Spoken like a true subjectivist! — counterpunch

Well, we are human beings. Not Gods.

What other realistic scenario exists?

That's quite hard rockish eh? :smile:

Man In The Box - Alice in Chains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46zC6iR2wsg

Correct, but we don’t care about what we see, as much we wish to be certain about our knowledge of what we see. It makes no difference to us what’s out there, we care only about how it relates to us. — Mww

:100: :up:

I prefer to tangle with Box Jellyfish. Pointless and painful, I'm told. :wink:

But different strokes...

Cudworth postulated things in themselves before Kant and Chomsky thinks Cudworth ideas are more interesting than Kant, he doesn't think "things in themselves" are an empty idea.

Kant was a Newtonian which is why he postulated space and time to be a priori. He didn't just postulate things in themselves for the fun of it or trying to be obscure.

On the other hand Schopenhauer was a Kantian and built on that system. One of the portraits hanging in Einstein's office in Berlin were of Faraday, Maxwell and Schopenhauer. He apparently did not think it silly that Schopenhauer built the system he did.

But if it's pufferfish to you, then fine.

I will always stand by Kant's differentiation of phenomena and noumena, because it is the central problem of philosophy, that being 'appearance and reality', and philosophy only ever consists of seeking new ways to re-frame it. — Wayfarer

:100:

Yes. Science gives us models to frame reality. Reality as it appears to human beings, which appear to include aspects of reality that are mind-independent.

But it doesn't go beyond. It can't. Science only goes so far as the phenomenon we study impinges itself on our mode of cognition. But it's still a representation. By postulating things in themselves, we put in a framework that signals "beyond here we cannot venture", in part because we are the creatures we are, and in part because we cannot exhaust nature.

Well bad threads in terms of woo-like subjects at least offers the opportunity for some here to show why such thinking is bad for rational discourse.

Of course, it rarely changes minds. But for others who might be looking at this site, it could be helpful in this negative sense.

Fair enough.

There isn't much to say about it, true.

But it has has epistemic consequences, if it exists.

There is no contradiction in saying science studies reality, but that it does not reach thing in themselves. It needn't even come from Kant, Russell says something similar.

Or to state it differently, I don't see why this would be a problem. Unless you have something specific in mind.

Yes, there are real victims on both sides. What do you mean "even if these victims' circumstances were also caused by the victims themselves?" I agree that there were Jewish leaders who acted atrociously and as collaborators so I'm fine attributing blame to some individual Jews in leadership positions. I don't think I'd go much further than that however. — BitconnectCarlos

Sorry. I worded it badly, All I meant to say that even if the victims situation (the Palestinians expulsion) was caused by victims too (Jews in WWII).

I don't mean to take it further than that.

I haven't typed the words "human nature" until just now. I don't know why it should be a problem, because humans have a nature, being that we are natural creatures like everything else in biology. But it is very complex: everything that humans can do, are part of that nature. But that's for another thread.

I think there are real victims in history: Native Americans all throughout the continent, Jews in WWII, the black population in South Africa during apartheid, etc., etc. And I don't think this should be controversial in the least.

Does this mean that there aren't other factors that could be included in these events? No. You can find almost anything in any group: Blacks in South Africa collaborating with the racist government, Palestinians working with the IDF and so on down the line.

It doesn't change the fact that there are victims, even if these victims circumstances are also caused by victims themselves, as is the case with Jews in WWII.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I see it, but I guess I'm not really understanding the point. Like you said it's subtle. If by free agency you mean the each member in Israel and the Occupied Territories can do different things, as in not get engaged in politics or not identify with any of the ruling political parties or anything else, sure. That happens in virtually all conflict, there's simply too much variety in human beings.

Having said that, what we're speaking here is of the most salient and organized groups of each side. In this case it would be Hamas, the Israeli government and the PLO in the West Bank. We don't mention at the moment other political groups in the Territories nor other political parties in Israel, because for this massacre just now, they're not the main actors. But all people have a range of options available given whatever constraints they have placed on them given life circumstances.

Hamas could not shoot and just be humiliated by Israel as they steal more land and kill more innocent people. It's not as if the Israeli government needs Hamas to kill Palestinians, they do it quite frequently, but it doesn't make the news. Heck they did it before Hamas with the PLO too, also called terrorists.

Where I think you are mistaken is that you seem to think Gazans have a lot of options. They don't.

I think you are all overlooking how much this is just a feeback loop of the extremes. Hamas and Netanyahu should thank each other, they hold everyone else hostage.. They keep each other in power. But yet the general populations are complicit as well, because they too can't get out of the "security/revenge" cycle and so vote the extremes back in because of the very thing they started and perpetuated. Go deeper than the usual blame/victim performance you are all doing. — schopenhauer1

In a certain sense this is correct. It's correct that Israel helped create Hamas to weaken the PLO, which by the time Hamas branched out into a political entity, the PLO was actually making real strides towards a two state solution, circa 2000 ish.

And of course Hamas won in part because they were speaking about taking action against Israel, after much humiliation and land theft. By now, for Israel, Hamas is a gift. A bit like ISIS for the West: we have to defeat them, etc. But you can't defeat them by killing them: they morph into something more ugly at best. Short of Israel removing the blockade and settlements, Hamas will be around, because what else can they do? They have no autonomy in Gaza, despite Israel's rhetoric.

In the respect in which you are wrong is that, again, the people in Gaza don't really have an option. Well, they could just wave at the sky with peace symbols as they're bombed. Or they can try to fight the most sophisticated army in the Middle East and one of the strongest in the world. Israel is keeping Hamas in power, but Hamas doesn't change the situation in Israel much.

For that to change US policy towards Israel has to change. Then we might see real change in the area. But the power disparity between the Occupied Territories and Israel is so vast and massive, that speaking of "two sides keeping each other in power" is a massive exaggeration.

Innatism/Nativism as exemplified in Russell's An Outline of Philosophy and Tallis' The Knowing Animal.

Though neither are innatists as such.

Wittgenstein has a point, not all, but a point:

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.

I don't agree with his "this is the answer" part.

:party: :cheer: :party:

L.A. Woman - The Doors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHXjcdNIN-Q

But I also think it might be important to point out that it's not always trivial separating science from the scientist. It's not as if science is "out there" and we simply re-describe how the mind-independant world works.

People are crucially involved and we can only hope to capture those things which we have the cognitive capacity to map out or describe. In this respect, and trivially too, we can only do science in as far as it's the type of phenomenon human beings can recognize.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/21/jubilation-in-gaza-as-ceasefire-takes-effect-palestine-israel-live

Things are still very tense in Jerusalem...

After all, knowledge is justified true beliefs. — Curious Layman

I don't think so. This restricts whatever "knowledge" is, and includes things such as knowledge by luck or knowledge by accident.

This is probably also tied in with some rather peculiar connotations and uses related to the English word "knowledge".

September - Earth, Wind & Fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYk

Perhaps. I have noticed that for the past few years I've posted more to politics-related discussions than philosophy. I guess after 15 years of being here/the old PF I've run out of stuff to say. — Michael

That's interesting. Also a bit worrisome if it happened to me, not that this applies to you at all.

I'd be afraid that there's nothing new that I could learn in philosophy. But there's so much in the tradition. I guess it could also happen that no new topics are of interest to me, then I could see that not being something that would bother me.

Probably true here again. I hope not.

I was hearing about a certain faction in Iraq wanting to get involved if this fighting continued. If this cease fire breaks, they could get involved.

Enough bloodshed already...

I'm quite new here, but I'll give my 2 cents on the general topic. I used to be a consistent poster on another sports-related site, was there for about 6 to 7 years.

It's as other have said, I used to belong to a very nice community of about 7 or 8 people. I guess that lasted for a bit over a year. Inevitably someone says something stupid or irresponsible and it all fell apart quite quickly. I tried to bring it back, but I couldn't: life and all.

I go back once in a blue moon to see it, I think at most I recognize 2 people all of which joined after me. The quality itself has not changed much, I don't think. But site format too much for my taste. If people you recognize don't remain, it's only normal to see these things as "deteriorating".

And maybe in some respects it has, but overall it's similar. Being invested in a place will shade the colour of your glasses. How can it not?

Science as in Sean Carroll, Carlo Rovelli or Noam Chomsky is good.

Science as in Richard Dawkins or Lawrence Krauss is still ok, but is missing quite a bit.

They're going to be the last ones to change.

But when they do they'll claim moral indignation at the world's indifference, bla bla. Nothing new.

Hope this cease fire holds.

Of course. Then again, it's hard to think of a more repressive government and mentality than the Saudi one. Maybe something like ISIS.

We can still be grateful that no other country in the Middle East has nukes aside from Israel. But Pakistan could always get involved and then it would be a world disaster.

Anything can happen.

Sure, but who does Saudi Arabia use these weapons against? Yemen. Besides being a crime of the very worst calibre in global affairs, Saudi Arabia is not going to use all those weapons against an enemy that can fight back to some degree. Like is the case with Hezbollah against Israel. Of course, Israel is vastly superior to Hezbollah by many, many magnitudes. But Hezbollah could hurt Tel Aviv.

Israel gets the best weapons. Sometimes these weapons are tested on the Palestinian population. Other countries sell weapons to Israel too. And you're correct about France back in the day.

All I'm saying is that the Israel lobby goes way beyond AIPAC, which by now, since Sanders ran in 2016 actually, has lost quite a bit of relevance. The Israel lobby includes top US planers and military strategists, since it is an ally when it comes to killing people in the Middle East. This continues to be the case to this day.

But if the US population strongly pressures the government to stop supporting Israeli crimes, this could change to some extent.

People still don't realize just how dangerous that would have been, and how important it was to vote him out. Which is very discouraging. — Xtrix

Yes. It would have been a total disaster. I'm not sure the US is clear of that if Trump runs again in 2024. I hope not.

The problem for me is the speed needed in relation to the time we have left to prevent the worst outcome from happening with Global Warming. Some people know about it. But not nearly enough.

Sure. But the real Israel lobby is the military industrial complex including the Pentagon. They have strategic interests in Israel, they can depend on it to do dirty business for the US, including eliminating secular Arab Nationalism as they did when they defeated Nasserism.

I understand the religious right is insane. I'm just pointing to a encouraging phenomena: 15 years ago you would have not seen these protests in the US at all. I suspect it will get stronger, as it has with each Gaza massacre and I don't think it's limited to "woke" people only, thankfully. With the internet, everyone can now see how Gaza is being abused and how the West Bank is being robbed.

Everyone can see that Israel is just destroying innocent people and repeating the word "Hamas", "Hamas", "Hamas" all the time. After a while, it sounds like "support our troops", meaning hollow in content.

How this will pan out, is anybody's guess. Going to resolutions 242 would be best...

I mostly agree. Nevertheless Israel defenders have to mention Hamas and to a less visible extent Muslims in general. Otherwise there is no possible response for the lack of proportionality, none. You have to make Hamas look like a super power.

But yes, US support has not been mentioned much here. Without US support Israel could not be getting away with as much as it does. It gets most of its weapons from the US and the US is the sole vote against the UN resolution condemning the violence. But pressure inside the US is changing rather quickly and sooner or later, this will have a strong reaction in Israel, because they will be isolated and won't be able to kill children like nothing and destroy press buildings.

It goes even before that. The term "neoliberalism" was coined Walter Lippman Colloquium in Paris in 1938 by liberal (market based) minded intellectuals and economists, in part as a reaction to the New Deal but also in general because they saw the liberal project as conceived by property rights and competition being corrupted in the late 19th and early 20th century, more or less.

It comes in large part from the Austrian School whose most lauded member is Von Mises. But it included Joseph Schumpeter, Willheim Röpke, Hayek and many others. They thought about how to save market society for a very long time. And only really started implementing such views, in as much as they could, by the time of Reagan and Thatcher, although as you know, it was forced down on the people of Chile under Pinochet. Friedman was a member, but quite simple minded compared to others.

Quinn Slobodian documents this very well in Globalists: The End of Empire and The Birth of Neoliberalism. Recommended to me by you know who.

There are others too by different authors: Marginal Revolutionaries by Wasserman, The Morals of the Market by Whyte, Never Let A Serious Crises Go to Waste by Mirowski, etc., etc.

In any case, it has very much managed to seep into all of us to some extent or other. It may be starting to crack, as evidenced by Biden's agenda, which far, far from ideal, is a step away from austerity.

Zionism even had anti-statist branches, based on mutual cooperation. It's what Chomsky's father was in to as was Chomsky himself.

Then again, WWII did not allow for many options for the Jewish people. So the US and Europe are also directly connected to this mess. It need not have played out this way...

into a system of multiple elites: an educated left wing elite and an income / wealth right wing elite, both of which are inegalitarian. The left wing elite is interested in cooperation, but not to the point where is would endanger it's privileges, and the right wing is committed to competition as the basic principle. — Echarmion

I think that makes sense. I'd only add that some of this left elite may be willing to "give back", in terms of paying slightly higher taxes and some may even want modest welfare reform. But this does not mean "endangering it's privileges" in a manner that would actually cause them to lose privileges.

If they were smart, they'd want modest "reform", because it gives something to the people and could serve to temper the anger which is felt throughout the world. And then they would look good and perhaps even do some good, while staying safe. But even that's too radical for most elites.

As for the right, yes. I've seen it pop-up specifically within the neoliberal/liberal (liberals can be anything these days, from right to left) framework, "competition" is a dogma. But this mindset is going to kill us all. Almost no one is safe from global warming, nor massive war. All which increase drastically due to this "competition" mentality.

The egalitarian/socialist left seems to me to suffer from serious problems in coordination and sustaining the movement. There's way too much fighting in the left: you aren't left enough, Marxist that's nothing I'm an anarchist, anarchist how naïve I'm social democrat, etc, etc. It's crazy.

Sorry for the long rant. It's just that the problems facing us as a species cannot wait for much...

I have to laugh.

I expected some pushback from these "defenders" of Israel, aside from actual Israelis. But some arguments here about "complexity" are ridiculous.

Bomb shelters open in northern Israeli cities after rockets from Lebanon

The northern Israeli cities of Acre, Nahariya and Haifa opened public bomb shelter after rockets were fired from Lebanon.

The Israeli army however is saying procedures in the north are back to routine. (Noa Shpigel)

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-officials-expect-gaza-cease-fire-within-days-as-rockets-fired-at-south-1.9821476

The problems Hamas poses for its people are for the Palestinians to decide, not Israel.

It's not as if Israel loved the PLO either, they were labeled "terrorists" for the longest time.

I'm not in the US anymore. But I have to ask, how the heck do you get people together for a long enough time to manage significant changes that would help the many? I'm mostly thinking of greatly expanding welfare and a generous UBI, which is perhaps more of my hippie-ish ideals.

In any case, by now the ideology of "freedom" and "leave me alone" is so strong in the US (and being fair, is also growing in other parts of the world), that I don't know what could overcome it. Not that it cannot be defeated, just that I don't see how at the moment.

To be fair, BLM was very important in the George Floyd protests. Occupy was important too.

Occupy could not be sustained to the degree it had attained when it was in Zuccotti Park. BLM on the other hand, seems to still be active.

Then there's these sporadic demonstrations, such as the recent ones condemning Israel or even back to the women's protest when Trump won.

But these protests are only a few days long.

I know others have, correctly in my view, said that neoliberalism cannot possibly account for everything. True. But it does account for a large part of our current global problems. They've been organizing for more than 80 years.

The left does not have that...

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If you merely want to weep over the Palestinian causalities, I'll leave you alone with your grief. — counterpunch

We may not have much of it left. History that is.

Nice quote. Never heard of it. :roll:

Feel free to analyze the profound complexities of WMD's in Iraq or of Japanese aggression in WWII. :up:

Exactly what the Jews said in 1947. — counterpunch

Sure. No one else cared.

But the British were in a terrible state after WWII, and couldn't maintain their commitments. Resolution 181 was based on demographics. The Jews accepted it. The Arabs rejected it and launched militia attacks on Jews that then led to a wider conflict. — counterpunch

Fine. The point is most of the people living in Palestine were Palestinians. Why should they accept some other people coming in to take their land?

But again. This is not the point of the thread. I've already stated the point many times. If you want to start another thread dealing with the conditions of how Israel was created and why it was complicated, you can do that.

The occupation now, the time that matters for the issue at hand, is not hard to understand. If the the situation were inverted and Jews lived in Gaza and the West Bank, I don't think you'd raise these points. It would be simple: Palestine needs to give Jews what is their land as stated in 242. That's it.

But that's the thing. We can talk of history for a long time. We can even go back to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand as a catalyst that would lead to the creation of Israel eventually.

We can speak of how the Palestinians could have accepted the UN partition which would have given them 45% of Palestine, which was once 100%, but it would've been better than what they have now.

We could also mention how the US could have taken in most of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and we could speak of the Jewish population in the Kibbutz living in Palestine before Israel existed.

All that is complex and multi-faceted and includes many actors.

But that's not the point at all. What's relevant and the reason why people are angry at Israel is because of the occupation and enslavement of Gaza and the way they treat Palestinians as sub-human, with caloric restrictions imposed on them.

The occupation of land and the bombardment of Gaza are not complicated. Israel just needs to stop and give them a state. It's can only be complicated if you are an Israeli trying to rationalize the unjustifiable. The same way many in the US rationalized war crimes in Iraq or way back in Vietnam. For the vast majority of victims, it is not complicated.