Plutonium is made in breeder reactors. Its a man made element last I recall. What's needed before that step is enriched uranium as far as I know. But you can have bombs made out of enriched uranium only. Just that theyre not as easy to miniaturize.

(but with the numbers of ICBM's available, combined with traditional bombers and nuclear armed subs, MAD is probably more guaranteed than ever before) — VagabondSpectre

Not really, because there's nobody to assure destruction with. Possibly, if China and Russia ganged up together and came up with the bright idea of attacking us, then? Maybe. But, then there's France, Israel, UK, India, Pakistan (?), that would assist with the total annihilation of the known world. A desirable outcome for China and Russia, not at all. North Korea's wet dream? Yeah, for sure.

EDIT: You know a nation that has gone through famine and such poverty really doesn't see nuclear war as that bad a thing if you think about it.

Hardly. Regional wars have been going on continuously since the beginning of the atomic era. It isn't obsolescence that has prevented nuclear war from happening, it's mutually assured destruction. — Bitter Crank

MAD no longer applies nowadays, not to the degree it did in the past with the balance of power between us and the Soviets. We have superiority in almost every regard. That's not to say that we wouldn't suffer casualties, just that any losses an enemy would incur would far outweigh our losses.

With North Korea, you just have them trying to increase their regional influence with threats against peaceful nations like Japan and to a lesser extent South Korea. The sad thing is that Japan, which is one of the most technologically advanced country in the world has been prevented from developing anti-ICBM technology, which has always been inferior to delivery technology. I suspect, as the US usually does, we import the brightest minds from Japan and have them work for us and then sell them back their work to Japan.

Are you sure they are copying technology? Their missile development is pretty slow and steady for working from specs. They probably did get some basics from either China or the Soviet Union on nuclear technology, but again, the rate of development doesn't seem to be that rapid. — Bitter Crank

Well, you know, they have the GDP of some banana republic. There's only so much you can do with that much money to go around. Iran has only made so much progress due to having vast oil reserves? What does North Korea export? Counterfeit US currency (and probably European too), heroin, methamphetamine, and arms to rogue nations. Certainly the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network helped them get to where they are; but, a certain amount of expertise is required to build centrifuges for uranium enrichment along with weapons design. Where do you get the brains to assist in building those? Most likely China helped with the scientific team needed to assemble said weapons and fuel. Soviet technology also proliferated considerably after the collapse. The technology is there, you just need human capital (scientists) and money to get the job done.

Is NK a threat? Well, sure they are. If they can miniaturize a reasonable-sized nuclear weapon so that it would fit on top of a reasonably powerful missile (intercontinental or not), and since they already have submarines that can launch a missile, and even if they can land one bomb successfully in the US, say on Washington, D. C., or Los Angeles, I think we would rather seriously resent having that happen. — Bitter Crank

I talked about this with a friend, and the consensus is that North Korea would need to build technology that is far beyond their capabilities to evade sonar detection to get close enough to our coasts to launch and strike a target successfully. They are FAR away from that ever happening, and Russia and China aren't crazy enough to give a modern stealth sub to North Korea just so that they can have their wet dream of starting another World War. I don't know the technicalities as this is some pretty top secret shit; but, I'm assuming stealth is still beating detection methods.

Of course, we do have absolute superiority over NK, but NK is very, very close to Russia and the PRC. My guess is that both Russia and China would rather seriously resent us having bombed to smithereens a country on their borders. I don't think SK or Japan would be thrilled about it either. — Bitter Crank

Well, the problem is the concentration of power in North Korea. Whereas the Soviets were in many regards totalitarian, there was some level of check and balances to be maintained within the regime. North Korea presents a problem with the unconditional support of one man, and thus a great chance for irrationality to go too far in saber rattling.

The problem is that post atomic era, war has become obsolete, which North Korea is finding it hard to accept. How far are they willing to go is the elephant in the room.

Its been a rather obvious fact of game theory that the more irrational you appear the more rational you actually are in game theory in achieving strategic advantages. So, what does one do? Id say enjoy the show. If Kennedy acted rationally during the Cuban middle crisis its rather certain that you would see further escalation in tensions. Its counterintuitive at first but makes sense when you want to cow down your adversary.

Well, my only worry is that when do the NK's really want to strike us? I mean, they're been dreaming about it for a while now already.

That's understandable. I never assumed the US was even capable of defending both Japan and let alone South Korea against someone like China and Russia.

As for Russia and China, there's no doubt in my mind that they stalled any peace agreements and UN resolutions against NK along with, I think - without a doubt - helping NK acquire technology and expertise to assemble a nuclear bomb and make the uranium fuel.

It might be that NK was always a bargaining chip over diplomatic issues between the three powers. Now, it seems things have grown out of control.

Yes, America-above all- exports capitalism, in many forms.

We have some really bright minds on our side.

Here's what I think. The US never considered NK a threat, in the past, present, or future. We will always have an absolute advantage of whatever technology they copy from the Russians or Chinese. Which means that despite our assurances of honoring past agreements with South Korea and Japan, we do not take their safety in as high an esteem as ours (US').

Now call me a liar.

I'll let you figure that out. X-)

Another central idea presented in the Tractatus is the truth-function theory. This theory goes hand-in-hand with the picture theory. "A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions (T. 5)." Therefore, if you are given all elementary propositions, then you can construct every possible proposition, which fixes their limits (T. 4.51). My understanding is that this sets the limit of language, or sets a limit to what can be said. — Sam26

Sorry to go back on old posts Sam. I think this is a very important point raised here. I like to think of this situation as akin to how a computer operates because in my opinion if Wittgenstein were more of a logician, I believe he would have been an Alan Turing of his time.

Please don't take it too literally; but, you have a set of rules by which a computer operates. These rules are all logical. Now, you have some software running that sets "objects" in certain configurations by the rules of logic of the computer (through some programming language).

Can you help me fill in the gaps in this reasoning? I find it extremely helpful to think in analogies.

Well, I can tell you that according to the Tractatus, we are direct realists. Where 'realists' is just our ability to picture logical relations between objects, but are bound by the limits of language. And, more importantly, irrespective of 'ability', those bounds are absolute.

The Investigations is much less rigorous and logical and treats reality as a sociological language game, meaning that how we perceive reality is entirely dependent on our inclinations, desires, upbringing, and will.

This is why I have always preferred the clarity of the Tractatus.

But what I tried to explain, via the analogy with cryptographic key exchange, is that it still enables fruitful communication with others possessing their own private colors, via mixing with the correct public shared color. — ernestm

Yeah, it's unclear where Wittgenstein stands on our perception of reality. Is it indirect or direct or rather what I believe Wittgenstein is trying to say is that there are no grounds or objective criteria to make that distinction.

See my previous edited post. The solipsism is still present in the Investigations despite people thinking the PLA repudiates that.

Of course, there is no necessity for that either, and one can see a lot of philosophers these days falling into rather depressive solipsistic skepticism. — ernestm

That's quite interesting as Wittgenstein professed a very strong version of solipsism in the Tractatus. Namely, a sort of linguistic solipsism.

EDIT: I'd even say that this line of thought continues in the Investigations.

"If a lion could speak we would not understand it."

Wittgenstein actually is telling you that everything you ever thought was truth in your entire life could be wrong. It does take a little time for that to sink in. — ernestm

This is his sentiment towards the descriptivist theory of meaning.

Edit: Wittgenstein is quite Kantian in this regard. At least in the Tractatus.

This isn't mysticism, it's just stating ordinary language philosophy and the redundant theory of meaning and truth in another way.

However, the questions raised by philosophers as to the nature of reality as we perceive it are important to Wittgenstein; but, I suspect he thought in most cases unanswerable and nonsensical.

"mirroring" would presume that we carve nature at its joints when we form true propositions — Marchesk

No, to "mirror" already assumes indirect realism.

I do think there is something to the idea that propositions picture reality, or mirror reality. The problem is that philosophers are always trying to find a precise definition that explains what correspondence means, and precision is not always possible or needed. I think we generally understand what it means for a painting to picture reality, and in many of the same ways we generally understand what it means for a proposition to mirror reality. Is it a model that fits every instance of a proposition? No. — Sam26

Here's the problem. Wittgenstein goes on to assert the validity of pictures depicting reality, without specifying what criteria are being met to accurately or correctly depict reality. It's not a matter of semantics as to what degree are we 'accurately' or 'correctly' depicting reality because if the assumption that either a picture is in accordance with reality (the state of affairs of being 'True') or is not in accordance with reality (the state of affairs of being 'False'), because we are already making the assumption that what we are saying is 'True' as opposed to being 'False' when talking about pictures of reality (or the representation of states of affairs in reality via the use of elementary propositions, eg. names). Otherwise, if we can't specify the meaning of "correctly" or "accurately" in this context, then sad to say the whole thing is nonsense.

According to the Tractatus a proposition pictures reality, so if we are to understand a proposition that refers to unicorns, it is because the proposition displays a picture, and that picture either matches up with reality or it does not. If it correctly mirrors reality, then it is true, if it does not mirror reality, then it is false. — Sam26

From your post "Wittgenstein: The Tractatus Post #5".

There is a metaphysical assumption lumped into that paragraph that plagues the Tractatus and for the matter the correspondence theory of truth. Namely, that to know if a picture is accurate in depicting reality, we already have to know what reality looks like. In other words, there is a certain unspecified set of criteria that has to be met for a picture to be in accordance with reality, which exhaustively can never be achieved (A central reason why Popper's Fallibilism will always be superior to Verificationism). Wittgenstein does not go into detail about this set of criteria, which is unfortunate. Perhaps, this is just a game of semantics over "correctly" or "accurately"; but, this is where I think Wittgenstein is lacking in his appeal to the scientific process or logical positivism, which would have made his Tractatus a lasting work of philosophy if it already is not one.

Thomas Sowell - Basic Economics

Guy gets it right every time. Just too bad people aren't as rational as conservatives think.

Noesis, a land only granted to those with superior intelligence.

No luck here, man.

Try here.

To me, modal logic looks, well, unnecessary. Or, to be sharper, what does modal logic make possible that was not possible before? — tim wood

In my understanding, all of 'logic' is absolute, or again as Wittgenstein said, logic takes care of itself.

There is where modal logic deviates from the norm. Modal logic seems to be the only type of logic that is observer dependent. For example, say God we're omniscient and eternal, then modalities would be irrelevant to him since his observation of the sum total of modalities in existence is tautologically true on face value.

But this all pushes for a closer look at your original question, "Thus, is there any valence to logical truths or conditions?" — tim wood

So, what I just said has some bearing on what is mentioned above. Namely, that modal logic is subject to changing conditions and that seems to me to be an indication that logic can have some valence as opposed to strict and absolute categorical logical proofs. Once can argue, that why stop at modal logic, why not mention quantum logic for the matter? Well, in my mind the holistic aspect of modal logic leaves the room in its scope for non-deterministic behaviour.

In the link you provided, valence seems to be about the words that can be meaningfully connected to verbs (maybe I got that wrong - please correct!). It seems a miss-application, then, to try to apply valence to logical truths or conditions (what, actually, does "conditions" mean in this context?). — tim wood

What makes you say that? Where is the difference in our line of thought here?

An example of the problems that arise absent preparatory groundwork is that I think of logic as being contentless, merely manipulations of symbols under arbitrary rules of manipulation. And some manipulations seem useful; some more than others. How does valence work with symbols? And so forth.... — tim wood

That is an interesting assertion. I do wonder in what way logic and its versatility 'work/is applied' in reality.

I mean it's all really confusing to me. If reality can be simulated via logic, then shouldn't all Platonists necessarily be logicians too? Doesn't logic come before math?

My idea of posting the OP was that valency exists where there are conditions for some state of affairs (function) to exist.

Most of 'logic', as Wittgenstein just takes care of itself.

Modal logic is one area where I think the function runs backwards, where the state of affairs themselves (the function) dictate the behaviour of the variables inside the function.

I think what you are interested in, if you truly mean valency as it is defined in chemistry, is some kind of weighted probabilistic logic. — ernestm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valency_(linguistics)

Using your analogy. Doesn't the content of the games have an influence over the rules of the games, as in modal logic?

Please do a thread on the Tractatus while referring to the answers already provided in the old thread. That would be heavenly.

It would seem to me that to have free markets, capitalism is a sine qua non. However, the question is that how would one alter capitalism to have a society where people don't fall into a bad infinity?

But, communism isn't a solution. I was expecting more well rounded answers. Not, slogans! :_)

Yeah but who enforces the rules?

So the first rule is that philosophy club shall be anarchic or perverse? — unenlightened

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof things must be shown in action.

I see this as a perversion of philosophy and Wittgenstein. As if rules were needed prior to the use of reason and ethics.

Booms and busts in economics are depicted by a bull locked in an eternal battle with a bear.

The future retroactively influences the past as well as the present and the future, same with the past and present.

I prefer 4D relativism.

No, sorry even better.

Have Sanders hold hand with the fearless girl in front of the bull with him holding a big axe in the other hand.

Yeah, take that you fucking ugly fucking bull.

I hope someone puts a statue of Sanders depicting him having a big ax looming over the bulls head.

Wet dream.

Boom and busts. If only the bull dominated all the time, wishes the CEO of some Wall Street firm.

You might as well as installed a giant penis in place of the bull.

The girl adds some sanity to the whole place.