• Argument against Post-Modernism in Gender History
    @ButyDude Your OP introduces a lot of 'culture war' topics, which naturally excite some of the less moderate responses. To mitigate this, it can be helpful to pick one aspect and focus narrowly on it and ask a specific question ending in a question mark. Your OP does not clearly tell the readers what kind of response you are looking for, and a more hierarchical top-down approach might help you here, as @unenlightened says, we like to be told what to do. You present a very cursory characterisation of feminism and offer your rebuttal of your own characterisation (inviting accusations of 'straw man'). We are invited to insult you by confirming your own (correct) suspicion that you are waffling. Consider:

    The women’s studies and historical women’s studies are mostly concerned with the idea of “power.” From the gender perspective, or basically the women’s feminist perspective, society is interpreted as a hierarchy of “power structures,” ranging from government to gender roles. I will offer a rebuttal to this interpretation of society.ButyDude

    Quoting a seminal feminist work here would be useful, to get a horse's mouth concept you can then attack. The second sentence here is very unclear. What is a 'gender perspective'? The 'feminist perspective' is not the same thing as the 'women's perspective', there can be male feminists (or can there? - a topic for a thread perhaps). Is there a perspective that all women share? If so, what is it? How do you know what it is? You set yourself up as disagreeing with (your characterisation of) the feminist perspective as interpreting society in terms of 'power structures', yet you seem to be endorsing that very view, that society very much is comprised of power structures. Are you therefore a feminist?

    There is a lack of agreed definitions in your OP which would help focus the responses, I feel. @Banno says you are full of rage, which I gather from his own angry responses to you he approves. Similarly, @Banno thinks definitions are not helpful in philosophy discussions, so again, despite appearances, he seems to be your friend in this thread, and I your enemy.

    EDIT: Here's a question I'd be interested in someone answering for me (I can't be bothered) "Are all feminist views anti-hierarchical?" Even that's probably way too broad and blobby a question to tackle.
  • Argument against Post-Modernism in Gender History
    You make ethical claims on a philosophy forum and then don't want to discuss ethics.

    Go away.
    Banno

    Banno, isn't it customary to regard the OP as defining the scope of discussion in a thread?
  • Argument against Post-Modernism in Gender History
    I'm actually interested in the OP, but this thread seems to be going the way of all flesh. I don't know what the answers are, and I'm interested in hearing the arguments.
  • How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
    One persons misconceptions are another person's blindness.

    One person's blindness is another person's wilful ignorance.

    One person's exit is another person's entrance.
  • Unperceived Existence
    Is this about the British empiricists? Locke, Berkeley, Hume?
  • Unperceived Existence
    Do we infer the unperceived existence of what we perceive from the nature of our experience? If so, how? If not, why not?OwenB

    I'm not overly keen on the question. I'd need to know what the course material was to ensure I understood what kind of answer they want.

    'Do we infer...' is different from the usual philosophical question of 'Can we validly infer...' Answering 'do we' isn't really philosophy is it? That's some kind of social science. Although maybe in the context of Hume, maybe 'do we' is appropriate, as he is interested in that as well.

    @OwenB what is the context? What material has led up to this question?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    If Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, they're remarkably bad at it.RogueAI

    October 7th was the first realistic chance they had to go full-on genocide. They couldn't have done that under the gaze of the rest of the world without a really good bit of provocation. And they got it. Makes me wonder if they knew. Anyway, they've been doing as much as they can get away with before that anyway, what with the settlers and land-grabs. Not that I can remember the details now.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    All the statements i've seen from Israeli officials, while uncomfortable to me, appear to be sane, if heavy handed, responses to a terrorist attack aimed at maiming your population and geopolitical stability.AmadeusD

    https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-01-11/wipe-gaza-off-the-face-of-the-earth-the-statements-made-by-israeli-politicians-on-which-south-africa-supports-its-genocide-case.html

    A few snippets from the article:

    “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”

    “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

    “there are no innocents”

    "Tally Gotlib, from Likud, has called for “merciless bombing from the air” so as not to endanger the soldiers and to stop “feeling sorry for the uninvolved Gazans” because “there are none.”"

    This combined with the clearly unnecessary and disproportionate actions of the IDF in terms of destroying buildings and infrastructure, combined with the video footage of IDF soldiers having a laugh all adds up to intent to destroy Gaza and its residents. Israeli Zionists jumping around shouting about wiping them all out. Then there's the stuff about 'encouraging' Gazan's to leave and talk of moving settlers into the area. There's too much of this stuff for it to be put down to one or two rabid zionists. The intent seems really clear.

    Even if I'm just watching left wing media, this stuff isn't made up by lefties. This is real isn't it?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    For genocide, you need an actus reus and a mens rea it seems. You have to do certain acts. And you have to do them with a criminal intent, in this case, the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

    The actus reus seems clear - plenty of killing, engendering mental health issues, inflicting very difficult living conditions.

    Statements by Israeli officials, and the acts themselves, also seem pretty clear evidence of the mens rea.

    EDIT: this is certainly enough to establish that there is a case to answer I would have thought. Actually hearing the case needs a lot longer of course.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    "Article II
    In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    (a) Killing members of the group;

    (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

    (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

    (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

    (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

    https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide

    Seems a, b, c are clearly engaged. Not sure about d and e.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    One could argue that deporting people from a country that they don't live in, but want to live, is a bit different from deporting people from a country (or let's say a physical place) that they have lived all their lives and do want to continue to live.ssu

    Oh, indeed! It was a frivolous comparison. :)
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Didn't the Germans at first think about relocating Jews to Africa?ssu

    The UK is doing that with asylum seekers. Pack them off to Rwanda. It's been blocked by the courts on Human Rights grounds so far, but the Conservatives are planning legislation that legally defines Rwanda as safe! The world has been missing a trick it seems. We should just pass legislation that says climate change isn't happening, Gazans don't suffer, the moon has an oxygen rich atmosphere and welcoming locals, and everyone is happy.
  • Nothing to something is logically impossible
    Time changes but it is not the same thing as change in physical.MoK

    Is that right though? I'm not sure what it could mean for time to change. Things move from one place to another, that is a kind of change. They do so at a speed, which involves a concept of time. But can't we just replace the concept of time with counting movements? We know Earth rotates 365 times in a year. A year is a unit of time. But we don't need that do we? We can say the Earth rotates 365 times for every one rotation of the Earth around the Sun. That's just movement and counting, no? Is time reducible to that? Or is time something over and above measuring one set of movements against another? If everything stopped moving, would there be any time? What does it mean for time to 'pass' sans movement in space?

    I should do a basic physics course.
  • Nothing to something is logically impossible
    P1) Time is needed for any changeMoK

    One view of time is that it is basically the same thing as change. Time starts when change happens. Not sure if this fits with science or not.
  • Nothing to something is logically impossible
    Here is my simple argument in syllogism form:

    P1) Time is needed for any change
    P2) Nothing to something is a change
    P3) There is no time in nothing
    C) Therefore, nothing to something is logically impossible. (From P1-P3)
    MoK

    @Banno How about:

    1) Assumption: If change, then time
    2) Assumption: If nothing to something, then change
    3) Assumption: Nothing to something [object of reductio]
    4) Therefore, change [2,3 MPP]
    5) Therefore, time [1,4 MPP]
    6) Therefore, nothing [3, some kind of a fortiori inference, like &elimination, seems reasonable]
    7) Assumption: If nothing, then not-time
    8) Therefore, not-time [6, 7 MPP]
    9) Therefore, time and not-time [5,8 & introduction]
    10) Therefore, NOT nothing to something [RAA]

    Or something like that. May have missed out some bits. What lines do you cite for a reductio?
  • Paradigm shifts in philosophy
    For example, philosophy used to be the general name for various sciences, but when these sciences specialized there was a shift in philosophy towards questions that didn't concern the sciences, such as ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and some left-over questions from psychology. Then with the linguistic turn there was a shift towards the nature of language.jkop

    Yes, science has been gradually annexing philosophical territory as it figures out a way to check an idea against the world in a publicly repeatable way. I'd less characterise these as paradigm shifts (which represent progress and no loss of territory) and more as straightforward redrawing of the boundaries of philosophy.

    The linguistic turn is an interesting case. I think of it more as a fashion, but perhaps for some it really is a paradigm shift because, if successful, it renders large quantities of philosophy confused and obsolete. I just don't think it's successful.
  • Paradigm shifts in philosophy
    Paradigm shifts in science result from the scientific method, it seems to me. There is no analogous method in philosophy, and i can't really think of any paradigm shifts that have advanced the whole enterprise. Interesting question though.
  • Lost in transition – from our minds to an external world…
    The skeptic equivocates between self and consciousness. The idealist says there is a world external to self, but not a world external to consciousness.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    They are very sticky, even to use the word taints one with racismPunshhh

    Yes, not as sticky a paedophilia though.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    They chose to get in bed with Hamas, and now they're in a war and getting the shit kicked out of them. Live and learn. Next time don't vote for terrorists.RogueAI

    There is a moral (but not legal) argument to be made that the citizens of a democracy are responsible for the actions of their rulers, and therefore are morally legitimate targets in a war. I don't know how much of a democracy there was in the region at the time. I live in the uk and we have a shit democracy here. We have a choice of two due to the gaming mechanics of the first past the post system. I certainly don't think I'm personally responsible for anything the current government does. Do you feel the same about those who didn't vote for Hamas? What about the children of Hamas voters? Do your think international law should be changed to allow targeting of civilians in a democracy? If so, how direct should the democracy be?
  • What is a strong argument against the concievability of philosophical zombies?
    If you think there is a problem of other minds, the conceivability of p-zombies follows. If it's conceivable that other people than I lack consciousness, that's basically the same thing as conceiving of p-zombies.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I don't know much about international law. Is there an equivalent concept to mens rea when it comes to crimes committed by states?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    counts as evidenceneomac

    It's pretty normal to use behaviour and words as evidence of intention, as we don't have mind-reading machines.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Just listening to Tal Becker's defence. He's just talking about how nasty Hamas is. Nothing directly relevant to the case so far. He's just mischaracterised South Africa's argument by saying that SA is denying Israel's right to defend itself in any way at all. Now he's doing an ad hom against SA saying SA has links with Hamas, which is irrelevant. Not impressed so far. More emotional pleas than legal points.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Besides it isn’t that easy to prove the intentionality of such violations like “collective punishment and deliberate targetting of civilians” and pin it down on specific political leaders, or is it?neomac

    Fairly straightforward I would have thought. The facts of what has happened is evidence of intention. Words are evidence of intention.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    One good thing about mobile phones - soldiers keep incriminating themselves
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Nice bit of simple modus tollens in there @ 11:18 in establishing genocidal intent:

    "The statements were made by persons in command of the state. They communicated state policy. It is simple. If the statements were not intended, they would not have been made."
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    The simplest and cleanest way to understand physicalism is as the idea that only the stuff described in physics texts is true.Banno

    Maybe, but I've always thought that both physicalism and materialism were theories of mind, as usually discussed anyway. I'm not at all sure what one has said about something when one says it is physical, but typically people don't mean 'has a mind' or 'is conscious'. But some think it's fine to include mind in the conception of physical.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I've also taken issue elsewhere with the overly simplistic notion that physical explanations are "causal", the image of A causing B causing C and the folk hereabouts who think this an adequate description of the world. "Cause" isn't a term used in physics, having been replaced by maths since Galileo. But it lingers in meta-physics and in pop philosophy of science.Banno

    Yes, that's really interesting, I noted your post about that with interest. Worth a thread perhaps. The place of causality in nature, if anywhere,
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    So physics is not capable of giving an account of the simplest social interactions.Banno

    I probably agree with you, I was just putting a counter-argument. But if I adopt a reductive bottom-up causality position, I'm not convinced you have shown me I am wrong. They may not be more than the individual brain and its model of the social world. And the model is itself, the argument will go, is nothing more than a stupendously complex brain process. But yeah, I don't find that plausible either.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    How? Show your working. In terms only found in physics.Banno

    Isn't that like asking someone who wrote a program in python to write it instead in machine code? Possible but a pain in the ass. Not that I know anything about programming.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    It's very simple: anyone who believes the universe existed before it contained any minds is a physicalist, as long as they don't posit a transcendent mind.Janus

    I think that's a good way to characterise it. I think the clearest dividing line is between emergentist and non-emergentists regarding mind. When materialists or physicalists identify as such, what they usually end up meaning is that they don't think any consciousness or intentionality was there at the start.

    Galen Strawson possibly bucks this trend as he claims to be a physicalist panpsychist.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    1) Some things are physical
    2) Monism is true
    Therefore: 3) Everything is physical
  • Why be moral?
    I guess the barebones reductio is something like this:

    1. Assumption: Ethical non-naturalism
    2. Assumption: Ethical truths affect choices
    3. Assumption (but argued for in this thread): If ethical non-naturalism is true then ethical truths cannot affect choices
    4. Therefore, both (ethical truths affect choices) and not (ethical truths affect choices)
    5. Therefore, ethical non-naturalism is false.

    3 is the subject of this thread.
  • Why be moral?
    But if people have the moral beliefs they do because of moral facts (at least in part), then there seems to be a clear connection here between evil acts and social consequences.Count Timothy von Icarus

    It's exactly that question that is the subject of the thread. What is the connection between these moral facts and people's beliefs? You could be a moral intuitionist, perhaps.
  • About definitions and the use of dictionaries in Philosophy
    And it is this that will be missed if one places undue emphasis on dictionary definitions.Banno

    Sure
  • Why be moral?
    ...over the course of this thread.Banno

    Righto, I haven't closely read it. I'll check your posts again.
×
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences.