Concerning your last statement, your type of arguments are hardly new either, it's not as if there are twenty different end games here. I see your point, and think you are wrong.

How do you actually talk to a criminal like Putin who over and over breaks deals, lie and does whatever he wants. There is no peace talk that works with such people so thinking the war can end by giving a criminal what he wants thinking that's the end of it is naive to the extreme.

The resistance, the sanctions and opposition towards Putin seems by all measurements to actually work, regardless of what many have said in this thread. If this leads to getting rid of Putin, then it was all worth it. — Christoffer

The same way we deal with other criminal leaders, many "our allies": Israel, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and so on down the line this illustrious list of known liars, criminals, thieves and barbarians.

You talk with them, because they are the one you are dealing with. Iraq had to talk to the US after the invasion did it not? That war was pretty ugly but nobody in the West ever said it was a bad idea for Iraq to talk with the US, as they should and did.

That's the world we live in. You don't like it, I don't like it, but we deal with what we have not what we want. That's politics.

How would you reduce the number of Ukrainians being killed when they seek to defend themselves against those killings? We should, by your argument, give Putin some land where Ukrainians grew up and lives on after they conducted genocide. And what happens when he makes a move again? Give more land? Give up the whole of Ukraine? What about the respect for the Ukrainian people and what they want? Do you think they fight in this war just for the sake of it? You think they don't know they're dying on the battlefield? — Christoffer

As I've said many times, you negotiate. What makes you think he will move again? This war was a total disaster from his perspective, NATO got larger, they've been sanctioned like no country on Earth (with the possible exception of North Korea), not to mention the many Russians who have fled the country and those who are in jail for protesting.

And will continue dying, unless this war stops short. The Ukranian people are not a monolith, nor should they be treated as such. Some want negotiations, others want to defeat Russia. Some have argued that WWIII has already started.

Not all these views are correct: WWIII has not started. If it did, there would be no Ukrainians left on Earth, not to mention the rest of the world.

I believe sensible people should understand that giving up pieces of illegally, criminally obtained land (and this is what the borders of ALL nation states are, regardless of the state) would prefer to give a bit of land, for thousands of lives.

Will this be good news for those in the annexed territories? Of course not. How can you satisfy all the people in a country that large? It's impossible. So you try to find the least worst option, and make a case for it.

The expansion of Nato has been because of nations fearing what Putin might do and seeking security in an alliance that blocks such aggressions. I know, I live in a nation who wants this security. Any notion that Nato is an existential threat to Russia is a delusional idea promoted by Russian propaganda in order to give justification for Russias actions. And at the end of the day, Putin is responsible for all of this and any delusional idea that Nato forced him to do so is just buying into his narrative. — Christoffer

You are seriously misinformed and confuse the symptom with the cause. And stop with the hypocritical holier than thou attitude.

Plenty of criminals in the US and Europe, many of them far worse than Putin (Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, etc.). But if you can't see that because of some strange notion that we are better because we have more freedoms, then yes, we do well to stop here.

Putin is a criminal, a horrible one. One from a long list of criminals from powerful states.

jk T Clark.

The idea of reality is ontology, metaphysics. As I understand it, metaphysics is not something that can be verified empirically. But that's a long song I've sung many times here on the forum. — T Clark

Wait. What is metaphysics?

But that's the thing, it's not once in a while, it must be stated in a three-post exchange. It's not that it takes skin off my nose to say it, it's that it's like saying "torture is bad". Wars are evil, people who begin wars aren't good people, 99.9% of the time.

I don't have a problem with this issue, you can merely skim my last few exchanges. Just imagine having to say, "torture is bad" and I condemn it, every three or four posts. As far as I can see, it creates a feeling of being virtuous for condemning something so obviously wrong, that it has little merit in trying to think about ways to solve the situation.

And yet I have to say it yet again, that Putin is a criminal. Again. Ok, fine.

We live in insane times if every single time I post I have to say Putin is a criminal. It's a bit like saying guns are lethal during wartime (and outside of it too). What value does saying this so much have?

I've said it easily over 10 times and very explicitly, so has @Isaac and @Mikie and others. It adds zero clarity in how to get out of this situation.

The only ones supporting Putin are those who argue in defense of Putin. The side-picking is obvious in people's rhetoric. Personally I side with the west, not because it is an innocent perfect utopia, but because it allows progress, personal freedom and security far better than any other form of government or society so far. Siding with the least worse does not mean supporting the bad sides of it, but it damn straight stands up against the tyranny of someone like Putin. — Christoffer

Arguing for a stop to the war is not the same as standing or supporting Putin - it does not follow at all, logically speaking.

I agree that the West is significantly freer than Russia, it's not even a contest. What does that have to do with anything?

They're so deeply entrenched in their dislike of western society that when a person like Putin essentially wage war against western ideals and any post-soviet nation who wants to rebuild into such ideals, they get confused into somehow defending Putin or validating his perspective just because it somewhat aligns with how they dislike western ideals. — Christoffer

Find someone here that is supporting Putin. I haven't seen one in a long time, at least 3 months, if not more. But out of everybody currently arguing, I don't see a single poster who supports Putin.

I would also like to know what is meant by "the West". Does South America count? Africa? Clearly not China because NATO members don't like it. If by the West you mean those countries here that sanction Russia, then I think it's a very nebulous notion:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2022/10/20/russia-ukraine-live-news-kyiv-restricts-power-use-after-attacks

it just means that we pick the side that is the least worse — Christoffer

The less bad "side" is to avoid another World War, because apparently two of them were not enough for us to get the message.

One side of empathic people who get outraged by the brutality of Putin and one side who can't align their criticism of the west with standing against Putin so they disregard any judgement of him or try to justify his reasons because of some weird emotional inability... — Christoffer

You can be outraged at the war crimes and want them to stop, while at the same time seeking to reduce the number of Ukrainians killed. Or you can create a Disney film in which the Empire is defeated.

There are many monsters which NATO is perfectly happy to ignore, like Saudi Arabia's bin Salman, Israel's Lapid, Brazil's Bolsonaro, Turkey's Erdogan and so on. Putin belonged to this happy camp until he acted on what he said was Russia red line for decades.

You may say my last sentence is a defense of Putin, when it is a description of fact, going all the way back to the dissolution of the USSR, stated clearly by people who actually know about this conflict, like the US' last ambassador to the USSR Joh Matlock and others. But if you can't make a distinction between these two, then we are stuck.

Well, people are bombarded with the "good vs. evil" picture all the time in the media and pop culture, so naturally this view transfers to the real world and thus the outcome is that some people prefer the war to go on, than trying to look for a way to negotiate to end the war.

It is indeed strange that we must pick sides, because otherwise we support Putin, as such views appear to exclude each other.

And always remember, always always always, to say that Putin is a criminal, which he is. Because we didn't know that.

Poof. All gone.

Next.

I’m here to serve.

But that’s full of mental phenomena, I don’t see a way around that. Take your example of an apple in front of you: you’ll say this is real. Perfect. Now I’m not in front of it, so I have to take your testimony as accurate and I have to imagine that what you mean when you say “this is an apple” will evoke in me, a similar object to what you are seeing. Likewise if I look out my window and say I see a car, a real car, not a toy car, you would have to imagine a car in your head, unless you look at a car. What’s the issue here- this looks to me like “ordinary, humdrum reality”. What’s your concern in such a situation?

It could well be that actually. They wouldn't want more people leaving Russia at the moment.

They might even be looking for Israeli settlers to join the reserve troops. It wouldn't be suprising. But there's also the Syria element you mentioned.

None of this is something that Israel would like to face or worry about. But it has to give some sort of reply to Ukraine on the weapons issue, though they have supposedly given Ukraine military intelligence regarding Russian troop location, according to Haaretz.

So, they are caught in balancing act.

I missed your reply. As I said to Mww, I think that the problem here is the issue of "purely" mental entities, that is, thinking about objects absent being in front of them.

Then there's also issues pertaining to fiction, Harry Potter and so forth, which enter the conversation. There's also the issue of memory, of not remembering if an event "really" happened the way you recall it.

The one place where the issue does not arise, or at least not nearly as frequently, is when we speak about an apple in front of us, or a tree, or a road and so on.

If we talk about something, and we understand each other (roughly), then we are speaking about that thing being talked about, even if that thing has no world-correspondence. So, we speak of fictional entities, or mythical ones, or even fake entities (fake money, fake products, etc.)

But there are "real" fake things, there really is fake currency and products that are not as comes as advertised (buying fools gold, thinking it's actual gold) . So, I fail to see the problem being much more than linguistic.

I'd guess part of the issue - aside from the situation in Syria, which Israel is currently fine with - is that, Russia may make customs to Israel very problematic, or could even prohibit it.

That means less settlers in Israel, so it's not something they would like to deal with. I'm sure there are other ties that are of importance, but I don't know the details.

I don't think the settlers in Israel would affect Russia much, but it might be an issue for Israel's internal politics. The settlers tend to be extremely right wing, and vote for the more radical parties in Israel.

But all of this is pure speculation, until we know how Israel deals with Ukraine's plea, we're totally guessing.

Which one? Putin's?

I haven't looked at any polls mentioning this.

No, I mean, Israel has its own interests that not-infrequently clash with the US' interests. Nevertheless, if they do sell weapons to Ukraine, it might get more complicated for Israel, given the amount of Russians inside Israel.

They would rather stay away from this one, but are being forced to reply.

Israel.

It sure can. Which is why they've been stalling.

Very much so. And Israel is hesitant to sell weapons to Ukraine, as they are quite happy with the current arrangement in Syria.

I suspect only the US could get Israel to sell weapons to Ukraine, but then maybe not even them, because lots of illegal Israeli settlers are Russian. So it's a hell of a problem for Israel.

Since science is epistemic, not ontic — 180 Proof

Interesting.

Sure, I would agree that physics is epistemic.

Would you say the same thing about the things studied by biologists?

I sense that, I don't know anything. A bit like a zombie, what with Halloween coming up and all.

I suspect the problem resides in our not knowing well enough how to categorize "purely" mental objects. But then, this rock I see here, is partially mental, at the very least.

And so, it is not clear...

Ukraine to Officially Submit Request for Air Defense Supplies From Israel

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-10-18/ty-article/ukraine-requests-israel-supply-immediate-air-defense-supplies/00000183-eb24-da6b-a1fb-fba5783f0000

While Israel has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and provided Kyiv with humanitarian relief, it has stopped short of also providing military support, citing concern for continued cooperation with Moscow over next-door Syria.

The discussion over air supplies comes amid internal wrangling in Israel over deepening its cooperation with Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

"Real", as is used in English is an honorific word, adding little substance to what is being discussed. If a person tells you this is the "real deal" or this is the "real truth", it would be an error to think there are two kinds of deals or truths.

It's a matter of emphasis.

Are unicorns real? Well, they're not objects in the world, but people can surely speak about them without much problem, within an appropriate context (mythology, storytelling, etc.)

I think this is an issue in which the use the word often obfuscates the phenomenon it is trying to discuss.

Sam Harris is mediocre at very, very best. At worst he's just a useful idiot, probably believes what he says about torture and AI and the woke left.

He sometimes can string together some interesting observations, maybe once every 3 hours in his podcast. Not much more.

The worst of the so called "New Atheists". Hitchens used to be fantastic but went hard right the last decade of his life.

Dawkins and Dennett are quite good in many respects.

I find all this bollocks about a 'nation's right to exist' really sickening. — Isaac

I believe it was a product of Israeli propaganda, which serves to silence critics of Israel.

The rights that should be afforded, and are granted at least in rhetoric, are peace and security. Of course, you can't have these if you don't exist, pace anti-natalists, but existence is a given for these rights to come into effect. Adding "right to exist" affords nothing to already existing rights, except for dubious rhetoric.

Mww, is Mww.

He's great! :)

I heard an interview with one such person who works as a professional animator. — Srap Tasmaner

:rofl:

That's extraordinary.



I think mathematical conceptions are different in nature than world phenomena. A perfect tree does not exist of course, but Plato had an interesting take on this.

I think it's kind of the opposite, as I see it: we see imperfect triangles all the time, which makes us think of triangles (which are perfect in our minds). You could perhaps say that imperfect triangles are a kind of derivative of mental triangles.



Absolutely nothing. T'was a hit and miss.

Yeah, but after 3000-odd years, the corpus of philosophy texts is so vast, it’s really hard to do philosophy that hasn’t already been done. — Mww

Pfffft.

May I invite you good Sir, to read Lacan and Derrida?

:joke:

Hmmm. I would not be surprised if there were cases of people who lacked the capacity to visualize such elementary figures. But the vast majority of people call a "rectangle" or a "triangle" something which does not exist in the world.

I think that in the instance you are mentioning in your thought experiment, unless they do lack these basic capacities, I'd think you'd be arguing about the meaning of words and not the concept.

Plato goes over some of this (example of having knowledge you did not know you had) in his Meno, which I have to read. This shouldn't be too shocking; we very likely had the capacity to do math for thousands of years before we realized it could be used for things beyond very basic counting.

It could be a bit of both, but the example you give was used by Descartes, if I don't misremember. And Cudworth too, though his examples were more varied.

In the empirical world, we don't see triangles, nor rectangles nor any other geometrical figure, for exactly the reason you point out: they are imperfect, sometimes severely so. The interesting thing is that unless it is completely unrecognizable, we see three distorted lines and judge it to be a triangle, same with other such figures. If this is not innate, then nothing is.

Hume, though not Locke (as far as I can tell), did not think this to be true, he thought we had no notion of straight line not derived from experience, but then we simply don't have such a notion. Because the experience won't yield what we take to be a straight line.

So, I wouldn't give up on your pet theory.

No travesty at all. Hume has a ridiculous amount of quotable sentences, paragraphs and even pages. Good on you for trying that style of writing out, it's fantastic.

Assume that during the Gulf War in 1991 the Iraqi armed forces would have had high fighting moral and similar combat capabilities as Israeli Defence Forces has and the US lead coalition would have suffered similar defeats as Russia has now. What do you think would have happened? Would it have been better then for the US to make the bluff of using nukes? How much weight to you give this embarrasment issue? — ssu

I think this thought experiment doesn't work for the present case, but let's see.

Well, the US would use it's might military to flatten Iraq, in this case, as it later did in 2003. The crucial difference in here is that who would dare sanction the US to the extent Russia is now? The US would not only be embarrassed but furious. Heck, the government threw a hissy fit just because France did not join in on the Iraq War, with zero consequences for the US.

Now let's add to your scenario, that not only is the US sanctioned, but China, Europe, Russia all join together in a military organization, that keeps giving Iraqis weapons that kill Americans. Would the US bluff and use nukes?

Well, they strongly considered doing that in Vietnam, but stopped short of it. In this scenario, the stakes are so much higher, that I don't think the US would bluff...

So, yeah, the embarrassment issue is not a small one.

Very much so, the simple fact that almost everybody can use Twitter to boast about something or to report on an event, very much affects the reactions of other world leaders. So, this recent counteroffensive carried out by Ukraine is a huge embarrassment for Russia and this is something which adds more fuel to the fire.

It's as you say, in history one can find examples of almost every possible event playing out and though there are some useful or interesting things than can be learned that may apply here, these things are rarely identical.

You pretty much nailed it, spot on, and very astute observation with Sun Tsu. I think we have good reason to believe that Putin actually feels this way, based on what he is currently saying. Even Biden has been saying to his donor class, behind closed doors, that "Putin is serious" and this is the closest we've been to "Armageddon", since the Cuban Missile Crisis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOJ4NEYs1gU&t=499s

So faced with such prospects, I think prolonging this war will surely mean more deaths on both sides, and ever-increasing desperate measures. Putin and his gang have cornered themselves in such a manner, that if they aren't offered a way out - via some mediating state, maybe Turkey, whatever, then the worst side of nationalism will come into play.

Surely this is not worth the death of thousands of more civilians and perhaps the entire world. That's why I insist negotiations, however disgusting they may be, should be a priority.

He doesn't consider its current status as a sovereign nation legitimate, does he? — Srap Tasmaner

Probably not. I mean, the Russian army was basically walking into Ukraine thinking they would be welcomed in many cases.

If it's not the homeland stuff, then we have clear examples of a small nation fighting for its life overcoming those sorts of reasons. — Srap Tasmaner

It plays a big part, no doubt. The other examples of Vietnam and Afghanistan, as far as I know, did not resemble this one in that sanctions of this scale, followed by constant coverage of a humiliating retreat right after annextion, were put into play.

The way I see it, is that a person like him, say Erdogan, Modi and others with dictatorial and or quite right-wing views would do something similar in the same place. I don't see why Putin is uniquely different in this respect, other than he put himself in this situation. It's not clear to me that, had the exact same situation been brought on another dictatorial person, they wouldn't act in a very similar manner.

Of course, it would be nice it Ukraine could defeat Russia and expel them completely. We'll see.

1) Nuclear armed countries have lost many wars. Afghans have now gotten victory over to two nuclear armed Superpowers. Nuclear weapons aren't some miracle weapon system, just like chemical warfare. — ssu

Correct. Nevertheless, Afghanistan was nowhere near the level of importance to the USSR as Ukraine is now. Nor was it for the United States.

Russia has been mentioning Ukraine as a red line for decades. The West didn't listen.

According to most military experts, any use of nuclear weapons, even tactical ones, would almost inevitably lead to a full-scale war. You are correct that they aren't magic, it's not as if Russia bombing a city in Ukraine would make them win. It would prompt a reply though, of that we've been assured.

2) For Ukraine this war is successful when it has repulsed the Russian attack.For a smaller defender to succeed in defense is the objective, not overtaking the aggressors Capital and totally destroying all of it's army. Ukraine won't have it's tanks on the Red Square, hence that kind of victory is a silly argument. — ssu

They managed to push back the Russians quite a bit in the annexed territories, look at the reply. Of course Ukraine cannot possibly invade Russia. The question is whether Russia has enough missiles left to continue this assault, in case Ukraine does another push. I think Russia could flatten all the major cities, but it would be of no benefit to them, for now.

3) Russia has it's limits. Sending the now mobilized troops immediately to the front tells how bad the situation is for Russia. The idea that "Russia cannot lose" is quite naive. This can very well be one of those wars that end up as a huge embarrassment for Russia. It's totally possible. — ssu

The thing is, this argument takes a massive, massive gamble, that Putin will just bow out of Ukraine and just handle getting embarrassed - this is after all these sanctions, poor military results and so on. I don't see Putin as the type of person who would just not react. One must measure how likely that gamble is to succeed and it's extremely risky, in my view.

Good to know you care so deeply about Ukrainians. But I did start the thread, way before we had any idea it could reach this level of magnitude. I don't live next to Ukraine and I don't like the invasion, it's a straight out war crime. That's clear.

Yes, you are quite right that are several conflicts going on all over the world, many of them quite horrible, but it appears we don't give a crap. So it must be that for some reason Ukrainians matter more than other people? I don't think so, I doubt you do either.

I very much doubt a fraction of the news would be given if Russia did not have nukes. I think nuclear war is an important topic. On the other hand, people dying right now and getting land stolen, is not good. I think we can discuss both at the same time as they are closely connected.

I've also started a pretty big thread on Israel, what, I need to do one in every conflict that is going on?

There are not too many options on the table: 1) Russia gives up, which is what you want and I think is extremely unrealistic, but would be the most just scenario. I don't think we live in that world. 2) Ukraine gives up, they get land stolen from them, it's very ugly. 3) Maybe there is a negotiation in which both sides lose as little as possible, given that they obviously wouldn't like to give away much, if anything. 4) Nuclear war.

Is your principle here that we must defeat an evil dictator using a brutal army? That's fine. The way it could possibly happen involves the most amount of Ukranian lives lost, or maybe you think they have some secret weapon or something that could turn them into victors.

What do you think? Could causation be a relationship between words and things rather than things and things? — invizzy

IF the word latches on to something, and we can isolate a state before an event and afterwards, and we notice the effect changes the state, we would likely be using the word "cause" correctly. But it's hard to find a "final" cause, other ones, that go deeper could be discovered.

The ideal would be to encapsulate a "thing to thing" relationship, since we are interested in the world.

Your examples of Aristotle's causes are interesting indeed, though perhaps introduce more technicality than is warranted:

So Aristotle would say the bronze causes the statue and one explanation = the words ‘the bronze’ ARE sufficient to give information about the statue (e.g. information about what the statue is made of) however the mere fact there is the statue is NOT sufficient to tell you that there is bronze, only that there might be bronze (i.e. statues can also be marble). — invizzy

This is tricky. Strictly speaking, if you say "the bronze", you need to have the concept "statue", if you lack the concept, bronze won't tell you anything. It's similar to your example of "spark" causing a fire. If you don't know what a fire is, spark tells you very little.

It's true that cause become harder to pin down the more complicated the phenomena you are analyzing are, but I think we would still like to maintain the concept cause as simple as possible.

In the case of someone with lung cancer, we might need to speak of multiple causes. Not only the cigarettes influenced getting the disease, but perhaps also air quality and genetic issues. Here we then speak of multiple causes, but maybe not of different kinds of them.

Worth me thinking about some more though.

Nevertheless, very interesting post.

I don't think it's hard really. The more humiliation Russia suffers, the more they missiles they will use to flatten Ukraine. It's not the "actual opposite" of what I'm saying, it's what's happening.

If you don't know the difference between defensive and offensive, you can look it up. I've been polite with you till now, but you've been insulting one too many times.

It boils down to the fantasy, which is what it is, that you think Ukraine will be able to defeat a NUCLEAR armed country. It won't. The fact that you can't get this through your head, is more a signal of your own inabilities to understand how fucked up this situation is, than any alleged shortcomings I may have.

So keep on dreaming about Ukraine defeating Russia, "helping" the Ukrainians get slaughtered, which is what you are advocating for.