Paine

That is a very interesting development. While being pissed off by the U.S. could be a powerful motive, I wonder how much the rise of the Salafist part...

Arguments based upon authority are the weakest kind. Since you have no independent view of the matter, what would Mearsheimer accept as evidence of in...

Organisms are not completely determined through their genetic makeup but have different life experiences due to the particular environment in which th...

That is a fair challenge after you give some kind of reading of Hegel that could serve as a point of departure. So far, there is no way of knowing wha...

What do you understand Hegel to be saying to be so confident in your dismissal?

Developmental psychology. Game Theory. Models of urban planning. All built on the view of process as an interaction of conflicting goals.

Okay, it looks like Russia has gone too far to jump start a Minsk III. The annexations also make an armistice line an unlikely option because Ukraine ...

The arguments over who caused what is interesting but which part of the truth of that relates to a future of possible agreements? Whatever was possibl...

Will to Power is not something one practices, certainly not in the sense of divination to discover a personal outcome. Nietzsche's development of the ...

I start with being glad the thing is still going on. Not as a part of some idea. Just that the return is an unexpected gift.

Before 911, Al Qaeda was split on whether to force the 'far war' to be brought into the 'near war.' The die was cast and the response surely wiped-out...

Indeed. Hegel's representation of the ownership of property being an integral component of our experience as free agents is the fault line of the many...

It is important to understand why something is happening. And if there is any kind of resolution possible through dialogue, it will have to start from...

I am curious what standard of evidence you deem legitimate in the matter. When one state invades another to obtain territory and control, what value i...

In regard to ssu's observation about language use issues, I wonder how many Ukrainians who felt marginalized about that before the occupation feel abo...

I did not say that one should ignore geopolitical facts. I merely note that one of the important ones has not been properly included in the analysis. ...

The Ukrainians don't think it is a proxy war. That is what is missing in all this fine analysis of who is threatening who.

With all the shifting accounts given by Putin stating the goal of the operation, the consistent message given through the process is that each set bac...

I don't understand how noting the limitations of our knowledge in the context of all that is true amounts to saying we could not learn anything that i...

Yes, it is an update from the Vietnam era: "We had to destroy our village along with their village in order to save either one."

Nothing could be further from the truth. While it may have been presumptuous for him to confidently declare how the perfection of God's mind relates t...

That is the sort of thing I don't know. In the context of Descartes' use of God in his epistemology, it is a large step back from an assumption that h...

I did read the whole speech. The intention to erase that state does not have to be stated as a goal if it has already been said to not exist. Which po...

Whatever Putin's ambitions may be, he kicked off his invasion by saying what he had said before: This erasure of identity is not justified on the basi...

What I don't buy in Mearsheimer's argument is how one motive for Putin to invade has to exclude all others. Whatever degree Putin was motivated to inv...

Are you saying that when he told me: that he was not being honest?

I started reading Oppenheimer’s The State. A problem appears early in the Preface: While that description of exchange might apply to Locke's 'natural'...

MS DOS, maybe.

Descartes based his confidence that he truly knows things from the existence of God, who allows for the possibility: This confidence does not, however...

My thought was a response to the claim that truth is knowable. Taken as the unchanging that is assumed to be the condition for all that exists, how ca...

I was thinking of it more as ignorance wanting what it lacks. If what is knowable can be established outside of that desire, then it does not have a j...

I was thinking Putin's. But maybe a better way to ask my question is to ask how this group is one Israel is reluctant to offend because it would offen...

Do these Russian people in Israel support the present regime?

Is it not possible that something could be true but one could not verify it is the case? If that is not possible, what is ignorance?

Update: Iran is sending trainers to help with drones they are not providing

Doesn't the factor of increasing Iranian involvement decrease the chances that Israel is simply being pressured by the U.S. to give up on a 'good deal...

Who is stalling? Iran to admit that it is selling weapons? Or Israel because it does not want to change deals?

My point is that if Iran starts to profit significantly from selling arms to Russia, that will be the motivation to change course. So, maybe not so ha...

Thank you, I tried to do that the first time but did not put in the needed extra convolutions.

What a tangled web is weaved: Russia's help in fighting Assad in Syria versus stopping Iran from becoming a go to arms dealer and producer. And the ol...

The pleasure was mine. I will check out Oppenheimer.

Well, that reply helps me distinguish your view from some kind of hyper libertarian credo. The emergence of 'egoism' is where I question how the 'cont...

You are right, it is only my guess. He wasn't banned. It is 3 months since his last comment.

He left voluntarily.

Yes, things are trending that way. Add the brain trust fleeing the country in spring to the young people fleeing mobilization, they should be able to ...

There is a strong resemblance between your views regarding what amounts to the 'collective' and how that is opposed by an ethos of the individual as t...

Yes, that is why so many ultra conservatives and alt right thugs have had a crush on Putin for years. But Putin used to play footsie with the world or...

They do share the ethos built on the centrality of the ego. But Ayn is cool with institutions like Banks to keep her money. You need a government for ...

???????, I see that you have to have joined the party of ????????? ?????: You guys seem enthusiastic. Not sure where you going to receive income after...

Are you saying that Russia is the vanguard for this 'Aspirational majority'? Is the Chechen society, as it exists now, a part of this group after deca...