What do you guys think of the escalation of nuclear threats from Russia?

Initially, Russia must have known it faced military calamity if other nations intervened directly in Ukraine. It effectively used nuclear threats to deter this. But, it did not include mere armament in it's threat: perhaps it feared the west would arm Ukraine anyway.

But now, Russia must realize that any kind of victory might be impossible if arms continue to follow more or less freely into Ukraine. And so, it has extended it's nuclear threats to include armament.

First, I think it is important to note that there is a subtle but important difference between warning against something an adversary has not yet done, versus warning against something an adversary is currently doing. In the latter case, if the adversary continues to do it, there is still room to manouver: you can issue more furious threats, and maintain some credibility. Whereas in the first case, if you draw the line first, then the adversary crosses it anyway, more threats strike of impotence: the choice becomes escalation or humiliation.

Second, what is the rational response to such threats? The stakes seem excessively high: is it rational to back down in the face of such threats, and leave Ukraine to it's fate? After all, MAD only works with rational actors, this is far from guaranteed when the decision maker is an (aging, deeply immoral) individual. For such an individual, Armageddon, or the risk of such, might indeed seen preferable to worldwide humiliation.

But on the other side, if we back down, then we immediately enter a world where every nuclear power may leverage their nukes for potentially unlimited strategic gain. The world would enter a new, even more dangerous and destabilized phase, one in which the US and the west's relative strategic power is vastly diminished: the latter alone makes this choice untenable to Western policymakers.

So then, how to respond? It is an uncomfortable dilemma.

no

Then where does the physical law come from? — Hillary

Who can say. But it is fallacious to argue they must come from a lawmaker, because they are laws.

If laws exist, then a lawgiver must exist, too. Therefore, God. — Art48

You are conflating legal "laws" with physical "laws".

Says who? — Changeling

Says the kinds of contradictions pointed out in the op.

Well, "God" is the ur-"incoherent concept" (i.e. empty name), no? — 180 Proof

If you demonstrate this then you demonstrate logically and conclusively that God does not exist. Not easily done. But you can demonstrate quite easily that an omnipotent God does not exist: such a quality cannot be instantiated.

Endless blather, blah blah blah blah blah, when the solution is so simple: omnipotence is an incoherent concept.

t's inevitably what it means for something to be justified that causes grief. But of course one man's justification will be insufficient to convince another.

It's not truth that is problematic for knowledge, but justification. — Banno

This is true, but it is not problematic, as far as JTB is concerned. Different people will in fact disagree on what is knowledge, due to disagreements about what is justification.

Consider religious knowledge. The religious will happily fill libraries with "knowledge" based on arguments from scripture. The primitive atheist will contest this knowledge because it is not true. The more sophisticated atheist will contest it because they consider its justification (scriptural, faith based, etc.) to be illegitimate.

These groups have irreconcilable views on what is knowledge, because they have irreconcilable views on what is justification. This is not a problem for JTB, but rather an affirmation: different concepts of justice imply marking different things as knowledge.

This only might be a problem if the aim was to elucidate knowledge's "ultimate", ontological essence. But this would be a foolish endeavor, knowledge is a human construct and it presumes too much that it should have such an essence. Rather, the aim is to clarify what it is people are conceptually picking out when they mark something as "knowledge".

The sentences should make sense if 'I know X' can be treated as an empirical fact. The sentences don't make sense. So there seems to be a problem with treating 'I know X' as if it were an empirical fact. — Isaac

Really, these don't seem particularly uninterpretable. "I know that I know X" conveys either unordinary confidence (after all, knowledge is a claim, because as you point out we don't have access to absolute truth). Or, it affirms that you not only know X, but you are aware of the fact that you know. As opposed to the many things you may know peripherally or unconsciously. "I believe that I know X" is even more straightforward: You believe you have knowledge, but are not quite sure: perhaps you are not quite sure what you know is true, perhaps you feel your justification is possibly suspect. The further iterations are more rarefied and silly, but you can still assign an interpretation.

How so? I mean, it seems to me to intersect in the manner of christening of terms at the very least. You've not supported your assertion. — Isaac

Suppose we conclude the external world is illusory. Berkeley was right, esse est percepi. Would Searle then be obligated to re-write his theory of speech acts, so that all assertives are in fact emissives?

Which seems of the same sort as "suppose there's a big green dragon..." — Isaac

I don't think so. Whatever your theoretical model of what geometric truths are, that is independent of the speech act being performed. Geometry is taught at school, assertively, it is something students must absorb from without. Even if you declare that geometry is purely mental (I disagree, but I guess it is possible to argue), this theory does not intersect with the nature of the assertive speech acts which communicate it.

This same distinction has a lot bearing on our discussion of knowledge: the theoretical status of truth does not intersect with the everyday usage of the concept.

_well I can not say that I know how this comment is relevant to my point that "knowledge" and "truth" do not always overlap. "I know" and "I use a specific knowledge" are two different things. — Nickolasgaspar

You are conflating what it is you are "knowing". You can "know" or "not know" how to use a technique which produces useful results, and you can "know" or "not know" ontological truths. Just because you can "know" how to use a technique which does not correspond to ultimate reality, doesn't mean that knowledge and truth are disjoint.

Again, you're just repeating back to me what your preferred theory of knowledge is ("yet, you do not know it, because the truth is..."). You've not demonstrated that I don't 'know' it because the truth of the matter is what determines whether I know something. — Isaac

If it sounds like I am talking to you in absolutes, it is because I am appealing to your presumed competence as a speaker of English. If you think that you were right when you said "I know I have apples in the bag", or if the statement was correct until the moment you opened the bag, if you think that is how the word 'know' works, in the plain language you and appeal to while simultaneously disregarding , then we really have nothing further to discuss. You can cite a hundred dictionary definitions, that is completely irrelevant. Tell me, is this how "know" works for you?

Yes. I'm deflationist about 'truth'. I thought I explained that earlier by referencing Ramsey. The entire problem here is the definition of "I know" for someone deflationist about truth. — Isaac

Your initial argument was that the truth is inaccessible, and therefore cannot be a component of the concept of 'knowledge', because how can people access something which is inaccessable? And yet, people use the concept 'truth' itself quite happily, without giving Ramsey a second or even first thought. Even if absolute truth is theoretically inaccessible, this in no way prevents people from making use of the concept.

Whatever your theoretical notion of truth may be, you have to deal with the fact that truth is a component of the plain English concept of knowledge. To deny this, you have to account for all of the plain English examples I have given which strongly suggest that is the case. In spite of mental gyrations requiring meaning to shift with tense, which is in any case irrelevant, I haven't seen anything approaching that from you.

I've shown the problem with this above. If "I know" is simply a claim to knowledge, then we have to admit of the disjunction "I believe I know..." and "I know I know...". Then we have to admit of "I believe I know I know..." and "I know I know I know...", and so on. — Isaac

These marginal formulations could charitably be construed to communicate degrees of certainty. The fact that you can construct these cumbersome sentences is supposed to say what exactly?

You seem to use "Knowledge" as an idealistic "quality" that a claim has it or not...when its the other way around. — Nickolasgaspar

You can call it idealistic, but I am not discussing platonic ideals. I am discussing the concept of knowledge, as we use it daily. A guess is not considered knowledge until it has been verified, not ideally, but in the mundane, everyday English sense.

Knowledge and truth are not(always) the same thing.
I.e. We know Relativity(in an ontological sense) is wrong but we still use it for its instrumental value. — Nickolasgaspar

I know how to use this technique, I know it has instrumental value, I know it doesn't match the world ontologically. The can all be true, justified claims.

Exactly. Yet your claim was that such assertions refer to objects in the external world. — Isaac

"External world" is not what I want. Rather, external to the speaker.

My point is that there is a clear external-to-the-speaker/internal-to-the-speaker distinction between assertiives/expressives, and directives/comissives.

So then there should be another, internal to the speaker, corresponding category to declaratives.

What, that we refer to the ratio with the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet? That's a geometric fact? — Isaac

If we take π to mean the number, which people generally do, your quote is a assertion of a geometric fact:
"the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference is 3.14159..."

If we are talking about the use of the symbol itself, that is also an assertion of convention:
"the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference is denoted by π"

A claim is accepted as knowledge when it is in agreement with available facts and carries an instrumental value. — Nickolasgaspar

A random guess may be in agreement with facts, it may have instrumental value, but it is not knowledge.

We can only evaluate a claim as true or not true based on the facts that are currently available to us...not in an absolute sense, because we don't know if we have all the facts needed to make such an absolute evaluation. — Nickolasgaspar

I see no inconsistency with this account of truth and JTB. If we cannot evaluate truth in an absolute sense, then we cannot evaluate knowledge either. We can only claim that something does or does not hold the status of knowledge. What is or is not considered knowledge changes over time, because our body of currently accepted truths, as well as the justifications we consider legitimate, change over time.

So to properly use the word knowledge, the public rule governing it's proper use (the rule which we reference to say what it 'means') cannot use the concept of what is 'actually true' since no-one in the public rule-making community has this information. It can only use what they think is true. But that (as above) already constitutes that which is well-justified - and being well-justified is already one of the criteria for 'knowledge' under JTB. — Isaac

There are plenty of examples of well justified falsehoods, like the one I gave above.

By your logic, the use of the everyday word 'true' would be impossible, since no one has access to the truth. The way out is simple: every "I know", every "this is true", is a claim to knowledge and truth. We don't need direct access to the truth to make claims to it.

So, like our apple, proper justification (relative to the context) is the truthmaker of "I know X". If it turns out that (like our apple not being there) that I don't have proper justification for believing X, then the proposition "I know X" is false. — Isaac

Suppose you bought a paper bag of apples, and left them in the car for a few minutes when you went to the post office. While you were away, a thief broke into your car, and replaced it with a bag of oranges. Later, you claim, "I know I have a bag of apples in the car". By every standard you are perfectly justified in believing so. And yet, you do not know it, because the truth is, you have a bag of oranges.

Perfectly good English, just wrong. — T Clark

Oh? And why is it wrong?

I see the distinction, but it's less clear with something like "the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference is Π" This doesn't apply to any object in the external world (unless you want to posit the existence of perfect circles), but it declares rather than supposes. — Isaac

This is neither declaration nor supposition. It is an assertion, of a geometric fact. Not an expressive, because geometry, like the physical world, is something external to the speaker.

'Knew' is the past tense. We use the past tense differently to the present tense. — Isaac

So now meaning shifts with tense to keep your account coherent. And I'm the dogmatist.

Yet, tense has absolutely nothing to do with it.

He knows that 8*8 is 63.

This is simply bad English, given that the speaker presumably knows that it does not. "Know" in English cannot be applied to something that is known to be false. Similarly, it cannot be applied to a guess, and be good English. This is not how "know" ought to be used, it is how it is used. These are the rules that JTB captures.

JTB is not perfect (which I pointed out in my op). But it is a far better model of how we actually use the word than your mental state theory.

to be clear, I'm not looking for someone to clarify what the standard theory is, I'm trying (or was) to explain a different theory (broadly Ramseyan - or my interpretation of it). — Isaac

Please.

There were Greeks as long ago as 500 bce who theorized that the earth revolves around the sun. Just type in ancient Greeks heliocentrism. — T Clark

Yeah yeah. From what I read this was a minority view. But this is utterly beside the point. Answer the question. Did MOST of the ancient Greeks know the earth was the center of the universe?

This is not even philosophy anymore, just basic English.

An inward declaration would make no sense in the same way a private rule would make no sense. A declaration is a public event, creates a public rule. — Isaac

Every speech act is public, that goes without saying (leaving aside self talk). The distinction is, what is the domain of this rule? Where does it happen? Declarations happen in the world: a naming assigns a name to a being or object. Suppositions on the other hand, happen purely in the mind, of the listener and speaker.

Not sure what you mean by "inward". — Banno

Assertives and Expressives are quite similar. The difference is that assertives assert about the outer world, expressives assert about the inner world of the speaker.

Similarly, a Directive and a Commissive are quite similar. Directives direct out, at someone other than the speaker, while a Commissive directs in, to the speaker himself.

And in the same way, I propose that Declaratives by fiat create an external reality, in the world, while Suppositions by fiat create an internal reality, in the minds of the listeners.

But on first glance I think you are right that suppositions are declarations. — Banno

After thinking about it, by Searle's scheme there must be a missing category:

There are assertives, and inward assertives, which are expressives.
There are directives, and inward directives, which are commissives.

But that leaves declarations as the odd man out. Mustn't there be corresponding category of inward declarations?

There is, and it is precisely: suppositions. Declarations declare something into existence in the world, suppositions declare something into existence in the mind.

whether or not this activity is in itself philosophy, you must agree that it does, or can, bring the decider into contact with philosophical issues.

Such confrontations happen throughout everyone's life.

What about suppositions? Is this a missing category? Suppositions cut across reasoning ("Suppose the following is true, then what follows?") and storytelling ("in a world where...").

Are these directives? ("entertain this thought in your head"). But this is an order that has no force. It is an activity the listener may take up, at their choice. Are they declarations? The speaker is declaring a suppositional reality into existence? Or do we really need a separate category?

Knowledge is adequately justified belief, whether or not it is true. — T Clark

This is untrue (and therefore, not knowledge).

Did the ancient Greeks know the earth was the center of the universe? This is bad English. It is proper to say, they believed, or thought they knew.

If I wanted a lecture I'd visit the university. I came here for a discussion. If you can't even be bothered to justify your assertions, then there's no point continuing. Things are not the case simply because they seem that way to you. — Isaac

Whatever dude. You are wrong, obviously wrong, and I made it abundantly clear. If your can't admit it, that's on you.

If you can't address the arguments I made, you can say so. No one will think less of you (in fact they would think better). But instead you leave in a huff. What more can one expect of a pro Russian anti vaxxer?

I'm not 'confusing' them, I'm arguing that they amount to the same thing. — Isaac

You are absolutely confusing them.

But, using this analysis, "I know where my hat is", when used to describe a high degree of confidence in my belief about the whereabouts of my hat, is exactly the right use of the term, and so it is true that "I know where my hat is", because I used the term correctly. Even if my hat turns out not to be there. — Isaac

"I know where my hat is" is a perfect exemplar the verb "know". Nonetheless, if the hat is not there, it is an incorrect claim, no matter the degree of belief.

The ancient Greeks did not know the world was the center of the universe. They merely thought they knew, with complete and justified confidence. And they made this claim in absolutely perfect Greek.

Ah, you've misunderstood my example (or I've been unclear). In your example, I couldn't possibly justify my statement because I'd never been to the city before. — Isaac

No, you misread mine:

Consider, we are in a city we haven't been to in 10 years — hypericin

You have a foggy memory there is a pub at the end of the road. The memory was wrong. But by chance, a pub was built there in the last month. You were right that there is a pub at the end of the road. But you were wrong that you knew it.

Given that Gettier Problems were presented to show that the JTB definition of knowledge is insufficient, having to add a fourth condition to overcome them shows that the JTB definition of knowledge is insufficient. — Michael

Fair

I've never found such decisions hard at all. — Tom Storm

Hmm, maybe it is the fact that I have always been philosophically inclined that has made these kind of decisions nightmarishly hard for me!

"I like this home. At least I think I do. But do I really know that? What if it is a passing whimsy? How do I distinguish my preference of the moment from a stable preference that will endure 10 years from now. I won't even be the same person by then! So how can I make this decision for a person I hardly know? Do I really even want a house? It is the largest purchase I have ever made, how do I justify spending the accumulated capitol of a lifetime on one? Is home ownership even my preference, or a socially normative one? Why do I really want one? How do I know there is not something drastically wrong with the house. There is an inspection, but is that sufficient evidence? How can it rule out every problem? Is the inspection not an instance of motivated reasoning? And it does not rule out horrible neighbors, a dog that barks at 3am, a wildfire that will destroy it in 5 years. The world is entering a phase of chaotic change, is it rational to tie oneself completely to one location in what might be a new and unpredictable epoch..."

These are the thoughts that will actually, frantically, go through my head, with my exasperated realtor wondering why I am passing on yet another perfectly good house. I have never bought one!

n ordinary life, epistemology is of little consequence - in picking a partner, choosing a home or selecting a car, working out what university degree to do, or which job to take, what shopping to buy - we do not worry about the problem of induction, or the correspondence theory of truth, or philosophy in general. — Tom Storm

I completely disagree. All of these life decisions are fraught with epistemological and philosophical considerations. It is what makes decisions so hard. If philosophy were a quaint exercise confined to certain abstract questions, it would be utterly uninteresting.

What if there isn't an 'underlying logic'? I mean there's no intrinsic reason why there need be. what if 'know' as in "I know my keys are around here somewhere!", is different in meaning to 'know' as in "she knew where her keys were". — Isaac

I'm not sure that's true, but if this is the case, that's totally fine. I'm not committed to the meaning of words being rigid. Natural language is allowed to do that. Then, I'm only interested in the latter sense here.

The word 'know' would never be used if used according only to the principle of true facts with true premises. — Isaac

No no no, you are confusing truth condition with condition of use. The truth condition of "to know" is nontrivial and very debatable. But the condition of use is both variable between people, and might be as simple as a feeling of confidence that something is so. These are totally disjoint things. And this question of "what is knowledge?" is here asking about the truth condition, not about the conditions of use.

All these debates and claims we make on this forum are complex, with very complex truth conditions, if we were confined to making true claims only, we would be paralyzed, and say nothing. And even then, we could only limit ourselves to making claims we felt were true with absolute certitude. We would still be wrong 95% of the time.

When I claim "I know the pub is at the end of the road" I simply mean that if you walk to the end of the road, you will find the pub there. So if the pub I thought was there had been knocked down, but later replaced by another, I don't see a problem with saying that I 'knew' there was a pub at the end of the road, since, if you walk to the end of the road, you will, indeed, find a pub there. — Isaac

I disagree. "I know there is a pub is at the end of the road" is distinguishable from the statement of bare fact, "there is a pub at the end of the road". The truth condition of the first is not that of the second. The first adds additional constraints to the truth condition: "There is a pub at the end of the road, and additionally I stand in a knowing relationship with that fact".

Consider, we are in a city we haven't been to in 10 years. You say "I know there is pub at the end of the road." We go to the end of the road. There is a pub with signs of fresh construction, and a "grand opening" sign. You say, "I knew it!". This would be a joke. Because, while there is in fact a pub at the end of the road, you absolutely did not know it.

An analysis of knowledge is either an analysis of what the word 'knowledge' means - how we use the word, or an analysis of what the word ought to mean - how it would make most sense in some particular context, to use it. — Isaac

"Knowledge" and so many other words are like "obscenity" in one of the trials in the 60's: The judge couldn't define it, but he famously "knows it when (he) sees it".

We make these distinctions easily enough, without knowing how we do it. What, if anything, is the underlying logic? This is the task of philosophy as I see it, in answering these "what is" questions.

In every day use, knowledge is most often simply a category of belief we have a high confidence in — Isaac

But this does not cut it, even by the standards of every day use. Sure, if you have a strong conviction, you might claim to know something. But if you had said, "I know my keys are around here somewhere", I can ask, "In retrospect, did you really know it?"

• If in fact the keys were in the car, you did not know it.
• If you knew it because you are a Pisces, you did not know it, even if they were around here somewhere, and you are in fact a Pisces.
• If you knew it because you remember leaving them on a table, when in fact that memory was from yesterday, but they did fall out of your pocket here anyway, you did not know it.

We make these intuitive judgements independently of how strongly you happened to hold the conviction that your keys were around here somewhere.

You are proposing an equivalence between supported theory (the world is older than 5000 years) and an unsupportable theory (that men did not like hairy women). — god must be atheist

I am proposing an equivalence between arguments: they are equivalent, and equally weak. You can (incorrectly) claim sexual selection is unsupportable. But not because, "what if it all just happened at once?". This is a miracle, and as an explanation, compared to the Darwinian model, it is fantastically unlikely trash.

My counter point will be this: mutations occur randomly, and at times in groups. The more intelligent, more verbal, more sexy humans of today may have mutated from proto-humans all at once in these aspects: sexual features, sexual preferences for looks, intelligence, and verbal skills.

Who is to say this has not been one whopping mutation? — god must be atheist

Who is to say that god didn't create all the animals in their present form 5000 years ago, and leave fossils in the ground to tease heretical archaeologists.

I contest that this question can be decided.

Other than that, by describing them as MVHPHs, you nicely described half of the males of the currently surviving specimens of the human race. — god must be atheist

:rofl:

So, do you not believe in sexual selection in other animals as well? Or is it just humans? Not that either are in dispute, afaik.

It is not an all or nothing thing. Ugly people/animals still get opportunities to mate. Sexual selection just needs to provide an advantage, both numerically (how many times do I get to mate?), and qualitatively (how good of a mate can I get?). The offspring of good mates will have this same advantage over the offspring of less favored individuals.

Clincher: Think about it another way: let's suppose that you were right. Therefore the "unsexy" gene ought to have been eliminated from the gene pool by now — god must be atheist

Everyone you see is the product of rampant sexual selection. All the really "ugly" genes, unfavorable to sexual selection, have been weeded out already. How attractive do you think a hairy, minimally verbal proto-human would be to you? What you perceive as ugly is one point on a very narrow band, compared to possible physical and mental variation.

How do you explain that some features are attractive to you, and others are not? How did that happen?

There is another logistics-related argument against "only the best-looking and sexiest" survive. Or humorous, intelligent, etc., as the case might be. — god must be atheist

To be sure, unattractive "borons" still have sex, now, and most likely prehistorically. All that is required is that the sexy attributes provide an advantage. You are arguing against sexual selection in its entirety, which is a non-starter.