Philosophical contributions of new atheism? Virtually zero. There's no content here, just mediocre arguments rehashed thousands of times over and over again.

I think it's perfectly fine to have people learn about atheism and the irrationality which religion often does to people, but it's not much better to create militant atheists who are fanatical and just like to make fun of other people.

I think Harris is extremely bad. Hitchens was very good, but became garbage after 9/11, Dawkins is a good science educator. Dennett is very polite, at least.

But as for substance, not here. There's far more to be learned in Hume on this topic, than these four combined.

And, for something more modern than Hume, yet still quite rational and humane, Bertrand Russell also far exceeds them all.

The example of Afghanistan and Yemen too, are quite illustrative. They say a lot about "the West".

Not that this should mean we should not care about Ukraine. We should extend that care to others who are in an even worse situation, however hard that may be to imagine.

You're quite right about sanctions being related to moral outrage. But it's a bad reaction to have, because it increases tensions even more. These damn calls for no fly zones that keep popping up are a damn problem.

If I were Ukrainian, I would likely (maybe) call for them too. But I doubt they truly understand what this entails. It is not smart to isolate an enemy and try to embarrass them.

I don't like Putin. This war is a total catastrophe. But we should approach this level headed, too much is at stake.

It's an interesting take. But, I think we are forced into the conclusion that whatever we end up doing or believing, is all an outcome of our the way we interpret the world, meaning, we can't help but "delude" ourselves in a way. I don't think anyone is exempt from this, though "sages", may be less liable into falling too deeply into whatever they believe.

So I think that even in belief, a mitigated skepticism is the best bet we have of being somewhat "on the right track".

Yes.

In this case, many oil companies are very very happy. Not to mention Lockheed and company.

And seeing as this war may escalate again, they are even happier. It's savage.

Sure, matter leads to life, in certain configurations. But why this happens, is a mystery.

It's a case of radical emergence. Vitalism may now be obsolete, but our understanding of how non-living matter leads to living matter leading to experience is still extremely limited.

I took my rhetoric too far, I did not intend to literally suggest that many people love war.

The point was to express that those in power who argue for war, that it's a noble cause because of "democracy", "unification", "de-Nazification" and so on, will enthusiastically continue supporting the war, that other people pay with there lives.

I think one can make a case that there is a certain "ideal" element to this, who is against "democracy" or for Nazis? But more often than not, the arguments are bs or vastly exaggerated as is the case now .

Really? I think it's pretty evident and frequent.

The late Christopher Hitchens, most of the Bush Administration. The Kremlin now.

Basically those initiating a war, who don't have to participate in the field of battle. It's quite common.

Sure.

Just like those who love war (or romanticize it) are willing to shout and support it till' the end of other people's blood.

They are. No doubt about it to my mind. Perhaps isolate sanctions to oligarchs and Putin, try to make these bite, other sanctions only hurt the population.

I think that having a cursory glance at 20th century history shows that sanctions haven't prevented a war from occurring. Nothing comes to mind, though someone here may point one out to me.

I mean, would it make sense to sanction all of France for its savagery in Algeria? Or sanctioning all of Indonesia for East Timor? Etc., etc.

You have to deal with those who have power, which are the leaders.

I think it depends on the circumstance. If you are in a state of dreamless sleep, you can't say you have a self, but another person who is awake would surely consider you (the sleeping you) to have a self, despite the absence of thoughts.

But if you take a somewhat similar situation, and make it worse, like permanent brain damage and being in a vegetative state, then it seems to me that outside of a few religious people, no one would say you have a self, you won't have any thoughts anymore.

Then there's everything in between. You could be doing an activity, like walking or playing a sport and be "in the moment", very little of this is explicitly thought out after a point, but we'd say you'd have a self in this situation.

The connection is not easy to state in detail, but they do seem to require each other.

They could bomb government institutions and try to spare "civilian areas" - unlike what they did in Mariupol. Then again, they'd lose plenty of aircraft.

Well, to be honest - besides capturing those two "separatist areas", everything else is diminishing returns. Just rubble and death. Unless they're doing this to extract a lot from Ukraine.

It's not worth the price. So, you have a point.

I mean I would imagine this depends on strategy. I don't believe (but lack evidence here, because info on the state of the Russian military is highly unreliable now) they have used all there might (not meaning nukes) - for instance they could, use the airforce and flatten Kiev.

But maybe not.

Except for Sam Harris, — 180 Proof

:lol: :rofl:

:clap: :clap:

I don't know about Mearsheimer, I think I remember him saying something about the conflict, but don't know specifics.

Chomsky has mentioned a few things, but not those details you mention. More so the foreshadowing of such a conflict by leading figures back when the USSR collapsed.

I think it is legitimate to have NATO being a concern for national security. No powerful country would willingly allow a hostile military alliance in its border. And while it may be true as SSU says, that NATO was not the only thing that motivated Putin, it clearly was a cause for concern - for decades in fact.

"Existential threat" is perhaps used to frequently, as I don't think NATO would reach for nukes immediately even if Ukraine were a member. Nevertheless, it's a massive risk that could lead to the destruction of the world - hate to harp on the same point, but, that's how I see it.

So there's that one issue. Other threats are much less severe, Chechnya, internal dissent and so forth. Not existential in terms of the country being gone, but in terms of the Putin regime losing legitimacy if enough dissent occurred.

How to avoid a war? It's a bit tricky. Forgot who said this, and I'm going to probably phrase it badly, but, after a certain point, it can no longer be avoided. What that point is, is obscure-ish in terms of timelines.

I mean, how many ways do you tell the "West" that you will not tolerate NATO on your border before things go badly? The "West" is not used to countries refusing to take orders. Hence the hate of China too. It's not because of "authoritarian regimes" (which they are), it's because they don't follow orders.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Brazil are very authoritarian now, the West doesn't really care about them, they're obedient (mostly or by and large).

So, having said all this. Taking these two regions somehow and saying, if you send troops to Ukraine, we will invade the whole country, might have made this go a bit differently.

Or maybe not.

A full scale invasion is just the very last option that should have been pursued.

Sure. It may not work. Crimea did, but that doesn't attach to other territories by necessity.

But it would have been much better, in terms of less human suffering.

Well, IF it was planned, then there's going to have to be some serious thinking about what a "rational actor" is supposed to be in international relations.

Not that it was entirely clear before this war, though getting your country kicked out of the financial system is not very sensible.

There's a lot to your interpretation, I think by and large, rather sensible. The problem we share here, is that we cannot enter Putin's mind and most info on him right now is extremely unreliable and subject to extremely fierce ideological impositions from the "West" and Russia too.

Now that they're in this, they're going to have to make the best of it, as in, get as much concessions as they can get and declare a victory. Sure, Russia is now more closely aligned with China, but Russia isn't a massive market for China at all - perhaps the Taiwan issue is also one reason China is being diplomatic. But that's speculation.

As it currently stands, Russia simply has more to lose than prior to this war, as I see it. But. But, once we get verified, good data, then we may say with more confidence, how much of this went as planned and how much of it was a surprise.




Sure, I saw that report too. Meaning I saw it reported on some of the podcasts I watched, it's rather shocking. But shouldn't be, it's very, very rare for war to go as planned. Way too many variables.

You are certainly correct about denying reality and being inside a propaganda bubble. But it can only last so long before it bursts. Then again, North Korea exists...

Either way, if this drags on for too long, Putin is just going to have to swallow "reality", however he chooses to interpret it.

What's going to be surprising to see is how Germany and the like will react after Putin is gone (if we are still alive), he's not going to stay in power forever.

Ah. Concrete evidence... yeah, that's a problem during a war, it is hard to know what's going on. Once this passes, we'll have the facts.

What you say about proximity and people talking to each other and all the rest, yes, this makes the whole situation even more strange. But then there are reports of many Russian soldiers entering Ukraine simply not knowing what they were doing there, approaching civilians and asking for directions and the like.

There are also reports - which again, taken with lots of salt - which say that Russia expected this thing to last about 2 weeks. Now, this may all be fake.

My problem is that a nation knowingly going to war with these kind of sanctions, does not fit into the "rational agent" idea, as in I don't think Putin would've been that irrational. After all, NATO now has a reason to exist, whereas it was struggling before.

But since I don't know the facts, I'll just have to wait.

I mean, yeah, countries will imagine certain scenarios if they go to war and will have a plan - or an outline of one and then proceed.

One such scenario is literally blowing the world up with nuclear war. Of course, this option is given low credibility due to its insanity, but it could still happen.

I'm not saying Russian elites were completely clueless or had no idea, but, I do think they very much over-estimated how easy this would be by a lot.

They will achieve some goals - given something of this size, it would be hard if they didn't. I too think they would probably ask for even more in negotiations and we'll see how that goes. But I find it hard to concieve that they would have done this as they are doing, if they knew for certain what the outcomes would be.

Including re-strengthening NATO, isolating Russia globally, etc.

However, I may be totally wrong, I'll admit.

I think China did know about Russia's plans concerning Ukraine, there's some evidence to back that up. Probably China did not expect the war to be this long, but that's irrelevant, so you're right here.

The other things mentioned, like alternatives to Swift, nationalizing foreign companies, etc., look to me to be more of a reaction than pre-planned. It's not as if they have many alternatives, they couldn't well not do anything.

Yeah, agreed, about these social media companies, don't really care if they get in trouble or lose money, they're pretty annoying and problematic, in many instances.

The issue is not: being surprised vs. not being surprised at the sanctions, it's being surprised by the extent of them, which is a different issue.

I suppose their worries per se are sanctions, economy, and losing face, ...? — jorndoe

Yeah, losing face is probably the biggest problem now. They can't go home humiliated, or to state it another way, they will not.

Hence the tension of this war.

Seems Ukraine may have retaliated inside Russian territory, which will likely lead to further escalation.

What a mess.

That's quite a stretch and not relevant here. Taking these two territories "only', would have been much less deadlier than a full scale war.

I agree that this goes beyond a mere flag, but the cause is security concerns mixed with nationalism.

It makes sense to wait for the data, clearly.

As for least bad choice, well, the one in which least amount of lives are lost.

Doing nothing in effect gives free reign to the West to do whatever it wants wherever in wants and no regional power of any kind, will do anything about it. In effect, it sends a signal to other countries you'll take what we give you and you can do nothing about it.

Having said that, the miscalculation on this war is pretty insane and does not justify this scope or scale. Something much more reduced and quick, would have been the least bad realistic option.



Given what has happened, I think it's not illogical to assume Putin had very misleading info about what would happen in this war.

Sure, you can say, and are likely correct, that NATO was not the only factor that led Russia to do what it did. But it was one reason they kept pointing out, so if anything else, expanding NATO much beyond Germany was never going to be a good idea.

Yes this has strengthened NATO - for now. Once Putin is gone, who is going to be the big enemy, China? Or is Russia now condemned to being a pariah state forever? Long term thinking is usually not considered in these situations.

Ukraine certainly developed very good defensive capabilities, and that this was either overlooked or downplayed is surprising.

What do you mean? He expected sanctions as he said in his speech, but I suspect he had in mind sanctions for oligarchs, not being expelled from the international banking system. These sanctions came in waves after the invasion, not before.

What risk free option though? Ukraine in NATO would not be tolerated by any Russian leader, not only Putin, the question is, is it worth invading the country to this extent and causing so much damage? I think most of us would say "no".

But I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say risk free options.

Eh. I think he knew of certain risks involved in invading Ukraine, but I have doubts he would have done so had he known the extent of these sanctions, which are extreme.

He might have waged a much shorter war, perhaps confiscate the two "separatist" regions, but this is way too difficult to come back from.

I understand that Germany, Finland and many others are now increasing military or wanting to join NATO and the like, all things Russia would not have wanted. But, Putin won't live forever, so these short term strategies are not evidently good for Europe as a whole.

It isn't a good idea to isolate Russia from the world for too long, despite its criminal acts. It's a mistake, which can backfire big time.

This is true, almost always the case.

There is nothing but diminishing returns now. Obviously even beginning the war was pretty bad, but more than a month, is pretty intense.

Of course he cannot portray anything other than a victory of sorts. I'm curious to find out when this stops, how will the removal of sanctions proceed.

I was looking at just that. Here's the problem. I think most of us can attest to the extremely dubious record of US intelligence in the not too distant past, so if Putin had not launched this war, it's something I would laugh off and not even give a second thought to.

But they were right, and deserve credit here. The more extreme reports, verging on newspaper aisle tabloids, is that Putin may be in a bunker directing this war.

We have to take this information with several grains of salt. Given how the war is going, how close Ukraine is to Russia geographically and culturally and just how badly they assessed this war going, gives us sound reason to suspect that Putin is very much in his own "Trump world".

In either case, it's not good, even removing the bunker talk. If they don't finish this quickly, they will suffer enormously from sanctions, which further pushes them to the brink.

We'll see.

So Russia is setting up a service in which payments received for natural gas will be converted from Euros to roubles, because Germany and other countries refused to pay in roubles, as the original contract did not have this stipulation.

Russia can't really afford to not receive payments for energy supplies, nor can Europe gamble with its energy - this year anyway.

Russia’s Gazprombank is the intermediary for rouble gas payments, Putin order says

These terms, these terms... can cause a serious block in thinking. Whereas it is true that "naturalism" as commonly used in contemporary philosophy is very similar to "scientism", it need not be the case.

One can be a panpsychist, a non-dualist, a pluralist - whatever and be a naturalist, a real one. A real naturalist would limit itself to saying that everything that is, is natural, with no hint of scienticism or "verificationism" or eliminating mental objects and so forth.

This rejects supernaturalism - that there are other forces in the world that aren't natural. This includes much woo, though by no means all.

If God existed or if panpsychism were true or even dualism - for who knows the answers to ultimate metaphysical questions? - then they would be natural, but not for that reason limited to a laboratory, nor less special or extraordinary.

The onus is for someone to explain WHY there need be something other than natural stuff in the universe and provide, if not evidence, then good reasons. Then I might be willing to throw naturalism to the wayside.

In either case, it's not a problem for panpsychism.

They differ though. Goff calls himself a "Russelian Monist", or a "neutral monist", so the stuff of nature is neither mind nor matter.

Strawson, being provocative, though not necessarily inaccurate, calls his panpsychism "materialist panpsychism", as his materialism takes consciousness to be the thing we are best acquainted with out of all of nature, he adds that consciousness is physical, not physicScal.

Dennett certainly is no panpsychist, he uses the term "nifty" and argues, sure pansychism is fine, but if so, then why not pan-niftyism? And he has a point here.

Yes, there is a sense in which there are extremely rudimentary forms of experience everywhere. But it has virtually nothing to do with how we think or talk about consciousness ourselves, or at best, very little.

There are many forms and articulations of panpsychism. The one I know well is Galen Strawson's. The gist of it is that the basic constituents of reality are so made up that if they are assembled in a certain way, consciousness will follow. So we don't need to think in terms of "emergence" in this case.

Put it this way, given an extremely long period of time, odds are that at least once, this specific configuration of stuff will mix in such a way that its dormant experiential properties are given a chance to appear.

But the potential for experience was always there all along.

That's how I understand him anyway.

And Nature will win, she eventually always does. But we fight it for a bit.

Going back to the OP, it looks like Russia is now using mercenaries to fight. Unsure how significant this will end up being, or if it is more of a PR stunt, unfortunately, we'll find out based on how many people die...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/28/uk-says-russian-mercenaries-to-be-deployed-eastern-ukraine-liveblog

All roads lead back to Hume on this one, with much merit of course, he gave the topic the fame it deserves and noted the massive issues involved.

So what is it causality? It's a good question and Hume would say that whatever it is, we can only see "constant conjunction", event B following from event A. There is surely more to causality than this, Hume unambiguously states, but that's not what we discover when we look at things happening in the world.

I'd add that whatever it is, is crucially determined by the creatures we are. We frame events so as to say that one follows the other, it's an open question if this is what nature does.

Sometimes it may. But we can't get out of our bodies to verify it.

EDIT: After reading the OP's request, I think the meaning of the word is more or less straightforward, we want to know what matter affects this other matter is such a way as to be able to state that one phenomena is intimately connected in the rising of another phenomena, which would not occur absent the preceding event.

Well it's gone pretty badly if he had this in mind - having so many soldiers killed must be embarrasing.

At this point, I don't know what he may have in mind, with lowering population levels, a mismanaged economy, Russia does not look good. Having nukes is what sets them apart now.

But I do agree that they will be much closer to China than ever before, not only in the economic domain, but also further military partnerships of one kind or another (down the line).

I haven't heard this mentioned too much, but I suspect that part of the reason why China is hesitant to call out Russia internationally, has to do with the issue of Taiwan.

If any issue sparked in that region of the world, Russia would back China as a thanks for this situation.

Europe won't be able to get enough supplies for its energy demands this year if Russia stops the flow. Next year, perhaps, very hard to imagine that happening beforehand.

If Russia continues to bomb Ukraine, it's somewhat safe to assume they still have more demands they want met, which aren't being given. Otherwise, it's pointless to continue this war.

Well, by now, I think it's not relevant to science really. Most scientists simply do experiments without assuming any metaphysical stance.

There are exceptions, but not too many.

It is a good question, one would think they would be more readily admitted here, which in a sense they are, but not as much as one would expect.

Of course, the problem very soon arises as to what you mean by "idealism". Berkeley's notion is not Kant's or even Descartes, etc.