Ssu’s implicit claim came after you solicited him and he clarified on what grounds he made his claims. At the first round, your response seemed to me something like: Putin did not commit imperialist acts, therefore Putin didn’t have imperialist motivations. Were this the case, then you too in the end were making an implicit knowledge claim on Putin’s motivations, just you took Putin’s acts as more relevant evidence than Putin’s words to assess imperialist motivations.
But then at a second round you wrote “I'm not addressing the motivations here; I'm addressing the act. Those are not the same things”, so you are addressing just “the act”. And you wrote “when Russia extends greatly beyond the Donbass and begins regularly taking resources from that area and its citizens, then I will consider it imperialism”, so what I understood so far is that you can assess Russian imperialism based on such acts, independently from whatever Putin’s declared motivations were. I take such acts to be broadly “non-speech acts” because such acts are not talking and writing. So yes you were grounding your claims on non-speech acts actually or hypothetically committed by Russia, while ssu was arguing based on what was written and said by Putin, so broadly Putin’s speech-acts, to legitimise what Putin did (invading and annexing Ukrainian territories). — neomac
This is all supposition, and you admit it is. You cannot make a logical claim based on "it seems" and "what I understood" and assert it as fact. That is not just analytically incorrect, it is syllogistcally so. You must provide factual premises to synthesize a factual claim..and you don't do that here. Also, you clearly don't know what "speech act" means. — Jack Rogozhin
The fact I’m stating is nothing other than my understanding of your views. As I repeated many times, I’m not sure to understand your claims, so I’m expressing how I understood what you said so far, and “it seems” and “I understood” are intentional warnings to signal that. You too keep misunderstanding what I (and others) say and render your own misrepresentations as a factual claim as you just did by attributing to me inference I didn’t make. Instead of repeating that I’m misrepresenting you, even though I’m literally quoting your claims, can you try to clarify better what you meant in those quotes?
Since you know, what does “speech act” mean in your own words? I’m eager to share your superior knowledge.
The point here is that your claims are implicit knowledge claims grounded on certain evidences relevant for your understanding of “imperialism” as much as ssu’s implicit knowledge claims are grounded on other evidences relevant for his understanding of “imperialism”. And as long as one just expresses one’s beliefs to illustrate one’s own implicit assumptions to an interlocutor who doesn’t necessarily share them there is nothing really challenging about it, one is simply talking past each other. — neomac
The one who needs to heed this admonishment is you, as you have been doing what you admonish against here this whole discussion, and you do it in the sentence right above. You make another false claim against me without supporting it in any way, which is not philosophical at all. Remember, what is asserted without proof or evidentiary support can be refuted without such — Jack Rogozhin
I still have no idea what you are talking about though. You keep accusing me of misrepresenting you, but adding no clarifications about the claims I allegedly misrepresented in order to rectify my misrepresentations, and keep avoiding to answer my questions directly. So I’ll cut with this pointless exchange over my alleged misrepresentations by asking you more directly: do you distinguish imperialist acts and imperialist motivations as you distinguish acts and motivations? Yes or no? If so, would this distinction imply that non-imperialist acts can have imperialist motivations and that imperialist acts can have no imperialist motivations?
The point is that if I misrepresented them, maybe it’s because I didn’t understand them and need to question your claims to understand them better, after all you do not seem to understand my claims either. — neomac
This is not an excuse for misrepresentation. You should only claim, particularly in a philosophical discussion, your interlocutor is doing or saying something if you actually think they are. If you are not, you should either say "I think you are doing/saying this" or "i think you are doing saying this, could you clarify if you are or are not.” Otherwise you are being unfair to your interlocutor and degrading the discussion — Jack Rogozhin
Well I don’t really see why reiterated expressions of “it seems”, “I understood” and “am I misinterpreting you?” can not do the same job as “I think you are doing/saying this”, but if that will make things more clear to you then I’ll give it a try. Glad that you got rid of your glib “you don't get to tell me how I make my arguments, just as I don't get to tell you how you make yours”.
All right, can you give me your definition of “selfishness” as a general characteristic that is not about motivations and psychologies? Because after a quick check on wikipedia — neomac
Yes: the quality or condition of being selfish...from Merrian-Webster. As I said, it's a characteristic
— Jack Rogozhin
Sure a psychological characteristic concerning people’s motivations. — neomac
Your inference here makes no sense syllogistically or syntactically; motivations is neither mentioned nor implied. Again, you are imposing your erroneous belief and acting like it is a correct inference. — Jack Rogozhin
But I wasn’t making an inference of the kind you suggest. I was simply making explicit what I thought and still think you are leaving implicit, based on ordinary semantics. Indeed, strictly speaking, the Merrian-Webster definition doesn’t mention nor implies that “selfishness” is a characteristic for that matter, the words used are “quality” and “condition”, not “characteristic”. But if you implicitly assume that English speaking people have enough semantic competence to understand that “quality” and “condition” equate to “characteristic” in that context, then I too can implicitly assume that English speaking people can have enough semantic competence to understand if “selfishness” is a psychological characteristic or non-psychological characteristic, if it’s about people’s motivations or it’s not about people’s motivations. Besides relying on the Merrian-Webster definition simply shifts the burden of the semantic clarification from “selfishness” to “being selfish”. So I’ll cut with this pointless exchange over my alleged misrepresentation by asking you more directly: is “selfishness” a psychological characteristic about people’s motivations to you? Yes or no? If yes then, “selfishness”, as a general characteristic of politicians, is still a claim about their psychology and motivations, as I said. If no, enlighten me what kind of characteristic is that?
Notice also that here you are not using “I think you are doing/saying this” (i.e. “I think your inference makes no sense…”) but actually presenting as a fact you misrepresentation of my claim as a “syllogistically or syntactically” inference.
First, yes it is controversial for one reason or the other, again you just recently joined the thread, and I’m not here to keep you up-to-date on what has been discussed in this thread. Just as an example, what you call “the Maidan coup” has sparked some controversy in this thread at least 7 months ago (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/776025), use the search function. Also the alleged Ukrainian war crimes sparked some controversies in this thread. — neomac
It is controversial for those who deny the facts, such as the US sending CIA agents to Ukraine right before the coup, and Gloria Nuland and our ambassador to Ukraine discussing who should replace the deposed democratically-elected leader...as if they have substantial say. The fact Nuland recently visited Niger to sway events there shows she hasn't changed her spots — Jack Rogozhin
Well, then it’s controversial because it wouldn’t make much sense to me to claim that there is a controversy about facts for those who agree on the facts. I think what you are trying to say is that there is an overwhelming large consensus over certain facts (like CIA agents and Gloria Nuland). The problem however is not necessarily on denying such facts but on questioning if such facts are enough to support the claim that the Revolution of Dignity was a coup as Russia and pro-Russian propaganda claims (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity). But again, I’m not interested in restarting the debate about these facts as such. And as long as you keep accusing me to misrepresent you at every exchange for whatever reason (including irrelevant editing incidents), instead of clarifying better your views, I don’t feel encouraged to widen the debate over other subjects. My focus is on your claims about “imperialism” and ”legitimate threat”.
Second, I didn’t claim that “the notion citizens have to abide by their country's rules no matter what”. My claim wasn’t about moral assessments of laws and related citizens’ attitude, it was about what Russia can claim as a legitimate threat against Russia — neomac
Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules — neomac
You did claim this and you did not just say that about Russia...you said what you said above, proving me right. — Jack Rogozhin
I claimed “Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules”, but that’s it. “No matter what” is your spurious addition. And, I didn’t mean to make a moral claim either. To me “must” can legitimately express a rule-based injunction that can apply to maths, logic, juridical laws, morality, games, etc. (e.g. if you want to play chess, you must abide by chess rules), so with that statement I meant to make a legal and political claim: sovereign states (like Ukraine, Russia, the US, Switzerland, etc.) impose their rules over their citizens within their territories by using their coercive power, so citizens must abide by them if they do not want to pay the consequences. This holds for democratic and non-democratic regimes, moral and nor moral laws. And since we were talking about legitimate threats AGAINST Russia, my point was: can imposing rules to its own citizens by a sovereign state (Ukraine) be a legitimate threat against other sovereign states (Russia)?
BTW even here nowhere you are saying “I think you are doing/saying this”, but you keep asserting your misrepresentations of my views as a fact, proofs. And yet you admonish me to do otherwise with your views. I almost feel like complaining about this treatment. But my spider-senses tell me that you have a very good excuse or justification that makes you happy, right?
Even if Ukraine is repressing or oppressing a minority of its own citizens, that doesn’t seem to be a threat against Russia (so much so that Russia needed to distribute Russian passports into annexed territories to have a convenient pretext that Ukraine is threatening Russian citizens) — neomac
Actually it is a threat against Russia and their people as it is fomenting violence and murder right at their border, which can spill into their own territory. And it is being done against their own ethnic people who were citizens of their country only thirty years ago. If Mexico had annexed San Diego 30 years ago and started slaughtering the Americans within their new borders, the US certainly--and rightly--would militarily step in
And you must certainly disapprove of all of the US's military border crossings/bombings since WWII. I agree with you there. — Jack Rogozhin
First, if Russia didn’t spill violence and murder into Ukraine by supporting militarily the separatists FIRST, and so be a legitimate threat AGAINST Ukraine, its people and its territory (according to your own notion of “legitimate threat”), things wouldn’t as likely have reached such a scale to be a legitimate threat AGAINST Russia and its borders, assumed that’s the case. Indeed, what does it mean “it can spill into their own territory”? How could such violence and murder spill into the Russian territory and become a threat against Russian people and territory exactly? Let’s not forget that Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, that Ukrainian military couldn’t match in the past and still can hardly match the Russian war machine with the current Western support, and a quite effective repressive machine within its own territory against unwanted political movements or social unrest?
Second, I find the claim “And it is being done against their own ethnic people who were citizens of their country only thirty years ago.” quite problematic for several reasons:
1. thirty years ago they were citizens of the Soviet Union not of Russia,
2. if ethnic Russians are Ukrainian citizens they must abide by the Ukrainian rules in Ukraine as much as ethnic Ukrainians who are Russian citizens must abide by the Russian rules in Russia,
3. if ethnic Russians feel persecuted they can still flee Ukraine as much the Jews fled from Nazi Germany, being so close to the Russian border it shouldn’t have been that difficult, and since Russia was so keen on saving the ethnic Russians in Ukraine with all the land they have, they could have helped them with the same efficiency the Soviet Union deported Crimean Tatars from Crimea to relocate inside Russia as they have relocated Ukrainian children.
4. if protecting ethnicity was a reason for invading and annexing, how about all Ukrainian citizens of those annexed areas which weren’t ethnic Russians or just pro-Russia?
5. Russia itself is a multi-ethnic country and repressed the separatist movements in Chechnya supported by many ethnic Chechens, why can’t Ukraine do the same within its territory and its ethnic minorities?
6. There are Russian minorities also in other Russian neighboring countries, like in some Baltic States, if such minorities complain about prosecution and want to separate from the State that is hosting them, Russia should see it as a legitimate threat against Russia, and so again invade and annex those territories too, but if that’s the reasoning all neighboring countries with Russian minorities should see Russia as a legitimate threat against their security with all non-assimilated Russian minorities, right?
Certainly, I do understand that Russia is concerned about ethnic Russians around the world and can exercise diplomatic and coercive pressure to protect them, if they are threatened. But can this predicament be qualified as a legitimate threat AGAINST Russia? Or AGAINST Russia more than or with greater priority than a legitimate threat AGAINST Ukraine? And consequently justify invasion + annexation by Russia of Ukrainian territories?
Concerning your last remark, I “must certainly disapprove of all of the US's military border crossings/bombings since WWII”, if I shared enough of your assumptions. That's not my impression.
If China tortures, imprisons, and persecutes Chinese muslim Uyghurs that doesn’t count as a legitimate threat against muslim states either. Right? BTW Russia too oppresses minorities up until now (like the Crimean Tatars which were occupying Crimea way before the Russians) that doesn’t make it a legitimate threat against other states (other than Ukraine of course, since Crimean Tatars are Ukrainian citizens too within Ukrainian territories), or does it? — neomac
This is a terrible analogy. Firstly, this action against the Uygures is still in dispute; the UN admits they have no evidence of such a persecution. Secondly, the Uyghurs are not ethnically Russian and the posited persecution is neither at the Russian border or involving shellings at that border — Jack Rogozhin
Firstly, “disputed” as the claim that the Revolution of Dignity was a coup. Or that the Ukrainians committed a genocide in Donbas. Can you post a link with the UN admitting “they have no evidence of such a persecution”? Anyway the UN is not the only relevant source about the Uyghurs’ case. BTW the UN also condemned Russian aggression of Ukraine (
https://press.un.org/en/2022/ga12407.doc.htm), this is not controversial either, or is it?
Secondly, I’m still trying to understand your notion of “legitimate threat“ (“a legitimate threat to the security of a nation and its borders, and the safety of its people, is a legimtiate threat”, and I’ll ignore that it would be a very bad definition, being evidently tautological), I think you are conceiving it as a geopolitical general principle not as a principle that just happens to be so narrow that it can practically apply only to the Russian state, people and borders. Indeed, there have been and are lots of proxy conflicts and inter-states and intra-states threats in the world (think of the conflicts in the Middle East between major powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, or the case of Islamic terrorism) which are grounded more and religion then ethnicity. So the analogy with Uyghurs case was a way to test how your notion of “legitimate threat“ works in other scenarios.
Anyways, since you now insist on ethnicity and borders, I'll reformulate the hypothetical case of the Uyghurs: the Uyghurs are Muslim, ethnically Turkic, living in the Xinjiang and confining with another Muslim and ethnically Turkic state, namely Kazakhstan, so if China is oppressing Uyghurs, would this be a legitimate threat against Kazakhstan (let’s forget that the Kazakh government wants to preserve good relations with China, it’s just a hypothesis), to the point that they would be justified to invade and annex Xinjiang, if they only could?
And if you still don’t like the Uyghurs analogy, how about the inter-ethnic conflicts on the border between Azerbaijan and Iran, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, Armenia and Azerbaijan? Which state’s acts are “a legitimate threat” against which state? Which state would your notion of “legitimate threat” justify territorial invasion and annexation from which state? In other words, let’s see if you can find a real case good enough analogy to illustrate how your notion of “legitimate threat” applies on other non-Russian related scenarios. Because if you can’t , well that’s a problem to me.
Besides, your second comment makes me wonder how narrow is your notion of “legitimate threat”: e.g. by “nation” and “its people” you mean “citizens” or “dominant ethnic group”? A threat against the safety of the people of a given state can be qualified as a “legitimate threat“ against the State no matter if such people are living within their State or somewhere else? For example, Ukrainians ethnically Jewish are suffering as well the horrible consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fighting for that too (https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-jews-recount-stories-of-survival-endurance-escape-after-1-year-of-war/, https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/in-ukraine-jews-embrace-their-double-identity,
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/01/1126217137/jewish-ukrainian-father-son-soldiers-russia-war), Zelensky himself is a Ukrainian Jewish president, so is Russia a legitimate threat against Israel given that Russia is murdering and willing to murder ethnic Jews in Ukraine?