There is far more to rationality than mere logic. — Janus

That makes absolutely no difference to the demonstration.

The only thing you need for reason to be compatible with determinism, is for reason to be determinant, causal, i.e. to be a cause of other things.

If reason could not cause anything, it could not exist in a determinist world, which is all about cause and effect.

Have you ever read from an Arabic author, for instance? — Olivier5

As an aside, a few Arab authors are herewith highly recommended:

Yasmina Khadra is a Algerian author of (mainly) crime novels with a social and political slant. The Attack is pretty good, set in Israel & West Bank.

Amin Maalouf is a Lebanese author who writes in French. The Crusades through Arab Eyes, and Samarkand are probably his best known works. His Samarkand is a masterpiece of history-based fiction.

An excellent (well-known, consecrated, more literary) Moroccan writer is Tahar Ben Jelloun.

Evidently, literature Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfouz has written at length about Egypt, à la John Dos Passos. Including about Islam, women, poverty, the whole gamut of social issues. Writing in Egypt and in Arabic, he tended to avoid directly political themes.

For the idealists among us, Kahlil Gibran is this Lebanese writer who penned The Prophet. I must confess to liking bits of it. Sometimes considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title, according to Wikipedia.

Edward Said should be a familiar name. He was an American citizen born in Palestine, professor of literature at Columbia and well-known critique of what he called "orientalism", i.e. the western gaze on Arabs and other eastern folks.

A shopping mall girl
Getting off the limo
In her tricoline dress
Passing by the window
Of my heart
And she didn't even see me

Hey, shopping mall girl
In your petulant way
Drinking soda on the escalator
In the middle of the lobby
I said: Psst!

My heart is on a toast
I'm on sale

But who was born to a gecko
Alligator never becomes
I already spent all my chips
In this woman
Who doesn't like samba
Who doesn't walk
She is pretty damn beautiful
And doesn't go easy

My heart is on a toast
I'm on sale

Let's go to a lounge
And talk about TV
Let's go far
Without touching the eyes
Go find yourself and get lost
Let you and me get close
So I can get lost once and for all in your inks
One night a little in the morning
Just so I can see if your eyes change color

Lets go in
My house is not hot
I bring the [heater?] to heat
Let's sweat
With snake venom
That I stole to sting you

Let you and me get close
So I can get lost once and for all in your inks
One night a little in the morning
Just so I can see if your eyes change color

Indeed, women would benefit from the implementation of shariah in Afghanistan. They'd be better off.

Maybe you should join the Taliban — Apollodorus

I've been wandering around with Afghan Mujaheddin for years, prior to the Taliban. Now, I know you probably meant it as an insult, but I don't take insults from racists very seriously.

If you hate Arabs with a passion, as I think it's pretty obvious you do, you will never be able to see past your own propaganda, ensconced as you are in your own negative emotions and prevented by them to understand the issue at hand. Hence my question: are you able to like an Arab? Have you ever read from an Arabic author, for instance? If yes, that would show some capacity to open your mind. If not, it could well be that you are prejudiced against Arabs...

There's this puppet
Who goes: "no, no, no, no!"
All day long
She says: "no, no, no, no!"

She is so pretty
That I dream of her at night
No one ever taught her
That one could say "yes"

Without even listening
She goes "no, no, no, no!"
Without looking at me
She goes "no, no, no, no!"

Yet I would give my life
For her to say "yes"
But she's only a doll
Who goes "no, no, no, no!"

All day long
She goes "no, no, no, no!"
No one ever taught her
That one could say yes

No no no no!
No no no no!

Independent agency I take as a given required for an intelligible view of the world. — Hanover

:up:
Indeed, mechanical puppets don't usually make much sense.

if determinism is true, then beliefs are not rationally, but causally, determined. — Janus

This is a false opposition. Even if determinism is true, it could be that beliefs are determined by reason in a fully deterministic manner.

Imagine for instance a species where a certain biological sub-system is devoted among other things to "reasoning". This sub-system works deterministically, like a machine, but based on logical rules and procedures: it reasons logically to determine the optimal response for the organism on the basis of all inputted information. In this situation, the organism could be determined by reason, even in a determinist universe.

I don't see how it's being a role prevents me playing it, or prevents anyone else from responding to it in kind. — Isaac

It can prevent others from taking such role playing seriously. If your philosophical ideas are just pretense, then why should anyone (including you) care about them?

Any Arab you happen to like?

Afghans have this gift. I've met some pretty regular folks who spoke five languages.

Who reads history in other language than English? — ssu

Err, inter alia the French, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and the Arabs of course.

People look to find from history things that suite them for the present. — ssu

As you must be aware, we don't read history as written by the Arabs.

E.g. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf is interesting in that it present the Christians as the bad guys.

It was still under Arab rulers.

The Persian were beaten by the student of Aristotle, and under Greek control for a while; so of course they assimilated Greek philosohers before the Arab...

The synchretism of al Andalus was not Persian in any way. So what was it? Spanish?

So why the insistence of Arabs and Arabism? — ssu

Vice versa, why the insistence (among some) on erasing Arabs from history? Give to Mohamad what belongs to Mohamad.

Correct. America is a mixture of cultures. That's why no one calls it "great English civilization". — Apollodorus

Every civilization is a mix of cultures, though, except the most primitive perhaps.

The same applies to the supposed "great Arab civilization". The Abbasid Caliphate was a mixture of Greek, Persian, and Arab elements. — Apollodorus

And Berber, and Jewish, and Syriak, and more... but that synchretism was made possible by an Arab language shared by most and under an Arab aristocracy. Even Persian got to be infused with many Arab words and from there on written in the Arabic script.

nteresting but pessimist and depressive news we should to check out about the new variant...
What is the Mu variant of COVID-19 the WHO is now monitoring? — javi2541997

Heard a new term yesterday, about how news outlet keep scaring people with new variants: "variant porn".

we have at least three distinct metaphysical eras ( and we could divide them up into many more) that accompanies the history of science from the 1600’s to today. — Joshs

Yes well, one could argue endlessly with the details of the story but the broad outline isn't too far off. To me the main actual changes in the credo inherited from the humanists, Descartes, Spinoza and co were the introduction of the numena/phenomena distingo by Kant, and of inderterminism by Popper (belatedly, as a patch for QM). And yet, many rejected and still reject those innovations and remain "crudely Spinozean" (e.g. determinist) to this day.

:razz:

Nothing pleases me
By Mahmoud Darwish

So Roman civilization must have been even better, and Egyptian civilization that lasted a few thousand years, must have been the best. — Apollodorus

The Abbassid were one single dynasty, not two dozen dynasties like in the case of Egypt, so the comparison is biased. But yeah, the Egyptians did really well for a long time (with ups and downs).

most of its cultural features were non-Arab. — Apollodorus

Oh please. Most of America's cultural features are not American, if you go that way.

Ok, so you went looking for it in India, thus proving your total lack of bias... or clue perhaps.

I meant the Abbasid caliphate, as you must know. They lasted over 400 years, which ain't that bad. As well as Al Andalouz, at least the first few centuries of it were really brilliant culturally.

I can see no “Arab civilization” in India. — Apollodorus

Maybe you are not looking in the right place... Note that you can't see an Indian civilization in Arabia either.

I let you to your jerking.

Decisions made by an oligarchy are not communal decisions, they are decisions by few men which affect the 'community'. — hairy belly

Lots of folks show up in jirgas. It is innacurate to characterize them as a form of oligarchy. Of course only men talk.

There's nothing communal about them. — hairy belly

Meaning?

The nation-building may have succeeded had we used Islam for the foundation of that nation. — Athena

I happen to think that what was missing was Afghan own governance traditions, and in particular their reliance on communal decision making through institutions called shuras and jirghas. Very little of that tradition was reflected in the constitution drafted in 2004 or 2005 (after the US invasion and under the nation-building project), which was inspired from Switzerland...

Sure. My point was that the US could dispense from looking for new enemies all the time. The books are now closed on Afghanistan, thanks to Biden. That was the longest war the US ever fought... and for what? What do they got to show for it?

That is not exactly what they want. The first thing they accomplished is convincing Turkey to operate the airport. — Athena

I guess you're right: they seem to be interested in keeping channels open with the rest of the world. Good sign, I guess.

As for enemies... The Americans always look for some enemy or another. I guess they're convenient to justify enormous military spending, huh?

Nobody said Pakistanis were Arab. I just said that there was once a brilliant Arab civilization. I don't think this is in dispute by any serious historian.

Great piece, please do thank your rabbi for it. :-)

Okay, the Russians and Chinese have some satisfaction seeing NATO leave the neighbourhood. Fair enough.

Science is more likely to be explained in sociological than metaphysical terms nowadays — Banno

There is room for more than one understanding of science, but even a sociological account would be grounded in some sort of metaphysics or another. One might ignore metaphysics but not dispense of it.

science doesn’t have a single definition , it is a historical development with a changing understanding of itself, undergirded by a changing metaphysical outlook — Joshs

Correct, although the changes were not that significant in my view, mere adaptations of the same basic empirico-rationalist framework. It's not a 'transformation' by any stretch, rather it's a slow and gradual evolution. In any case, the point was that a certain type of metaphysics underwrite science, which you seem to agree with.

. The Russians and the Chinese can be happy how things are going now. — ssu

Nope, they are not. The Chinese were very happy with NATO troops keeping the peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban could get pro-Uighur, you see? The Russians pretend to laugh at the US (as their protégé, Najibullah, resisted for two years after the withdrawal of soviet troops, offering a sharp contrast with Ghani) but they are nervous. And Tajikistan has already aligned with the Northern Alliance.

You definitely have a bias. As I said, it's very common: the history you go by was written by Christians and Jews who had the same bias. You should try to read Arabic authors.

It strikes me that metaphysics, though it may purport to explain (or question) why science or other things "work", doesn't "work" itself. Merely to claim that other things like science or religion "work" provides no support for metaphysics, though. — Ciceronianus

It seems to me that everyone operates or rather thinks based on certain assumptions, whether they are conscious about it or not, and that being conscious of one's basic credo is better than not being so.

More like asserting historical fact.

The very concept of Arabs being "a great civilization" is doubtful — Apollodorus

That is what I am talking about: a dismissive, almost racist attitude towards them. It's very common in some corners of the 'west', unfortunately.

It's complicated alright. But there's no reason to systematically dismiss the Arabs. It was once a great civilization, until the sack of Baghdad at the very soonest, they were the smartest guys around.