Then why propose the scenario of a freeze, so desired by Russia, instead of speeding up the supply of weapons? — Mykhailo Podolyak (Aug 15, 2023)

Here one major problem "Ukraine is burning through ammunition faster than the US and NATO can produce it": https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/17/politics/us-weapons-factories-ukraine-ammunition/index.html

Your inference here makes no sense syllogistically or syntactically; motivations is neither mentioned nor implied. Again, you are imposing your erroneous belief and acting like it is a correct inference.
— Jack Rogozhin

But I wasn’t making an inference of the kind you suggest. — neomac


Yes you were. — Jack Rogozhin

You should write “I thought you were making an inference” or “I still think you were making an inference”. Unfortunately you are wrong as a matter of fact and beyond any reasonable doubt.

The problem however is not necessarily on denying such facts but on questioning if such facts are enough to support the claim that the Revolution of Dignity was a coup as Russia and pro-Russian propaganda claims — neomac


I agree here and this is what we should be discussing — Jack Rogozhin

Too late for that, I think your own notions of “imperialism” and “legitimate threat” may likely be part of your main assumptions in discussing about the alleged coup, so I think you too should be focusing on such notions of yours even before talking about those facts. At this point, if you are not willing to clarify your own notions, then neither am I in discussing your understanding of those facts.

I claimed “Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules”, but that’s it. “No matter what” is your spurious addition. — neomac


Yes you did, and it's reprehensible...and I made no spurious addition and you haven't shown I have. — Jack Rogozhin

Yes I did, and I’ll do it again easy-peasy. You attributed to me “the notion citizens have to abide by their country's rules no matter what” while my original quote was “Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules.” (dot sign included). So there is no final “no matter what” in my original quote, you spuriously added it and then presented it as a factual report of what I said or meant. But you are factually wrong beyond any reasonable doubt. If you think you could infer it from my original quote, then your inference here makes no sense syllogistically or syntactically; “no matter what” is neither mentioned nor implied. If you thought you were making explicit what I left implicit, then you are still factually wrong beyond any reasonable doubt: indeed, what I left implicit at most is “if they do not want to pay the consequences” and not “no matter what“. Finally, and more importantly, I didn’t make a moral claim, but a political and legal one that holds for any state. So yes, you are factually wrong beyond any reasonable doubt no matter how you want to play it.
Oh, and if you don’t like to waste your time, then let me warn you that I don’t care about your emotional blackmailing.

First, if Russia didn’t spill violence and murder into Ukraine by supporting militarily the separatists FIRST, and so be a legitimate threat AGAINST Ukraine, its people and its territory (according to your own notion of “legitimate threat”), things wouldn’t as likely have reached such a scale to be a legitimate threat AGAINST Russia and its borders, assumed that’s the case. — neomac


This is an unfounded lie. What happened first is the US backed coup led to 50 Russian Ukrainians being burned alive in the Trade House and Donbass Russian Ukrainians rejecting the coup being shelled and terrorized by Azov Nazis. The fact you ignore that is also reprehensible. And calling it a "revolution of dignity" when it was a foreign-backed coup where citizens and police were executed by CIA-trained snipers is both erroneous and disgusting — Jack Rogozhin

Focus, I was talking about your notion of “legitimate threat” as it applies in the inter-ethnic conflict between Ukraine and Russia. And even if, for the sake of your argument, one was willing to concede that there was a “coup”, it remains the fact that it was widely welcomed by the dominant ethnic group in Ukraine as much the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea was widely welcomed by the dominant ethnic group in Crimea (which however is a minority in Ukraine). So much so that Ukrainians are asking support from the US against Russia, not from Russia against the US.


Dude, if it is of any consolation, you must know I take no particular pleasure in damaging your goofy self-promoting beliefs and claims. Actually it’s getting more and more boring. In any case, I’m here to entertain myself, not to tolerate your incontinent lack of self-confidence. I’m not your therapist and I have no pity for you.

Ssu’s implicit claim came after you solicited him and he clarified on what grounds he made his claims. At the first round, your response seemed to me something like: Putin did not commit imperialist acts, therefore Putin didn’t have imperialist motivations. Were this the case, then you too in the end were making an implicit knowledge claim on Putin’s motivations, just you took Putin’s acts as more relevant evidence than Putin’s words to assess imperialist motivations.
But then at a second round you wrote “I'm not addressing the motivations here; I'm addressing the act. Those are not the same things”, so you are addressing just “the act”. And you wrote “when Russia extends greatly beyond the Donbass and begins regularly taking resources from that area and its citizens, then I will consider it imperialism”, so what I understood so far is that you can assess Russian imperialism based on such acts, independently from whatever Putin’s declared motivations were. I take such acts to be broadly “non-speech acts” because such acts are not talking and writing. So yes you were grounding your claims on non-speech acts actually or hypothetically committed by Russia, while ssu was arguing based on what was written and said by Putin, so broadly Putin’s speech-acts, to legitimise what Putin did (invading and annexing Ukrainian territories). — neomac


This is all supposition, and you admit it is. You cannot make a logical claim based on "it seems" and "what I understood" and assert it as fact. That is not just analytically incorrect, it is syllogistcally so. You must provide factual premises to synthesize a factual claim..and you don't do that here. Also, you clearly don't know what "speech act" means. — Jack Rogozhin

The fact I’m stating is nothing other than my understanding of your views. As I repeated many times, I’m not sure to understand your claims, so I’m expressing how I understood what you said so far, and “it seems” and “I understood” are intentional warnings to signal that. You too keep misunderstanding what I (and others) say and render your own misrepresentations as a factual claim as you just did by attributing to me inference I didn’t make. Instead of repeating that I’m misrepresenting you, even though I’m literally quoting your claims, can you try to clarify better what you meant in those quotes?
Since you know, what does “speech act” mean in your own words? I’m eager to share your superior knowledge.

The point here is that your claims are implicit knowledge claims grounded on certain evidences relevant for your understanding of “imperialism” as much as ssu’s implicit knowledge claims are grounded on other evidences relevant for his understanding of “imperialism”. And as long as one just expresses one’s beliefs to illustrate one’s own implicit assumptions to an interlocutor who doesn’t necessarily share them there is nothing really challenging about it, one is simply talking past each other. — neomac


The one who needs to heed this admonishment is you, as you have been doing what you admonish against here this whole discussion, and you do it in the sentence right above. You make another false claim against me without supporting it in any way, which is not philosophical at all. Remember, what is asserted without proof or evidentiary support can be refuted without such — Jack Rogozhin

I still have no idea what you are talking about though. You keep accusing me of misrepresenting you, but adding no clarifications about the claims I allegedly misrepresented in order to rectify my misrepresentations, and keep avoiding to answer my questions directly. So I’ll cut with this pointless exchange over my alleged misrepresentations by asking you more directly: do you distinguish imperialist acts and imperialist motivations as you distinguish acts and motivations? Yes or no? If so, would this distinction imply that non-imperialist acts can have imperialist motivations and that imperialist acts can have no imperialist motivations?

The point is that if I misrepresented them, maybe it’s because I didn’t understand them and need to question your claims to understand them better, after all you do not seem to understand my claims either. — neomac


This is not an excuse for misrepresentation. You should only claim, particularly in a philosophical discussion, your interlocutor is doing or saying something if you actually think they are. If you are not, you should either say "I think you are doing/saying this" or "i think you are doing saying this, could you clarify if you are or are not.” Otherwise you are being unfair to your interlocutor and degrading the discussion — Jack Rogozhin

Well I don’t really see why reiterated expressions of “it seems”, “I understood” and “am I misinterpreting you?” can not do the same job as “I think you are doing/saying this”, but if that will make things more clear to you then I’ll give it a try. Glad that you got rid of your glib “you don't get to tell me how I make my arguments, just as I don't get to tell you how you make yours”.

All right, can you give me your definition of “selfishness” as a general characteristic that is not about motivations and psychologies? Because after a quick check on wikipedia — neomac


Yes: the quality or condition of being selfish...from Merrian-Webster. As I said, it's a characteristic
— Jack Rogozhin

Sure a psychological characteristic concerning people’s motivations. — neomac


Your inference here makes no sense syllogistically or syntactically; motivations is neither mentioned nor implied. Again, you are imposing your erroneous belief and acting like it is a correct inference. — Jack Rogozhin

But I wasn’t making an inference of the kind you suggest. I was simply making explicit what I thought and still think you are leaving implicit, based on ordinary semantics. Indeed, strictly speaking, the Merrian-Webster definition doesn’t mention nor implies that “selfishness” is a characteristic for that matter, the words used are “quality” and “condition”, not “characteristic”. But if you implicitly assume that English speaking people have enough semantic competence to understand that “quality” and “condition” equate to “characteristic” in that context, then I too can implicitly assume that English speaking people can have enough semantic competence to understand if “selfishness” is a psychological characteristic or non-psychological characteristic, if it’s about people’s motivations or it’s not about people’s motivations. Besides relying on the Merrian-Webster definition simply shifts the burden of the semantic clarification from “selfishness” to “being selfish”. So I’ll cut with this pointless exchange over my alleged misrepresentation by asking you more directly: is “selfishness” a psychological characteristic about people’s motivations to you? Yes or no? If yes then, “selfishness”, as a general characteristic of politicians, is still a claim about their psychology and motivations, as I said. If no, enlighten me what kind of characteristic is that?
Notice also that here you are not using “I think you are doing/saying this” (i.e. “I think your inference makes no sense…”) but actually presenting as a fact you misrepresentation of my claim as a “syllogistically or syntactically” inference.

First, yes it is controversial for one reason or the other, again you just recently joined the thread, and I’m not here to keep you up-to-date on what has been discussed in this thread. Just as an example, what you call “the Maidan coup” has sparked some controversy in this thread at least 7 months ago (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/776025), use the search function. Also the alleged Ukrainian war crimes sparked some controversies in this thread. — neomac


It is controversial for those who deny the facts, such as the US sending CIA agents to Ukraine right before the coup, and Gloria Nuland and our ambassador to Ukraine discussing who should replace the deposed democratically-elected leader...as if they have substantial say. The fact Nuland recently visited Niger to sway events there shows she hasn't changed her spots — Jack Rogozhin

Well, then it’s controversial because it wouldn’t make much sense to me to claim that there is a controversy about facts for those who agree on the facts. I think what you are trying to say is that there is an overwhelming large consensus over certain facts (like CIA agents and Gloria Nuland). The problem however is not necessarily on denying such facts but on questioning if such facts are enough to support the claim that the Revolution of Dignity was a coup as Russia and pro-Russian propaganda claims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity). But again, I’m not interested in restarting the debate about these facts as such. And as long as you keep accusing me to misrepresent you at every exchange for whatever reason (including irrelevant editing incidents), instead of clarifying better your views, I don’t feel encouraged to widen the debate over other subjects. My focus is on your claims about “imperialism” and ”legitimate threat”.

Second, I didn’t claim that “the notion citizens have to abide by their country's rules no matter what”. My claim wasn’t about moral assessments of laws and related citizens’ attitude, it was about what Russia can claim as a legitimate threat against Russia — neomac


Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules — neomac


You did claim this and you did not just say that about Russia...you said what you said above, proving me right. — Jack Rogozhin

I claimed “Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules”, but that’s it. “No matter what” is your spurious addition. And, I didn’t mean to make a moral claim either. To me “must” can legitimately express a rule-based injunction that can apply to maths, logic, juridical laws, morality, games, etc. (e.g. if you want to play chess, you must abide by chess rules), so with that statement I meant to make a legal and political claim: sovereign states (like Ukraine, Russia, the US, Switzerland, etc.) impose their rules over their citizens within their territories by using their coercive power, so citizens must abide by them if they do not want to pay the consequences. This holds for democratic and non-democratic regimes, moral and nor moral laws. And since we were talking about legitimate threats AGAINST Russia, my point was: can imposing rules to its own citizens by a sovereign state (Ukraine) be a legitimate threat against other sovereign states (Russia)?
BTW even here nowhere you are saying “I think you are doing/saying this”, but you keep asserting your misrepresentations of my views as a fact, proofs. And yet you admonish me to do otherwise with your views. I almost feel like complaining about this treatment. But my spider-senses tell me that you have a very good excuse or justification that makes you happy, right?

Even if Ukraine is repressing or oppressing a minority of its own citizens, that doesn’t seem to be a threat against Russia (so much so that Russia needed to distribute Russian passports into annexed territories to have a convenient pretext that Ukraine is threatening Russian citizens) — neomac


Actually it is a threat against Russia and their people as it is fomenting violence and murder right at their border, which can spill into their own territory. And it is being done against their own ethnic people who were citizens of their country only thirty years ago. If Mexico had annexed San Diego 30 years ago and started slaughtering the Americans within their new borders, the US certainly--and rightly--would militarily step in

And you must certainly disapprove of all of the US's military border crossings/bombings since WWII. I agree with you there. — Jack Rogozhin

First, if Russia didn’t spill violence and murder into Ukraine by supporting militarily the separatists FIRST, and so be a legitimate threat AGAINST Ukraine, its people and its territory (according to your own notion of “legitimate threat”), things wouldn’t as likely have reached such a scale to be a legitimate threat AGAINST Russia and its borders, assumed that’s the case. Indeed, what does it mean “it can spill into their own territory”? How could such violence and murder spill into the Russian territory and become a threat against Russian people and territory exactly? Let’s not forget that Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, that Ukrainian military couldn’t match in the past and still can hardly match the Russian war machine with the current Western support, and a quite effective repressive machine within its own territory against unwanted political movements or social unrest?
Second, I find the claim “And it is being done against their own ethnic people who were citizens of their country only thirty years ago.” quite problematic for several reasons:
1. thirty years ago they were citizens of the Soviet Union not of Russia,
2. if ethnic Russians are Ukrainian citizens they must abide by the Ukrainian rules in Ukraine as much as ethnic Ukrainians who are Russian citizens must abide by the Russian rules in Russia,
3. if ethnic Russians feel persecuted they can still flee Ukraine as much the Jews fled from Nazi Germany, being so close to the Russian border it shouldn’t have been that difficult, and since Russia was so keen on saving the ethnic Russians in Ukraine with all the land they have, they could have helped them with the same efficiency the Soviet Union deported Crimean Tatars from Crimea to relocate inside Russia as they have relocated Ukrainian children.
4. if protecting ethnicity was a reason for invading and annexing, how about all Ukrainian citizens of those annexed areas which weren’t ethnic Russians or just pro-Russia?
5. Russia itself is a multi-ethnic country and repressed the separatist movements in Chechnya supported by many ethnic Chechens, why can’t Ukraine do the same within its territory and its ethnic minorities?
6. There are Russian minorities also in other Russian neighboring countries, like in some Baltic States, if such minorities complain about prosecution and want to separate from the State that is hosting them, Russia should see it as a legitimate threat against Russia, and so again invade and annex those territories too, but if that’s the reasoning all neighboring countries with Russian minorities should see Russia as a legitimate threat against their security with all non-assimilated Russian minorities, right?
Certainly, I do understand that Russia is concerned about ethnic Russians around the world and can exercise diplomatic and coercive pressure to protect them, if they are threatened. But can this predicament be qualified as a legitimate threat AGAINST Russia? Or AGAINST Russia more than or with greater priority than a legitimate threat AGAINST Ukraine? And consequently justify invasion + annexation by Russia of Ukrainian territories?
Concerning your last remark, I “must certainly disapprove of all of the US's military border crossings/bombings since WWII”, if I shared enough of your assumptions. That's not my impression.

If China tortures, imprisons, and persecutes Chinese muslim Uyghurs that doesn’t count as a legitimate threat against muslim states either. Right? BTW Russia too oppresses minorities up until now (like the Crimean Tatars which were occupying Crimea way before the Russians) that doesn’t make it a legitimate threat against other states (other than Ukraine of course, since Crimean Tatars are Ukrainian citizens too within Ukrainian territories), or does it? — neomac


This is a terrible analogy. Firstly, this action against the Uygures is still in dispute; the UN admits they have no evidence of such a persecution. Secondly, the Uyghurs are not ethnically Russian and the posited persecution is neither at the Russian border or involving shellings at that border — Jack Rogozhin

Firstly, “disputed” as the claim that the Revolution of Dignity was a coup. Or that the Ukrainians committed a genocide in Donbas. Can you post a link with the UN admitting “they have no evidence of such a persecution”? Anyway the UN is not the only relevant source about the Uyghurs’ case. BTW the UN also condemned Russian aggression of Ukraine (https://press.un.org/en/2022/ga12407.doc.htm), this is not controversial either, or is it?
Secondly, I’m still trying to understand your notion of “legitimate threat“ (“a legitimate threat to the security of a nation and its borders, and the safety of its people, is a legimtiate threat”, and I’ll ignore that it would be a very bad definition, being evidently tautological), I think you are conceiving it as a geopolitical general principle not as a principle that just happens to be so narrow that it can practically apply only to the Russian state, people and borders. Indeed, there have been and are lots of proxy conflicts and inter-states and intra-states threats in the world (think of the conflicts in the Middle East between major powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, or the case of Islamic terrorism) which are grounded more and religion then ethnicity. So the analogy with Uyghurs case was a way to test how your notion of “legitimate threat“ works in other scenarios.
Anyways, since you now insist on ethnicity and borders, I'll reformulate the hypothetical case of the Uyghurs: the Uyghurs are Muslim, ethnically Turkic, living in the Xinjiang and confining with another Muslim and ethnically Turkic state, namely Kazakhstan, so if China is oppressing Uyghurs, would this be a legitimate threat against Kazakhstan (let’s forget that the Kazakh government wants to preserve good relations with China, it’s just a hypothesis), to the point that they would be justified to invade and annex Xinjiang, if they only could?
And if you still don’t like the Uyghurs analogy, how about the inter-ethnic conflicts on the border between Azerbaijan and Iran, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, Armenia and Azerbaijan? Which state’s acts are “a legitimate threat” against which state? Which state would your notion of “legitimate threat” justify territorial invasion and annexation from which state? In other words, let’s see if you can find a real case good enough analogy to illustrate how your notion of “legitimate threat” applies on other non-Russian related scenarios. Because if you can’t , well that’s a problem to me.
Besides, your second comment makes me wonder how narrow is your notion of “legitimate threat”: e.g. by “nation” and “its people” you mean “citizens” or “dominant ethnic group”? A threat against the safety of the people of a given state can be qualified as a “legitimate threat“ against the State no matter if such people are living within their State or somewhere else? For example, Ukrainians ethnically Jewish are suffering as well the horrible consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fighting for that too (https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-jews-recount-stories-of-survival-endurance-escape-after-1-year-of-war/, https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/in-ukraine-jews-embrace-their-double-identity, https://www.npr.org/2022/10/01/1126217137/jewish-ukrainian-father-son-soldiers-russia-war), Zelensky himself is a Ukrainian Jewish president, so is Russia a legitimate threat against Israel given that Russia is murdering and willing to murder ethnic Jews in Ukraine?

I wouldn't presume to know his actual motivations. I don't know him and I'm not a psychologist.
— Jack Rogozhin
You don't have to be. A good start is to read what Putin has said and written. There's bound to be some links to his actual motivations on what he has written or what speeches he has given. — ssu

First, your name in the quotation came from the quotation function not from me — neomac


As you can see, that quote couldn't have come from the quote function as it was SSU's quote responding to me. To willfully misrepresent that is either a mistake or dishonest; i'll assume it was the former — Jack Rogozhin

Then I don’t know what else went wrong in my quotation and I don’t mind to correct it. If you wish so, just tell me. This incident is however irrelevant to the point I was making and I also acknowledged that the word “accusation” was bad wording, so I’m not going to waste more time on such mishaps.

I didn’t formulate my question appropriately. I was wrong in using the word “accusation” there. Mea culpa. What however I noticed is that ssu didn’t make any explicit knowledge claim first, it was you to introduce it while commenting his claims, to question ssu implicit knowledge claim. I didn’t find it fair because “if you can ground your claims about Russian imperialism on non-speech acts — neomac


SSU did make a knowledge claim about how I could know things. I, on the other hand didn't "ground my claims on Russian imperialism on non-speech acts" and you didn't show I did. Also you are mixing up two discussions here, try to stick the one that was at hand — Jack Rogozhin

Ssu’s implicit claim came after you solicited him and he clarified on what grounds he made his claims. At the first round, your response seemed to me something like: Putin did not commit imperialist acts, therefore Putin didn’t have imperialist motivations. Were this the case, then you too in the end were making an implicit knowledge claim on Putin’s motivations, just you took Putin’s acts as more relevant evidence than Putin’s words to assess imperialist motivations.
But then at a second round you wrote “I'm not addressing the motivations here; I'm addressing the act. Those are not the same things”, so you are addressing just “the act”. And you wrote “when Russia extends greatly beyond the Donbass and begins regularly taking resources from that area and its citizens, then I will consider it imperialism”, so what I understood so far is that you can assess Russian imperialism based on such acts, independently from whatever Putin’s declared motivations were. I take such acts to be broadly “non-speech acts” because such acts are not talking and writing. So yes you were grounding your claims on non-speech acts actually or hypothetically committed by Russia, while ssu was arguing based on what was written and said by Putin, so broadly Putin’s speech-acts, to legitimise what Putin did (invading and annexing Ukrainian territories).
The point here is that your claims are implicit knowledge claims grounded on certain evidences relevant for your understanding of “imperialism” as much as ssu’s implicit knowledge claims are grounded on other evidences relevant for his understanding of “imperialism”. And as long as one just expresses one’s beliefs to illustrate one’s own implicit assumptions to an interlocutor who doesn’t necessarily share them there is nothing really challenging about it, one is simply talking past each other.

Forth, to be clear, if I don’t understand your reasoning or your assumptions, and I feel like questioning them, then I’ll question them. I've been doing this for several hundred pages before you joined the thread and nothing could change it. That’s a philosophy forum after all. — neomac


I never said you can't question my reasonings...I made no assumptions. I said you can't misrepresent my reasoning and arguments as you are doing now. This is a philosophy forum after all — Jack Rogozhin

The point is that if I misrepresented them, maybe it’s because I didn’t understand them and need to question your claims to understand them better, after all you do not seem to understand my claims either. And since we are at the beginning of our exchange, you joined just recently this thread, and we don’t know each other from other threads unintentional misunderstandings are likely to happen on such controversial political topics.

Unless your glibly usage of the verb “to show” shows otherwise. — neomac


My usage of the verb "to show" wasn't glib; it was accurate — Jack Rogozhin

Whatever makes you happy.

I didn’t say that one has “to distinguish imperialism motivations from non-materialist motivations when one does so with imperialist and non-materialist acts”. — neomac


You did say that.

I took as premises your distinctions between motivations and acts, between imperialist acts and non-imperialist acts, and between imperialist motivations and non-imperialist motivations, and then concluded that also imperialist motivations and imperialist acts are distinct. If set M (set of motivations) is distinct from set A (set of actions), M is constituted by subsets M1 and M2 (e.g. imperialist and non-imperialist motivations), and A is constituted by subsets A1 and A2 (e.g. imperialist and non-imperialist acts), then M is distinct from A subsets as much as A is distinct from M subsets as much as M subsets are distinct from A subsets. This conditional must be logically true if we understand the notion of “distinction” in the same way. If not, I literally do not understand what you are claiming. — neomac


So what is your point here? I literally do not understand what you are claiming — Jack Rogozhin

Again, I was asking questions for you to clarify your views, not making a point yet. The question was: “by distinguishing imperialist acts and imperialist motivations, are you suggesting that non-imperialist acts can have imperialist motivations and that imperialist acts can have no imperialist motivations?”. You had problems to understand the question, so I clarified in that piece you quoted, that my understanding is that since you distinguish motivations and acts then you also distinguish imperialist motivations and imperialist acts, because this is what your claims would allow me to logically infer. So I hope that after my clarifications you can answer the question.

Your final balance sheet of what you succeeded in showing and I failed at every round doesn't impress me and, worse, it shows nothing more than your lack of self-confidence to me. — neomac


This is just ad hominem and projection. It shows nothing more than your lack of self-confidence to me. And what do you mean by "final balance sheet"? It's a bizarre phrase for a philosophical discussion — Jack Rogozhin

Again, whatever makes you happy.

All right, can you give me your definition of “selfishness” as a general characteristic that is not about motivations and psychologies? Because after a quick check on wikipedia — neomac


Yes: the quality or condition of being selfish...from Merrian-Webster. As I said, it's a characteristic — Jack Rogozhin

Sure a psychological characteristic concerning people’s motivations. Not, say, a chemical characteristic concerning unicorns’ rainbow farts, or am I misinterpreting you?

You see, there is a lot more to unpack in your “evaluating acts on their own to a great degree”. Each example of “immediate and primary causes” you listed is controversial and can be used to argue the opposite, namely that the alleged coups and their consequences were “immediate and primary causes” for Ukraine to look for Western support against a foreign power messing up within its territory, and discounting the fact that Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules. — neomac


No, nothing I said was controversial. You keep making claims without backing them up, and that is not appropriate for a philosophical conversation. Also, the notion citizens have to abide by their country's rules no matter what is both wrong and anti-Humanist. According to you, American slaves and Native Americans needed to bow to its country's rules of slavery and oppression, and Japanese Americans would have been wrong to defy the US' internment of them...and all rebels, including the American Revolutionaries were inherently wrong. This is pure authoritarianism. Poroshenko literally said Russian Ukrainians of the Donbas would be cut off from state benefits and their own language and you want them to sit like good dogs and take it...because rules? — Jack Rogozhin

First, yes it is controversial for one reason or the other, again you just recently joined the thread, and I’m not here to keep you up-to-date on what has been discussed in this thread. Just as an example, what you call “the Maidan coup” has sparked some controversy in this thread at least 7 months ago (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/776025), use the search function. Also the alleged Ukrainian war crimes sparked some controversies in this thread.
Second, I didn’t claim that “the notion citizens have to abide by their country's rules no matter what”. My claim wasn’t about moral assessments of laws and related citizens’ attitude, it was about what Russia can claim as a legitimate threat against Russia. Even if Ukraine is repressing or oppressing a minority of its own citizens, that doesn’t seem to be a threat against Russia (so much so that Russia needed to distribute Russian passports into annexed territories to have a convenient pretext that Ukraine is threatening Russian citizens). If China tortures, imprisons, and persecutes Chinese muslim Uyghurs that doesn’t count as a legitimate threat against muslim states either. Right? BTW Russia too oppresses minorities up until now (like the Crimean Tatars which were occupying Crimea way before the Russians) that doesn’t make it a legitimate threat against other states (other than Ukraine of course, since Crimean Tatars are Ukrainian citizens too within Ukrainian territories), or does it?

"I wouldn't presume to know his actual motivations. I don't know him and I'm not a psychologist.
— Jack Rogozhin
You don't have to be. A good start is to read what Putin has said and written. There's bound to be some links to his actual motivations on what he has written or what speeches he has given."
— Jack Rogozhin

The reason why I talked about “accusation” is that in the passage you just quoted ssu is arguing about a link between Putin’s motivations and what he said. So if you can ground your claims about Russian imperialism on non-speech acts (like invading and annexing Donbas and Crimea) others can ground their claims about Russian imperialism on speech acts (like denying Ukrainian identity as distinct from the Russian, talking about denazifying Ukraine) made to legitimate certain non-speech acts. — neomac


That second quote isnt mine (it's SSU's). So, I still made no accusation and you haven't shown I have. I also made no speech acts and you haven't shown I have. Also, you don't get to tell me how I make my arguments, just as I don't get to tell you how you make yours. Let's actually discuss the issue — Jack Rogozhin

First, your name in the quotation came from the quotation function not from me.
Second, you are right. I didn’t formulate my question appropriately. I was wrong in using the word “accusation” there. Mea culpa. What however I noticed is that ssu didn’t make any explicit knowledge claim first, it was you to introduce it while commenting his claims, to question ssu implicit knowledge claim. I didn’t find it fair because “if you can ground your claims about Russian imperialism on non-speech acts (like invading and annexing Donbas and Crimea) others can ground their claims about Russian imperialism on speech acts (like denying Ukrainian identity as distinct from the Russian, talking about denazifying Ukraine) made to legitimate certain non-speech acts.”
Third, when I talked about “speech acts” I was referring to the acts committed by Russia, not you. You based your arguments on Russian invasion and annexation, ssu based his arguments based on what Putin said and wrote to legitimate Russian invasion and annexation.
Forth, to be clear, if I don’t understand your reasoning or your assumptions, and I feel like questioning them, then I’ll question them. I've been doing this for several hundred pages before you joined the thread and nothing could change it. That’s a philosophy forum after all.

Where did I distinguish between imperialist acts and imperialist motivations? Where did I say the invasion was an imperialist act, and how do you draw that suggestion from the first premise? You're making a lot of unfounded assumptions here
— Jack Rogozhin

Dude, chill down, I’m still exploring your assumptions with some questions. You distinguish acts from motivations (“I'm not addressing the motivations here; I'm addressing the act. Those are not the same things”). And then you distinguish imperialist acts from non-imperialist acts (“when Russia extends greatly beyond the Donbass and begins regularly taking resources from that area and its citizens, then I will consider it imperialism”). Therefore you must distinguish imperialist motivations (if also some motivations can be qualified as imperialist) from imperialist actions too, that’s logic.
I didn’t say nor implied that you said “the invasion was an imperialist act”. I’m aware you are trying to argue against it. — neomac


I am and was chill, and my quote you posted shows that. So, you need to chill a bit yourself. I made no assumptions. As I showed, you have and did. And no, one does not have to distinguish imperialism motivations from non-materialist motivations when one does so with imperialist and non-materialist acts, and I already showed that. Your saying otherwise is just an assumption, not logic. Show otherwise if you can — Jack Rogozhin

Unless your glibly usage of the verb “to show” shows otherwise.
I didn’t say that one has “to distinguish imperialism motivations from non-materialist motivations when one does so with imperialist and non-materialist acts”. I took as premises your distinctions between motivations and acts, between imperialist acts and non-imperialist acts, and between imperialist motivations and non-imperialist motivations, and then concluded that also imperialist motivations and imperialist acts are distinct. If set M (set of motivations) is distinct from set A (set of actions), M is constituted by subsets M1 and M2 (e.g. imperialist and non-imperialist motivations), and A is constituted by subsets A1 and A2 (e.g. imperialist and non-imperialist acts), then M is distinct from A subsets as much as A is distinct from M subsets as much as M subsets are distinct from A subsets. This conditional must be logically true if we understand the notion of “distinction” in the same way. If not, I literally do not understand what you are claiming.
So either those premises are wrong or we do not share the same notion of “distinction”. That’s all there is to clarify to me at this point.
Again, I’m simply asking questions to understand your assumptions (for example on what you take to be imperialist or a legitimate threat). And for that reason I do not want my non-shared implicit assumptions nor misreadings nor my slips of the tongue get in the way of your attempts to clarify yourself. What I can’t avoid however is to question your views on things I find unclear or unconvincing about your claims. Your final balance sheet of what you succeeded in showing and I failed at every round doesn't impress me and, worse, it shows nothing more than your lack of self-confidence to me.

OK when you are talking about selfish leaders (selfishness here is about leaders' psychology and motivations, right?) you do not mean to address particular motivations or psychologies but general ones. — neomac


No, selfishness is a characteristic, not a motivation. If a hot-headed person yells at someone because they are hot-headed, that doesn't mean they are motivated by hot-headedness. Again, you are drawing unfounded conclusions.
— Jack Rogozhin

I didn’t mean that selfishness is a motivation, but that when you talk about leaders’ selfishness you are talking about psychology and motivations of such leaders. Indeed, it’s hard for me to even understand what you mean by “selfishness” without referring to people’s motivations. — neomac


I showed why this you're wrong here in the quote you quoted of mine above. I'm sorry your understanding of "selfishness" is limited as such — Jack Rogozhin

All right, can you give me your definition of “selfishness” as a general characteristic that is not about motivations and psychologies? Because after a quick check on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism) I find statements like this: Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest and selfishness, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It claims that, when people choose to help others, they do so ultimately because of the personal benefits that they themselves expect to obtain, directly or indirectly, from so doing. And this is also what I mean when I claim that “selfishness” even as a general characteristic is still about psychology and motivations.

If ordinary peoples’ judgments of politicians are just a reflection of their own bias, then every ordinary person’s judgement of Putin would just be their bias, not an objective judgment. I'm surprised you believe that
— Jack Rogozhin

First, my claim was generic about ordinary people’s bias, I didn’t say every ordinary person is biased about politicians’ selfishness. Generic generalisations should not be conflated with universal generalisations. The bias I’m referring to can be read in different ways: e.g. avg politicians may be prone to selfish reasoning no more than avg ordinary people, “selfish” reasoning may not always be a bad thing as much as ordinary people would assume.
Second, concerning Putin, he may hold some nationalist motivations (and I don’t take nationalism to be a form a selfishness) besides worrying about his own political or material survival (which would be a more selfish motivation). — neomac


Generic and universal work the same here; universal is just more extreme. You made a claim about how ordinary people are biased towards politicians, and I correctly showed how that would apply to their (including your) view of Putin as well — Jack Rogozhin

First, if you intend to question my assumptions appropriately, fine but you have to understand them as close as possible to how I understand them. I didn’t make a particularly strong claim, I just made a cautious conjecture. Concerning the distinction of generic generalisations and universal generalisations, they are not the same as far as my claims are concerned, I clarified what I meant, plus there is a whole entry in SEP (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/generics/), if you are unfamiliar with it.
Second, I also answered positively about Putin to the extent that ordinary people’s may be biased about Putin’s selfishness too. I don’t find it implausible that Putin could be motivated to some extent by genuine nationalist reasons as his rhetoric of the great patriotic war, the Russian minority genocide in Ukraine and Russian Crimea suggests, and I don’t take Putin’s nationalist motives to be selfish motives as such. That is perfectly compatible with Putin also having more selfish motives like his political survival.

I asked you the same question by mistake. Indeed my second question should have been “was Russia a legitimate threat to Ukraine before after the invasion of Crimea?”. I’m not making “the presumption Russia just invaded Crimea out of the blue without taking into account the factors preceding and causing that” (assumed it makes sense). On the contrary I’m reasoning from your own assumptions. You yourself claimed “histories are important, but we still have to evaluate acts on their own to a great degree” (like all the declarations against Ukraine joining NATO) and “a legitimate threat to the security of a nation and its borders, and the safety of its people, is a legimtiate threat”. So If NATO could be perceived as a legitimate threat by Russia, why couldn’t Russia be perceived as a legitimate threat by Ukraine prior the invasion of Crimea and/or after? — neomac


Yes, and evaluating acts on their own to a great degree includes immediate and primary causes, with less (but not no) attention given to older history. That would include the Maidan coup, the burning alive of the Crimean anti-coup protesters in the trade house building, Kiev's shelling of the Donbass Ukrainians, and Kiev's admitted (Merkle admits this too) breaking of the Minsk Accords

I answered your final question in my last post. You're repeating your questions again — Jack Rogozhin

You see, there is a lot more to unpack in your “evaluating acts on their own to a great degree”. Each example of “immediate and primary causes” you listed is controversial and can be used to argue the opposite, namely that the alleged coups and their consequences were “immediate and primary causes” for Ukraine to look for Western support against a foreign power messing up within its territory, and discounting the fact that Ukrainian ethnic Russians and Russophone are still Ukrainians and must abide by Ukrainians rules. But I’m not interested to investigate them further at this point. What I would say though is that none of them SHOWS “a legitimate threat to the security of a nation and its borders, and the safety of its people, is a legimtiate threat” AGAINST Russia to me, does it to you? The torture, imprisonment, and persecution of (more than a million?) muslim Uyghurs by China doesn’t count as a legitimate threat to muslim states from China, or does it to you?

I didn't accuse others. He said he knew Putin's motivations beforehand
— Jack Rogozhin

Where did he say it? Can you quote him saying this verbatim? — neomac

Here you go:

"I wouldn't presume to know his actual motivations. I don't know him and I'm not a psychologist.
— Jack Rogozhin
You don't have to be. A good start is to read what Putin has said and written. There's bound to be some links to his actual motivations on what he has written or what speeches he has given." — Jack Rogozhin

The reason why I talked about “accusation” is that in the passage you just quoted ssu is arguing about a link between Putin’s motivations and what he said. So if you can ground your claims about Russian imperialism on non-speech acts (like invading and annexing Donbas and Crimea) others can ground their claims about Russian imperialism on speech acts (like denying Ukrainian identity as distinct from the Russian, talking about denazifying Ukraine) made to legitimate certain non-speech acts.

By distinguishing imperialist acts and imperialist motivations, are you suggesting that non-imperialist acts can have imperialist motivations and that imperialist acts have no imperialist motivations? If so, do you have historical examples to illustrate your point? — neomac


Where did I distinguish between imperialist acts and imperialist motivations? Where did I say the invasion was an imperialist act, and how do you draw that suggestion from the first premise? You're making a lot of unfounded assumptions here — Jack Rogozhin

Dude, chill down, I’m still exploring your assumptions with some questions. You distinguish acts from motivations (“I'm not addressing the motivations here; I'm addressing the act. Those are not the same things”). And then you distinguish imperialist acts from non-imperialist acts (“when Russia extends greatly beyond the Donbass and begins regularly taking resources from that area and its citizens, then I will consider it imperialism”). And you also seem to acknowledge that imperialist motivations can exist in political leaders, but you don't know if Putin's motivations are imperialist, that's why you focus on acts. Therefore you must distinguish imperialist motivations from imperialist actions too, that’s logic.
I didn’t say nor implied that you said “the invasion was an imperialist act”. I’m aware you are trying to argue against it.

OK when you are talking about selfish leaders (selfishness here is about leaders' psychology and motivations, right?) you do not mean to address particular motivations or psychologies but general ones. — neomac


No, selfishness is a characteristic, not a motivation. If a hot-headed person yells at someone because they are hot-headed, that doesn't mean they are motivated by hot-headedness. Again, you are drawing unfounded conclusions. — Jack Rogozhin

I didn’t mean that selfishness is a motivation, but that when you talk about leaders’ selfishness you are talking about psychology and motivations of such leaders. Indeed, it’s hard for me to even understand what you mean by “selfishness” without referring to people’s motivations.

Talking generally about motivations and psychologies , I suspect that the difference between politicians and ordinary people in terms of "selfishness" may be biased in favor ordinary people when the judgement comes from ordinary people. — neomac


If ordinary peoples’ judgments of politicians are just a reflection of their own bias, then every ordinary person’s judgement of Putin would just be their bias, not an objective judgment. I'm surprised you believe that — Jack Rogozhin

First, my claim was generic about ordinary people’s bias, I didn’t say every ordinary person is biased about politicians’ selfishness. Generic generalisations should not be conflated with universal generalisations. The bias I’m referring to can be read in different ways: e.g. avg politicians may be prone to selfish reasoning no more than avg ordinary people, “selfish” reasoning may not always be as bad as ordinary people would often assume.
Second, concerning Putin, he may hold some nationalist motivations (and I don’t take nationalism to be a form a selfishness) besides worrying about his own political or material survival (which would be a more selfish motivation).

Was Russia a legitimate threat to Ukraine before the invasion of Crimea? If so when did it start to become a legitimate threat to Ukraine? If not, was Russia a legitimate threat to Ukraine before the invasion of Crimea? — neomac


You ask the same question twice here and you make the presumption Russia just invaded Crimea out of the blue without taking into account the factors preceding and causing that, so the question is a loaded one. Also, if by threat, you mean actually threatening Ukraine,I would say no — Jack Rogozhin

I asked you the same question by mistake. Indeed my second question should have been “was Russia a legitimate threat to Ukraine before after the invasion of Crimea?”. I’m not making “the presumption Russia just invaded Crimea out of the blue without taking into account the factors preceding and causing that” (assumed it makes sense). On the contrary I’m reasoning from your own assumptions. You yourself claimed “histories are important, but we still have to evaluate acts on their own to a great degree” (like all the declarations against Ukraine joining NATO) and “a legitimate threat to the security of a nation and its borders, and the safety of its people, is a legimtiate threat”. So If NATO could be perceived as a legitimate threat by Russia, why couldn’t Russia be perceived as a legitimate threat by Ukraine prior to the invasion of Crimea and/or after?

I didn't accuse others. He said he knew Putin's motivations beforehand — Jack Rogozhin

Where did he say it? Can you quote him saying this verbatim?

Because I'm not addressing the motivations here; I'm addressing the act. Those are not the same things — Jack Rogozhin

By distinguishing imperialist acts and imperialist motivations, are you suggesting that non-imperialist acts can have imperialist motivations and that imperialist acts have no imperialist motivations? If so, do you have historical examples to illustrate your point?
BTW psychologists typically talk about motivations based on people's behavior (words and acts), right?

I'm not addressing motivations or psychologies here. I'm addressing general characteristics...and most leaders' today, particualry the ones Ilisted, are greatly driven by self interest....as many firemen/women are greatly driven by wanting to help people. You think otherwise? — Jack Rogozhin

OK when you are talking about selfish leaders (selfishness here is about leaders' psychology and motivations, right?) you do not mean to address particular motivations or psychologies but general ones. Talking generally about motivations and psychologies , I suspect that the difference between politicians and ordinary people in terms of "selfishness" may be biased in favor ordinary people when the judgement comes from ordinary people.

A legitimate threat to the security of a nation and its borders, and the safety of its people, is a legimtiate threat. — Jack Rogozhin

Was Russia a legitimate threat to Ukraine before the invasion of Crimea? If so when did it start to become a legitimate threat to Ukraine? If not, was Russia a legitimate threat to Ukraine before the invasion of Crimea?

on the Russian foreign currency stash: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/russia-s-rupee-trap-is-adding-to-147-billion-hoard-stuck-abroad#xj4y7vzkg

If you accuse others

you think you know Putin's motivations — Jack Rogozhin

and then claim

I wouldn't presume to know his actual motivations. I don't know him and I'm not a psychologist. — Jack Rogozhin

why are you so confidently expressing the following?

This isn't an issue of imperialism at this point. It is a security and territorial dispute. You can argue its a wrong one on Russia's part, but this isn't--at least not yet--an act of imperialism. — Jack Rogozhin

I would say every leader's--including Biden's, Zelensky's, Macron's, and Xi's--are primarily selfish and self-centered. I do, however, think sometimes a leader's self-interest can alighn with his country's. I don't think Putin was primarily acting out of his country's interests, but Ukraine and NATO created a legitmate threat against his country and himself when Ukraine refused to remain neutral and NATO refused to not put missiles in Ukraine. — Jack Rogozhin

OK let's not talk about Putin's, Biden's, Zelensky's, Macron's, and Xi's motivations, or simply assume they are selfish and self-centered. Let's talk about "legitimate threat against the country and himself", what makes a threat perception (NOT based on leaders' actual motivations because we do not know that other than assuming they are selfish) but on potential and precedent (like placing NATO missiles on the border between Ukraine and Russia that could kill Russian people and trigger a regime change in Russia) "legitimate"? And what would need to happen for you to believe that is an act of imperialism yet?

OK. Have they and the claims against them be resolved? Judging by the discourse around the topic, and the changing support for US funding of the war. I imagine they haven't. — Jack Rogozhin

It depends on what you take to be a resolution of such claims. For sure there is enough disagreement.

What is the rule here? Are positions only allowed to be said once? — Jack Rogozhin

The rule here is that positions ought to be repeated many more times than God can count.

Newcomer here, so tell me if I'm repeating. — Jack Rogozhin

Yes, you are repeating claims that have been repeated already many many times in this thread.

If we cannot discuss moral claims, then what is left to us - we just fight it out? — Isaac

Precisely. Moral conflicts can as well lead to war.

If another country comes and steals it using military force, they are not entitled to use the same lethal force to retrieve it just because it's rightfully theirs. — Isaac

Yes they are. That's the whole point of "sovereignty". The state has the legitimate monopoly of force within a territory. And that's a moral point too.

Russia meddling in Africa for Macron's joy:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/regional-global-powers-decry-nigers-coup-countrys-future-101846403

"Just give them your handbag, it's not worth your life" well it depends on what is in the handbag.
Besides, as Holy Guru Mearsheimer spoke, in the international arena anarchy reigns: “It simply means that there is no centralized authority, no night watchman or ultimate arbiter, that stands above states and protects them.” So states have to protect themselves against bullies.

I doubt that negotiations will lead to conflict resolution IF Russian annexations won't be acknowledged by Ukraine and the West. And I find this acknowledgment politically suicidal for Ukraine and the world order promoted by the West.

What do you think you've provided evidence for? That Russia might not overthrow tyranny in eight years? Sure. But that's not the claim, the claim was that it will not. Or your later claim that it is more likely to not. Nothing you've provided has any probability assigned to it. It all simply might be the case. — Isaac


If past facts are irrelevant for probabilities, then anything really might come up. Why should we avoid war then? Past wars cannot inform us if there will be victims, simply that it might be the case. That is your reasoning, right?

Facts underdetermine theories. If you're having trouble with the notion, I'm sure I can dig out a Wikipedia article for your edification. — Isaac


But you do not have facts. If all the evidence I have provided is just 'some other people think otherwise', as you say, then your evidence is also just 'some other people think otherwise', which, as you say, cannot support or counter any claim. So neither theory has sufficient support, we have no reason to believe any of them is true. — Jabberwock

You must have realized by now how full of sophistry, incoherence and self-defeating conclusions his arguments are. Many of the points you have raised are similar to the ones me and others have raised against his arguments. The problem is however deeper because it is rooted into the meaning of words and in concepts (like argument, bias, likelihood), he thinks he scores points by messing with words and concepts until he simply becomes unintelligible. That's why I have no pity for him.

The usual intellectually miserable tactic of framing opponents’ views. Apparently, on matter of facts we can’t prove anything, if we happen to believe anything is because of Western propaganda, what they believe is clearly not propaganda though (even if, on the other side, all narratives are claimed to be all plausible interpretations), on matter of moral we are either coward or cynical (is that yet another interpretation? or The Facts™?). — neomac


What does your comment have to do with my comment?

Are you disputing the fact that other Western countries, and also all the other countries, have not sent their soldiers into Ukraine?

Or are you arguing sending arms to Ukraine is brave? That's what a "brave" country would do, send arms instead of their own soldiers.

Feel free to have at it: You / the Western legacy media / NATO says Ukrainian sovereignty is a moral imperative to uphold ... just not without sending themselves or their own soldiers. If Ukrainian sovereignty is so important, why is it not worth risking our own soldiers lives to see it preserved? — boethius

The usual intellectually miserable tactic of framing opponents’ views. — neomac

Ok, well, un-frame it for me.

In what moral theory is there a cause not worth risking much of anything yourself but is like "totally so important"? Worth sending arms ... but not too many arms!!! — boethius

As far as I’m concerned, you (and others) keep arguing based on background assumptions (on morality, propaganda, geopolitics, etc.) that I do not share at all, and keep challenging me based on your background assumptions, even after I explicitly questioned them. One of MY assumptions is that in an anarchic environment constituted by many nation states, there are 2 constitutive shared rules: pursue national interest, do not aggress acknowledged sovereign states first. The first is a domestic politics engagement between governments and its citizens. The second is a foreign politics engagement between states. There is absolutely nothing intrinsically immoral, coward or cynical in the Western decision to send weapons and not soldiers in Ukraine IF this serves Western national interests, and even if this is NOT in Ukraine’s best national interest, because Ukrainian sovereignty is a moral imperative AT BEST of the Ukrainian government. So no, I do not believe at all that Ukraine is "totally so important” or “Ukrainian sovereignty is a moral imperative to uphold” as if this is Western top priority, Ukraine is instrumental to the Western national interest (the European security, as Zelensky puts it) as much as the West is instrumental to the Ukrainian national interest (Zelensky’s moral imperative is Ukraine’s national interest, not European national interests). But the Western support doesn’t need to end up being some sort of cynical exploitation (as the “Ukrainians as cannon fodder” accusation suggests), even in case of significant power or costs imbalance, because again harnessing foreign consensus, allies and partners can also be part of power struggle strategies.

Now, seen as everyone agrees Ukraine is not worth spilling their own countries blood to defend (at least anyone who actually affects policy), the key question is whether the policy of sending arms instead is a morally justifiable in lieux of our cowardice or then a smart geopolitical move to cynically use Ukrainians to harm Russia, and if the whole of Ukraine needs to be sacrificed to do so that's just "gainz" on the geopolitical chess board. — boethius

The usual intellectually miserable tactic of framing opponents’ views. Apparently, on matter of facts we can’t prove anything, if we happen to believe anything is because of Western propaganda, what they believe is clearly not propaganda though (even if, on the other side, all narratives are claimed to be all plausible interpretations), on matter of moral we are either coward or cynical (is that yet another interpretation? or The Facts™?).

you have argued for an alternative between 'peaceful protests and military invasion', but that alternative is false and ahistorical — Jabberwock

That alternative sounds foolish after so candidly claiming:

Of course it is. Sachs's question isn't 'what caused the revolution in Ukraine', it's 'what caused Russia to invade Ukraine'. His answer to that is the threat of foreign interference in Ukraine, his evidence is the foreign interference in the revolution. To demonstrate that point he need only show that there was indeed foreign interference in the revolution. He does not have to show what proportion of the revolution's cause it was because his argument isn't that "Russia were provoked by over 56.98% foreign interference". It is that Russia were provoked by foreign interference. Any value above zero demonstrates that possibility. — Isaac

ANY government (ESPECIALLY AS AUTHORITARIAN AS RUSSIA !) can VERY EASILY claim foreign interference for any fucking peaceful protest (see the protests in Iran for more than 20 years).

Depends on the framing. As I said above...

Easy. The 'desired effects' are freedom for Ukrainians with fewer than a hundred thousand dead. Your proposal has zero chance of achieving that, so mine only has to have greater than zero. Are you arguing that mine also has zero, that Russia cannot shake off tyranny? — Isaac


...if you want to put it in terms of likelihood. — Isaac

Dude, focus. The point is not if I want to put it in terms of likelihood. But that you wanted to put it as well (framing or not framing). So if you talk about "more likely" events, others can do the same and challenge you accordingly. Framing interlocutors' views as a matter of possibility or impossibility constitutes a strawman argument. Repeatedly soliciting interlocutors to frame their arguments as a matter of taking position for or against possibilities is intellectually cringe.

Sure, if your sole concern is the ability of Ukrainians to vote in an unimpeded election then maybe there'd be an argument about probability, but why the hell would anyone sane have that as their only goal. — Isaac

If your sole concern is "freedom for Ukrainians with fewer than a hundred thousand dead", then maybe there'd be an argument about probability, but why the hell would anyone sane have that as their only goal?!

We're comparing two options here, It's no good just dismissing one because it's unlikely. What matters is whether it's more likely than the other. — Isaac

For both sides the burden of proof is exactly the same – to show that the expected results of the proposed course of action are more likely than not. Without that it does not matter at all whether the solution would be preferred by both sides, because if it is not likely to happen, it makes no difference. — Jabberwock

It's not about possibility and necessity. It's about "more likely".

↪Tzeentch
You can be sure of whatever you want, still Bennett did not say what Sachs attributed to him. — Jabberwock

And assuming that Bennett's account is reliable: https://theintercept.com/2022/03/23/ukraine-russia-peace-negotiations-israel/ (BTW one key issue in the negotiation was REGIME CHANGE IN KYIV)

Juicy fruits of the no-limits alliance between the peaceful China and Russia against the greedy Nazi pro-LGBT Neocapitalist imperial vampires which holy Putin is so powerfully leading (with Mearsheimer's blessing): https://www.eurasiantimes.com/fact-check-has-china-really-claimed-russian-port-city-of-vladivostok/

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1680499284611932160

"Gerasimov and Shoigu should be held responsible for the genocide of the Russian people, the murder of tens of thousands of Russian citizens and surrender of Russian territories to the enemy. And this was intentional, just like the murder of Russian citizens and genocide."
(from the neo-nazi Utkin with exquisite ironic feinting love)

• However, being innate to our universe does not necessarily imply any innate, imperative bindingness - what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences. — Mark S

Saying that moral norms are innate "to our universe" (what do you mean by "our universe"? "universe" in the sense of "all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos." or "universe" in the sense of our species?) in some sense, but not innate in some other sense is not clear unless you clarify the senses in which something is innate as opposed to not innate. Is mathematics innately binding? Do we ought to abide by mathematics rules regardless of our needs and preferences?

People can use this knowledge to resolve disputes about refining their morality to meet their needs and preferences better. — Mark S

How? Show me how being aware that moral norms are just heuristics to solve cooperation problems and that those norms that are cross-cultural and cross-species are the ones which do not exploit others can help understand if the capitalist appropriation of the surplus value of wage labour is moral or immoral, or a solution to the cooperation/exploitation problem or not? Or how can this awareness help us understand if the policies of all main involved parties in the war in Ukraine is moral or immoral, a solution or not to cooperation/exploitation dilemmas?
If you can't bring anything NEW on the table and you just keep repeating things that liberal Westerners already accept (e.g. that slavery is bad and sexism is bad from cross-cultural non-exploitative moral rules), where is the help?

And you are better than Naftali Bennett because? — neomac


I'm not claiming either he or you are factually wrong though, am I?

I'm taking issue with ssu's response which frames his opinion as being what "really" happened, and what "in fact..." is the case.

Jeffrey Sachs is neither an idiot, nor a liar, so clearly there is room for more than one legitimate interpretation of the facts. — Isaac

No no, I'm claiming that I am RIGHT and you are WRONG AND DISHONEST. I don't need to believe that Jeffrey Sucks is an idiot or a liar, I'm claiming that what Naftali Bennett ACTUALLY said in the interview IS NOT TALKING ABOUT "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]." as SSU was objecting to but about his mediation being stopped.

I'm quite happy to accept more than one legitimate interpretation — Isaac

And I'm happy to call your interpretation WRONG AND DISHONEST whenever I believe it's the case.

Interviewer: "So they blocked it?"

Naftali Bennett: "Basically, yes. They blocked it and I thought they're wrong. In retrospect it's too soon to know.

[Naftali Bennett lists a number of disadvantages of continuing the war, and then continues...]

On the other hand, and I'm not being cynical, there's a statement here, after very many years. President Biden created an alliance vis-à-vis an aggressor in the general perception and this reflects on other arenas, such as China and Taiwan and there are consequences."

Are you playing dumb? You reported the claim "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]." which then cited Naftali Bennett in support of it which is what SSU was questioning with his comment. I gave you the link to the youtube video (here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK9tLDeWBzs&t=10774s). Listen to the interview, Naftali Bennett IS NOT TALKING ABOUT "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]." but about his mediation being stopped (quite interesting what he also says later). Focus on what I'm actually objecting to you not on what you wish I objected to you.

And you know better than Jeffrey Sachs because...? — Isaac

And you know better than Naftali Bennett because...?

And you know better than Jeffrey Sachs because...? — Isaac

To say the least, because anybody can listen to what Naftali Bennett ACTUALLY said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK9tLDeWBzs&t=10774s

Nafatali Bennett's claim is not about why "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]."
but about why his mediation at the beginning of the war was stopped.

You know what a caricature is, right? It doesn't just mean 'got wrong'. — Isaac

I have no idea why you call it a caricature then. In what way what I wrote distorts your claims? When I'm accusing you and others to make a caricature of my views I'm referring to what you got wrong about my views and yet you need to make a point against my views. I don't need to distort your views to question them. You do.

Besides I'm still waiting for your math:

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac


I just did. — Isaac


Quote where you did it. — neomac

You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency. — neomac


Coming from you, that's rich. :rofl: — Tzeentch

It's laughing the guy who is so desperately in need to score a point that he wishes his opponents to answer a ridiculously framed challenge like "If there are people here who are predicting imminent major successes in line with this paper reality, speak up please." and even insisting on it.

your helpless craving for pinning roughly everything bad is happening primarily on the US. — neomac


... would be an example of caricaturing your opponent's views, yes. I — Isaac

No dude, that's not a caricature at all. Quote a claim of yours that contradicts it.
It should be pretty easy for you to do it, since mine is a very general claim.
Who is primarily to blame for starting the war ?
Who is primarily to blame for continuing the war ?
Who is primarily to blame for food crisis related to the war?
Who is primarily to blame for NATO policies toward the war?
Who is primarily to blame for the misinformation we get on the war?
You didn't lose a single occasion to blame American media, American political elites, American military-industrial-finacial complex. Where is the caricature? Maybe you are a caricature.

You even had your sidekick claiming
We are literally in a 6th mass extinction event heading towards civilisational collapse that is entirely due to US policy and acquiescence of their fellow Western acolytes, not to mention pollution of various other forms as well as neo-colonialism and US imperialism (however "soft" you want to call it -- being smothered by a pillow can have the exact same end result as being stabbed in the chest).

Now, if you want to argue that the Soviet Union, China and India weren't and aren't any better and would have done equally bad or worse things (and did and do their best to help destroy the planet as second and third fiddles) had they been the dominant super power and setting the terms of world trade, I'd have no problem agreeing to that.

But the reality is that the dominant power since WWII setting most economic policies on the planet (what and how things are produced) has been the US, and the consequence has been destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale.

Unsustainability literally equates to destruction, that's what it means: destroying the ecosystems we require for survival, not to mention a host of other species.

And global unsustainability has been a Western choice, championed by the US and supported by their vassals. The policies for sustainability are pretty easy and known since the 60s (public transport, renewable energy, less meat eating, sustainable fishing, strict care what chemicals are allowed in the environment and how much, and farming in ways compatible with biodiversity and soil protection) and since the 60s the policies critical to sustainability could have been easily implemented to create a smooth transition. (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/801709)

Funny how this has only just occurred to you after nearly 500 pages of having every single opposing view caricatured as Putin-loving, Putinistas, Russiophiles etc... but it's good that you're on top of it now. — Isaac

If you think I caricatured your views, quote exactly where. This time you failed.

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac


I just did. — Isaac

Quote where you did it.

It's not to the penny accounting, but it's just dishonest to present it as if we just don't know. — Isaac

The problem is not what we know but what we can infer from it.

Not that many. This isn't some unknown quantity we might as well toss a coin over. — Isaac

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation.

Convincing people that Ukraine has a chance of 'winning' — Isaac

it takes quite the major advertising effort to keep this illusion up — Isaac

Hence the massive social media campaign, of which your posts (wittingly or not) form part — Isaac

It appears those who would post lengthy and strongly-worded posts on how the Ukrainians must continue to fight and die — Tzeentch

You dudes think to make a point just by caricaturing opponents' views.
That's intellectually abhorrent. You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency.
And you are quite good at that. Hands up.

> How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is Washington's ego worth?

How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is defeating Washington's ego worth?

Given the overwhelming quantity of posts here doing the latter and very few posts doing the former, it's hard to see how that could be without aim. — Isaac

Assuming you are good at keeping stats.

There have been reports of the Russians pushing for territory in the north. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians haven't reported any territorial gains for about a week or so. That to me is a pretty good indicator that the Ukrainian offensive has likely concluded, and the Russians might be looking to retake the initiative.

The Russians probably wouldn't go on the attack if they believed the Ukrainians may still have capacity left. — Tzeentch

You conjectures are as good as the following:
1. "the long-awaited Ukrainian offensive"will start late in summer to prevent Russia from doing the counteroffensive in rainy season, for now the Ukrainian tactic is just attrition along the line to prepare the right spot to drill.
2. The Russians probably would push in the north to weaken Ukrainians' capacity for their offensive in the south.

Indeed, Prigozhin's exquisite ironic feint is not over yet:

After long days of silence following the 'march on Moscow' on June 24, the founder of the Wagner militia Yevgeny Prigozhin reappears on social media with a vitriolic post against Russian state media, quoted by Novaya Gazeta.

"Reading the newspapers, hearing the stories on TV, makes me feel very bad, the TV bastards, who yesterday admired the Wagner boys, are now pouring all kinds of poison...

Remember TV bastards that it wasn't your children who fought in our ranks, it wasn't your children who died, but you bastards are making audiences with stories like this."

https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/mondo/2023/07/08/prigozhin-ricompare-sui-social-e-attacca-i-media-russi_f4295770-f72b-490d-ad8e-eadabc5ee6b8.html?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=

Again on Prigozhin's exquisite ironic feint : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/25/yevgeny-prigozhin-moscow-advance-putin-threat-wagner-family/

There's no evidence that the Russians intended to absorb or subjugate Ukraine. — Tzeentch

Here is how people focused on security concerns reason over "intentions":
During his annual review of Russia's foreign policy January 22-23 (ref B), Foreign Minister Lavrov stressed that Russia had to view continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine and Georgia, as a potential military threat. While Russia might believe statements from the West that NATO was not directed against Russia, when one looked at recent military activities in NATO countries (establishment of U.S. forward operating locations, etc. they had to be evaluated not by stated intentions but by potential.


Security concerns can be triggered by potential not just by "intentions" (BTW among Mearsheimer's offensive realism tenets there are "States can never be certain of the intentions of other states" and "States are rational actors, capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_realism). History, ambitions, military capability, economic leverage and aggressive attitude of Russia especially under Putin inside and outside Russia were enough to trigger security concerns.
Talking about intentions (the initial march toward Kiev's intentions, Putin's intentions, Prigozhin's mutiny intentions) is not all that matters. Also the US intentions were to spread democracy in the rest of the World.

"ordered" doesn't sound unexpected from Lavrov, the rest does. Especially if one takes the Amerikans to be warmongerers and this attempted coup as something staged by the Russians.