingly "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" simply means that one can have "correlation" (A="E1 is correlated to E2" is true ) but not "causation" (B="E1 is causing E2" or "E2 is causing E1" are false). Here some examples: https://wikimili.com/en/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation#Examples_of_illogically_inferring_causation_from_correlation
  • Gettier Problem.
    ↪neomac
    I used to think like you, but then I looked it up in a dictionary which clearly suggested two senses of justification.
    Ludwig V

    Yet you claimed: "But there's an issue about how far philosophy needs to cater for ordinary use of words".

    If something is 95% likely to happen, most people would consider themselves justified in predicting that it will happen, and most people will agree.Ludwig V

    So are you suggesting that the farmer calculated that the likelihood of that cow-looking thingy on the field was 95% and therefore he was partially justified in believing that there was a cow on the field? I think that’s a bit of a stretch. I could find plausible that the farmer claimed “I’m 95% sure that’s a cow” but not “There is 95% chance that’s a cow”. In other words “95%” is more likely and hyperbolically a degree of confidence not a computation of probability in the case of the farmer.

    The standard format for establishing who committed a crime is means, motive, opportunity. Suppose I establish means and motive beyond doubt and establish that there is no evidence against opportunity. Not quite conclusive, but enough to justify belief - or so many people would say.Ludwig V

    That’s a good example. Would you claim that the judges know that the crime was committed based on that partial justification? Or, else, would you claim that the judges know that the crime was probably committed based on that full justification?
    It seems to me that once you introduce probabilistic beliefs there is no need to talk about partial justification, the justification can still be full and conclusive (unless for you "conclusive" = "non-probabilistic" while for me "conclusive" = "sound"), the point is that premises and conclusions are probabilistic.
    One way to verify this is again through deduction:
    P1: if X had means and motive to commit crime Y, then it’s highly probable X committed crime Y
    P2: X had means and motive to commit crime Y
    C: it’s highly probable X committed crime Y
    This deduction expresses knowledge not if it’s valid but if it’s sound. Contrast that to the case where the situation was exactly the same, except for the fact that the judge reasons like this:
    P1: if by flipping a coin I get heads, then it’s highly probable X committed crime Y
    P2: by flipping a coin I get heads
    C: it’s highly probable X committed crime Y
    The deduction could be valid but certainly not sound. Therefore it wouldn’t express knowledge.

    My impression is that the reason why one could consider "partial" a probabilistic deduction wrt a non-probabilistic deduction doesn't depend on the lack of soundness of the deduction but on the cognitive limits that the probabilistic reasoning shows wrt a non-probabilistic reasoning in a certain domain. However since both reasoning can be sound, they both can express full justification and full knowledge.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    I have no idea what you're talking about.Isaac

    Agreed. You have no idea about what you yourself are talking about, go figure!

    What has the pragmatic acknowledgement that Russia had legitimate security concerns (if you poke them, they'll bite), got to do with the ethics of supporting a war affecting millions according only to the objectives of those with a particular passport?Isaac

    Precisely, that’s why you are living in your fantasies. You must properly connect ethics with pragmatics if you want to rationally commensurate what should be achieved (in terms of desirable ends) with what can be achieved under given geopolitical circumstances.



    We ought not have provoked Russia - knowing what would happen and we ought not continue to finance a war which risks the starvation of millions.Isaac

    Here 3 problems:
    • Unjustified conceptual framework shift: what do you mean by “Russia” here? Did you ask ~143M Russians? Are you treating Russia as a homogenous entity? There is no Russia, just a bunch of people with Russian passports. And since their government is not democratic and there are no other ways to measure support, we have no way to know what Russia wants. So stop talking about Russia being provoked.
    • Missing geopolitical conceptual framework: your pragmatic acknowledging that Russia had legitimate security concerns is not based on the conceptual framework that gives sense to the expression “legitimacy security concerns” with all its implications but outside of it (namely it's based on its ethic implications). It’s like acknowledging the value of a chess move by a player based on the next move of his opponent independently from what the endgame is or worse as a function of how the result is welcomed by the father of one of the players or worst without understanding that chess is a competitive game.
    • Unjustified knowledge claims: talking about “knowledge” is incompatible with the notion of taking decisions under uncertainty as in politics people do (and you were taking into account), and that’s not just due to the extraordinary complexity of the problem, but also due to the players’ intentional opacity about specific strategies: geopolitical agents for security concerns are never fully transparent to their competitors or even allies (e.g. just think of the notion “strategic ambiguity”). And that's why our guesses better be educated by geopolitics and history.




    if you believe that "lots of global events cause that level of damage - from local warlords, oppressive police, environmental pollution, poverty" why are you specifically concerned about the Ukrainian crisis? — neomac

    It's the title of the thread.
    Isaac

    Sure why not? Since you just happened to find a study that highlights the effects of the Ukrainian crisis instead of the effects of "local warlords, oppressive police, environmental pollution, poverty”, you thought it was worth quoting it to me because of the title of the thread, despite the fact I was the one who first linked a survey titled “Global impact of the war in Ukraine: Billions of people face the greatest cost-of-living crisis in a generation” while you were the one claiming that the Ukrainian crisis doesn’t deserve such highlight compared to"local warlords, oppressive police, environmental pollution, poverty", right?

    No it isn't, don't be naive. It's produced by conflicting national interests, not Steven Segal.Isaac

    Are you crazy?! I - not you - am the one claiming that the core issue is about the Western countries national interest in conflict with the national interest of an authoritarian regimes like Russia, China and Iran. You are the one trying to sell us the idea that 8 million dead children in Yemen ought to be the core issue of this conflict as if it made geopolitical sense!
    And talking explicitly in terms of hegemonic power clash is Putin too, not his friend Steven Seagal: https://intellinews.com/putin-calls-for-a-new-world-order-in-his-annual-valdai-speech-260759/
  • Gettier Problem.
    This presupposes that there is more than one kind of belief.creativesoul

    The expression "perceptual belief", as I use it, it's simply pointing to the genesis of that belief. If a belief is processed out of perceptual evidences, it's perceptual, if it's processed out of other propositions through reasoning it can be deductive or inductive belief, if it's processed out of a communicative channel it's a transmitted belief, etc.
    This is at least part of my background assumptions while thinking about justification.
  • Gettier Problem.
    If I see a cloth and I think it is a cow, is that not based on induction? I've seen cows before and that looks like a cow so I conclude that it is a cow.Janus

    Then there seems to be a terminological issue here. I intend inductive reasoning as a form of reasoning where from a set of particular propositions we conclude some general proposition: e.g. From crow one is black, crow two is black, crow three is black, ..., crow n is black, I conclude that all crows (in a set of crows larger than n) are black. As you see we are talking about propositions and we are moving from particular to general.
    In Gettier's examples: 1. We do not talk about particular propositions as the basis for some other belief, but of perceptual evidence as the basis for perceptual beliefs 2. The perceptual belief is particular not a generalization.
    So to me the information processing that goes from perceptual evidence to a particular perceptual belief is not inductive reasoning.
  • Gettier Problem.
    Most knowledge claims it seems, apart from purely logical or mathematical results, are based on observation and inductive reasoning, so I am not sure where you see deduction fitting in the picture.Janus

    Logical and mathematical knowledge are based on deductions (see theoremes). And one could question that inductive reasoning based on observation can be called knowledge at all (Hume deemed inductive inference are unjustified). In any case Gettier’s examples do not seem to relate to deductions nor induction. They concern particular perceptual beliefs.
    But I was suggesting to consider “deduction” as a study case for better clarifying the notion of “justification” because if “justified” is a normative term (as I understand it) and not just a descriptive term, then justification must refer to some information processing based on some cognitive standard (e.g. deduction rules in case of justification based on deduction, observational/measuring standards in case of perceptual justification, communicative standards in case of third-party feedback justification etc.). And if deduction is a form of justification, then we can easily see how our acceptance of knowledge=JTB or its rejection can be rendered in terms of valid/sound deductions. In other cases of knowledge, it’s less clear, how to distinguish valid from sound information processing.

    I suggested that one would only be justified in believing that one had seen a sheep rather than a cloth if one got close enough to be absolutely sureJanus

    adoption of some arbitrary standard of what should be thought to constitute evidence and hence justification for empirical claims.Janus

    Here you are confirming that justification is a normative concept not a descriptive one, since we should use some standard to assess justification, then you are suggesting what observational protocols could be provided in order to ensure justification for perceptual beliefs (e.g. one has to go close enough to be justified). I would add that perception is not the only way we form beliefs, but there is also deduction and third-party feedback. So what is left to clarify is if there is a way to distinguish valid/sound justification in case of perceptual beliefs and socially transmitted beliefs as much as we distinguish valid/sound deduction.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    More nationalist bullshit.Isaac

    "Legitimate security concerns" is not fashionable anymore?

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1116152

    The Ukraine crisis risks tipping up to 1.7 billion people — over one-fifth of humanity — into poverty, destitution and hunger.

    “In Yemen 8 million children are already on the brink of famine. Families are exhausted. They’ve faced horror after horror through seven years of war. We fear they will not be able to endure another shock, especially to the main ingredient keeping their children alive.
    Isaac

    But if you believe that "lots of global events cause that level of damage - from local warlords, oppressive police, environmental pollution, poverty" why are you specifically concerned about the Ukrainian crisis?


    8 million children. Did anyone ask them whether they want the war to continue so that Ukraine doesn't lose any territory? No.Isaac

    And did anyone ask them whether they want the war to continue so that Russia will appease its legitimate security concerns? Neither.
    Not to mention that this war is not matter of Ukrainian losing territory to Russia or Russian national security concerns. It’s matter of power struggles and world order between authoritarian vs democratic regimes: in particular, it’s about Putin wanting his threats against the Western-led world order to be taken as damn seriously as his threats against NATO enlargement, if not more. What do you say? Should we take him damn seriously?

    Disgusting.“Isaac

    And how is your disgust helping the 8 million children so far?
  • Gettier Problem.
    all justification is conclusive would result in two senses of "justification"Ludwig V

    I don't understand what you are saying here. What are the two senses? By "conclusive" are you referring for example to sound deductions as opposed to valid deductions?
    I’m still wondering what “partial justification” means. How can probability make the justification partial?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    The latter tells us a lot more about support for particular strategies in the areas where is actually matters, as opposed to an almost meaningless generic support among people who are no more affected by the issue than any other.Isaac

    It matters to them because their lives and living is more exposed to the war than in other areas. But it matters to the rest of Ukraine too because they might lose their territory, men and resources to fight a foreign power. Besides those areas are more pro-Russian so it's easier to find Ukrainians there who would more likely want Zelensky to make concessions to Russia, than the other way around, and if Putin is right in claiming that pro-Russian separatists called him in their defense against the Ukrainian government, then they are now paying also for the gamble pro-Russian separatists there have taken, as much as Ukrainians are paying for provoking the Russian bear with a stick in the eye, right?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    All surveys apply only to the sample. Whether the stratification is specified or not. Your study, for example, was limited to Ukrainians outside of donbas, over 18, with access to a mobile phone and internet connection, and with sufficient free time and willingness to take part. That biases the results against the very people the survey I cited aimed to capture.Isaac

    Sure, and anybody must take into account the limits of sampling to reason more clearly. But there is a difference in a survey that is designed to address the popularity of Zelensky in Ukraine and another designed to address the popularity of a strategy in 3 cities in south-east Ukraine.
    And again, this is not the only indicator. That's one that adds up with many others, including also formally democratic indicators. And any popular support indicator in its individuality (including formally democratic indicators) may be misleading and miss something of non-negligible political value in determining popular support for or against a government.
  • Gettier Problem.
    So you could get it wrong and still be justified. That makes Gettier cases possible.Ludwig V

    But what does “justified” mean here? If “justified” is a normative term and not just a descriptive term, then justification must refer to some cognitive processing assessment wrt some cognitive normative standard (e.g. deduction laws in case of justification based on deduction, observational/measuring standards in case of perceptual justification, communicative standards in case of third-party feedback justification etc.)

    (Actually, the doctor is almost certainly in the same situation, that the tests and evidence will only give their answer on the balance of probability.)Ludwig V

    I was thinking about probability too in reference to partial justification. But then I spotted 2 issues: 1. as far as I know, Gettier’s examples do not talk about beliefs in probabilistic terms (“S believes that P” and not “S believes that probably P”) 2. Probability either is conceptualised as a scalar value to be quantified (then what is supposed to be the probability that the farmer saw a cow while watching something that looks like a cow to consider his belief that there is a cow partially justified? I don’t think anybody is computing probabilities to support justification assessments in ordinary contexts), or it simply expresses a personal degree of confidence, but the inconvenience of taking into account degree of confidence in assessing partially justified beliefs is that anybody could be claimed to be partially justified in believing literally anything to be the case (including contradictions!) on condition that she be not sure about it. That's too much of a concession to me.

    That's why I think that talking about partial justification makes more sense in ordinary contexts as a way to acknowledge some limits in our cognitive competence.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Zelensky is committed to a policy which this poll indicates does not have great popular support.Isaac

    Only within the sample of Ukrainians that the survey was specified to be representative of: namely "residents and displaced persons in three Ukrainian cities close to the southeast battlefields this summer" (so in an area were pro-Russians are more likely to be found)
  • Ukraine Crisis
    So?Isaac

    So popular support can be measured through indicators others than the ones provided by formal democratic institutions. Indeed the poll you provided is again an indicator to take into account, that however doesn't invalidate the claim that Zelensky has great support from Ukrainians.

    I didn't ask if you had a problem with it.Isaac

    I didn't talk about me I talked about democratic institutions as such. And I gave you historical examples to prove the point.
    No sensible person would consider Italy a failed democracy because it doesn't admit a mafia party or a fascist party or a North Korean party within its party system. On the contrary, we may consider Italy democratic precisely because it doesn't include such parties. And if you do not understand this, you are a danger to democracy.

    I'm explaining the consequences.Isaac

    You are explaining nothing. You are just iterating on your piece of propaganda not meant to well-inform anybody.

    You've yet to demonstrate thatIsaac

    Why on earth would I?! Your intellectual clumsiness is just so fun to watch, dude, why would I give you another chance to get things straight? You have no fucking clue even what you are asking when you say "You've yet to demonstrate that". Priceless.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Propaganda is OK. Autocracy is OK. Banning free press is OK. Conscription is OK. Denying human rights is OK.Isaac

    Are you talking to me? I never made such claims.

    I wouldn't so easily have been able to find a poll to the contrary.Isaac

    But you didn't. The poll doesn't survey the popularity of Zelensky among Ukrainians: Ordinary Ukrainians on the front lines are divided on a ceasefire and negotiations.
    Besides also in peacetime, in democracy, you have people voting against what turns out to be the winning party or refusing to go to vote, that has no bearing on the fact that that party has democratically won.

    In addition, the lack of opposition parties and opposition press means that any support thus measured is unlikely to be well-informed and so even less useful as an indicator of genuine support.Isaac

    Where opposition = "Russian collaborationist". Zero problem with that in democracy. Besides the "Russian collaborationist" can just run propaganda and misinformation as Russians do on national TV, so there is no guarantee that having such opposition people would be more well-informed.


    You, however, do need some qualification if you want to claim a view or interpretation is wrong, more than merely disagreeing.Isaac

    It's enough to have read Mearsheimer's to realise how clumsy it's your attempt to making a point in favor of your views by citing him. You are incapable of understanding my own claims (I suspect you do not even understand your own claims), so it's no surprise that you do not understand what "legitimate security concerns" means in Mearsheimer's "offensive realism" theory. Or you do but you are playing dumb. In any case I'm not handholding you through fairly simple concepts, you need a minimum level of comprehension.
  • Gettier Problem.


    Let’s distinguish two intellectual tasks: the first one is to assess whether JTB is an acceptable definition for the notion of “knowledge”. I think that deductive reasoning offers a study case to clarify the alternatives wrt the notion of “justification”: if “justification” amounts to “sound deduction” then knowledge=JTB is still plausible (this view is in line with the NFL assumption). If “justification” amounts to “valid deduction” then knowledge=JTB is not plausible (this view is not in line with the NFL assumption).
    The second task is to assess knowledge/justification claims, namely beliefs about one’s knowledge/justification. This task must be handled in accordance with the definition we have given for “knowledge” or “justification”: so e.g. knowledge claims express knowledge if they are JTB, if we have established that knowledge=JTB.
    There is something else however that might interfere with our understanding of both tasks: the trivial acknowledgement that any claims, including knowledge/justification claims (which discriminate between what is knowledge/justification and what not) are fallible may induce us to question the nature or the very possibility of knowledge/justification as such. Here is the problem of skepticism which we can address, but currently I find it off topic for this thread.