Requesting iambiguous to discuss Judgement and Action

[iambiguous]

@Xenophon

@iambiguous

Of course, the overwhelming preponderance of animal species never ponder their interactions in this way. Why? Because, driven genetically by instinct, it never comes up.

Reasons have nothing to do with it for them.

The irony here then being that if we live in an entirely determined universe our own species is really no different. Except that we embody the illusion that our reasons really our own own because we think we freely chose them and not others.

I happen to think that even our reasoning and our conscious thoughts are the result of instinct.

Then you ought to consider taking your arguments here: knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

These folks are convinced that in order to more fully understand human interactions the place to start is genetically. There are “natural behaviors” rooted in biological imperatives rooted in millions of years of evolution.

And all the so-called “enlightenment” embedded memetically in all the so-called “civilizations” changes none of that. Among other things, men are men and women are women. And all the feminists in the world won’t change that.

Go ahead, give it a shot. If nothing else I’d be curious to see if you either did or did not end up in the dungeon.

For example, on this thread: knowthyself.forumotion.net/t2176 … imp-talk-3

@iambiguous

Yes, but I keep reminding you that just because you don’t approach the relationship between “Judgment” and “Action” and “Good” in this manner, your own behaviors may well come into conflict with those who do. Then What? Then it is necessary for you to establish that they should approach this crucial relationship more like you do. How? Well, you will give them reasons why. And they will give you reasons why not. Then what?

@Xenophon

In the real world, insofar as my behaviours come into conflict with others such that I am to be put in a disadvantage, I do not enter discussion, and even if I did I would not discuss the matter in such a way as to try to convince others that what is good for them is not because it is bad for me, unless I was being deceptive, but the latter is not what I’m trying to do when I examine a position philosophically.

Okay, then it seems [to me] that you “resolve” such conflicts by merely assuming that your own narrative here is the correct one. In other words, if it results in establishing all of the advantages for you.

Either/or.

And, sure, that is certainly one rather effective way in which to go about calculating these things. Though it would seem [to me] to involve one or another tangled rendition of might makes right and right makes might; or in contexts in which no one is clearly mightier or in which a consensus regarding behaviors to be either prescribed or proscribed is not able to be reached, it is agreed that moderation, negotiation and compromise are preferable. At least “here and now”. Until something changes and everything has got to be recalculated.

And, in turn, there are those who imagine that these calculations have litlle or nothing to do with the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political ceconomy.

Okay, fine.

But then we have to take our respective philosophies – our “intellectual contraptions” – out into the world of actual conflicting behaviors and probe the extent to which just the sheer complexity of all the existential variables involved [and then evolving over time in a world of contingency, chance and change] can be compacted down into a political narrative/agenda more in tune with “one of us” or “one of them”.

In other words, when some folks speak of “the real world” they mean the way in which they understand it, not others.

@iambiguous

Now, some species eat plants and other species eat meat. But: They don’t choose to do so autonomously. Instead, they do so autonomically. It’s hard wired into them as a biological imperative.

Our species, however, is the only species [at least on this planet] able to imagine that they can choose to eat either plants or animals. Or both.

And that makes all the difference in the world. Why? Because given some degree of “free will”, it introduces the “is/ought” world into the equation.

And it is here that I surmise that limitations are applicable regarding so-called “rational exchanges” in forums like this one.

@Xenophon

I don’t believe in free will.

How far then do you take this? Up to and including the part whereby this very exchange that we are having is only as it ever could have been?

That “mindful matter” embedded in the human brain produces results no less embedded in the either/or world? That your post topples over onto mine, mine onto yours and “I” is but an illusion in calculations that are ever and always only in sync autonomically with “all there is”?

Apparently…yes:

@Xenophon

When I or you or anybody has a given idea, it doesn’t come from the will, the will itself, as far as I can see, simply arises from some unconscious part of ourselves. Even our arguments here are what occur to us but are not necessarily created by us consciously, which is to say that even our conscious thoughts are posterior to the unconscious process from which they arise.

Well, one way to look at it then is to argue – to “argue” – that I’m right from my side and you’re right from yours. But only because there was never any possibility that either one of us was ever going to argue [autonomously] anything different.

Even our “differences” here are autonomically determined.

@Xenophon

Edit: I don’t think that what I said about free will negates the issue that you are raising however. Take for example veganism. We could become vegans because humans are omnivores and we are capable of producing enough food that we could survive off only vegetable product. Thus far, because we are capable of it, I don’t think is yet a reason. What I mean by that is, if someone could gain more benefits (nutritionally) from eating meat than a strictly vegan diet, what is the reason not to do so? We could say that it harms the animal, but why do we shrink from harming animals? Not necessarily all, but at least some humans are selfish (I mean this in a non-judgemental sense) to the point where they would prefer their own benefit to that of other creatures, and so for these humans, is there a reason for not eating meat? If we say it is wrong to harm animals, can we give a reason why it is wrong? As a sort of side note, if we made the same statement about harming humans when there are laws, the law could be used as an argument. Without laws, I wouldn’t be as sure if there was a reason why, perhaps because human friends and family might revenge, so there could be risks attached, etc.

From my point of view if all of this “analysis” is inherently embedded in the immutable laws of matter going all the way back to the Big Bang, then any manner in which “I” might react to it here and now is too.

How are we not then “stuck” here “cosmologically”?

@iambiguous

For me both “Judgment” and “action” are just fabrications that I reconfigure existentially from the cradle to the grave.

@Xenophon

I can at least begin to grasp why you would say that about judgement, but I cannot understand why you call action a fabrication. If us sitting at our computers and typing and the rest are our actions, in what way do you mean that they are fabrications?

Well, clearly, if we do in fact live in a wholly determined universe both judgment and action were “fabricated” in whatever is responsible for the existence of Existence itself.

Only here of course the mind is simply boggled. How do we explain why something exist instead of nothing? And how do we explain why it is this something and not some other? And how do we even begin to grasp how matter can evolve into mind able to even ponder these things “self-consciously”?

The point [mine] is in understanding how the act of typing these particular posts is intertwined in judgments that [seemingly] propelled/compelled us to make one set of arguments rather than another.

And how do we determine which sets of arguments make the most sense? And what does that mean [to you] given that the arguments themselves are derived from creatures for whom rationality is not even the fundamental factor?

And that is when I take the discussion out into the world of conflicted behaviors derived from conflicted values. Why? Because that is the part that seems to revolve more around the actual limitations of reason. The subjunctive “self”.

@iambiguous

@Xenophon

In a previous post you said to me “But the bottom line [mine] is that for all practical purposes in any particular human community there must be rules of behavior established. Whether you call certain behaviors good or moral or politically correct or ideal or Godly or reasonble or virtuous or natural or ideological sound etc., there must be a way chosen in which to make distinctions.”

What would we do if we were to apply your perspective and make a response to that?

But I am entangled in my dilemma. I acknowledge that I am no less obligated to respond to others who do not share my own value judgments. I take my political leaps to one or another set of behaviors.

But in recognizing these leaps as just “existential contraptions” I am unable [as are the objectivists] to convince myself that my behaviors do in fact reflect the “real me” in sync with the sort of behavior that can be construed as either “good” or “bad”.

@Xenophon

I understand what you are saying but I just wonder if you understand a couple of things, for example why I made this thread to discuss judgement and action. If I recall correctly you, perhaps in a kind of jest, once said that objectivism is the nearest you can come to thinking something a sin. I have tried to tell you that I am not an objectivist but you seem to want to insist that I am.

To me, objectivism revolves not around whether one believes that their own understanding of judgment and action works for them, but that those who do not share their own thinking about it are wrong.

Sure, if you have decided that the accumulation of resources and influence works for you in determining whether your behaviors are the right ones or the wrong ones, fine.

That works for you. And it works for you “for all practical purposes” out in the world of your daily interactions with others. And, if you can sustain this “sense of reality” all the way to the grave, what more is there?

I’m still confused however regarding the extent to which you basically predicate this frame of mind on might makes right or on right makes might. And then what unfolds in your interactions with those who challenge your priorities…those who insist that accumulating resources and influence is not the most “reasonable” or the most “virtuous” manner in which men and women ought to interact. That their own understanding of “good” as that relates to “judgment” and “action” is preferable.

You note that:

@Xenophon

The reason I made this thread and the reason I am concerned with discussing the concept of good (particularly in regards to judgement and action) is because when humans act we do so, generally (even if unconsciously), because we think there is something good in what we are going to do. I mean this even in the senses of the good that conflict with the definition I have given. In that sense, even if a philosopher, or anyone else, would have problems objectively arriving at a definition of the good, I still think it worth considering and examining because we are constantly making decisions which may be good or may be disasterous or whatever else, neutral and mundane. Again, that is why I began this thread. I wanted to discuss it particularly with you, not to convince you of my rendition of the good, it was because you are skeptical of the notion of finding a good. For that reason I thought there would be a way of testing my own perspective, the problem became that we simply reiterated our own positions and tossed them back at each other repeatedly rather than examining why other things might be good…

To me, however, this is just one more “general description” of human interactions that “in your head” makes sense to you “here and now”. You understand “good” in this particular way. I then ask myself: How is this “analysis” pertinent to the manner in which “good” – judgment, action – is understood by me subsumed in my dilemma.

And it still is. Why? Because there are any number of other folks who do not share your assumptions at all. They come at me with competing arguments. Arguments rooted in God or political ideology or deontology or in an essentially absurd and meaningless world.

You manage to yank yourself up out of the hole that I am in by concocting a frame of mind in which calculations can be more clearly made. And then by merely assuming that if it “works” for you, that’s “good” enough.

And there is nothing that I can argue that would demonstrate that you are on the wrong path. It’s just not a path that “I” am able to talk/think myself into following.

At least not here and now.