]

Pretty much. All we have in the end is speculation.



Why shouldn't it? Strictly speaking, nature holds no secret. We just don't have the necessary equipment (brain/mind) to pierce through all the layers it may have.

Well, correct. I think math helps us discover some of the abstract structural characteristics of the universe. But it doesn't apply well to things well beyond it's scope in physics (biological beings).

I think the inner nature of nature (pardon the redundancy) will remain a secret, beyond our understanding. But, that's idiosyncratic.

What's curious here is why we even have the capacity to do physics at all, and also why the universe seems to be "built" in such a way that math can see into her secrets.

It doesn't make sense in terms of a survival purpose.

You have to try to isolate whatever a "mind" is. But we don't even know what it is.

So, no, I highly doubt it.

What you say is true.

And of course, this is a reaction to Russia's war. But I'm not sure it's a smart move. This war has been a really bad mistake (crime) on Putin's behalf.

Everything he wanted to avoid got magnified times twenty, so to speak.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/14/russia-warns-of-nuclear-deployment-if-sweden-finland-join-nato

Russia warns of nuclear deployment if Sweden, Finland join NATO

Thanks for the clarification. I had just woken up, so I was slower than I usually am. :sweat:

Sure, what you say here makes sense. And indeed, a and b turned out to be wrong. It's another issue, altogether more complex, if at the time (the 1980's) the people in power really believed that the Sandinistas were a threat.

It looks to me like the Domino Theory is correct in fact, hence why Vietnam was destroyed.

But I suspect that, it's not always cynicism, that is, I think people in power really do feel a threat.

Facts.

And if the little country they take interest in cannot be in any way a threat, then it's the hypothetical argument of another great power using that little country. — ssu

Could you rephrase this, I'm not following.

I do agree with your first statement, prior to this. That's commonly part of imperial dogma, they do need to justify what they're doing.

I'm no commie, I'll say that, but these China accusations are pretty wild. You REALLY gotta buy the "Western POV", hook, line and sinker

Human rights and NATO! Is that a joke? Because Turkey is a prime example of human rights.

The purpose of NATO was to contain the Soviet Union. Why is it still around if the Soviet Union fell a long time ago?

It was completely obsolete and Europe should by now have it's own military (a real one), not reliant on the US.

Let's keep it that way. China's system is evil and repressive. The more enemies it has the better. — RogueAI

Are we trying to understand the world or are we subjecting it to Disneyfication?

If that's true, why didn't NATO accept Russia as a member back in 2000?

Contain China? Where? They're going to some areas in the South China Sea, but are surrounded by countries with fire power.

Well, if you overlook the fact that the US stole half of Mexico. It's not as if "San Francisco", "San Diego" or "El Paso" are English names, afer all.

Yeah, Cuba and Russia have a history, which could have destroyed the world. The US (correctly), did not want nuclear weapons in Cuba.

Well, Obama and Trump weren't too nice to Mexico, incidentally.

All I'm saying, is something that I think should not be controversial: no big power would want a hostile military nation on its border. Some countries are forced into this situation, like China with Taiwan, or India with Pakistan.

But it's not as if any of these countries would be say "great, let's have our enemies living next to us."

I mean, the US went to war in Iraq for WMD's (that's what they stated) and that country is not even close to US borders. Not to mention the sanction on Iran, also extremely far away from the US.

What Russia is doing is still awful and criminal, they shouldn't have done it, the punch is coming back with interest added. But from a "realpolitik" perspective, it makes sense.

What's scary is a nuclear war.

What Russia is doing is criminal, no doubt at all about it.

But if they're cornered without being offered a decent way "out", is very dangerous, regardless of what one may think of the situation.

https://www.ft.com/content/dc70777f-05d9-4e44-8217-30f448e2b64f

Finland to decide within ‘weeks’ whether to join Nato

This is scary. It makes sense. But damn, what a mess.

Yeah. No.

That's for another thread.

That's a good diversion.

Ask Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, in fact all of South America.

What does that have to do with anything? Like at all?

Clearly the US, but that's immaterial to this.

They can have a crap army, it doesn't matter. North Korea's apparently is pretty crap. They don't get invaded.

Wouldn't want a hostile military nation living next to me, no. Obviously.

What?

Oh, then let Russia put a base in Mexico in Canada, no problem.

Well. They could. They've surprised me before with this war.

However, they have been warned about the use of chemical weapons. I don't think many people want to rush to WWIII, but who knows?

Hard to believe she's still taken seriously. I mean, I prefer Deepak Chopra, literally.

Stuck up *****.

Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

I mean, there should be people around that remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, not just Chomsky.

But it's also cheap votes. It's disgusting. But - nothing new.

I mean, I know the initial shock of this war has blown over - for those of us not in it in real time - but it's far from clear we are out of the woods yet.

Took them long enough to say this. They've been really trying to make it seem as if there's almost no chance this can happen here, or a very low chance.

I think it's higher.

But yes, you are correct, these are people that should be taken seriously.

Well. Maybe. But they surely must have heard that NATO will intervene if they use chemical weapons, or at least, this is what they've stated.

The point is that time is against them (Russia), so either they do something big quickly, or it will get very ugly for them.

I'm surprised that Russia is allowing for other countries to send arms to Ukraine.

This still has a long ways to go, ffs. It's already been way too long. Each day these sanctions will bite more and more and then, we may see the Russians go crazy.

Not good.

Austria’s Nehammer ‘pessimistic’ over Putin’s ‘war logic’

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said he was “rather pessimistic” about the prospects for diplomacy ending the Ukraine conflict after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Describing Putin as having “massively entered into a logic of war”, Nehammer told reporters following his meeting that he was “rather pessimistic” about the success of negotiations “because peace talks are always very time-intensive while military logic says: ‘Don’t spend too much time and go directly into battle'”.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/10/russia-ukraine-live-news-war-to-slash-ukraines-gdp-by-45

The only thing I like about "analytic" philosophy is that they try to be clear. But some of them do lack content, at least for me. Quine, for instance, does nothing for me, nor does Kripke or Lewis.

Of course the world is interesting, there are many ways to tackle it. I tend to find certain figures enlighten me more than others, often in an eclectic manner.

But the world should be analyzed correctly too, one can easily confuse elaborate constructions for insight about the world, or the mind for that manner.

Again, Heidegger is interesting, Husserl is fine, but goes into mental gymnastics often. I don't find much of anything in Levinas.

I think that what you're saying was already well known thousands of years ago, and was even discussed by Plato in his Cratylus dialogue.

And all this elaboration on speech and meaning were already discussed very sensibly by Locke, Reid, Priestley and others.

Was there more added later on? Very much so. Quite a lot.

I think you simplify analytic philosophy. People like Nagel, Haack, Tallis, McGinn and a few others are very, very good.

But, to each there own.

I would agree.

I think however there are some very useful pearls of insights in Descartes and Cudworth (who is unknown) that really set the stage for a kind of special "power" in our souls, in which with our "cognoscitive" powers we are able to take stimulations (not objects) and enliven them.

Once this is cleared up a bit, I think one could proceed down the lines of "reduction" or Tallis "episteogony" and much else that follows. But before checking consciousness, I think there are some obscure factors in play, which allow the mind to have the capacities it does.

Recommendations without a area of interest are very strange to me. If you specify, I'm interested in Chomsky's political (or philosophical) recommendations, then that's fine.

But to ask, what book must be read? Assumes there has to be such a book. The onus is on the person providing the book to say what this book must be read, out of all possible books.

He's happy to get people thinking for themselves. I think he wants to find out the truth, but knowns that in human affairs, there are likely no final answers.

It's extremely long, and should only be of interests to those who think what he's saying makes sense.

I was only half-joking about "having" to read that book.

I agree with others here that there is no must read, especially in philosophy - there are too many ways of thinking about the world and people often feel attracted to very different perspectives, making recommendations pointless.

Unless they are looking for a specific branch of philosophy, then one can throw out some suggestions.

Understanding Power interviews with Noam Chomsky

And then whatever you think is interesting. :cool:

What I'd like to do with Tallis as an extension of Heidegger is to continue to explore the notion of making knowledge visible. I think that in a time when a great deal of discussion in the phil. of mind is about neuroscience and these abstract models that I think are generally very misleading, essentially a more sophisticated version of what the 17th century classics called "animal spirits" acting in the brain, a new approach is badly needed.

These models often make us out to be much more passive creatures than we actually are.

Yes, there is a lot of literature about Heidegger on the environment, technology, science, history and so on. Some of it is interesting (Dreyfus, Caputo, Fink), some if it is very bad (Derrida, parts of Foucault, Levinas - though I might get hate for mentioning him.). I personally can't see a positive project I can make out of it. So I'm grateful to have read him and I admire his uniqueness, but, I had my fill.



Thank you.

I suppose that some of the problem here has to do with our intuitions. Had we better intuition (differently "constructed") we could perhaps see how mind emerges. We seem to lack such intuition.

I eventually felt that he lead me nowhere. He has a very unique capacity to make the ordinary seem extraordinary, but I can't build off of that. And the distinguished philosophers who followed him (Sartre, Gadamer, etc.) didn't really expand on what he said to my satisfaction.

He can be read in too many ways, and although you can always find a quote of his to contradict a statement he said elsewhere, he didn't really illuminate much on the mind, which is what I think is fruitful.

In short, I got stuck there with no way out. So it stopped being such a novelty. I still think he's interesting, but I prefer other methods of philosophizing, such as Tallis whom I think "does Heidegger" better because one can work on his foundations, and some of the classics of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, who have rich insight that I can try to do something with.

I used to like Heidegger, now less so, but he's interesting. Husserl has insightful things to say, but I do think he gets caught up in very serious mental gymnastics.

But to be fair, Husserl was following Descartes to an extent. The Continentals skipped over the empiricists, which I think is a mistake. I won't hide my pro-Locke, pro-Hume biases and although I think Locke has some chapters which I think should be mandatory reading for phil of mind, skipping over Hume is pretty remarkable. He's a force, I think.

But those figures you mentioned are good, I just really dislike postmodernism. That's where I draw the line.

I don't agree. Not that I think Quine or Kripke are too interesting, but contemporary continental philosophy is pretty bland to me.

Chomsky is excellent. I think people often read into some superficial notions of "scientism", which I think is a mistake.

But Kant is fantastic. Schopenhauer maybe better.



99% of the time we are not free? That's a bit much, no?

I take that to be self evident. Though I'm not particularly analytic. I'd say I'm 17th, 18th century phil + Chomsky and Tallis.

And a bit of Galen Strawson. But pure analytic phil, depending on the figures, doesn't satisfy me.

Yep. You and I are virtually on the same page on almost all topics. I wonder why? ;)

And yes, we can put words into a "question like" format, doesn't mean it's coherent or sometimes, even answerable by us.

I'm not much into political philosophy. I like phil of mind, epistemology, metaphysics. And on these alone, they have so much gold. Much richer than most modern interpretations.

But I'm sure they both have quite sensible things to say about politics too.