But you know what I mean when I say 'voiture' is not the correct word for a car in English, yes?

It's not a falsehood. The four-wheeled personal transportation machine is une voiture. But it's the wrong word, in English.

You may not understand the way I'm trying to put that into words, but we can skip that bit, it's irrelevant if you already know what I mean.

I mean 'correct' in the sense that 'car' is correct and 'voiture' is not.

Or...

If I say "I to the shops go" that's not correct either. I haven't said anything false, and you'd probably understand what I mean, but it's not correct.

Or...

Language has rules, just like chess. If I move a piece the wrong way in chess it's not correct. If I use a word other than by the rules of my language it's not correct.


Any of those any clearer?

People tend to want to know the truth. Correcting falsehoods is a normal thing that people do. — Michael

I don't see what that's got to do with the 'correctness' of a word.

If, instead of 'car' I said 'voiture', that's the 'wrong' word in English, but it's not false, it is une voiture.

What do you mean by "wrong"? If by "wrong" you mean "false" then it's a truism that an asserted falsehood is wrong. — Michael

I mean why does it matter? Why correct the errant child? To what end?

If there isn't a bus and you say "there's a bus" then what you say is false. — Michael

But what's wrong with saying something false?

I don't know what you mean by this. — Michael

I mean a state we can imagine but which doesn't ever exist. Imagine a world where everyone was nice to each other all the time - an ideal. Here, I'm talking about a world where people don't cover other people's mistakes by guessing what they really mean.

That the thing they're referring to isn't a bus. — Michael

What's wrong with using the word 'bus' to refer to something that isn't a bus

As I said, it's trying to reference an ideal. If I'm way off base here is there some other meaning you'd use for what a 'correct' word is?

If you hear a child refer to a car as "bus", you say "that's not the correct word", what is it you mean by that? Or do you not have the concept of the 'correct' use of a word?

I can understand you even if what you say is false, so this doesn't work either. — Michael

It's not about your ability to understand. If I said "pass me the stapler" whilst pointing at the hole-punch, you'd understand me. I've still used the 'wrong' word, haven't I?

'Correct' here means more than being understood because you mentally make up for my error, it's trying to get at an ideal assuming you don't have to.

Justification for knowing where my keys are is less stringent than that required to make sure the bridge doesn't fall down. — T Clark

That's a good point, what we understand by 'I know' varies even within claims about states of affairs.



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.

What do you mean by the right or correct use of the term? Do you mean appropriate? — Michael

No, I mean 'correct' as in 'to be understood, to make sense'. No different to if I pointed to a tree and said "dog". I'd have just used the wrong word. " Tree" is the correct word.

I'm understood, if I say "I know where my keys are", to be very confident about my belief. I'm not understood to have verified the absolute truth about their location. As such, it seems reasonable to conclude I've used the term correctly, and I do indeed 'know' where my keys are.

The alternative seems really weird to me. That I say "I know where my keys are", I used all the terms correctly, but I don't actually know where my keys are.

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 — hypericin

I'm not 'confusing' them, I'm arguing that they amount to the same thing. That - "Is it true that 'I'm a woman'?" amounts to the same thing as - "have I used the term 'woman' and the grammatical construct 'I'm a...' correctly?"

Regretting my choice of example in today's climate, but pushing on... If I had male genetalia, it would not be true that "I'm a (biological) woman". It would not be true by virtue of the fact that the kind of thing I am is not the kind of thing we use the word 'woman' for. I'd have misused the word.

Same goes for 'know'. If I say "I know my keys are on the table", when in actual fact I haven't a clue, it's not true that "I know my keys are on the table", I've misused the word because the state of mind I have (in relation to the world) is not the sort of thing we use the term 'know' for.

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. (Although, any reflective past tense use would not be true since we don't use the term in the past tense that way).

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. — hypericin

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. In my example I could justify my statement, and it also turned out, in hindsight, that I did know there was a pub at the end of the road. Justification is part of using the word 'know' correctly. Truth clearly cannot be.

The essay above, 'How to Derive "ought" from "is"', was pretty controversial for a while. — Banno

I'm pretty sure I've read it, but I'm having another look at it over the morning tea.

Is this a fair observation? — Tom Storm

Yes, that's something of what I was trying to get at distinguishing what 'to know' does mean and what it ought to mean. Things like justifications are just habits of thinking. They're often sprinkled liberally into analytical propositions, but what constitutes a 'justification' is no more than a gentleman's agreement among peers, an obligation. If I said "I know my keys are on the table because they're made of metal" I've provided a 'justification'. If my keys were in fact on the table, we could say I have justified true belief. But something's off, my justification didn't make any sense. So why not? Well there's no link between being made of metal and being on the table. So we bring in all this background 'knowledge' into what counts as a justification - hence my invocation of Ramsey sentences.

I think there's considerably more than two such uses as well. Consider "you're never going to make it to the meeting you're already late" - "I know that!", or "I just knew it!"

So yeah, I think you're right that there's a use case where "I know X" ought to mean something like 'if you act as if X is the case you'll get the expected results and I've done the generally agreed upon due diligence to make such a claim among my peers in this context'.

(You'll note I've not used the word 'true' as I don't see any need for the word 'true' in there at all, but that's another whole keg of worms)

What, if anything, is the underlying logic? This is the task of philosophy as I see it, in answering these "what is" questions. — hypericin

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". The former expressing a confidence on one's belief, the latter expressing a relationship between a third person's beliefs about the world and our own (she believed the keys were on the table, but I can see them here in the car).

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?" — hypericin

I have trouble with this idea that saying "I know" is merely a claim to know. I don't see how it distinguishes the utterance from any other. What else could it be? "that's a tree" is merely a claim that that's a tree - it doesn't change the meaning of the term 'is' to something other than the claim.

If we say that "I know" is a statement about one's mental state, then it has nothing to do with the actual state of affairs, right? So we say that "I know" is a claim about one's mental state and the world. it's meaning therefore has to relate both (something like my mental state matching the way the world is). This is the origin of the idea that "I believe my keys are on the table, and my keys actually are on the table, hence I know my keys are on the table" (I'm leaving out the convention of 'justification' or a minute).

The problem is, that seeing the keys on the table is just another justification for believing the keys are on the table, so all you have is a better justified belief. And if everyone you speak to agree that they keys are on the table, that's just even better justification for believing the keys are on the table.

So in your example...

If in fact the keys were in the car, you did not know it. — hypericin

...the 'in fact' bit can only ever mean that even better justifications exist for believing the keys are in the car (I've seen them there, my friend has too, I started the car with them...)

This list of 'even better' justifications becomes the Ramsey sentence I mentioned above, listing all the beliefs with their preceding justifications. The word 'know' would never be used if used according only to the principle of true facts with true premises.

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.

For now the point might be that the aliens would presumably agree that allocating presidents is done using language. — Banno

Ah, yes. Meaning they could no less make a separate study of 'human speech acts' than we can. Or than we can make a separate study of 'bee social status acts' (as opposed to just bee biology as a whole). That makes sense (to me at least).

So we do indeed have quite a wide category of institutional facts sensu lato, but because we're embedded in some of them (language, object recognition) and not in others (marriage law, electoral rules) they can have quite meaningful sub-categories.

Maybe going on too much of a tangent to what you wanted to explore, but it does perhaps leave moral obligations in something of a no-man's land. There's obviously a considerable non-embeddedness in social mores, but a lot of moral obligation arises out of a rather deeper, more visceral sensation, far more (I imagine) like the bee gets when responding to the pheromones which make the queen-bee the queen-bee?

Anyway, don't let my rambling disrupt you. I'll look forward to your next scheduled instalment.

not until the structure of speech acts is shown to reflect the structure of our intentionality. — Banno

Not sure I understand this. It's exposition is coming later though? I'm happy to wait.

She is Queen because of biology, not because of a social activity. — Banno

Well, yes, but hence my example of aliens. Would they not have some cause to look at us and say "allocating presidents is the kind of thing this species does - it's in their biology"

they are not true for the sort of reasons that

The bishop is made of wood — Banno

Just an enquiry - but isn't "the bishop is made of wood" institutional too by virtue of the institutional fact that "that's the kind of thing 'wood' is". We institutionally collect certain material types and group them, then name those groups. That's not done for us, it's not some state of affairs that these materials ought to be grouped and have a single name and that name ought to be 'wood'. It is our institutions of object categorisation and language that have done that, no?

To put it another way. If Zelensky being president is an institutional fact, is the Queen bee being the Queen bee an institutional fact by virtue of the the institution of bees, or does it cease to be such because we're not bees and are just reporting the fact (that one of these bees is the breeding one)? Would an alien report on Zelensky's role as a fact of nature (these humans have acted such as for us to give this man this label)?

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.

In neither case must it mean 'true belief justified by true premises'.

In the former case you can see from everyday use we simply don't use it that way because we don't stop to check either beliefs or premises are true before we refer to those beliefs as knowledge. In every day use, knowledge is most often simply a category of belief we have a high confidence in - "I know my keys are around here somewhere!"

In the latter case, you can't analytically separate the two interpretations. They are underdetermined, the analysis supports either. There's nothing conceptually wrong with either the model that knowledge is justified true belief (but has Gettier-like exceptions), or that knowledge is justified true belief with true premises. It's not a problem solved, it's an alternative proposal submitted to our preferences. In supporting it, you'd have to explain its usefulness over the former. In what cases might the latter have some advantage.

The most obvious problem I can see with the latter model is that you'd never be able to specify all the premises. In most Gettier-like problems, there's some premise which is false, but it is often a hidden premise (the clock is actually working). Think of all the hidden premises we use (gravity pulls me down, events have a cause, the external world is real...). If all knowledge is one very long Ramsey sentence, your definition would have to see all the premises as true. A robust definition, sure, but a useless one as very little would ever be categorised as such.

That's literally what OSINT is meant to do, to put analysis in clear language for the public. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Firstly, if your (or anyone else's conclusions are interpretations from OSINT, then you should cite the source rather than trying to pass it off as your own analysis, but regardless

a) the data from OSINT doesn't even begin to cover the sorts of speculation passed off as fact I was referring to in the comment you initially replied to. The actual data is sparse and usually of low confidence, and the reports make that quite clear.

b) much of OSINT isn't itself interpretation but reporting of opinion (and clearly labelled as such). Even the CIA admitted to lying about some of its intelligence reports for propaganda

c) most sources of OSINT (such as osint.org) also act as news aggregators and as such have their own editorial policy, just like any newspaper.

d) the intelligence community, foreign policy strategists, military and political analysts are not all exactly of one mind and speak with a united voice about the issues we're talking about here. There's considerable variation which encompasses pretty much all the views expressed here (with the exception of some of the very fringe positions we've heard from).

So again, the conclusions presented as fact to which I was referring are not magically supported as such simply by hand-waiving generally in the direction of OSINT, it would be the equivalent of me writing an entire paper without any citations and then at the end saying "there are such things as journals, you know!"

Russia's argument isn't about Western hypocrisy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is. I quoted the relevant parts of Putin's speech in support of that. You just saying "it isn't" is meaningless. Where does that get anyone?

You do realize open source intelligence reports exist, right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, it's not the data I'm referring to, it's the interpretation. The data needs careful and expert interpretation. One can't simply look at some intelligence reports, even of the highest confidence, and say "well, I reckon that means..."

The war crimes investigation is also being conducted by professionals, namely the ICC, who arrived on the ground as Russia pulled out — Count Timothy von Icarus

Key word being 'investigation'. The conclusions we read here are straight off social media.

All written without exception for the other chap, by people who think to have no further need to unfuck themselves. — unenlightened

Oh, I see. A minority though, no? I mean the sorts of people who write those books are very much the smaller group compared to the sorts of people who read them. So I'm still not quite seeing how the self-righteousness of the self-help author can be to blame for climate change, there can't be more than a few hundred of them (though I admit sometimes it seems like they're everywhere).

Books written to change the readers' minds are exactly authors' theories about how to change other people's minds. — unenlightened

Again, seems you're pointing to a minority (the ones who write the books, as opposed to read them - not to mention the conjunction who do both). What is it that links this minority to issues like climate change?

Who has a theory about how to change their own mind? It would be superfluous, would it not? — unenlightened

Not superfluous so much as already enacted. We have theories about how to change our own minds all the time, we just mostly have them quietly. If I'm expecting my cup to be on the table but see no cup when I look, I have to change my mind about what happened to my cup. I probably wouldn't post it on the internet though.

You guys are priceless.

On a thread full of people claiming to be able to divine Putin's motives from their armchairs, predict moves even CIA strategists missed, work out battle plans from a few newspaper articles, judge war crimes using Facebook, and all without the need for experts but rather their own "rational induction"... The one calling out such nonsense is the one exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect.

You couldn't make this stuff up...

Every Englishman and his dog has a theory about how to solve everyone else's psychological problems, but no clue at all how to solve their own. I'm always trying to change your mind and keep mine the same. This is the problem. — unenlightened

You think? There seem to be an awfully large number of self-help books on the shelves... Aren't the avid readers of such beacons of enlightenment as "12 Rules for Life", or "Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds", or the delightfully titled "Unf*ck Yourself", desperately trying to, to use the technical terminology, 'unf*ck themselves'? These books seem very popular and they don't seem to be about changing other people's minds, but rather the reader changing their own.

These days, everyone thinks they're the Englishman. This is the problem that has to be solved before we can effectively deal with climate change. It is a psychological problem. — unenlightened

Then we're faced with the preceding problem of how to get that to change.

At least with climate change itself there's only two solutions (change the atmosphere, or change what we're pumping into it). The trouble with psychological problems is that every man and his dog has a theory about how to fix them (with a suspicious majority involving a return to the morality of the popular youth movements of their respective teenage years - also the time in their lives when they would have felt most solidarity and most confidence in their group identity - but that's just another psychological theory - they really are two a penny).

Interesting stuff, but I'm sorry my question wasn't clear. You said...

there isn't any fig leaves left — ssu

... I asked you why you thought there were any now. Fig leaves, that is. Not martial law.

Point being that if de-nazifying Ukraine is being used as a fig leaf to cover political power grabs, then attacking the countries who are deliberately frustrating your 'anti-nazi' crusade isn't "no fig leaves left" is it? It's 'one more fig leaf' (or a whole fucking fig tree)

I'm just not seeing how that's a coherent argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What argument? I'm struggling to see how any argument I've just made is rendered incoherent by Russia's use of far-right paramilitaries.

I made the argument that...

Us then going ahead and doing exactly what Putin wants to say we do (denying the blindingly obvious Neo-Nazi issue) is playing directly into his propaganda. Read the speech. It's not about the mere presence of Neo-Nazis, it's about Western tolerance of them. The exact tolerance useful idiots like we have here are amply demonstrating. If it suits Western purposes (in this case, opposing Russia), we'll turn a blind eye to the far right. It's precisely what Putin used as justification and it's precisely what we're showing to be absolutely true. — Isaac

...and you're saying it's incoherent because Russia uses far-right paramilitaries? How does their use of those groups impact that argument?

then there isn't any fig leaves left to disguise Putin's Russia from the authoritarian system it is. — ssu

You think there's any now?

But that doesn’t exclude that Ukrainians could fight Russians because their aggression is criminal either. — neomac

No, but they'd be fighting for freedom from criminality, not for their country, which is merely an incidental grouping. Unless you're suggesting Russian's are just criminals by birth.

And there is nothing in the meaning of the word “criminality” that excludes that an act of aggression is criminal precisely because it violates one nation sovereignty and self-determination. — neomac

Well, technically there is, since neither sovereignty, nor self-determination are enshrined in law sensu lato, otherwise things like federations, customs unions and the UN would be illegal, but I get what you mean. Still, the people would be fighting for sovereignty or self-determination not for a country.

A moral fight is a fight for moral ends, a country is not a moral end. Associating countries with moral ends is nationalism. It's what gets us into wars, not what gets us out of them.

Can you literally quote and reference any of these studies? — neomac

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

Neither logic nor moral is matter of preference. You simply make no sense, dude. — neomac

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

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

If one is fighting against criminal aggression then one's country is immaterial. It's perfectly possible for both Ukrainians and Russians to fight against criminal aggression together.

The moral element is the criminality, not the countries. Anyone fighting the criminality is behaving morally, anyone supporting it is not. Regardless of the country they pledge allegiance to.

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

They're generally in journals, preprint servers, libraries, bookshops...

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

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

You were saying about your exceptionalism...

Double standards, hypocrisy (straight from the initiator/invaders). — jorndoe

Yep. Are we seriously still surprised that Russian narratives aren't actually true?

"blindingly obvious" is sort of a weasel phrase here (slant, bias), but OK then, maybe it's time to secure extremist-infested Russian areas by force (call it, say, "an armed humanitarian operation")? — jorndoe

No. Why the hell would we do that? Haven't we just got through repeating in painstaking detail how Neo-Nazis are not justification for invasion?

Heavy emphasis on the problem just in Ukraine (by Putin in particular) is out of proportion though — jorndoe

Not at all. Denying the existence of Neo-Nazis in all those other countries hasn't just been used as a pretext for war, so the lack of emphasis is completely warranted. It's irrelevant whether there are Nazis in Russia, or Azerbaijan. It's incredibly relevant how we react to the Nazis that are in Ukraine because that's the reaction Russian propagandists are currently using to maintain the (increasingly fragile) support for the war in Russia.

The alternatives were:

1) Male
2) Female
3) Other
4) I decline to comment — ssu

Of course, 4 would be a performative contradiction.

Wow. Threatening to attack the countries who are arming the one they're at war with!

In other news, bear shits in the woods.

What the fuck did anyone expect to happen? Putin to come on and say "Fair enough I suppose, after all, we're the bad guys"?

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

Which is? — neomac

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

offer a counter argument on logic grounds — neomac

Show me then how my reasoning goes wrong — neomac

Both of these are impossible tasks. I cannot 'show you' how your reasoning goes wrong because whether an argument is reasonable or not is an opinion you hold about it, I can't show you it isn't any more than I can show you that my cup of tea is nice.

Even if I made an argument as simple as "Either A, or ~A", you could still dispute it by rejecting the LEM. What we're discussing is massively more complicated. The idea that either of us could present some 'logical' argument that somehow 'proves' one side or the other is laughable. You're either persuaded by my argument, rhetoric and all, or you're not. That's entirely your preference.

it doesn’t work that way for me. — neomac

I don’t have world views and then look for a pool of experts based on titles and not evident conflict of interests to support my pre-established world views. — neomac

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

Funny how mention of US illegal invasions gets immediately accused of whataboutism, yet not one paragraph about Ukrainian Neo-Nazis can go by without these same voices immediately reaching for "well, Russia has them too".

What relevance does that have to the discussion?

Ukraine has a Neo-Nazi problem. Putin used it (and specifically, US covering up their alliance with them) as a justification for the invasion.

Us then going ahead and doing exactly what Putin wants to say we do (denying the blindingly obvious Neo-Nazi issue) is playing directly into his propaganda. Read the speech. It's not about the mere presence of Neo-Nazis, it's about Western tolerance of them. The exact tolerance useful idiots like we have here are amply demonstrating. If it suits Western purposes (in this case, opposing Russia), we'll turn a blind eye to the far right. It's precisely what Putin used as justification and it's precisely what we're showing to be absolutely true.

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

...and in English?

I never called preposterous the line of reasoning you offered when talking about the moral dilemma “option1 vs option2”, because it doesn’t strike me as evidently implausible, just disputable. — neomac

Well then we have no disagreement. The rest is just your misunderstanding. All I've been arguing is about the moral status of those two positions.

Then it follows that other people act morally only if they act the way you want without further reasons. And if you ever wanted thousands more deaths without further reason, then it would have still been a defensible moral claim to support the continuation of this war. Is that right? — neomac

No. I would have misunderstood the meaning of the word 'moral'. Wanting thousands more deaths is not the sort of thing the word 'moral' is used for.

Briefly, my point has to do with logic consistency not with your rhetorical quibbles. — neomac

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

you are prone to strawmanning your interlocutor (often by conveniently chopping their quotations). — neomac

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

That’s indeed the perfect recipe for feeding one’s own echo chamber — neomac

Yes, I agree. I'm sorry you went to all the later trouble to explain how echo chambers work, butI appreciate the effort.

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

Just walking into a room, your mental models of your environment make up 90% of what you perceive from the fragmented saccades of your vision. Do you seriously believe that with something as complex as a global geopolitical argument, you're going to be doing any less?

So, US officials are saying they've no idea where the weapons they're sending to Ukraine are ending up.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/04/united-states-military-aid-ukraine-war-weapons

Thank goodness there's absolutely no Neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine, and it's not, for example, one of the largest arms trafficking markets in Europe

HA!!!! Just like that, although any critique needs internal support consistent with it. — Mww

Damn, I knew it wouldn't be so easy.

Let's try... any definition of 'rule' would itself be a rule and so one would have to include an understanding of rule-following to understand how to adhere to the definition?

Critical — Mww

Rubbish.

(Like that?)

it is beyond question that the US is not fighting this war directly. They are not among the belligerants. — Olivier5

Also beyond question that Russia is the only party involved with a double consonant in its name.

in places such as this, no one should be conventional. — Mww

Then, dare I ask, what should we be?

Why have you decided to keep replacing the question at hand with a different question. Have you forgotten how conversation works? Would you like me to draw you a diagram?

Ohfercrissakes......all this beating around the proverbial “rule” bush.

Without ever once stating what a rule is — Mww

Why, do you not know? Have you been using the word 'rule' thus far in your (I'm going to guess, substantial) lifespan thus far by just winging it?