Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game. Wealth is created and constantly expands. — NOS4A2

i don't think socialists understand that.

They're not doing it to win the moral argument, they're doing it to stop the police killing them — Michael

I agree with that. It's the looting and burning and things spiraling out of control with people getting hurt. That's on the police as well as the rioters.

My comment was directed at those in this thread, not protesters.

The sticking point is what such belief is... what it consists of. — creativesoul

True. What does cognitive science say about animal intelligence? Would it be the same for us, plus the linguistic ability where we translate beliefs to language? Or do we internalize the language as beliefs?

Does a bear shit in the woods? — StreetlightX

I don't know comrade. Tell me.

So far neither Bitwhatsheface nor Marches seem to give shit other than to suck the balls of Target. Would seem to be joining in. — StreetlightX

Sounds like a logical fallacy.

Society was already burning, you're just too blind to see it. — StreetlightX

You mean you're itching for the greedy, evil capitalistic system to burn. The thing that's the cause of all evil in the world.

I think when people are faced with injustice, winning the moral argument is the least of their concern. — Michael

And that's how all kinds of bad shit gets justified during a revolution.

What they want is to not be killed by the police. — Michael

How does arguing on here for a socialist revolution do that?

I don't know what the fuck side you're talking about. — StreetlightX

The one that wants to burn society to the ground versus the one that doesn't.

So fix that with more dying and starving?

Maybe there's a better way.

Your side lost the moral argument.

Enough. — 180 Proof

So you're willing to have people die and starve. Does it mater who they are?

It's possible to do anything you want. — StreetlightX

Or argue for it.

Because the only reason to not loot Target before was because you were upholding society's contract. [But] there is no contract if law and people in power don't uphold their end of it". — StreetlightX

Also because I think it's wrong. But let's replace looting Target with looting X, or committing crime Y against target X. So if the social contract is voided, why not just do whatever?

That's to say, I don't think considerations of corporate finances outweigh those of social justice. (And by the way, none of this argument relies on the idea of the overthrow of capitalism). — Baden

I can agree with that, but only if it's effective and doesn't hurt people in the community who need to work and shop there, beyond an inconvenience. Like impoverishing the community if businesses move away and the local economy can't replace it.

Now you're getting it. — StreetlightX

How many people are you willing to have die and starve for that to happen?

Are you suggesting that propositions somehow exist prior to language? — creativesoul

I'm suggesting there's more to belief than being able to express it in language.

The only thing extreme is the utter shitness of the a society in which George Floyds happen regularly and when all people like you can moan about are property. — StreetlightX

The only extreme? Like there is no worse way for society to go?

Well shit, let's burn it all to the ground and start over.

Good, 'cause I'm not. — StreetlightX

Unfortunately, people who think like you do, as far as the extremism goes.

You make some good points, but then throw it away with the extremist stuff. I think your approach to society would be worse than what it is now. But some reforms within the current system along those lines would be good, in moderation.

I wasn't responding to your arguments. But I added a paragraph on what I think needs to happen, somehow.

Got anything else to say? — Baden

Yeah, I don't think a socialist overthrow of capital is going to solve the problem of racism. A nation-wide reform of police departments from top to bottom is a good start, though.

Cops with prior incidents need to be reviewed and fired or charged as necessary. There needs to be better and longer training in de=escalation. And the psychopathic power hungry ones need to be weeded out of the hiring process.

Also, further investigation into white supremacy groups inside the police. They need to be removed.

Not focusing on that makes it look like you're not interested in what's significant here. — Baden

You mean like all the talk about capitalism? That's a separate issue from police racism and brutality, and yet certain revolutionaries want to make it about that.

Fuck you. I said keep the anger targeted at the police.

Especially the part about the rest of the community needing to being threatened. /s

Says who? — 180 Proof

Not MLK or Gandhi.

Scorched Earth is a venerable military tactic, of proven effectiveness. — unenlightened

It's also an ends justify the means. It would be better if the human race didn't use that tactic.

s directed at property and guess which one I care about — Maw

Some of that property is people's livelihoods. Nice of you not to care. Why not just focus on the police?

You don't get to decide what is and is not enough from your high chair. — StreetlightX

You don't live there, so you don't get to decide either.

Why not just make it simple and condemn police brutality while also condemning lawless rioting? — BitconnectCarlos

Because they want a socialist revolution.

"Rioting is not senseless destruction; on the contrary, it is often (even without explicit intention) a deeply political challenge to property and white supremacy —two concepts intractably entwined in this former slaveholder republic. Only when rendered in the language of capital are the acts of smashing chain store and cop car windows sufficient to see a protest deemed “violent”; but this is the media lingua franca... — StreetlightX

You can argue that for a Target, but those aren't the only buildings being looted and burnt. It's harder to make that case for locally owned. I think it's better to ask the people who have to live with the aftermath whether they think it's an effective strategy.

Burning precincts and cop cars should be enough to get everyone's attention. No need to destroy the rest of the community.

However, in a later passage he seems to clarify what he has in mind. In paragraph 42 Wittgenstein speaks of the "mental state of conviction," and that this state of conviction is something that occurs regardless of whether a proposition is true or false. Wittgenstein seems to refer to it as a subjective state of certainty, and we observe this in the way people speak or gesticulate. The way we gesticulate will often show our convictions. Moore's claim to knowledge seems to be more in line with this subjective state of certainty, than with real knowledge claims. This will be developed more as we look at these passages. — Sam26

This is very interesting. So Moore is misusing the word "know" to instead refer to a feeling of certainty.

As a side note, it's also interesting that Wittgenstein is referring to a mental state.

Why did Moore choose hands to make his point? — TheMadFool

Would you have preferred a different body part?

Probably because hands are harder to be skeptical about than a rock, since hands are part of the person doing the doubting. You can kick the rock, but it's still not as good as waving hands about.

However, it still doesn't accomplish what Moore wanted it too, unless one already agrees with Moore. A skeptic is not going to be persuaded. Moore is waving his hands to the choir.

Interesting:

In other words, the ‘realism’ which constitutes the target of Collingwood's critique is not the ontological thesis that there exist mind independent objects, but the epistemological thesis that there is such a thing as presuppositionless knowledge of reality. Collingwood's rejection of this realism develops out of an attempt to explain how forms of enquiry which make mutually exclusive absolute presuppositions can co-exist alongside one another. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood/

And:

He attacked the neo-empiricist assumptions prevalent in early analytic philosophy and advocated a logical/epistemological transformation of metaphysics from a study of being or ontology to a study of the absolute presuppositions or heuristic principles which govern different forms of enquiry.

Sounds like absolute presuppositions are similar to Witty's hinge propositions. But Collingwood argues we have mutually exclusive presuppositions across different fields of inquiry, which raises a problem for using those as a basis for making claims to certainty about the world.

Covid is still a thing.

Presuppositions are the ground. And if good, they're usually solid ground - until they change. — tim wood

Such as someone in antiquity presupposing the Earth was motionless. It was as obvious as waving one's hands about. The sun, planets and stars are what move. Or things upon the Earth. But it's the Earth that provides the stationary ground upon which we have a means to measure motion.

Or some such obvious appeal to the way things seemed to be prior to convincing arguments for heliocentrism.

However, can we doubt the propositions Moore is using, and can we doubt them in Moore's contexts? — Sam26

We can doubt his claims to certainty about an external world because it appears that he has hands. How do we really know (have certainty) the external world is as it appears to us humans? The problem is Moore's dogmatism.

If the argument is only that we can't doubt the everyday appearance of normal life, then sure. But it doesn't help Moore's case. It's just an argument for pragmatism, while Moore wants to argue for realism.

Strange balls... — creativesoul

LOL! Indeed.

Yes, to me it makes sense that certain animals have something like concepts. — path

It seems the counter argument is that concepts can only be lnquistic, and language is an external, public thing. But there has to be something in human brains that forms language. And why would that be entirely novel in the animal kingdom? Also, why must concepts be only expressible in words? Do images not count?

Or, two, "I know or am certain that such and such is the case." In the second case the word certain could replace the word know, i.e., they essentially mean the same thing. — Sam26

Until one finds out they were wrong to be certain. In that case they didn't actually know what they were certain about. Unfortunately, I have been certain and wrong a few times before. Probably all of us have.

This is one argument for skepticism. We think we know various things. They we find out we don't actually know.

just because people (or Moore) say something is so, it doesn't follow that it is. However, Wittgenstein points out that what we need to ask, is whether the doubt makes sense. Doubting occurs in a language-game, and language-games have rules - later Wittgenstein will point out that a doubt that doubts everything is not a doubt. Some kinds of doubting make no sense, — Sam26

It helps to ask why skeptical doubt arose in the first place. Ancient skeptics produced various arguments for doubting dogmatic claims about the world that Moore makes. As for the coherency of doubting everything, the ancient skeptics were aware of those criticisms. One answer is that beliefs are based on what appears to be the case to someone, such as having a body with two hands to wave about, but that doesn't justify being dogmatic.

The most widely discussed charge is that they cannot act without belief (Apraxia Charge). In response, the skeptics describe their actions variously as guided by the plausible, the convincing, or by appearances. The notion of appearances gains great importance in Pyrrhonian skepticism, and poses difficult interpretive questions (Barney 1992). When something appears so-and-so to someone, does this for the skeptics involve some kind of judgment on their part? Or do they have in mind a purely phenomenal kind of appearing? The skeptical proposals (that the skeptic adheres to the plausible, the convincing, or to appearances) have in common their appeal to something less than full-fledged belief about how things are, while allowing something sufficient to generate and guide action. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient/

Moore is also misunderstanding the skeptic. The skeptic will agree that we have an experience of having a body. But Moore is making a claim about the external world. Moore thinks waving his hands around proves that waving hands exist as such in the external world. How does Moore get from his experience of a body to an external world matching that experience? He just assumes it.

It's been stated in this thread that small businesses are part of the capitalist problem. And some of the violent protesters in Minny are rumored to be Antifa from out of town. If so, they're a distraction and what gets talked about on the news.