Israel.

It sure can. Which is why they've been stalling.

Very much so. And Israel is hesitant to sell weapons to Ukraine, as they are quite happy with the current arrangement in Syria.

I suspect only the US could get Israel to sell weapons to Ukraine, but then maybe not even them, because lots of illegal Israeli settlers are Russian. So it's a hell of a problem for Israel.

Since science is epistemic, not ontic — 180 Proof

Interesting.

Sure, I would agree that physics is epistemic.

Would you say the same thing about the things studied by biologists?

I sense that, I don't know anything. A bit like a zombie, what with Halloween coming up and all.

I suspect the problem resides in our not knowing well enough how to categorize "purely" mental objects. But then, this rock I see here, is partially mental, at the very least.

And so, it is not clear...

Ukraine to Officially Submit Request for Air Defense Supplies From Israel

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-10-18/ty-article/ukraine-requests-israel-supply-immediate-air-defense-supplies/00000183-eb24-da6b-a1fb-fba5783f0000

While Israel has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and provided Kyiv with humanitarian relief, it has stopped short of also providing military support, citing concern for continued cooperation with Moscow over next-door Syria.

The discussion over air supplies comes amid internal wrangling in Israel over deepening its cooperation with Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

"Real", as is used in English is an honorific word, adding little substance to what is being discussed. If a person tells you this is the "real deal" or this is the "real truth", it would be an error to think there are two kinds of deals or truths.

It's a matter of emphasis.

Are unicorns real? Well, they're not objects in the world, but people can surely speak about them without much problem, within an appropriate context (mythology, storytelling, etc.)

I think this is an issue in which the use the word often obfuscates the phenomenon it is trying to discuss.

Sam Harris is mediocre at very, very best. At worst he's just a useful idiot, probably believes what he says about torture and AI and the woke left.

He sometimes can string together some interesting observations, maybe once every 3 hours in his podcast. Not much more.

The worst of the so called "New Atheists". Hitchens used to be fantastic but went hard right the last decade of his life.

Dawkins and Dennett are quite good in many respects.

I find all this bollocks about a 'nation's right to exist' really sickening. — Isaac

I believe it was a product of Israeli propaganda, which serves to silence critics of Israel.

The rights that should be afforded, and are granted at least in rhetoric, are peace and security. Of course, you can't have these if you don't exist, pace anti-natalists, but existence is a given for these rights to come into effect. Adding "right to exist" affords nothing to already existing rights, except for dubious rhetoric.

Mww, is Mww.

He's great! :)

I heard an interview with one such person who works as a professional animator. — Srap Tasmaner

:rofl:

That's extraordinary.



I think mathematical conceptions are different in nature than world phenomena. A perfect tree does not exist of course, but Plato had an interesting take on this.

I think it's kind of the opposite, as I see it: we see imperfect triangles all the time, which makes us think of triangles (which are perfect in our minds). You could perhaps say that imperfect triangles are a kind of derivative of mental triangles.



Absolutely nothing. T'was a hit and miss.

Yeah, but after 3000-odd years, the corpus of philosophy texts is so vast, it’s really hard to do philosophy that hasn’t already been done. — Mww

Pfffft.

May I invite you good Sir, to read Lacan and Derrida?

:joke:

Hmmm. I would not be surprised if there were cases of people who lacked the capacity to visualize such elementary figures. But the vast majority of people call a "rectangle" or a "triangle" something which does not exist in the world.

I think that in the instance you are mentioning in your thought experiment, unless they do lack these basic capacities, I'd think you'd be arguing about the meaning of words and not the concept.

Plato goes over some of this (example of having knowledge you did not know you had) in his Meno, which I have to read. This shouldn't be too shocking; we very likely had the capacity to do math for thousands of years before we realized it could be used for things beyond very basic counting.

It could be a bit of both, but the example you give was used by Descartes, if I don't misremember. And Cudworth too, though his examples were more varied.

In the empirical world, we don't see triangles, nor rectangles nor any other geometrical figure, for exactly the reason you point out: they are imperfect, sometimes severely so. The interesting thing is that unless it is completely unrecognizable, we see three distorted lines and judge it to be a triangle, same with other such figures. If this is not innate, then nothing is.

Hume, though not Locke (as far as I can tell), did not think this to be true, he thought we had no notion of straight line not derived from experience, but then we simply don't have such a notion. Because the experience won't yield what we take to be a straight line.

So, I wouldn't give up on your pet theory.

No travesty at all. Hume has a ridiculous amount of quotable sentences, paragraphs and even pages. Good on you for trying that style of writing out, it's fantastic.

Assume that during the Gulf War in 1991 the Iraqi armed forces would have had high fighting moral and similar combat capabilities as Israeli Defence Forces has and the US lead coalition would have suffered similar defeats as Russia has now. What do you think would have happened? Would it have been better then for the US to make the bluff of using nukes? How much weight to you give this embarrasment issue? — ssu

I think this thought experiment doesn't work for the present case, but let's see.

Well, the US would use it's might military to flatten Iraq, in this case, as it later did in 2003. The crucial difference in here is that who would dare sanction the US to the extent Russia is now? The US would not only be embarrassed but furious. Heck, the government threw a hissy fit just because France did not join in on the Iraq War, with zero consequences for the US.

Now let's add to your scenario, that not only is the US sanctioned, but China, Europe, Russia all join together in a military organization, that keeps giving Iraqis weapons that kill Americans. Would the US bluff and use nukes?

Well, they strongly considered doing that in Vietnam, but stopped short of it. In this scenario, the stakes are so much higher, that I don't think the US would bluff...

So, yeah, the embarrassment issue is not a small one.

Very much so, the simple fact that almost everybody can use Twitter to boast about something or to report on an event, very much affects the reactions of other world leaders. So, this recent counteroffensive carried out by Ukraine is a huge embarrassment for Russia and this is something which adds more fuel to the fire.

It's as you say, in history one can find examples of almost every possible event playing out and though there are some useful or interesting things than can be learned that may apply here, these things are rarely identical.

You pretty much nailed it, spot on, and very astute observation with Sun Tsu. I think we have good reason to believe that Putin actually feels this way, based on what he is currently saying. Even Biden has been saying to his donor class, behind closed doors, that "Putin is serious" and this is the closest we've been to "Armageddon", since the Cuban Missile Crisis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOJ4NEYs1gU&t=499s

So faced with such prospects, I think prolonging this war will surely mean more deaths on both sides, and ever-increasing desperate measures. Putin and his gang have cornered themselves in such a manner, that if they aren't offered a way out - via some mediating state, maybe Turkey, whatever, then the worst side of nationalism will come into play.

Surely this is not worth the death of thousands of more civilians and perhaps the entire world. That's why I insist negotiations, however disgusting they may be, should be a priority.

He doesn't consider its current status as a sovereign nation legitimate, does he? — Srap Tasmaner

Probably not. I mean, the Russian army was basically walking into Ukraine thinking they would be welcomed in many cases.

If it's not the homeland stuff, then we have clear examples of a small nation fighting for its life overcoming those sorts of reasons. — Srap Tasmaner

It plays a big part, no doubt. The other examples of Vietnam and Afghanistan, as far as I know, did not resemble this one in that sanctions of this scale, followed by constant coverage of a humiliating retreat right after annextion, were put into play.

The way I see it, is that a person like him, say Erdogan, Modi and others with dictatorial and or quite right-wing views would do something similar in the same place. I don't see why Putin is uniquely different in this respect, other than he put himself in this situation. It's not clear to me that, had the exact same situation been brought on another dictatorial person, they wouldn't act in a very similar manner.

Of course, it would be nice it Ukraine could defeat Russia and expel them completely. We'll see.

1) Nuclear armed countries have lost many wars. Afghans have now gotten victory over to two nuclear armed Superpowers. Nuclear weapons aren't some miracle weapon system, just like chemical warfare. — ssu

Correct. Nevertheless, Afghanistan was nowhere near the level of importance to the USSR as Ukraine is now. Nor was it for the United States.

Russia has been mentioning Ukraine as a red line for decades. The West didn't listen.

According to most military experts, any use of nuclear weapons, even tactical ones, would almost inevitably lead to a full-scale war. You are correct that they aren't magic, it's not as if Russia bombing a city in Ukraine would make them win. It would prompt a reply though, of that we've been assured.

2) For Ukraine this war is successful when it has repulsed the Russian attack.For a smaller defender to succeed in defense is the objective, not overtaking the aggressors Capital and totally destroying all of it's army. Ukraine won't have it's tanks on the Red Square, hence that kind of victory is a silly argument. — ssu

They managed to push back the Russians quite a bit in the annexed territories, look at the reply. Of course Ukraine cannot possibly invade Russia. The question is whether Russia has enough missiles left to continue this assault, in case Ukraine does another push. I think Russia could flatten all the major cities, but it would be of no benefit to them, for now.

3) Russia has it's limits. Sending the now mobilized troops immediately to the front tells how bad the situation is for Russia. The idea that "Russia cannot lose" is quite naive. This can very well be one of those wars that end up as a huge embarrassment for Russia. It's totally possible. — ssu

The thing is, this argument takes a massive, massive gamble, that Putin will just bow out of Ukraine and just handle getting embarrassed - this is after all these sanctions, poor military results and so on. I don't see Putin as the type of person who would just not react. One must measure how likely that gamble is to succeed and it's extremely risky, in my view.

Good to know you care so deeply about Ukrainians. But I did start the thread, way before we had any idea it could reach this level of magnitude. I don't live next to Ukraine and I don't like the invasion, it's a straight out war crime. That's clear.

Yes, you are quite right that are several conflicts going on all over the world, many of them quite horrible, but it appears we don't give a crap. So it must be that for some reason Ukrainians matter more than other people? I don't think so, I doubt you do either.

I very much doubt a fraction of the news would be given if Russia did not have nukes. I think nuclear war is an important topic. On the other hand, people dying right now and getting land stolen, is not good. I think we can discuss both at the same time as they are closely connected.

I've also started a pretty big thread on Israel, what, I need to do one in every conflict that is going on?

There are not too many options on the table: 1) Russia gives up, which is what you want and I think is extremely unrealistic, but would be the most just scenario. I don't think we live in that world. 2) Ukraine gives up, they get land stolen from them, it's very ugly. 3) Maybe there is a negotiation in which both sides lose as little as possible, given that they obviously wouldn't like to give away much, if anything. 4) Nuclear war.

Is your principle here that we must defeat an evil dictator using a brutal army? That's fine. The way it could possibly happen involves the most amount of Ukranian lives lost, or maybe you think they have some secret weapon or something that could turn them into victors.

What do you think? Could causation be a relationship between words and things rather than things and things? — invizzy

IF the word latches on to something, and we can isolate a state before an event and afterwards, and we notice the effect changes the state, we would likely be using the word "cause" correctly. But it's hard to find a "final" cause, other ones, that go deeper could be discovered.

The ideal would be to encapsulate a "thing to thing" relationship, since we are interested in the world.

Your examples of Aristotle's causes are interesting indeed, though perhaps introduce more technicality than is warranted:

So Aristotle would say the bronze causes the statue and one explanation = the words ‘the bronze’ ARE sufficient to give information about the statue (e.g. information about what the statue is made of) however the mere fact there is the statue is NOT sufficient to tell you that there is bronze, only that there might be bronze (i.e. statues can also be marble). — invizzy

This is tricky. Strictly speaking, if you say "the bronze", you need to have the concept "statue", if you lack the concept, bronze won't tell you anything. It's similar to your example of "spark" causing a fire. If you don't know what a fire is, spark tells you very little.

It's true that cause become harder to pin down the more complicated the phenomena you are analyzing are, but I think we would still like to maintain the concept cause as simple as possible.

In the case of someone with lung cancer, we might need to speak of multiple causes. Not only the cigarettes influenced getting the disease, but perhaps also air quality and genetic issues. Here we then speak of multiple causes, but maybe not of different kinds of them.

Worth me thinking about some more though.

Nevertheless, very interesting post.

I don't think it's hard really. The more humiliation Russia suffers, the more they missiles they will use to flatten Ukraine. It's not the "actual opposite" of what I'm saying, it's what's happening.

If you don't know the difference between defensive and offensive, you can look it up. I've been polite with you till now, but you've been insulting one too many times.

It boils down to the fantasy, which is what it is, that you think Ukraine will be able to defeat a NUCLEAR armed country. It won't. The fact that you can't get this through your head, is more a signal of your own inabilities to understand how fucked up this situation is, than any alleged shortcomings I may have.

So keep on dreaming about Ukraine defeating Russia, "helping" the Ukrainians get slaughtered, which is what you are advocating for.

That's kind of the point I made.

Sensible ones (for the time they were writing in) also include Locke, Smith, Mill, Hume, Russell, Kant, Dewey and many others. Not utopians.

But then those you mention are problematic in many ways.

You are correct, and one tries to be accommodating to those who are next to Russia, or close to it. Totally understandable position. We all think we are on the right track, of course, but we could be wrong in our thinking or when looking at evidence, or the weight we give to one thing over another, etc.



lol I would be crazy to read everything here, I've skipped often 10-15 pages or more. When I have participated, I know of one poster, but maybe there is another one or few. They're not common.

I'm only slightly surprised because I expect a little more from this forum, especially after 355 pages — Xtrix

Me too.

Then again, if you look at the tradition in philosophy, you find every kind of political persuasion and personalities, so, I suppose we shouldn't be mildly surprised.

What’s more striking is that one cannot question further without either being labeled a Putin supporter or US jingoist. — Xtrix

This is very important and it seems other people have a hard time understanding this, when it should be quite simple to get. I think I've only seen one poster here supporting Russia and saying Ukraine is part of Russia, though I have not seen him post here in a while. Everybody else that I've seen, takes it as a given, that this war is a crime. I mean, it's obvious, I can't believe it has to be said all the time.

The most scary thought is that if Putin would have stopped there, he might have gotten away with it. It might have taken a decade, but the likelihood of the West accepting de facto the annexation of Crimea would have been likely. But a gambler doesn't know when to stop. He had to have that land bridge to Crimea and Novorossiya. — ssu

Yes, it was very much well on its way to that, seems to me it actually was taken as a de-facto part of Russia, but he wanted more.

Russia has a habit of having these epic fails in wars where some in their own hubris write off the whole country. They shouldn't do that. The bear can lick it's wounds and sometimes get smarter. — ssu

I think this applies to all great powers honestly. And to be clear, it's the leadership, the elite, the military, that choose to do these things, the populations very often don't even get a choice, or are fed propaganda.

True enough. Nowadays we call it reification, in that mind per se isn’t reducible to substance, therefore thinking substance is moot. — Mww

This depends on what you mean by "substance". I've been re-reading Locke again, and he raises this problem in very, very interesting ways. Actually, on one not-too-controversial interpretation, I think Locke's "substance" is similar to "things in themselves". There are differences of course, especially when primary qualities are listed as belonging to the thing in the material world.

As to the rest, he says it's "something I know not what", which we have to postulate to make sense of experience, unless one believes that objects are properties alone, which I think is unintelligible.

So on interpretation, thinking substance is possible, we just don't know how it could be so.

But do you think Descartes treated res cogitans as a principle, or an actual substance? In First Principles 1, 52 he defines substance, then in 1-53 qualifies the differences with the attributes each can have. The attribute of a thinking substance is thought, so....is he calling it out as the case, or a principle which grounds the case? — Mww

I may have not expressed myself as clearly as possible. I'm saying that he postulated res cogitans as a way to account for the things which could not be accounted for by res extensa. Yes, he did classify res cogitans as a substance, in this respect, being also a scientist, he was doing something rational, looking for a principle (in the scientific sense) to close the gap, as it were, his principle was to add another substance to the one he thought the world was made of.

He was as much a scientist and mathematician, if not more so in his time, than a philosopher, which is how we recognize him today.

I do know I am talking to a Finn, we have raised it a few times actually. That's interesting intelligence, and believable. But one thing is having such ambitions, and the other is actually doing it.

From a military perspective, Crimea went rather well for Russia. The general consensus on this war by now, is that Putin thought he would be welcomed and he was gravely mistaken.

So the rest of what you mention may well be accurate, but now we know it can't apply. Heck, even without this protracted war, after about a month, maybe two, this dream of his of negotiating with the rest as a great power seems to me to have vanished, because in reality, he can't make it happen.

We will see how this pans out. Hopefully well enough.

So now Putin is like Hitler, carrying out literal genocide and wanting to conquer, not "merely" all of Europe, but also the rest of the world?

He couldn't conquer Ukraine, and is now resorting to desperate measures. You really think he will conquer Finland and Sweden and Germany? But how could he realistically do that and to what end?

You must know now that internally in Russia he is losing popularity quite quickly and the longer this lasts, the more his popularity will drop. Not to mention all the internal dissent and all the many fleeing the country.

From that, it does not follow that all there is, is what I think (there is). It is absurd to claim there is nothing other than what I, or humans in general, can think. — Mww

Quite right.

And I happen to think that his dualism is often misunderstood. He thought he could explain the whole physical (non-mental) world in terms of mechanistic materialism, the view that the world is a giant clock.

But mechanistic materialism could not account for many aspects of the mental, including thought and the creative aspect of language use, which is why, as a scientist, he introduced a new principle, res cogitans, to attempt to account for what his mechanistic philosophy could not explain.

He was wrong in the end, but it was a sensible approach.

I had in mind Russia (the Russian state) in general rather than Putin himself, who does have most of the power.

Netanyahu is a compulsive liar, Bolsonaro too, Bush junior was pretty bad and so was Blair, not to mention whoever is in charge in North Korea.

You are right that countries will lie often. Not always, nor is agreeing with some of the things they say make you support them.

This point generalized to virtually every government in the world. They all commit crimes to differing degrees, but agreeing with them doesn't make one a "supporter" or a "hater".

Of course, all this gets magnified significantly during wartime.

The main point here, for me, regardless of how the attacks were carried out, is that this has increased military offensive, as we are seeing daily with this missile barrage. They have a right, no doubt, to fight in every part of Ukraine. I think they have to be careful in what choices they carry out. Russia still has plenty of missiles, which can and likely will be used against Ukrainians.

I wouldn't gamble on the point of the "red line", it seems pretty serious to me and obviously to many leaders, which is why it is practically the dominant topic on international affairs. I also don't think that if on some particular point, if an argument is given that happens to coincide with Russia's views, it must be "propaganda".

It's not so much that the West tells Ukraine to do whatever they want, and Ukraine must do it, it's more in line with, we are giving you weapons, so you better fight the Russians to the end, don't focus on negotiations, as Johnson said, for instance. He was almost surely following the US/NATO line.

The focus should be on de-escalation, but we don't see that happening right now. You seem to be of the persuasion that Russia can be defeated completely and kicked out of Ukraine and that's it. I really doubt that's how it's going to play out. We will see who ends up being right.

I've been a bit busy today and my brain is a bit gone. Just from skimming, agree on some points, others not so much.

Thanks for the detailed response, will get back to you tomorrow.

I currently cannot access the NYT articles, which are paywalled. You are correct that there is no link given for this claim.

As for the terrorist attack, it is defined in numerous ways, Oxford for instance defines it as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims."

Is the bridge in Crimea used for civilian purposes in addition to military ones? Yes.

Is it a legitimate target? Sure. Was it a smart action to do this? I don't think so, look at the results of such actions. This much was predictable.

Of course, there is no doubt that Russia is committing, by far, the most terrorist attacks in Ukraine, it's not even a competition.

the US, along with almost every other country in the world, considers Crimea to be part of Ukraine, not Russia. And the phraseology, such as "pumping Ukraine full of the world’s most advanced weapons systems" (накачка украины оружием - google this phrase) is straight from Russian propaganda playbook — SophistiCat

You are right. On the other hand, it is de facto taken to be part of Russia. Obama applied the mildest of sanctions when the Russia annexed Crimea. It has important military value for Russia, given the naval base they have there.

I don't think this area will be given back. The newly annexed territories are a different matter, this was a desperate attempt to save face given the counterattack.

The quoted phrase may indeed be out of the Russian propaganda playbook, but it is no less true for being so. You think Ukraine would've lasted much without such help?

I happen to think that the longer this lasts, the more civilians will die, which is not good for Ukraine by the way.

Forgot who was asking, but here is the evidence of US/Ukraine bombing of bridge:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/10/ymsa-o10.html

It's not really the entirety of Russia, I'd say the autocratic Russian leadership. Of course some would blame the population at large for not ousting the leadership, I just don't think it's that easy/simple. As far as I can tell (conjecture on my part), Putin's agenda is one of domination, national pride, and it seems the end justifies the means. Then a real-life chess game. — jorndoe

I assume that when one says "Russia" or the "US" or "Ukraine", one is not referring to a land mass, much less to millions of people, with different opinions and perspectives.

The interest of a politician, or an oil baron, is not the same interest of that of a nurse, housekeeper, plumber or mechanic.

It almost always refers to the elites who are making the decisions, whether in military or private capacity, they are the ones who dictate policy. Granted, even in elite groups there can be dissent, but those aren't the ones making decisions.

You are right to bring it up, and although I have mentioned it a few times, not emphatically enough, it's an important topic.

As for Putin's agenda, sure. Similar to Erdogan or others who have some power. But he has nukes, which makes it very dangerous.

Here's me thinking that wanting a nuclear war should suffice on pain of stupidity...