bert1

I remember Blair saying that, by Saddam's actions, Saddam chose to be invaded.

@"180 Proof" is right in a way. When formalised, "an infinite person" does not entail a contradiction. There is an X that is both i and p. No problem ...

Is conceptual possibility the same thing as metaphysical possibility?

This gets to the nub of the debate really well I think. The answer to this question depends brings out the different views. Someone who thinks the phy...

But Israel is a colony isn't it? Yes, Hamas are horrible, but the cause is just, no? That's why even if all the Hamas assholes are killed, Israel is s...

It's an odd kind of universe. How is it set up in Omelas? Why does the child need to be tortured? I know thought experiments are supposed to abstract ...

Ah, very good. New word for me, thanks. No doubt I heard the sentiment indirectly from Nietzsche somehow and it stuck in my head.

I can't actually cope with Nietzsche! I tried reading him a few times but found it too emotional. I'm vaguely aware it's the sort of thing he says tho...

There is only power, interests and negotiation. Morality is a trick of the weak to constrain the strong. Morality is what other people want you to do....

Wealthiest: maybe £10 million, a worthwhile target for greedy wankers to have something to aim at. Keep them busy. But then have a mechanism that redi...

How are moral facts discovered? Also, of they contradict ones own values, how does one choose what to do?

I half agree with you. A person's values might ultimately be a brute fact (as Hume attempted to demonstrate), and that determines what is good for the...

Interesting comparing Hamas to animals. I suppose all people are animals. But no non-human animals rape and pillage (AFAIK), not to say drop bombs, in...

Do animals have a reason for their behaviour?

Dickheads can still be right sometimes.

Who has defended Hamas actions?

OK, this is an argument from analogy, which is interesting. The difficulty is, how similar do two things have to be to make the argument convincing? A...

This is an example of what not to do in a group you have only just joined. Demand they do what you say.

Ken, chill out. We're people, not receptacles for you to dump your ideas in. Meet us half way. This is a society. Take an interest in us first, then w...

The solution to a might-is-right free for all is to have global rule of law, no?

This is all a bit context-free isn't it?

Why is it wrong to do that?

The attacks won't stop until Israel ceases to exist in its current form it seems to me. And it shouldn't exist in its current form. It's a colony isn'...

A political solution.

But 'going on with their lives' isn't an innocent desire to live peacefully. It is colonising another country.

I have evidence of a secret network of Hamas tunnels under GB News headquarters.

Would it change your view if instead Hamas was hiding in Israel using civilians as human shields there? Should the IDF kill its own citizens to get at...

As part of the process of signing up to this forum, we should all sign a document saying "I confess I'm a pretentious twat and I pretend to believe wh...

Haven't read that one.

Bertrand Russell "Problems of philosophy" is a nice short intro. It's old but philosophy doesn't change much so it doesn't matter.

Also academic papers are much better than books on the whole

One option is to stay on this forum and engage with topics you find interesting. There's room here for a wide range of knowledge. And when you get stu...

Do not go to the elves for advice

I think it is causal too, but not just in humans. One way to solve the problem of overdetermination (psychological causes compete with physical causes...

Sure, I'm not criticising the concept of emergence in all contexts, just in the context of the move from non-conscious systems to conscious ones.

Either panpsychism or eliminativism I think. Those plus emergence are mutually exhaustive of the possibilities it seems to me.

But sometimes (not always) the appeal to emergence is just as much of a non-explanation as appealing to a notion of God. In both cases, we need convin...

Somewhat, yes. I'd want to know why someone thinks consciousness emerges from brain activity. The usual answer is that changes in brain activity resul...

Well some times emergence-of-the-gaps is used a bit like a God-of-the-gaps. Of course, lots of instances of novel properties emerging from systems is ...

You have a strong mechanistic intuition, which is fair enough. So we take that as axiomatic, which is as good a starting point as any. So what happens...

Wow, I bet Wayfarer has never heard any of that. You must have really opened his eyes. He should be grateful.

Yeah looks like it. EDIT: Netanyahu's pretty much explicitly saying it

That's the critical assumption. Yeah, that's the issue. Who is the deciding 'we'? The colonial West? It seems to me that the nearest entity with a val...

I should get a job writing history books.

I think wounds can be kept open much longer now. Record keeping is better. We have old maps. Victory is not as absolute as it used to be, perhaps. The...

Sure, I get that eventually borders that were once new become old, generations die and the new order becomes the old status quo, and attempting to put...

I just don't think it's a tit-for-tat grievance game. Or maybe it is between Hamas and Right-wing Israelis, but not between the Palestinian Territorie...

Sure, but the rape and pillage hasn't stopped yet, it's not in the past. We stopped raping and pillaging the natives when they had nothing left to tak...

Got it now, thanks. We shouldn't give land that isn't ours away to anyone, psychopathic colonists or gay-bashers alike.

We should have created Israel in some corner of the UK. Nice fertile soil. Not too hot. Tolerant and friendly locals. Way better than the Middle East,...