So with additional information, he would not have the power to wipe out N Korea in one strike by the end of his first term and would only start the bombing if he were in real risk of losing.

Well we have a bit of a reprieve. Today I learned it will take Boeing a year to retool for the project, so only the prototypes are available until jan 2020, after which the plan is for Boeing to make 2 a week for five years. So in current circumstance Trump will only have a couple dozen and would probably have to wait until the month before the election before starting.

Hi Jake, I actually worked in VR technology for some time. In the end the company folded, and we did have alot of discussion about it. The fact is, a moving image with sound already occupies quite alot of brain activity. So far VR technology has added a bit of whizbang but is mostly a novelty only. It hasnt provided enough additional input information to the brain to justify the expenditure and inconvenience of the equipment necessary to provide the additional data.

So what? He only wants to win the next election. Wartime presidents never lose an election. I dont think the logical process needs to go any further than that.

North Korea doesn't pose a credible threat, — Tzeentch

Exactly. What the world needs to do is stop looking at Trump from everyone else's point of view and think how we look to him. N Korea isnt a real threat to US security, but it has proven it can hit Japan by mistake when trying to hit us, which makes it a perfect victim.

go as far as what? The DoD already decided the B61-12 isnt a WMD.

the problem as I see it is that Trump has already bypassed congress and the international community on making these devices, and demonstrated he can put an aircraft carrier next to N Korea without anyone knowing. And he clearly has no moral compunction to do anything except to make more money and stay in power.

don't think we all go on to judge other people and think ourselves superior or inferior. — andrewk

true. But the people who are capable of exercising restraint in this vanity are a remarkably tiny fragment of the species.

The mistake you are making is to believe that theology must be rational. In fact the opposite is true. The more irrational something is, the more the majority of humankind tries to believe it.

How many people judge themselves to be morally superior to Nazi concentration camp guards? — Tzeentch

You got the question right. This is a particularly appropriate day to consider it. In the USA, the democrats are splitting up after they had a majority in the house for less than a day. Trump is using federal funds to keep trump towers open during the federal shutdown. And in Britain, they are talking about 'no deal brexit' now. Both the USA and Britain continue to believe themselves morally superior to germany. Yet somehow, even after being split in two, germany is now more unified and a greater world power than ever.

Sounds like the typical Internet message board poster personality to me. — Terrapin Station

I dont understand exactly, but what I learned since Elizabeth Warren decided to run for election, I am not going to be able to read social media at all. Now all the Trump inanity is going to happen in inverse, and I dont have the stomach for it any more. It would be nice if people had to at least graduate high school before they were allowed to vote, even if not fair in some people's minds, it would be better for the digestion.

I would argue that that is only the case in the Supreme Court and maybe the respective state Supreme Courts. What do you think? — Noah Te Stroete

I only know one state supreme court judge, so I cannot answer that. I can say, having share the empirical reasoning behind the natural rights in the constitution for five years now, that there is not one American alive so far who has modified any intuitive beliefs as to their self-oriented entitlements when confronted with contrary reasoning, no matter how extensive, succinct, or undeniable it is.

What is Jesus referring to here when He says, “The Kingdom of Heaven (or God)”? — Noah Te Stroete

To the OP:

One thing you have to decide is which historical version of Jesus you want to provide the answer. St. Thomas is quite clear on the answer right at the beginning of his gospel, verse 1.3:

Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

Of course, although few now challenge the gospel's authenticity, the majority of the church challenges its veracity.

Ah, I remember you. I think I will leave again, like others have already, tired of their ears being filled by braying vultures. You may have the world you adore to scorn. The grave is enough for me. Terminal cancer leaves me few enough days as it is without hearing more cackles, gloats, and hoots.

Oh. well, to clarify my point, I personally want to say one thing. I am fed up with people mouthing off at how they are mistreated on any and every possible occasion. I can't do anything more about it than I already have, and there are many nice things in the world to think about instead of attacking other people continuously. Good night.

That the descriptive content can represent false beliefs about the intended target is common ground. — Pierre-Normand

hence belief is removable by occam's razor. Its irrelevant to the theory. You too.

The audience would normally know who the speaker is thinking about even if the audience knew most of all the the descriptive content used by the speaker to be wrong of her intended target. — Pierre-Normand

That isnt true either. Black communities love to make fun of white people by talking about, for example, invented people who dont exist, when actually talking about the white person. And Ive heard them do it many times without the white person realizing it and some black teenager sniggering out of sight. There's alot more forms of communication than are obvious from the blithe statements of simple truths and falsehoods that people for whom English is not a first language figure out, and then deliberately connive to humiliate native English speakers together without the native English speakers realizing it.

And I do have to go to bed now, good night.

The issue is to explain how the speaker's belief comes to be about the speaker's intended referent in the world. — Pierre-Normand

Again, it is a common technique in black communities to deliberately lie about descriptions which is known to others. As an overly simple example, they will say 'don't insult my brother like that.' The person who is not his brother then nods in agreement and raises a fist.

I've tried to help understand the issue but I do have to rest.

The truth of the DD is irrelevant to successful reference. The speaker believes it to be true. That's relevant. — creativesoul

Actually no, I stand by my prior statement. All that is necessary is for a sufficient number of the descriptive properties to be identified as referring to the same person. It doesn't matter whether the speaker believes them true either.

For example, it is a common technique in black communities to deliberately lie about descriptions which is known to others. As an overly simple example, they will say 'don't insult my brother like that.' The person who is not his brother then nods in agreement and raises a fist.

This account presupposes that your belief about that person indeed is about that person and not about someone else who might actually be, unbeknownst to you, drinking champagne, (or about nobody, if nobody is having champagne). — Pierre-Normand

Well I regret I must agree with andrewk. As you are interested in externals only, the belief doesnt matter. All that matters is that the two identify a sufficient part of the descriptive properties as referring to the same person. Thats the point of the theory. It doesnt matter how many of the descriptive properties are true or false, or if some of them could truthfully apply to others too.

Can you help me to see the circularity? — andrewk

Maybe I can help explain, the idea is that each person has already established a different cluster of descriptions for the subject in question, in this case. So the listener compares their own cluster with the known parts of the speaker's cluster to establish a shared identity of reference. Maybe Im wrong but the 'circularity' refers to the issue that no two people ever have the same cluster of descriptions due to each person also being different, and therefore, viewing other people from different perspectives. So the point it that the cluster of references has to have enough commonality to the listener and speaker to establish a unique refrerence. If two people had exactly the same cluster of descriptions for another person, then they would be indistinguishable as separate people, for the purposes of the operation of the naming theory.

he creates a new scenario in which events subsequently can be considered as directly influenced by him, for good or bad he doesnt care, he just wants attention. Then whatever particular events occur which happen to support his thesis, he claims to have known that would happen and boasts how right he was and how wrong others were. And thats about as much as I can say and stay coherent myself today, good night )

Interesting. And do you know any rational explanation on how could anything be "eternal outside time"? — Patrick Aoun

Besides the transcendental you prefer to discount, there are states which are considered eternal but are not bound by time at one end or the other, or both. For example, life after death, whether it actually exists or not, has nothing to do with any particular time measure at the far end, it is simply considered eternal.

Similarly, statements of a PRIORI TRUTH, again whether you consider them real or not, are eternal. Like maths. But not bound by time in any way, simply eternal. And theres things like eternal love. And thats why the definition exists in a dictionary. It may not appear entirely rational to you but humans are not known to be purely rational in their meanings.

What trump does is called 'post truth reasoning' which means, he asserts something, then he waits for facts which substantiate his assertion, then he says those facts prove he was right, claiming he knew them all along.

Well, strangely enough, this rough account of demonstrative reference seems to me much closer in spirit with Kripke's causal/externalist account that it is from Davidson't internalist/interpretivist account. — Pierre-Normand

Maybe so. Ive thought alot about it this last 40 years, far more than I should really, and so I'd hazard to add some thoughts for your amusement. If I were to say, that man holding a glass of vodka is drunk, then it would appear that the alcohol is necessary to the truth of the proposition. As you say, the glass could contain water, and the person could be drunk on love, talking with a girl so enamored by him that the behavior is the same. For such real-world cases it appears to me a purely externalist account is insufficient, because, as soon as any intrinsic state is implied to any extent, there is no property with truth value assignable by empirical observation.

However, do you have a source where Davidson explicitly adresses Kripke along such lines? — Pierre-Normand

Unfortunately my tutor at oxford has retired and she was too polite ever to write down the criticism. What she pointed out, which I think was a good observation, is that when people talk about 'the man holding the glass of vodka' they are not talking about a cluster of properties viz, male, with arms, holding a glass containing liquid, etc.' even if that is how the reference breaks down for the purposes of logic. They are saying 'that person', in a Wittgensteinian manner, pointing as it were, to enable an assertion about them without befuddling other detail once the reference is defined. So for purposes of logic, kripke's theory is excellent; but for purposes of understanding normal human language, davidson provides the additional necessary extensions, and one issue to decide, when examining limits in kripke, is whether the limit is a fault of kripke's, or a fault of our own understanding of meaning for any particular assertion.

I'd like to know a bit more about Davidson's 'dubbing'. Would you happen to have a reference? — Pierre-Normand

Specifically, kripke initiated the idea of dubbing. The problem with it from Davidson's point of view was that purely referential theories of naming have trouble with defining meaningful knowledge, for which he provided new ideas on meaningfulness that allow for indeterminacy, in case there are mistakes in the act of assigning a label to a reference.

In that case, the person who the speaker is looking at does not match the DD (since the DD expresses a false belief about that person), and hence, by your own account, isn't the person who the speaker is talking about. — Pierre-Normand

I totally agree, but I reach the conclusion this is a good argument for Davidson's 'dubbing.' In your example, the person is dubbed with the properties which may or may not be true, resulting in ideas about the person which are unprovable. That does seem to be the normal state of affairs in human interactions.

Wasn't it Socrates that said: — Bitter Crank

Definitely. And Euripides was definitely a better philosopher than Plato )

1) When we people refer to Western civilization today, do you think it is fair to say that they typically have in mind Anglosphere countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand. — johnGould

I would concur on the problem of ignorance. My example. Recently I published a blog article on the risk of civil war in thailand, which focuses on the fate of 67 million descendants of the Khmer empire in Eastern Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Despite their unique Theraveda culture and one of the greatest poverty levels in the world, it attracted a total of 3 readers in the USA. Thankfully one of them worked for Amnesty International which is now trying to stop the Thai elections being rigged in February 2019. Other than that, it was the only article in the West about the Thai junta since it assumed military control in 2014. Almost no one knows Thailand has been under military dictatorship for four years, and even less care, preferring to think of it as still being a healthy example of democratic success. That is the level of ignorance one actually can expect: whirlwinds around isolated issues chosen for their impact on Western agenda, and otherwise, an indulgence of occasional scholars, and nothing else. It's not an isolated example; the Maoists took over Nepal in exactly the same way, which didn't even rate a Western breaking news report except in Australia.

Im glad to find the topic is settled and we can return to thinking about philosophy then

s I pointed out above, the variation over the last 300 million years is equivalent to a fourfold decrease in CO2 concentration. — Pierre-Normand

thats actually the entire problem of averages in one sentence, because before man-generated co2 since the atmosphere was first cooled down by plants consuming co2 and generating oxygen, sun radiation has been a larger varying factor, as well as, of course, cloud cover, which is almost entrely unkowable.

Right. The figures I gave are averages. If the average temp was 14, why wasn't the average CO2 concentration 400 ppm? — frank

Because of co2 dissolving in water.

I wonder whether he got the idea from someone else or came up with it himself? — SophistiCat

No lol, it was definitely his own idea.

"Ha! ha! ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality, say what you like," you will interpose with a chuckle. "Science has succeeded in so far analysing man that we know already that choice and what is called freedom of will is nothing else than--"

Stay, gentlemen, I meant to begin with that myself I confess, I was rather frightened. I was just going to say that the devil only knows what choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing, but I remembered the teaching of science ... and pulled myself up. And here you have begun upon it. Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices--that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula--then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule?

I was just picking up the thread where you got to )

yes desire motivates intent. Im sorry but I ran out of brain sugar and I have to go get some food )

Yes, it is the motivation by desire on which that the eastern branches of thought focus. Here is a rather extensive depiction of the relations in successive actions of mind.

https://www.yofiel.com/images/nidana.jpeg

in some cases, such as taoist and zen thought, the mistake is acting with intent at all. In Taoism it is because the world in which we live is so chaotic as to be essentially random, so any effort to force it in any one direction is futile. In zen the mistake is seen as being acting based upon desire, as fulfillment of desire does not result in fulfillment of the self, and therefore, acting in interest of the self's own intent results in lack of satisfaction.

Oh I see. Well one could say all intents are misdirected. Thats the Zen approach )

What about if that intent is undirected? Then do we count it as a desire or some form of willpower? — Wallows

I dont think most people understand their own desires, and so are not actually capable of acting in a direct manner, but that could rightfully considered presumptuous of me )