Biden also broke literally every campaign promise he ever made with the exception of pulling out of Afghanistan - after which he stole their gold reserves and plunged the country into famine potentially killing tens of thousands- and is also easily responsible for more death and suffering than anything Putin could ever dream about but sure when glorious leader Biden says something we must surely take him seriously.

Biden also broke literally every campaign promise he ever made — Streetlight

Yep. The most rational position to take with regard to Biden's planned, official announcements seems to be to assume every single one of them is a lie. That would simply be more likely based on past experience.

...but then @neomac is currently schooling me on how to think rationally. It turns out to have a lot less to do with methods of thinking and a lot more to with with how far arguments support a neo-liberal agenda. Who'd have thought, eh...

I thought... Didn't the thread already establish that everyone is bad, evil, something like that...?
I guess then a follow-up is: therefore...?

therefore...? — jorndoe

Therefore we ought to stop looking at potential solutions presented by one of these 'sides' as if they were beneficent manna from heaven with no downsides.

There's only one issue (beyond the pointless moralising others seem to delight in) and that's whether we lend our support to our own governments (and media). Decisions such as joining NATO, sending weapons, taking part in negotiations, the terms of those negotiations... all involve an assessment of honesty, intent and integrity on both sides. Treating one side as saints and the other as the devil gives an inaccurate assessment of how those decisions will impact the people they are made on behalf of.

So you first imply that Russia are late to the negotiating table, then that no position they might come with is reasonable anyway. — Isaac

No.

What I'm saying is that they are continuing their assault in Ukraine and have not yet made realistic proposals to end the war. What I'm saying is that they have a chance of easing the situation by letting through the blockade "humanitarian shipments" of grain and fertilizer from Ukraine. Now using the UN in this case as the negotiator would be quite beneficial to them: they have veto-power there and their friend China has too. After the bloody assault on Ukraine they have a lot to do to polish their image as a reasonable actor.

And this btw, might be happening:

LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - Senegal's President Macky Sall said Russia's Vladimir Putin had told him on Friday he was ready to enable the export of Ukrainian grain to ease a global food crisis that is hitting Africa especially hard.

"President #Putin has expressed to us his willingness to facilitate the export of Ukrainian cereals," Sall wrote on Twitter after meeting Putin in his role as chairman of the African Union.

Russia was also ready to ensure the export of its own wheat and fertiliser, Sall said after the talks in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on day 100 of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Naturally Putin wants his own wheat and fertilizer to be exported, but allowing Ukrainian wheat to be exported would be a positive signal.

Putin has said he's not looking for regime change in Ukraine. You didn't believe that. Your bias is astounding. — Isaac

Yeah, obviously after the Kyiv operation didn't work out so well, he had to limit his objectives. Your apologetics are astounding.

but Putin mentions something about Ukrainians and Russians being 'one people' some time back and that's enough for you to impute a clear intention to take over the whole country. — Isaac

Don't forget the artificiality of Ukraine as a sovereign state too. Yeah, Putin has annexed Crimea, then has fought a proxy war in Ukraine for eight years and then assaulted with the full force of the Russian Army Ukraine. So yes, when he attacked Ukraine on the 24th February, Putin clearly had the objective to take over the country, at least Kyiv and NovoRossija, perhaps to install a puppet government in place in Kyiv. And obviously he has had to limit his objectives.

And then you here are defending him that "he didn't have the objective to take the country". You don't see how insane your apologetics are.

Yeah, obviously after the Kyiv operation didn't work out so well, he had to limit his objectives. — ssu

No Putin has never, ever said that he wants to occupy Ukraine. You've assumed it. I don't object to you surmising or estimating someone's motives from their actions rather than their words. Putin may well have wanted to occupy the whole of Ukraine. I don't know. No apologetics going on at all.

What I objected to was you treating Russia as if their intentions had to be derived from some deep analysis of their actions, off-message speeches, intercepted phone calls... Yet to arrive at America's intention we only need ask it's leader.

That's apologetics. Either treat them both as dishonest or take them both at their word. It's your favourable treatment of Biden that's sycophantic. I've not treated Putin favourably. I think they're both liars.

Therefore we ought to stop looking at potential solutions presented by one of these 'sides' as if they were beneficent manna from heaven with no downsides.

There's only one issue (beyond the pointless moralising others seem to delight in) and that's whether we lend our support to our own governments (and media). Decisions such as joining NATO, sending weapons, taking part in negotiations, the terms of those negotiations... all involve an assessment of honesty, intent and integrity on both sides. Treating one side as saints and the other as the devil gives an inaccurate assessment of how those decisions will impact the people they are made on behalf of. — Isaac

Now we're getting somewhere. Both sides are evil. So, what's wrong with evil fighting evil in a contained battlefield? It would appear like the only outcome could be a negation of evil. Of course the innocent good people who own property in the battlefield would have to flee, thus surrendering their property. But any good person knows that property is not the greatest good.

what's wrong with evil fighting evil in a contained battlefield? — Metaphysician Undercover

The poor sods the two 'evils' get to do their fighting for them.

The Innocents caught in the crossfire, or deliberately targeted.

The poor, who inevitability pay the most for the damage both sides have done to their livelihoods.

The people who each side should have been looking after but weren't because they were too busy playing Top Gun.

... Will that do?

Guterres has already tried to get something done with the blockade already last month. It could be a way forward. And I think it would be good that the UN would gain some role in the conflict. — ssu

It's the same effort, I guess, reported about at inception and a month later. The article I posted was from Kommersant, a leading Russian economic daily, and was based on an interview of Guterres at a time when he could dare state that "the negotiations are on track", ie moving forward somehow.

Yes, it'd be good if the UN could show some utility at last. They can do neutral like nobody else, to the point of saying strictly nothing at times when you would want them to say something.

when he attacked Ukraine on the 24th February, Putin clearly had the objective to take over the country, at least Kyiv and NovoRossija, perhaps to install a puppet government in place in Kyiv. And obviously he has had to limit his objectives. — ssu

That's literally what Macron reported Putin telling him:

Macron had said Putin "wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine. He will, in his own words, carry out his operation to 'de-Nazify' Ukraine to the end," a senior aide to the French leader told the AFP news agency.
3 March 2022

Just in what drug-addled world does "de-Nazify' Ukraine" "literally" mean 'take over Ukraine'?

To force a regime change, one of the things one must do is take the capital city.

To force a regime change, one of the things one must do is take the capital city. — Olivier5

So?

So it implies taking Ukraine as far as Kyiv.

So it implies taking Ukraine as far as Kyiv. — Olivier5

To force regime change, yes.

'De-nazify' doesn't "literally" mean 'force regime change' any more than it "literally" means 'take over'.

It "literally" means 'remove Nazis'. As an objective it could have been satisfied by anything from destroying the Azov battalion, to changing legislation, to killing every last person Putin even vaguely suspected of being slightly right-wing.

What it doesn't, under any circumstances whatsoever, literally mean, is 'take over political control of a neighbouring country'

Even 'regime change' isn't the same as 'taking over' a country. The US wanted regime change in Iraq, but Iraq is not now part of America.

It's not literally the same, okay, but that's what it meant.

Again, not sufficient for what, to whom, why? — neomac
I'm not going to hand-hold you through the argument. If you can't remember where we are, that's your loss. I asked about methods for determining ideas which were wrong, your appealed to 'aggregate methods', I asked what they might be and you said… — Isaac

As long as you keep referring to our exchanges in a rather vague and decontestualised way, you are neither proving to understand my claims nor helping me understand your point. And that’s probably a reason why you end up straw manning me (as other interlocutors) so often.

If we are in a forum debating things we can link sources, provide arguments , offer definitions. — neomac
Now you're saying that is not, in fact sufficient to determine wrong arguments at all, but further — Isaac

Provide arguments, link sources and offer definitions are what we can do when debating. But those activities are governed by epistemic rules that we can fail to follow: arguments can be flawed formally or informally; definitions can be contradictory, circular, semantic nonsense or ambiguous; evidences can be from unreliable source or misreported or misunderstood or non-pertinent etc.

whenever I found your arguments fallacious as straw man, misquotations, contradictions, question begging claims, lack of evidence, blatant lies, etc.) or questionable on factual or explanatory bases, I argued for it. — neomac

Except that all of the above are completely subjective, so you've still given nothing other than your judgement as a measure. Arguments are wrong because you think they are. — Isaac

What do you mean by “completely subjective”? I’m not giving you my judgement as a measure! I gave you arguments for you to assess based on rules you actually do, can and must share and apply to play the game of assessing rationally peoples’ claims and arguments, mine and yours included. BTW, if I were to believe things completely subjectively, what would even be the point to provide arguments to discriminate what is more or less rational? I could simply claim you are a Russian troll/bot, that you claimed that Russians are morally justified in bombing, killing, raping, looting Ukrainians, or that Mearsheimer is paid by Russians. Or I could argue that all my objections to you were perfectly rational for exactly all the same reasons I already pointed out, in spite of being called “completely subjectively”, and not because you made your point but for the simple reason that the expression “completely subjectively” doesn’t discriminate anything, it’s an empty word. Indeed you can’t point at anything that is not completely-subjective, including your own claim that my claims are “completely-subjective”. So, far from having any epistemological value, your claim that “all of the above are completely subjective” serves the only purpose to dispense yourself from rationally validating your claims and continue to nurture your informational bubble. And that amounts to corner yourself into a position that is not rationally compelling.

I try to identify the logic structure of the argument, — neomac
Now you're saying you don't. Which is it? — Isaac

That objectively is a false claim. I never said “I don’t try to identify the logic structure of the argument” in my previous post. You can prove me wrong by quoting exactly where I wrote “I don’t try to identify the logic structure of the argument”, can you? No, you can’t. And that your claim is objectively false is independent from our political orientations.
Maybe you have a more rationally compelling objection to make, but all you have offered here is yet another straw man argument.

I’m mainly interested in reasoning over pertinent arguments on their own merits, more than in resulting opinion polls and intelligence contests — neomac
It's entirely an 'intelligence contest'. — Isaac

To me it's not an 'intelligence contest' precisely in the sense that I’m not here to test and rank how people are intelligent nor I see the pertinence of talking about people’s intelligence if it’s not the topic under investigation. I’m participating to this forum, primarily because interested in discussing and assessing arguments as rationally as possible. If you are here to do something else, I don’t care.

Great. So let's have those methods then. You keep vaguely pointing to the existence of these supposedly 'rational' methods (which I've somehow missed in my academic career thus far - which ought to be of concern to the British education system), yet you're clandestine about the details. Are they secret? — Isaac

I have no idea what academic career you have/had and in what field, but it would be shocking to discover you didn’t apply some standard academic methodology to prepare and assess your students’ tests for example, or some standard scientific methodology when making and publishing your research: e.g. in collecting, processing, assessing data wrt a set of hypotheses, and communicating your results on a scientific paper to be reviewed and published. And it would be shocking to discover if your work wasn’t peer reviewed wrt strict epistemic requirements likely including clarity and coherence of the analytic notions used, consistency and consequentiality of your conclusions wrt a set of assumptions, explanatory power of your hypotheses, accuracy and significance of the evidence used to support your claims, etc. Accuracy, consistency, clarity, pertinence, explanatory power, evidential support are epistemic goals that we can pursue or defend to some extent also in informal contexts like debating topics on a philosophy forum. Anyway this is how I would navigate our differences rationally. And I would expect you to do the same with me, if you want to be rationally compelling to me.
Concerning your generic request of details about my rational methods, aren’t all the detailed objections I made to you during our exchanges enough to illustrate what they consist in? Lately you made an objection to me where you evidently failed to logically process a modus tollens. Is this an objective epistemic failure? Yes it is. Does this epistemic failure have anything to do with political orientations? Absolutely none. Is this a detailed enough illustration of my all-too arcane exoteric top-secret clandestine hush hush unheard so-called “rational methods” that is totally missing in the entire British education system?

you started talking about possibilities (“possible interpretations”, “could perfectly rationally”), yet you concluded your argument with a fact (“And indeed, many have” concluded that perfectly rationally look at those facts and conclude etc.) giving the impression that the possibilities you were talking about were actually the case — neomac
It is a fact that many have reached different conclusions. I can't see what your problem is with that. Are you saying that all parties agree on this? — Isaac

No, I’m questioning that you proved as a fact that reached different conclusions are the result of perfectly rational considerations of exactly the same facts, which was the point of your possible scenario.

Not sure about that either. First, I have no idea how one would or could calculate such a probability — neomac
There's no need to calculate it. It's sufficient that it exists. In order for a country to be called 'a security threat' is is simply definitional that their probability of causing harm has to be above some threshold — Isaac

You can define all you want, but I don’t see the point of talking about probabilities in numeric terms when you nor anybody else - as far as I can tell - even knows how to calculate it. It would be easier to talk about risks in qualitative terms (e.g. very unlikely, unlikely, possible, very likely, practically certain ) for example after consulting and aggregating the feedback from experts in different strategic domains. But still the purpose of fixing democratically a threat index by nation based on some risk assessment looks to me quite obscure. Why wouldn’t current simple opinion polls be enough to you?

'De-nazify' doesn't "literally" mean 'force regime change' any more than it "literally" means 'take over'.

It "literally" means 'remove Nazis'. As an objective it could have been satisfied by anything from destroying the Azov battalion, to changing legislation, to killing every last person Putin even vaguely suspected of being slightly right-wing. — Isaac

Clearly, the Nazis which Putin desires to remove are supported by the present Ukrainian government, so Nazism must go to the top. I think Putin's goal of de-nazifying necessarily requires regime change.

Macron had said Putin "wanted to seize control of the whole of Ukraine. He will, in his own words, carry out his operation to 'de-Nazify' Ukraine to the end," a senior aide to the French leader told the AFP news agency. — Olivier5

In fact Putin had already in 2014-2015 bullied to Western leaders that he can "roll the tanks to Kharkiv and Kyiv easily".

'De-nazify' doesn't "literally" mean 'force regime change' any more than it "literally" means 'take over'.

It "literally" means 'remove Nazis'. As an objective it could have been satisfied by anything from destroying the Azov battalion, to changing legislation, to killing every last person Putin even vaguely suspected of being slightly right-wing. — Isaac

This is very bizarre semantics. It's difficult to understand Putin's words at the start of the war as anything else than regime change as stated. Now the objectives might have been lowered.

Yet the fact is that Russia made an all out conventional attack against Ukraine starting from February 24th of this year. Before it had fought an 8 year proxy war in the Donbas. And before that it had annexed Crimea and tried to start similar uprisings in other places than Donetsk and Luhansk, where the instigation was successful.

I think that this history of aggression, the actions taken by Russia, speak more clearly than words.

The poor sods the two 'evils' get to do their fighting for them. — Isaac

Wait, aren't the ones fighting, the "evils"? You call them "poor sods", but they're fighting an evil war, so I think that makes them evil.

The Innocents caught in the crossfire, or deliberately targeted.

The poor, who inevitability pay the most for the damage both sides have done to their livelihoods. — Isaac

If it's a contained battlefield, why would there be any "innocents" there? I guess what you are saying is that it's not a contained battlefield. Do you think that the good of the world does not have the capacity to contain the evil to that battlefield? Seems to me, like the evil has already run amok, and pervades the entire world. This is why providing it with a battleground might not be a bad idea.

those activities are governed by epistemic rules that we can fail to follow: arguments can be flawed formally or informally; definitions can be contradictory, circular, semantic nonsense or ambiguous; evidences can be from unreliable source or misreported or misunderstood or non-pertinent etc. — neomac

And if we disagree about those judgements?

What do you mean by “completely subjective”? I’m not giving you my judgement as a measure! I gave you arguments for you to assess based on rules you actually do, can and must share and apply to play the game of assessing rationally peoples’ claims and arguments, mine and yours included. — neomac

Right. And I disagree that those rules have been broken (by my claims). I think they have been broken by yours. So now what? How can I now argue (using those same rules) that you broke those rules. We're just going to end up in the same position (you think you didn't break them, I think you did).

I were to believe things completely subjectively, what would even be the point to provide arguments to discriminate what is more or less rational? — neomac

To convince me (or others) to believe the same. I'm not claiming that nothing is objectively irrational (it's a word in a shared language, so it has a shared meaning, not a private one). What I'm saying is that you cannot get further then the range of shared meaning. Several contradictory things can be equally rational (they all fit the definition of the word). Take 'game' for example. A Cow is not a 'game', it's a type of farm animal. Anyone claiming a cow is a game is wrong. But the question of whether, say, juggling is a 'game' is moot - some say it is and others say it isn't. There's nothing more you can do from there to determine whether it's a game or not, there's no outside agency to appeal to. Whether an argument is 'rational' is like that.

I could simply claim you are a Russian troll/bot, that you claimed that Russians are morally justified in bombing, killing, raping, looting Ukrainians, or that Mearsheimer is paid by Russians. — neomac

Not without providing some evidence. It would be a ridiculous claim.

That objectively is a false claim. I never said “I don’t try to identify the logic structure of the argument” in my previous post. You can prove me wrong by quoting exactly where I wrote “I don’t try to identify the logic structure of the argument”, can you? No, you can’t. And that your claim is objectively false is independent from our political orientations. — neomac

Good example.

Here's a dictionary explaining what the Idiom "you're saying" means in English. As you can see, it doesn't literally mean that you actually spoke (or wrote) those exact words. It's an understanding of your meaning. Hence, again, what you think is objectively false only seems that way to you. Other interpretations see it differently.

I have no idea what academic career you have/had and in what field, but it would be shocking to discover you didn’t apply some standard academic methodology to prepare and assess your students’ tests for example, or some standard scientific methodology when making and publishing your research — neomac

I do. Absolutely none of which is happening here. There have been no scientific papers produced on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, no statistical analysis, no accepted methods and no peer review. But it's not these standards that make for a filtered set of theories in the scientific journals - it's the agreement on how they're measured. If I published a paper in which the conclusion was "I reckon..." without any reference to an experiment or meta-analysis, we'd all agree that's a failure to meet the standards. We're talking here about situations where we disagree about such a failure. You keep referring to epistemic standards (as if I'm disputing they exist), but the question is not their existence it's the resolution of disagreements about whether they've been met. So...

this is how I would navigate our differences rationally. And I would expect you to do the same with me, if you want to be rationally compelling to me. — neomac

...we would both already claim we were. The problem here is that you keep insisting I'm not meeting those standards, but you've got nothing more than your opinion that I'm not. No evidence can be brought to bear, no external authority appealed to. It's just you reading my argument and concluding it is not 'rational' and me reading it and concluding it is. There's literally nothing more that can be appealed to other than our judgements.

Lately you made an objection to me where you evidently failed to logically process a modus tollens. — neomac

I disagree. So what I'm asking is what is your method for demonstrating that I'm wrong in that disagreement and you're right?

It would be easier to talk about risks in qualitative terms (e.g. very unlikely, unlikely, possible, very likely, practically certain ) for example after consulting and aggregating the feedback from experts in different strategic domains. — neomac

So what method (if not numerical) is used to perform this 'aggregation' and reach the assessment?

Clearly, the Nazis which Putin desires to remove are supported by the present Ukrainian government — Metaphysician Undercover

How so?

It's difficult to understand Putin's words at the start of the war as anything else than regime change — ssu

No it isn't. I've understood then other than that. So have many others. That you personally find it difficult is the result of your particular biases (as is the fact that I find it easy). Truth is not given us by the difficulty we have understanding it (otherwise all quantum physics would definitely be wrong!)

I think that this history of aggression, the actions taken by Russia, speak more clearly than words. — ssu

Exactly the point I was making. Your apologetics for America. You take Biden's word as evidence of America's intent (despite a similar history of aggression), yet with Putin, you look to his actions, not his words. Why the different treatment?

You guys should start a new thread on epistemology. Your conversation is off topic here.

Why the different treatment? — Isaac

Personally, I tend to trust Biden far more than I trust Putin.

You take Biden's word as evidence of America's intent (despite a similar history of aggression), yet with Putin, you look to his actions, not his words. Why the different treatment? — Isaac

There's no different treatment.

The US is arming substantially Ukraine. It's sharing intelligence about the Russian invader. But it's not declaring a no-fly zone or sending it's troops to Ukraine. Ground forces surely haven't been sent and how many other US actors are in country is an open question. Several articles about how the weapon transfers go into a black hole (see What happens to weapons sent to Ukraine? The US doesn't really know]) hints to that there really aren't many US actors on the ground in Ukraine.

Furthermore,

A war of aggression similar to this on US behalf would be the Spanish-American war, which also resulted in annexations of land from the country attacked. Other war of aggression would be the invasion of Iraq in 2003, were it's quite clear and evident the agenda and the push for the war by certain group in Washington. Cheney started promoting the war against Iraq right on 11th of September 2001 immediately. Likely the idea had been brewing for a long time in neocon circles. The case of Valerie Plame shows the extent where those rooting for the war would go.

In the US, the political apparatus is quite open and leaks make it quite transparent, unlike Russia. If one follows US politics. Hence it's quite easy for example to Noam Chomsky to follow what is happening.

The Centre for Strategic Communications (StratCom) of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has confirmed the death of Russian Major General Roman Kutuzov in a battle near Popasna in a Facebook post. "Major General Roman Kutuzov has been officially denazified and demilitarized," the statement said.

Earlier reports said that Russian Major General Roman Kutuzov was killed in battles near the town of Popasna in the Luhansk region.

"Major General Roman Kutuzov has been officially denazified and demilitarized," the statement said. — Olivier5

:rofl:

I love the language of war. The Ukrainians are catching on. I think the Russians are the best but the Ukrainians are learning.

You're right. Back to the topic.

So those Hungarian bath houses...

There's no different treatment. — ssu

There is. You used Biden's statement as evidence of America's intent. You disbelieved Putin's statement (and Lavrov's earlier) deciding that only an analysis of their actions would suffice.

The fact that you can criticise America is not in question. As @Streetlight rightly highlighted...

"History" is not a storage space for America's bad shit, to be sequestered and lopped off as an academic's concern. — Streetlight