It was just lazy on my part not to force myself to read the last 100 or so pages, but I kept putting off till' it was way too late to read it, I forgot so many characters and plot that I have to start from zero.

Strangely, his prose in ATD is probably his easiest to read. I also thought quite well of Inherent Vice, the movie was shit though.

Because we are misled by what we think are the "easy problems". We think we have much better intuitions than we do. There are several hard problems, not just consciousness.

What's the argument for saying language has a "purpose"? One is pre-supposing that there is such a "purpose".

We have it now, so in retrospect we put assign it such a thing. But I think one of the ways to frame your main point is to argue that we don't have full definitions - outside mathematics.

Sure, no single word is exhausted by our trying to explain it. But if we attempt to be clear in what we are arguing for - then in need to dissolve into gibberish. We just have to face the fact that there are things we have that we cannot explain to our satisfaction, such as us having full definitions.

Because one often needs help in such circumstances then the issue no longer reflects a person's autonomy? Well, if that is the case, we have no autonomy in almost anything - because we get assisted in all aspects of life.

Nevertheless, if one does not have a say in what you do with yourself, I don't know what should count as having a say in something.

As for circumstances, many, notably cases of enduring and not-relieveable pain, severe mental disorders and, sometimes, very bad luck. If a person really wants to die, they will find a way - often a quite horrible one at that. Better to allow these things to occur with empathy, instead of moral grandstanding.

And sure, we should be careful in cases in which what's going on is no more than a temporary depression.

I've done one for Chomsky and Hume.

Coming up is Locke's Essay, probably focusing on 3 chapters, but I've still to finish re-reading the book.

Hah! I will say, that opening quote is probably my favorite of all time.

I really hope you enjoy it. I stopped at pg. 910 - no joke. Yes, I am that stupid.

:victory:

• The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Bryan Magee — 180 Proof

:fire:



Per 180's suggestion, continuing with Magee:

His Confessions of a Philosopher and then, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. He's probably the single best one, but I'm sure there are others.

I have pending a Locke's Essay reading group, probably will cover 3-4 different chapter, but I've still to finish it again. but am not too far from it.

Not higher quality per se, but content that expands on my own interests.

There is also very high-quality content here and some which are not very good. But my options are rather limited and I find that many posters here are very good and interesting.

There aren't good alternatives where I live, and I very much enjoy what I do. But it's also hard to enjoy these things without discussing them. Waste of time can be very nebulous: you could be visiting a country or meeting a "distinguished" member of society, but if you are bored and/or not stimulated then you are wasting your time with these "useful" activities.

I see what you are saying, I'd add that it's not linguistics solely, but also conceptual. By expressing ourselves in a clear and concise manner, the information or data we are presenting is more easily understood than in some other, more technical or obscure manner.

Understanding is not limited to language, I don't think. But, point taken.

It's likely, or at least it wouldn't surprise me. But one can explain the basics of Kant without much trouble.

That was Foucault. Derrida claimed that he never fell into that temptation to write more obscurely for the sake of profundity. Clearly, he wasn't being honest.

Well, I suppose that arguing, instead of Occam's razor per se, that one should present a hypothesis or theory in the simplest available manner is better than presenting such information in a convoluted or inflated way.

One can say that gravity pulls apples to the ground.

Or one can say that given the universe we are an in, and the planet we find ourselves in, plus the properties of apples all combine such that it follows, that in the vast majority of circumstances, gravity on Earth pulls apples to the ground given ordinary conditions, because a hurricane might complicate the process.

Both are true, one is simpler. But sometimes we cannot simplify more than we'd like.

This topic wasn't my focus when I wrote about Strawson, so I can say very little. Free will arguments often get stuck really quickly on intuitions.

I think we should distinguish personal pre-disposition with choices. I have a pre-disposition to get really bored in large crowds, but I still have a choice to remain or to leave.

I can't, of course, force myself to be pre-disposed to change what I like or dislike, with some minor exceptions. But within this constraint, I have plenty of options.

But if you do suppose that, then solipsism collapses. You can only suppose that you are the only thing in existence, and the question would be how long would you render your existence tenable, right *now*, an hour, you whole life?

So, you need some kind of modification to allow the supposition to be postulated at all.

but can we ever say that it is a waste? I think not. It is thanks to those who care; hold pragmatic hope and take action that life can be improved. — Amity

Not a waste per se. But comparatively less rich for some people.

But in cases of sensory deprivation, there is hope as our experience of the world is tremendously rich.

I mean, if we do permanently lose the faculties that allows for consciousness, that is a case of a life that's over, for all practical purposes.

Depends on the context. If you know the mythology behind Santa Claus and want to explain it to somebody, you could say that Santa would be the person thought about.

If you are merely saying that Santa brought gifts, then Santa would be the thought, or so it can be argued.

We don't have a clear notion of what a thought even is.

But generally speaking, this distinction is more semantic than substantive.

I don't see why Santa Claus would be a "non-thing". It's a mental construction of a person in a red dress living in the North Pole, that's a thing - though it lacks concrete existence in the world.

I mean, most of the words we use all the time, even right now, aren't referring to anything.

Sometimes, we refer as when we speak of that car the ran through a red light or this cool moment in a novel. What's the problem? A "thing" must be concrete? Well, most of the universe isn't. We can't see quarks, but few physicists would say these are "non-things".

In another sense, one can do experiments that show the existence of quarks. Not so with Santa Claus. Neither are concrete.

Yet people speak about Santa Claus all the time, so the issue of the alleged difficulty does not arise, if one drops word-object obligations.

All kinds of things, ranging from ideas to mythical creatures to a car outside the window and so on.

The act of referring to a specific thing is one of many things we do when we talk. In a normal conversation we do all kinds of things, including showing emotions, laughing, talking with no particular goal in mind.

And then you have the politician, who can spend an hour talking and not saying anything, much less referring to an event or anything of substance.

The thing is you are assuming there is a reference relation between words and things. If there is no reference relation, the problem disappears, we have no trouble speaking about Santa Claus or Pegasus.

I don't think there is a reference relation between words and things. People refer, not words themselves.

I don't think so, unless you think that other mammals don't have experience, which goes against what we observe in nature.

But language is crucial for articulating thought. Without it, one can at best have specific signals such as "predator", "food", "sex" and so on.

But for anything other than very basic things, language is needed for the higher consciousness we have, I'd wager.

It's your mind pal.

As he says in ATD: Good Luck.

:victory:

I'd suggest V or GR before Against the Day. It can be a real possibility that this latter book will erode your endurance. It's not a bad book by any means, but it far inferior to V and GR. V is probably his most fun book.

But good luck with whatever you choose. Inherent Vice was quite fun.

Very beautiful song - and a wonderful voice.

I don't see how we can reclaim spirituality from the New Age aspects the word has acquired. Having said that, anyone can use the word.

If we had no such thing as music or books, or plays and colors and tastes, well then, life would be indeed be a waste.

So there's hope in that, as you say. :)

It's hard to maintain a view of the world objectively and speak much about hope. It is a strategy to maintain some semblance of sanity. Otherwise, things are simply too bleak for us.

I do want to add though, that being secular too, as I am, can be a profoundly mystical experience. I hesitate to talk about spirituality, given how loaded the word is.

But depending on which traditions you follow and how you view the world from a more general perspective, can be a source of very profound experiences.

In fact, you mentioned one: music. It is a privilege to be a being that is capable of appreciating such a thing, noise to other creatures, sublime to us.

As with music, many other experiences too. Not sure if this connects with hope, but, worth pointing out.

Let’s suppose some sort of universal mind creates me and everyone else. — Art48

This doesn't follow from the rest of your reasoning. You could make an argument that solipsism solves the problems you say it does, such as the problem of evil.

But from solipsism to "universal mind", there is no connection. You are postulating something independent of you in this specific case.

And if you allow a "universal mind", you'll need to allow much more.

It's an interesting poll(s) result. Though compared to other fields of enquiry, consensus in philosophy is very far from being a sign we are thinking about something correctly.

I mean, if such a poll were to be taken before the 17th century, most European philosophers would likely be dualists.

And the determinism thing continues to be a bit puzzling. It made sense in Newton's time, but now we know that physics tells us that the world is at bottom probabilistic, not deterministic.

Either way, I doubt physics tells us anything about free will.

Still, it's good information to have. Thanks for sharing.

Lady Joker (Volume 2) by Kaoru Takamura

Still re-reading Locke's Essay, been having lots of trouble concentrating this second time around - fantastic book though, worth re-evaluation imo.

Ok. Sounds good.

Irrespective of GDP - putting that aside, the money the US spends on the military is absurd. Anything Russia or China do pales in comparison to what the US does when it comes to spending. I do not see a good justification for it at all.

So I’d find more reasonable to hit an expansionist Russia as hard as possible when it’s in a weaker position, than wait for Russia to recover and give it another try in the future just for the fun of it. — neomac

So are you saying that you support the West or no? Based on this comment, I think you sound like a West is good (or least bad) type of person.

What I would add, is that I don't think we have good reasons to believe Russia will come out of this war in good shape. It has a population problem, it's economy is far from being optimally used, without even considering the effects of the sanctions long-term.

In short, I see such conflicts as rather dated and mostly dangerous. Something not worth gambling on.

you didn’t calculate by yourself, I guess - doesn’t concern the next 5 years, right? If you feel dispensed from engaging in such kind of speculation like anticipating potentially hostile competitors’ moves far before they could actually happen, States will do it at your place anyways and likely much better than you could ever possibly afford because they have means and that’s necessary for their own survival. — neomac

Correct. I threw it as an arbitrary number, I think 5 years is reasonable time frame to think about what could happen. Anything longer that that is bound to be distorted or drastically changed given unforeseen events, which if enough of these happen, can alter a countries history.

You could say something like, every 4 years (being the average election cycle in most countries). But if you want to go beyond that, which you have the right to do, the further in the future you go, the more distorted your projections can be. It's just a tendency in human history, it seems to me. International Relations involve many actors and events, it's not physics.

now the Rest is ~7B vs the West ~1B — neomac

What are you including in the west?

American temptation to reduce their military commitment around the world — neomac

They are constantly overspending on the military, no matter who gets in power.

Anything beyond 5 years is way too much speculation in my view. We don't know what will happen.



Sure. But he can't.

He doesn't rule over Taiwan. I don't know what you meant by that comment.



For some things yeah, you can do that, for others its much harder. I mean you have to consider military personal, construction workers, tax payers. Automation can only do so much. Maybe some radical new AI discovery will render people obsolete in most things, but we are far from reaching that point.

In any case, whatever happens in Ukraine in terms of winning or losing, has no consequence for us in terms of who will lead us. It's not a serious issue for people who don't share a border with Russia.

Yep, that's exactly right.

Also, it's weird to seriously consider that Xi will rule over everybody. Like, what?

But the rest of the world knows quite well just how friendly the West can be...

Jeez dude, you are going in that direction?

I don't even know how to reply to this, because it looks to me so, so far removed from actual possibility. There's been talk - for some time now - of the whole "decline of the American Empire" and so on, because of how China is growing and is now (or is about to be) a bigger economy and so forth.

First of all, this overlooks a crucial problem for China: drastic declining population numbers. This is going to severely impact economic output.

But the main point to me anyway, is to ask, how many military bases does the US have around the world? Around 750.

How many does Russia have? 20. What about China? 1. That makes a grand total of 21 military bases vs 750.

I think such numbers are useful in projecting actual power and the capacity to get countries to do what you want. Right now, Russia is barely managing Ukraine, how can they expand more? And after this war, the Russian population is surely going down, along with birthrates.

China has Taiwan. That they can't take. They're extending to the "South China Sea" and well as the Silk Road, it brings forth some influence sure. Nowhere near the US.

Iran is not worth talking about, until we mention a much more problematic country in all respects: Saudi Arabia. And Israel too.

So we are as far apart as possible on this issue.

That would be ideal. Hard seeing it actually happening. Not impossible, obviously, but I don't see what possible things must happen for such a situation to materialize.

So whatever nuance and impartiality one may want to put in their own views, it is likely going to get lost in the process of collective choice making. In other words, we can reason and analyse geopolitical conflicts of such magnitude for the intellectual fun of it (or for moral concerns?) in a forum but in the end we can't likely hope to be more than polarised political "meme" vectors in the geopolitical arena. — neomac

Very much so. I mean the caveats and nuances one may argue for, in the end, are "just" that, caveats and nuances, the "endgame" being the same (from your "opponents" perspective).

This generalizes to a larger phenomenon (I think), which is, one simply creates "shortcuts" for other points of view, in philosophy, politics and everything else. Otherwise, it would take forever to do any political discussion - or any other discussion.

The story of those people fighting for their "claimed" land for generations shows that their motivation and endurance is not weakened by to the kind of reasoning that makes you think their fight is pointless. And Ukrainians may show analogous motivation and endurance wrt the Russians, no matter how much land Russia has currently annexed nor to what extent it has military means to preserve it. — neomac

That's correct. And obviously, they should react in whatever way they think makes sense for them (in so far as each person has a particular perspective on this war).

That doesn't alleviate or address my issue, which is, they may continue to do this, but I have reasons to believe that Russia will take the territory it wishes. So the deaths do end up being in vain, having achieved no specific goal, as in, dissuading Russia from doing what its doing, or creating more awareness for this war (which has enough eyes on it as it is) and so on.

In that respect, I think deaths with no goals in mind, are pointless and sad.

The issue w/Palestine has been different. It took many, many, many thousands of brutal deaths for Palestinians to even be acknowledged as human beings in the eyes of the US public - which is the one that matters. Israel could carry out no occupation without US aid.

Even if Palestinians gave up today, Israel will treat them exactly the same as if they struggled from time to time. That's a situation which is intolerable, given it's been going on for over 50 years.

You are moving from what is at stake for Afghans (which is relevant to guide our expectations about their behavior and prospects of success), to what is at stake for all other players. So I’d say we concur on a couple of points: first, if we want to better assess the relevance of a conflict for us we should move from the stakes of one player to the stakes of all other players directly and indirectly impacted by such conflict (including us). — neomac

Sure. Which is why I said that this situation in Ukraine now bears little (save superficial) resemblance to Afghanistan.

Yes, they will need to consider what would be a fair deal to them, as well as to Russia. It won't be trivial, but it must be done.

My re-involvement here was occasioned by a silly remark made by Christoff about people wanting the war to stop being labeled "Putinistas" or something like that.

Olivier replied to that, then it took off. I needn't have - you are more than doing enough presenting a coherent position that seeks to de-escalate, none of this macho-bullshit.

I have trouble understanding the war aims of the people who are argue "for Ukraine." We will see, maybe by January, how this pans out....

What does dignity have to do with land to you? Consider the case of, Kurds and Palestinians, they are fighting against much greater regional foreign powers for having a land internationally acknowledged to them and sovereign (which never happened) for generations. Do they have any chance to win for something they "never" had? How many lives is their fight worth? — neomac

We are getting side-tracked from the origin of the comment:

The point of my original comment was that Olivier was suggesting that I am presenting a view that has "no evidence" in its favor: that a nuclear armed country like Russia would accept humiliation at these scales given all that has taken place since this war began.

Hence, I should "challenge" myself. Because for some unexplained reason, if you don't support the continuation of this war by "supporting Ukraine", then one isn't challenging oneself.

So this is how it is: if you fall in line with Western Propaganda (US, EU, British, Australian), you are being brave, support democracy and are against dictatorship.

If you disagree and think this war should end now, then one is a Putin Supporter and a sympathizer for dictators.

That out of the way, let's go to your examples:

By now the Palestinian cause is widely recognized, up until the mid-early 2000's, if you supported Palestine, you were a terrorist sympathizer. Do they have a chance to get a two-state solution? Israel is uninterested and is instead stealing everything of value in the West Bank. What options do they have? They could try and change Israeli society from the inside through the Arab parties - unlikely to happen but it's an option.

Or they could keep forcing for a two-state solution, which is what is recognized by international law. Regardless of how they act, they will be killed, as can be seen almost every day in Israeli news. It makes sense for them to get a state, if only to be able to live a semi normal life.

The Kurds have been betrayed by everybody at one point or another. They do have a quite advanced society, which merits autonomy. Will they get it? Who knows. These topics deserve whole threads not brief comments.

what were the chances for the Afghans to win a war against the second strongest army in the world of a state with nuclear weapons? What was that chance at the beginning of the war, in the middle of the war, and by the end of the war? Finally the Soviet Union withdraw and the Soviets' failure in the war is thought to be a contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War) — neomac

Afghanistan has been fiendishly difficult to conquer for hundreds of years, we also see how they managed to get rid of a much larger US army, never mind the Soviet one.

But on to the important issue, what was there in Afghanistan than the Soviet Union cared enough about such that they would resort to nuclear war? Did "the West" sanction the Soviet Union for going into Afghanistan? Did the West say that victory for them means that the Soviet Union cannot win this war?

Was the global economy in a fritz because of Soviet war in Afghanistan?

No - these are quite different times. The stakes are much higher in all respects.

So what is making conceding lands instead of sacrificing people to free lands so unpalatable? — neomac

Well, it's both at the moment. People are being killed and land has been stolen (though some of it has been taken back for the moment). The issue you are pointing to, namely sacrificing "people for an uncertain... outcome", is less problematic from a narrative perspective, because they are fighting against an aggressor for dignity's sake.

As I see it, by arguing that Russia will end up with a portion (if not all of it) of the seized territory, it is pointless to let civilians die with no realistic hope of retaining such lands. I don't see this as a good reason for dying or being killed.

Not to mention the specter of escalation, which would involve everybody else.



Yeah yeah, these cases have been mentioned in this thread several times already, I'm surprised you haven't seen them. Afghanistan and Vietnam are quite different given the context and the importance of the countries involved.

And speaking of "defeat" in the case of Vietnam is rather misleading.

That quite probably Ukraine will lose, not only Crimea (which has been more or less taken for granted by the rest of the world), but also these new "liberated cities". I do not know where the borders will be finally established, but I think this is something that Ukraine will be forced to concede.

I hope I am wrong though.

Uninformed opinions have zero value; and when taken as facts, they even have negative value (are detrimental). So please stop putting out your uninformed opinion as if they were facts. Try to think before you post, and challenge yourself a bit. — Olivier5

This applies to yourself too. As for evidence, there is a lot of it, which has been posted here by many members, including most importantly, NATO's decision to not implement a No-Fly Zone.

I am aware that my "side" is effectively saying that Ukraine is going to have to give up more land. That's not a palatable view, but I happen to think it is the least harmful one. So maybe it can be considered a challenge to myself, whatever that means.

Rest assured that no one is gambling a nuclear war. Biden has told Putin that nukes should not be considered, and Putin has said that nukes are not being considered. — Olivier5

There aren't any assurances in politics, despite the rhetoric.