So all we ever have is map map map ?

But why the representation metaphor then ? — Pie

Maps have to represent something... What's the use of a map about nothing?

I was trying to figure out yours. — Pie

As I said, the territory is where the map says it is, if the map is any good.

How do you cash out 'representation' ?

It's like Hotel California: you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave representation.

The question (the one you keep dodging) is "ought they?", not "can they?". — Isaac

Starting from basic premises, a democratic government ought to find ways to optimise the public good in their country, while implementing the will of the majority most of times. It follows that, if those two conditions (necessity for public good and majority support for conscription) are the case, then a democratic government ought to implement conscription.

In the case at hand, there is evident support for the measure among Ukrainians, and it appears to be necessary to protect Ukraine from invasion and transformation into "Malorus", whence the public good element.

This neither proves, nor even constitutes robust evidence for your theory that "a self-governing people can muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship can" because it is a sample of one. — Isaac

In history, this is often the case. However the fact that something happened, if only once, shows that it is possible. Therefore, a self-governing people can muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship can. It is doable, because it's been done.

And mind you, this is precisely what Ukraine is trying to do.

The take away was already mentioned: a self-governing people can muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship can, everything else being equal.

the argument against historicism. That it happened once is not sufficient evidence to support a theory. — Isaac

I am not making an historicist argument. Just saying that that's how certain things happened. We owe human rights to the French revolution, and this revolution defended itself from European tyrans by way of general conscription.

Of course it could have happened differently. Nothing is predetermined. The Italians or the Poles could well have invented human rights, if the French had not.

Off-topic, but nauseatingly enough, this is exactly what Yuval Noah Harari argues in Sapiens: apparently, racism and eugenics were discredited because the Nazis lost the war. Shit book :vomit: — _db

That's actually true. The Nazis showed the rest of us what a society based on racism and eugenics looks like, and the rest of us thought it was horrible. The post-war decade saw a flurry of new or rejuvenated antiracist movements in the West, e.g. the civil rights movement in the US. The decolonisation of Africa proceeds from the same historical logic: if it's so bad for the Germans to invade France, why can France invade Algeria?

Indeed we have only one history, and in it the recourse to general conscription helped saved the French revolution and its human rights from annihilation.

That carries a lesson relevant to this thread: a self-governing people can muster, through conscription, a stronger military force than a dictatorship can, everything else being equal. Whereas a dictator would be liable to be toppled by an army of conscripts, a democracy would be less prone to that.

Noumena. Of course people still debate the best interpretation, and I understand why the concept was tempting (as the territory), but I suspect the the true/warranted distinction does the same work with less confusion. — Pie

So then, why do you keep asking "where is the territory ?"

The territory is where the map says it is, if it's a good map.

In map / territory parlance, Kant is simply saying that there must be a medium between us and the territory, which maps provide.

I like this idea, by the way. We could keep finding tinier, more and more fundamental things. — Pie

In my mind, the idea implies that smaller is just a different scale than larger, not a more 'fundamental' level. Atoms are not the foundations of reality (as they are conceptualized in atomism) but simply how reality may look like at this level of detail.

Go where?

But where then is the territory ? Is it maps all the way down ? If so, does not the metaphor fail or become misleading ? — Pie

Are you talking of the thing in itself?

So what is the territory made of ? Is there a deepest layer ? — Pie

Why would there be a bottom layer? It could be that

Matter has no “bottom”, no “foundation”. It’s turtles all the way down. — Olivier5

Are electrons part of the map of tuna fish sandwiches and promises? — Pie

A map, in this way of talking, is a view, a representation, done by someone for someone. It is a product of and tool for human activity.

So if there is someone out there who thinks that mapping a tuna sandwich down to electronic-level precision can be of some utility, I see no logical impossibility for him to draw it. (it might be practically impossible to do of course)

So in theory, electrons can be part of a tuna sandwich map. If someone draws it.

(or just speaks of it, as we are doing)

Promises are of a non-electronic nature though. They are not material. You can eat a tuna sandwich and all its electrons will be yours, but you can't eat a promise of a tuna sandwich.

In this analogy, you have two objects, but what is the territory corresponding to scientific maps like ? — Pie

It's simply the world, or the part of the world that science deals with. It's subject matter.

At the moment, I think it's just the (grammatical) gap between a warranted belief and true belief. In other words, it expresses our caution, our finitude, our willingness to edit our governing beliefs. — Pie

It goes deeper than that. A painting of a pipe will never be a pipe. There is an epistemic jump, a radical alterity between a thing and its representation.

The word 'horse' is not a real horse and will never be a real horse.

Could you provide an example of words representing nonwords ? — Pie

When you write some text, do you generally mean what you write? Since you are writing to me, isn't the word 'you' in the sentence above, supposed to mean something, such as me myself and I? Isn't the word 'example' intended to call up or evoke some sort of thing, such as the examples I am writing about right now?

Take 'objective' in its pure sense as unbiased, and science's goal is to objectively settle what a community ought to believe about the world. — Pie

In that sense of the word 'objective', yes, but note that this type of objectivity is arrived at through an intersubjective process of shared observations ('facts') and debate over their correct (or best fit) interpretation. And the product of this process is still a representation, i.e. something different from the actual world. The map is not the territory.

How can words be understood to represent nonwords ? That's like paint trying to be music. I — Pie

Nope. That would be like paint trying to represent nonpaint, which is evidently possible and in fact done all the time. It's called figurative painting.

The scientist is a human, science is not. The whole point of science is to detach human biases and subjectivity in order to prove truths. — Christoffer

That's a logical contradiction. Truth is generally defined as an accurate representation of some state of affairs. How can one get a representation -- accurate or not -- of some state of affairs without some guy doing the representing to some other guys?

Another way to say the same thing is: truth requires a language, and a language requires several human subjects speaking it.

That is kind of the equivalent of saying you know better because you say you know better. — Christoffer

No, just saying you tend to assume a bit too much about what I know, based on too little. A mere philosophical disagreement is insufficient ground to conclude that someone doesn't know the history of science.

What's the point you're arguing for? — Christoffer

That science is a human activity, and hence inherently subjective. A scientist is and can only be a subject, i.e. a spectator and actor in/at the world.

What's pathetic is your confusion. You got no leg to stand on, but you are too stupid to realize it.

These are links, not facts.

What facts are you talking about?

I doubt it.

Historicist bullshit. — Isaac

It is a historical fact.

Actual Ukraine had virtually the same record on human rights as Russia. — Isaac

Really? Have you looked at some actual data?

Or too weak a logic to state, peut être.

Nobody's fine with forced enlisment into the armed forces. — Agent Smith

And why not?

If a majority decide that one race ought have fewer rights than another, that is wrong — Isaac

Irrelevant to the issue of conscription.

If the majority is fine with conscription, what human right is being trampled, pray tell? Are there human rights to selfishness and cowardice? I am not aware of them.

Conscription was first instituted by French revolutionaries, precisely to defend the young republic and the newly minted Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen (1789) against the Austrian empire. As it turned out, the French conscript army managed to push back the Austrian professional army, e.g. at Valmy (1792).

So without conscription, there might be no such thing as human rights.

Likewise, Ukraine might not enjoy its human rights for long if the Ukrainians fail to defend them against the attacks of the Russian empire.

You've literally said "The majority usually trumps the minority" that's a word-for-word quote. — Isaac

Then stick to that. Human rights and constitutions are different issues which I did not evoke and which are irrelevant.

Stop inventing straw men.

You've heard about the concept of democracy, and how it functions? The majority usually trumps the minority.

I found someone to love
I found someone

Quelqu'un pour rire
Quelqu'un pour parler
Quelqu'un pour se battre
Quelqu'un pour se fâcher
Quelqu'un pour vivre
Quelqu'un pour se quitter
Sur qui cracher, à caresser

I found someone to love
I found someone

Un pour dormir
Un pour s'ennuyer
Un à embrasser
Un à énerver
Un à lécher
Un pour rigoler
Un pour ramper
Un à surprendre
Quelqu'un à étonner
Quelqu'un à regarder
Quelqu'un à frapper
Quelqu'un pour s'esquinter
Quelqu'un pour se blesser
Quelqu'un pour changer
Quelqu'un à inventer
Quelqu'un à maudire

I found someone to love
I found someone

Quelqu'un pour rire
Quelqu'un pour parler
Quelqu'un pour se battre
Quelqu'un pour se fâcher
Quelqu'un à fuir
Quelqu'un pour revenir
Quelqu'un à démolir
Quelqu'un à retrouver

For which you'd need evidence that the polity would be less free to do that under the threatening government than they would under the defending one. And that this difference is significant enough to risk unwilling lives for.

Evidence you lack. — Isaac

It is pretty obvious that a majority of Ukrainians are in favor of the current resistance. A poll in March indicated that 3/4 of men and a majority of women were willing to fight personally in the war. I assume that they have good grounds for saying so. In fact I would feel exactly the same if some goons invaded my country.

Strategically, the proof of concept will have to wait for when the Ukrainian conscripts reach the frontline. It's not a given that they will make a difference there, but the Ukrainian side clearly expects their "million men army" to prove decisive.

How do those atrocities have any bearing whatsoever on the relative ability of citizens to influence peacetime governments?

Honestly. You can't just answer every single question about Ukraine and Russia with "look Russia did a bad thing". It's puerile. — Isaac

Russia did more than one bad thing. In Ukraine alone there are hundreds of cases. And remember Aleppo, and Grozny. They murder journalists and political figures wherever they can. The Putin regime murders people with impunity in your own country, too.

As a matter of fact, I have a much better understanding of science, its methods, history and current status than you seem to believe, on the rather flimsy basis of a mere epistemological disagreement between us.

That's not how science works. Theories don't get thrown out of the window because something else explains things better, they get added, and mixed together, one theory helps explain something else further or helps explain problems with the first theory. — Christoffer

There are revolutions in science though, such as the Copernican revolution.

The make up of a government (Zelensky or Putin, to put it simply) is of little relevance to serving the population's interests relative to their ability to influence what they do. Turnout at elections, for example, is often very low. — Isaac

Hostomel and Bucha bear witness that there is a huge difference between the two.

A government justifying conscription on the grounds of public good is claiming that the people's interests are served by who is in government — Isaac

Not really, no. It is rather, in this case at least, to defend an independent polity, free to make its own collective choices.

All this talk about "the leadership of a country trying to hold on to their positions of power" applies squarely to nations of slaves, such as Russia. Evidently, Putin is trying to hold on power and waging a war was a way to try and do that. The worth of a Czar can only be demonstrated in battle.

But the case is more complex for democracies, that may sometimes (in war times) impose stringent obligations such as conscription, that may appear undemocratic, for the purpose of safeguarding their democratic system from an aggressive dictator.

If the government were concerned about something other than its own survival, then it would not need conscription — Isaac

Why not?

It's not sufficiently in the interests of the people themselves the exact group of people who run the place to be forced into risking their own death to preserve. — Isaac

And in English?

just the leadership of a country trying to hold on to their positions of power for as long as possible, regardless of the costs. — _db

There is no evidence that this diagnostic applies to Ukraine.