Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

If Putin’s intention in this war is merely to collapse the state of Ukraine, as Mearsheimer claims, then not only has he failed already, he was bound to fail. If a state has the backing of its people – and we can see, by now, that Ukraine h…

[…] If the Russians should occupy Ukraine, for however long they do, they should and will hear things like this every day, dozens of times a day from all variety of ordinary people. I’ve had similar “conversations” with Israeli …

This video of an unarmed Ukrainian woman confronting a Russian soldier is making the rounds. Take a long, hard look at it: it’s literally a profile in courage.  I’ve encountered people on Facebook who profess not to understand the point of this “conversation.” What is the woman doing? What is she trying to accomplish? Doesn’t…

In this post, I said: But I doubt a single one of us will lay eyes on one of these Afghan refugees–unless, maybe years from now, they find their way off the base, “assimilate” into our society, re-package Afghan food as something that can compete with…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Apropos of the Kessler-Carlson exchange, I can’t help noting this irony: the same people who want to insist that a fetus is not a child because it lacks the qualitative features possessed by a child, want to insist that…

In reply to mlyoung57. I think Putin would like to control Ukraine, but is also smart enough not to over-commit. So it’s very misleading for mainstream journalists to describe the invasion as “full scale.” No one knows that. So far, i…

Hasn’t Putin shown, over the past decade or so, that his preference is to control Ukraine through a puppet government like an old-style imperial power? Perhaps he has given up on this and the second-best thing is a gutted, weakened Ukraine (that …

Though I realize that this lecture is currently in vogue among people on the extreme Right of American politics, I highly recommend it anyway. I’ve previously cited Mearsheimer and Walt’s work on Israel, and Mearsheimer’s now-famous lecture on Ukraine has the same clear-eyed quality about it. It is not a defense of Putin, and not…

Although it seems to have caught on here, I still cannot buy into the idea of “perfect” or “imperfect” duties. Suppose there is some duty D, and for person A, duty D is regarded as “perfect” but for person B, duty D is “imperfect”. There are many examp…