:up:

A glass can be both half full and half empty. Kinda corny, but true.

I would prefer the big picture first, but in practice I need to start with the details and move toward the big picture as my understanding grows. It can be frustrating. :wink: — Pattern-chaser

I agree. Monsterous amounts of frustration for a holistic learner abound.

It seems to me that general education courses, freshman and sophomore courses in college, are intended to provide "the big picture". — Bitter Crank

I would tend to agree. Although, it's much harder to grasp the 'big picture' of some course or field of study right from the getgo in college settings. There's just so much information to grasp and formulate a vision of some field. College seems to be where concepts are crystalized of formulated into a whole worldview.

Speaking about a specific field of study that you bring up, being 'History', there's certainly a tendency to formulate a holistic perspective of hidden agendas or motives behind decision making. Other subjects are different in this regard as to presenting a whole worldview or the big picture.

What say you?

But, all the fear-mongering aside. National socialism, if it can be understood without connotations of fascism, isn't all that bad. Agreed?

Conspiracy theory are self-realizing endless mazes. — Akanthinos

Indeed.

There's also a more nefarious and sickly part of me that just wants to see Trump squirming and watching his base be composed of a diminishing pool of shit and idiocy. So, there's that full disclosure.

I'm not too sure about Pence being Prez either. Dems stand to benefit more from dragging out the investigation. Trump will just be a lame duck after the midterms so no harm done there.

I believe the consensus was that the PSR is or was an epistemological principle first and foremost in the piggybacked thread mentioned in the OP.

I'm rereading it and will do so due to the thoughtful posts there.

Yeah, that goes without saying. I'm more into letting this drag out until the next relection just to sear it into the memory of everyone who voted for Trump that that was a bad idea.

As far as I'm aware a conspiracy to commit a crime against the US government is sufficient to get one's self in the slammer. So, foreknowledge has already been assured with Cohen coming out on the recorrd about the issue. Now the rest lies with what Muller has already been covered by his investigation.

What would count as corroborated evidence in this case, @Benkei?

Not without corroborating evidence which we haven't seen at this point. — Benkei

Hmm...

If memory serves me well, yes.

Shit is hitting the fan.

Trump's antisocial personality must be going in overdrive.

Aww yeah, that's was' up...

This is pretty big:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/26/politics/michael-cohen-donald-trump-june-2016-meeting-knowledge/index.html

fluoride in the drinking water, decreased fertility of white people, alien invasion, aliens already here,... — Marcus de Brun

Nutty.

In case I haven't dumbed it down enough;

What is a sufficient reason?

What distinguishes them evidently is that the cause of a thing is always something else. The cause of A is B, the cause of B is C, etc..... An indefinite series of causes. Sufficient reason is not at all something other than the thing. The sufficient reason of a thing is the notion of the thing. Thus, sufficient reason expresses the relation of the thing with its own notion whereas cause expresses the relations of the thing with something else. — StreetlightX

So, thank you for taking the time to address this issue of causes. I seem to be interested in what that 'something else' is. What do you take it to mean?

Duu it. Haha.

If you don't keep the distinction firmly in mind then, as happened in your last thread, the specificity of sufficiency is entirely lost. — StreetlightX

I still don't think I understand what you're saying. If so, let's return to the OP. What do you think about the questions posed in the OP?

I think the difference is superficial. Surely, a reason for why an event happened the way it did is pertinent to the topic at least. Anyway, how would you answer the question about the difficulty in determining one reason from another for some event?

I bring up the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy due to such a problem of induction about certain events given a sufficient reason for their (unknown?) cause if a sufficient reason can at all be arrived at.

So, namely if we have modalities we are concerned with, and as you stated:

If you're asking 'why this rather than that (or literally anything else), you're asking what force of necessity was in play to bring about the thing in question. — StreetlightX

Then, how are we to know what causes led to what event given uncertainty about said (necessary) sufficient reasons. Thins rings of Hume's problem of induction, if that helps.

Fuck there's that pigeon cooing again. — Maw

:lol:

How does one then avoid the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy under such a state of affairs?

This post was in part inspired by what @StreetlightX has to say in the older PoSR thread, here. I've just been putting it off in addressing the issue in another thread, which I hope this one is sufficiently apt at starting such an analysis if I've articulated the problem clearly enough.

Just my two cents; but, the logical atomists, I think, correctly assumed that things can exist as atomistic elements/objects of the world. One could simply not go down further. However, this too is problematic as it brings about forth the Sorites paradox, of sorts. Namely, when do the combination of logical constituents of the world (objects) obtain as sufficient? So, hence the above again.

Thoughts?

@ssu, what do you think about this, in regards to China representing a fascist state? Any further thoughts welcome, as this is a pretty interesting way of presenting China as it currently operates.

You keep on treating fascism as if it were an exclusive thing to Nazism, which it isn't. Nobody mentions it but Japan was fascist in the past too, not just Nazi Germany and Italy for example.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/199457

I think that's pretty accurate...

Unless they lead by example. Think China...

No, it's just depressing that you believe such things. Nothing to address here.

Can we get a sidebar to inform us on what target we're trying to reach each month, monetarily? That could help with trying to meet our funding goals.

Fascism is necessarily on the rise, and it may be the salvation of the race — Marcus de Brun

:vomit:

It's loving fast cars while hating thermodynamics. — Banno

Then we invent electric cars!

He did come pretty late on the scene. There were others closer to the actual formalization of fascism in Italy. Like, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gentile or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Tommaso_Marinetti

Am I mistaking fascist futurism for modernism here?

Positivists would've called Hitler's notion of Arian heritage nonsensical. — creativesoul

Yeah, well, I don't disagree with that. I just thought that the intelligentsia and other thinkers of fascism thought that to be some perversion of their ideology. Again, I might have to read up on the origins of fascism, any handy books anyone cares to recommend?