I think that's a method but I don't think it's practical as we would just all have to forget that God(s) exist whatsoever and probably spiritualism too and even ethics could eventually lead back to God a bit directly. In any case theism is verifiable by any conception of God.
Yeah science can't dictate those and atheism literally has no ontology or epistemology to speak of.

I think it's putting the cart before the horse in that one needs to separate out abstract chewing from physical. There is a fundamental aspect of perhaps being and "chewing", in the ways you mentioned, just makes external objects amenable to our being. Obviously not everyone needs to "chew" over the same information. One might consider the orbital or a planet a matter of "chewing".

So you just want to talk about the writers thoughts with not much reference outside that?

They only reference the kleptocracy of russia in the first essay (and once in the third) and never "kleptopia" (which is a much larger discussion).
So you just mean how to solve kleptocracy as detailed in the first essay (business elites get passing mention in the second)?

You certainly do, appreciate the conversation.

I can only comment and say these aren't really fruitful objections for either of us. Some of its handwaving and others are just negating the point with no justification and the points have seemed to take a life of their own and have lost any reference to a main point that we were discussing. I can't meaningfully respond to that without going down the path of complete tangentiality.

You said "the way forward?" and "how do we deal with that?" and I explained the limit of any meaningful "way" or solution. Again I'm not even sure what you're asking. How do you stop russia from invading ukraine? It's like asking the yankee north to not invade the confederate states for them.
It's just not a meaningful question from any perspective you must refer to for any question you may have.

Your title is "How to solve a problem: like Putin" and I thought it may be about the different archetypes of "problem-solving" using Putin as a stand-in for an archetype and as a case study.

I feel like I'm missing a lot of background assumptions. You want to overthrow Putin and establish a liberal democracy you prefer? That still runs into issues and many cultures reject that approach so how do we solve that? Just as I said.

I'm not sure what you want from this situation. America and the west are purely countries within an order and time and place. The question is more what's happening and I think the liberal individualist/capitalist experiment has shown cracks with afghanistan, covid, domestic issues like university, genders etc and it looks like our economy will be eclipsed by china. What is happening in afghanistan and even india and russia/ukraine, is more or less developing past that and you cannot expect america to be anything but a speed bump until it solves its own issues and develops an actual philosophical position which solves these really embarrassingly terrible positions.

Yeah it's not a problem.

Logic itself isn't really a meaningful statement with no predication. Classical logic, which you may be referring to, asserts the law of non-contradiction and law of excluded middle (along with law of identity and maybe a few others depending on the specific language). Fuzzy logic denies those two former laws and we use it in electronics and there are tons of logic languages besides that.
I'll go a bit further and say everybody uses their logic language of choice, even if they don't know it or contradict themselves, so saying "logic is my epistemological choice" is trivial at best.

As for the assumption that the world is material, math cannot be material at least epistemologically. That is to say it may in fact be ontologically material but we have no way to approach that from this limit that physics necessitates math to do physics. This is an asymmetric relationship where we don't need physics to do math (as that would be circular).
In addition, modern math/logic is based on the principle of being more universally applicable than to material objects (as shown by frege's reasoning here).


Also physics is very much a philosophical endeavor and was called natural philosophy (as a group name with chemistry, biology etc) until a century and a half ago.

Also you can't even reject theism with atheism. You're using naturalism, materialism or whichever frameworks you're using. There's no way to get to an "atheist" position ontologically or epistemologically.

Yeah I agree with that entirely. For wittgenstein it wasn't use itself but use from a language someone used. I disagree with that but yeah I see no way to have words not refer to something without fundamentally only saying vapid things.

Sure but you would say aristotle's prime mover is valid for God like Aquinas did no? The cosmological argument would include aristotle's prime mover.

If that's your preferred way of thinking then I don't want to barge in on that. That being said you asked two questions which would attack my ontological positions so it'd be odd for you to say the epistemological nature is all you want but then question the applicability of my positions.
This distinction is really what comes at play here. You cannot approach theism from an epistemological standpoint or you simply can't ask the questions you did. In that then it's useless to define theism as belief rather than propositional statements.

I will answer the propositional questions regarding the ontological nature of theism.

I don't really care to speak about my religion but suffice it to say that many theistic conceptions are naturalist entirely or idealist (spinoza, aristotle are an example of the former and berkeley and, perhaps, hegel are examples of the latter). I will say science, which is concerned with nature in a particular way, can't ever deny supernaturalist concepts because no supernatural objects etc ever go into its domain.

The conception of a pentaune god does not require the communication nor livingness of said conception of god to exist. I don't have to worship a pentaune god to develop a thought puzzle around this. This applies towards any science or math field as well (e.g. we can theorize gravitons and what they may do if they exist without being forced to base our physics on it or even insert it at all). We also apply ethical conundrums into thought puzzles. In any case the main point is you can't use an epistemological definition for theism to ask this and if you're questioning these things then you necessarily are using an ontological nature to interpret and question these things (you need a framework to do so). Atheism, while being the negation of theism de jure (linguistics) and de facto, is not an ontological framework but the rejection of one. In that you can't ask these questions through atheism but through some other framework you may be or may not be conscious of using. That ties more into the point that atheism is not a position one can meaningfully get to without separating atheism from theism and implying atheism is just some random name for a gaming group that has shared likes and dislikes. A huge fall away from all atheist claims and from new atheist claims and from hitchens and all before him.

You seem to be showing even more how inaccurate saying "theism is just belief" is or you're showing a worse claim "theism cannot be a purely linguistic claim (as it can lead to issues)" but that latter would apply to anything and never manage to supplant the issues/inaccuracies of using an epistemological position for theism (or any -ism really) and it seems circular anyways ("what is theism? It's belief in God", perhaps god-fearingly so).

In any case, religion itself is an application of a theistic claim. There is possibly, in the philosophy of religion, a pentaune (five-in-one) God with distinct possible derivations and thought puzzles which may intuit issues or benefits in the triune God vs the unitarian God. Keep in mind that no religion of a pentaune God exists.

They choose what they think is the wisest track which may be, for a child, the easiest and most shortcut-y path.

Lol anyways you were the one saying we could find it from the subject as a foundation. Keep in mind that was just an epistemological track not an ontological one (clearly you have to start with yourself for the epistemological track).

Once found, we can only relate to this objectivity in our own way. Doesn’t mean we can’t find it in the first place. It is our interpretation that is not objective.

That seems so odd to say that 'positive confidence level' idea.
In any case that would be so awesome if that's all theism was (just getting epistemologically tricked) (side example, your grandma says "I love you, do you believe me?" This example wouldn't preclude theism/atheism).

No, theism has always been about specific God claims. If theism was purely just the non-starter that is "belief" then why would theists ever disagree with each other.
That epistemological position ("belief") would be doing so much work there and still couldn't do enough.

In any case, the proof is in the pudding, atheists are clearly antagonistic to theists. There's no disbelief/ambiguity there but even if there was, that metric wouldn't be enough to describe the situations or what those words have been/are doing for all of human history (or even one moment).

I meant that the study of wisdom naturally applies to all of us in every action and state (we're always and only seeking to do the most wise thing even if it's something very personal or petty even, we try to solve the issue how we best can).

Sure I get your point but even saying competence and critical reading (both words that necessarily apply anywhere, kinda weasel-y words) in the tradition has a circularity where tradition refers to philosophy.

You're effectively saying "a philosopher is a person who philosophizes correctly (philosophically)". You'd be using the same word in the definition which creates a recursive issue.

Calling a philosopher someone who has expertise in philosophy offers no real explanatory power. It's weird how you said that first paragraph bit then made the adverb-exclusion second paragraph.

Your teacher is just gatekeeping. Natural philosophy became science so very technically doing science is doing philosophy. Reapplying this to all that's applicable you see no reason to exclude anything.

Yeah but that's circular which is why philosophy must be defined in general terms and not specific (what we call philosophy either academically or not).

I thought you were being serious lol
If you have antipathy to philosophy then pick up a logic book or a math proofs one.
In any case, you were defining it from the subject and the predicate is a stand-in for what's ontologically grasped next (e.g. I have no interest in how you understand darkness itself but whatever you do it may follow that "subject observes light in the negation that comes off as darkness" and you have an accurate path of predication that allows the subject but treats the object as separate).

Darkness is an object as well and "qualify of" it is a predicate of darkness. If "quality of" is determined by the subject then darkness itself is still unreferencible solely from the subject.

Sure but that never accounts for the object. Your perception can miss a carriage going across the road and you may still get hit by it (the objection to berkeleyan idealism until he posited that we're all in God's mind to solve the issue). If you conflate them all to subjective then you can't account for these things.

It's completely obvious to anyone who has been studying philosophy for awhile that you referred to late witt's language games which is why I referenced it. You did not know the reference and were caught up in an ego trap.

You did not understand wittgenstein's language games when I referenced it. He says meaning is derived from the languages which instantiates the sentence and words. I do not agree with that whatsoever but he still says there is a referrent to the language.
You are new to philosophy. Many people here seem to be not. You are also young and egotistical and you're trying your best to claw up some dignity where you shouldn't feel the need to.

Also the advice "you don't know" and "there's more to learn" is effectively meaningless and is either trivial or points towards nothing.

I'm not one to tell people the signs of a potentially abusive person but they are as obvious as people make them want to be.

Where does a word get its specific meaning then?

You need a word with meaning from wherever you think they get assigned meaning.

There is no possible way to be an a-anything. It's entailing existence to non-existence. To say you *are* a non-existing object is inherently contradictory and I've already specified how it's epistemologically impossible to arrive at an a-anything position.

Yes the world is so big and vast once you learn a new word that others must been in the same position as you.
I intuited you meant language games and you did not get the reference so I cited works. It's very clear what he means by that, it's not at all esoteric, and I referenced an article for you.

Words are clearly dependent on meaning based on the language that instantiates it for him. The 'use' is the application of the language.

I'm not sure what private headspace is but for later witt language determines meaning and language can be private or social. In any case it's what determines meaning for him but that's completely tangential to what we were talking about which was whether terms needed references at all.

Between wittgenstein, nietzsche and godel's incompleteness (followed at a distance by hume's induction bit) are very overrepresented references which never actually reference the body of work or if they do the philosopher was supplanted.

I literally said language games. Yes he's referring to the designated language is what is used to give meaning to a word so the meaning of the word refers to the language which it's a part of.

Language games? From philosophical investigations?

The meaning of the word depends on the language-game within which it is being used. Another way Wittgenstein puts the point is that the word "water" has no meaning apart from its use within a language-game. One might use the word as an order to have someone else bring you a glass of water. But it can also be used to warn someone that the water has been poisoned. One might even use the word as code by members of a secret society.

Wittgenstein does not limit the application of his concept of language games to word-meaning. He also applies it to sentence-meaning. For example, the sentence "Moses did not exist" (§79) can mean various things. Wittgenstein argues that independently of use the sentence does not yet 'say' anything. It is 'meaningless' in the sense of not being significant for a particular purpose. It only acquires significance if we fix it within some context of use. Thus, it fails to say anything because the sentence as such does not yet determine some particular use. The sentence is only meaningful when it is used to say something.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)

He would be saying what I would. You would find the reference in the language game but he very specifically speaks about everything having a reference.

I like getting past that dichotomy too but in my experience we can only perceive objects (whether they're hallucinations/simulations/etc or not). Darkness for instance has no material object but it's clearly an object and we can see whether we predicate out to it well enough to see if the predications rightfully describe that object. I treat everything as an object. How would you try to go past the dichotomy?

You need a reference for king. You've already said that. You also need one for America (again already said). How they are conjoined dictates another reference for instance the King (of Spain visited) America is completely different from King of America. So there's still a reference there or there is no way to meaningfully parse the statement "King of America".

Okay so you have to refer to America and a king of a certain sort (in a monarch position of government etc etc). Them conjoined implies a reference. That you have to refer to things to specify what you mean implies the necessity of a reference (not a material reference).

I just said it has too general reference. It's like saying "this is objective fact" where we can't properly describe "objective" except as their subjective fact. So it's a reference to an existential construct (subjective fact).