atomic bomb on Hiroshima

My impression of the issue of using the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is that (1) the Supreme War Council of Japan was not unanimous in bringing a peace proposal to the Emperor. [It could not bring such a proposal unless it was unanimous].
[The military  had a few aces up their sleeves: new technology  and advanced planes and biological weapon facilities. So four of the ministers wanted to continue the war. Two wanted peace. Tojo, the prime minister wanted peace, I seem to recall.] (The Supreme Council had six people. The prime minister, foreign minister, chief of staff of the army and minister of the army, chief of staff for the navy and minister of the navy.]
(2) The idea of giving a demonstration I always thought was ridiculous because in fact the USA gave a demonstration, and that certainly was not enough to bring a surrender.
(3) The war consul did not convene after Hiroshima.  Tojo [foreign minister] sent a special message to get in contact immediately with Molotov to press the idea of being a go between between Japan and the USA.  That is --the previous proposal of keeping the Emperor in place and in charge of everything. But this proposal would never have been accepted since the emperor was in fact in charge of the military. That was the very thing the USA blamed the war on.
(4) What caused the War Council to convene? Not Hiroshima. Not Nagasaki. It was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. [They convened immediately after the news of the Soviet invasion came in.] The news of Nagasaki came only during the time the consul was meeting.
So what caused the consul to send a surrender proposal to the Emperor? Certainly not Hiroshima. Maybe a combination of Nagasaki with Hiroshima, plus the Soviet invasion, plus the obvious fact at that point that the Soviets were not going to be bringing any peace proposals to the Americans. Just the opposite. The Soviets at that point wanted their own piece of the pie. So that is what caused Japan to surrender--not even the fact of the Soviet invasion, but the fact that Molotov was not going to be a go between. Soviet intentions became crystal clear after a millions troops crossed Japaneses borders.




[I might add here that but continuing the war with Japan would certainly have meant the USA army being transferred to the Far East. If we think in terms of Iwo Jima or Okinawa, every square mile of Japanese territory claimed 1,000 American lives. But Iwo Jima is  a tiny coral island. Can you even begin to guess the casualties of an invasion Japanese soil? [Just count up the square miles and multiply by 1,000. That is American lives. Japanese lives that would have been lost you have to multiply by a factor of many times more.  And they were certainly getting a warm welcome ready for the Americans with massive military build ups in the area (Kyushu) they expected the American would come into.]

[Of course none of the above have anything to do with why people condemn the USA for fighting back. The reason people mention ''Hiroshima'' is to see if you are a good person. If you say it was OK, then you are evil. The same issue with slavery. It is not to decide the issue. The issue is to decide if your a decent person. If you defend it by lets say self determination then you are still thought to be evil. After all, no nation except England and the USA outlawed slavery. It was a part of the legal arrangements of every nation. It is all about "virtue signaling".
They always approach Hiroshima as if it was just out of the blue that Truman decided to use the bomb.

There really is no reason to think that "reason" is infallible.
Let's say we are learning the Critique of Pure Reason or Hegel which deal with what pure reason can tell us. [That is  where Kant says that pure reason can tell us more than when there are self contradictions [as per Hume]. He shows  reason can show us synthetic a priori which is the same things as universals.]
But there is no claim that reason is infallible.
So how does reason recognize things. Not by implanted knowledge, nor by recollection but by probability. [The implanted knowledge was refuted by Husserl].
The kind of probability here was discovered by Thomas Bayes.
Dr Michael Huemer shows this in his web site 

In Yore Deah the Rema brings that learning Physics and metaphysics is a part of learning Torah,. Even though the is a famous note from the Gra on this  Rema in Yore Deah, I was one day in the Yeshiva of the Gra in the old city of Jerusalem and saw an extended commentary on the notes of the Gra. On that note it was brought that it was inserted and not at all from the Gra. [Before the notes went to the printer someone inserted this comment that supposedly shows that the Gra disagreed with the Rema on that point.] 

One surprising things the Gra wrote is "The root of the souls of gentiles is from heaven and the root of souls of Israel is from the earth." From what I recall this is from his commentary on Shir Hashirim chapter two [right at the start of the chapter]. So the idea of superiority because of birth seems to be in accurate.

I saw a similar idea in Rav Luria on Genesis in a verse on the three sons on Noah.I.e., that their root was from the three names "I will be" אלף הי יוד הי. אלף הא יוד הי. אלף הה יוד הה.

Even though I learned a lot of very great lessons from the teachings of Rav Nahman of Breslov still I have to admit that the only way to get to the pure essence of Torah is through the Gra [Rav Eliyahu the Gaon of Vilna]. And you can see this yourself any time you talk to anyone in Breslov. When anyone in Breslov wants to show that so and so is a great Torah scholar, they never say "he is so great and you know this because he learned in a  Breslov yeshiva". Rather they say "he is a great Torah scholar, and you know this to be so because he learned in the Mir." [Or they say it in present tense as in reference to people that are at present in the Mir either in the Mir in NY or the Mir in Israel.] 

w87 E Flat Major

Philosophy is supposed to give some direction in life. It is meant to apply reason to questions about life and the universe in general. Yet is it has not been providing much direction for a long time. So instead of philosophy people would look into different religions.
Now in the Middle Ages there actually was direction one could gain from philosophy since the general line then was Faith with Reason. But since then this balance has been lost.

That balance and synthesis was lost to some degree I would guess because of the Enlightenment that meant to push out priest and princes and replace them with intellectuals [as Allan Bloom points out in his Closing of the American Mind].
 But Kant and Hegel meant to find a balance. Kant on one hand looked towards Newton as a paradigm of what a rigorous logical philosophy ought to be, [as  Nataliya Palatnik in Kant's Moral System points out in her PhD.] Kant however knows there are no experiments that can be done. So he substitutes the idea that certain kinds of things, dinge an sich [things beyond the capability of experience] if reason goes into them comes up with self contradictions. And Hegel simply stretched that idea further to come to the conclusion that reason (--no matter what it is applied to) will come up with self contradictions until it rises up one level to a higher level where that contradiction disappears and then at  that level the process is continued until one gets to God.
However Kant and Hegel only lasted until the 1900's. Then came "analytic philosophy". That Robert Hanna has shown well is overdue for the trash bin. So people are waking up again to Kant and Hegel. [But I have no idea what kind of approach to Kant and Hegel, Robert Hanna would take. Which Neo Kant school? If any? Which approach to Hegel? McTaggart? Maybe someone would start to look at them afresh?]