Sounds complex. A default view based on up and down votes works well for the question and answer format, as implemented on Stack Exchange, but here I can't see how it would work, even without the added difficulty of subtle judgments on relevance, "key argument", etc. Unless I'm missing something.

In any case, nothing like that can happen with the software we're currently using. I'm thinking of moving to Discourse, which will give us a lot of flexibility. As it happens, Discourse was developed by the guy who made Stack Exchange, so maybe it'll have some of that functionality too.

As far as I know there hasn't been an episode of Conflicted since December, and if Aimen Dean has reacted to the air strike, I don't know what his reaction was.

If you just mean that based on the opinions he makes clear in the podcast, he would support the air strike, then I think you might be right. Dean is especially hostile to the ambitions and foreign actions of Iran, and approved of the Americans' assassination of Qasem Soleimani.

I can't recall ever using that functionality, so I didn't know until a few seconds ago that I have 14 followers. I am sure that this has nothing to do with my philosophical skills and everything to do with being a significant personage at TPF.

You can't send private messages until you have posted 20 times.

So that's what he's been up to. I'll watch it some time soon. Thanks for posting.

(Jazz elitists: I don't care I like it)

How can I absorb these texts better — deusidex

note taking — The Questioning Bookworm

This.

only reading the authors/thinkers you truly are interested in — The Questioning Bookworm

And ideally this.

Simple.

I'm just puzzling over the place of this little corner of the community. Part of me would be rid of it, merging the conversations into metaphysics and ethics - but that would detract from both those — Banno

If this were my personal fiefdom I'd remove the philosophy of religion category and I'd probably delete most of the philosophy of religion that turned up in other categories. But it's not, so the most I want to do is crack down on it. I confess I want do this more to religion than, say, solipsism, which is another subject that generates bad discussions. I'm not sure if this is unfair.

I'm someone who firmly believes that religion has historically played an important socio-cultural role in collective normative validation and legitimation. And that its complete expulsion from modern life is more of a harm than a good. — Pantagruel

One can agree with all this, as I do, and yet find the majority of these discussions about God's existence and omnipotence bloody awful.

:clap:

Navalny gets 2 years and 8 months. In a "penal colony", which always makes me think of the Gulag.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard that sort of view being articulated before. — TheHedoMinimalist

To add to what SophistiCat said, it goes back to Plato's Theaetetus. To show that there must be more to knowledge than true belief, Socrates gives the example of a jury convinced of the truth merely by the rhetoric of a lawyer: only through luck did they arrive at the right verdict, and that doesn't look a lot like knowledge.

In your own example, luck didn't replace justification as it did in Socrates's example, but merely put you in a position to justify your belief (by allowing you to be taught). That's not what philosophers are talking about when they talk about luck in epistemology.

https://iep.utm.edu/epi-luck/

I thought there were too many of them.

done

Note: I've merged a few God threads together into this one.

This discussion was merged into Can God do anything?

This discussion was merged into Can God do anything?

It's in the text box toolbar see.



If you're typing it, you have to use double quotes around the username.

You broke it. — Gus Lamarch

Wrong. The original, «What it's "Legitimacy"», is nonsense.

Fixed, thanks.

One fact to notice is that actually the Russian Opposition to Putin aren't actually very Pro-Western, or at least aren't politically correct when viewed from the West. It shows the distrust or suspicion Russians do have towards the West. Nemtsov had been a deputy prime minister during the Yeltsin years and an outspoke critic of Putin, while Navalnyi I think hasn't held office. — ssu

As far as I can tell, Nemtsov was actually quite pro-West. For example, unlike Navalny he was against the annexation of Crimea, and supportive of Ukraine's closer ties with the West.

Looks completely farcical compared to putin's instrumental use of nationalism. — The Opposite

If I was a Russian liberal opponent of the regime I'd be troubled that the only guy I could support once attended far-right marches, and during the short war between Russia and Georgia referred to Georgians as rodents, and urged the government to take more drastic action:

Russia should take the following steps (at least):

1. Provide serious military and financial assistance to South Ossetia and Abkhazia (to the extent that Abkhazia is ready to actually fight in South Ossetia).
2. Declare South Ossetia a non-flying zone and immediately shoot down all aircraft that are in this zone.
3. To declare a complete blockade of Georgia. Stop any communication with her.
4. To expel from the Russian Federation all citizens of Georgia who are on our territory.

In the future, act according to the situation, but at the same time be aware that of course you really want to fire a cruise missile at the general staff of rodents, but the rodents are just waiting for this. — Navalny, 2008, through Google Translate

https://navalny.livejournal.com/274456.html

"Rodents" ("grizuny"), was a known ethnic slur against Georgians. He has since apologized for the slur but stood by the rest of it.

Generally it looks like he was somewhere around the xenophobic end of the Russian political spectrum, with a less-than-accommodating attitude to immigrants from the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

But as I've implied, I think this could be set aside in the fight against authoritarianism and corruption, and it's possible he has moderated his views. I'm certainly impressed by him at the moment. I'm not trying to cancel him as the pro-Putin tankies are no doubt spending all their time doing as I write this (I wasn't surprised to see the socialist Monthly Review peddling the idea that Navalny's return is a CIA plot).

As for Putin's nationalism, what exactly are you referring to? He's a pragmatist when it comes to issues of ethnicity, and more often than not emphasizes the multi-ethnic nature of Russia: one of the things he has always been afraid of is the country falling apart.

Plenty of information around. Just look for it yourself. Not that it's significant in the present context.

what are your thoughts on the protests? Did you join in? — The Opposite

I think they're entirely justified and I hope it has some momentum, although it's difficult to see how at the moment. And no, I stayed well away from the city centre. Getting arrested or kicked out of the country is something I want to avoid at all costs. Not only that but I don't feel like it's my fight, or maybe, I don't feel I know enough about it. I think on balance that Navalny is to be admired and supported right now, but his apparent past support of ethnic Russian nationalism isn't something I could get behind.

But that last point isn't all that significant here. Obviously the protesters were not nationalists in that sense; they were protesting against authoritarianism and corruption. Really it's just that I can't risk getting kicked out.

It might be relevant to put his photography, and perhaps even his attachment to Alice Liddell, in the context of a contemporary aesthetic movement or tendency, namely the Victorian cult of the child, "which perceived child nudity as essentially an expression of innocence". (source)

It might be naive to think that there was never anything erotic about this, but as far as I know there's no evidence that Dodgson sexually abused or assaulted anyone, or "engaged in lewd or sexual behaviour" as Wayfarer put it.

Has anyone watched this video by Navalny — The Opposite

Yep: as I write this it's had over 79 million views :grin:

I'm closing this.

Thanks, they look interesting. I don't know when I'll get around to reading them. Maybe others on the staff might want to have a look: @StreetlightX, @fdrake, @Baden.

Thanks Josh. On the face of it, something like a critique of mindfulness might have some potential, and personally I'm interested in phenomenology, but ideally, articles should be accessible to intelligent and curious lay-people, those who aren't familiar with the literature.

Or the more likely reason is you are defending a nutter, which seems popular in philosophy. — Darkneos

If only you had offered a criticism for me to defend him against.

[Moving this garbage thread to the lounge]

That still sounds foolish to me. Judging by his books it sounds more like the guy doesn't have a grasp on the subjects he talks about. Even his book is rife with logical fallacies. — Darkneos

If this is your own assessment rather than that of the philosophically illiterate one star Amazon review that you quoted, then tell us in what way it's foolish, why you think Gabriel doesn't have a grasp of the subjects he talks about (whatever that means), and point out his logical fallacies.

When Gabriel decided on his provocative title, he likely wanted to stimulate curiosity. It obviously hasn't worked in your case. You didn't like it and came here to attack what you assume it is he is saying. As I pointed out, you made a mistake. Own up to it.

Other than a few similar interviews, I've read the book, Why the World Does Not Exist, which uses the concept first laid out in Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology, which I haven't read.

In any case I'd need a refresher to discuss it; maybe I'll look at it again. (It could make a nice reading group too, especially in the way it might attract both analytics and continentals).

Up his sleeve he has indefinitely many fields of sense, I believe.

I'm not sure. Some kind of coherentism, I suppose.

I suggest reading that interview to get an idea of what he's saying.

Here's a quote from it:

Skepticism, the position or worry that we cannot really ever know anything, is completely unjustified... — MG

http://www.fourbythreemagazine.com/issue/world/markus-gabriel-interview

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/488577

Just work on your reading comprehension please.

I have no idea how you got that from what I said.

It just seems.....weird to me that some folks would do that? I mean doesn't that amount to shooting yourself in the foot more or less? Who are you talking to then? Why charge for your courses? Why tell this to anyone? — Darkneos

If you really want to know why Markus Gabriel says that the world does not exist, you should read his book, Why the World Does Not Exist, or one of the interviews in which he summarizes the argument, like this one.

Very roughly, he argues that existence applies locally and within domains, i.e., to each object against its background, not to some posited all-encompassing container object that itself has no background or domain.

Anyone thinking that...

It's just skepticism doing what it does best — TheMadFool

...is incorrect.

No problem Todd. Assuming you're on a desktop computer or laptop rather than a mobile device, to "hover over" is to position your on-screen mouse pointer over something, without clicking. I've indicated this in the image below:



The date and time isn't shown in this image, but if you position your pointer as shown, over the grey text that says "14 minutes ago" (or whatever), you'll see it.

And if you hover over the "an hour ago", "a day ago" or whatever, it displays the date and time in a tooltip.