that's poetry, not anything based in actual fact. — Philosophim

"sub specie aeternitatis" is not poetry, it's an approach that is logically deduced from the fact of necessary causality. For Spinoza, time is something closer to "poetry" than eternity. As for my own position, it differs from Spinoza's, because I think that causality logically turns into its opposite in a dialectical way. (Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems, solution 10)

I agree with you when saying that "Science often thinks in terms of causality as well."

I'll try to rephrase it. The effect comes from the cause (by definition), so the effect includes the cause. For example, the plant includes its seed, because the plant is the-seed-that-grew. The plant is the continuation of the seed. (This continuation already blurs the border between cause and effect, by the way).
But we can also say that the cause includes its effect. Of course, we cannot perceive the effect while the cause is still here (we cannot see the plant when there's just a seed), but, if causality is necessary (like science and Spinoza say), then the cause has to produce this effect, in this specific way and at this specific moment. So, in a way the effect is already there in the cause, for nothing else can happen but this effect. As Philosophim says:

we have to watch it unfold — Philosophim

It is true, we cannot perceive the simultaneity of the cause and the effect, we can just think about it. To Spinoza, "watching it unfold" is indeed just something that "we" do, humans, through what Spinoza calls "imagination" (which doesn't mean hallucination). But humans can comprehend, with rationality, that, in a way, everything happens at once, which is what Spinoza calls "considering things sub specie aeternitatis", "under the aspect of eternity", as you probably know.

Now, back to what I was saying in the previous comment: as you can probably feel, this reasoning leads to a cause that is hardly distinguishable from the effect, and vice versa, which kills causality (how could we think of causality without distinguishing a cause from an effect?). This applies to both concrete and abstract causal things.
Now, it is true that :

The only option in which logic applies is two physical entities interacting. — Mark Nyquist

Science often thinks in terms of laws and not causes indeed. For example, law of gravitation: is it the Earth that attracts the moon or the other way around? The answer is: both, it's a law, a relationship, not a causality.
("Causality can exist thanks to the absence of causality": I agree it's not easy to understand without a larger context. That is the very conclusion of what I wrote beforehand, it's just a weird and a bit striking way to put it.)

I think it was right to talk about Descartes in this thread, as long as we also see the limits of Descartes's reasoning. The beginning of Heidegger's Being and Time is, by the way, very much inspired by the cogito.
BUT what Hegel shows is that cogito is not only a thought of being, but the being of thought as well. So it is true that consciousness is a precondition of being, but it doesn't mean that there could be a consciouness without any beings to be conscious of. Of course, it's not a subject that can be summed up in a few sentences. (source: Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 1 and 2)

First, we should point out that, not only the first cause but any cause is supposed to be necessary.
But this necessity kills causality itself: it's actually a problem in Spinoza's works that you probably already heard of. Since the cause cannot not produce the effect, it means the effect already lies in the cause somehow (and it means that time is a kind of illusion for Spinoza but that's another matter).
But then: how can the cause produce an effect, since the effect already exists?
Therefore, nothing can really be produced, and this kills causality. Or rather, it shows that causality is contradictory: causality can exist thanks to the absence of causality, and vice versa. That, of course, is a very short presentation of this subject (source: Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 10)

When two 86-year-old Russian women talk about this thread while being interviewed...! Have a look at the end ->
"Irina and Ioulia, both 86 and childhood friends, came together to pay tribute to Alexeï Navalny.

Both are regulars at opposition demonstrations or, "when it was possible", against the war in Ukraine. Irina also remembers, as a child, attending Joseph Stalin's funeral. "That day, I cried... What an idiot I was!" She was also at the airport in January 2021, when Alexeï Navalny returned to Russia after being poisoned. "They changed the arrival airport at the last minute, the cowards...".

However, she is not only angry with Vladimir Putin's regime, but also with her fellow citizens, who failed to defend their rights: "If there had been more than a few hundred of us waiting for him... Even in my own social circle, there are only a few people who think like me. It wasn't Putin who killed Navalny, it was Russia." " (from Le Monde)

I think we're going round in circles, or that people defend what they want to defend before knowing whether they can defend it. I'd also like to think that there are different degrees of responsibility, and that I'm hardly responsible at all for not fighting injustice (because it's up to the leaders to do so, or because the leaders prevent me from doing so, or because it's pointless as long as others don't follow me... etc.). But this would need to be proven.
Thank you for your answers though.

It wasn't about the existence of a cup, or any particular physical objects as such. It was rather about the the nature of our belief in the existence of the unperceived objects or world. — Corvus

But it's not a belief. The world really exists. And it really exists precisely because there is nothing outside of ideas or perceptions. Since there is nothing outside those, there is no "outside" at all, and since there is no outside, the so-called "inside" is actually the world itself. So the world does exist. It lies within the idea itself. Idealism leads to realism and realism leads to idealism. It's a "loop".

How would we as humans comprehend any intelligence, other than the one by which humans comprehend anything? — Mww

he regards it as an unavoidable product of the understanding — Jamal

In my view, Hegel has very convincingly criticised Kantian criticism, thereby answering the question posed in this thread.
In particular, he explains:
- that we cannot draw a limit between what we can know and what we cannot know because, in order to draw this limit and know where to place it, we would already have to know what there is beyond this limit (a limit must know what it delimits).
(that answers:

he saw the limits of espistemology — Jack Cummins

)
- that, to talk about the thing-in-itself, Kant keeps using (human) categories: the thing-in-itself "is not" a phenomenon (= use of the category of negation), etc.
- that there is nothing fundamentally new about the idea of the transcendental, because "knowledge of the conditions of knowledge" is... knowledge.
(Source: Hegel, beginning of The Phenomenology of Spirit and beginning of Science of Logic)

To sum it up, Kant is a metaphysician without knowing it (and therefore is an incomplete metaphysician).

As for the existence of an object that would come "only" from human intelligence, "only" from understanding:
It is true that all knowledge is humanly shaped.
BUT it doesn't lead to a pure subjectivism or even a transcendental idealism. Here is the condensed proof. If we can not have any knowledge about the external world, then we can't even say that this "external world" exists. So there would only be an "internal" world. But how could there be an "internal world" without an external one? So it means that our so-called "internal world" is not "just internal", "sadly internal"... It is the world itself.

(Source: Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 2)

I don't have time to answer all messages, so I selected just a few ones. Of course feel free to keep this debate going without me anyway (except if you think this is a "poorly written question").


Interesting insight thank you.

(…) one the 0.5% shot down on the street and never heard from again? You don't: it's risk you take.

Agree. But then, two comments: 1. All the people who didn’t join to make up that “enough” will be held responsible, although just partly and indirectly, of those killed and imprisoned ones. Because, had they joined their peers, the regime would have been overthrown (with limited and/or temporary casualties, and political prisoners freed). This is what I mean: the people who have stayed at home for fear of demonstrating may be friendly and cordial, but they are by no means "neutral". There is no neutral zone, because inaction is always also action. They are definitely not as responsible as snipers on the roof, but their responsibility is not 0 either. Right? 2. It could at least be said that those who stay at home in such a situation value life higher than freedom. Which is understandable, and I'm likely to join them, but morally questionable.

then I'd be calling for an impossible administration of justice.

But I thought this post was about

Indeed I'm first looking for the truth, not the thesis that is most applicable in practice. A good example of this would be denazification in Germany from 1945: in May 1945, there were 8 million members of the Nazi party. In Bonn, 102 out of 112 doctors were Nazis. In Bavaria, 94% of judges and prosecutors and 77% of finance ministry employees were former Nazis... and so on. So obviously these people were guilty, at least partially or indirectly, of Nazi crimes, but it was impossible to prosecute them and put them in prison, for practical reasons.

you are morally culpable, but not criminally culpable — unenlightened

Yes indeed that's what we're reflecting on.

I do believe in the existence of the cup when I am perceiving it, but when I am not perceiving it, I no longer have a ground, warrant or reason to believe in the existence of it.

Indeed, and this is what Berkeley said. Something that would exist independently of a perceiving mind is unverifiable. Because, if you check that such a thing exists, well, too late, you're using thought again. That is the powerful argument by Berkeley.
BUT it doesn't lead to a pure and insane subjectivism, as Berkeley himself noted (although Hegel showed it way better, according to me). Here is the condensed proof. If we can not have any knowledge about the external world, then we can't even say that this "external world" exists. So there would only be an "internal" world. But how could there be an "internal world" without an external one? So it means that our so-called "internal world" is not "just internal", "sadly internal"... It is the world itself.
(source: Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 2)

I’m a bit confused because you first want to defend that citizens aren’t responsible for the crimes of their leaders, but using an argument that actually seems to prove the opposite:

Easy example is Trump and the insurrectionists. He's guilty even if he didn't want all of those crimes because he was in a position to stop them and chose not to.

Indeed, just like the military could stop a tyrant, but doesn’t. The only difference here is that, within the military, the responsibility is shared, whereas in your example it is rather concentrated in one person. The new problem, then, is to determine how big this difference is. Is a shared responsibility a smaller responsibility for each individual of the group? Can responsibility be “diluted”?

About your pilot example, I do agree that it is necessary to know that you are committing a crime in order to be considered responsible for that crime. I would just add, of course, that the individual must do everything possible to access information about the act he is about to commit. Otherwise, he is responsible for burying his head in the sand.

to live under a mafia is to live under coercion to support criminality

. That is a good way to put it.

if one handed over the cash of the bank at gunpoint one would not be committing robbery

. But there's an important difference here. The one handing over the cash is almost sure of dying if he disobeys. The military revolting against a tyrant (or a very large number of citizens revolting against a tyrant) are almost sure of putting an end to injustice. But they don't.

I'd like to learn what exactly was disappointing in the papers you read?

Sure, here it is:
"Suppose a charged particle is accelerating at a rate of 15 ms−2 under the joint influence of gravity and an electric field. How much did each force contribute to the particle's acceleration? A natural way of answering this question would be to consider what the acceleration would have been had that force not been present." (Kaiserman's paper)
My reaction: That's all well and good, but not everything in life (especially politics) can be summed up by just two factors. You can't say: Hitler caused 2.5 times more of the Shoah than Himmler.
Finally, scenarios such as "What if such and such a historical figure had not existed?" are absolutely unverifiable fictions, unlike the withdrawal of a variable in a closed physical system.

"Suppose they’re trying to push the boulder down the hill to save a climber’s life who got stuck under that boulder. They are of varying strengths—say, one is a little bit stronger than all the others who are equally strong. But all of them do everything they can to save the climber. And again, none of them are strong enough to push the boulder on their own, and hence each of them is needed for the outcome. They push the boulder down the hill and save the climber.
If causation comes in degrees, it seems plausible to think that the strongest teen¬ager is more of a cause of saving the climber’s life than all the others. This might in turn imply that she is more morally responsible—i.e., more praiseworthy—than all the others." (Demirtas' paper)
My reaction: Another example that is too abstract/simplified and cannot be generalised. In this situation, we assume that they all had the idea of saving the climber at the same time and in the same way. But, in truth, there were group effects, and individual wills were to some extent "blended" into the collective... The strongest climber lifted the rock more, but perhaps he wouldn't have done so if the skinnier climber hadn't suggested lifting it. And so on.
Only quantifiable factors: very problematic because there are 'spiritual' effects that are very important and unquantifiable, such as education or propaganda that would make someone a murderer, for example, and where the perpetrators of this influence would logically be held partly responsible for the crime.

Generally speaking, the authors of these articles always work in closed systems. A finite set of variables (and what's more, there are never many of them) but in reality the variables are far more numerous or even infinite. Example: one person in particular, and only that person, can kill the Bad Guy to save humanity. And he does. His action was necessary and sufficient and, what's more, of a high degree of necessity, because it was irreplaceable. It is therefore legitimate to consider this person responsible for this act (and to congratulate him). However, it was also necessary for his parents to bring him into the world... and to transmit to him an idea of civic-mindedness and courage... Otherwise none of this would have been possible... and the grandparents etc.

Or we would have to prove that reality is made up of closed systems, that these are not simplifications of reality. The question of the weighting of causality/responsibility then becomes first and foremost that of the existence of variables really isolated from others to explain an action.

I need to think about it more. (Hence the fact I asked the question).
What is your own answer, by the way? Are citizens responsible for the crimes of their leaders? And, for example, is the sergeant's "less responsible" for a war crime than his general? And the peasant who happened to be passing by at the time of the crime, who could have hidden the persecuted people so that they were not murdered, but did not do so, is even "less responsible" than the general and the sergeants? And how could all this be rigorously proven?

Yes, exactly. The famous Dostoevsky’s quote: "Each of us is guilty of everything against all." The fact that it is unpleasant to hear doesn't make it false.

A purely physical nothing would be a nothing that stays so without us even needing to think about it. It would be independent of thought. But that is totally unverifiable. Because, if you check that this nothing exists, well, too late, you're using thought again. That is the powerful argument by Berkeley. And it doesn't lead to a pure and insane subjectivism though, as Berkeley himself noted and as I tried to express in a recent message in the forum, in another discussion. I'm not fully Berkeleyan but this argument is very correct and important.

"we can not have any knowledge about the external world." That is true. But, if we can not have any knowledge about the external world, then we can't even say that this "external world" exists. So there would only be an "internal" world. But how could there be an "internal world" without an external one? So it means that our so-called "internal world" is not "just internal", "sadly internal"... It is the world itself.
(source: Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 2)

This question cannot be solved without first defining what an existence would be

That is correct but a more direct way to prove this would be to show that "nothing" (nothingness) is already not possible logically anyway. If I think that nothingness exists, I still think it, so there's at least a thought, not nothing. And if I think that "nothingness exists when I stop thinking about it", then this statement is purely unverifiable.
(source:Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 1)