I know this rock here has existence — Gregory

So my question is: was contradiction a necessary part of logic and/or reality in the worldview of Kant? — Gregory

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It falls into this perplexity without any fault of its own. It begins with principles which it has no choice but to employ in the course of experience, and is thus encouraged to extend them beyond all limits of experience. But it soon becomes aware that, by this means, its enterprise is drawing it into darkness and contradictions from which it can never escape. The battlefield of these endless controversies is called "metaphysics."

We have now not only traversed the region of the pure understanding and carefully surveyed every part of it, but we have also measured it, and assigned to everything therein its proper place. But this land is an island, and enclosed by nature herself within unchangeable limits. It is the land of truth (an attractive word), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the region of illusion, where many a fog-bank, many an iceberg, seems to the mariner, on his voyage of discovery, a new country, and, while constantly deluding him with vain hopes, engages him in dangerous adventures, from which he never can desist, and which yet he never can bring to a termination.

the law of causality and the treatment and investigation of nature which is based upon it, lead us necessarily to the conclusion that, in time, each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared —this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all.

Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being, however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time. — How Schopenhauer's Idealism Began with the First Eye Opening

Her (i.e. America’s) greatest enemy at the moment is the U.S. — Punshhh

Or am I just severely overthinking — Darkneos

That's not what this AP article indicates — frank

WASHINGTON — Most of the 80,000 federal workers responsible for researching diseases, inspecting food and administering Medicare and Medicaid under the auspices of the Health and Human Services Department were emailed an offer to leave their job for as much as a $25,000 payment as part of President Donald Trump’s government cuts.

The workers have until 5 p.m. on Friday to submit a response for the so-called voluntary separation offer. The email was sent to staff across the department, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the National Institutes of Health as well as the Food and Drug Administration, both in Maryland.

The mass email went out to a “broad population of HHS employees,” landing in their inboxes days before agency heads are due to offer plans for shrinking their workforces. HHS is one of the government’s costliest federal agencies, with an annual budget of about $1.7 trillion that is mostly spent on health care coverage for millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.

There was no immediate comment Sunday from HHS. — AP

We’ve all been influenced by propaganda — from the news to education— but the advisement industry is a particularly effective and often overlooked source of indoctrination. In my view it’s as potent as Fox News or going to church. — Mikie

So far, the Commerce Department has signed contracts to grant more than $36 billion in federal subsidies under the CHIPS Act. Samsung, Intel, Micron, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC, and others in response have pledged to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. chip-making facilities …

In late February, Michael Grimes, a senior official at the Department of Commerce and former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, conducted brief interviews with employees of the CHIPS Program Office, which oversees the grants.

In interactions some described as “demeaning,” Mr. Grimes asked employees to justify their intellect by providing test results from the SAT or an IQ test, said four people familiar with the evaluations. Some were asked to do math problems, like calculate the value of four to the fourth power or long division.

Last week, the Commerce Department laid off 40 of the CHIPS office employees, nearly a third of the entire team, these people said. ~ NYT

the youtube isn't accessible from here — jorndoe

...with tornado season looming, our access to valuable weather information is under threat. The U.S. government‘s stellar weather information service is being torn apart and likely sold for parts as Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency implement another destructive chapter of the Project 2025 playbook: experienced scientists fired, senior meteorologists forced into retirement, broken radars left unrepaired, weather forecasting balloons not launched, and leases for vital forecasting units canceled. The loss of expertise is profound, and the impact will be widespread. We’ll all be less safe, the economy will suffer and, yes, those popular weather apps could miss the next big storm. — The Contrarian

So Indian religion is an elaborate confabulation from the yearning for justice? Fine - as Lennon sang, whatever gets you through the night, it's alright. — Banno

That "aggregate of material elements" is the very source of value. — Banno

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.

What about those centuries when you could change your prospects in the afterlife by getting with the winning team? — Paine

“I actually think he’s doing what anybody else would do,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday, when asked whether he was upset that Russian President Vladimir Putin was taking advantage of the U.S. halt in aid for Ukraine. “Probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now. He wants to get it ended. And I think Ukraine wants to get it ended, but I don’t see. It’s crazy. They’re taking tremendous punishment. I don’t quite get it.” — WaPo

It is a fact that the United States of America is not in the Bible. — Arcane Sandwich

Does it matter, in any meaningful way, for ordinary citizens, that none of the aforementioned countries are not in the Bible? — Arcane Sandwich

What do you think the actual idealism is? What is your account for non-naive idealism? — Corvus

The only way to change this, is to change the fundamentals of the US, to focus on running society as a society and not as a business. — Christoffer

But if you divide the world into reality and representation, then you are back in the old dualistic view of the world. We have been on that road before. — Corvus

If you go out, and see the tree in front of you feeling and confirm the physical tree, then you have the physical tree as well as the sensation and ideas of the tree. — Corvus

When the perceiver is only thinking about the world without direct visual or material sensation or perception, the world is in the mind of the perceiver as ideas only. — Corvus

Idealism cannot explain the coherence in reality therefore it is false. — MoK

I'm not concerned with questions of 'materialism vs idealism' or 'realism vs antirealism' because I think these questions are not definitively decidable....Science for me offers a far more interesting, rich and complex body of knowledge. — Janus

It's a kind of confabulation, hand-waving. — Janus

You are welcome to produce an alternative definition of "field" that does not invovle a value at every point in a space. — Banno