Because of the menagerie of fantastic creatures that populates this site, and that must come from some old medieval treatise on exotic beasts with two heads and one leg or something... I mean, you could mean zombies, or automatons, or winged rabbits — Olivier5

...or brains in vats, or rational animals, or vehicles for genes, or eternal souls...

Yeh, it makes you dizzy.

If you say to me "this block of wood is solid", and i cut it open to find a hollow in the centre, I'd be liable to say "no, this is not solid". When the scientist 'cuts open' the wood even smaller and find no less of a hollow you want to deny him recourse to the same language to describe his findings. — Isaac

You appear to be under the impression that scientists claim that what we call solid objects are not actually solid. This isn't true. Ever heard of the states of matter, or solid-state physics?

Same for neuroscientists.

But if you just mean that they should be allowed to say, speaking loosely, "tables are not really solid", and "we don't really see apples", then I guess it's a way of getting their point across. It seems far too misleading to me, and I've only seen it from bad popularizations.

People, I suppose. Why do you ask?

By this token, eyes don't see, because eyes don't have eyes — Olivier5

According to the most relevant sense of "see", I agree that our eyes don't see, that it's better here to say that we see by means of our eyes. We can use words in different ways, and in philosophy we have to be careful not to use two senses of a word without realizing it.

Why not? — Banno

Maybe it's just me that disagrees then. Minds don't see, not least because minds don't have eyes.

I don't really see the problem, at least as you've described it. Physicists have no problem using "solid", and it's consistent with one of the main ways we use it in everyday life. Tables and walls and rocks are solid, and the scientist explains what a solid is down at the atomic level etc.

One of the challenges to direct perception is that if the object appears differently in some ways to us than it is, then we're directly aware of a mental object, and only indirectly the physical cause. — Marchesk

So...when I'm looking at the the moon I can cover it with my hand, but the moon is too big to be covered by my hand, therefore I'm not seeing the moon, but just a mental object. Is that about right?

It being mostly empty space held together by electromagnetic bonds would have blown their minds. — Marchesk

It would have blown their minds that this is what solidity is, yes. Turns out, for a neutrino, the table doesn't feel anything like the same as it does for us.

I think they're only spooked when people claim that minds, rather than people or animals, see apples--and other such confusions. But I'll leave it to Banno to respond.

I think our disagreement, as ever, comes down to this:

You think that our scientific investigations have revealed that apples are not actually red.

I think that this is as confused as saying that solid things are not actually solid. Following unenlightened, I think that our scientific investigations, rather than being a substitute for seeing, explain it, i.e., explain how we see red apples.

we have direct access via perceptual sensations? — Marchesk

I think that's true.

seeing color is what makes us visually aware of objects? — Marchesk

Well, seeing things normally involves seeing their colour, of course, but one can see (be visually aware of) things without seeing their colour.

I don't know what we're talking about here.

there is mind seeing the apple — Olivier5

:rofl: Somehow I doubt that Banno's going to agree with that.

I may have used Kantian terms, but that wasn't the substance. Also, I haven't mentioned Dennett here and I'm not talking about qualia.

We could ask where the colors live instead. — Marchesk

I thought you were on the way to recovery after our last debate, but it looks like you've had a relapse. :wink:

I liked that too. Sums it up nicely.

Incidentally, one could argue that he doesn't live in the world either. He lives in, perhaps, a house, and in England, and near Wales, and in the Milky Way, and in the lap of luxury, but to say he lives in the world is to unjustifiably posit a great big container object, or else is to say no more than that he lives.

But that's a topic for another discussion: "Where do you live?"

I didn't say "perception occurs on the forum" (I don't know what that means). I was responding to Olivier's apparent surprise that unenlightened lives in the world and not in his mind.

The way you're using the word "perception" looks different from how I use it. Anyway, the brain and eyeballs both have important roles to play in perception. What's your point?

I can't make sense of the question.

it's the first time I meet with an out-of-minder — Olivier5

Did you meet him on this forum, or in your mind?

Yep, and Chuck wasn't complacent about the killing of civilians, recognizing that both sides committed atrocities.

Well the subject of this thread is "liberal imperialism". Is that classified as an attempted replacement and do you think it works well? — Paul Edwards

I'm not sure if it could be classed as a replacement. Traditional imperialism, with settler colonialism and all that, was still fundamentally tied to the nation-state, and perhaps it's the same now. In any case no, I don't think it works well. See my various posts in this discussion.

As for the Philippines, I'm confused as to what your point is. Its history doesn't seem to be a good advert for American interference.

Yes, we've seen the trouble with a world divided into nation-states, but none of the attempted replacements so far seem to work very well, and in some cases they're worse, e.g., internationalist Islamism vs nationalist Kurds. As for NATO and the "free world", I don't think I want to address that directly at the moment, even though it's more on-topic than all this stuff about bombing Germans.

I think a comprehensive response to 9/11 will involve getting people to think of themselves as individuals rather than as a member of some race/religion/sex/nationality or any other form of aggregation. — Paul Edwards

Says the person with the NATO flag avatar.

This illustrates the fact that some kinds of aggregation can be in opposition to others. One of the most interesting examples is Islamism vs nation-states, which is one of the fundamental dimensions of what some call the Islamic civil war (the other main one is Sunni vs Shia).

But isn't it always a matter of degree of responsibility that the citizens have for their leader's actions as opposed to offering the citizens full absolution? — Hanover

Well, what does that scale look like in the case of these bombings? Does it go by age and ability, with infants and the mentally disabled being the least responsible, and capable adults being the most responsible? Maybe it's intersectional, such that we can use social class as well: the industrial working class were down at the bottom end of the scale (because they were overwhelmingly anti-Nazi), and Protestant small-businessmen and farmers were at the top (the Nazis' support base)? Even if this were a reasonable scheme for the apportioning of responsibility, the bombings made no such distinctions (although I'm pretty sure they didn't bomb many farmers).

The sense in which some civilians in a war might be regarded as to some degree responsible for the actions of their government is, I suppose, that some of them fully approve of its aims and actions. But, even aside from the presumption of civilian innocence enshrined in international law, in Germany, most of them did not. It was a totalitarian regime that had seized power through a combination of minority support, terrorizing the electorate, and destroying the massively popular anti-Nazi parties and their unions. After the seizure of power, the scope for resistance shrunk to nothing, if one discounts those actions that were suicidal.

I'm really having some amount of difficulty hearing the cries of the German citizens over the cries of those who were executed by their government. — Hanover

But you don't have to choose between them. They are not competing for your sympathy unless you see every civilian victim merely as a representative of the Nazis, on one side, or of the victims of Nazism on the other. To hear the cries of the Germans is not to sympathise with Nazis or belittle their victims. Quite the opposite.

So yes, I do think you're entirely wrongheaded.

My view and the view in my country would be a bit different, of course. — ssu

Well, everything in your post is consistent with the post of mine that you replied to, and I agree with you.

My disagreement is not fundamentally with your principles but with your approach. — Baden

This brought to my mind the imagined scenario of a social democrat saying this to Felix Dzerzhinsky during the Red Terror.

@Hanover Also, I'm just curious: was Stalin a hero as well?

My own position on this question is about the same for Stalin as for Churchill: the cause of fighting the Nazis was a good one, and we can be thankful that they were victorious, and they certainly had personal qualities that helped the Allies win, but to call them heroes doesn't seem right to me. Most Russians are proud of their victory against the Nazis, but they're mostly not very enamoured of Stalin himself.

Of course, it's fair to say that unlike Churchill, Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler and only joined the Allies because Hitler broke it. But I don't think Churchill's motivations were much more noble, old-fashioned imperialist that he was.

In case it's not obvious, I'm not saying Churchill's crimes were as bad as Stalin's.

There seems to be what I'll call a "combatant's exception," where we allow some degree of excuse (or at least we mitigate our evaluation of the severity of the infraction) when the person committing the act is in the heat of battle. It's for that reason that court martials are notoriously lenient. If a soldier fires off too many rounds after fighting for his life, we tend to allow for some degree of overkill (literally). You see the same with the current shootings by police, although those have been called into question because the concern is the overkill is not motivated by uncontrollable emotion, but by racism. This exception would also apply to those in the command center, not just on the ground, so it could apply to Churchill as well. This exception appears to be acknowledged by both you and Benkei. You've stated that you're not willing to call the bombings of Berlin a war crime and Benkei specifically stated he did not see a moral equivalence between the Nazi crimes and the crimes of Churchill. — Hanover

Agreed.

I tend to think the pain doled out on civilian populations by the Nazis leaves them in a difficult position to argue that they were being disproportionately punished by the bombings over Germany. — Hanover

But in what sense was it the Nazis who were being punished? I think in no sense at all, but I suppose you have another view. I think I could accept your interpretation of Kantian retributive justice as it applies to war (which I think is controversial, but never mind) without accepting that incinerating innocent Germans amounted to retribution against the Nazis.

Additionally, I entirely disagree with an assessment that Churchill was not a hero even if I were to agree that the bombings of civilian German targets was entirely unjustified. I can easily divide Churchill's dogged refusal to submit to the Nazi onslaught and his unrelenting effort to protect his island and the greater Western world with his decision to bomb civilian targets. That one saves humanity on Monday and engages in acts of depravity on Tuesday doesn't make me reassess their heroism on Monday. It simply means that people are complex and nuanced and that real life superheroes don't exist are still human beings. — Hanover

I have a slightly different view of Churchill, but I'm happy to go along with this here, and I think I made it more or less explicit in my mention of Churchill. My post was not aiming towards a reassessment of Churchill as a leader, a person, a hero, or whatever. Rather, it was a plea for the acknowledgement of all acts of depravity.

I think the original point of Benkei's that you objected to was this: "The Blitz still targeted docks and war effort manufacturing. It was Churchill who went for the jugular." The thing is, in the context of Britain and Germany's bombing of each other, this is a fact. That you took Benkei to be implying a general equivalency is partly why I accused you of kneejerk reaction.

I don't get to hear radio 4 around here, not available — Sir2u

It's available online, last I checked. Has been for many years. It isn't blocked like TV (but there's a way around the block anyway).

I even use Street View to look for the places sometimes — Sir2u

I do that too, often when listening to podcasts or reading books.

After listening to it I was a bit disappointed, entertained yes but not informed. — Sir2u

Bad luck. There are many unsatisfactory podcasts around, just like books, movies, everything.

Trump didn't do shit of substance in the Middle East — Baden

Apparently the killing of Qasem Soleimani substantially hurt the Iranian efforts to dominate the Middle East.

Incidentally, I know some Russians who make excuses for the rape of two million women in Germany by Soviet troops at the end of the war. To make excuses like this I think is a thoughtless instinct, and it's the same phenomenon in these two cases.

:up:

Sorry, misread it.

You don't think Slaughterhouse-Five is a condemnation?

Marxism: man is primarily a labourer: physical labour being the only way leading to the fulfillment of his physical needs with all other needs being denied or rated as inferior. — Daniel C

There may have been Marxists who believed this, but Marx certainly did not. "Marx held a consistent view that our human nature was expressed in a drive to spontaneously and creatively produce products in a manner that is conducive to social and individual satisfaction."

Marx's view of human nature
Marx's theory of human nature

talk just to talk style that is used so often today an the radio — Sir2u

I'm not sure what you mean, but I was referring primarily to radio 4 and the World Service.

Are all other horrors of war so eclipsed by the Holocaust that we no longer have any usable scale by which we can condemn them? Can we condemn them as much as they ought (in my view) to be condemned without being falsely accused of equating them with the Holocaust? — Peter Hitchens

Is the motivation for defending Britain's deliberate bombing of civilians that giving even an inch to those who condemn it would be seen to moderate one's uncompromising opposition to everything the Nazis did and stood for? I don't understand it otherwise. And even this motivation is difficult to understand except as a thoughtless kneejerk reaction. It seems to me that your moral authority is only enhanced by facing up to the crimes perpetrated by your own side. After all, if anything you do can be justified by "but Nazis" then you don't have much of a morality at all.

As for the idea that condemning the bombings excuses or diminishes the atrocities of the Nazis, I just find it bizarre. Note that British historians right across the political spectrum condemn the actions. Not all would label it as a war crime, but none of them, as far as I know, think that the earth-shattering horror of the Holocaust makes everything the Allies did somehow all right.

Myself, I also hesitate to label it as a war crime, partly because I'm simply uncomfortable, unlike Benkei, with a legalistic framing of such things, even if I can admit that international law has its place, given that we do live in a war-torn world. But to me, the law here would seem to me just to normalize the war, and to simplify it, to isolate specific actions that have to be understood in context, etc. Anyway, that's beside the point. The point being that killing those people was an inexcusable evil.

To condemn the targeting of innocent people, who included children, the old, and the sick--to say it was evil, as I do, is not to say that the war effort was evil, that RAF personnel were evil, or even that Harris or Churchill were evil--and it is not to draw an equivalency between the bombing and the exterminations carried out by the Nazis.

Would any Allied action have been justified? Would it have been "yeah it was bad but we were fighting the Nazis" if the Allies had, after liberation, continued to use the concentration camps and death camps, this time to murder German people in exactly the same way as the Nazis used them? People who were not in any sense responsible for the Nazis? Would you simply shout "Payback" in that case too? (As it happens, the Soviets did continue to use the camps for a while, especially for political prisoners, though not to gas people)

Peter Hitchens is an extremely unfashionable conservative but he has a lot of good stuff to say about the issue:

I get into no end of trouble for my position on this. I am told that I am unpatriotic, even now, for discussing it or for being distressed by the extreme and horrible cruelties inflicted by our bombs on innocent women and children, who could not conceivably be held responsible for Hitler’s crimes. On the contrary, I believe it is the duty of a proper patriot to criticize his country where he believes it to have done wrong.

I am told I am defaming the memory of the bomber crews. I have never done so, and never will. They had little idea of what they were doing, died terrible deaths in terrible numbers thanks to the ruthless squandering of life by their commanders, and showed immense personal courage. It is those who, knowing what was being done, ordered them into battle that I blame.

I am told that I am equating our bombing of Germany with the German mass murder of the Jews, when I would not dream of making such a comparison, never have done so and never will. I am told that I am excusing the mass murder of the Jews, when nothing could ever excuse it and I should certainly never attempt to do so. Is it still necessary to say that two wrongs do not make a right, and that one horribly wrong thing may be worse than another horribly wrong thing, and yet they may both still be horribly wrong, examined by themselves as actions? — Peter Hitchens

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/02/the-bombing-files-arguments-against-the-raf-bombing-of-german-civilians-summed-up.html

Welcome to the forum Lutz :smile:

the search for reality — Lutz

Try and remember where you last saw it.

This discussion was merged into Time Isn't Real

Judaka is right: It's been entertaining but let's stop being silly. I'll start deleting anything that's not a serious and thoughtful contribution to the discussion.