Vance says in an interview that America could put boots on the ground in Ukraine if Putin doesn’t negotiate in good faith. And also impose further sanctions. Now that is out of left field.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/politics/jd-vance-us-troops-russia-ukraine-intl-hnk?cid=ios_app

Again, how could you know this? — Banno

Deductively, from the nature of knowledge.

If time only passes from a perspective, then clocks would be pointless. Clocks have a use becasue time also passes independently of perspective — Banno

But we all share a perspective! Time passes independently of a particular perspective, but it is common to all of us, because we live on a planet that rotates daily and orbits yearly. That is the same for everyone. But for a being from a world that rotates once a century and orbits every millenium, the human concept of time would be meaningless.

The world is indeed independent of us, but to the extent that it is independent, it’s also unknowable. The mind-independent nature of the sensory domain is a methodological heuristic, not a metaphysical principle.

In some possible world there are no minds. — Banno

on many planets, no doubt. But, absent mind, they are not worlds.

The clock was built by an observer to make a measurement which both you and the maker of it will be able to understand. Your statements about the 'there anyway' rely on an implicit perspective. Though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gESbfgDRozw

https://youtu.be/9nPTHiPPCak?si=LwDnI4L_lFepLmRZ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbN2pkAFN2Q

We would not measure time because that accuracy is not given by our experience but by the clock mechanism. Hence it is the clock that measure. — JuanZu

I don’t agree. The clock is the instrument by which we measure, but the act of measurement is carried out by the measurer. As that passage I quoted says, ‘ A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession’ - which is what measurement entails.

We don't actually measure the time from the clock, the clock does the work automatically, we read that measurement. — JuanZu

See this post for a rebuttal. ‘ A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do.’

appeal to authority — Banno

Citing sources in support of argument is perfectly legitimate.

‘Clocks don’t measure time. We do.’

Are you aware of any form of consciousness that is not the attribute of an observer? Is it like something free-floating in the ether?

You’re the master of the back-handed compliment, Banno.

Well that’s cool. It’s said that 9/10 of the law is possession, I sometimes think 9/10 of philosophy is disagreement. (Although I will add, a great deal of what I say is also expressed in different ways in Continental philosophy.)

What it is illustrating is the fact that science has had to start taking into account ‘the act of measurement’ instead of only ‘what is being measured’. And what does that mean? It blurs the boundary between objective and subjective. This is the basic issue. And it’s the same issue Rödl is writing about. He has Frege saying, well true propositions are just so, independently of what anyone thinks about them. But Rödl is saying, it’s senseless to talk of them being so, in the absence of one who says so. The whole point about ‘the observer issue’ in quantum physics is also like that. Einstein wants the world to be just as it is irrespective of what the observer does or measures. Penrose likewise. But Bohr et al says what shows up depends on the way you set up your apparatus. It undermines the posit of objectivity. That’s why it seems like ‘mysticism’ because it challenges the boundary between knower and known. I don’t want to trivialise that - it’s a profound and important point, it’s nothing trite nor obvious.

Folks are never hesitant to appeal to the implications of science when it seems to support realism. But when anti-realism enters the picture, woo betide them. But, go back to wordplay if that’s what you think philosophy is.

He is assuming time is relative rather than absolute. Notice he says: "The passage of time is not absolute" — Metaphysician Undercover

He’s saying in plain English, the passage of time always depends on there being a change in one physical system relative to another. Customarily, that involves measuring the change in one system relative to the observer’s system. The observer is intrinsic to that. That is all that is being said, but it’s significant.

How are they actually stopping the people responsible for disbursing the funds from disbursing them? Can you answer that? — Janus

They’re going into the actual offices where the metaphorical ‘cheques are being written’ and saying ‘stop writing that cheque.’ This is what all of the clamour is about. One of the heads of the Treasury resigned over it on the spot, rather than let what he saw as unqualified outsiders into these systems.

The dismantling of U.S.A.I.D was a particularly pernicious example of that. 10,000 overseas workers were summarily locked out of their computer systems and told they were being recalled, practically overnight. Musk made a wisecrack about ‘staying up all night feeding U.S.A.I.D into the woodchipper’ instead of going to parties. These USAID services provide poverty relief, medical and related services in many situations of dire poverty and distress - like helping fit Ukrainian veterans with prosthetics and treating HIV/AIDS in Africa or distributing emergency food aid in Somalia. US foreign aid was a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people. But Musk declared it a ‘criminal organisation’ and it was shut down practically overnight. These are all facts, which have been reported in the media. Do you think it is ‘hysterical’ to report on these facts, or to express abhorrence for what has taken place?

It is indeed a time of crisis, but Trump is pouring gasoline on the flames. Don’t forget he was under indictment for crimes against the State when elected, and had he not been, faced the very real prospect of prison time. And that is not ‘being hysterical’, it is a statement of fact.

And, sure, it’s already been said - cut foreign aid, dismantle the agency - that is what was voted for. That would normally be thrashed out in Congress, the passing of legislation, arguments from both sides. What is being objected to is not that, but rule by decree, carried out by an unelected representative, who just happens also to be the World’s Richest Man.

It cannot be concluded that time does not exist without minds. It's an illegitimate leap. — Banno

It's already been demonstrated in this very thread, that there is a scientific argument for the indispensability of the observer in cosmological physics.

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

What do you think he means by that?

How could you know that? — Janus

Because they have been vetted by nobody. Musk and Trump will trot out these claims that U.S.A.I.D. is a 'criminal organisation' and roll their eyes about 'massive fraud and waste', and millions of the uninformed will believe it. But the funds they've frozen, and the programs they've cut, have already been approved by Congress. And Congress is the House of Representatives, they represent 'the people'. So people like you, uninformed and only interested in stirring the pot, will simply believe what you read, without actually reading much. Musk and Trump have no intrinsic right to act without congressional consent. That is why every one of his executive orders - every one! - is under challenge in the court system.

That tells us nothing about time. Only about believing, doubting, and measuring. — Banno

Measuring is what is significant. Give us a dissertation on the nature of unmeasured time. That should clear things up for once and for all.

I don't know enough to know if the article is correct — Janus

The point about DOGE's activities is that NOBODY knows on what basis all of these wild claims about 'fraud and corruption' are being made. Musk is showing up in Government offices with a troupe of 20-25 y.o. computer engineers and SpaceX interns, many of whom have had no clearance and certainly no congressional vetting, and going through their accounts. And yet, calling attention to the extreme nature of this, and the obvious dangers it poses, is 'hysterical' or 'hate speech'.

Here's Time Magazine being a tad hysterical:

Is he actually flouting the law, the courts? — Janus

Legal challenges to Trump administration actions

Every one of President Trump's most sweeping executive orders is now being challenged in court by multiple lawsuits.

Trump never campained on immediately shuttering U.S.A.I.D. or freezing foreign aid, medical research expenditure, and many of the other actions he has taken. The normal way of going about those would be to introduce legislation to Congress, debate it, and then pass it and enact it. Trump has instead signed all of these into law by his so-called 'executive orders' which amounts to government by decree. There is no question that it is authoritarian in intent, with any dissent, either from Congress or the Courts, smeared by Trump's minions as 'thwarting the will of the people'.

But time? It needs human mind to exist. Are we being extreme idealists here? — Corvus

Human minds? I would prefer 'the observer' or just 'mind'. To say 'human minds' is already in some basic way to objectify, to stand outside.

Have another look at this post from five days ago - notice that I start that post by saying the OP is 'mistaken'. What I mean is, It's not that time doesn't *exist*. It exists, but we're mistaken about the nature of time - that is what is at issue, and it's a deep issue.

If mankind is a part of nature, then no act of mankind within nature is open to judgement. However, if mankind is separate to nature, for what reason does mankind have a responsibility to nature, and if mankind does have a responsibility, then its relationship with nature may be open to judgement. — RussellA

You will recall the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden. In the story, the tree from which it is forbidden to eat is the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. Doesn’t that signify in mythological form the origin of man’s sense of separateness from nature? The Genesis myth of the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ can be understood as an allegory for the moment when humans become aware of themselves as separate beings—self-reflective, capable of judgment, and alienated from the purely instinctual existence of other creatures. In this sense, moral awareness is the marker of separation from nature, because nature itself (in the strict sense) does not operate in moral categories.

Of course we understand, in a way that our Biblical forbears did not, the physical story of human evolution as it unfolded across millions of years. But it is not hard to imagine the gradual dawning of self-awareness and the sense of 'me and mine' - and, with it, intentional planning and activity - as developing in tandem with that. Stone tool use - the first manufactured artifacts we have records of - preceded the arrival of h.sapiens . With the advent of ownership, comes that sense of separateness which is deeply rooted in the human condition.

If humans are part of nature, all actions (including moral judgments) are merely ‘natural’ and thus beyond value judgments. But the act of judgment itself—the ability to step back and reflect—is precisely what separates us from nature in a fundamental sense. If we were only ‘another force of nature,’ then deforestation, pollution, and even nuclear war could be seen just as expressions of natural causality. Yet, we experience them as ethical dilemmas precisely because we do not see ourselves as merely ‘forces of nature.’ Even the insurance industry recognises the distinction between acts of nature and those of humans.

So to attempt to say that there is no difference between man and nature, or that human acts are simply natural acts, is really an attempt to dodge or hide from the reality of the human condition. That's what I was getting at when I said that the tendency to idolise nature and the environment in modern culture really amounts to a kind of faux religiosity. 'We have to get back to the Garden', sang Joni Mitchell. But the way is blocked by 'angels with flaming swords'.

He was indeed an empiricist, as well as idealist. Hume was an empiricist, but I don't believe he was an idealist. Indeed Berkeley is often said to have made explicit what was implied by Hume, but which Hume himself never spelled out. Berkeley was subject of the recent thread I refute it thus!

How would it flow? If time is a general concept which covers all the temporality in general, how would time flow without human mind perceiving, measuring, asking, and telling? — Corvus

That's what I mean.

Question: Do magnetic phenomena refute the Empiricist claim that an ordinary object (such as a magnet) is nothing more than a bundle of perceptible qualities corresponding to the five human senses? — Arcane Sandwich

No, because instruments, such as magnets, extend the human senses.

David Hume famously suggested that there is nothing more to an ordinary object, such as an apple, than what we can be perceive with our five senses. The apple is simply a bundle of qualities. It has colors, it makes a certain sound when I munch on it, it has a fragrant aroma, it has a sweet taste, and it feels solid to the touch. But there is no philosophical substance or res extensa underneath, so to speak, supporting those qualities. — Arcane Sandwich

That is much more Berkeley than Hume. True, Berkeley called himself empiricist, but I think that particular claim is more characteristic of Berkeley.

What do you think of van Fraassen work? He's an Empiricist. — Arcane Sandwich

I'm familiar with him, but I don't *think* he would endorse the statement you're attributing to empiricists.

State Dept. Plans $400 Million Purchase of Armored Tesla Cybertrucks

Conflict of interest? Me?

Plato was addressing an intuition he had (I speculate, from Socrates) that humans approach things already and inevitably "clouded" by the concepts history has constructed. — ENOAH

Plato was many things, but post-modern was not one of them.

Thanks I’ll look into that book. Have you run across Matt Segal? He’s written some interesting material about Schelling.

Having never gone through any kind of vetting or Congressional scrutiny let alone approval. With no published mandate or actual warrant. Deleting programs and withholding funds previously approved by Congress. Nothing remotely like it has ever been attempted.

If a bunch of tools barge into an office, would the office not require a warrant? — jorndoe

The warrant is ‘don’t you know who I am?’ :brow: Those resisting are threatened with arrest by Federal marshalls.

Well, sure, now that you've provided that background. :up:

Give me an example of what you would describe as a mainstream intepretation? You came in with this:

Maybe it's talking about the time, before the Paleolithic (before cavemen) when men and women were not human. — Arcane Sandwich

which I for one have never encountered elsewhere.

Trump suspending all foreign aid and dissolving U.S.A.I.D. is hardly a demonstration of strength. The America that I used to look up to was deeply committed to humanitarian aid and leadership. That tens of thousands of unfortunates are left suffering without that lifeline speaks volumes about Trusk. What is the opposite of 'philanthropy'? (Oh, it's misanthropy. Hatred of the human race.)

Have you ever come across someone who didn't understand it? I haven't. Think about it. — Arcane Sandwich

Nothing you've said in the brief exchange we've had about 'the allegory of the Cave' would indicate that you interpret it accurately :brow:

I get it, and respect your readings. But at any given time I'm sorrounded by books I ought to read, not to mention my late-in-life attempt to generate some income, so Rödl will have to wait.

...continued:

What this could mean for the US

As Musk continues his assault on the federal bureaucracy, the American people will suffer the consequences.

The most immediate impact of state capture: worse decisions are made. By purging experienced civil servants, cancelling government contracts and accessing sensitive information systems, Musk’s actions will likely degrade the standard of living at home and endanger American lives abroad.

State capture also means there would be less accountability for the Trump administration’s public policy decisions. With a lack of congressional and independent oversight, key decisions over the distribution of economic benefits could be made informally behind closed doors.

Finally, state capture is inseparable from corruption. Doing business with the US federal government could soon require one to pass a loyalty test rather than a public interest test.

Trump’s enemies will encounter more hurdles, while his allies will have a seat at the table.

I studied it in anthropology. I could google it, but you can do your own research. And besides, this is not a thread about the human condition, but about the hostile takeover of the US Government.

Rousseau: 'Man is born free but everywhere is in chains'. But it's basically the 'myth of the noble savage', that the human condition in the natural state is one of spontaneity, freedom and equality. Which anthropology has comprehensively debunked - many tribal and non-industrialised cultures are shown to have high rates of murder and domestic violence. At least the Biblical myth has the Fall, which in my view depicts a real fact about human nature in symbolic form - we're not naturally inclined to being all sweetness and light.

All of which is beside the point of this thread, which was to comment on and document the hostile takeover of the functions of the US Federal Government by Elon Musk, acting as an agent for the current President. Between them they are white-anting the Federal public service - Musk is saying continuously that bureaucrats are a 'threat to democracy' and that 'in order for democracy to survive' they must be whittled down to size (this is Orwellian doublespeak in action). When it's actually Musk and Trump ('Trusk') that are blatant threats to the democratic process - flouting congress, constitution and the rule of law. As the post Banno linked to points out, what is happening in the US is 'state takeover':

the appropriation of state resources by political actors for their own ends: either private or political.

Musk’s aim could be to capture different pieces of the US government and turn the state into a tool for wealth extraction (and bear in mind, his net worth has been increased by hundreds of billions since the election. This is not theoretical.)

State capture is a relatively simple but extremely destructive process. This is how it has played out in countries like Indonesia, Hungary, Nigeria, Russia, Sri Lanka and South Africa (Musk’s birthplace):

First, political and corporate elites gain control of formal institutions, information systems and bureaucratic policy-making processes.

Then, they use this power to apply rules selectively, make biased decisions and allocate resources based on private interests (rather than the public good).

In captured states, strongman leaders often use economic policy and regulatory decisions to reward their political friends. For instance, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Russian President Vladimir Putin and former South African President Jacob Zuma have helped their allies by:

* making government anti-trust decisions
* issuing permits and licenses
* awarding government contracts and concessions
* waiving regulations or tariffs
* conferring tax exempt status.

State capture is fundamentally a predatory process.

I think it's fair to say that I'm respectful of your idealism and spiritualism. Wouldn't you agree? — Arcane Sandwich

Generally you’re a very courteous poster, yes. (Although I would gently distance myself from the word ‘spiritualism’, it always reminds me of Victorian seances with table-rapping and ectoplasm. Philosophical idealism is another thing.)

Why would Plato need an allegory to say that? — Arcane Sandwich

Because nobody gets it. Symbolic language is being used to convey profound and difficult insights.

It's philosophy 101, right? That section of the Republic is plainly allegorical, with the Sun representing the knowledge of the Good, towards which all should aspire. The 'ascent' from the 'Cave' is 'painful', and should the one who has ascended return to the cave and try and explain to the cave-dwellers the magnificence of the outside world, they'll want to kill him. The mainstream interpretation is that the cave represents the world of sensory experience, the ascent to the Sun represents the insight into the forms or intelligible principles which are only discernable to the 'eye of reason'. It is followed by the 'allegory of the divided line' which describes the levels of knowledge, from (mere) belief or opinion, through mathematical knowledge (dianoia) and then noesis (higher knowledge.)

None of this makes much sense to us moderns, because being committed to materialism and empiricism, we're essentially cave-dwellers ;-)

Hermeneutics, right? Interpretation of ancient texts. The allegory of the cave being on of the foundational texts of Western culture and being about the nature of knowledge and philosophical insight (noesis). Plato’s cave was never about actual cave-dwellers, or actual caves.