Israel is creating Hamas, not destroying it — bert1

That's a risk any country takes when going to war, but what would you recommend Israel do? Suppose you were president of Israel. What would your response have been to the attacks? Suppose you were the American president after 9/11. Would you have gone after Al Queda? Also, suppose Israel adopted a pacifist strategy and gave in to Hamas's demands. Would Hamas and all the other Muslim terrorist organizations stop trying to kill Jews? I doubt it.

Interesting conversation. I've been looking for just such a discussion. Care if I join? More questions than anything, really... for now. — creativesoul

Of course!

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-official-says-group-will-repeat-oct-7-attack-twice-and-three-times-to-destroy-israel/

If that is accurate, then Israel would be crazy to agree to a cease-fire.

Yes, that's exactly what I would say. If our information processing capabilities increased because of evolution, and consciousness is a consequence of that, that's exactly what I would say. — flannel jesus

Even if there's no survival benefit to consciousness and natural selection doesn't apply? Maybe so. What about if panpsychism is true? An electron's consciousness would not be a product of evolution, so why would a brain's consciousness be a product of evolution?

If it came later, then either its a consequence of evolved features, or it just appeared by magic. — flannel jesus

Isn't there another option besides "magic"? Is it possible consciousness appeared when a certain amount of information processing in brains was present? In that case, if consciousness just happens when a certain amount of information is processed, would you really say it's a "product of evolution"? Also, if all matter is conscious (panpsychism), it also wouldn't make sense to say consciousness is a product of evolution.

the question seems largely irrelevant to me. — flannel jesus

If a scientist has no idea when X first appeared in creatures, I'm going to be leery if he then claims that X is certainly a product of evolution. Do you see my point? Not knowing when X appeared implies a lack of understanding about X, which tarnishes any other claims about X.

Do you think consciousness is a physical thing?

who is "we"? I have no idea when sight evolved, but I have very little doubt that sight did evolve. — flannel jesus

I was using "we" to loosely mean "people".

From what I gleaned from a Google search, eyes first appeared 500-600 million years ago. Now, you claim that consciousness evolved. But there is no agreement among scientists when consciousness first appeared. So, if scientists don't know when consciousness first appeared, how can they/you be sure it is a product of evolution?

Usually (or always?), when we say a feature evolved, we have some idea of when it first appeared on the scene. If consciousness is a product of evolution, when did consciousness first appear?

Given that some neural processes experience qualia, — Danno

The implication here (correct me if I'm wrong), is that neurons exist outside the mind and there is some mind-independent stuff that neurons are made of. I don't take that as a given. Why should I?

"Fair and square"? Well, the U.S. certainly did it's best to hide its conquest, theft and fraud in the trappings of the law in some cases, though there was no contract (treaty) it was unwilling to breach or see breached as convenient. — Ciceronianus

Yes, the U.S. treated Native Americans horribly. Does that mean that Native American tribes would be justified killing civilians and/or American soldiers in an armed uprising? Suppose Cherokee Nation pulled off an attack similar to 9/11. What should the American response be?

I don't think it need justify its existence; I simply don't think it has any claim to exist because God wills it or because it's the homeland of the Jews. — Ciceronianus

I agree. America stole Native American lands fair and square and would no more tolerate an armed Cherokee uprising anymore than Israel tolerates Hamas.

Palestinians in Gaza in free elections in 2006 elected Hamas as their government. — tim wood

As someone once said, "elections have consequences." Also, lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

I don't see any difference between Israel and a country ruled by the Quran. — javi2541997

Of course you don't.

Whenever I read statements like this, I wonder which are the concepts of 'first world' and 'third world', respectively. Apart from being a notion created by Western civilisation after WWII to label nations in different boxes and causing, in the long run, negative prejudices sorrowfully.

If we continue to use those concepts, the problem will remain, because the sense of your argument is backing up Israel's genocide because it is a 'developed' nation in a 'backward' territory. A territory which was occupied illegally in the first place.

If you check the politics, level of corruption and their system of representatives, Israel is far from being a nation of the 'first world', as you labelled it. Israel is consistently rated low in the Global Peace Index, ranking 134th out of 163 nations for peacefulness in 2022. Marriage and divorce are under the jurisdiction of the religious courts: Jewish, Muslim, Druze, and Christian. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Israel a "flawed democracy" in 2022. A flawed democracy is a nation where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honoured but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition and critics). This is how Netanyahu literally works.

According to this data... do you really consider Israel as a first-world country? — javi2541997

I'm OK calling them a second-world country surrounded by shitholes. It doesn't really take away from the point that Israel is a democracy where gays and women aren't flogged and killed by "morality police". Do they have their issues? Of course. Are they ten times better than the surrounding countries? Yes.

If Gazans surrendered
— Chisholm

Like the French in June 1942 — FreeEmotion

Like Germany and Japan in 1945.

:100:

:up:

So whenever Israel has a spat with a country, they should be disallowed from participating in UN bodies? — Tzeentch

"LGBTI people suffered systemic discrimination and violence. Consensual same-sex sexual relations remained criminalized with punishments ranging from flogging to the death penalty. State-endorsed “conversion therapies” amounting to torture or other ill-treatment remained prevalent, including against children. Hormone therapy and surgical procedures including sterilization were mandatory for legal gender changes. Gender non-conforming individuals risked criminalization and denial of access to education and employment.

In August, LGBTI rights defender Zahra Sedighi-Hamadani, known as Sareh, and another woman, Elham Choubdar, were sentenced to death for “corruption on earth” by a Revolutionary Court in Urumieh, West Azerbaijan province, due to their real or perceived sexual orientation and/or gender identity and their social media activities in support of LGBTI communities.6 The Supreme Court quashed their conviction and sentence in December and sent their case for retrial.

Women and girls
The authorities continued to treat women as second-class citizens, including in relation to marriage, divorce, child custody, employment, inheritance and political office.

The legal age of marriage for girls remained at 13, and fathers could obtain judicial permission for their daughters to be married at a younger age.

Women and girls were at the forefront of the popular uprising, challenging decades of gender-based discrimination and violence, and defying discriminatory and degrading compulsory veiling laws that result in them facing daily harassment and violence by state and non-state actors, arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and denial of access to education, employment and public spaces.

There was a stricter enforcement of these laws in mid-2022, culminating in the death in custody of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini in September, days after she was violently arrested by Iran’s “morality” police amid credible reports of torture and other ill-treatment."
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/iran/report-iran/

You and Baden apparently have no problem with Iran leading a UN human rights group. I think you're nuts.

"The United States is appalled that the Iranian Ambassador in Geneva may serve as the Chair-Rapporteur of the Social Forum, an annual meeting in Geneva established by a UN Human Rights Council resolution, to be held in November. "

Again, you have to understand the nature of a thought experiment and that there are no two real groups, and that positing them as such and giving them a priori moral attributes makes the thought experiment useless. — Baden

The thought experiment is unanswerable because the motivations of the warring groups are unknown. There's not enough information to make a moral judgement. Is the pilot fighting on behalf of Baal worshippers who want to install a theocracy and sacrifice every firstborn child? Then he's worse than the armed men of group B. Is the pilot an Allied fighter trying to stop the Nazi's? Then he's better than the armed men of group B.

See my point?

Brains in vats and evil demons aren't how the real world works either. I wonder why they should be invoked by philosophers... Obviously we can agree if one side are Nazis (or the equivalent) then all things being equal we are against them and we can agree that in many conflicts one side has the moral upper hand. But if we take that approach then the thought experiment is unnecessary because the answer is decided a priori, right? So, the only way to make the thought experiment relevant is to focus on the precise moral issue it raises. I'm not going to judge the intentions of the OP writer, but I think it's a worthwhile OP insofar as we take the point seriously. — Baden

The OP asked if there is a moral equivalence between two groups. That's impossible to determine without knowing why they're fighting, hence my point: "WHY two sides are fighting is as important as HOW two sides are fighting".

In retrospect from a given angle. Never beforehand from inside either faction's ideology. — Vera Mont

Really? Allied soldiers fighting the Nazi's weren't aware they were on the right side? They (and the world) only realized this after the war was over? Nonsense.

Every side believes its cause to be a good one. — Vera Mont

Some sides are right and some are wrong. The North morally trumps the South in the American Civil War (the North was morally superior), agreed?

Honestly, I think there are people out there who think being killed by a bomb dropped by a nice respectable airplane pilot is somehow more humane than being shot in the face or stabbed to death. These people either lack the imagination to conceive of a slow and agonising death under a pile of rubble with your legs blown off or are utterly devoid of morality themselves. Either way not good. — Baden

How passive aggressive of you. Obviously, this is directed at me. You should have the courage to answer my questions and accuse me directly.

It's much more useful to designate party A and party B as just fighting for their own interests, not one morally superior at the outset. Then we can focus solely on the morality of the methods used to kill civilians. That's the only sensible way to approach the OP. — Baden

No, it's not, because that's not how the real world works. If two groups are fighting, it is often the case that one side's goals are morally repugnant and the other side's goals aren't: Russia vs Ukraine, North vs South, Axis vs Allies.

If two sides are fighting, and both are committing atrocities, we have to look at why they're fighting. If they're both fighting over some natural resource, there may be a moral equivalence. If one side is fighting to rid the world of "subhumans" so their "master race" can have lebensraum, then there is not a moral equivalence. If one side is fighting to establish a theocracy that is hostile to women, Christians, atheists, Jews, LGBTQ, then that is morally repugnant, is it not?

You're answering my relevant question with an irrelevant question of your own. The OP is focused on civilian victims of conflict and makes no mention of military casualties fighting against Nazis etc. And unless you think babies can be Nazis then, any way you look at it, you seem to be engaged in a distraction. Anyhow, fighter pilots don't drop moralities on their victims and assassins don't shoot immoralities. The means is not what's important. The ethical point centres around the killing of innocent civilians. — Baden

Could you just answer my question? If your kid has to die in a war, does it matter to you what the cause he was fighting for is?

For the thought experiment, it's not necessary to consider what they're fighting for because that's not the focus. Let's just imagine they are both fighting for their own interests without bringing the Nazi trope into it, which just makes the whole exercise pointless. — Baden

You can't look at two warring groups in a vacuum. Why they're fighting is as important as how they're fighting. Both the Allies and Axis did horrible things to civilians. Did that make them morally equivalent? Yes or no?

Tell me TPF, is there an equivalence here? In this scenario A and B are at war.

Scenario 1: Armed men of group A come into a residential neighborhood of group B and go from house to house shooting and using blunt force weapons such as axes against civilians. They go from house to house and butcher 100 civilians before leaving. Babies are killed in their cribs and children are smashed against walls.

Scenario 2: A pilot of group B is conducting a strike on armaments factories of group A. The flight is done at night to minimize civilian casualties. Fliers are also dropped to minimize casualties. The bombs are dropped using a precision missile yet debris from the explosion kills 100 civilians.

Is the pilot and the group of armed men morally equivalent? — BitconnectCarlos

IMO, you have to look at what the groups are fighting for. What are their goals? In WW2, both sides deliberately killed untold numbers of civilians. Does that make the Allies and Axis morally equivalent? Does the slaughter of innocents by both sides mean we just throw up our hands and say, "I guess it doesn't matter who wins. A plague on both your houses!"? Obviously not. I'm glad the Allies won. Aren't you?

Would you rather have your baby shot to death or blown into little pieces by a bomb? Looking at it from the perspective that matters, it doesn't matter much. — Baden

Would you rather have your son killed fighting for the Nazi's or fighting against them? Dead is dead, right? Except it's not really. If it is my kid's fate to die in combat, I would prefer he die fighting for a good cause. Wouldn't you?

"The United States is appalled that the Iranian Ambassador in Geneva may serve as the Chair-Rapporteur of the Social Forum, an annual meeting in Geneva established by a UN Human Rights Council resolution, to be held in November. "
https://geneva.usmission.gov/2023/05/23/statement-by-ambassador-taylor-on-the-appointment-of-the-iranian-ambassador-as-chair-of-the-social-forum/

The UN is an Israel-hating joke.

If someone is making the offer, please send them my way. I'd take the million in a heartbeat. — wonderer1

I guess you have to like drinking a lot. Which I do!

.

Hey which is worse?

A group of armed Jews in 1944/45 who go from house to house murdering German civilians with guns and blunt weapons.

A German pilot in WWII who bombs an English armaments factory but intends to destroy only military targets.

I would tentatively say that the Jews are worse, on a personal level taking the incident isolated. — BitconnectCarlos

That's funny, my gut feeling is the German pilot is worse. Those German civilians (collectively) ushered in and supported the Nazi's, so screw them. Now, if the armed Jews knew they were anti-Nazi civilians, that would be different.

They don't. The hallmark of metaphysical possibility is that you can have God create the situation however you like. God made the p-zombies that way.

There isn't a big difference between metaphysical and logical possibility. Remember, logical possibility just means you haven't conjured a contradiction. — frank

That's true, but that forces proponents of the conceivability of p-zombies to basically use the "god did it" explanation. That sounds kind of like a copout.

What part of some violence is acceptable and some isn't is so incredibly hard for you to grasp that you start making shit up about my position? — Benkei

I'm sorry, I was mad. Let's back up. I agree with you that slave violence against their masters is justified. What about a slave that kills the plantation owner's kids? That wouldn't be justified, but what if the slave had good reason to think the kids would ruin the head start he could have in his escape? Would the violence against the kids be justified?

I mean, that's my view, which I am pretty confident of but I am of course not the final arbiter, and plenty of smart people disagree. — flannel jesus

I wonder how they argue p-zombies could develop a language that has referents to mental states.

That's the neat part - they wouldn't! — flannel jesus

Right. So then we can't conceive of beings like us, who have the same vocabulary as we do, but with no mental states. They're impossible.

How would p-zombies develop a language that refers to consciousness and/or mental states?

I disagree. I see a very clear justification for armed resistance. — Benkei

A justification for rape, torture, and murder of children? It sounds like you're not even aware of what Hamas has done.

ETA: Reading through the responses, I see you are aware of the atrocities Hamas has done. You just don't care. Or you just don't care when they happen to Jews.

If someone offered you a million dollars on the condition you could never drink again...I wouldn't take the money.