When's the last time you looked for an analysis of the Russia/Ukraine conflict? Three years ago? — frank

Yesterday. I read the Kyiv Post maybe once or twice a week.

There's also a show in Australia called "Planet America", which is enjoyable. It's a mix of news and comedy - it might have once been called "satire" but that term no longer works in relation to US politics.

I suppose that the US foreign policy is perhaps more important to folk outside the US than to folk inside.

The tariffs are curious because they are somewhat novel and unpredictable. Estimates put the reduction of US GDP at up to 6%, and it is this slow down of the US economy that will have the greater effect on Australia, rather than a 10% tariff on our exports to the US. If everyone else ends up paying 10% or more, then that makes little difference to our competitiveness in the US market.

remember that it is the US customer, not Australia, who pays the 10%.

Australia's economy is much more closely aligned with that of China than the US, has been for decades, so the US economy is increasingly irrelevant. But our foreign policy remains closely aligned with that of the US and Europe, an it is this tension that is interesting here.

So the talks in Alaska matter at least as much to us as US economic decisions.

What may be developing is an alliance between Australia, Japan and South Korea, independent of US foreign policy. Australia is re-assessing it's own attitude in the light of the changes in the US.

I don't understand why non-Americans always focus on the stuff that doesn't really matter. — frank

The talks with Putin regarding Ukraine don't matter?

The Reserve Bank has published a study confirming that growing concentration in the Australian economy has contributed to poorer productivity growth and higher mark-ups.

How Costly are Mark-ups in Australia? The Effect of Declining Competition on Misallocation and Productivity

https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/08/15/reserve-bank-corporate-profiteering-productivity-roundtable/

There is substantial evidence that the degree of competition in the Australian economy has declined over the decade or so leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has the potential to weigh on productivity, and in turn incomes, and so the welfare of the Australian people. In this paper we calibrate the general equilibrium model from Edmond, Midrigan and Xu (2023) to Australian microdata to answer the following question: If the degree of competition in the Australian economy had not declined from mid-2000s levels, how much higher would aggregate productivity and GDP be due to resources being better allocated across firms throughout the economy? The answer, according to this model, is 1–3 per cent. The model also suggests even larger economic costs once we account for other channels through which rising mark-ups affect the economy, though these are less precisely estimated. — Reserve bank

So corporate profiteering is costing 1 to 3 percent of GDP.

Keep this in mind as the week progresses, in relation to the forthcoming productivity discussions.

Pissant. Makes a big fuss, gets the attention because of the smell, ruins the barbecue for everyone else and does nothing useful.

What’s that horrible Americanism that Trump sycophants always used about the findings of various criminal and civil investigations into him, even when they were clearly incriminatory? — Wayfarer

TACO?

I prefer pissant.

Catness is that which is had by a cat, such that it is a cat and not some other thing.

Somewhat circular, no? — Banno

How so? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, if you can't see the circularity in setting out the essence of cats in terms of catness, and catness in terms of what it is to be a cat, and what it is to be a cat in terms of essence, there's not much more to say.

If we say a being a cat consists in having some set of properties... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not something I'd agree with. It presumes that there is a something it is to being a cat...

Simpler to just say that some individuals are cats. Telling, in it's way. You appear to think that the only alternative to essentialism is reductionism, so that's what you are addressing. But what is being mooted here is that we simply do not need access to an essence. Not even a reductionist one - if by that what you mean is "some set of properties."

A particular picture of how language works has you enthralled. In that picture there is a something that is the meaning of a word, and the aim is to set out what that something is.

But what if there is no such something? What if we just use words, and in using them get on with life?

Perhaps you cannot see how this would work. Hence your rejection of Quine and Wittgenstein and most anything more recent than the French Revolution.

But sure, we agree that there are cats and trees.

Neither does anyone say how “catness” is used. You just use it. — Fire Ologist

Think on this a bit, if you will. It carried the very point Wittgenstein and others have made against essences.

You choose to ignore the fact that we ubiquitously use words without having at hand an essence.

We just don't need essences to get on. They are a philosopher's invention.

Meaning is use. — Fire Ologist

Actually it's don't look to the meaning, look instead to the use.

Played.

Before the talks, Trump told Fox 'I won't be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire'

After the talks, 'No deal until there's a deal', whatever the fuck that means.

Pissant.

Should put the whole thing to bed. — Apustimelogist

You'd think.

But we have a couple of folk who insist on using syllogistic logic together with essentialism, in order to defend a particular theological dogma.

The thread isn't going to end any time soon.

Cheers.

To be sure, anomalous Monism remains an area of great interest and ongoing development. Just look at the list of supplements to the SEP article on that topic.

SO all ready to watch Putin play Trump, yet again?

but the issue is similar, — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, it isn't. An individual is not a kind.

Israel is Palestine
Israel is a Jewish state
Therefore, Palestine is a Jewish state. — Count Timothy von Icarus

All this shows is ~(Israel = Palestine). They are not identical, and so substitution fails.

That there is some difference as to the identity of Spiderman suggests that we sort out the identity before we start substitution.

Referential opacity is not about ambiguity.

...catness... — Count Timothy von Icarus

But it seems you can never quite say what "catness" is.

Catness is that which is had by a cat, such that it is a cat and not some other thing.

As if this were an explanation. Somewhat circular, no?

I suggest that we do manage to use the word "cat" without having available some essence that specifies what is a cat and what isn't.

We can of course stipulate such an essence. But we do not need to in order to use the word.

It simply is not true that there is some fundamental unchanging nature which all cats possess, unless we stipulate such a nature.

67. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait,
temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.— And I shall say: 'games' form a family.

And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a—direct—relationship with several things that have hitherto
been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And
the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.

But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions—namely the disjunction of all their common properties"—I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread— namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres". — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Added: for those watching on, The article in question is Why alchemists can make gold.

Essence is the meaning of a word that might be compiled from an analysis of all of the uses of a word - if we quantify and collect all of the uses of a word and find its mean use, we’d hold the essence. — Fire Ologist

Fucksake.

The 20th century just didn't happen for some folk.

It's coming to Broadway next month with Keanu Reeves. I hear the music score and dancing are amazing.. — Hanover

I can't wait for Disney to release the animation...

Who's the positivist?

You aren't using the identity elimination schema there. — frank

Yep.

The schema says that if we have a true formula containing an individual variable a, and if we have a=b, then we can replace a in with b, and the formula will remain true.

Do you recall this?

The problem here is an equivocation on "water" as chemical identity versus as a particular phase of that substance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. The problem is that you have moved from individuals to natural kinds.

Oh, Tim.

Referential opacity is to do with individuals, not natural kinds.

In first-order logic a,b,c... are variables picking out individuals. Identity elimination is the rule that if a=b than for any formula that contains a we can write another formula replacing every instance of a with b and this formula will have the exact same truth value. That's pretty much the definition of "=".

That's why we use the individuals Superman and Kent.

Your examples use kinds, not individuals.

Steam is H2O
Ice is H2O
Therefore, steam is ice — Count Timothy von Icarus

would be parsed as

U(x)(x is steam ⊃ x is H₂O)
U(x)(x is ice ⊃ x is H₂O)
Therefore
U(x)(x is steam ⊃x is ice)

It's the same as "All cats are mammals, all dogs are mammals, therefore all cats are dogs".

That's a nice and thought-provoking collection of examples. — Ludwig V

I don't agree.

That might be true, but I did specify structure. — AmadeusD

Yes, as did I. The structure of your occipital lobe is very different to mine.

Leave it.

We both have occipital lobes, I assume, however the neuronal connections in your occipital lobe are vastly different to mine.

So we both report that some thing is red, despite having different perceptual systems.

Some hold these views — AmadeusD

Sure, but they are wrong. So what's "unhelpful and lazy" might be allowing them to go ahead unopposed, or allowing their wrong ideas to decide what we do.

Not following your argument, but then I did miss a bit.

These rely on our reports of what they do to our perceptual system though. — AmadeusD

Notice that we - you and I - do not share a perceptual system? We have one each.

What is it that we do share?

, Thought as much. So let's not entertain opinions otherwise. Whether "most" people are against it or not, it's wrong.

So what's all this about?

This response to this thread stands:

The thing is, you started this walk by yourself, and forgot about other people. That's the trouble with idealists - they are all of them closet solipsists." — Banno

We'll continue to use "colour" as we long have, regardless of peculiar and idiosyncratic stipulations of those on Philosophy forums.

Who here thinks honour killings are... honourable?

...this contradiction can easily be resolved. — Ludwig V

What contradiction? Leon seems to think that no relation can be between a thing and itself. But seven is less than or equal to seven, and your phone is the same size as your phone, and you are the same age as yourself. There's no logical problem in something standing in relation to itself.

It seems that people are quite unwilling just to accept the restriction. — Ludwig V

Yep. Quine's contribution was to put the problem in terms of substitution, and hence in terms of extensionality, and so presenting it as a puzzle of logical form as opposed to a physiological issue. It's a change in emphasis, one that greatly clarifies the apparent problem. To talk in terms of believing, knowing, questioning and so on is to set different logical contexts. Mixing those contexts is what leads to our considering the opacity of reference.

So let's look at the example:

a. Superman is Clark Kent. Major
b. Lois believes that Superman can fly. Minor
c. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly. a, b =E — IEP

The logical problem is that there are two contexts in this deduction. The first line is in a different context to the other two. There's no problem with:

a. Superman is Clark Kent.
b. Superman can fly.
c. ∴ Clark Kent can fly.

nor with:

a. Lois believes that Superman is Clark Kent.
b. Lois believes that Superman can fly.
c. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly.

And indeed this last can be re-written as

Lois believes that:
a. Superman is Clark Kent.
b. Lois believes that Superman can fly.
c. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly.

In this last we can see the whole in a single context. The problem - so far as there is one - only arrises when the contexts are muddled together. That's what Quine pointed out.

The context here is not mysterious - it's simply the result of our being able to talk about sentences. The "god's eye view" answer is another muddle, supposing some transcendent truth.

In a forum in which even the logically straight forward puzzle posed by incites page after page of disagreement, such a response will not satisfy everyone. Here's another example that might help make the contexts clear.

a. Ludwig believes that Superman is Clark Kent.
b. Lois believes that Superman can fly.
c. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly.

Hopefully folk can see why this is a non sequitur. Ludwig's beliefs are a different context to Lois' beliefs, so the deduction fails.

Notice that the reasons that Ludwig and Lois have different beliefs are irrelevant to the analysis here. Nor do we need to attach a sense to the proper names involved, in the way Frege suggested. Quine's answer is elegant and brief.

I suspect that you, @Ludwig V, are familiar with all this.

You might notice that the "Lois believes..." appears to predicate over sentences. The Problem Davidson set himself was to parse as much as he could of English (and any natural language) into first order logic. Hence, very roughly, his solution of treating the content of beliefs as themselves an individual. "Superman can fly. Lois believes that" where "that" refers to the first sentence.

We might still wish to explain the psychology - why Lois and Ludwig have such different beliefs. But that's a seperate question.

Anyway, that might make clearer what I meant by "sorting out the scope".

See what I mean? — I like sushi

Not really. You have three distinct issues, phenomenology, referential opacity and Anomalous Monism. Bringing them together is no short order.

Cheers.

I'm still not following you. He certainly thinks there are physical causes - laws, if you like. You'd have to explain how what he calls a mental even is always a phenomenological event, if that is what you are claiming - it's not what I understand. He does deny the identity of mental and physical events. He rather infamously accepts extensional first order logic, so he does use substitution.

The position he takes is quite developed, a life's work, so difficult to do justice to it in a few sentences. You seem to be importing a phenomenological gap that Davidson doesn’t actually formulate in those terms.

Might let it go until there is an agreed background?

It has tendency to slip into that. — Punshhh

And when not navel gazing, it's Spinoza for retired engineers. Ok. I supose it keeps them off the streets.

navel gazing — Punshhh

Is that what it is? Ok.

He himself point sout this discrepency between the phenomenological and nomological meanings when appying them to Supervenience. — I like sushi

I don't see that. I don't see what it is you are driving at. I don't think he is doing what you claim; but then, I'm not sure what it is you are claiming.

Indeed, on a search, the word 'phenomenological' does not appear to occur at all in Actions and Events. "Phenomenalism" does, also on p. 217, in "the catalogue of philosophy's defeats".

I hope it is clear that Davidson is rejecting nomological connections between the mental and the physical. That's the very point of the anomalism of the metal.

...flipping tractors is not a good idea... — Janus

That I didn't is clear evidence of divine intervention. God is on my side. Turning and seeing the wheels three feet off the ground was very - sobering.

We were manually running a chain around the Lantana in order to avoid pulling out the natives, then ripping it out with the tractor. Effective but slow. It was off the edge of the escarpment, so pretty steep, I nearly flipped the tractor a few times.

Cheers, Olo.

Yeah, OK. Phenomenological difference is a difference in conceptual role, not a difference in referent, so not following this at all. Have you a phenomenological account of referential opacity?

I spent a summer pulling out lantana when I was seventeen. Not fun. That was further south, near Comboyne. My hippie girl and I got chased out of Lake Cathie, "We don't want your kind 'round here - get a job!". I don't think they had good experiences with the folk from your area.

Nausea is pretty tedious.

I'm thinking it best if I just let you go. Have fun.

Sure. :meh:

I can't see how that links to what I understand about Davidson.

I've no idea what you said here. Sorry.

Nice. I haven't been up that way since I was a kid. I presume you grow a few "herbs"... not need to answer. Ours is a suburban block, carved into multiple beds, so not at all large scale, just enough to feed us in Summer. We host the occasional "herb", which is legal here - or at leat not illegal...

How did you fare in the rain?

I've read Being and Nothingness - as an undergrad requirement, so never completely. I also read Nausea, but I quite like radishes. I don't mind No Exit. Read the Plague and of course the Myth of Sisyphus. Can't think what else. However if I had to pick a fav existential work it would be Waiting for Godot.

Added: Not sure we should count Camus as an existentialist...