Specter of Reason

Anti-Zionist protesters have a lot to complain about. In the seven months since the October 7 massacre, over 35,000 Gazans have been killed, compared to less than 2,000 Israelis. Population centers in Gaza have been decimated, while Israel has been able to fend off most of the missiles fired into the Jewish state.  Around two million Gazans have been displaced, compared to perhaps 250,000 Israelis.   These numbers are impossible to ignore, but they do not tell the whole story. For critics of Zionism, the current Israel-Gaza war is just the latest chapter in the ongoing Palestinian struggle against the state of Israel. This struggle, which they call  the Nakba ( "the Catastrophe"), began in the late 19th century, when Zionists staked a claim to the land in Palestine as their national home, and crystallised during the first Arab-Israel war (1947-1949), when Israel ascended to statehood and over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees, mostly in Gaza and the West Bank.  The Ca

photo source: arstechnica Daniel C. Dennett was a philosopher of enormous influence and stature, held in the highest regard by philosophers and scientists alike. His work played a huge role in shaping my own philosophical ideas on a to number of topics: from free will (where I still agree with the thrust of his arguments) to the philosophy of mind (where I’ve eventually come to reject his approach). Right or wrong, he was a powerful and inspiring communicator, a luminescent voice of insight and curiosity.  Apart from any particular philosophical ideas, his work has also had a huge impact on my approach to how philosophy should be practiced. Unlike the vast number of academic philosophers, he wrote with a devotion to the pleasure of *reading*. He criticized philosophers for writing for the pleasure of *writing*, as if getting their ideas on paper were an end in itself. He wrote with personality and wit, recognizing that philosophical investigation is a fully human experience. I recommen

 Here are links to my philosophical writing at Specter of Reason (2007-2014). Philosophy Philosophy of Mind Intentionality Knowing How Consciousness The Conceivability Argument Zombie Mary and The Incompatibility Argument The Knowledge Argument Swampkinds Gilbert Ryle Ethics Free Will Epistemology Gettier Problems Philosophy of Language Meaning Knowing How The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction science Naturalism neuroscience atheism Dennett Jason Stanley Kant Kripke religion Sam Harris Philosophy of Mathematics

 Just a heads up.  I've started a new blog where I'm going to carry on all of my philosophical work. (You can find it here: A Study In Philosophy .) I will continue writing (sporadically) about film and politics here at Specter of Reason. However, for reasons I explain at the other blog, I've decided to create a new, separate space for new philosophical endeavors.

My wife and I were talking about it this evening, how her paternal ancestry was rooted in a part of Poland that doesn't exist anymore. The land exists, and many of the villages exist, but it stopped being Poland in 1945. Today it is part of Ukraine. We discussed how this might be similar to what happened around the same time with Palestine in the Middle East. After WWII, Britain and the Soviet Union negotiated new Polish borders. On the one hand, northeastern Germany was absorbed by Poland. (That's why the city we live in now is called Szczecin, and not Stettin, and why Danzig is now Gdańsk.) On the other hand, eastern Poland went to the Soviet Union. Over one million Poles were forced to relocate. Looking at the map below (Poland gained the brightly coloured areas and lost the grey area), it's easy to see that Poland also got smaller in the process. Poland's borders before and after WWII This was only about two years before Britain abandoned its Palestine Mandate, leav

South Africa's strongest case seems to be that Israel has not done enough to crack down on hate speech and possible incitements to genocide within the country. While Israel has taken some steps in this direction, the ICJ may decide that they have not done enough. A plausible outcome would be a provision recommending that they do more. As for South Africa's argument that Israel's military activities should be suspended until a verdict is reached: I think the case is extremely weak, and the ICJ is almost certain to reject it. On the one hand, South Africa ignores the many efforts Israel has made to protect innocent Palestinian lives and comply with the Genocide Convention. Second, South Africa fails to take into account the fact that Hamas continues to be an active participant in hostilities, and that hostages and other Israeli civilians are still in danger--hundreds of thousands of whom have already been displaced. South Africa's argument is ideologically driven, which t