The “mysticism” of cultural moral norms that science debunks is the mystery of their origins and why they have the strange intuitive properties (that John Mackie described as queerness) of bindingness and violations deserving punishment.

By explaining the “queerness” of our intuitions about cultural moral norms as subcomponents of cooperation strategies, science debunks the mysticism that shields cultural moral norms from rational discussion. — Mark S

Science can only "dubunk" the mysticism of moral norms when it is opposed to mystical narratives concerning their origins and operation, such as those offered by some religious traditions. But we are not talking about that. There is no mysticism involved in accepting moral norms without or independently of an awareness of history and mechanism. (The "queerness" of which Mackie wrote is something else - it concerns moral "properties" when viewed alongside items in a naturalistic ontology of properties.)

And while conservative religious societies may indeed oppose the kind of scientific research into the anthropology of morality that you have been championing in this thread, somehow I don't think that is what you have in mind when you talk about debunking and shielding. What then? The questions that science opens to rational discussion concern the whats and the hows of morality: What norms are there? How did they arise? How do they operate in society and in individual? Etc. What it cannot do is advance the discussion of norms as such - that is, whether one ought to accept them - except indirectly and arationally, similarly to how learning and life experience can over time affect one's moral outlook.

Science reveals an objective basis for evaluating cultural moral norms as instrumental oughts. If you want the benefits of cooperation, you ought not follow cultural moral norms when they predictably will create rather than solve cooperation problems. That seems simple to me.

We can set aside the question of naturalizing morality via scientific insights into its origins, which I think has not progressed much in this discussion, and talk instead about putting those insights to practical use. But I don't know how much there is to be said here. Morality is a social institution, and just about anything having to do with sociality involves cooperation strategies - even conflict above individual level. "Solving cooperation problems" can describe everything that goes on in society, from family life to wars.

Thanks for Clarifying your thinking.

With this empirical knowledge:
• Any perceived imperative oughts are debunked. (Despite our intuitions, the Golden Rule, do not lie, steal, or kill, and other cultural moral norms do not have any innate, mystical, imperative oughtness. They are only heuristics for parts of cooperation strategies.) — Mark S

Yeah, that's a non-starter then. Is does not debunk ought. A naturalistic theory of morality does not have it as a consequence that moral imperatives are false, invalid or obsolete. Strictly speaking, there is no logical coupling between the two. Perhaps entertaining such theories can influence one's moral reasoning in some way, but not via inference.

Generally, a reductive explanation does not debunk its explanandum. But here we don't even have a reductive explanation. A moral imperative is not reducible to an explanation of its neurochemical mechanism or its social function. To see why, simply note that, as Hume argued, causal explanations neither contain nor imply any oughts, nor do they motivate action on their own, without being supplemented by some imperatives.

You still have the choice to abandon moral norms and leave only non-moral imperatives (instrumental oughts), but that choice cannot be justified by science. It's no less "mystical" than accepting moral norms in the first place.


I want to also push back against this charge of "mysticism":

Lacking the empirical knowledge that cultural moral norms are heuristics for parts of cooperation strategies:
• The mysticism of religious and cultural heritage and moral norms’ intuitive imperative oughtness can protect cultural moral norms from rational discussion. — Mark S

This implies that moral norms must derive their oughtness from something - if nothing else, then "mysticism." But I don't think that we necessarily derive our oughts. We may rationalize them, but that is optional and done after the fact.

There is no getting away from norms. We have rational, epistemic norms - those aren't derived either. Moral norms are just a different kind of norm, and they are not derivable from anything non-moral, though many things can influence them.

Key question for you: Why do you think this knowledge would not be useful as I have described? — Mark S

Well, to summarize my perhaps a bit convoluted response, I'll reiterate PhilosophyRunner's question:

How does the "is" help with disputes about "should" and "ought?" — PhilosophyRunner

You yourself seem rather conflicted on this point. In your OP and responses to others you both acknowledge it and contradict it. This is what I find most confusing. There are plenty of people among those who comment on morality who blithely ignore or deny the is-ought problem. But with you I can't even figure out where you stand.

Let me try to reconstruct your thinking and you tell me if I got something right:

1. Science can give us insights about generative principles behind moral norms.

2. Those generative principles constitute a purer form of morality than the specific norms that result from it.

3. Therefore, by gaining an understanding of those principles, we can apply a corrective to the actual moral norms that we hold, or fill the gaps left by existing norms.

(2) is the most problematic step here, in my opinion, although plenty can be said about (1) and even (3) to further complicate the issue.

And to use for example surface to air missiles in the surface-to-surface role is quite inefficient as the missiles don't have a similar high explosive charge as actual artillery missiles and rockets. — ssu

Yes, much of what Russia is now lobbing at ground targets was not primarily intended for that purpose. And the problem with that is not only the size or penetration, but targeting as well. For example, the Kh-22 missile was originally designed to target aircraft carriers, so it has plenty of charge - enough to destroy an apartment complex in Dnipro. But, like most anti-ship missiles, it has radar homing, which works well for large metal bodies in open sea, but not for concrete structures on land. So on land it can hit hundreds of meters wide off target.

Yet I think that creating simple "el cheapo" rockets/missiles to this role is quite possible even with the sanctions etc. Scuds were made in the 1950's and then there wasn't much computer chips around. Russia is likely transforming to a wartime economy and likely changes to the military industry can be done in a year or so. Hence likely a continuation of the missile barrage against Ukrainian cities will continue and I'm not so sure if the missiles will run out. — ssu

Iranian drones that Russia is launching against Ukrainian infrastructure were found to be assembled from many Western components that Iran wasn't supposed to have. But over the years Iran has learned how to get around sanctions, so that they can manufacture their weapons in quantity. If Iran can do it, so can Russia. Indeed, sanctioned components have also been found in recently manufactured Russian munitions and drones as well.

Still, we are likely going to see primitivization of their weapons production, just as we are already seeing primitivization of civilian production (car manufacture, etc.)

Hello Mark and welcome to the forum!

First, when you say "this empirical finding," I am assuming you are referring to this, plus your generalizations/summations, right?

See Oliver Curry’s “Morality as Cooperation” papers and Martin Nowak’s book SuperCooperators for an introduction to the field. — Mark S

This is all fine. Just to add, the study of the natural origins and mechanisms of morality goes at least as far back as Darwin, and has been particularly active in the past 100 years. There are multiple theories from anthropology, ecology, psychology, neuroscience, developmental biology, many of which are not mutually exclusive, but rather provide different and mutually supportive ways of looking at the same subject. Morality as cooperation strategy very much fits into that body of research.

However, I don't understand how you get to this conclusion:

This knowledge can help resolve disputes about cultural moral norms because it provides an objective basis — Mark S

This implies that you can discern the shape of some truer, superior morality by identifying global patterns in its natural origins. And once you have grasped this "super-morality," you can then use it to arbitrate moral puzzles and disagreements. But why? Why must there be some universal, immutable "super-morality" behind the dizzying variety of cultural norms? And why think that this is the way to find it? Just because you can identify patterns doesn't mean that you have found a general principle. Such an approach is redolent of natural science, but then you must believe that morality is a universal principle of nature, like, say, relativity or the least action principle?

I suspect that what is really going on is that you are taking modern science as the paragon of a methodology aimed at truth and then applying that methodology to ethics without first establishing whether ethics is a suitable domain of application.

Identifying general principles behind the historical development of moral norms is a worthy and fascinating scientific endeavor, but I don't think it can inform us about some "truer" morality that supersedes whatever moral norms we may currently hold.

Human Rights Watch: Russian Attacks on Energy Grid Threaten Civilians

Russian forces’ widespread and repeated targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure appears primarily designed to instill terror among the population in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. Numerous missile and drone attacks in October and November have deprived millions of civilians of at least temporary access to electricity, water, heat, and related vital services ahead of the cold winter months. — HRW

Russian politicians, lawmakers, and other commentators on Russian state media widely applauded the prospect of Ukrainian civilians being left without heat and water in winter. One member of parliament stated that ordinary people should “rot and freeze”, another said the strikes were necessary to destroy the Ukrainian state’s capacity to survive. — HRW

Amnesty International: Russian attacks on critical energy infrastructure amount to war crimes

Reacting to the news that Russian attacks on energy facilities in Ukraine over recent days have led to a nationwide blackout in the country, Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said:

“The strategy behind Russia’s latest warfare tactics is unmistakable. In bombing Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure, including energy facilities, the Russian army clearly intends to undermine industrial production, disrupt transportation, sow fear and despair and deprive civilians in Ukraine of heat, electricity and water as the cold grip of winter approaches.”

“Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure is unlawful. The morale of the civilian population is not a lawful target, and carrying out these attacks with the sole purpose of terrorizing civilians is a war crime. All those responsible for ordering and committing these criminal attacks must be held to account. With Russia ramping up its efforts to terrorize civilians in Ukraine, the international community must urgently respond and condemn these heinous attacks.” — Amnesty International

International Federation for Human Rights: Russia’s attacks against energy infrastructure violate international humanitarian law

In this position paper, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) analyses why the Russian attacks against Ukrainian energy infrastructure violate international humanitarian law and could be qualified as war crimes. — FIDH

Reuters: When are attacks on civilian infrastructure war crimes?

Russia's attacks on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, including energy facilities, have been described as possible war crimes by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty International. — Reuters

BBC: Is attacking Ukraine's power grid a war crime?

"Demoralising people, terrorising people, is not considered to be an acceptable military advantage," Dr Varaki explains. In fact, she says, the opposite is true: "Terrorising the civilian population is considered to be a war crime."

As well as Russia's insistence that it is targeting only military objects, the Kremlin has hinted that there is another reason for the strikes - persuading Kyiv to talk.

"The unwillingness of the Ukrainian side to settle the problem, to start negotiations, its refusal to seek common ground - this is their consequence," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. — BBC

How is this taken in the Kremlin? Should a change in their tactics be expected? — jorndoe

Not likely. Terror against civilians has been their favored tactics practically from the beginning of the invasion, or rather since the leadership realized within the first few weeks that the blitzkrieg failed and that Ukrainians were not welcoming their "liberators" with open arms. This is nothing new for Russia: they did the same in Chechnya and in Syria. The campaign to destroy life support systems for millions of people in the middle of winter is just the latest escalation of that tactics. It had long been called for by hardline supporters of the war inside Russia, and Putin seems keen to please them, although they are a small minority.

The only change that I am seeing is in the state propaganda rhetoric. In the past crimes against civilians were denied at all levels, however implausibly. Now, while the Russian MoD hypocritically claims that the strikes are aimed against "military control centers and energy infrastructure linked to them," state media and lower-level officials are openly acknowledging and even praising the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure. And they are not shy about articulating the reasons for attacks against civilians: it is to destroy their will to resist and turn them against their government. That the tactics didn't work before and isn't working now doesn't seem to give anyone a pause and doesn't prompt any change in thinking at the top.

As for the effectiveness of the air campaign, it may be less effective than hoped for, but as long as a percentage of missiles and drones gets through, it does its job. Note also that some munitions are better at getting through the air defense than others. For example, Ukraine has no defense against the Kh-22 missile that destroyed the apartment complex in Dnipro (and earlier destroyed a shopping center, also causing dozens of casualties). Patriot might have shot it down, but it is not deployed yet, and Ukraine will never have it in anything like sufficient quantities to protect its major population centers. In any case, all Russia needs to do is launch more than the defense can shoot down. The only potential issue for Russia is the depletion of its stocks of long-range munitions at a much faster rate than the industry can produce. But they are already supplementing their dwindling stocks with hundreds of cheap Iranian strike drones, and according to Western intelligence, they are also negotiating to buy Iranian ballistic missiles.

Think of tpf as a magazine or philosophical daily paper — unenlightened

That's not an apt analogy. A magazine or a paper is not a place for discussion. Yes, sometimes a response to a published piece may be published, but for the most part it is a one-way broadcast to a silent and anonymous readership. An internet forum is a community and a discussion club. Quite a different dynamics and atmosphere.

This comment is not intended to argue for or against bannings. People get ostracized by their communities and banned from clubs just the same as here.

Our primary source of confidence in our senses and our reason is that we don't have a choice. You either take them as given or you are lost.

So I will continue to take my faculties for granted, except when they prove to have been at fault, which, alas, is often enough. — unenlightened

Yes.

Doesn't follow. Nothing follows if you can't take the reliability of your cognitive faculties for granted. The argument is so corrosive that it undermines everything, including itself.

No, I think Nagel is right in this instance. You cannot pull yourself out of the abyss of skepticism by your bootstraps using reasoning and empirical evidence if the very reliability of reasoning and observation are in question. It is good that evolutionary science can give a plausible account for the reliability of our cognitive faculties, but that cannot be your source of confidence in them. You have to "help yourself to a little something" (Plantinga's expression) to even start.

But so does everyone, no matter their beliefs. Theists aren't better grounded just because they help themselves to imaginative origin stories and rationalizations of why the good Lord would not allow a malicious demon to systematically deceive them.

I think it is in the interests of NATO states to oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One could oppose the invasion on moral grounds, but that might be more hypocritical than self-interest. Europe didn't care that much about the USSR invading Afghanistan--who, outside a small circle of friends, did care? But Ukraine is WAY TOO CLOSE for comfort, being right up against NATO's and the EU borders. — BC

Caring about something is not hypocritical unless it is not genuine. And don't see any reason to believe that most Europeans who object to the Russian invasion on moral grounds are insincere. That they allegedly didn't care that much about the Afghan invasion may be unfortunate, perhaps even hypocritical (if they used hypocritical rationalizations for their indifference), but that doesn't make their present reaction hypocritical.

Do you care about anyone in your life? Do you ever help anyone? Or do you worry that not caring about every person in the world to the same extent and not helping everyone who needs help in equal measure would make you a hypocrite?

No, I was thinking of "nothing about me without me", where folk mention a member without linking their name. Once or twice might be forgetfulness, but here are a few repeat offenders. — Banno

I don't see a need to be notified whenever someone mentions me. This doesn't happen offline (and that's probably for the best), so why should this be a rule online? If I get a mention, I take it that they want me to attend to it. If that wasn't their intent, then why bother me?

Scale of alleged torture, detentions by Russian forces in Kherson emerges

This is in regards to why those selfish Ukrainians are giving their lives to defend their country, instead of "accepting the realities" and letting Russia steamroll over the rest of the country, as it originally intended (and apparently still does).

The numbers that are emerging on the scale of alleged detentions and torture, “point to widespread and grave criminality in Russian-occupied territory,” said British lawyer Nigel Povoas, lead prosecutor with a Western-backed team of legal specialists assisting Kyiv’s efforts to prosecute war crimes.

Povoas said there appears to have been a pattern to inflict terror and suffering across Ukraine, which reinforces “the impression of a wider, criminal policy, emanating from the leadership” to target the country’s civilian population. — Reuters

3. You can choose which subjects appear in your All Discussions feed. Go to the Categories page and uncheck the categories you don't want to see. — Jamal

Does this work for anyone? I don't see any way to check or uncheck a category on the Categories page.

Instead, if you open a particular category page, at the bottom of the discussion list there is a faint eye icon. Clicking it will toggle the visibility of the category on the All Discussions feed.

The states and organisations only act when they see it is worthy for their own interests and I don't understand why the Western world is caring that much about Ukraine. I feel I am not seeing something. — javi2541997

You mean to say that your horse is higher because you don't care about anything (besides your income, natch)?

Well, if you believe that "states and organisations only act when they see it is worthy for their own interests" then it should be obvious why the Western world is caring about the biggest war in Europe since WWII. But another reason is that not everyone in the Western world is a selfish rat, and governments and organisations in democratic nations care about public opinion.

The difference between National Socialists and plain socialists appears to be pretty tenuous.

The problem here isn't just that you are ignorant of the facts (you are). The problem is that you think that it's OK for one country to invade and subjugate another if from 2000 km they all look pretty much the same to you, and besides, gas prices are more important, so why are they being so selfish about resisting brutal occupation? In other words, this is an issue of values, not an issue of facts. If you don't get it, you don't get it, and there's nothing for us to talk about.

No one would say that you are "seeing brain states" when you look at something. — SophistiCat

Then I am gratified you are here to disabuse me. I won't ask for a thesis, just the essential idea you have in mind. — Constance

We started this discussion with the thesis "The brain is the generative source of experience," which was presented as an essential physicalist commitment. I won't dispute that, though I personally think that physicalism is not so much about specific scientific commitments. With that in mind, a physicalist should be committed to the idea that what we call "seeing" is generated (in some sense) by the activity of the brain.

In what sense is seeing "generated" by the brain? I would say that the weakest physicalist commitment would be the supervenience relationship between seeing and brain activity (that is to say, no difference in what we see without a corresponding difference in brain activity). Some would go further than that, asserting a stronger reductive relationship between the folk-psychological concept of "seeing" and its physical realization.

The subject is different. While Poland is country with his own history, language, culture and system, Ukraine is basically a little Russia — javi2541997

Ookey... So Ukraine does not have its own history, language and culture and does not have a right to exist as a sovereign nation (no matter what its people think). In that case they totally deserve to be invaded and subjugated. Got it :roll:

we do not see any move by Ukraine to end this war... he is acting selfish and is choking the world economy just for his nationalist business. He is acting like the rest of the world is not in trouble... — javi2541997

Very selfish indeed. Why can't they just quit their resistance to the invasion and let Russia rampage over the rest of the country? No one would care (except for Ukrainians, but they aren't even a people, so they don't count).

Also Poland was as much responsible for WWII as Hitler and Stalin.

but logic* as a field does not present an argument or a justification of itself. — SophistiCat

This would be true if logic were, magically, its own interpretative base — Constance

That's the opposite of what I said.

I first put this out there to show how physicalism as a naive thesis, lacks epistemic essence. — Constance

What do you think the thesis of physicalism is? I don't think there is a single generally recognized physicalist doctrine. It is more of a family resemblance among philosophical treatments of certain subjects.

I see my cat and I am thereby forced to admit I am reductively seeing brain states only. — Constance

That's hardly even a caricature of physicalism. No one would say that you are "seeing brain states" when you look at something.

Phenomenology remedies this matter, I argue. — Constance

Well, I was hoping to find out more about "this matter" (not so much about phenomenology), but I am making no progress in teasing it out.

But you are talking about the very possibility of discoursing (logically) about logic, and I don't see a problem with that. — SophistiCat

And there is none. What you talk about is the very reason why we have the discipline called logic. the point I am making is that this field is question begging in the same way physics is question begging when it talks about, say, force. They talk about and use this term freely and make perfect sense, usually, but ask what a force is, and you will get blank stares; well, at first you will get explanatory attempts that contextualize the meaning, by when you get to "where the ideas run out" as Putnam put it, it has to be acknowledged that physics hasn't a clue as to the "true nature" of force. Go to something like Plato's Timaeus and you find some intriguing inroads, but mostly pretty useless. — Constance

An argument or a justification can beg the question, but logic* as a field does not present an argument or a justification of itself. I already acknowledged that logic cannot be grounded in more logic, but that is in no way controversial, nor does it present a challenge for its study.

* Or rather, rationality, which includes informal logic, as well as other standards of reasoning and decision-making.

(I don't want to derail this conversation further, but if you are interested, Feynman (who rather disparaged philosophy as a discipline) has a good philosophical discussion of the nature of force and its treatment in physics in his Lectures: Characteristics of Force. (I dare say, this is more useful than Timaeus.) He sort of agrees with you.)

Anyway, I still don't see how this addresses the thesis that started this conversation:

If the brain were the generative source of experience, every occasion of witnessing a brain would be itself brain generated. This is the paradox of physicalism. — Constance

What paradox?

I thought the analogy of logic clear. — Constance

I would rather address the original question directly.

No, I don't find the analogy with logic any more clear. Anything can be the subject of a discourse, including logic. At the same time, as you note, logic structures discourse. But I don't see a vicious circularity here, if that is what you are leading to. You cannot ground or justify logic with more logic - that much is clear. But you are talking about the very possibility of discoursing (logically) about logic, and I don't see a problem with that.

I don't see how, at the level of basic questions, anything can be posited that is not phenomena. — Constance

Well, then you do deny the premise, and that's that. You cannot make an argument against a contrary position without first taking it on its own terms. If you deny the position outright, or, as you admit, don't even understand it, then there is no argument to be made.

That encountering is phenomenological. What isn't? — Constance

Indeed, especially if you understand "phenomena" and "encountering" as one and the same, or one being a species of the other. But I don't see where that gets us.

If you accept the brain as the generative source of consciousness and its phenomena, you are also a brain doing the accepting, so the question goes to where the authority of the accepting lies, for one simply can't get beyond the brain-itself-as-phenomenon, for to affirm a brain as not a phenomenon, one would have to stand apart from a phenomena. — Constance

I am not following your argument. I am stuck at "one simply can't get beyond the brain-itself-as-phenomenon, for to affirm a brain as not a phenomenon, one would have to stand apart from a phenomena." Can you expand on this?

Is it that you are committed to the idea that "everything is a phenomenon," and therefore there is no such "thing" as a brain? If so, then you are merely denying the premise. The only contradiction here is between the premise "the brain is the generative source of consciousness" and your commitment to phenomenology.

Or: How can consciousness position itself to "see" consciousness in order to discuss what it is?

I don't see a problem here. Is it self-reference that is giving you difficulty? Self-reference is not necessarily paradoxical.

Indeed, and this is an extraordinary point: If the brain were the generative source of experience, every occasion of witnessing a brain would be itself brain generated. This is the paradox of physicalism. — Constance

I don't see any paradox here. Can you explain?

LESS TALKING MORE SHOUTING1!1

I DISAGREE!!1

Nice. I am listening the whole set.



A while ago I was binging on Purcell and Handel, especially their lesser known keyboard works. These guys rock!

Purcell


Handel

What trips people up is conflating an understanding of consciousness with understanding the NCCs (neural correlates of consciousness). — hypericin

I would include here all scientific and scientifically informed studies of consciousness, including psychology and some philosophy of mind.

You can imagine in the future that we might have a complete accounting of the NCCs, a complete description of all the relevant brain structures and how they interact with one another. But nonetheless, we still can't conceptually make the leap from this description to the first person features of consciousness: qualia, what-is-it-like, etc. — hypericin

Well, this gets me back to what I said about explanations. We have a good idea of what a scientific explanation is (neuroscience, psychology, etc.) But you say: No, that's not it, that's just such-and-such "correlates" of consciousness. OK, but do you have an idea of what it is that you are looking for in an explanation of "the first person features of consciousness"? How would it differ from the other kind? How would you recognize a successful explanation?

And I don't mean to say that scientific explanations are the only explanations that deserve the name. But to even have a discussion about this, we should understand what it is that we are looking for. And that seems to be the one thing that is conspicuously missing in most such discussions.

You have to explain how it is — hypericin

I am suspect that, like @Art48 and some others in this discussion, you are not clear on what the Hard Problem of Consciousness is supposed to be. It is not about describing in detail how consciousness works - that is supposed to be the Easy problem (hah!) The Hard problem is explaining "qualia" - first-person experience, what-it-is-likeness - in an objective, third-person scientific framework. So the framing already assumes a certain kind of dualism in the world: objective vs subjective, first-person vs third-person.

To compound the problem, those engaged in this discussion often aren't clear on just what they are looking for in an explanation. The complaint from the consciousness-can't-be-explained camp often comes down to nothing more specific than "consciousness can't be explained to my satisfaction." But what would satisfy them?

Yeah, fascists and tankies often make cozy bedfellows, even as they try to make bogeymen out of each other. In the post-Soviet Russia the relationships between various flavors of communist/socialist and far-right nationalist/neo-fascist groups have been so incestuous that they are sometimes collectively referred to as the Red-Browns (after brownshirts). Unsurprisingly, in Europe and America both the far-right and the far-left are Putin's closest allies.

Which makes all this "denazification" rhetoric all the more insane on its face. Timothy Snyder characterizes Putin's regime as schizo-fascism.

Another beautiful violin concerto. Not yet "typical" Britten, and not often performed, owing to its great difficulty. (Jascha Heifetz declined to premier it, because he wasn't sure it was even playable.) It doesn't sound like a virtuoso stunt in the hands of Janine Jansen though.

So this is not about fields at all. The actual question being asked could be stated as follows:

Can a researcher postulate an unknown force of nature (to use a somewhat dated expression) in order to explain anomalous results of an experiment?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Not so fast.

Anomalous results are ubiquitous in science. Any student who has performed lab experiments has obtained anomalous results on occasion, be it a couple of outliers or an entire data set. The same goes for most professional experimentalists. Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of these occasions do not betoken a scientific discovery, let alone some fantastic new force of nature. That alone should tell you that jumping to conclusions is unwarranted.

There are many potential reasons for anomalous results: equipment malfunction, external interference, faulty experimental design, faulty analysis, even scientific malpractice. Any honest researcher will try to rule these out first. That means critically analyzing your experiment for potential faults, and if none stand out, conducting additional experiments with tighter controls and more data points. Most of the time, this results in either eliminating the anomaly or explaining it in terms of known science.

Only once these most likely causes for the anomaly are ruled out does the search for a new explanation begin. But what could such an explanation look like? There are as many answers as there have been scientific discoveries, but one thing is common to all of them: merely positing "subtle forces that hadn’t yet been discovered" won't cut it, even if you make up a sciency-sounding name for these subtle forces, such as "morphic fields." The reason is that such "explanations" explain precisely nothing. Stripping off superfluous and unwarranted verbiage, all they say is that "there is something that accounts for these results being just so." Well, duh.

"Person" does not have the sort of sharp and unambiguous meaning as, say, the Sun (something that we all understand the same way, at least ostensibly). Not only is it hard to nail down a universal definition, but there are genuinely ambiguous cases, as when someone is said to have become a different person. Can one change so much as to become a different person?

In my opinion, "a person" is not a matter of fact but a manner of speaking.

This seems to be entirely a function of pragmatic convention. — noAxioms

So it's obviously a bad idea to draw conclusions from language conventions. — noAxioms

But language conventions are pragmatic conventions.

Kyiv International Institute of Sociology released the results of the latest telephone poll, which it has been conducting periodically since May: Dynamics of readiness for territorial concessions for the earliest possible end of the war: results of a telephone survey conducted on December 4-27, 2022

I challenge anyone to listen to this song all the way through without e.g. tapping your foot, bobbing your head, etc to the rhythm. Its just infectious. — busycuttingcrap

What did I win? (Just kidding! I like it.)

For me, the most cogent challenges to his view come from writers Jan Smoleńsk and Jan Dutkiewicz. — Paine

Thanks for the article. It nicely exposes the willful ignorance and parochialism of westplaining Ukraine. One phrase strikes a false note though:

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine several times attempted to assert and defend its westward course, including in 2004 and in 2014, both times to great resistance on the part of the Kremlin. There is no point in denying that the West actively intervened in this. But so did Russia. — Jan Smoleńsk and Jan Dutkiewicz

This suggests some sort of parity between Western and Russian intervention in Ukraine over the last 20 years. But that's blatantly false. I am not even sure what they meant by Western intervention, other than the West just being there as a major presence on the world stage going about its business. That can't be ignored, of course, but that in itself doesn't usually merit the characterization of "intervening." As far as anyone knows, Western dealings with Ukraine were open and consensual. It's not like they strong-armed and corrupted Ukrainian officials, penetrated the military and security apparatus, attempted assassinations, played power games with gas supply, issued threats and ultimatums, and finally intervened militarily - Russia provably did all of those things.

On the matter of agency:

Given that the only combatants on the ground are Russian invaders and Ukrainian defenders, the implication that this is a battle between the U.S. and Russia over influence is ridiculous. — Jan Smoleńsk and Jan Dutkiewicz

It is pretty insane to think that Ukrainians defending their country against Russian invasion are merely doing someone else's bidding. Now, if we look at Russian fighters, there is some truth to that characterization. By all accounts, when Russian soldiers were ordered into Ukraine on February 24, it came as a shock to them, as it did for the rest of the country. They had a very vague idea of what they were fighting for, and still do. And that is reflected in the poor troop morale on the Russian side, which just about everyone acknowledges. The difference with Ukrainian defenders is stark.

Besides, Ukraine is a very different country than Russia. Whereas Russia has been living under a progressively more repressive autocratic rule for the last 20 years, Ukraine has had two democratic revolutions over the same period. Even during the most oppressive years of Yanukovich's rule, they still had opposition representation in politics, and a lively and diverse media landscape. And since Yanukovich's fall they have elected and then voted out one president and voted in another. Who wasn't doing so great before the Russian invasion, by the way: Zelensky's ratings were pretty low going into 2022. So to assert that Ukrainians are fighting for Zelensky is just as insane as to assert that they are fighting for NATO.

Michael McFaul, former ambassador to Russia, now Professor at Stanford, recently gave a lecture: "Explaining the Causes and Consequences of Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine"



His main thesis: "It's democratic expansion, not NATO expansion that has created this tension between Putin and the west and Putin and Ukraine."

Not much new for most of us here, but one of the arguments that he gives in support of this thesis is that relationships between Putin's regime and the West weren't always that hostile. What's more, NATO expansion wasn't much on the agenda until very recently - when there actually was no cause to raise this as a concern, since Ukraine wasn't going to be admitted to NATO any time soon, if ever. He recalls that in all the high-level talks where he was present (he was ambassador during Obama's administration) the expansion of NATO was hardly ever brought up.

I think we are on the same page. It's just that for me energy transfer means that, well, energy is transferred between parts of the system or between the system and the universe, as you say. And that doesn't need to happen during mixing. The Gibbs equation illustrates that: as you said, there is no change in (total) enthalpy with mixing, and enthalpy change stands for heat exchange with environment, assuming total volume and pressure are constant.