If you have any counter-argument beyond huffing your incredulity, feel free to post it.

The loss of their “empire” after the collapse of Soviet Union principally due to NATO expansion and the need to recover their hegemonic status overshadowed by the Americans. — neomac

...is hypothetical.

offensive means to threat Western security — neomac

...the actual use of which is hypothetical.

Russian hegemonic ambitions. — neomac

...which are hypothetical.

promoted/pursued an anti-West alliance with other authoritarian states (like China and Iran) with hegemonic ambitions. — neomac

...hypothetical ambitions.

Russia’s military activity beyond its borders up until now shows an actual non-hypothetical pattern of “Western containment” — neomac

...not even going to dignify this bullshit with a response.


Yes. All of Russia's actions could be interpreted as a threat to the west. Or, they could not.

There's active and informed debate on that subject among experts.

There's no debate at all about the threat Russia poses to Ukraine. That's the difference.

I know it's a very hard thing to grasp, — Wayfarer

This is where you keep equivocating which perpetuates the confusion...

It's not 'hard' to grasp. It's just an option. Unargued for, no evidence, no reasoning... Just a choice.

You're saying we could look at things one way, or the other. A or B. But then when people choose B you want to also say they've 'missed' something, haven't 'grasped' the difficult argument. But there is no argument. Just a declaration that things might be viewed that way.

All the while it's just an option, there's very little of philosophical interest in the mere fact that you chose it.

As this one: acting as if Russia is not a threat to the West, when it is, just because the West ought to be peaceful, is reckless too. — neomac

Yes, it would be. The difference is that Russia's threat to 'the West' is entirely hypothetical, as is the efficacy of war as a tool to deal with it. Russia's threat to Ukraine can hardly be denied.

As ever, this is all based on anonymous insider information, so use your sound judgement. — SophistiCat

"These lunatic conspiracy theorists, with their anonymous sources... Can't wait to see the pro-US goons jump on this... What a joke!"

There.

Just adding that "sound judgment" you're so fond of when dealing with reports based on anonymous sources...

Acting as if something is safe, when it isn't, just because it ought to be, is reckless. It's not complicated.

Please inform us what blame the Ukrainians have / the country of Ukraine has for this war. — ssu

Pretending the world is something it's not.

I ought not have to worry about bad drivers, but if I send my kids out to play in the road, are you seriously suggesting I share none of the blame if an accident happens?

Ukraine ought to be able to enjoy its sovereignty without being threatened by powerful neighbours. Pretending that's how the world is when it blatantly isn't is reckless.

But then everyone knew that, back before we had to pretend we live in Disneyland.

The thing that is being ignored is that none of us are Russian.

This isn't about blame. It's about what we can do (or pressure our leaders to do) to end this war.

All those who want to do nothing but talk about how bad Russia are are basically deciding not to help. If only one country is to blame, then only one can do anything about it. That's not our country, so we just sit back in our armchairs and wait.

Since we are, almost universally, Europeans and Americans, the only relevant question right now is what course of action do we need to campaign for.

We can tally up the score of who caused what when the shelling has stopped. Right now, anything that isn't actively trying to stop it is a waste of time.

social inequalities and prejudices are enshrined in the languages we inherit. We all, here, inherit the language of the British Empire, and its legacies of racist, sexist, classist, and otherwise offensive attitudes. Overcoming these is difficult and has not happened just because the inequalities in the written law may have largely been removed. Old habits die hard. — unenlightened

Absolutely.

How grossly offensive then, when one very minor group of such 'oppressed' people (who just happen to be mostly rich and white), ask for their particular set of oppressive words to be removed and the entire progressive media, most governments of the world and the left-wing pundits jump to it right away.

I'd struggle to think of a more blatant and disgraceful display of contempt for the poor than for our governments and media to say "Oh, we can make all these changes, we can do so very easily - we just didn't in your case".

Or maybe I'm mistaken. I haven't checked the newspapers for a while. Are we perhaps finished with the poor now, are the starving no longer with us, and we can safely move on the merely uncomfortable?

Anyway, censorship being bad might be another reason the Ukrainians aren't into being ruled by the GKremlin? — jorndoe

Then why make (and benefit form allies who make) such copious use of it? It's clearly nonsense to say that a group of people are so opposed to censorship that they're willing to risk their lives to avoid it whilst at the same time use it to greater extents than we've seen since McCarthyism.

Disagreements are occasions for anybody to review their beliefs and reasons, making them explicit, examine how they link together, find inconsistencies, inefficiencies, holes. And what makes this king of exchange philosophical to me is that we can dig further into our background assumptions, especially our conceptual frameworks. — neomac

Bollocks. You've done none of those activities. All you've done is use the spectre of them to pour cold water on any counter-arguments you don't like. For example...

here there is a whole package of deep assumptions of yours that would need some reviewing — neomac

... is typical of your responses. No actual review, no actual analysis, and God forbid any comparison to your own assumptions. Just enough distraction to blunt the point that you have used US government funded sources to back up US government policy.

BTW even opendemocracy is financed by grants from funds and trusts in the hands of philanthropic wealthy or ultracapitalists like Soros. And Soros isn’t so “well reputed“ either, is he? — neomac

Indeed. And if ever I was arguing in favour of the General Theory of Reflexivity I wouldn't cite a Soros-funded think tank in support of such an argument as it would be obviously at risk of bias.

You cited US government funded think tanks to support your belief in a US government policy. It's not just intellectually dishonest, it downright dumb. You seriously think that an organisation funded by the US government and arms manufacturers is going to give you an honest assessment of the state of the war in which both are intimately involved?

My criteria for placing trust in source of information is not based exclusively nor primarily on the distinction between mainstream and non-mainstream as you seem to suggest. — neomac

No indeed, it also seems predicated on the extent to which they support your pre-existing ideas.

Besides your argument looks questionable for 2 reasons: on one side, it recommends not to be dismissive toward views alternative to the ones spread by mainstream outlets while suggesting to be definitely dismissive toward the mainstream outlets (“mainstream outlets can't be trusted (and they definitely can’t)” as if mainstream outlets are like astrologists). — neomac

How is that questionable. I'm saying don't trust mainstream outlets on certain issues because they're funded by the people who benefit from the issue in question. There's no contradiction there, no error of fact. So in what way is it "questionable"?

even if it was true that definitely mainstream outlets can’t be trusted, that doesn’t imply non-mainstream views can definitely be trusted — neomac

Absolutely. Which would be why I never made such a claim.

your argument is so general that it holds for any alleged non-mainstream view (islamists, nazis, anarchists, satanists, QAnon or flat-earth believers, etc.) — neomac

No it doesn't. I'm referring here solely to the use of expert opinion. Not lay opinion. If you can find me an expert in geology who thinks the earth is flat we can have that discussion, otherwise this is just more straw-manning. We hear this garbage argument every time someone brings up an alternative perspective; it's like you guys just pick these off the shelf.

Hopefully, no one suggests gagging Chomsky (or worse) similarly. :) — jorndoe

Perish the thought...

https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/21/patrick-lawrence-totalized-censorship/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=patrick-lawrence-totalized-censorship

Hmm Gotta' wonder what Putin would do with all that in case the diplomats came through with something... — jorndoe

Well, yeah. That's a major problem for both sides. The more Putin portrays this as an existential battle for Russian pride, and the more the West portray Putin as nothing more than an evil supervillain bent on taking over the world, the further we get from a plausible negotiating position on either side, which literally every expert consulted agrees is the only way out of this.

Why didn't you vote idealist then? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know, it's a complete mystery. It couldn't possibly be because I disagree with you about the definition, because the notion of anyone disagreeing with you is obviously absurd, so... I'm at a loss I'm afraid.

if you equate enlightenment and data-harvesting then there is probably no enlightenment to be had. — Wayfarer

Intriguing. So does enlightenment give no information at all? If 'the world' is more than just the sensible objects, then any form of 'revelation' takes to form of data about the way the world is. Religious prophets are saying something about what is the case, so they must, by some means, have gathered that data.

You can't have it both ways, you can't claim that the world (all that is the case) encompasses more than just material sense data, but then say that knowledge obtained by revelation isn't data-harvesting.

Trails of (independent) evidence paint a picture and also suggests modus operandi, fingerprints, tell-tale tracks. — jorndoe

Perhaps you could link to some? Despite truly bizarre assumptions to the contrary, the various governments are actually quite sophisticated in their 'information wars'. They don't tend to leave White House postmarks on their secret communiqués, or give anonymous tips to the newspaper calling themselves "Agent...I mean, Mr, Smith".

It's insufficient to simply point to a source that says it's independent. I don't want to shock delicate ears, but people have been known to lie sometimes. A little background checking (funding sources, affiliations, history) is the bare minimum requirement these days.

The shamming, organized re-enculturation efforts, subversion (mentioned in the thread prior) are also parts thereof.
...

Grabbing Crimea and eastern "insurgence" (followed by "annexation") are fairly hands-on type pieces of evidence — jorndoe

I don't see how. Pretty much all of Russia's actions so far which cannot be denied (the war itself, the sham referenda, the annexing, the bombing, the inhumanity...) are indicators of a ruthless country invading a neighbour. No one is disputing that simple fact. The dispute is over the question of why they invaded, and (more importantly) how best to bring the invasion to an end.

I think that the really deep aspects of the various world philosophical traditions do far, far more than just 'think about it'. They have their methodologies, strict, rigorous, and highly disciplined. — Wayfarer

Oh, indeed. I wouldn't want to be read as denying that. But they are all thought-based, they all rely on some 'data-harvesting' method, be it meditation, revelation, or enlightenment...

The point I was making is that there's no connection between the methodology, no matter how strict and disciplined, and 'truthiness' because there cannot be (under a model-dependent realism). Any mechanism, be it empirical theory-testing, or some deeply disciplined religious practice can only ever be used to check constraints because it is only constraints that we are able to become aware of (like a blind man can only tell by bumping into a wall that he has come to the edge of the room).

A revelation from some deep meditative practice may find an 'edge' that empirical science cannot find, but what it can't do (as with empirical science) is show, merely by methodology, that the model it's come up with using those edges is more of less likely to be true.

The religious (or otherwise spiritual) have not found any way past the fundamental problem that no matter what method we use to obtain data (sensory inputs or 'revelation') we still cannot verify the accuracy of the information thereby gained by anything other than simply 'more of the same'.

The point I was making is that there's a tendency to try and get around this problem by claiming consensus, or popularity (or I suppose in religious terms, tradition) all get at the truth better. But they don't. There's no intrinsic connection (as my thought experiment was designed to show).

I can't see a way around the problem, myself. Certain methods of dealing with data qualify as being 'connected' to the world and so produce what we might call 'reasonable' theories - as opposed to merely guessing, or making stuff up. But within that canon, there doesn't seem to be any reliable process for choosing between them. If they meet the criteria of not being overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, then then seem to all be equally fair game.

I've often heard the view I subscribe to called model-dependant realism, but I don't know if that's the right term. It's interesting to me that most of what comes out of discussions like this seems to hinge on the significance of the extents to which our understanding (our models, in my terminology) are constrained by external forces. The realist sees the existence of constraints as the most significant element, the idealist sees the degree of freedom within those constraints as the most important bit. Each, I'd venture, has their reasons for wanting to highlight their particular favoured aspect, probably the one they feel has been most maligned (or simply sidelined) by the culture they find themselves in.

The realist gets the certainty they're looking for. There's a lot of anti-religion campaigning (Dawkins et al), but also fights between realists over what is real where one side want the bigger stick and the last thing each want is a truce. But the ultra-realists (my made up term here) will be dissatisfied with model-dependant realism because science thereby ends up far more Kuhnian than Popperian. It looks more like each new competing theory might simply be better defining the space of constraints than approaching some ultimate truth.

On the other hand, I think the Idealist is no less dissatisfied. They regain their God, their 'soul' or their charkha healing because their dismissal by science now looks less strict. But they too lose their claim to the ultimate truth. One can hardly invoke the unavoidable subjectivity of interpretation to regain access to the mysterious, yet at the same time claim access to a single ultimate truth via the most subjective means out there. If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement.

Both, I think, ultimately (assuming model-dependant realism) find themselves in the same statistical quandary of wanting to associate truth value with popularity. The scientistic wants the 'consensus' theory to have more weight, the religious want the 'serious' religions to be taken...well, more seriously. But neither can have what they want out of this model (and so both are dissatisfied). Despite intuitions which may seem to tell us the opposite, there's no mechanism (in this model) to connect popularity with truthiness. We can show this with a simple thought experiment.

Probably excessive armchair psychologising (so sue me), but I think that's why these debates go on so, and possibly why nuanced alternatives to hard-realism or hard-idealism are increasingly popular, yet still argued as vehemently.

As already said, “likelihood” expresses to me an assessment of the degree of confidence. There is no formula about this. Just informal assessment about what I’ve read so far from different sources — neomac

Is there then a reason why you'd expect your "informal assessment" to be the same as anyone else's? You seem affronted by the fact that other people's views are different to yours. If you recognise it's all just "informal assessment" that should be expected.

CSIS — neomac

... seriously?

CSIS is funded largely by Western and Gulf monarchy governments, arms dealers and oil companies, such as Raytheon, Boeing, Shell, the United Arab Emirates, US Department of Defense, UK Home Office, General Dynamics, Exxon Mobil, Northrop Grumman, Chevron and others. — https://fair.org/home/nyt-reveals-think-tank-its-cited-for-years-to-be-corrupt-arms-booster/

WilsonCenter — neomac

... uh huh

Approximately one-third of the center's operating funds come annually from an appropriation from the U.S. government, and the center itself is housed in a wing of the Ronald Reagan Building, a federal office building where the center enjoys a 30-year rent-free lease. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson_International_Center_for_Scholars

RUSI — neomac

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/why-is-bbc-presenting-rusi-as-objective-analysts-of-middle-east/

None of this is difficult to find. You just don't want to find it.

I don’t think that non-US and non-Western administrations and media are immune from accusations about their honesty. The same goes for non-mainstream and anti-system source, not mention that they can absolutely be infiltrated, exploited and financed by foreign powers. What one can infer from such predicament or how we may cope with it is up for debate. — neomac

It's really very, very simple. Don't dismiss dissent from mainstream views as if it were the notions of some conspiratorial nutters.

If mainstream outlets can't be trusted (and they definitely can't) then views which dissent from the mainstream are not compromised simply because of that dissent. It is not a 'mark against them' in terms of credibility.

No specific evidence has been put forward to justify the two-step plan — https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/13/russias-fsb-agency-engineering-coups-ukrainian-cities

I can't find in there a single reference to...

a coup attempt in the works in Ukraine — ssu

... nor...

lots of willing Quislings on it's side, starting perhaps from Viktor Yanukovich himself. — ssu

Can you reference the source of those claims more clearly. A wall of text just looks like deliberate obfuscation. If you know where the evidence is, just quote it.

Also a considerable chunk of your 'evidence' comes directly from the US government or Ukrainian government sources. You can't seriously expect me to take those sources seriously in the circumstances.

If I understand you correctly you are claiming that by denying that we can talk about the way things are independent of us I am talking about the way things are independent of us? — Fooloso4

Yes. That it is something we cannot talk about is one of its properties, you are therefore talking about it. I listed a few other properties. That it is external to us is another property about which we can talk.

Then there's the perpetually occult property of its containing objects that are 'as they are'...

So, would you say the world is external to human experience or not? — Janus

I think it's both. When we use the word 'world' in that context it encompasses both the variable products of human experience and the proposed causes of those experiences.

Trees are in the world. They are obviously to some extent a product of human experience (I doubt a creature at a radically different scale to us would identify such an object), but it is also constrained by factors external to our experience, otherwise we'd have no entropic factor in our models, no uncertainty.

The idea of 'as it really is' seems to me to be intellectual quicksand, however. It can surely only ever be something in relation to something else? Do you think this is bad thinking? — Tom Storm

Yes, that's right.

We cannot at the same time conceive of such a thing as a 'world as it is' and claim such a world is independent of our machinery of conception. I clearly just used such machinery to conceive of it.

The moment we include any creation, any theory, model or idea within our arsenal of concepts, it is of us, not outside of us.

we go too far if we draw the conclusion that there is a way things are that is independent of us that we can know or talk about in a meaningful way. — Fooloso4

Then what is...

Do we experience it as it is? No. — Fooloso4

...?

That sounds an awful lot like someone talking about the way things are that is independent of us. You're describing one of its properties - that it differs from the way we experience things. Another of its properties is apparently that we cannot 'see' it. Another is that it is responsible for our sense data...

That's a surprisingly comprehensive description of something you apparently can't say anything meaningful about.

As opposed to claims about how things are independent of us. — Fooloso4

That's the concept that's unclear. What do you mean when you say that a thing can be some way independent of us. What sort of properties could it have, what might it's boundaries be? I can't make any sense of an object having a 'way' it is that is the way it 'really' is.

Take a tree. I think its a tall plant with a trunk and green leaves. What might it be 'as it is'?

Things are for us as observed or conceived or experimented on by us — Fooloso4

As opposed to what?

I never said he did. — RussellA

Then you've failed to provide any evidence to back up your claim that...

A Direct Realist argues that they have direct knowledge of the world, and therefore knows that there is a tree there. — RussellA

the model and what the model is of are one and the same, — RussellA

That's not remotely what Searle is saying there. He's saying that one does not 'experience' pain because pain is an experience. Likewise one does not 'experience' a perceptual representation because representing something is an experience, not an object.

The quote has nothing to do with modeling external objects. He's certainly not saying models and that which they model are identical. That would be absurd.

If the Direct Realist doesn't claim that have they have direct knowledge of the world, what do they claim ? — RussellA

Direct doesn't exclude the possibility of error, so it in no way assumes perfect knowledge. You said yourself...

For the Indirect Realist:
1) We directly perceive sense data. — RussellA

Does that directness mean it is impossible to be wrong? That no error can possibly occur between sense data and conscious awareness?

No, seeing is a kind of mapping. — hypericin

So do we see trees then?

Finally.

Do we experience it as it is? No. — Fooloso4

What does it mean for an object to be 'as it is' (or the oft substituted 'as it really is')?

The tree is real, and the tree as represented experientially is not the "way the tree really is" — hypericin

Right. So when the vaccine scientist sees the result of their test in the pertri dish, it's not the way the result 'really is'. We ought doubt it.

It is likely a faithful mapping of real properties of the tree, but it is a mapping — hypericin

So we map trees, but we don't see trees? Any reason why the normal use of the word 'see' here is replaced with 'map'? what was wrong with 'see' to describe (as it has done for thousands of years) the process of what you're now calling 'mapping' the tree?

don't know why you think I have "trouble with trees". I have none. — hypericin

You said...

I'm quite certian I'm not "seeing the tree as it really is" — hypericin

Are you also quite certain that vaccine researchers are not seeing the results of their tests as they really are? That they may well be wrong?

The point is your sophistic uncertainty about the external world is performatively contradicted by your every action toward it. You are certain that the chemicals in the vaccine will have a real effect on real cells in your body to help fight off real virus particles. You don't even doubt it as much as you should, let alone as much as you claim to doubt the reality of trees.

knowing what is meant often depends on context, which is often ambiguous. — RussellA

But the context in which 'see' means to get signals from an internal model absent of any involvement of the eyes seem entirely a fabrication of philosophers pushing the brand of indirect realism for which it was coined. It's not in common use in any other field. So why fabricate it thus?

I think that I am seeing only one thing, a model of a tree in my mind. — RussellA

So your eyes are not even involved in seeing? If you don't see the tree, then how do you know what it is your model is a model of?

What exists in the world are elementary particles, elementary forces and space-time. — RussellA

How do you know they exist? The only means we have of detecting them has been via the same flawed senses which you doubt can detect a tree. How on earth can they now detect an elementary particle?

a tree is is stored in the public domain — RussellA

So if what you see matches the definition in that public domain, in what sense have you still not seen a tree?

I may believe that there is a tree in the field and can justify my belief, but a justified belief is not knowledge.

To be knowledge, the justified belief has to be true. There arrives the problem.

A Direct Realist argues that they have direct knowledge of the world, and therefore knows that there is a tree there. — RussellA

No direct realist I've ever read claims this. Do you have a quote or reference to work from?

how deep Russian influence operations in Ukraine went. — ssu

Evidence.

Prior to the February 2022 assault, there likely was a coup attempt in the works in Ukraine — ssu

Evidence.

Russia had lots of willing Quislings on it's side, starting perhaps from Viktor Yanukovich himself. — ssu

Evidence.

If I’m claiming that “Russia likely pursued regime change in the first phase of the war based on what has been reported”, I need to provide what has been reported. And I did. — neomac

No. If your claim is about likelihood, you need to provide some metric of likelihood (or prove that your record of 'what has been reported' is exhaustive). Without either, all you've shown is that it is plausible that Russia pursued regime change in the first phase of the war. You've not presented an argument regarding the claim that it was 'likely'.

Second “burden of proof” is limited by the available information — neomac

That is why we are making alternative sources of information available to you. If you ignore them, that's an issue of bias, not availability.

Generically speaking, the platforms I reported from (and they were just a part of the sources I consulted) are well reputed, domain-specific, corroborate each other and do not contradict my wider background assumptions. — neomac

Nonsense. You cite US government sources and those who cite them in turn, occasionally turning to Western mainstream media. None of these are "well reputed". The US government have been shown time and time again to lie; with sources from military intelligence it is literally their job to lie (when it serves their country's interests). As to mainstream Western media, only recently has the Columbia Journalism Review written a damning report of press coverage regarding Russia, and here on the Ukraine war itself, The Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting group have written a considerable number of articles highlighting serious bias in press reporting (including specifically on Ukraine), not to mention the shocking level of blatant racism.

As I said. If you merely want to claim plausibility, it is sufficient that your sources meet a threshold of expertise (which military intelligence and sourced journalism would meet), but if you want to claim 'likelihood' you need to show how your sources are more likely to be right than others, You've not even begun to make that argument.

It's very hard to follow any of your arguments (as it was in your responses to me) because you keep vacillating between disproof, proof and plausibility.

It would significantly help those attempting to follow along if you could decide which you are attempting and stick to it.

If you want only to prove that your view is plausible, then you need to show that you have sufficient evidence and that it is trustworthy. You're failing to do that because you're instead asking others to show their evidence or to show yours isn't trustworthy. This is an incorrect burden of proof for this type of claim. Other people lacking evidence is not evidence that your position is plausible, it's evidence that their position might not be.

If you want to prove that another's view is implausible, then you need to show that their position is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary. You keep failing to do this because you revert instead to merely showing that there is evidence to contrary (sufficient to show your view is plausible, but insufficient to show another's view isn't).

If you want to prove that your view is more likely true than another's, then you need to have some metric of likelihood. Again, you keep failing to do this, merely pointing out that there exists evidence of alternative views, none of which has any bearing on likelihood.

You've written huge volumes of text, all of which add up to nothing more than that there exists evidence which supports (some of) your views. That's not an argument. That's the bare minimum threshold of entry into the debate. You then have to go on to argue either likelihood, or the implausibility (lack of evidence) for the alternative view. Otherwise, all you're doing is showing, at enormous length, that you qualify to be heard. Something which no-one is now contesting.

I bet none of them are thinking 'what am I doing here?' or 'what does being an elephant mean, really?' They don’t have the predicament of selfhood. — Wayfarer

I've always thought this position really odd. I mean you've literally zero evidence either way. There's no behavioural indicator of questioning selfhood and no reason to think a spoken language is required. So why would you "bet" either way?

If you were to "to describe everything I know of sight", how long would it take? An hour? A day? A year? Just roughly...

On the contrary, I'm quite certian I'm not "seeing the tree as it really is" — hypericin

Exactly my point. You have trouble with the tree, yet when considering, say public health policy (over which you've become quite hysterically opposed to alternative views) you are absolutely pathologically certain of what you believe to be the case about the world.

Why is it in complex cases of public health policy you're absolutely certain that the way the world seems to you is the way it is, but with a simple tree you're unsure?