There are innumerable ways to "model" any "functionally limited data set" - taking "model" here as setting out some sort of narrative or rule. If instead we consider "model" as letting a neural network predict the next element in the sequence, will it always choose the same sequence? — Banno

Perhaps numbers were a bad example afterall, being famously infinite, and here I'm trying to give an example of a finite data set.

In my example, one should imagine the set {2,4,6,8} as the entirety of the external state - finite and discrete. So numerous models could be used to predict the full set from some part of it, and, being both finite and discrete, there'd never be a point where any one model could be shown to predict (or model) more accurately, the full set.

Like the duck-rabbit. It's never going to resolve the question of which it is.

Anything so farging weird as mental events that apparently don’t do certain things, creating for itself events that apparently can do the things the system apparently doesn’t do, just has to be entirely ineffable, right? — Mww

I don't know. I made a modest career doing my damnedest to eff it. But maybe...

And why are concepts like “mental event” and “constituent neural activity ” not themselves post hoc narratives? — Joshs

Well, they are, in that I experience them in a lab, but they're not in this narrative - the one we're talking about here where we're discussing how experience might be best modelled. It's like me narrating a story to you where the main character jumps out of a window and you say "but he can't jump out of a window, he's a fiction, just a figment of your imagination"

Say the entire world is a fiction. I assume, in talking to you as normal human beings, that you too are embedded in this fiction, and that in this fiction there are plot items called neurons, and brains, and that they have a history in this storyline, they've occurred in previous scenes. We're discussing what part the character 'experience' ought to play in this story. Someone says "oh, he could pick up the plot-item 'neuron' and throw it at the wall". I'm saying "No, he couldn't do that because, if you remember from scene 4, the plot-item 'neuron' was described as really, really heavy, and in scene 2, the character 'experience' was described as being quite weak. It wouldn't work to have him throw 'neurons' at the wall here".

All made up. Nothing having any better claim to be real than anything else. But things in the world have histories, they're tied to other things by logical and rational connections. A neuron is like one long Ramsey sentence, it starts with "If...", but to deny that first 'If' means the whole sentence must be undone and that unravels a ton of connected stuff.

We're constantly weaving narratives to explain the causes of our internal states, and yes, that process is not passive - we reach out to the external states and sometime try to change them to match the prediction rather than change the prediction... but either way, we're weaving a story, not arbitrarily, but with purpose. We want it to cohere, to make good predictions, to be consistent...

It still matters (to some) if the post hoc character we've made into 'neurons', makes sense when in the same scene as the post hoc character we've made into 'experience of red'.

if a neurological account of psychological functioning constructs the world that it models in niche-like fashion, then the distinction between post-hoc experience and original event collapses. — Joshs

Case in point. You're drawing here a logical conclusion from two narrative points. You're saying that if we accept A and B, then C must follow, ie C must be the case. So some things simply must be the case once we accept their premises. That's all empirical sciences are claiming (or at least, that's all I'm claiming). If we accept A,B,C...etc about our interactions, our models thus far, then D must be the case. and if D is the case, then our previous E cannot also be. It's all hypothetical, it's all one long Ramsey sentence. There's no claim to ultimate reality there, just If-Then.

A dog can develop the concept of treat and associate it to the word "treat" only by a kind of inductive inference from a limited set of particulars of which it is aware of - this to the generalized notion as concept - by holding first-person awareness (to not further confound the issue by using the term “conscious awareness”) of things such as biscuits and bones. — javra

I'm still not following how you've jumped to 'awareness'. Why does the dog need to be 'aware' of bones and biscuits in order for the category {stuff that's nice to eat} to form a semantic memory. It seems to me all that's required would be some connections between the word-sound 'treat' and the neural networks associated with nice food. There are still specific networks that will be excited in response to categories, just perhaps fewer of them than with specifics.

In a sense, the dog collating mental events into category 'treat' therefore is social construction. The trigger for the association with a broad response such as nice food, rather than a specific one such as bone, has been built, not by the dog, but by the interaction with the owner.

So the confusion (my fault perhaps) that many seem to have gotten into from my comments is that they are...

the appraisal that experiences need to be contingent on narration in order to manifest. — javra

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that without language we do not have experiences of 'red', not that we don't have experience tout court. To abstract an experience (a post hoc construction) as being one of 'red' one requires the definition of red. Without it, one has neither cause, nor capability to abstract, from the stream of experience being constructed, anything like 'redness'.

The illogical or delusional reasoning is that — ssu

People disagreeing with you doesn't make them illogical and delusional. I've shown quite clearly that normal intelligent and informed people think that right here right now in 2022 Russia are likely enough to use nuclear weapons that concessions might be a wise precautionary move.

As has been discussed at some length, your examples from history show only that it is possible for a nuclear power to lose a war without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. It does not prove that they always will in all circumstances.

Experts are of the view that they might use nuclear weapons this time, in this place, in these specific circumstances. It is recklessness beyond criminal to ignore their concerns for the sake of some localised nationalism.

since concepts are abstractions abstracted from a plurality of particulars - the implications are that experiences can then take place prior to, or else in the complete absence of, narration. This conclusion would be entailed by the process of forming concepts from particular, narration-devoid experiences. — javra

I don't follow how you're making the jump from the particulars constituting concepts to 'experiences'. Why must the particulars be experiences?

Say there's concept a dog has which makes it more likely to, say, fetch its lead when it hears the word "walk", and say this concept is constituted of several linked concepts, I don't see why any of those linked concepts need be an experience.

What I'm suggesting is that all experience is post hoc. Everything we'd call an experience is made up after the mental events which that experience is attempting to explain.

So your dog's constituent neural activity is not an experience. If your dog has any experiences at all they'll be like ours, constructed after the event - possibly, with dogs, even using socially available narratives... Who knows I don't think it's out of the question.

So the fundamental issue here is not really the use of words. It is for humans, but maybe less so for dogs. It's about what kind of cognitive activity constitutes an 'experience' as opposed to simply some neurons firing.

I think the evidence is pretty strong now that there's no one-to-one relationship between neural events and our 'experience', so we must explain that epistemic cut somehow.

the above might clarify your otherwise felicitous distinction. It is indeed the system doing the narration, but not of experiences so much as of mental events. Does that make sense?

What is the error? Can you spell it out? Can you talk me through it? — neomac

Yes.

the problem I see is that Russia doesn't simply want to take a piece of land from Ukraine, but it wants to do it expressly in defiance and at the expense of the West/NATO/US: starting with the violation of international law — neomac

So the problem I saw here was that violating international law is not in defiance of "the West/NATO/US" because "the West/NATO/US" have little respect for international law either.

aiming at establishing a new World Order in alliance with at least two other authoritarian regimes (China and Iran) [ — neomac

Same problem here. The West/NATO/US act as authoritarian regimes. In terms of their actual impact on the globe there's not sufficient difference in their approaches to justify the claim that Russia's intent was "a new World Order". It's the same world order.

Also, I found your evidence that this is, indeed, Russia's intent to be sketchy at best. A lot of supposition, very little empirical ground.

Russia is capable to blackmail the West (and the rest of the world) with wheat and gas supply (among others), threaten it with nuclear weapons, fund pro-Russian lobbies in the West, conduct cyber-warfare against Western facilities/institutions and project military assets in Africa, Middle East and Mediterranean sea through the Black Sea (basically encircling Europe), — neomac

This doesn't seem to have a point related to the argument. You've stated a fact (Russia has this capability) but you've not made any argument about what is consequent to that fact. No one has expressed disagreement on those grounds, nor any argument assuming the opposite. So the statement just hangs purposelessly. Yes, Russia has that capability. So what?

So I do not see how exactly letting Russia get what it wants expressly out of fear of Russia under the eyes all other authoritarian challengers of the West is to the best interest of the West — neomac

This conclusion doesn't follow because you've weighed only one side of the argument.

The argument being made is that Russia getting its way would be bad, but Russia not getting its way would be bad too (nuclear escalation). Therefore some negotiated compromise between the two positions is the best course of action.

You've only concurred that, yes, Russia getting its way would be bad. This adds nothing to the discussion because we were all already agreed on that matter, it's right there in the argument.

To dispute the argument, you have to show that one is worse than the other. Not merely that one is bad.

if you care for the West, of course — neomac

I don't. I find such thinking disgusting. I care about humanity. Not just westerners.

the point of bias analysis is less to discard sources, than to interpret them correctly. — Olivier5

I just try to interpret its pronouncements at the light of its interests. — Olivier5

OK. So these sources who argue...

the risk of nuclear escalation is exaggerated by Kremlin-affiliated cretins — Olivier5

...what efforts did you take to 'triangulate' their pronouncements with those of experts offering contrary views. Talk me through how this process works.

I chose to believe it because it was reported to me by reporters I trust. — Olivier5

Yeah, we've just got through demonstrating that to be bullshit. You can't provide a consistent criteria you use to judge who to trust. You dismissed RAND because of their connection to the military industrial complex yet 30 seconds on the internet tells us that ISW have exactly the same connections.

The difference..? RAND were saying something you didn't want to believe and ISW were saying something you did want to believe.

It's abundantly clear you choose who to trust because they agree with your preferred narrative. The narrative came first.

"Ukraine" in this context should be taken as meaning "the Ukrainian people". — Olivier5

Right. So...

the people of Ukraine are not one homogeneous mass all of a conveiniently singular opinion which virtue-signalling westerners can adopt in faux solidarity. — Isaac

Because Russia is currently governed by a ruthless, aggressive dictatorship that attacked Ukraine and other countries such as Georgia. Ukraine is the victim here, and it aspires to be a liberal democracy. — Olivier5

That's a restatement of what the narrative is, not an explanation of why you choose to believe it.

Also, Ukraine is not a victim. That's a category error. Ukraine is a country, it's not the sort of thing that can have victimhood.

People are victims, not countries. And as we've seen, the people of Ukraine are not one homogeneous mass all of a conveiniently singular opinion which virtue-signalling westerners can adopt in faux solidarity.

when pushed or catastrophically fail to understand and rebut on rational grounds — neomac

There's nothing to rebut. I completely agreed. Russia broke international law.

So now do you agree with that too? it's all mundane and tautological? — neomac

Probably, from past experience, when pushed you'll end up claiming it only says that Russia exists, or that people sometimes think before they act. You seem to want to write at enormous length explaining boring and obvious truisms that everybody already knows.

I expect I'll agree with your next post too if it is, as I predict, a 500 word masterpiece concluding that, yes, there is a war in Ukraine.

maybe this piece of emigration data means something different from what you think it means. — Olivier5

Yep. Exactly. "Maybe".

So the question you keep dodging. Why believe that explanation and not the other? Why do you prefer the 'Russia bad, Ukraine good' narrative? Why do you interpret all evidence in that light?

Is it just a coincidence that it also happens to be the sales pitch of one of the most powerful industries in the world?

This is interesting. I'm not sure quite how best to answer using the terms you're using. But I'll have a go.

The way I see the relation between external and internal states is like a small mathematical data set say {2,4,6,8,10,12}. We could define that set as something like "double the value of the ordinal in the sequence". We could also define that set as "add 2 to the previous number in the sequence". Both are right, and with the sequence were given, neither are more right than the other.

We could extend it to something like {2,4,8,16} which could be "double the previous number" or ad to the previous number the sequence {2,4,8}. with what we've got, both are right, even though, if we had more numbers, the latter might be shown to be wrong.

But unlike the pragmatists, I'm not suggesting that we're merely having a 'best guess' given limited knowledge, I'm saying that the external states have functionally limited data sets. It will never be possible to determine between the two definitions. Both are right and always will be.

Would that be that the models are incomplete, then?

Without an organism’s innate ability to cognize non-linguistically expressed (hence, non-narrative) concepts - such as the concept of treat - how do words that reference concepts, such as “treat”, become associated with anything any concept whatsoever? — javra

I don't know anything about canine psychology, but if it works anything like human psychology, the association of a word (or any noise at all) with an expectation is mediated primarily by the hippocampus and just works by associating previous responses with a kind of 'mock up' of that response repeated (but not carried out). So if a human says "pass me the book", my motor circuits will be fired for all the muscle movements required to pass the book, by that expression, before I actually decide to pass the book. The last action on my part is sort of 'releasing the flood gates' of the potential to act that has already built up. Or in object recognition, it might be firing all the clusters related to some action on that object (naming it, using it, emotional response to it), connected, via the hippocampus, to the output of the various auditory cortices (depending on if it were a word or another sound type).

'Experience', as in the thing we later report as our conscious experience of the event, is constructed later out of those firings (plus a whole load of random firing which are happening all the time, and a load of extraneous firings to do with unrelated environmental variables). The task of the experience narrative is (partly) to sift out all that extraneous junk so that the memory of the event is clearer - next time's firing set is nice and neat, useful and clean of noise. It doesn't really play a role in the actual word-object linking in real time.

so long as I don’t contradict myself. Cool as hell of you to remember that. As for its relation to social constructs, asking you to explain that would take you away from your engagement here, so I won’t. — Mww

Another thread perhaps. The phrase stuck with me, this is the first time I've linked it to model-dependant realism. Perennially interesting thing about philosophy is where these crossovers are that one had never thought of.

so the (wordless) experience comes first and the post hoc narrative follows — Janus

No, that's not how it seems to me. Experiences are all post hoc constructions. What 'comes first' is not an experience. It's not something we can report, nor anything that we're even conscious of. It's just a load of neural activity which, as we should all know by now, does not have any kind of one-to-one relation with the sorts of things we talk about like balls, colours, or words. all of that is constructed afterwards as a way of explaining what just happened.

So it's not a case of "I threw a red ball" being an experience constructed out of the constituent experiences "throwing" redness" and "ball".

It goes...

1. {some collection of neural firing events} ->
2. "I threw a red ball" experience ->
3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components

The example of an open society next door is bound to give some untoward ideas of freedom and justice to folks living in the goulag nations of Belarus and Russia. — Olivier5

I'm curious then as to why...

As of mid-year 2020, 6.1 million migrants from Ukraine resided abroad. ... more than 53 per cent of them resided in the Russian Federation — https://www.migrationdataportal.org/ukraine/migration-overview

Perhaps you could explain the origin of Putin's concern when, as of 2020, more than half of those leaving Ukraine chose to go to Russia?

Also, the second largest population of students studying abroad chose to study in Russia.

I'm curious as to why the...

goulag nations — Olivier5

...attracted the largest proportion of those leaving the...

progressive liberal — Olivier5

...utopia that is Ukraine.


Perhaps some bloke off of YouTube has an explanation you can share with us

Maybe the data from Migration Data Portal is wrong? I suppose you've never heard of it and it's not passed your rigorous credibility and bias checking. Is there perhaps a retired secretary whose sister once knew a guy in immigration you can ask?

if you are talking about international law, it should be a resolution within international law to establish what constitutes violation. — neomac

Possibly, not always. Many of the issues are the US's failure to ratify laws others have taken on.

when I talked about international law violation by Russia I'm talking about this: — neomac

So?

I didn't claim that the US didn't commit international law violation, I simply claimed that Russia did. — neomac

So?

Back to the same transparent strategy you used last time when @boethius pointed out your obvious error. Reduce the scope of your claim to something so utterly mundane that no one could disagree.

So what you're now saying is just that Russia broke international law. Yes. Well done.

How do you like our disagreement — neomac

We don't have one. I agree Russia broke international law.

I agree “red” acts as an off-the-shelf narrative for use post hoc, along with every other possible “__” experience. But ‘tis a veritable beggar’s banquet, I say, not to consider how they were one and all put there in the first place. — Mww

Absolutely. I'm ultimately a realist, which means, for me, the social constructs aren't just random, they are constrained by the external states they seek to explain. Not just any old explanation will do. But where I depart from many realists in in there being a single 'true' narrative that somehow captures external states in perfection. I just don't see external states as being so closely tied to our modeling methods.

What is it you say, something about being able to think what you like so long as it's not contradictory? Something like that, I think is true of social constructs.

I would argue that what we weave together is not disparate and completely contradictory bits but inferentially compatible ( but never identical) experience united on the basis of commonalities as well as differences. — Joshs

I'm not sure I fully understand what this means, but why would you think there'd be a lack of internal disparity. We have many different inputs, many sources of data noise, why would each input yield, nonetheless, complimentary dataset?

Why not be consistent and jettison the assumption that neurons and brains and wavelengths refer to something any more context and person-independent that the experience of color? — Joshs

Well, that's an interesting suggestion, but I'm not entirely sure how one might speak at all without such terms.

American violations...are often alleged by authoritarian States which themselves have being accused of analogous behaviour, or for American domestic political competition. — neomac

So?

the attitude of ALL geopolitical players toward it will realistically serve geopolitical goals... So more important of the attitude of the US toward international law is all other players (allies and enemies) attitude toward the US. — neomac

And?

None of this nonsensical verbiage alleviates your error. You said that...

the problem I see is that Russia doesn't simply want to take a piece of land from Ukraine, but it wants to do it expressly in defiance and at the expense of the West/NATO/US: starting with the violation of international law — neomac

How is it a problem that Russia are violating international law, when America clearly violates international law all the time?

It's a strong claim that we don't have experiences — frank

It is.

Your quote...

f you're claiming we don't have experiences of red and pain — frank

There is not one single red sensation, it is a family. I learned to associate a spectrum of color sensations corresponding to a spectrum of light centered around 700nm or so as "red". — hypericin

How did you identify that the sensation was a 'colour sensation'?

Are you prepared to say that a human being who had been raised without learning language would have no experiences? — Janus

I don't think anyone 'doesn't have experiences'. I said earlier that experiences are post hoc constructions, they're narratives we use to make what just happened in our brain more predictable (understandable in more colloquial terms). We weave together disparate, and often completely contradictory processes into one coherent narrative after the mental events themselves have already taken place and then 'prune' our connections to those process via the hippocampus to create a false memory of how things went down - one which eliminates all the contradictory and inexplicable stuff. That process will (theoretically) happen in a newborn as much as in a language-less adult - though nether have been so thoroughly tested as normal adults. But our word 'red' acts as an off-the-shelf ready-made narrative (one used pretty specifically for communication as well, not one much used for understanding life in general). So anyone having a 'red' experience' is, by definition, using that off-the-shelf narrative.

What actually just went on in their brain which the narrative was chosen to help explain has nothing whatsoever to do with 'red'. It may have been triggered by wavelengths of light. It may, as in @Banno's mention of blind people using colour words, be completely unrelated to such triggers.

The point is that any use of the public narrative 'red' is, by definition, public.

So are you prepared to say plants have experiences?

I can get a spectrometer to respond one way to green light and another to red. Did the spectrometer just have two 'experiences'?

You could set up an experiment to show that, for example, dogs, might respond differently to different coloured cards where a green card meant getting fed and a blue card meant being let out for some exercise, and where the cards were tonally identical, which would rule our their responding to different shades of grey, (I remember reading that dogs can see certain colours, but I can't remember which ones, so my suggested experiment is just an example). — Janus

So has this been done? It doesn't seem much of a point to say that an experiment could show what you believe to be the case.

As I said before. Plants respond to different wavelengths. Are you prepared to say that plants have experiences?

You said...

When I was a small child I learned to associate this sensation with "color", and this variety of color sensation with "red". — hypericin

I asked...

Which sensation? — Isaac

You replied...

Redness, the visual sensation I experience when an object or light source designated "red" enters my visual field . — hypericin

Now you're saying there's no 'the'. So which sensation did you learn to associate with the word red as a child?

of course language is involved in conceptualizing and talking about the colours seen, including the kinds of gross generalizations involved in such things as referring to all those differently coloured objects as "red". — Janus

So 'red' is a social construct.

From where do we learn that the wine and the post box are of similar enough colour for the experience they produce to be the same 'red experience'? Language. Culture.

Do you deny that animals can recognize different colours although they have no language? — Janus

Yes, in the main. I would deny the claim that animals have no language, but I doubt any are sophisticated enough to delineate colour terms.

That's language. You were denying the role of language. I was asking how this 'generalization' was carried out absent of language or socialisation.

"Red' is a generalization applied to all of them. — Janus

How?

First Wikipedia copy/paste looks a bit raised to a genetic fallacy.
Second looks fine, except you'll rarely find something like this with exclusively positive reception.
Temper mon capitaine, I wouldn't just wholly dismiss them that easily with a casual handwave. — jorndoe

Funny your keen anti-bias radar missed...

RAND is a military think tank with good analysts but strongly connected to the US military-industrial complex, which implies a significant bias towards their interests and thus a tendency to take any threat to US military dominance very very seriously, if not to exaggerate them. — Olivier5

'Genetic fallacy' here? or is it just when your opposition say it?

the problem I see is that Russia doesn't simply want to take a piece of land from Ukraine, but it wants to do it expressly in defiance and at the expense of the West/NATO/US: starting with the violation of international law — neomac

Here's the US attitude to 'international law' - From https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/the-u-s-makes-a-mockery-of-treaties-and-international-law/

the United States refuses to sign or to ratify foundational international laws and treaties that the vast majority of countries in the world have signed, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), ICESCR (the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), CRC (the Convention on the Rights of the Child), ICRMW (the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families), UNCLOS (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), PAROS (the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space), the Ottawa Treaty (the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention), and the majority of labor conventions of the ILO (International Labor Organization). In fact, the United States harbors sweatshops, legalizes child labor (for example, in migrant farm labor), and engages in slave labor (in prisons and immigration detention centers). Even the U.S. State Department’s own 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report acknowledges severe problems in the U.S. of trafficking and forced labor in agriculture, food service, manufacture, domestic service, sex work, and hospitality, with U.S. government officials and military involved in the trafficking of persons domestically and abroad. Ironically, the United States tries to hold other countries accountable to laws that it itself refuses to ratify. For example, the United States tries to assert UNCLOS in the South China Sea while refusing—for decades—to ratify it and ignoring its rules, precedents, and conclusions in its own territorial waters.

There are also a slew of international treaties the United States has signed, but simply violates anyway: examples include the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, UN treaties prohibiting torture, rendition, and kidnapping, and of course, war of aggression, considered “the supreme international crime”—a crime that the United States engages in routinely at least once a decade, not to mention routine drone attacks, which are in violation of international law. Most recently, the AUKUS agreement signed between the United States and Australia violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by exploiting a blind spot of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

There are also a multitude of treaties that the United States has signed but then arbitrarily withdrawn from anyway. These include the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, the Agreed Framework and the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, the Geneva Conventions, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and many others.

There are also approximately 368 treaties signed between the Indigenous nations and the U.S. government; every single one of them has been violated or ignored.

There are also unilateral fictions that the United States has created, such as “Freedom of Navigation Operations” (FONOPs): this is gunboat diplomacy, a military show of force, masquerading as an easement claim. FONOPs are a concept with no basis in international law—“innocent passage” is the accepted law under UNCLOS—and it is the United States and its allies who are violating international laws when they exercise these FONOPs. Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZs) are likewise notions that have no recognition in international law—the accepted concept is “sovereign airspace”—but the United States routinely claims that China is violating Taiwan’s ADIZ or airspace—which covers three provinces of mainland China. These are some examples of the absurd fictions that the United States invents to assert that enemy states like China are violating the RBIO. This is weaponized fiction.

The United States also takes great pains to undermine international structures and institutions; for example, not liking the decisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), it has disabled the WTO’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism; it has undermined—and threatened—the ICC (by passing the American Servicemembers Protection Act [ASPA], also known as the Hague Invasion Act), and more recently, sanctioned the ICC prosecutor and her family members; it thumbs its nose at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its decisions, and generally is opposed to any international institution that restricts its unbridled, unilateral exercise of power. Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, in blunt candor, asserted that there is “no such thing as the United Nations,” but this unhinged ideology is quietly manifested in the day-to-day actions of the United States throughout successive U.S. administrations.

Babies begin to see red after a few weeks. — hypericin

Babies respond to different wavelengths. Plants do that too. Do they have 'experiences of red'?

As an Englishman, do you have a moral right to some piece of geography, like where you live? — ssu

No. I can't see how I do. If you think I do , then give us an account of it.

It's not about duty. It's simply a very rational response. — ssu

Then why ought we support them? It's rational for me to earn money, does that mean you ought to support me in doing so?

Redness, the visual sensation I experience when an object or light source designated "red" enters my visual field . — hypericin

Which one? The one you experienced with the red post box, or the one from the red wine, or the red rose, or the red car...which of them is the 'red' one?

If you're claiming we don't have experiences of red and pain, you're making a strong claim and you'll need a strong argument for it. — frank

It's a 'strong' claim because you said so?

Hers' my 'strong' argument for it. There's absolutely no evidence for it. No one can describe such an experience, no-one can pin down such an experience, there are no tests for it, there's no mechanism in the brain which could account for it, there's no cortex in the brain which could process it, and every test that's ever been done to try and identify such a thing has failed utterly.

What might prompt such a time? — Isaac

I could come across one of these guys saying something I find interesting — Olivier5

I'm curious about what you find to be so boring about the risk of nuclear escalation resulting from the very actions you're currently supporting? Unless you're already biased against such views (which would be prejudicial) we have some apparent experts (they do have some credentials without you needing to do any research at all) sating that your preferred course of action might lead to nuclear war and your response is "call me if anything interesting turns up".

You seriously expect anyone to believe that isn't massively biased?

Continuing your education...

Chatham House? Heard of them? Dr Patricia Lewis Acting Deputy Director echoed Avril Haine's concern

Putin made further – and stronger – nuclear threats and seemed to stretch Russian nuclear doctrine from nuclear weapons use being only in the event of an existential threat to instead a threat to territorial integrity – this is particularly worrying given that territory looks set to change and it is contested by Ukraine

These developments are escalating what was already a highly dangerous situation in which mixed messaging with the potential for misinterpretation could lead to decisions being made under false assumptions – there is a well-documented history of close calls with nuclear weapons.

... the application of deterrence theory to the post-cold war realities is hotly contested and far more complicated in the era of cyberattacks which can interfere with the command and control of nuclear weapons.

Also wondering what your experts say about The Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg. Is he one of the...

Kremlin-affiliated cretins — Olivier5

...when he says "The risk of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine is low, but the consequences will be huge, so we take it very seriously,"

Oh and as to your absolute bollocks about...

"

assessed their credibility and biases critically and effectively — Olivier5

...here what about 30 seconds of internet research found out about your sources...

Michel Goya works for BFM-TV a channel which has faced numerous accusations of bias, been caught lying (coverage of the yellow-vest protests), co-writing their material with the subject of their inquiries (police unions), and openly giving preferential support to politicians it favours.

Xavier Tytelman is a private contractor whose business benefit directly from conflict

and the ISW... seriously

ISW ... supported in part by contributions from defense contractors[6] including General Dynamics, DynCorp,[7] and previously, Raytheon.[8]

critics have described ISW as "a hawkish Washington" group[32] favoring an "aggressive foreign policy".[6] Writers for The Nation and Foreign Policy have called it "neoconservative".

Edit - I almost forgot - there's 'some bloke off YouTube'. Let's check out his credentials shall we? Confirm his biases and political influences...

I am a Ukrainian — The bloke's entire bio offered

Yep. Seems to check out. Must have taken you ages to research that.

If that's what you think passing a bias check is about then god help anyone relying on you for such services.

I don't know even their organisations. — Olivier5

You don't know who NATO are? Never heard of RAND Corporation? Never come across Carnegie Endowment?

What about the US intelligence service? Heard of them. Their director Avril Haines warned that Putin was likely to use nuclear weapons if he felt an existential threat to Russia and that "We do think that [Putin’s perception of an existential threat] could be the case in the event that he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine, and that Nato in effect is either intervening or about to intervene in that context, which would obviously contribute to a perception that he is about to lose the war in Ukraine"

Or perhaps the most senior intelligence official in the US isn't qualified enough for you. Perhaps she ought to have consulted some bloke off YouTube or a retired pilot.

I don't know who these guys are, never heard of them, and have not assessed their credibility and biases critically and effctively. — Olivier5

Interesting. So, your study of the credibility and biases of the sources you do use - how was that carried out, and what were the results?

Take...

this Youtube channel, — Olivier5

...for example. What checks did you carry out as to their credibility and bias? What was it about the results which satisfied you?

Should a times come when I need to study those guys, I will study them and their biases, and I might end up using them if I can trust them enough. — Olivier5

Odd. What might prompt such a time? You read a quote from someone with apparent credentials (I supplied their qualification details) saying that the position you support might well lead to nuclear war, and you think "well, maybe something will crop up where I need to check these guys out, but threat of nuclear war isn't it" - well, what the fuck is?

How did I know? When I was a small child I learned to associate this sensation with "color", and this variety of color sensation with "red". — hypericin

Which sensation?

My go-to experts on military mattersd in Ukraine are Michel Goya, ex-colonel and military historian and commentator, Xavier Tytelman from the website Air&Cosmos, ex-military pilot and aviation specialist, and the good guys in ISW. I also consult this Youtube channel, signaled here by another poster and generally informative. — Olivier5

So why them?

Which one said that, for example,...

the risk of nuclear escalation is exaggerated by Kremlin-affiliated cretins — Olivier5

...and why did you choose to believe them over, say, Swift Center analysts, or Alexander Vershbow, NATO’s deputy secretary general from 2012 to 2016, who said that Western leaders had concluded that Russian plans to use nuclear weapons in a major crisis were sincere, raising the risk from any accident or misstep that the Kremlin mistook for war, or Dmitry Gorenburg, an analyst of Russian military policy who said "The escalation dynamics of a conflict between the U.S. and Russia could easily spiral into a nuclear exchange", or Samuel Charap, Russian foreign policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, who said "Between volunteers from NATO countries, all this NATO weaponry, reinforcement of Poland and Romania...they might connect dots that we didn’t intend to be connected and decide they need to pre-empt", or Christopher Chivvis, Senior Fellow and Director American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment who said "Scores of war games carried out by the United States and its allies in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine make it clear that Putin would probably use a nuclear weapon if he concludes that his regime is threatened. In most games, Russia still responds with a second nuclear attack, but in the games that go “well,” the United States and Russia manage to de-escalate after that, although only in circumstances where both sides have clear political off-ramps and lines of communication between Moscow and Washington have remained open. In all the other games, the world is basically destroyed"?

What is it about the message of the people you choose to believe which makes it so attractive to you?

Most experts I've read from (French dudes you wouldn't know of) seem to agree that Ukraine has a good chance of recovering territories, that the Russian army is disorganized and liable to collapse, that Putin's territorial ambitions need to be pushed back against, that the risk of nuclear escalation is exaggerated by Kremlin-affiliated cretins, and that it won't succeed in intimidating Ukraine or NATO. — Olivier5

So, do I take it you've no intention of giving any explanation as to why you've chosen to believe those experts (nor even telling us who they are it seems). How dull.

We're not conducting a poll. We're not compiling a database of 'things Olivier thinks'.

We're having a discussion. So to take part you need to be able to support your position, explain why you prefer some explanations over others. Otherwise there's nothing to discuss.

do tell what the 'experts' that you are reading about are saying. — Olivier5

You're embarrassing yourself. Anyone following the thread can see that I've already done that in spades.

If you do not clarify what you consider "moral ground" vs "non-moral ground" and "moral right" vs "non-moral right", "moral duty" vs "non-moral duty" and there is no convergence in the usage of such notions, you and your interlocutor will inadvertently talk past each other. — neomac

I'm interested here in why people believe the things they do, so there's no need for me to clarify anything in the respect you suggest. I'd be as interested in any answer regardless of the definitions used. In fact the more diverse the definition, the better.

As far as I'm concerned something like "moral ground" just defines a set of conditions. The debate is about what sorts of conditions belong in that set. If I pre-define the set, then the conditions which belong in it become a matter of mere accordance with that (my) definition. A fairly boring exercise in consistency - we might as well be doing maths. The interesting discussion is in the disagreements about the definition (about what belongs in that set) and the reasons for believing in those criteria.

You're asking me to clearly define 'chair' and then ask people if, according to my criteria, the thing they're sitting on is, in fact, a chair.

I've no interest in that. I want to know what people think the thing they're sitting on is. I want to know if they think it's a chair.