On the contrary, it is you who misinterpreted my position. You need (1) to show that you correctly understand others before blaming them for misunderstanding your incomprehensible statements and (2) make sure that your statements are comprehensible. — Apollodorus

As for (1) you didn’t show me that I misunderstood you before I showed you that you did misunderstand me, and repeatedly so. Therefore it’s you who needs to show me that you correctly understand me before complaining about my misunderstandings (and you didn’t show me any of my misunderstandings yet!). As for (2), I can’t make sure my statements are comprehensible to you if you conveniently chop them to build a straw man argument out of them.

From what I see, you seem to be some kind of Nazi who thinks people should shut up unless they think and speak exactly like you. — Apollodorus

To a deranged mind, I can seem lots of things, I guess.

The fact is that when I said "as far as I am concerned", I meant that it makes no difference to me personally, as it doesn't affect me in any way whatsoever. The conflict might put up my energy bills, but other than that, it makes no difference to me. Hence I have no personal interest in "spreading pro-Russian propaganda" as you falsely claimed. — Apollodorus

And where exactly did I make such a false claim?! As far as I remember, I never claimed anything that relates "spreading pro-Russian propaganda" with your “personal interest” or the impact of the war in Ukraine in your personal life. I was talking about your legitimacy claims (some of which I quoted) in favour of Russia and against NATO or for a more equitable world (which is again in line with what you attribute to non-Western powers’ views, including Russia, and against NATO aspirations to world hegemony), independently from your personal interest. These legitimacy claims are the only claims of yours I found pertinent to address so far, "as far as I am concerned”. These legitimacy claims show exactly that you are against NATO involvement in Ukraine, and can’t possibly square with this statement of yours “Let them fight it out and whoever is the best fighter deserves to win” from a normative point of view exactly because if NATO with all its hypocrisy and predatory attitude - as you claim - were allowed to fight and win over Russia, destroy it and exploit whatever is left of Russia, then NATO would have deserved it as the best fighter, in spite of all your other legitimacy claims opposing this scenario.
While your dodging pertinent objections against your legitimacy claims by arbitrarily shifting focus from them to talking about your personal interest is a goofy or dishonest dialectical move that deserves to be either ignored or rebuked, "as far as I am concerned”.
In short, you provided yet again another straw man argument.

As a more general principle, my position has always been absolutely clear, i.e., every country and continent should belong to its rightful owners. If you were prepared to give Tibet back to the Tibetans, North Cyprus back to the Cypriots, Kurdistan back to the Kurds, Germany back to the Germans, etc., then you might have some credibility. But as it is, you haven’t. IMO if you've got a rule or law, you must apply it consistently, not arbitrarily, otherwise it's just a joke. Unfortunately, there is no consistency whatsoever in the NATO position — Apollodorus

There are two reasons why I don’t find your “Western hypocrisy” kind of argument thrown at me (and others) as rationally compelling as you seem to believe:
1. Siding with NATO and against Russia wrt the war in Ukraine, doesn’t imply any (unconditional) ideological commitment to NATO expansionism and Western leaders/administrations’ choices, nor a dogmatic defence of Western foreign politics on both current and past affairs. As much as your siding with Russia and against NATO wrt the war in Ukraine doesn’t imply an (unconditional) ideological commitment to Russian imperialism, nor a dogmatic defence of Russian foreign politics on both current and past affairs. Yet I, you and other participants may have other ideological or pragmatic reasons to side either with NATO or Russia wrt the war in Ukraine. So if it’s possible for you to support Russia against NATO without being a pro-Russian troll, then it’s possible for me and others to support NATO against Russia without being a NATO jihadis.
2. Complaining about how fucked up the Western world and Western propaganda is an understandable and morally compelling reaction, yet turning that complaint into a reason for dismissing other political views just because they do not address or process Western injustice (even its impact at World scale, mind you!) in line with your general principles of democracy, equity and freedom is not only unjustified but dangerous.
It’s unjustified because as long as injustice is systemic, it is also the unintended outcome of cognitive asymmetries, moral hazards, bad habits and vicious loops embedded in complex societies. And for that reason systemic injustice can neither be entirely explained in terms of some popular “populist” narrative with agents moved by callous greediness for money or power on one side (the evil elite), and agents exploited and fooled by the former on the other side (the innocent mass), nor can be fixed at will, if only a large enough number of individuals could unite to oppose or revolt against the evil elites.
It’s dangerous because just preaching general principles and relying on the sheer force of a popular emotion (as the self-righteous’ indignation) in order to fix the World without having a fucking clue of what is feasible, sustainable, widely shareable and achievable in the medium-long term for individuals, decision makers and collectivities given all material, moral and cognitive constraining factors of our human condition might not only fail to fix the World, but it could arguably make it worse.

So, no, I don’t have to be prepared to give Tibet back to the Tibetans, etc., (whatever the fuck that means), nor I have to rely on NATO position consistency (whatever the fuck that means), to side with NATO countries in support of Ukraine against Russia. And no, I don't take fixing the World as an unconditional moral imperative for my political choices, nor I see how we are closer to that objective by making concessions to Putin's aggressive expansionist ambitions.

Well, if a statement is "more articulated" that doesn't make it more logical, comprehensible, or true, does it? — Apollodorus

Yet it proves that yours was a straw man argument based on a misinterpreted bit of what I wrote.

You're claiming that my "propaganda is instrumental to Russian criminal expansionism”. But you have completely failed to demonstrate (a) that my statements were "propaganda" and (b) that they have any impact on Russia's foreign policy. — Apollodorus

Completely failed?! How so? I usually don’t even try to “demonstrate” what I take to be evident or common knowledge.
But if that’s your challenge to me, ok let’s address it. Starting with (b), your accusation looks three times pointless to me: first of all, my claim that your propaganda is “instrumental to Russian criminal expansionism” is simply acknowledging its instrumental role in this war of propaganda, not assessing its specific impact. By analogy, saying that that knife is for cutting bread, doesn’t mean that knife is used or has ever been used to cut bread or is effective in cutting bread.
Second, I don’t even see the rational of requiring such an assessment in ordinary political debates like ours. Assessing the specific impact of your specific claims may be pertinent as a scientific task, I guess. But my claim is still rationally compelling despite the lack of such an assessment, or even due to the lack of such an assessment. Indeed propaganda is not only matter of sources and methods but also of content virality wrt a certain social environment. Considering that in Western democratic societies one can take part in free public debates and vote to have an impact on leaders’ policies also wrt the war in Ukraine (and indirectly wrt Russia's foreign policy), pro-NATO or anti-NATO propaganda narratives can compete in order to influence public opinion accordingly (letting aside all other more or less questionable ways available to militants to proselytise and fight the system from within, of course). Besides thanks to the internet and the social networks non-mainstream and anti-system propaganda have become more pervasive, impactful and easier to infiltrate by hostile powers too. All that considered, uncertainty about the risks of spreading propaganda about controversial issues plausibly increases a default aversion toward ideological opponents in those who are risk averse (by analogy we take default counter measures against covid-19 and expect the same from others, even if we don’t exactly know the medical condition and actual impact of spreading the virus in our and other cases).
And, third, you too must know all that already since you keep stressing the role of propaganda in this thread:
“Wars aren't always fought by military means. There are culture wars, economic wars, propaganda and info wars, some wars are overt, others are covert, etc., etc.”
“The first thing that is imperative to understand is that there is an info war going on between America and Russia, and this means that not only Russia, but America, too, is involved in disinformation and propaganda”.
“And let's face it, every major power wants more power. The only difference is the tools you employ to acquire power, financial, economic, political, military, or any combination of these, and the narrative you use for justification, "world peace", "economic progress", "democracy", "human rights", etc. ”


Concerning (a), besides the fact that you keep complaining about Western propaganda (e.g. “The problem with Americans and Westerners in general is that they tend to be either uneducated or miseducated. It’s hard to tell which is worse, but the result in either case is that Westerners can’t see through their own ignorance and propaganda.”, “The West is, literally, an island of ignorance and self-serving propaganda promoted by the US-controlled global media”), you do not seem to do it exclusively based on your selected repertoire of alleged “facts” at all but also because motivated by your own justificatory narrative which you have been very vocal about on several occasions in this thread: e.g. you wrote “a real solution requires a global, comprehensive vision and a degree of objectivity and impartiality than he is not prepared to bring to the table. As already stated, my position as a general principle is that in a genuinely free, democratic, and equitable world, every country and continent should be ruled by the people who live there.
This attitude of yours is perfectly in line with non-Western powers’ narrative as you described them (“IMO the interests of true freedom and democracy would be served much better by a multipolar world order based on free and independent countries and continents instead of a worldwide American empire. This seems to be the view of non-Western powers like Russia, China, India, and many African and Latin American countries, i.e., the majority of the world population”).
Add to this, your biased intellectual approach (just see how you grossly and conveniently misunderstood my claims about Russia being an existential threat to Europe and then tried to minimise Russian nuclear threats) and polemical rhetorical attitude (see the usage of loaded language e.g. NATO jihadis), and what you get is exactly your propaganda, actually one that’s very much in line with the claims of other participants in this thread.
Finally, it’s not uncommon among those who support certain controversial propaganda narratives to deny that even when it’s evident, and this is what makes them also intellectually dishonest.

Moreover, I never said I was "against Western involvement in Ukraine", so there really is no need for you to make things up. As far as I am concerned, Russia and the West can do in Ukraine whatever they want to. Let them fight it out and whoever is the best fighter deserves to win. Very simple and easy to understand IMO. — Apollodorus

Yes, I am against NATO and against the EU because I am against imperialism. But I think discussion forums are for people to exchange views without resorting to ad hominems and insults. — Apollodorus

Well then I never said you said it either, nor I made anything up since that claim was logically implied by many other claims of yours: basically, you see the Western involvement in Ukraine (or as you called it “America’s economic and military jihad in the region”) as an expression of NATO imperialism and you are against NATO because you are against imperialism. Even more so because you see Western imperialism as illegitimate contrary to the Russian imperialism which you see as legitimate. You also claimed: “EU and NATO infinite expansion may sound “legitimate” at first sight. But only if you don’t think it through. Because if you think about it, it is a form of imperialism that can only lead to world government”. And: “no, I'm not ‘pro-Russian’, just anti-NATO and anti-US hegemony. And definitely against world government”.
In other words, you are against illegitimate imperialism, even more so if it’s likely leading to world government, which Western involvement in Ukraine you claim is all about. Then yes you are against Western involvement in Ukraine. As for the social-darwinist flavour of this claim of yours “As far as I am concerned, Russia and the West can do in Ukraine whatever they want to. Let them fight it out and whoever is the best fighter deserves to win”, it simply makes no sense wrt your own legitimacy claims in favour of Russia/non-Western powers and against US/NATO.

If I find it appropriate, I don’t mind resorting to “ad hominems and insults” as much as you don’t when making comments such as “It looks like some folks have their heads so deep in NATO propaganda”, “Your problem is that the more you go down your chosen path of activism and propaganda, the more irrational you become. That’s why your arguments lack objectivity and logic”, especially against intellectual dishonest interlocutors like you are proving to be. Yet it's not what I'm here for, so as long there are more pertinent arguments to address, the exchange can continue.

Ukraine entering NATO may or may not be a nuclear threat to Russia. That's for Russia to decide, not for you or me. But the situation is much more complex than that. If Ukraine becomes a NATO member, it might try to push Russia out of Crimea. This would be unacceptable to Russia (a) because Crimea has never been Ukrainian, (b) because this would result in NATO control of the Black Sea which Russia needs for access to the Mediterranean, and (c) because Crimea has been the base of Russia's Black Sea fleet for centuries (from 1783, to be more precise): Black Sea Fleet - Wikipedia
So, I think an objective analysis of the situation needs to consider the concerns of both sides, not just one. — “Apollodorus

I acknowledge the strategic importance of Crimea from a military and commercial point of view (actually I myself brought this issue up a while ago). Yet this is not how this war was explicitly justified by Russian propaganda in the first place (i.e. denazification of Ukraine, broken promises of NATO expansion), nor something the Westerns can now concede to Russia so easily given the confrontational attitude of Russia toward the West and its military presence in Middle East and Africa. And the claim that’s “up to Russia to decide” sounds preposterous because it conflates a trivial observation with a questionable understatement: ordinary citizens’ political contribution is obviously limited to ideological support (in debates and during elections) not in political decision making as political leaders so what’s the point of mentioning me and you?! At the same time the allusive normative force of your otherwise pointless claim is questionable on geopolitical and ideological grounds.

Anyway, if you think that "the US is preparing contingency scenarios with its allies", and is "not waiting", then there is nothing to worry about. — Apollodorus

Of course there is, because “wars aren't always fought by military means. There are culture wars, economic wars, propaganda and info wars, some wars are overt, others are covert, etc.” So consensus can be eroded as well as support for certain foreign policy measures.

So, I'm not sure who is more likely to use nuclear weapons. A country that has never done it, or one that has? — Apollodorus

Your way of assessing the likelihood of such an event is preposterous, given that the US used strategic nuclear weapons after being directly attacked by a non-nuclear power while Russia is a nuclear power that seems unlikely to directly attack the US knowing it could provoke a nuclear Armageddon at this point (and the same holds for the US). Besides after the Cuban missile crisis, it became a political and military imperative for major nuclear powers to regulate the usage of their weapons within the boundaries of an officially declared, strictly codified, and implemented logic of deterrence. At this point however the problem is on the Russian side given its updated nuclear doctrine under Putin, the Russian significantly larger arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons wrt the one available to the Westerners, the poor performance of the Russians in the battle field, and the risks of Russian mismanagement of “limiting” their tactical nuclear attacks (given the different command&control difficulties affecting the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons), combined with the imperative of Western countries to not look weak and divided in front of such terroristic blackmailing strategies and their capacity to effectively respond with conventional strikes to frustrate Russian “escalate to de-escalate” strategy. So the burden of a first strike with TNW is all and only on Russian shoulders: indeed they cornered themselves into bearing this burden given their nuclear doctrine, their investment in building up their TNW arsenal and their repeated nuclear threats.

1. First you said that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is a threat. But all nuclear arsenals are a potential threat, including those of America, Britain, and France. — Apollodorus

I’m responsible for what I write not for what you understand. First of all, I didn’t focus on the nuclear threat per se. What I said was more articulated: “Russia is a direct existential threat to the West (primarily to the EU), given its nuclear arsenal and related repeated threats, its political infiltration in support of populist movements in the West, its veto power at the UN, its energetic blackmailing, its military presence in the Middle East and in Africa, its power concentration in one man's hands, and Putin's declared ambitions to establish a new world order with China and directly antagonise the West. ”
That is what makes Russia under Putin a direct existential threat to the West. Not a single condition but a set of conditions, including the nuclear threat. And it’s not only question of human lives and territorial integrity, but also of institutions and wellbeing.

2. Then you said that Russia is a threat and/or Putin invaded Ukraine because of my “propaganda”, which sounds pretty incomprehensible and irrational to me. — Apollodorus

No I didn’t say that either. You wrote “if you've got a problem with Russia invading Ukraine, go talk to Putin. I’ve got nothing to do with it!”. I simply said you do have something to do with Russia invading Ukraine b/c Russia is not just conducting a war in Ukraine, but also a worldwide propaganda war to gain support and stir aversion toward Western involvement in Ukraine against Russian criminal expansionism. And your propaganda is instrumental to Russian criminal expansionism.

3. The quotes you posted do not show that the US regards Russia as an imminent nuclear threat. Statements like “if someone does x, we’re going to do y”, do not support your claim. — Apollodorus

So what?! I never used the expression “imminent nuclear threat”. And even Ukraine entering NATO wasn’t an imminent nuclear threat to Russia, yet Putin waged war against Ukraine and started menacing the West with nuclear threats every other day. The risk of escalation (especially in the usage of tactical nukes by that Russians) as suggested by the Russian nuclear doctrine, Russian politicians’ declarations, and Russian performance on the battle field is what the West must deal with well before any imminent nuclear threat.

4. And now you’re saying that “Nobody is going to wait for Putin to make the first move on this”. If that is the case, why are you waiting???!!! :rofl: — Apollodorus

Who is waiting?! The West is neither deterred by Russian nuclear escalation threats from supporting Ukraine given the growing military support to Ukraine (BTW the latest US security package for Ukraine, includes gear designed to protect Ukrainian forces from nuclear, biological and chemical exposure), regime of sanctions against Russia, and rearming programs against Russian military threats (while Finland and Sweden plan to join NATO). Nor refraining from developing and coordinating their deterrence strategies against Russian nuclear threats: the US is preparing contingency scenarios with its allies (not to mention that the current Russian nuclear posturing was practically foreshadowed since 2018). And things are on the move in terms of nuclear deterrence preparation inside many European countries (e.g. Poland announced its readiness to host US nukes).

Dude, whether Ukraine joining NATO is a security threat to Russia or not, is for Russia to decide, not for you or me. — Apollodorus

Dude, whether Russia is a security threat to Ukraine or not, is for Ukraine to decide.

In any case, if you've got a problem with Russia invading Ukraine, go talk to Putin. I've got nothing to do with it! :rofl: — Apollodorus

Sure you do with your propaganda.

Dude, says WHO??? — Apollodorus

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin:
Russia’s most recent threats of escalating its attack on Ukraine into a nuclear conflict are “unhelpful” and “irresponsible,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday.  “You’ve heard us say a number of times that that kind of rhetoric is very dangerous and unhelpful,” Austin told reporters following a meeting with military leaders from more than 40 countries at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. 
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3463700-pentagon-chief-irresponsible-for-russia-to-talk-about-potential-nuclear-escalation/

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was just a month old, but Kendall noted the danger of escalation: “We’re dealing with a nuclear-armed state; you cannot ignore that as you make decisions about how to respond.” […] “World War II-style conflict that could involve nuclear weapons is not in anybody’s interest,” Kendall stressed in our interview last month. “That’s pretty obvious. But that doesn’t mean that somebody is not going to make a mistake in taking an aggressive action, thinking that the other side is not going to fight and then finds out that they do.” That, he said, “ends in a very difficult situation.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/28/russia-ukraine-nuclear-pentagon-budget/


CIA Director William Burns:
"Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they've faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons," Burns said during a speech in Atlanta.
The Kremlin said it placed Russian nuclear forces on high alert shortly after the assault began February 24, but the United States has not seen "a lot of practical evidence" of actual deployments that would cause more worry, Burns added, speaking to students at Georgia Tech university.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220414-live-major-russian-warship-seriously-damaged-in-explosion-as-ukraine-claims-strike

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg:
underscored the urgency of the preparation effort on Wednesday, telling reporters for the first time that even if the Russians employ weapons of mass destruction only inside Ukraine, they may have “dire consequences” for people in NATO nations. He appeared to be discussing the fear that chemical or radioactive clouds could drift over the border. One issue under examination is whether such collateral damage would be considered an “attack” on NATO under its charter, which might require a joint military response.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/us/politics/biden-russia-nuclear-weapons.html

Rival nuclear powers monitor one another as a matter of everyday routine. At the end of the day, you react to a threat if you identify a threat. And you can identify a threat only by monitoring your opponent. So, you monitor your opponent irrespective of their being or not an imminent threat. — Apollodorus

Sure, but the pressure depends on the perceived risks, indeed:

“In late February, when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia declared that his country’s nuclear arms were entering “special combat readiness,” America’s surveillance gear went on high alert. Hundreds of imaging satellites, as well as other private and federal spacecraft, began looking for signs of heightened activity among Russia’s bombers, missiles, submarines and storage bunkers, which hold thousands of nuclear warheads.”
“Dr. Lowenthal, the former C.I.A. assistant director and now a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins, said he found the personnel aspect of Moscow’s escalatory process the most troubling. We can develop a good baseline on what’s normal” and routine in the movement of Russian nuclear arms, he said. “It’s the internal stuff that’s always worrisome.” Imaging satellites, after all, cannot see what people are doing inside buildings and bunkers. He said the main uncertainty was “the level of automaticity” in Russia’s escalatory war alerts […] You’re never quite sure” how Russia goes about authorizing the use of nuclear arms, Dr. Lowenthal said. “That’s the kind of thing that makes you nervous.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/science/nuclear-weapon-russia-satellite-tracking.html

“The White House has quietly assembled a team of national security officials to sketch out scenarios of how the United States and its allies should respond if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — frustrated by his lack of progress in Ukraine or determined to warn Western nations against intervening in the war — unleashes his stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/us/politics/biden-russia-nuclear-weapons.html

Nobody is going to wait for Putin to make the first move on this.

Dude, Russia has had a nuclear arsenal for decades and I don't see Russia invading Paris, London, or New York! — Apollodorus

I didn't see Kiev, Paris, London or New York invading Russia either. Yet Russia was considering Ukraine joining NATO and EU as an existential threat to them to the point of wage war against Ukraine and threatening the West to escalate to a nuclear war every other day.

Plus, here's an official Pentagon statement:
We continue to monitor their nuclear capabilities every day the best we can and we do not assess that there is a threat of the use of nuclear weapons and no threat to NATO territory
U.S. sees no threat of Russia using nuclear weapons despite rhetoric - Reuters
Maybe you live in some remote area where there is no news or they can't read? :grin: — Apollodorus

Dude, reading is not enough, one has to actually understand what one reads too.
So, first of all, there would be no pressure into monitoring “nuclear capabilities every day the best we can” despite the rhetoric if there was no threats in the first place (some listed in the very article you linked, here you find some more https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-warns-baltic-nuclear-deployment-if-nato-admits-sweden-finland-2022-04-14/, here some others https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089533705/putin-publicly-put-russian-nuclear-forces-on-high-alert-what-should-we-make-of-t?t=1651589513787, here some more: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-russia-moscow-kyiv-626a8c5ec22217bacb24ece60fac4fe1, here some more from Russian propaganda and think thank pundits https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/05/03/russian-propaganda-escalates-laying-ground-for-nuclear-strike/, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/04/russia-cannot-afford-to-lose-so-we-need-a-kind-of-a-victory-sergey-karaganov-on-what-putin-wants). Iran for its alleged threats and without actual nuclear capabilities is subject to a total embargo from the West, antagonised through proxy wars and aborted attempts of regime change.
Second, I wasn’t exclusively referring to the current scenario but also to the risks of escalation as one of your zealous fellows has warned all of us about [1], which Westerners can’t take lightly, even more so Europeans since they are exposed to Russian nuclear threats far more than the US, while being heavily but not unconditionally dependent on the US intelligence and military capacity to contain this threat. Weren’t the case we would have seen a no fly zone declaration already. BTW, if the West was accused of ignoring Russian grievances against NATO expansion, now the West can’t ignore Russian nuclear threats, can they? Russians could take this underestimation as a provocation and escalate just to prove a point, right? Many Westerners couldn't believe Russia would have started this war despite American warnings and Russian fake assurances [2]. And given how shitty Russians seem to perform in this war there is a greater risk that with their obsolete military doctrine organisation technology they could cause troubles beyond their intention for themselves and for the Westerners.


[1]

On many levels, Russia has few reasons not to use nuclear weapons; there is no reason for NATO to launch a strategic nuclear strike against Russia because it used a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
In particular, if Ukraine is able to continue to successfully blowup Russian industry and flagships (assuming all that was Ukraine), the only feasible retaliation available to Russia in the current situation maybe tactical nuclear weapons, and at some point retaliation is politically necessary and not just a good idea from a military perspective.
There's a lot of mathematics that can illuminate why all this is likely to be the case, but the short version is that it's the nature of this kind of crisis to get spontaneously worse and not spontaneously better. — boethius

[2]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60392259
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60468264
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-02-22-22/h_e6582bb2eb31e968a08bc25ea6e2bee3

That's an interesting dichotomy. Where have I suggested we should be aligned with Russia or that NATO's role during the Cold War was misplaced? — Benkei

Where have I suggested that you suggested it? You wrote: "So in all fairness it's the combination of two nuclear parties that compete for influence, one of which we're unfortunately aligned with". Your evaluation was partial, so "in all fairness" I completed it: would we be more fortunate or equally fortunate to be aligned with Russia? Hell, no.

Your assumption Ukraine needed Russia is one that results from ignoring the view of principled neutrality that has been argued by plenty of experts since the late 90s. — Benkei

My assumption is that “plenty of experts since the late 90s” weren't enough to convince many Eastern European countries about "principled neutrality", including Ukrainians b/c on 7 February 2019, the Ukrainian parliament voted with a majority of 334 out of 385 to change the Ukrainian constitution to help Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union, despite all western reluctance to accept Ukraine b/c of Russia and the weakening of NATO. Maybe EU and Ukraine do not act like pawns, nor the US and Russia are acting like chess masters, as much as post-Cold War experts have figured out.

If the US had no imperialist designs on Ukraine, this war wouldn't have happened. — Benkei

Who knows? All I know is that Ukrainians have been fighting for their independence and self-determination against Russian central governments for centuries. That they were victim of a genocide under Soviet ruling. That they preferred the Nazis to the Soviets. Now the EU and NATO to the Russians. And Russian imperialism pre-dates the American one and isn't aging well either given the delirious talks one can hear from certain prominent Russian putinists.
Besides, since "in all fairness it's the combination of two nuclear parties that compete for influence" then you could claim at best if the US and Russia had no imperialist designs on Ukraine, this war wouldn't have happened.

Europe as its forward pawn — Tzeentch

That's the geopolitical game, dear Pollyanna. Any pawn must play its role as a pawn as best as possible to get a chance to become a queen.

So in all fairness it's the combination of two nuclear parties that compete for influence, one of which we're unfortunately aligned with, that results in an existential threat to Europe. — Benkei

Not as unfortunate as if we were aligned with Russia: we needed NATO to protect us from the Soviet Union as much as Ukraine needed NATO to protect themselves from Russia (Ukrainians preferred Nazism to Russian assimilation, go figure!). And there are self-aware European nuclear parties too (https://www.france24.com/en/20200207-macron-unveils-nuclear-doctrine-warns-eu-cannot-remain-spectators-in-arms-race).

And I don't see you guys campaigning for China to give back Tibet or for Turkey to return Cyprus and other territories stolen from the Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, and many other nations. — Apollodorus

Dude, Russia is a direct existential threat to the West (primarily to the EU), given its nuclear arsenal and related repeated threats, its political infiltration in support of populist movements in the West, its veto power at the UN, its energetic blackmailing, its military presence in the Middle East and in Africa, its power concentration in one man's hands, and Putin's declared ambitions to establish a new world order with China and directly antagonise the West. You can continue your intellectual masturbation over the hypocrisy of the West all you want, but at this point the West should not tolerate a terrorist state that big that aggressive that close. "Very simple and easy to understand".

Quite a lot of words for someone who does not give a shit about this dude's arguments. — Bartricks

As I said: "I don’t give a shit about your arguments from authority and your raving about 'reason'". So I dealt with claims and arguments of yours I found more philosophically pertinent.

Needless to say, I did not waste any time reading them. I win. — Bartricks

Sure, sport, don't believe all those who tell you otherwise. Do you wanna a lollipop?

If the reason of others - including virtually all of those whose faculties of reason are so good they've entered the canon of great thinkers - represents events to have causes, that doesn't count for anything because the great neomac's reason makes no such representation. Ooo, mustn't contradict the great neomac's reason - his reason, uniquely among us, is our sole source of insight into reality. Get over yourself. — Bartricks

Dude, I don’t give a shit about your arguments from authority and your raving about "reason". Suck it up and move on.

Yeah, I'm not arguing anything, just blurting things.
What argument? What is your argument? Note, you seem to think the possibility that events may lack causes is some kind of evidence against simultaneous causation. How? How does that work, exactly? — Bartricks

You are confused. I argued that: “‘There is no logical inconsistency in claiming that something does not exist at t1 but it exists at t2. There is no contradiction.’ Even the notion of ‘event’ doesn't analytically imply ‘being caused’” to point out that self-creation understood as a form of self-causation is a metaphysical hypothesis (and parasitic to the notion of “causality”) one has to argue for. That’s all.

YOu don't seem to understand what my argument is. It is in the OP. I argued that the only reason to think self-creation is incoherent is the assumption that causes must precede their effects. — Bartricks

And I claim that it is not true that is the “only reason” to think that self-creation is incoherent is that causes must precede their effects, because even if causes and effects are simultaneous we could still argue that the notion of self-creation is incoherent (see below).

There's a time - t1 - when X does not exist. Right? Got that? Then there's a time - t2 - when X does exist. Understand? X doesn't exist at t1. X does exist at t2. So...X came into existence. Yes?
What caused X to come into existence? X. — Bartricks

Here my counter arguments against this answer:

• Semantic artifice: “our ordinary causal claims involve only numerical if not logically distinct ‘relata’ and express logically asymmetric relations, at least at token level, yet neither is true of ‘self-creation’ claims”. It’s “creation” as “bringing into existence at t2 from non-existence at t1” and not “causality” that requires the pre-existence of the creator wrt creature (e.g. the hen laying her eggs, the artist painting his portrait on the canvas, the blooming tree with its flowers).
• Fallacious explanation: “If ‘X creates Y and X = Y’ is understood as a simultaneous causal relation between existing relata, then the inconsistency is in its explanatory role because in order to bring into existence anything at t1 X needs to already exist, but if X already exists so it’s Y (since X=Y) and there would be nothing left to bring into existence. In other words, what needs to be causally explained (X existence) is at the same time what needs to be presupposed by the causal explanation (why does X exist at t1? Because X exists at t1). That’s why your inference to the best explanation (‘Imagine something just pops into existence. It didn't exist. Then it does. What happened? Did nothing bring it into being? Well, that seems incoherent: something doesn't come from nothing. So, it caused itself, then.’) fails. The explanation is only ‘apparent’ as any circular explanation (BTW were we to accept such circular causal explanations as you suggest, then we would theoretically need no other causal explanation than the circular one for all that happens, and yet we would practically find it always totally useless)”.

It is self-evident to reason that events have causes. Evidence that it is self-evident to reason is the fact that throughout history it has been appealed to by those whose faculties of reason seem among the very best. The burden of proof, then, is squarely on you. — Bartricks

That’s at best evidence to you not to me, since that all “events have causes” is not self-evident to me for logic and semantic “reasons” as I clarified. And if whatever you call “reason” is in conflict with logic and semantics then “intellectual confusion” would be a more appropriate way to call it for sure.

So if you want, you can continue to insist - on the basis of no evidence whatsoever - that some events lack causes, but you'll just be off topic. — Bartricks

My argument is based on logic and semantics, and that’s all I need to argue about “consistency” as far as I’m concerned. Not to mention the fact that you yourself didn’t offer any evidence to support your claim that something can create itself out of nothing. You just offered an argument that “simultaneous causation” would solve the putative inconsistency of “self-creation” as you formulated it. The problem to me is that “simultaneous causation” is not enough, you would need additional metaphysical hypotheses (like “events have causes”) as well as some semantic artifice (e.g. our ordinary causal claims involve only numerical if not logically distinct “relata” and express logically asymmetric relations, at least at token level, yet neither is true of “self-creation” claims). That’s why I don’t think I’m off topic as much as you didn’t seem to think you were off topic when you brought your disputable metaphysical hypothesis up in the first place.

It turns out, then, that you accept that simultaneous causation is coherent. Why, then, do you think self-creation is incoherent? Explain. — Bartricks

If “X creates Y and X = Y” is understood as a simultaneous causal relation between a non-existent X and an existent Y then the claim would be incoherent because X would be existing and non-existing at the same time, since X = Y.
If “X creates Y and X = Y” is understood as a simultaneous causal relation between existing relata, then the inconsistency is in its explanatory role because in order to bring into existence anything at t1 X needs to already exist, but if X already exists so it’s Y (since X=Y) and there would be nothing left to bring into existence. In other words, what needs to be causally explained (X existence) is at the same time what needs to be presupposed by the causal explanation (why does X exist at t1? Because X exists at t1). That’s why your inference to the best explanation (“Imagine something just pops into existence. It didn't exist. Then it does. What happened? Did nothing bring it into being? Well, that seems incoherent: something doesn't come from nothing. So, it caused itself, then.”) fails. The explanation is only “apparent” as any circular explanation (BTW were we to accept such circular causal explanations as you suggest, then we would theoretically need no other causal explanation than the circular one for all that happens, and yet we would practically find it always totally useless).

Nuclear war is 'most probable outcome', viewers are told, 'but we will go to heaven while they simply croak'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10762143/Ukraine-war-Russian-state-TV-says-nuclear-strike-probable-losing.html

more and more like a jihad

Because events have causes. Odd that you think causes must precede their effects, but think effects don't have to have causes!
I think causes do not have to precede their effects. You think I'm wrong about that (or do you think I'm right, in which case you agree with me but don't realize it). Yet you think effects don't need to have causes! — Bartricks

Dude you are twice delusional. I never claimed that cause must precede its effect. Instead I explicitly argued for the simultaneous co-existence of cause and effect if cause is to be understood as a relation in metaphysical terms (which is something you didn't clarify yet). Indeed relations metaphysically depend on the existence of all the terms they relate. Besides if cause and effect were in strict temporal succession, then when the cause occurs, then the effect doesn't, and when the effect occurs, then the cause doesn't. So there would be no intelligible interaction between the causal factor and its effect.
Again, what is your argument to support the idea that all events have causes?! As I said "There is no logical inconsistency in claiming that something does not exist at t1 but it exists at t2. There is no contradiction." Even the notion of "event" doesn't analytically imply "being caused". Yours is just an additional metaphysical hypothesis you didn't argue for. So your claims are odd and unmotivated. And evidently so.

You're just begging the question. You keep banging on about identity — Bartricks

No I didn't, precisely because self-identity holds independently from self-creation and the latter is under question. On the other side, you begged the question by implicitly inserting a metaphysical hypothesis you didn't argue for "Because events have causes".

you are the one who thinks that if X simultaneously causes X to exist then X is preserving X not creating X — Bartricks

Stop strawmanning. I never made such a claim, nor implied, nor suggested. I was talking about existence preservation just as an alternative to self-creation.

You seem to think that if God created himself, then he wouldn't be God. I don't know why you think that. To be God a person simply needs to be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Why do they need 'not' to have created themselves? Odd. — Bartricks

I didn't claim that, nor implied that, nor suggested that. I took into consideration the notion of "God" when talking about existence preservation, not self-creation. I just surmised you might go in that direction, that's all. Anyway "self-creation" is either an incoherent metaphysical notion or explanatorily empty.

Engage in the following thought experiment. Imagine something just pops into existence. It didn't exist. Then it does. What happened? Did nothing bring it into being? Well, that seems incoherent: something doesn't come from nothing. So, it caused itself, then. It brought itself into being. That's perfectly coherent if simultaneous causation is coherent (which it is). — Bartricks

Why does "popping into existence" without cause is incoherent?! There is no logical inconsistency in claiming that something does not exist at t1 but it exists at t2. There is no contradiction.

You don't seem to understand what simultaneous causation involves. The cause exists as does the effect. You seem to be thinking that in a case of self-creation, the thing doing the creating does not yet exist. No, it exists simultaneous with its effect, it is just that in this case the effect is itself. — Bartricks

What?! If cause X and effect Y both simultaneously exist and X=Y, there is no creation of Y by X, precisely because the existence of Y is granted by the identity between X and Y so there is no need of whatever causal-thingy between them you are raving about. The notion of "cause" in your case makes literally no sense. Period. You made such a preposterous claim probably because you didn't clarify to yourself what "cause" means in metaphysical terms and, at the same time, you are misled by the putative explanatory power of the notion of "cause" based on some intellectual compulsion ("Did nothing bring it into being? Well, that seems incoherent: something doesn't come from nothing. So, it caused itself, then", which looks very much like a circular argument meant to avoid an infinite regress, and both are fallacious).

Why are you saying that we have 'preserving into existence'? I don't even know what that means. — Bartricks

I already explained that: "at best it's existence preservation like when a person feeds herself to survive, and nobody would literally take self-feeding as a form of self-creation." Preserving existence from ceasing to exist. That's what I think it would make more sense for you to contend, but it's not self-creation.

Russian casualties in Ukraine. Mediazona investigation
https://zona.media/translate/2022/04/25/bodycount_eng

Now, just because it would be the only retaliation available simply because all conventional weapons are pretty much already engaged, doesn't mean they would use them.

Putin could be "the bigger man" and explain later that nukes were on the table but he decided not to use them. — boethius

Why not? As you said, Putin has figured all out, already. He will win anyways. And his people will support any leader who proves how powerful Russia is. Besides the Ukrainians are Nazis, America bombed Japan with strategic nukes even if there was no existential threat to America, why shouldn’t Russia be able to justify an attack with tactical nukes against a Nazi government committing genocides against Russians, threatening to use chemical weapons against Russians, with the support of corrupt and blood thirsty capitalist imperialists?! Is Putin too stupid or too coward? Because either way the Westerners will profit from his stupidity and cowardice and continue the war precisely because Putin refuses to escalate.

... Or ... or, the Kremlin is looking for the context to emerge where using nuclear weapons makes sense to the ordinary Russian and key allies. — boethius

Oh I see, so you are saying that Kremlin is waiting for the green light from China and India to fire tactical nukes? Why? Why does Putin need to wait if he will win anyways and why would his allies not support him if his victory will definitely show to the world how US and NATO are powerless?

In particular, if Ukraine is able to continue to successfully blowup Russian industry and flagships (assuming all that was Ukraine), the only feasible retaliation available to Russia in the current situation maybe tactical nuclear weapons, and at some point retaliation is politically necessary and not just a good idea from a military perspective. — boethius

If "the only feasible retaliation available to Russia" is using tactical nuclear weapons then Putin should use them as soon as possible. Actually it's weird that he didn't use them yet. Is Putin too stupid to realize it ? Putin can always blame the West and say that he was forced to do it despite the repeated warnings. Why didn't he do launch nuclear tactic weapons yet? Is Putin such a coward pussy? C'mon there is no serious risk for Russia: sanctions are ineffective, India and China are with Russia, Putin will still be in power, fucking capitalist imperialism has tired everybody already, the West has no courage to retaliate, and it bears exactly all the responsibility if everything goes to shit. What is Putin still waiting? He would be at worst "only" victorious in Ukraine, at best the savior of all human kind. We should be all in favour of nuclear escalation if that's the only way to end the war for good.

Er, no, they would be existent as cause and existent as effect. — Bartricks

If they simultaneously exist, there is no bringing into existence from non-existence (as creation is normally understood) but at best preserving into existence.

You've just made the 'the cause would need to precede the effect' objection — Bartricks

No, I'm talking about ontological dependency between properties/relations and the entities they are predicated of. If X is taller than Y, "taller than" as a relation is predicated of X and Y while X and Y are existing. It's possible that the relation holds simultaneously to the existence of both terms and the terms can not exist without being in such relation (this is the case for internal relations). The issue is that if one of the terms doesn't exist then relations/predicates can not be instantiated while if all terms exist there is no bringing into existence from non-existence as "creation" is normally understood.

As I said earlier, the claim is not that something can come out of nothing - it remains true that nothing causes nothing — Bartricks

Then it's not self-creation as normally understood ("the act or process of making something that is new, or of causing something to exist that did not exist before" source: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/creation?q=creation) but at best it's existence preservation like when a person feeds herself to survive, and nobody would literally take self-feeding as a form of self-creation.
Besides if you are talking about your god, why does your god need to preserve itself into existence? He is all mighty and perfect, so he would not suffer from any decaying process, nor need to preserve itself into existence.

The only reason to think self-creation is impossible is the idea that to create one's self one would have to exist 'prior' to one's own existence. And the only reason to think that is the idea that causes must precede their effects. — Bartricks

No, that's not true. If self-creation is understood as a form of simultaneous causation then the same entity X would be simultaneously existent (as effect) and non-existent (as cause). Besides properties and relations presuppose the existence of the terms they are predicated of, so if causality is a relation or a property it would require the existence of the causal factor to already obtain. Therefore non-existing entities can't cause anything.

How can we see which way motion goes by looking at a point? — Haglund

Again, I would distinguish between what is the case (metaphysical question) and what we can "see" (epistemological question).

Anyway the notion of "point" is a useful abstraction, but what the spatial notion of "point" doesn't seem able to render is precisely the dynamic nature of events. Events are transitional states of things, properties and relations in their becoming. As such they are intrinsically dynamic and can't be understood without reference to the time. So the notion of "motion" itself is a dynamic concept not because it relates to space, but because it relates to time.

Because breaking implies motion. An event is a point. — Haglund

are you talking about Zeno's paradox? The impossibility of having motion on a single point of the time series?

A bit paradoxically... A breaking glas an event? — Haglund

A glass breaking is an instantaneous event. Why do you see it as paradoxical?

As far as I can tell from my philosophical readings, events are temporal phenomena that can be extended or instantaneous: parties, watching movies, playing chess, calculating an equation are considered examples of temporally extended events. Explosions, particle decays, date expiration, snapping fingers are considered examples of temporally instantaneous events. Not sure to understand the link you see between the notions of “event”, “causality”, and the question of the reversibility or the direction of motion (or time).

Cause and effect are separate events. If they coincide its not clear which is which. — Haglund

We should distinguish epistemology from ontology. The incapacity of identifying cause and effect is not a reason to reject of the simultaneity of cause and effect. The metaphysical argument why cause and effect should be simultaneous goes roughly as follows. If causality is a relation, then it presupposes the existence of the related terms, because relations (at least external relations) are existence-entailing, one cannot have a relation without its relata: aRb cannot obtain unless both a and b exist. But if the existence of the cause precedes the existence of its effect, then when the cause exists the effect doesn’t, while when the effect exists the cause doesn’t exist anymore. So if there is no moment in which they co-exist then there can not be any relation between them, therefore not even a causal relation.
The problem of distinguishing cause and effect as events could be overcome if we consider that events can be temporally extended entities and that the causal relation between them requires the simultaneity of some moments: e.g. the rolling ball A hits the still ball B at t1 causing B to move. Then, the event of A ball’s rolling and the event of B ball’s moving are simultaneously and causally correlated at t1 (exactly when A hits and B starts moving, cause and effect).

cause and effect

Simultaneous causation is coherent. Simultaneous causation applied to self-creation no, because the same entity X would be simultaneously existent (as effect) and non-existent (as cause). Besides properties and relations presuppose the existence of the terms they are predicated of, so if causality is a relation or a property it would require the existence of the causal factor to already obtain. Therefore non-existing entities can't cause anything.

Putin's Witches
https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Putin's-Witches-55347.html

No, but they'd be fighting for freedom from criminality, not for their country, which is merely an incidental grouping. — Isaac

Still, the people would be fighting for sovereignty or self-determination not for a country. — Isaac

You just conceded enough to grant moral plausibility to the Ukrainian patriotic resistance against Russian criminal invasion. And if that's all I can get from your preposterous claims, fine with me.

I've hopefully been clear that I've no interest in these games. If you we're interested you'd have found them by now (unless you're very young), so your comment is intended to show (somehow) that I can't find them. But I knew that before I started, and so did you. So I obviously can find them (otherwise I wouldn't have made the claim, I'm clearly not an idiot), you know that, but you also know anything I find will be sufficiently vague (not to mention directly critiqued, somewhere) for you to oppose it. But I know that too, and you know I must know it. So why, exactly, are we bothering? — Isaac

Enjoy your echo chamber then.

I can't account for your inability to make sense of fairly common positions. — Isaac

"Fairly common positions" among people who share your "stupid" views (according to your own definition), I could concede that to you. But there isn't much one can make sense of in self-defeating positions like yours anyways.

> If one is fighting against criminal aggression then one's country is immaterial. It's perfectly possible for both Ukrainians and Russians to fight against criminal aggression together.
The moral element is the criminality, not the countries. Anyone fighting the criminality is behaving morally, anyone supporting it is not. Regardless of the country they pledge allegiance to.

But that doesn’t exclude that Ukrainians could fight Russians because their aggression is criminal either. And there is nothing in the meaning of the word “criminality” that excludes that an act of aggression is criminal precisely because it violates one's country national sovereignty and self-determination.


> They're generally in journals, preprint servers, libraries, bookshops…

Can you literally quote and reference any of these studies?


> Someone proposes moral relativism and logical non-realism (two perfectly normal philosophical positions) and you terminate the discussion, lest you encounter views counter to your preferred world views.

No it’s simply that the word “preference” loses its contrastive meaning in the way you use it. Neither logic nor moral is matter of preference. You simply make no sense, dude.

> It's used to describe behaviours and attitudes such as avoiding thousands more innocent people dying.

Does the meaning of “moral” exclude fighting for one’s own country and identity against a criminal aggression from another nation as moral?

> Then you are a true exception to all of humanity that's ever been studied. Well done.

Really?! Where are these studies that show that all of humanity has world views and then looks for a pool of experts based on titles and not evident conflict of interests to support their pre-established world views?

> Both of these are impossible tasks. I cannot 'show you' how your reasoning goes wrong because whether an argument is reasonable or not is an opinion you hold about it, I can't show you it isn't any more than I can show you that my cup of tea is nice.
Even if I made an argument as simple as "Either A, or ~A", you could still dispute it by rejecting the LEM. What we're discussing is massively more complicated. The idea that either of us could present some 'logical' argument that somehow 'proves' one side or the other is laughable. You're either persuaded by my argument, rhetoric and all, or you're not. That's entirely your preference.

After moral also logic is matter of preference. I think we are done here.

>...and in English?

Here you go: it’s legitimate to frame your moral position toward the negotiation deal in a way that is logically consistent with your own assumptions in framing Zelensky’s position toward the negotiation deal. Period.



> I never called preposterous the line of reasoning you offered when talking about the moral dilemma “option1 vs option2”, because it doesn’t strike me as evidently implausible, just disputable. — neomac
Well then we have no disagreement. The rest is just your misunderstanding. All I've been arguing is about the moral status of those two positions.

What?! Oh no, it's way more likely that you misunderstood what I was questioning despite the fact that I made it clear on several occasions:

“Indeed my focus has been always 2 moral claims of yours:
- Recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral (as an accusation against the West). (“Seeing this crisis as an inevitable result of capitalist imperialism lend support to the fight against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.”)
- Fighting a war over a flag is no doubt always immoral”.

“Indeed, I offered reasons mainly to question your 2 moral claims:
Recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral (as an accusation against the West).
Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral.”

“when I questioned your 2 moral claims my objections were not entirely based on considerations relying on experts’ feedback about the war in Ukraine, but also on conceptual considerations and common background knowledge”

“2 preposterous moral claims of yours: one about fighting over flags and the other is about Western responsibilities in the genesis and perpetuation of this war. ”


> I would have misunderstood the meaning of the word 'moral'.

Which is?

> Bollocks. You were trying to associate my position with the victory of a probable war criminal because it makes my position look less appealing. You can save your 'oh I was just talking about logical consistency' crap for anyone still naive enough to believe it.

Yes I know. Logic hurts your rhetoric. But you didn’t offer a counter argument on logic grounds, just more rhetoric claims.


> From the person literally stringing bits of my writing together using a cryptic mangle of quoting techniques to reach the conclusion that I apparently want Russia to win!

Really?! Show me then how my reasoning goes wrong based on what you said, as I did when you misquoted me. Prove me that I misquoted you.


> Where we disagree is the ludicrous notion that the rest of you don't do exactly the same thing.
That you don't interpret every imprecise thing I say (which is virtually everything) selecting the option which most suits your narrative, that you don't choose experts whose opinions mesh best with your worldview, that you don't put more effort into critiquing opposing views than supportive ones, that you don't 'fill in the blanks' in a way that bolsters your preferred story.

No dude, it doesn’t work that way for me. First of all you can make all claims you want, but I don’t care about your claims, I care about your arguments because this is what I’m here for. Second, I care about arguments but I judge them for their logical value (logical consistency), success conditions (range of applications), and explanatory power (conceptual or empirical). I don’t care about their rhetoric value, association of ideas, ideological appealing. Third, I don’t do the same you do: I don’t have world views and then look for a pool of experts based on titles and not evident conflict of interests to support my pre-established world views.

I know the quote function. I simply find it uncomfortable for personal reasons. But I don't want to infringe any forum rule. So is that a forum rule or can my quotation style be tolerated?

> Neither do I. You can have at my moral judgements using any data you like. Simply saying 'because X you must think Y' is not an argument. I've claimed that morally, the deal on the table is a better choice than continued fighting. I've argued it from a consequentialist framework (as I believe governments are not people and so don't themselves have virtues). A counter argument doesn't consist in vague hand-waiving toward some other de facto circumstances. A counter argument consists in some reason why I shouldn't have used a consequentialist framework, or some reason why my assessment of the consequences are wrong.

Yet another strawman argument. Dude, you don’t get to give me homework. I know what I’m doing. One could question somebody else’s claims and arguments based on their explanatory power and/or on their internal consistency. And I did both with you. The point I made and you are addressing now was about logic consistency: it’s legitimate to frame your moral position toward the negotiation deal in a way that is logically consistent with your own assumptions in framing Zelensky’s position toward the negotiation deal. Period.
You were trying to evade my claim as follows:
“if Zelensky’s moral stand and choices are to be assessed over a de facto situation or actual terms on the table (as you claim), then I don’t see why your moral stand and choices about this war can’t be assessed based on the actual clash between 2 de facto dominant powers, as you frame this war. — neomac
Because our choices aren't limited to a de facto 2 clash between dominant powers”
When I asked you to clarify this, after some more dodging in all directions, the best you came up with is this: “There are some de facto circumstances in the specific case of the war in Ukraine which have a moral relevance when considering a deal” which - as I argued - holds for Zelensky with his moral dilemma between continuing or ending the war, as much as for you with your moral dilemma between American (or NATO) vs Russian expansionism, in a way that is logically consistent with how you framed the war in Ukraine.
Besides I wasn’t even done yet: we could have discussed about other cases too the Palestinians wrt the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, the poor who give birth to children, the French/Russian/Iranian revolutions, the thought experiment I proposed to you.
My strong suspect is that your abstract line of reasoning applies only if e.g. it’s against the American capitalist imperialism, because if it logically goes against your preferred world views then it shouldn’t be applied. But that’s irrational and one-sided. Yet it explains why “you seem to be just appealing to whatever notions happen to support your already chosen course of action” (namely, fighting “against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.”)

> But since your argument was that my position is actually ‘preposterous’ rather than just something you happen to disagree with, you'd need to go further. You'd need to show that either it is completely absurd to use a consequentialist framework, or that it's not even plausible that my assessment of the consequences is right.

I already addressed this pointless objection. I called several claims of yours “preposterous” (starting from your declared idea that fighting over a flag is always no doubt immoral) for the reasons I clarified. You can counter them if you wish so, instead of inventing strawman arguments. I took mainly issue with the way you argued to support your position. Indeed I never called preposterous the line of reasoning you offered when talking about the moral dilemma “option1 vs option2”, because it doesn’t strike me as evidently implausible, just disputable.


> Arbitrary as in having no further reasoning. I don't have a reason for not wanting thousands more deaths, I just don't want thousands more deaths.

Then it follows that other people act morally only if they act the way you want without further reasons. And if you ever wanted thousands more deaths without further reason, then it would have still been a defensible moral claim to support the continuation of this war. Is that right? It sounds like a Devine Command Theory with the only teensy negligible difference that you would be playing the role of god.
I’m not sure you fully understand how not compelling is to others what you want without further reasons. And there could be no argument to clarify that better to you, I’m afraid.

>My point is that, given the “de facto” circumstances, the victory of Russia (even at the additional price of a regime change) will still be the lesser evil for you because both it could immediately end the war (so no more deaths) and it would be a blow “against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.” — neomac
...and that 'fairly' translates as...
you want to help Russia win — neomac
...without even so much as a hint of disingenuity…?

Yes it does “fairly” translate to “you want to help Russia win”, and I would expect you to agree with me again on logical grounds, even more so now that I clarified my point.
Here is another example to illustrate a similar usage of “want”: if a soldier was very badly shot in his left leg in some remote war front, and the doctor told him “under the given circumstances , unfortunately we can’t do much to save your leg and if we do not immediately amputate it, you would definitely risk to die from gangrene! So, what do you want to do?”. If the soldier said “I want my leg amputated, doctor”, would this mean that he would be happy of amputating his leg? Or that he wouldn’t have chosen any other option to avoid this, wouldn’t he be in danger of life? Or that he was brainwashed into wanting his leg amputated against his own interest? No of course, it simply means that he chose what he took to be the lesser evil option (so amputating his leg is instrumental in preserving his life) and communicated his choice accordingly with an “I want” sentence perfectly intelligible as it is.
The same would be with your case: “given the ‘de facto’ circumstances, the victory of Russia (even at the additional price of a regime change) will still be the lesser evil for you because both it could immediately end the war (so no more deaths) and it would be a blow ‘against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.’ That’s why you don’t mind to support Russians’ victory”. So if making “as public as possible your disgust (if you have such disgust) at the profiteering from suffering that seeps into everything corporate capitalist states do” could somehow help Russian victory then you want to do it not for Russians’ sake but because it is instrumental in fighting ‘against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing’.
Briefly, my point has to do with logic consistency not with your rhetorical quibbles.


> My objections were entirely against the claim of implausibility, so entirely pointed.
What claim of implausibility are you raving about?! Fully quote myself. — neomac
No need, you can just clarify here, save us both the bother.

No I’m not going to save you the bother to fully quote my alleged “claim of implausibility” concerning negotiation failures, because you are prone to strawmanning your interlocutor (often by conveniently chopping their quotations). And since I have no idea what you are talking about, I can’t even double check by myself. So I would like to be sure you are not making things up just on purpose to spin your idle intellectual game for another round (which would be intellectual dishonesty at its finest).

> Are the claims you're opposing reasonable claims that you just happen to agree with, or are they implausible claims that no reasonable person would agree with?

I opposed different kinds of claims of yours for different reasons and in different degree. The claim that fighting over a flag is no doubt always immoral is preposterous to me. The claim that it would be better for Ukrainian people option2 instead of option1 is not preposterous but disputable. Your claim that the Ukrainian war is a profitable business for American weapon industries and financial companies is clearly plausible, yet the moral implications that you may implicitly attach to such a claim could be disputable to me. Your general claim that the ruling classes oppress the poor is plausible, to what extent is disputable as well as its pertinence to the fact that Russian soldiers are killing Ukrainian families (in this latter case I find it rather unintelligible). The American administration support to Saudi Arabia war in Yemen is morally questionable to you: while this is plausible to me, its pertinence to the Ukrainian war is highly disputable.


> I love the way people still think they can get away without having to defend positions by smuggling in the word 'common'. A rational which one wants to avoid having to defend become 'common sense'. Some data one wants to avoid having to source becomes 'common knowledge'. Does that still work for you?

By “common background knowledge” I was referring to claims of mine such as “This is what I take to be an anthropological fact: ‘There is an anthropological fact that grounds my moral reasoning: social identities are part of our personal identities and they are rooted in our communal life with other individuals in a given environment’. All human societies (independently from geographic and historical latitudes) have ways of identifying human groups and individuals based on group membership. This is an anthropological fact. Some societies use ‘Nationality’ as a way to identify social groups and individuals as members of those groups: nation states, national languages, national flags, national passports, national money, national sport teams, national customs, national cuisine are examples of ways we identify groups and individuals within groups based on nationality.
Some value or pretend to value nationality in highest degree and shape their political views or actions accordingly.”
So do you allow me to consider this as a piece of background knowledge that I and you have roughly in common or am I expecting too much from your educational achievements?
In any case, either overly pointless (surprise surprise) or overly poor education (which of course is not an argument against “common background knowledge”).

even if a layman doesn’t have an expert view, still a layman can reasonably question how the expert input was collected and further processed by another layman — neomac
Can they? If I provided you with a Psychology experiment could you seriously question the methodology and statistical analysis in any meaningful way (assuming, for the sake of this argument you're not yourself a psychologist or similar, that is).

In this passage, I was talking about the way you collect and process experts’ feedback, not about the experts feedback itself! And there is no need to invent examples when I provided examples “(e.g. even the experts you trust do not fully agree with you as I pointed out)”! Here is what I was referring to: E.g. Kissinger advises “It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. […]. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html). While Mearsheimer concludes that: “The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.” (https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf).”
Concerning your example, I addressed this already: I don’t even need to prove that a layman in psychology could “seriously question the methodology and statistical analysis in any meaningful way” to you (even if I think I could prove that). It’s enough to remind you what you said: “you choose your expert and talk about why you find their arguments persuasive, and I choose mine and talk about why I find their arguments persuasive. That’s how I'm used to conducting discussions involving matters of fact”. From your claim logically follows that I as your interlocutor can talk about why I find some chosen expert’s view persuasive for me, which is what I indirectly and partly did when discussing about Mearsheimer’s views, and that would be perfectly fine since this is how you are “used to conducting discussions involving matters of fact”.



> if your point now is not a question of legitimacy grounded on the nature of the philosophical inquiry and the purpose of this philosophy forum (which is all I care about), but of feeding your little intellectual echo chamber for your own comfort, then just stop interacting with me, who cares? Not to mention, how hypocritical would your whining about other people not being opened to alternative views inevitably sound, if that’s your intellectual approach in this forum. — neomac
I have no idea what this means. From where did you get the impression that my 'point' is to 'feed my little echo chamber'. I mean, it's a legitimate accusation, a common enough reason people write in places like this, but you seem to imply that I'd actually said as much, which I haven’t .

My impression that your 'point' could be (not ‘is’) to 'feed your little echo chamber’ (once we exclude the philosophical legitimacy) is based on what you claimed in the post I commented and previously:
- “I choose the experts whose opinion align with the narratives I prefer (1). I have world views I find satisfying (2) and if an expert opinion aligns with those I’ll choose to believe that expert rather than one whose opinion opposes them (3). all this assuming the expert in question has sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest (4).”
- “If you said ‘why do you believe those cosmologists, they've all got a vested interest in heliocentricism…’ then we'd be discussing my reasons for believing the earth rotates around the sun.(5)”
That’s indeed the perfect recipe for feeding one’s own echo chamber, here is why: say part of your satisfying world views is that American capitalist imperialism is the worst evil (2), so you are going to select all the experts (with titles and no evident conflict of interest (4)) rather than others whose opinion opposes it (3), like Mearsheimer who blames NATO expansion for the war in Ukraine, feeding the narrative your prefer (1) b/c NATO is the evil projection of the American capitalist imperialism. Now, according to your example (5) I would be questioning your reasons to believe Mearsheimer in a way that is acceptable to you (!) only if I discussed about the vested interest of Mearsheimer in blaming NATO expansion for the war in Ukraine (e.g. if I provided evidences that Mearsheimer was financed by some Republicans to write a paper that could be timely exploited against pro-NATO policies by democratic administrations). Now if my questioning Mearsheimer’s claims based on his vested interest would be insufficient to you then you would keep Mearsheimer’s expert input as valid support to the narrative you prefer. On the other side, if my questioning Mearsheimer’s claims based on his vested interest would be sufficient to you, then you would simple give up on Mearsheimer’s expert input and look for another expert with titles and no evident vested interest (say Kennan or Kissinger or some CIA representative, or military expert etc.) that would support your world view. In other words, your satisfying world views will remain always unchallenged, you would just update your pool of experts. Additionally, you would always be in position to easily put the burden of proof on your interlocutor (conveniently so if he doesn’t share your world view) for - you could argue - how else e.g. could I prove to somebody that my chosen expert X has no evident conflict of interest other then by pointing at the obvious fact that hadn’t been the case I would have not chosen X? Rather it’s on others to prove to you if there are evidences of conflict of interests.
Besides all this is perfectly in line with this other piece of yours: “your argument relies on this not being the case, so it is incumbent on you (if you want to support your argument) to disprove it. I’ve not interest in supporting my case here (I don't even believe it's possible to support such a case in a few hundred words on an internet forum, and even if I did, I wouldn't make such a case as I've no expertise in the matter).” Practically the burden of proof is always on others, you do not need to argue for your case, nor even need to be capable of arguing for your case, you just rely on the expert that pleases you under some loose requirements.
Finally, if I got it all wrong, good for you, yet you should still clarify what the point of your comment actually was. Good luck with that!


> Do you want me to explain it to you?

As if I didn’t explicitly ask (“How is your piece of idle talk supposed to justify that?!”). Good luck with that too!

> No doubt in your simple world it's the only possible interpretation of what has been an extremely long and complex exchange in a medium doubly flawed from the start (language and brevity).

No dude, that’s all on your reluctance to engage in an intellectually honest conversation whatever the limits of communicating over the internet with anonymous people are, precisely because that’s the kind of entertainment a philosophy forum could offer despite the limits of the medium. If you don’t like the game, don’t play it!

> I'm at a loss as to why you're extracting weird rules from what was quite a simple moral statement, but in our continued exhaustive efforts to rule out every other possible interpretation prior to accepting the obvious one, I'll add that no, I do not mean that one must always be constrained by all the de facto circumstances either. I don't know how I can make this more clear. There are some de facto circumstances in the specific case of the war in Ukraine which have a moral relevance when considering a deal.

Unless you wanna go for something like “these are my arbitrary preferences”, then you must have some reasons to support your “simple moral statement”, and I’m challenging you to clarify them. Indeed you didn’t offer any criteria to establish what “de facto” circumstances would be relevant to consider in a choice like a negotiation deal other than the ones with moral implications that matter to you. But then you are asking people what their reasons are to take side wrt the negotiation deal (so again a case of moral choice), and you yourself brought into this exchange your own reasons: people dying, overwhelming amount of experts, American capitalist imperialism, Yemeni children, poor oppressed by the rich, etc. as if all this was relevant in justifying your position (so again moral implications that matter to you). In short, the “de facto” situation with moral implications that matter to you is a war provoked by the West against Russia, a clash between NATO and Russia. So if we should assess Zenesky’s moral choice based on a de facto situation that has moral implications that matter to you, I don’t see why we shouldn’t assess your moral choice (wrt Zenesky’s moral choice) based on a geopolitical “de facto” situation that has moral implications that matter to you (“Seeing this crisis as an inevitable result of capitalist imperialism lend support to the fight against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.”). You say they are different, but I’m asking to you why is that, so far you didn’t clarify this. And this rebuttal “I do not mean that all de facto circumstances are morally relevant, nor do I mean that in all circumstances all people are morally constrained by all de facto circumstances.” is pointless precisely because I’m not talking about all people nor all de facto circumstances, but about you and your criteria to determine morally relevant “de facto” circumstances.

> No. You offered absolutely no compelling reason why I need to do some kind of proportional calculation before talking about multiple causes. The suggestion was just absurd and remains so.

As much as your raving about multi-causal analysis you didn’t offer.

> Yes. My moral claims are arbitrary. My preferences arbitrary.

And what do you mean by “arbitrary” here? Are they “arbitrary” because you didn’t tell them yet? Or because they are random? Or what else?

> So because I think the Russian terms would make a good diplomatic end to the killing and I don't like capitalism I want Russia to win? I mean, it's hard to take you seriously with that kind of shit going on.

Read carefully: I’m not saying you are happy that Russia wins or that you wouldn’t prefer a third option where both America and Russia imperialism lose. That’s not my point. My point is that, given the “de facto” circumstances, the victory of Russia (even at the additional price of a regime change) will still be the lesser evil for you because both it could immediately end the war (so no more deaths) and it would be a blow “against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.” That’s why you don’t mind to support Russians’ victory.

> The answer is the same. I'm neither an expert in these matters, nor someone whose opinion you respect so there's no reasonable circumstances in which you're asking such a question because you actually want to know the answer. You're asking it because you want the answer to form part of your counter argument. I know this, you know this. So the exercise is pointless because I'm only going to try and answer it in such a way as to head off your potential use of my answer in said counter-argument, and you already know that I'll do that in advance of asking the question.

Sure, as you wish. But symptomatic.

> I have no interest in talking about Luc Montagnier in a thread about the war in Ukraine. — neomac
You brought him up.

Only to clarify my doubts about your criteria not to open another thread: there might be experts (like Luc Montagnier) that have titles and no evident conflict of interests, and yet I still may have good reasons to think that they said something unreliable about things they are supposed to know more than I do.

> So "no idea" then?

Dude, I’m here to entertain myself not you. Try harder.


> The power of a good story…

Whose truth you haven’t disproven yet.


> My objections were entirely against the claim of implausibility, so entirely pointed.

What claim of implausibility are you raving about?! Fully quote myself.


> One's reasons for holding some belief and the factual accuracy of those claims are not the same thing. I believe very strongly that the earth rotates around the sun, but I have absolutely no data at all on the factual accuracy of that claim. I believe it because it appears to be uncontested by those who are qualified and have looked at the data. I trust them. My reason for believing the earth rotates around the sun is that it is the view of all modern cosmologists and in that field, I tend to just believe whatever they say. You are attempting to do the equivalent of analysing my beliefs on the basis of some actual measurements you made of the earth's orbit. I'm not in the least bit interested in that kind of analysis because neither you nor I are sufficiently qualified to judge. If you said "why do you believe those cosmologists, they've all got a vested interest in heliocentricism..." then we’d be discussing my reasons for believing the earth rotates around the sun.

So monumentally pointless. First of all, when I questioned your 2 moral claims my objections were not entirely based on considerations relying on experts’ feedback about the war in Ukraine, but also on conceptual considerations and common background knowledge. Second, even if a layman doesn’t have an expert view, still a layman can reasonably question how the expert input was collected and further processed by another layman (e.g. even the experts you trust do not fully agree with you as I pointed out). Third, and most importantly, inquiring somebody’s reasons to hold a certain view, especially with the philosophical breadth one should expect in a philosophy forum, doesn’t presuppose a specific approach to experts (were this the case it would even beg the question). And indeed you yourself made that point precisely to question the reasons of my approach to experts. So even if you prefer to interact with people who share your approach to experts and inquire your reasons accordingly, that does not delegitimize my questioning your approach to experts (as I did, and still could go on) nor my questioning your views based on some experts’ feedback independently from your own preferences and assumptions (even more so if I find your approach flawed). And you yourself didn’t seem to have problem with that (“you choose your expert and talk about why you find their arguments persuasive, and I choose mine and talk about why I find their arguments persuasive. That’s how I'm used to conducting discussions involving matters of fact”). Four, if your point now is not a question of legitimacy grounded on the nature of the philosophical inquiry and the purpose of this philosophy forum (which is all I care about), but of feeding your little intellectual echo chamber for your own comfort, then just stop interacting with me, who cares? Not to mention, how hypocritical would your whining about other people not being opened to alternative views inevitably sound, if that’s your intellectual approach in this forum.


> Nonsense. What constitutes a 'claim', an 'argument', a 'challenge'... ?You set all these terms and their parameters to suit a narrative that you're playing out by your interaction here. It's just a role in a social game - you act out the script of the 'oh so rational analyst' because it's the badge you have to wear to fit the part in the story you have for yourself. The thousands of words, each with five or six different possible interpretations, the hundreds of sentences per post, each one possible to take in ten different ways, the dozens of choices about my intentions, my meanings, my objectives... You don't seriously think you make all those decisions on the basis of some cold mathematical algorithm do you? You interpret each one, each tiny possible misunderstanding each fork in the probability tree of possible meanings is weighted in favour of the preferred narrative, and each is so open to interpretation that within less a dozen such choices (of which there are thousands) virtually everything I've said can be moulded to fit virtually any narrative you care to come up with.

What on earth did you just write?! You said “your argument relies on this not being the case, so it is incumbent on you (if you want to support your argument) to disprove it. I’ve not interest in supporting my case here (I don't even believe it's possible to support such a case in a few hundred words on an internet forum, and even if I did, I wouldn't make such a case as I've no expertise in the matter).” So you are not interested in supporting your case here, and yet you still want to unilaterally decide where the burden of proof lies (always on me of course) and on what consists in?! How is your piece of idle talk supposed to justify that?! Are you out of your mind?!

>(2) doesn't even mention 'defending one's nation'. Not to mention it's denying a claim I didn't make, not making a claim itself.

It seems you weren’t following this argument either. So, let’s recapitulate, Ukrainians are fighting a patriotic war against the Russian invasion, you claimed that “defending one's nation’ alone is insufficient as a moral reason” because “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another.” In other words, the insufficiency claim just implies that one has more reason to fight against a greater oppressor, but it doesn’t deny that one has a moral reason to fight against a lesser oppressor (as much as having an insufficient amount of food doesn’t imply having no food). That was unexpected though because you claimed elsewhere that fighting over a flag is no doubt always immoral, so no moral reason at all ever.
To make sure you really meant what I understood about your moral reason insufficiency claim, I observed: “You could claim that one is morally more justified in fighting X over Y, because X is more oppressive, but that doesn’t equate to claiming that one has no moral reason to fight Y.” In my observation I used “fight Y” (e.g. fighting the Russian invasion) to refer to your “defending one's nation” for the obvious reason that this was what we were talking about and I too intend the Ukrainian war primarily as a patriotic resistance by the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion. That’s why there was no need to explicitly mention “defending one's nation” in (2). Then you answered: “Yes. Which would probably be why I didn't make such a claim.” So by saying “yes” you were agreeing to all of this statement “You could claim that one is morally more justified in fighting X over Y, because X is more oppressive, but that doesn’t equate to claiming that one has no moral reason to fight Y.” And since you agreed with this statement it followed that you didn’t make the opposite claim.
So even if it were true that your response “it's denying a claim I didn't make, not making a claim itself”, yet you agreed to my claim by saying “yes” and by using my claim to justify why you didn’t make a certain other claim. My objections to your position follow from what you agreed to in the context of that exchange, namely that “defending one's nation” is a moral reason however insufficient.


> None of that means Zelensky is 'constrained' by the de facto circumstances as some kind of rule 'one must always be constrained by the de facto circumstances' It just so happens that the actual de facto circumstances in this case are morally relevant because lives will be expended in trying to improve on them.

We are past that. De facto circumstances in this case include also a conflict between American and Russian expansionism. And this too has moral relevance: “Seeing this crisis as an inevitable result of capitalist imperialism lend support to the fight against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.”.


> Here, for example is a paper on the multi-causal analysis of the conflict in Algeria from Oxford University. Either point out the maths that I've clearly missed in that paper, or take up with Oxford University, their evident lack of deference to your greater knowledge in this regard.

A part from the fact that in this paper there is a certain amount of stats from politics, demographics, economics (necessary to support related explanatory hypothesis), that the analysis is systemic (and so it goes beyond the intended or foreseeable consequences of decision makers), and that you didn’t offer any such analysis, the point is that we are talking about blame and moral responsibility of Zelensky wrt Putin, or Western administrations wrt Putin, and if you want to use a multi-causal explanation to support related claims you should go through the kind of analysis I suggested. Or else, stop talking about multi-causal analysis pointlessly (since you didn’t offer any anyways), and start reasoning in terms of moral responsibility by analogy with legal responsibility assessment, as much as a judge would do on a crime case trial (whence my problem with your blaming the victim attitude). That’s also relevant to address moral implications in terms of a criterium of proportionality.


> I mean you've not given reasons for your choice of method. You've said you take into account what others value, for example. You've not said why you do that.

Then, are your moral claims arbitrary too for you didn’t give any reason for your choice of method to determine your moral claims, as far as I remember?
On my side, I find quite preposterous to claim that somebody is making arbitrary claims only because he didn’t tell you what his reasons for his claims are yet.
Besides that’s my take about arbitrary moral claims:
“ I’m not judging based on my own preferences alone, nor am I judging without rationally processing a load of information which include people preferences among other things (for example, the feedback from different experts concerning the strategic stakes of this war). So my moral approach is the opposite of “arbitrary” as I understand the word “arbitrary”. Actually that’s the reason why I support this approach.
On the contrary, I find arbitrary your claim that fighting a war for one’s nation is no doubt always immoral, precisely because it doesn’t take into account what other people value, but only what you value (i.e. life) and prior to any rational processing of the situation at hand.”

> I don't need to prove they are more plausible, or more likely to be the case because you didn't make the original claim that you merely preferred your opinion, or found it more plausible. Your claim was that the alternative was actually 'preposterous'.

> Remember, what I'm arguing against here is your claims that alternative positions are 'preposterous'. The fact that you can come up with scenarios which are plausible to support your position doesn't support that claim. You'd have to show that these scenarios were somehow the only plausible outcomes.

> Because assessing my alternatives is not necessary for a successful critique of your position. For your position to hold you'd have to support the claim that there literally are no alternatives.
No solutions other than the one you prefer. That's ridiculous, hence a stupid line of argument. The point I'm making here only requires that other solutions exist and it's 'stupid' to deny that.

I didn’t claim nor implied anywhere that “there literally are no alternatives”, “No solutions other than the one you [referred to me] prefer”. The way you frame my position is not just a fallacious straw men argument, but probably a delusional projection of your own “stupid” views (by your own definition). Indeed my focus has been always 2 moral claims of yours:
- Recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral (as an accusation against the West). (“Seeing this crisis as an inevitable result of capitalist imperialism lend support to the fight against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.”)
- Fighting a war over a flag is no doubt always immoral.
Your 2 claims looked pretty much radical, peremptory and one-sided, so incompatible with alternative or more nuanced views. That is why I didn’t hesitate in calling them preposterous and argued against them. Then you insisted on supporting your preposterous claims with further claims (some of which still sounded preposterous to me) , I counter-argued against them too. And so on. And add to that your reluctance to properly argue and clarify your own views which just reinforced my impression of your close-mindedness.
If you simply presented your position as a dilemma over option1 and option2 from the start, I would have still argued the way I did in the related comment, but I wouldn’t have called your dilemma nor your preference for option2 preposterous as I didn’t do it in the related comment.


> Yeah, right. You just conducted a completely impartial assessment of the evidence, sure.

Didn’t claim nor implied I’m impartial, I just said how it works with me. For example, I didn’t get interested in this war because triggered by strong prior biases against “Russian imperialism” (actually, before the war started, I had stronger prior biases against “American imperialism”, after seeing what they have done in the Middle East) and then looked for whatever expert (with titles and no evident conflict of interest) supported a narrative accusing “Russian imperialism” also for the war in Ukraine. I started with the war news in Ukraine and from there I did my research for expert advise (this rebalanced my attitude toward “American imperialism”)

> Who said anything about helping Russia win?

I am, based on what you support in a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, and other claims of yours such as “Seeing this crisis as an inevitable result of capitalist imperialism lend support to the fight against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.”

> since we are in a philosophy forum, here is a thought experiment for you: if it was the American army invading and bombing some country (say Mexico) the same way Russia is doing in Ukraine, with similar results of Russia in Ukraine, with similar indirect military support from Russia as Ukraine gets from the West, and with similar negotiations conditions from America as Ukraine gets from Russia, and all else equal, then would you have more likely supported those fighting a patriotic war against the American imperialistic capitalism (as well as Russian indirect military support) or would you have more likely supported surrender to the American imperialistic capitalism? — neomac
Interesting. What exactly did you expect to get from this? You fabricate a position you know full well I wouldn't admit to holding (that I support Russia) then ask a transparent 'thought experiment' the answer to which expects me to admit to the one position you already knew I wouldn't admit to. Surely you can see the flaw in that strategy?

No idea what you are talking about. And at this point it doesn’t really matter what you are ready to admit. For me, you can remove Russia from my thought experiment and put any other you like, say Venezuela or China or India or Tibet or Malta. The question is always the same would you support a patriotic fight or would you support surrender to the American imperialistic capitalism? Yes or no? Don’t waste your time guessing my expectations. I can’t remember a single time you succeeded.


> If someone is sufficiently qualified and without any conflict of interest, you're not in a position to dismiss their conclusions as dubious simply because you don't like them or they're not what you expected.

It’s pointless to guess things when I clarified already my position (“I can compare for example their titles or their arguments or how much they converge with the opinion of other experts, etc.”, “double-check based on what I find logic or consistent with other sources and background knowledge”). Besides I have no interest in talking about Luc Montagnier in a thread about the war in Ukraine.

> Really? If you were looking for a military expert you've no idea how to tell if they're qualified? Is there some compelling reason university tenure and/or doctorate-level qualification would be insufficient for you?

> How? If you're a non-expert, how can you meaningfully compare their arguments? And what relevance does it have how much they converge with the opinion of other experts?

Your questions show a poor understanding of what I’ve already said. Besides you could ask the last ones to yourself since you talked about “an overwhelming quantity of foreign policy and strategic experts” to make a point. I could elaborate my ideas further, yet the subject of this thread is the war in Ukraine not whatever unsolicited intellectual failure of yours I happen to witness. So let’s stay focused on the war in Ukraine.

> Where, in that, do I "praise" a Russian puppet government?

Just poor phrasing on my part due to the fact that I was thinking in terms of comparative advertising strategy: roughly, praise one option over the other to suggest the option to choose without actually saying it. The point is still that in framing the negotiation options, the option you presented in a positive light and support include the Russian puppet government, by contrast, the option you presented in a negative light and reject included Zelensky’s government. Besides the mention of the Russian puppet government in the option you support was unnecessary (for this condition was already withdrawn by the Russians and you could have simply kept Zelensky’s government) and unmotivated, therefore suspicious: as if this inclusion was implicitly motivated by whatever reason one could imagine you would plausibly support (e.g. avoiding the risk of future clashes between Zelensky and Putin, punishing Zelensky’s immoral political conduct in this war, keeping up the hostility against the American capitalist imperialism, pleasing Putin for mercy, etc.) in light of your other claims about Zelensky, the West, etc.
From this unnecessary yet plausibly motivated contrast, I had the strong impression you were implicitly supporting a regime change too. And that’s it.


> Following your link “https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/671136” I couldn’t find any reference to the fact that your option 2 is the best one as you suggest. — neomac
So?

Never mind. I thought you wanted to suggest experts who support option2, instead of generically pointing to the same experts' quotations we have already discussed, which would be pointless.

> The plausibility was never in question. The truth was.

Then your objections were pointless. Now for the third time. And that’s it.

> 'Similar' and 'the same' are similar, but not the same.

Impressive yet so pointless. The 2 cases were similar because they both fell under the same general principle you suggested here: “If you don't agree then you'd have to offer an alternative theory of moral responsibility; one in which people can make decisions without any blame accruing to them for the foreseeable outcomes.” Now, if from that general principle follows that Zelensky is blameworthy, then the same holds for the poor. And that’s it.

> I have to prove nothing of the sort because I'm not the one claiming your position is preposterous. Look back at our conversation. Who made claims and who questioned them?

>Again, I'm not putting claims out there for you to analyse. Why you'd think I'd want want some laymen off the internet to analyse my claims is beyond me.

And yet you claimed: “All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise. If you're going to answer ‘because of some reasons’, then we might as well give up here. I’m asking about what those reasons are, I assumed you had some.”
In other words, I’m in the right place for questioning your claims, as you yourself acknowledged. So suck it up and move on.

> Your argument relies on this not being the case, so it is incumbent on you (if you want to support your argument) to disprove it. I've not interest in supporting my case here (I don't even believe it's possible to support such a case in a few hundred words on an internet forum, and even if I did, I wouldn't make such a case as I've no expertise in the matter).

No dude, if you do not want to play the game, then let’s close it here, but you don’t get to decide what the rules of the game are for me. On a given topic, if one makes a claim, it’s on him to argue for it, if challenged (and also the challenge should be argued). That’s the game I’m playing in a philosophy forum. Period.

> My point requires only that the policies of the ruling classes cause some deaths among the working classes

I don’t think so. First of all your claim was “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another.” Second, you were neither clear about what oppression means nor how to evaluate it (here you take as a metrics “death” elsewhere you were talking about economic oppression “It is an economic fact that the working class are oppressed by the elite classes”). Third, you weren’t talking about “some” oppression but “far more consistent” oppression: so if your metrics is “death” then you have to prove that the Ukrainian ruling class’s policies cause far more deaths than the Russian soldiers as working class are causing to Ukrainian families.

> I don’t see the point of your claim “defending one's nation' alone is insufficient as a moral reason” since the “insufficiency” qualification by comparison to other alleged more relevant moral reasons (e.g. fighting against the ruling class, which you admit can be unacknowledged by the oppressed) doesn’t question the fact that Ukrainians actually have an acknowledged moral reason to fight for defending their nation and therefore feel compelled to act upon it as they do. — neomac
Of course it questions that fact. If there's no moral case for defending one's nation then those merely 'defending their nation' have no moral case. It could not be more simple.

Doubt that. Let’s recapitulate your previous claims:
(1)“I’m arguing that simply 'defending one's nation' alone is insufficient as a moral reason because the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another.”
(2)“You could claim that one is morally more justified in fighting X over Y, because X is more oppressive, but that doesn’t equate to claiming that one has no moral reason to fight Y. — neomac
Yes. Which would probably be why I didn't make such a claim.”

(3) “how come that the Russian soldiers (example of working class) prefer to kill Ukrainian families (which surely include members of the Ukrainian working class) instead of killing or mass revolting against the Russian ruling class (Putin and his entourage) if they have greater interest in opposing their ruling class more than in opposing other people? — neomac
I didn't say they realised or agreed, I just said they had more in common with each other than their rulers and bosses”.

So, according to (1), Ukrainians fighting to defend their nation wouldn’t have a sufficient moral reason “because the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another”. Yet, according to (2), you didn’t claim that Ukrainians have no moral reason to fight the Russian armies to defend their nation, when saying that they have no sufficient moral reason to fight the Russian armies. So Ukrainians actually have a moral reason to fight against Russian invasion.
Now you say that Ukrainians have no moral case to keep fighting the Russian army.
So what on earth does it mean that Ukrainians have a moral reason to fight the Russian army to defend their nation, yet they have no moral case to fight the Russian army to defend their nation?! Concerning your “moral reason insufficiency”, I find it problematic wrt its prescriptive implications, especially in light of (3). To clarify this, here is a more trivial example: X is a charitable man and has a moral reason to help A, a very poor man but with no family to support (2) however his moral reason to help A is not sufficient only in the sense that there is also B who is a very poor man with family to support, so B’s case is comparatively more urgent than A’s case (1). Yet B’s case is totally unknown to X or X has reasons to believe that B is neither very poor nor with family (3). In this scenario, should X help A or not? For me it would make sense only to answer yes, but you would say no, right?
Finally, (2) looks in contradiction to other claims of yours (“fighting over a flag is always wrong”, “Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral”) where fighting over a flag is no doubt always immoral: how can “fighting over a flag” be at the same time no doubt always immoral and still be a moral reason?!

> OK then what is the relation between Russian and Ukrainian rich people being in a luxury yachts, while Russian and Ukrainian children starve do death in their rubbish, with the fact that Russian soldiers are exterminating Ukrainian families and children? — neomac
Nor did I restrict my analysis to Russia and Ukraine. Are you going to go around the world adding one country at a time or are you going to have an honest conversation including the fact that America and Europe are deeply involved in this conflict?

I have no idea what analysis you are talking about, I’m still waiting for one about the pertinence of your claim “I would have thought it pretty self-evident that people swanning about in luxury yachts whilst children starve to death in their rubbish was both unfair and cruel” wrt the fact that Russian soldiers are exterminating Ukrainian families and children.
The irony is that your excuse to dodge this task is that I interpret your unrestricted claims more strictly. Yet I did that precisely because they are unrestricted, not despite the fact they are unrestricted. It’s on you to analytically clarify how your unrestricted claims should be properly understood not on me to do the job for you.
Besides, I don’t see how one could possibly have an intellectually “honest conversation” in a philosophy forum without clarity and arguments. So until I see some effort in this direction from you, I can’t take your “honest conversation” proposal seriously. And apparently I’m not the only one who questioned the honesty of your approach in this debate, am I?

> What the situation is and what our choices are, are two different things.

Meaning? Spell it out more clearly and argue for it, if you can. If Zelensky’s choice (e.g. between keep fighting or surrender) should be morally/strategically assessed based on a de facto situation (Russian control over Crimea and some Donbas lands) as you claim, why shouldn’t your related choice (i.e. Ukrainian keep fighting or surrender to Russian demands) be morally/strategically assessed based on a de facto situation as you framed this war from a geopolitical point of view (i.e. “American expansionism vs Russian expansionism”)?

> Who said Zelensky was 'constrained' by the de facto circumstances?

I am, based on how you framed the negotiation best outcome, in line with Russian demands.

“1. This gives Russia no more than is de facto the case already , so it doesn't give an inch on Russian expansionism, it just admits that we've failed to contain it peacefully as we should have. Russia already run Crimea, Donbas already has independent parliaments and make independent decisions, NATO have already pretty much ruled out membership for Ukraine, as have Ukraine.”

“you just repeated Putin’s demands and related blackmails without considering Ukrainian demands at all. — neomac
I know, that's why I said them. Those are the demands on the table at the moment, so of course they're Putin's. The argument was that they don't push Russian expansionism futher. They are the de facto positions already.”

> You introduced maths. Why does a multi-causal analysis entail that I should be able to carry out some mathematical calculation assigning degrees of blame? I can say party X is somewhat to blame and party Y somewhat to blame. That's multi-causal and involves no maths whatsoever.

Oh I see now how pointless your previous comment was: “You appear to be unfamiliar with multi-causal events, perhaps read up about the concept before pursuing this further”. Because the claim “party X is somewhat to blame and party Y somewhat to blame” is not a multi-causal event analysis nor necessarily requires one. Multi-causal analysis refers to the identification of a minimal set of causal factors (where the concept of “causal factor” goes beyond agency and intentionality) and each causal factor has a certain weight (statistical, i.e. depending on the stochastic correlation between causal factors and effects, or probabilistic, i.e. depending on the ratio between one factor and the total number of factors) in contributing to a certain effect. So you were loosely talking about multi-causality to refer in reality to multi-agency dynamics and related responsibility/blame attributions, as I clarified here (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/675364 , see comment about your vase broken example).
But if you want attribute blame based on multi-agency dynamics then, saying of the West, “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral” looks preposterous as much as your example of the broken vase to explain this: the West is no real moral agent while your broken vase example is not an example of multi-agency dynamics. Besides, if you want to put “some” blame to some agent wrt others in a multi-agency dynamics, it would still be important to assess how much blame in order to allow a proportionally adequate response. For example, assessing how much Zelensky is blameful wrt Putin will morally justify a proportional support to push Zelensky to accept Russian demands or to formulate Ukrainian demands in a way that is more acceptable by the Russians. Now, if the Ukrainian patriotic resistance is morally defensible (at least as long as they are aggressed, as I argued), then the Ukrainians can not be blamed for that, nor can be Zelensky as the Ukrainian legitimate leader in times of peace and war (as I argued), while Putin & Russian soldiers bear all the blame for continuing this war.
So it’s on you to clarify why Zelensky bears some responsibility along with Putin for the fact that Russian soldiers are killing Ukrainian families, and how much Zelensky is blameful wrt to Putin for what happened.

> I made my moral assessment based on a posteriori comparative evaluation concerning how much Zelensky’s choices reflect what Ukrainians actually value (defending Ukraine from Russian aggression), how much Ukrainian values are closer to Westerners wrt Russians (Ukrainains are more open to westernization), how much proportionate Russian response to the claimed threat from Ukrainians was, how much Russian aggressive expansionism is an actual existential threat to the West (given the actual Russian cyberwar against the West, the actual nuclear threat against the West, the actual Russian aggressive expansion in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, and Putin’s actual aspirations to a new world order), and so on, and my conclusion is that I have moral reasons to side with Zelensky’s resistance against Russia. — neomac
So a list of arbitrary preferences then…

> Yes I’m claiming there are moral reasons to back a particular strategy, and the particular strategy is supporting Zelensky’s resistance against Russian aggression. Does that sound new to you after all I already, repeatedly and extensively said? — neomac

No, but you've yet to adequately support any such reasons other than state some entirely arbitrary preferences and then declare alternative 'preposterous'. If you find the views of anyone who doesn't share your entirely arbitrary preferences 'preposterous' I suggest a debate forum isn't the best place for you.


What do you mean by “arbitrary”? I’m not judging based on my own preferences alone, nor am I judging without rationally processing a load of information which include people preferences among other things (for example, the feedback from different experts concerning the strategic stakes of this war). So my moral approach is the opposite of “arbitrary” as I understand the word “arbitrary”. Actually that’s the reason why I support this approach.
On the contrary, I find arbitrary your claim that fighting a war for one’s nation is no doubt always immoral, precisely because it doesn’t take into account what other people value, but only what you value (i.e. life) and prior to any rational processing of the situation at hand.

> if you contrast a Russian puppet government wrt Zelensky’s, praise the first and blame the second — neomac
Where have I done anything of the sort?

Here: “It’s not their lives. Zelensky (and his government) decide how to proceed. Western governments decide in what way to assist. Ukrainian children die. They didn't get a say in the matter. If you think that's moral, that's your lookout, but I don't see how. I don't see anyone asking the Ukrainian children if they'd rather lose both parents and remain governed by Zelensky, or retain their family and be governed by a Putin puppet”.
And now here:
“Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.”
This is called comparative advertising in marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising) and it explains how you strongly suggested your support for a puppet government over Zelensky’s patriotic government, without saying it.
So it is evidently plausible to say you are suggesting to replace Zelensky’s government with a puppet government, which is even more than what Putin asked in the scenario we discussed.

> Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament.

Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.
Option 2 has fewer dead.

First of all, I see “regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor” in both options. So since it doesn’t make any difference, what was the point of putting it? Second, what does support your claim “less crippled by debt” and “less in thrall to the IMF”? Actually there are reasons to doubt that if Ukraine loses Crimea, part of the Donbas region, and has a Russian puppet regime, it will recover more easily from its debts, since its economy will be badly crippled (due to the economic, energetic and industrial importance of those regions) and its dependency to Russia might suffer from the sanctions the West imposed on Russia as well. So their economy could go shittier than the Russian economy is right now (especially if Russia doesn’t make any reparation payment), and still under shittier Russian ruling class who cares about the Ukrainians even less they care about the Russians. They should give up on their hopes to join the West as they wanted, see their culture repressed along with persecutions of dissidents and rebels (which might be as bloody as in Bucha). They could also be involved in other Russian expansionist criminal wars as much Belarus was.
For the West the chances of another war against Russia can only grow bigger if option 2 was the case, and Russia pushed further its geopolitical agenda (so again more deaths and destruction also for the Ukrainians if the war will involve again Ukraine, this is also what buffer states are for right? ). Indeed Sweden and Finland are thinking to join NATO. So provocations are not over yet right?

> Why? People are not normally required to avoid all risk to others in order to avoid being labelled immoral?

Let me remind you of what you claimed “Zelensky bears some moral responsibility for the deaths if he chooses to continue fighting when he could have take a less harmful other option. That's just a statement about how moral responsibility works. It doesn't require me to do any maths. If you don't agree then you'd have to offer an alternative theory of moral responsibility; one in which people can make decisions without any blame accruing to them for the foreseeable outcomes.”
So your point is that Zelensky’s choice is somehow immoral right?
Now compare the previous claim with this one: poor bear some moral responsibility for the deaths/misery/starvation/disease of their children if they choose to give birth to their babies when they could have taken a less harmful other option, namely not having babies.
It’s a similar line of reasoning as the previous one, right? So the choice of having children by the poor is somehow immoral right?

> What are the other solutions you are talking about? — neomac
I'm not answering these stupid questions. Either have a serious conversation or don't bother replying.

Why stupid? Depending on your answer I can better assess the consistency of your reasons, precisely because I doubt they are consistent. BTW, enquiring about your reasons should not look that stupid to you if you want to be consistent with your claim: “All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise”.

> What is the point of such claims, in particular the part I put in bold? I see none. — neomac
Seriously. You don't see the point in ascertaining who I'm talking to? What garbage.

No I don’t see the point, for precisely the reasons I explained and you didn’t address, which again doesn’t sound consistent with your claim: “All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise”.

> I have no idea what “the outcome continued war is compared to matters.” is supposed to mean. — neomac

Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament.

Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.
Option 2 has fewer dead.

That doesn’t answer what I previously asked: “for the third time, wouldn’t this line of reasoning of yours simply support whatever the status quo is (ruling class oppressing working class is a de facto situation right?), since no power (especially authoritarian) can be radically challenged without risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material well-being and life?”
And then asked again:
“How else do you see the oppressed poor get better condition from an authoritarian ruling class without fight (history is plenty of violent revolutions and civil wars where the poor tried to fight against an authoritarian ruling class to improve their conditions), and therefore risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material well-being and life? I’ll remind you that you keep talking about the importance of ruling class oppression which is far more consistent than the oppression between nations, so would you exclude fighting against an oppressive ruling class (like the Ukrainian peasants’ revolts against the Stalin’s forced collectivization) as morally defensible for fear of worse consequences (like the Holodomor which is worse than what Russia has done so far in this war against Ukrainians)?”
It’s important you answer those questions because you are the one who claimed “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another” and believes it’s pertinent in the debate about the war in Ukraine.

> P1. If, in the Ukrainian-Russian negotiation, demands are unacceptable [p] or the assurances aren’t enough [q], then the negotiation fail [r]
P2. In the Ukrainian-Russian negotiation, negotiation demands were unacceptable [p] and assurances weren’t enough [q]
C. The negotiation fail [r] — neomac
Well then C doesn't follow because you've not demonstrated P2.

You evidently lost track of what I and you were previously talking about. On my side, the point wasn’t to provide a conclusive demonstration concerning the question of the negotiation failure due to the lack of assurance, but only its plausibility based on the available evidences: “Negotiations failed, so either the demands were unacceptable and/or the assurances weren’t enough. Since I wasn’t there at the negotiation table, I can only guess from available evidences and plausible reasons that support either cases. I already provided some for both cases. So if assurances weren’t enough at the negotiation table (which I find plausible due to evidences and reasons), then the mistrust was too much.”
Now, while this last objection of yours is related to P2 (which you claim I didn’t demonstrate), the previous one was more related to P1 (“That doesn't follow at all. Two parties could trust each other 100% and still not reach agreement on the deal because neither side thinks they have the concession they were looking for. It need have nothing to do with trust”). And in both cases you repeated the same complaint “that doesn’t follow (at all)”.
Yet my argument is logically valid (the conclusion correctly follows from the premises and I hope you know the distinction between valid and sound deductions), I didn’t ignore the case you were mentioning (100% trust but no satisfactory concessions), I provided evidences to support not the truth but the plausibility of P2 as expressly intended, so your objections either are wrong or missing the point.

> Seriously? You want me to re-post all of my comments with the names edited. Are you retarded? Can you seriously not handle the task of simply reading one for the other?

Yes seriously. There are two reasons why I ask: one, to more comfortably quote individual claims of yours (which would also reduce the risk of misunderstanding). Second, depending on the way you formulate the question, I could ask you to be more specific (indeed some of your questions were ambiguous or unclear about what they are referring to) or to argue for its implied assumptions (e.g. if I don’t see evidence to support what your questions assume to be the case).
Don’t start calling names, dude, your position is in such a bad shape already that you do not really need to worsen it.

> Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament.

Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.
Option 2 has fewer dead.

I'm not saying anyone has to do anything.

You are not saying it, yet you are suggesting it. If we are talking about moral, defending a line of reasoning to support a certain moral position has a prescriptive force related to what people should do e.g. supporting or not Ukrainian resistance against Russian invasion (“whether negotiations are taking place is not the question. Whether you support them is the question”). So if you say that “fighting for a flag is no doubt always immoral”, that implies that people should never fight for their nation. It doesn’t matter if you phrase it that way.

> I’m pointing out that the terms offered by Russia are in this specific case, not applying to every single case in the world (which you bizarrely assumed), are such that it's not worth thousands of lives and huge indebtedness just to avoid them.

I didn’t make any such assumption. When one argues in support of one’s claims one can rely on some more general beliefs and/or more specific beliefs. While defending your position, you too seemed to rely on some more general beliefs (“fighting for a flag is no doubt always immoral” or “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another”) and other more specific (like when you talk about “less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF”) so I addressed them differently depending on their level of generality.

> I choose the experts whose opinion align with the narratives I prefer. I have world views I find satisfying and if an expert opinion aligns with those I'll choose to believe that expert rather than one whose opinion opposes them. all this assuming the expert in question has sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest.

Let me notice first this: you talk about your personal preferences (+ some comparative criteria) in trusting some experts and yet you do not take this to be arbitrary right? But when I talked about preferences (not only mine! + some comparative criteria) in my approach to moral assessments you dismissively said “a list of arbitrary preferences”. That doesn’t sound fair, does it?
Besides your additional criteria (“sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest”) look neither better than mine (“double-check based on what I find logic or consistent with other sources and background knowledge”) nor incompatible with mine. They are not better than mine because even if conflict of interests and titles are certainly pertinent parameters among others when assessing experts, yet they are neither conclusive nor sufficient per se: during the covid crisis there were experts (like Luc Montagnier) with titles and no evident conflict of interests but whose reliability when talking about covid was still pretty dubious. They are not incompatible with mine because e.g. I don’t even know how you would assess “sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest” without adequate background knowledge. Yet oddly you didn’t accept mine as good response to your question, God knows why.
At this point I could try to complete my previous answer as follows. First of all, my understanding of the strategic implications of the war in Ukraine results from processing information from different sources, including experts (more than I can remember) on different fields and with different views (including Mearsheimer, Kennan, Kissinger). So it’s not like I have my moral or strategic understanding of this war and then I look whoever expert is confirming it. Secondly, as far as trust is based on implicit background knowledge (which include one’s personal encyclopaedic baggage of notions and cognitive habits), it doesn’t even make much sense to ask why I trust an expert. It would make more sense if I were to compare the opinion of the expert X wrt to the opinion of the expert Y (because I can compare for example their titles or their arguments or how much they converge with the opinion of other experts, etc.), or if I were to re-assess X’s opinion in light of some putative discrediting evidences (like a conflict of interests). With political leaders things are complicated by the fact that there might be discrepancies between what they say and the reality, or what they say and what they do as we commonly and widely experience (so it’s harder to assess what is physiological and what dysfunctional or how much a leader is reliable).

> Seeing this crisis as a random outburst from an unprovoked madman who the US can stamp on with it's shiny military is useless. It achieves nothing.

It is incorrect to say that it achieves nothing if it strengthens Western consensus in support of resistance/containment against Russia. You probably mean nothing you value for the reasons we are discussing.
On my side, I never talked about “a random outburst from an unprovoked madman”. Some give credit to the idea that Putin is victim of his own delusional propaganda and his paranoiac mentality, typical of a cranky single dictator surrounded by yes-men and pressed by the events, which may have some plausibility, even if the geopolitical competition between Russia and America can definitely not be reduced to Putin’s mental state.
What I also find interesting though is that the most vocal non-Ukrainian subjects about the importance of supporting Ukrainian fight against Putin I’ve heard so far are Russian personalities (like Andrey Illarionov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl_nWwx2B7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfYVX5ZWxBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDmEPFO_hd0

> Seeing this crisis as an inevitable result of capitalist imperialism lend support to the fight against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.

That is why you want to help Russia win against American capitalist imperialism, because American capitalist imperialism is the greatest Evil. This is what I was trying to get from you when I was asking you about your preference between Russia and America, or America and Isis. As long as Russia and Isis win against American capitalist imperialism it’s a good thing, right? You see there was no need to talk about third strategies or opposing Russian expansionism, after all. You just wasted our time on your pointless and poorly argued side issue.
Anyway, since we are in a philosophy forum, here is a thought experiment for you: if it was the American army invading and bombing some country (say Mexico) the same way Russia is doing in Ukraine, with similar results of Russia in Ukraine, with similar indirect military support from Russia as Ukraine gets from the West, and with similar negotiations conditions from America as Ukraine gets from Russia, and all else equal, then would you have more likely supported those fighting a patriotic war against the American imperialistic capitalism (as well as Russian indirect military support) or would you have more likely supported surrender to the American imperialistic capitalism?

> If you can suggest military and foreign policy experts or political commentators that disagree with my views or support your views, I’m open to have a look at them, of course. — neomac
I already have.

Following your link “https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/671136” I couldn’t find any reference to the fact that your option 2 is the best one as you suggest. Besides claims and advise of some of those experts you suggested do not seem to converge with your views in some relevant aspects. E.g. Kissinger advises “It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. […]. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea ” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html). While Mearsheimer concludes that: “The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.” (https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf).”

> You just keep claiming that “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another” without providing evidences and while being contradicted by the evidences: Ukrainian families got exterminated by Russian soldiers, no Ukrainian ruling class member has exterminated those families. — neomac
Are you suggesting that the policies of the ruling classes have resulted in no deaths?

I have no idea what you are talking about (which policies? Which ruling classes? Which deaths?) nor what relation it bears with what I wrote. So I’m explicitly asking you - now for the fifth time - to provide evidences of such claim “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another”.


> Yes. Which would probably be why I didn't make such a claim.

Then I don’t see the point of your claim “defending one's nation' alone is insufficient as a moral reason” since the “insufficiency” qualification by comparison to other alleged more relevant moral reasons (e.g. fighting against the ruling class, which you admit can be unacknowledged by the oppressed) doesn’t question the fact that Ukrainians actually have an acknowledged moral reason to fight for defending their nation and therefore feel compelled to act upon it as they do. Besides you were claiming that fighting over a flag is no doubt immoral. So, finally, can fighting for one’s nation be a defensible moral reason or not?


> Very little. Which is probably why I didn't restrict my assessment to the Russian ruling elite, nor the Russian poor.

OK then what is the relation between Russian and Ukrainian rich people being in a luxury yachts, while Russian and Ukrainian children starve do death in their rubbish, with the fact that Russian soldiers are exterminating Ukrainian families and children?


> if Zelensky’s moral stand and choices are to be assessed over a de facto situation or actual terms on the table (as you claim), then I don’t see why your moral stand and choices about this war can’t be assessed based on the actual clash between 2 de facto dominant powers, as you frame this war. — neomac
Because our choices aren't limited to a de facto 2 clash between dominant powers. Which is probably why I have never suggested they are.

What?! So you are not claiming that the war in Ukraine is a war between American and Russian expansionism as great power politics in Mearsheimer-lingo, now?!
Anyway if your moral position and choices should not be constrained within a de facto clash of dominance between American and Russian powers, then also Zelensky moral position and choices should not be constrained within what a de facto war situation is, especially as framed by the enemy.

> I talked about math because you talked about multi-causal theory and multi causal theories would allow to evaluate the exact or statistical relevance of a cause in a given output. — neomac
How?

What?! You should tell me! You talked about multi-causal analysis, I didn’t! That’s your job, not mine!

> So what factor (or factors) governs the difference?

> So you keep saying, yet you seem quite clear on what dimensions are not to be considered. Perhaps a quick run down of these multiple dimensions would help?[/i]

As I said, I intend moral assessment an a posteriori comparative tasks about what people actually value in given circumstances to determine the lesser evil. The reason why I can’t do a priori moral assessments is because I can’t predict what people actually value (they could value many different things) especially when facing contingent and challenging events (like a war, a pandemic, an immigration crisis, a terrorist threat, etc.), with all that goes with it in terms of costs/benefits and responsibility ascriptions. The multi-dimensionality of moral assessments refers precisely to the fact that there are values to consider and comparisons to make depending on given circumstances that we can not predict.
In a given situation like this war, I made my moral assessment based on a posteriori comparative evaluation concerning how much Zelensky’s choices reflect what Ukrainians actually value (defending Ukraine from Russian aggression), how much Ukrainian values are closer to Westerners wrt Russians (Ukrainains are more open to westernization), how much proportionate Russian response to the claimed threat from Ukrainians was, how much Russian aggressive expansionism is an actual existential threat to the West (given the actual Russian cyberwar against the West, the actual nuclear threat against the West, the actual Russian aggressive expansion in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, and Putin’s actual aspirations to a new world order), and so on, and my conclusion is that I have moral reasons to side with Zelensky’s resistance against Russia.

> If you want to object to me for good, tell me if you would morally support Isis over America and why. — neomac
I already did, right at the beginning of the paragraph you're supposedly critiquing.

I have no idea what paragraph your are referring to. Quote yourself or repeat your point as I’ve done many times.

> Again, how on earth do you get from the notion that a puppet government wouldn't be so bad as to be worth thousands of lives to "I think we ought to depose Zelensky". It's just an insane leap of inference.

A suggestion is a pragmatic implicature not a logic inference. So if you contrast a Russian puppet government wrt Zelensky’s, praise the first and blame the second the obvious implicature is that Russian puppet should replace Zelensky. Also because that is very much consistent with Russian desiderata (like having a Russian puppet government instead of having pro-western government as Zelensky running Ukraine) which you are arguing we should readily submit to.
If one wanted to suggest to people that Ukrainians should replace Zelensky with a Russian puppet government without actually saying it, one would precisely to do the way you did: insist on the tragic mistakes of Zelensky on one side and stress the benefits of having a puppet government on the other side. There is no more straightforward way to suggest it without explicitly saying (it’s called comparative advertising in marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising).
Again, at best, you could claim that you didn’t mean it. At worst, you could keep disingenuously complaining. Either way, I made my point and I’ll stick to it for precisely the reasons I provided.

> It's absolutely absurd to suggest that every time I raise a criticism about a government decision, I'm calling for them to be deposed.
Where else did I do that? Can you fully quote me? — neomac
I just did.

Where? So far we are simply arguing over a single claim of mine:

3. So you wanted to suggest a third strategy opposing Russian and American expansionism and now you want Zelensky gone, which is more than what Putin officially demanded?! Even Putin might cringe over your overzealousness. — neomac

This is where I claim you to be suggesting a replacement of Zelensky’s regime with a puppet government and we are arguing now about this claim. While you stated “It's absolutely absurd to suggest that every time I raise a criticism about a government decision, I'm calling for them to be deposed.” as if I suggested that you want Zelensky gone other times. I’m asking you to fully quote myself where else I made such a suggestion.


> Poor people bring to life children that they are incapable of taking care of, don’t they have some responsibility for the death/sickness/starvation/misery of their children? — neomac
Yes. I presume that would be why they try with every ounce of their soul to feed and protect those children.

> Palestinians bring to life children that they are incapable of fully protecting against the oppression of Israelis, don’t they have some responsibility for the death/sickness/starvation/misery of their children exposed to the Israelis’ oppression? — neomac
Yes. Again probably why they try so desperately hard to protect them.

Sure, but that’s also why you would consider the poor/Palestinian parents immoral because they are knowingly exposing their children to death/sickness/starvation/misery. Indeed you claimed “If you don't agree then you'd have to offer an alternative theory of moral responsibility; one in which people can make decisions without any blame accruing to them for the foreseeable outcomes.”


> So shouldn’t they stop having children? — neomac
That's one solution, yes. Not the only solution, clearly.

The point is that’s the moral solution, you would readily support, considering the de facto power relations between poor and rich or between Palestinians and Israel, and the gravity of risks that poor/Palestinians are exposing their children to.
What are the other solutions you are talking about?

> The former is true, the latter is a strategic judgement. I'm not speaking to a Ukrainian so I can't interrogate their reasoning. I’m speaking to a non-Ukrainian, form the comfort of their non-bombed home and asking why they are supporting continued fighting so fervently.

What is the point of such claims, in particular the part I put in bold? I see none. First of all, you don’t know me, and you have no idea about my personal involvement in this story as much as I don’t know yours. So I don’t see any compelling reason to support your assumption. Second, we are in a philosophy forum where we discuss things precisely because we are drawn for whatever reason to such intellectual activity, and we can do that without involving anyone’s personal situation. Third, I can talk about moral reasons as fervently as I can talk about the propositional content of our thoughts or the conceptual reduction of time to perception or the logical form of a Devine Command Theory, especially if I encounter people making preposterous claims as you did repeatedly (actually on other philosophical debates over epistemology or metaphysics or logics I have been even harsher than I am with you). Fourth, investing energies in a debate over a war without any direct involvement in that war could be true for those who support continued fighting as likely as for those who do support surrender. So why are you depicting only one side in these terms? Fifth, if Russia is an actual existential threat to the West, we have a damn serious reason to be worried even from a position of comfort, precisely because we fear it won’t last as much as we can fear a pandemic spreading from China even if we are not actually sick nor living in China.


> BTW, for the third time, wouldn’t this line of reasoning of yours simply support whatever the status quo is (ruling class oppressing working class is a de facto situation right?), since no power (especially authoritarian) can be radically challenged without risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material well-being and life? — neomac
Then for the third time, no, the outcome continued war is compared to matters.

Quote yourself where you said no to that question, the other 2 times.
I have no idea what “the outcome continued war is compared to matters.” is supposed to mean. Can you unpack your claim more extensively and highlight its moral implications? How else do you see the oppressed poor get better condition from an authoritarian ruling class without fight (history is plenty of violent revolutions and civil wars where the poor tried to fight against an authoritarian ruling class to improve their conditions), and therefore risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material well-being and life? I’ll remind you that you keep talking about the importance of ruling class oppression which is far more consistent than the oppression between nations, so would you exclude fighting against an oppressive ruling class (like the Ukrainian peasants’ revolts against the Stalin’s forced collectivization) as morally defensible for fear of worse consequences (like the Holodomor which is worse than what Russia has done so far in this war against Ukrainians)?


> What? You've not labelled p, q or r so I can't possibly use this.

Here you go:
P1. If, in the Ukrainian-Russian negotiation, demands are unacceptable [p] or the assurances aren’t enough [q], then the negotiation fail [r]
P2. In the Ukrainian-Russian negotiation, negotiation demands were unacceptable [p] and assurances weren’t enough [q]
C. The negotiation fail [r]


> But I support Ukraine. So does everyone writing here. We disagree about how. Are you claiming there are moral reasons to back particular strategies?

Yes I’m claiming there are moral reasons to back a particular strategy, and the particular strategy is supporting Zelensky’s resistance against Russian aggression. Does that sound new to you after all I already, repeatedly and extensively said? Because if it doesn’t, what was the point of asking such question exactly?

> Whenever I talk about strategy you switch to intention (1), when I talk about intention you say it's about 'moral reasons' (2) when I talk about morality you defer back to tactics again (3).

I can’t recall examples of (1) and (3) can you point me to where I did that? (2) happened because you tried to frame my claims from your assumptions not mine, and I didn’t just switch, I argued for my point to let you address it in a more pertinent way.
The fact that you feel talking about something doesn’t imply that your interlocutor sees it as pertinent, so the more you derail from what is perceived as pertinent by your interlocutor the more your interlocutor will likely switch back to what he perceives to be more pertinent (like when you feel like talking about the Yemeni when we are talking about the Russian aggression of Ukraine, or when you feel like talking about rich and poor when we are talking again about Russian aggression fo Ukraine, or when you feel like talking the deaths provoked by the Ukrainian ruling class when we are talking again about Russian aggression of Ukraine).
Besides you too switch from one subject to another, what makes it look suspicious though is that you are doing this when one is challenging the internal consistency of your own assumptions/claims (like the idea that this war is due to American expansionism, or that ruling class oppression is far more consistent than the oppression between nations).


> Fine. Replace all my uses of US, NATO and Europe with the names of their current leaders and influences and then answer the questions.

That’s your job. When you do your job, I’ll do mine.

> Not what I asked.

You asked: “If Putin's power consolidation was increased bu sanction and NATO involvement in the war, then ought we avoid those things?” I can’t/couldn’t give you a straightforward answer because that depends. If sanctions and/or NATO involvement consolidate Putin’s power within Russia but weaken his power outside Russia then we should sanction and get NATO involved. If sanctions and/or NATO involvement consolidate Putin’s power outside Russia then no we should not sanction nor get NATO involved. If sanctions and NATO involvement have equal opportunity to have Putin’s power consolidation outside Russia, then it’s indifferent what we do.


> Again, not even addressing the question I actually asked.

Which question? The piece of yours I was commenting (“So as far as the moral case is concerned, you concede the point that continuing to fight is not morally advised simply on the grounds of 'opposing Putin's expansionism' since it is a moot point what course of action would best do that.”) didn’t contain any questions, it was attributing to me a concession based on what I said earlier, so I was simply clarifying what I said earlier.
Nobody is forbidding you to ask your questions again. I have to do it very often with you.


> cruel and unfair treatment of people, especially by not giving them the same freedom, rights, etc. is morally defensible when it’s for punishing immoral people. — neomac
So you think punishing immoral people is unfair?

When we talk about unfair treatment we implicitly associate it with the idea of unjust treatment. Yet unfair treatment could simply mean unequal treatment for example by not giving someone the same freedom, rights, etc. But unequal treatment is not always unjust, unequal treatment of criminals is just. So, during our exchange, I hacked the latter usage of “fair” as an expedient to justify my unusual usage of the word “oppression” (when punishing the immoral) in the absence of a better word with the semantic features I needed (we do not have a word that allows to talk about just and unjust oppression). So, to answer your question, obviously no in the way we usually intend it, but yes due to the linguistic expedient I just clarified. I don’t mind if you disagree, though.


> There cannot always be an alternative, otherwise negotiations never end. At some point in time the agreement has to coincide with both parties' strategy.

Sure but the point is that you didn’t prove that you offered an alternative third strategy to which opposing parties could converge, you are just saying that one party has to converge to the requests of the other party as they are formulated.


> You can take side in accordance to your beliefs. So do I. Now what? — neomac
Well, you could start by refraining from referring to my beliefs as 'preposterous', if you accept that they're just beliefs.

Yet another preposterous claim. Even if you can act in accordance to your beliefs and your beliefs are just beliefs (?!), your beliefs can still be only partially true, false, contradictory, unjustified, nonsense, or preposterous. And if I believe they are only partially true, false, contradictory, unjustified, nonsense, or preposterous. I will claim so and argue for it, if necessary. You can do the same. Indeed we are in a philosophical forum discussing things, often we disagree because we have reasons to believe that our interlocutor’s belief are only partially true, false, contradictory, unjustified, nonsense, or preposterous. So your argument is flawed on so many levels that it deserves to be qualified as “preposterous”.

> So why do you trust those who tell you that continuing to fight is better for the Ukrainian people? Why do you trust those who tell you that life under the terms of a US/European loan system will be better than one under Russian puppet government?
Never made such claims. — neomac
Good. So are they?

Are they what? Whom exactly are you talking about?


> I already answered: “So for what strategy is concerned I tend to defer more to the feedback of experts and leaders, and then double-check based on what I find logic or consistent with other sources and background knowledge” — neomac
That's not an answer. All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise. If you're going to answer "because of some reasons", then we might as well give up here. I'm asking about what those reasons are, I assumed you had some.

I didn’t get why it’s not an answer, I would understand better if you could show me how you would answer to your own question: “If the outcomes of strategic decisions are beyond your expertise, then why do you choose to trust the experts and leaders supporting your current position and not those supporting the alternatives?”


> What matters to me is what Ukrainians and Western leaders consider the “worst option” in geopolitically significant terms — neomac
Why? Why not, for example, what the various military and foreign policy experts consider the “worst option” in geopolitically significant terms? Or what the various political commentators consider the “worst option” in geopolitically significant terms? Why put your faith in the Ukrainian leadership and the Western powers' leadership?

That’s not a full quotation. I was contrasting their opinion with yours and I explained why.
If you can suggest military and foreign policy experts or political commentators that disagree with my views or support your views, I’m open to have a look at them, of course.

> So how does this 'fact' link to the morality of fighting for one's nation? Lots of people value money too. Does that make fighting over money moral?

> People value money, so fighting over money is moral?

Also fighting over money can be moral of course, e.g. if fighting those who stole the money is morally defensible. Rebellions against work exploitation can be also understood as a moral fight over money as a means of subsistence and well-being.
I take moral assessment as an a posteriori comparative task based on what we actually value to determine what the best or lesser evil course of action is. And nationality is one thing that some people value.


> how come that the Russian soldiers (example of working class) prefer to kill Ukrainian families (which surely include members of the Ukrainian working class) instead of killing or mass revolting against the Russian ruling class (Putin and his entourage) if they have greater interest in opposing their ruling class more than in opposing other people? — neomac
I didn't say they realised or agreed, I just said they had more in common with each other than their rulers and bosses.

> I'm arguing that simply 'defending one's nation' alone is insufficient as a moral reason because the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another.

You just keep claiming that “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another” without providing evidences and while being contradicted by the evidences: Ukrainian families got exterminated by Russian soldiers, no Ukrainian ruling class member has exterminated those families. And now I wonder if you need any since you do not take into account what working class representatives (like the Russian soldiers) actually prefer, arguing that either they have been blind to their interests or disagree with you on what they are but it doesn’t matter because you know better.
I don’t even get the moral reason insufficiency claim. You could claim that one is morally more justified in fighting X over Y, because X is more oppressive, but that doesn’t equate to claiming that one has no moral reason to fight Y.


> Are you saying the working class ought to be oppressed?

I don’t even understand why you keep talking about working classes. If you want to talk about it open a thread, argue for your claim, provide evidences and I’ll give you my feedback, if interested.


> I would have thought it pretty self-evident that people swanning about in luxury yachts whilst children starve to death in their rubbish was both unfair and cruel - but if you think it's fine, then I don't think there's anything I can do do convince you otherwise.

And what is the relation between Russian rich people being in a luxury yachts, while Russian children starve do death in their rubbish, with the fact that Russian soldiers are exterminating Ukrainian families and children?


> America over Isis. America over Russia. Now, those are not the only choices, what on earth have they got to do with the question of whether fighting over nationality is moral?

What?! It was you in the first place to insist on framing the war in Ukraine as a clash between the America and Russia dominance, not me. And when I’m asking you who you would morally support between Russian and American dominance, I’m asking you this precisely because you care to frame this war in this way.
On my side I was content with describing the war between Ukraine and Russia primarily as a war between Ukrainians and Russians, and argued that the clash between America and Russia is grounded on this clash between nations. So I have really nothing else to explain.
Once again since this is a war of dominance between the US and Russia according to you, which dominance would you side with? With the so treacherous, hypocritical, cynical, exploitative, immiserating, Yemeni blood thirsty West or with the all so righteous de-facto-winning misery-free new-world-order champion Mearsheimer-approved Russia?
Don’t waste your time dodging the question or musing about some utopian third option, because my challenge to your views is about consistency: if Zelensky’s moral stand and choices are to be assessed over a de facto situation or actual terms on the table (as you claim), then I don’t see why your moral stand and choices about this war can’t be assessed based on the actual clash between 2 de facto dominant powers, as you frame this war.


> Why on earth would some kind of maths be necessary? Zelensky bears some moral responsibility for the deaths if he chooses to continue fighting when he could have take a less harmful other option. That's just a statement about how moral responsibility works. It doesn't require me to do any maths. If you don't agree then you'd have to offer an alternative theory of moral responsibility; one in which people can make decisions without any blame accruing to them for the foreseeable outcomes.

Not only I already offered my arguments to support my claims (not the ones you put in my mouth) when I talked about the link between responsibility and agency, the multi-dimensional nature of my moral assessments and the right to self-defence. But I also argued against your clandestine causal theory to support Zelensky’s “some responsibility”.
I talked about math because you talked about multi-causal theory and multi causal theories would allow to evaluate the exact or statistical relevance of a cause in a given output. However the main point is not even to stress the inadequacy of your multi-causal theory. Discussing about the degree of responsibility, especially wrt other actors, is important for a proportional response: for example in morally pressing Zelensky to accept Russian demands or to formulate Ukrainian demands in a way that is more acceptable by the Russians. So if you want to talk about Zelensky’s responsibilities for the fact that Russian soldiers under Putin’s orders keep killing Ukrainians and their children you have to argue for it and assess it wrt Putin’s responsibilities to make sense to me, because if the right of the Ukrainians to defend themselves as long as they want without being morally blamefull is morally defensible (as I argued) , then Zelensky as their leader is morally justified in continuing to fight and bears no blame for that, while Putin & Russian soldiers bear all the blame for continuing this war.


> So the elected leader of a country is assumed right about the values of that country until proven wrong? Do you apply that to your own country? Was President Trump, for example, right about the values of Americans simply by virtue of being their elected leader?

From what I argued so far it should be clear that if half or so of the American population voted for Trump, I have to take into account this and what they value in Trump, of course. The same goes with Zelensky. But as I said I would consider also the value proximity between Trumpism and what I value. And other things as well. No single dimension is a priori sufficient for a moral assessment.

> Really? So your personal satiation determines what's moral? That's certainly an odd notion of morality. What about the effect on others?

As I already clarified many times, moral assessments depend on a multi-dimensional evaluation of a situation. Material well-being is one dimension I would take into account, sure. The effect on others is another dimension. And again I’m not striving for perfection, only for lesser evil.
My claim was only to make you understand why I wouldn’t support Isis wrt America dominance.
If you want to object to me for good, tell me if you would morally support Isis over America and why.


> They don't 'strongly suggest' anything of the sort.

They do, if you contrast Zelensky’s government with a Putin puppet, blaming the first while assuming more acceptable the second. At best you can claim you didn’t intend to suggest it.

> It's absolutely absurd to suggest that every time I raise a criticism about a government decision, I'm calling for them to be deposed.

Where else did I do that? Can you fully quote me?


> No. The paragraph wasn't about Russian soldiers and Putin. It was about The governments of Ukraine, the US and Europe, plus their supporters.

> What about the values of those who can't vote - children, the future generations - do they get a say?

How about the continued exposure of millions of innocent children to Russian atrocities?


Poor people bring to life children that they are incapable of taking care of, don’t they have some responsibility for the death/sickness/starvation/misery of their children? Palestinians bring to life children that they are incapable of fully protecting against the oppression of Israelis, don’t they have some responsibility for the death/sickness/starvation/misery of their children exposed to the Israelis’ oppression? So shouldn’t they stop having children?
Ukrainians do not want to be eradicated from their lands nor they want their children to grow up under a Russian dictator capable of committing another Ukrainian genocide like the Holodomor, so they act accordingly. I don’t know if Ukrainians consider Zelensky responsible for having their children killed by the Russians or exposed to a war wanted by Putin, knowing that Zelensky did not submit to Russian demands so far. If they don’t why should I?
BTW, for the third time, wouldn’t this line of reasoning of yours simply support whatever the status quo is (ruling class oppressing working class is a de facto situation right?), since no power (especially authoritarian) can be radically challenged without risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material well-being and life?


> Negotiations failed, so either the demands were unacceptable and/or the assurances weren’t enough. Since I wasn’t there at the negotiation table, I can only guess from available evidences and plausible reasons that support either cases. I already provided some for both cases. So if assurances weren’t enough at the negotiation table (which I find plausible due to evidences and reasons), then the mistrust was too much. — neomac
That doesn't follow at all. Two parties could trust each other 100% and still not reach agreement on the deal because neither side thinks they have the concession they were looking for. It need have nothing to do with trust.

I see you continue to raise random accusations based on a surprisingly poor understanding of what I wrote. I took already into account the situation you are mentioning when I wrote “either the demands were unacceptable”. And if you were familiar with propositional logic, you would understand that my argument corresponds to the valid form:
p1. if p or q implies r
p2. p and q
c. r
So it totally follows.

> What I expect them to do is to offer concessions and make demands in the same way any party to a negotiation would.

What concessions and what demands do you expect them to do wrt Putin’s?


> If America's intention in supplying weapons is to make a profit, then one cannot say their help is moral, even if their action accidentally assists a moral cause.

This is why I wasn’t talking about intentions but about moral reasons. I don’t need to assume that the US leaders are acting out of moral intentions. All I claimed is that there are moral reasons to support Ukraine. I don’t think that in a negotiation between leaders of competing powers what counts is how adequate their intentions are wrt to their moral reasons for the simple reason that even if the intentions were genuine, it’s still possible that there is no workable agreement based on moral reasons and moral responsibility ascriptions, as this 180 page thread suggests. So what counts is reliability and fairness of the demands. Another reason why assessing morality of a choice or action on the basis of how morally genuine an intention is is not decisive, it’s because there are unintentional consequences (I will come back to this in a bit).
Besides don’t give for granted that I share your assumptions about how the weapon industry or political propaganda work.

> You agree then that I could very well be determinedly opposed to Putin's expansionism and yet advocate ending the war right now and agreeing to the terms on the table since it's perfectly possible to consider that course of action to be the one which will most effectively bring about an end to that expansionism?

No I disagree. Notice that having the intention to determinedly oppose Putin's expansionism doesn’t mean that your opposition is effective. You could be determinedly opposed to Putin's expansionism while doing something which - against your intentions - actually benefits Putin's expansionist ambitions. Indeed advocating for the acceptance of all Russian actual demands at the negotiation table doesn’t equate to actually opposing Putin’s expansionism, as much as advocating the acceptance of a working class exploitation out of fear of worse consequences in case of rebellion doesn’t equate to actually opposing a de facto working class exploitation. So concessions will not end Putin’s expansionist ambitions in any geopolitical meaningful way, they will just consolidate it.


> if Putin and Russian soldiers kill Ukrainians are immoral, if Ukrainians kill Russian invaders and murderers are moral. — neomac
Agreed. But we were talking about the US, so I don't see the relevance. Western capitalist systems kill and immiserate millions of innocent people. Russian wars kill and immiserate millions of people. Ending one by invoking the other neither helps nor has any moral force. You seemed to think it did, I'm enquiring about that.

It’s enough to re-read what I wrote because I’ve already addressed this many times already: geopolitical entities per se have no moral agency, they are theoretical abstractions useful to strategically study power dynamics. They are not good for moral responsibility ascriptions. This claim of yours “Western capitalist systems kill and immiserate millions of innocent people” may have some multi-causal plausibility (yet I can not assess it since you didn’t offer any such analysis and you didn’t consider also the millions of people that may prosper under the American system dominance wrt Russian dominance) even if it was correct, it would not suffice for responsibility ascription. For responsibility ascription, we need agency, decision makers. Russia is on war with Ukraine because Putin so decided. I’m not talking about Russian system nor Russian dominance for responsibility ascriptions, I’m talking about Putin deciding to start a war and bomb Ukrainian families and children, threatening a nuclear war, making claims about a new world order and blaming it all on the West. I’m fine if you want to talk about the moral responsibilities of Biden’s or Zelensky’s or EU’s administrations in relation to this war. If you want to talk about capitalism system and Yemen, you have to open another thread. And if you need it to prove your point, then your point is conceptually flawed as I already claimed and argued. The moral force of contrasting Russian’s war in Ukraine precisely depends on Putin’s morally illegitimate aggression of Ukraine. What is the most proper strategic response, for this I defer to people more expert than I am for the main input.


> If Putin's power consolidation was increased bu sanction and NATO involvement in the war, then ought we avoid those things?

If making concessions and avoiding sanctions will consolidate Putin’s power as well as not making concessions and adopting sanctions, I think it’s indifferent which option is chosen. Besides I would distinguish between power consolidation in Russia from power consolidation beyond Russia.
Don’t forget that according to the geopolitical experts Russia is a demographic and economic declining power, and if that is the case, wars around the world and economic sanctions could accelerate Russian decline. And the more Putin becomes aggressive the more reasons the West has to contain Russian expansionism.

> So as far as the moral case is concerned, you concede the point that continuing to fight is not morally advised simply on the grounds of 'opposing Putin's expansionism' since it is a moot point what course of action would best do that.

My point was simply that I’m well aware that there are risks when taking position on such matters. Yet I don’t think that we can take risk-free decisions on such matters, nor we can simply suspend our judgment or action just because we can’t make enough risk-free decisions, if pressed by the events.


> The word 'oppression' already covers that. What you're talking about is ‘suppression'.

Well if you take the meaning of a word based on a dictionary definition, then here is the one I used:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/oppression?q=oppression
cruel and unfair treatment of people, especially by not giving them the same freedom, rights, etc. is morally defensible when it’s for punishing immoral people.
Don’t waste our time on wording disputes.

> I assume Ukraine demand that the invasion stops.
This is one thing they demand, not the only one though. — neomac
No. I'm sure the current Russian demands don't constitute the full sum of all they'd want either. The point is, they started the war, so it's just self-evident, they'd have a different list of grievances

Same situation, you just changed words and I do not care about your wording preferences. If one wants to explain why a negotiation fails, then either demands/grievances/expectations/complaints/wishes/concessions/requests/desires/[fill up as you please] are not perceived as acceptable and/or they are not addressed with enough assurance. And an alternative to 2 parties' strategies in terms of demands/grievances/expectations/complaints/wishes/concessions/requests/desires/[fill up as you please], can not possibly coincide with one of 2 parties' strategy.
Don’t waste our time on wording disputes, especially if I abundantly clarified my point.


> You've no idea whose views and demands I considered, since consideration goes on in my head. I only told you the course of action I thought best.

With the word “considering” I’m not referring to a process in your head but to what proves that your third strategy is opposing both Western and Russian expansionism. As you seemed to understand:
"you just repeated Putin’s demands and related blackmails without considering Ukrainian demands at all. — neomac
I know, that's why I said them. Those are the demands on the table at the moment, so of course they're Putin's. The argument was that they don't push Russian expansionism futher. They are the de facto positions already."
Don’t waste our time on wording disputes, especially if I abundantly clarified my point.


> So If I think their standard of living will be considerably worse, then It's a reasonable position to take that involving the US is not worth the benefit.

You can take side in accordance to your beliefs. So do I. Now what?


> So why do you trust those who tell you that continuing to fight is better for the Ukrainian people? Why do you trust those who tell you that life under the terms of a US/European loan system will be better than one under Russian puppet government?

Never made such claims.


If the outcomes of strategic decisions are beyond your expertise, then why do you choose to trust the experts and leaders supporting your current position and not those supporting the alternatives?

I already answered: “So for what strategy is concerned I tend to defer more to the feedback of experts and leaders, and then double-check based on what I find logic or consistent with other sources and background knowledge”



> So you are saying that Palestinians should accept Israeli de facto settlements in the West Bank because they are “de facto”? The Talibans didn’t accept any “de facto” Afghan puppet government and took back their control over Afghanistan eventually. The expression "whatever it takes” simply refers to the fact that, in geopolitical strategy, demands and options are not assessed by one party the way their competitor frame them as I said repeatedly. — neomac
No. That's literally the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying the actual terms matter. It's not just a question of 'capitulate to any demands to avoid war', it's 'avoid the worst option’.

What matters to me is what Ukrainians and Western leaders consider the “worst option” in geopolitically significant terms, not what you consider the “worst option” based on a load of assumptions that I find questionable or unintelligible. For example, how does your line of reasoning about de facto situation would apply in the case of the Palestinians or the Talibans? should Palestinians accept Israeli de facto settlements in the West Bank because they are “de facto”? Were the Talibans wrong in refusing to submit to the de facto Puppet regime the Americans put in Afghanistan?