Fixed Cross wrote:
Well, if one looks on his/her existence/life as good, preserving that life and moving forward is a real need and is necessary.
A real need is one which serves humanity, individual humans, and which without it, humanity could not survive, thrive, evolve…
Asking “What is the good” is like asking what is beauty? It is always in the eye of the beholder.
What does it mean that something exists at a given point in time or space but without any interpretation?
It appears to me you’re not making a genuine effort to define anything.
You are merely shuffling words around.
And what does it mean that a judgment can be interpreted?
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Can you tell me what interpretation is?
I am pretty sure you can’t.
I am pretty sure that most of your philosophy is just that – words.
Indeed, each time someone asks you to define your words you complain that they are too analytical or too dry.
You will never admit you’re quite simply too stupid or too lazy to do so.
No, they are too dry.
That’s how you must see it.
Otherwise, you will have to contradict your delusional conviction that you’re Nietzsche’s successor.
True objectivity involves no interpretation at all because it is all subjective by definition
But only things that are beyond human knowledge or imagination fall into this category
To interpret a judgement means to change it in any way possible
I second this, first in the name of WtP. The imposition of the will to power upon everything is itself an act of the will to power–in fact, of the most spiritual will to power. The doctrine of the will to power is ultimately, or in the first place, an imposition–including in the sense of a deception. The doctrine of the will to power is at the same time deceptive and truthful; the will to power is at the same time a value-interpretation and the most fundamental fact. But ultimately, if it should be only one of these, it would be the former: it would itself be an act of the will to power even if nothing else should be.
Now I think the same holds for VO, though I’ve seemed to be at odds with you guys here. I think even the self-valuing logic is ultimately a value, an interpretation, an imposition. You will surely remember my previous signature here:
Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.
Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.
Value Logic: Logic’s self-identical “A” is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.
The last line is not pertinent here (though it derives from Heraclitus’ assertion that for the god all things, i.e. all existing things, are beautiful/noble and good and just!), but the other four imply 1) that even VO or VM is posited, as a value; and 2) that even the self-valuing logic is a value, and not necessarily a fact. Even the value of valuing is only a rational value, i.e, only a necessary value insofar as existence accords with human reason. The latter is obviously something human reason cannot ascertain.
Yeah, that’s what I meant by “being negative”: being negative about–well, yes, existence: as not being ideal (in the sense of Platonic metaphysics).
Still, isn’t that difference basically that Void thinks he’s looking at things from up there with the ideal, whereas KTS folk think the ideal cannot be realised, so they cannot look at things from up there? It certainly seems to me that Void thinks some things can never be raised up–pleasure(-seeking), for example. He seems to think that eros and the will to power shall be forever below his abstract “value ontology”. I discern a certain puritanism, even prudishness in him. Which is perfectly in order, supposing he’s about the age at which Schopenhauer wrote The World as Will and Representation and Nietzsche wrote The Birth of Tragedy; but for me it won’t do: I seek to get as deeply as possible into “bad” pleasure, lust. In fact, I’ve been thinking recently about what you proposed as a successor to the will to power, back in 2003 or so: the lust for truth. Isn’t that a/the precursor of self-valuing? (You originally called it “the lust to truth”, by the way, but I don’t think there was a reason to maintain the preposition “to” over the grammatically more correct “for”. In the meantime, however, I’ve come to see that “for” and “after” are synonymous in cases like this, and as “the lust after truth” sounds really lecherous, I propose to call it that now. I Love Lusting after truth! And there’s nothing ill or diseased about such lusting and ascending down…)
Well, I don’t think it’s the same God as the one he destroys, or whose death he proclaims and elaborates on. There is no difference between Creator and Creation here; the Primordial One (PO) is not conceived as preceding reality. You could say that It (i.e., the conception or notion of It) precedes reality logically, but there’s really no precedence in logic: in 2+2=4, for instance, the two twos do not precede the four, they are the four–and the four is them. This is what I meant when I’ve said the PO is immanent, not transcendent. Consider what you recently pointed out to me, that if the whole is infinite, its parts too are infinite, because they are connected to everything, if indirectly, and there’s nothing to separate them. The PO is then what Seung calls the Spinozan or cosmic self.
How is that? I can see how it’s impossible for the PO to exist as a self-valuing, but It’s the total of all self-valuings. It’s true though that Its imaginary fragments are self-valuings in the sense of valuings of selves (Apollonian eidotes/teloi), which in turn are valued by the PO. That is, the PO is the valuing of all the valuings-of-selves of which It consists. We can become true self-valuings, for whom the valued self is the valuing self, the self-valuing self-valuing, by being transported to the Dionysian perspective of the PO, seeing ourselves as Apollonian poetisings. I would agree though if you say that the PO has no perspective unless at least one self-valuing is at that moment transported to such a perspective (i.e., imagines such a perspective). This would truly make the Dionysian or tragic (Dionysian-Apollonian) experience crucial if existence is to be fully valued.
I am afraid that “true objectivity” is a meaningless word.
You can prove me wrong by defining it.
But I don’t think that you can.
Once you figure out that a word is meaningless, it is wise to no longer use it.
At least on philosophy boards.
It makes little sense to say “there is no true objectivity” if we know that “true objectivity” means nothing.
In order to affirm or deny something, that something must be well defined.
When you say “there is no [some meaningless word]” you are tricking your readers into thinking you are referring to something.
Just because Nietzsche decorated his philosophy with flowers does not mean we should do the same.
Ultimately, it depends on how serious you are.
What we’re doing here is logic.
You can also say epistemology.
Though I insist that the two disciplines should be merged together.
Logic is the study of reasoning.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge.
The two are very related.
Get rid of the word “epistemology” – a nasty neologism – and simply call it logic.
Because that’s what it is.
Imagine if mathematicians started to follow Nietzsche’s thinking and writing style.
It would be a disaster, right?
Epistemology is mostly about the formation, creation, and defining of concepts while logic is about the relation between them. Logic is the consistency of language. Epistemology is that formation of language.
I don’t think any of them has anything to do with language.
He’s saying “true objectivity” exists, but somehow, it cannot be discovered by the mind. So, now, objectivity is disconnected from human experience. Which leaves us with what? Well, how does anyone know?
“True objectivity” is that which we cannot know (i.e. it does not exist for us), but somehow, we know that it is there, or that, it exists. See? Contradictory. Can’t make references to what is not there.
He’s saying that “true objectivity” exists under certain conditions (conditions that we do not fulfill); that it must exist outside experience. So, every object that is not being observed or interpreted, is in a state of “true objectivity”. So, basically, all that is being said, is that “true objectivity” = (unobserved) existence. So, there’s the world of man, then, there’s “true objectivity” (that which is not being observed at any moment). The term “true objectivity” in this context is deceitful, and irritating, since it implies there is a “perfect” knowledge one could acquire, or, that is at the very least, out there, while simultaneously, restricting any of the conditions that lead to knowledge, thus removing knowledge itself as a factor of objectivity.
SAUWELIOS -
Even if I am mostly in agreement, I find your follow-through of the sv logic still lacking - the fact/value distinction isn’t of itself sensible.
A value doesn’t stand opposed to a fact, like a particular colour doesn’t stand opposed to a particular state of solidity; both apply at once.
The fact is that Self-valuing logic factually applies, in all cases. So it is a fact that we must address beings as valuing to make factual statements about them; i.e. statements that always pertain.
Beyond that criterium there is only mysticism, guess-work.
It is a fact that we, as thinkers, as humans, can not avoid this logic. There is no factuality beyond language, obviously - where no statements can be made, there are no facts to be observed. All philosophy is the work of making language into a rationally workable construct. VO is the finalization of that work. We can not speak entirely coherently about anything that can be addressed in words. This is both factual and valuable, and that, too, is both factual and valuable - etc.
Now, the primordial One:
You give the proof of its non existence.
It can not self-value; it can not interpret the world in terms of its continued existence. It thus does not exist.
The logic Nietzsche follows through, of the “too good” is sound, but the outcome is that there never has been a primordial one, an never will be.
Another absolute disagreement I have:
You speak of the totality of all selfvaluings.
This is not cognate with VO. There is no totality that can be factually established, because of the fact that every self valuing is the centre of the universe, and there is thus no conceivable limit. There can be no edge, no border - all the “nothingness” that would “surround” the existent really is is potential. There is no finite number of entities. The universe can not possibly be understood as limited. This, in turn, also negates the logic behind the ER - it is proven to not be factual - though not its value.
The ER is thus infinitely weaker than VO, as it is merely a value, not a fact.
But the WtP is essentially the same as VO, and the ER is a means of explicating a perspective that upholds the law of WtP and VO absolutely. It is valuable in its nobility, and can as such create facts of a less permanent nature.
Humans believe in a totality simply because the word exists.
Logic, VO and otherwise, can only arrive at refuting the possibility of a definite totality. Traditional logic does this as follows: a totality has a limit, and a limit to something implies something different beyond. Where this different thing is stated to be “nothingness”, what is logically said is that the limit is nowhere to be found.
Gummynuts thinks of language as simply the objective truth, a template of absolute being on which he tries to find his path. He never stopped to think about language, about its origin, or its particular structure, grammar, nature, capacity - he is hilariously dumb. But all non Nietszchean philosophy makes the same mistake in a more subtle manner; all use words as if they actually mean something of themselves, without any consideration for the fat that words act on us and causes us to construe their meaning dependent on the structures in which these words come to us. He probably doesn’t realize that different languages work different and thus have different cognitive structures (minds, characters) as a result.
Equally the value-fact distinction is entirely the result of a random formulation by someone who hadnt thought through either of these terms. As Nietzsche observes, a fact only becomes known in a way that is valuable. I contend that this is the only sensible meaning of “fact”. A universally uninterpreted fact does not exist, as all existence is interpretation.
Conversely, whenever something is noted as a value, it already has a factual existence. Pertaining to sv-logic: Self-valuing exists - that is a fact, because it can be verified and can not be refuted. That is the complete fulfillment of factuality.
What is beyond fact and value is logic.
Self-valuing is not merely valuing, nor merely fact - it is reality, it is the modus operandi of the world, the words method for existing, as WL might say.
I am a logician; the means that I verify all statements in terms of their axiomatic ground. Thus, I refuted the ER, and I refuted Einsteins problem with Relativity and QM, and I refuted the totality of existence - neither facts nor values are sufficient for this work: the criterium is absolute consistency.
And this is what the ultimate self-valuing is, what self-valuing logic means: consistency of a process with its ground.
And there we have the definition of Master Morality, and its relative antithesis, slave-morality which is inconsistency with its own ground, a fish in the air, a man running upside down, the “know thyself” forum - and these things are always only imagined. This is why animals don’t have slave morality, one needs conceptual language to be that weak, and one needs a titanic will to subject language, command it, discipline it, ennoble it, make it worthy of — me. And so this is what I have done: I self valued so strongly that I even drew language into my state of logical purity, and bestowed on it a king (the self valuing logic) and thereby made it into a rudimentary hierarchy.
Exactly right.
So epistemology pertains directly to logic.
A sound epistemology can ground a sound logic.
An imperfect epistemology can never amount in a sound logic.
Since knowledge is required for ontology, and yet ontology is required for knowledge, epistemology and ontology ultimately come down to the same study, namely of that which can be said to exist. We cannot, to paraphrase one of Wittgenstein’s rare valid statements, speak about what we can’t speak about.
I think we should be cutting down on pretentious terms and branches of philosophy such as: metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology, etc.
What exactly is ontology?
The study of being?
What the hell is being?
“Being” merely means “existence”.
An ontology is an arrangement of concepts used to describe reality, such as Physics Standard Model, Relativity, Newtonian physics, …, “Value-Ontology” (the universe being made of self-valuing) or “Affectance Ontology” (the universe being made of affectance).
If you thought of a good way to describe reality using acorns, then you could create an “Acorn-Ontology”. And ALL rational ontologies can be true at the same time, as long as they are not mixed because they are merely different languages used to describe the same reality.
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This defines “fact” in terms of human reason (logos). In my view, however, this logically makes self-valuing itself mystical. For it’s circular, and in fact you reject the law of identity. When I say logic’s self-identical “A” is a value, and not necessarily a fact, what I mean is that it’s a “fact” in the sense as defined in terms of human reason, but not necessarily a “fact” in all senses as defined in terms of non-human reason. We know only human reason, in fact I know only my reason, at this particular time. And yes, having considered all this, we have to limit ourselves to our reason. Now you say the ball is in when it bounces off the boundary line (as in tennis), but to me it seems that line is already out of bounds–irrational, illogical to us.
It may be helpful to approach self-valuing as an asymptote. For us, A can never equal not-A, for if it did, there would be nothing beyond it. Let’s recall your affirmation of the notion of VO as a kind of poly-solipsism. You say every self-valuing is the centre of the universe, but if a kind of solipsism is true, the self-valuing is the universe, and if it’s false, every self-valuing is a universe. There can only be a centre if there’s something that’s not the centre. A literal, concrete mirror can never reflect all the light that hits it. If the mirror-image were complete, it would not be a reflection at all, but a projection, a hallucination.
::
In the meantime I’ve jogged, and reading back the above I’m really weary of English. In order to proceed in English, I would first have to rephrase the above in Anglish. I wish the Anglophone world good luck, I bid it farewell with regard to matters like this.
“Analytic philosophy (sometimes analytical philosophy) is a style of philosophy that became dominant in English-speaking countries at the beginning of the 20th century.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy)
Thanks for your long reply. Mine is, unfortunately but necessarily, even longer. Feel free to pick and choose what you want to reply to here.
The question of morality or “the good” always means something specific, applied in a specific context and to a specific issue and person/people. To me, the question of morality I am investiating has to do with understanding from where morality comes and why, in the most general philosophical sense, so that we can get a better picture of the specific moral issues and situations. The specifics are always what matter when it comes to morality.
When we are talking about, or in a context of, self-aware rational life such as ourselves then we are always talking about morality, because morality is what created this sort of life that we are. We are rational because we are morally-capable; we are moral because we are rationally-capable. I do not agree that morality is synthetic, I think morality is right at the base of what it means for us to be these beings which we are. Morality is deeply rooted rationality required for life to develop into the kind of life that human beings are. Examples include, as I’ve pointed out, the ability to recognize that another person is logically the same as ourselves, they are having an experience just like we are, they are alive just like we are, they are self-valuing just like we are… we understand something about ourselves and immediately know it applies, at least in principle or potentially, to other people, just as we understand something about them and know immediately it applies, at least in principle or potentially, to ourselves. The golden rule is also a moral principle that is based on pure logic.
This is why I disagree with Kant, not because his formulations of the categorical imperative are wrong but because they are not developed, deep and specific enough. They are too overarching and generalized to really work in many real-world situations. But that doesn’t make his project wrong, it just means he laid out the grounding layer and it is up to us to build up the layers above that and from that ground.
If VO is prior to morality then to me this means existence is prior to essence, which I agree with. As I said before, in order to be moral (or to be anything else) first something must exist. Existence is the most basic and necessary condition for anything. In that sense, because VO describes the most basic logical requirement of existence, then indeed VO is prior. But, just like with the example of Kant, that realization alone isn’t sufficient. Kant’s CI’s do not exhaust what is morality anymore than VO exhausts what is morality. Try answering a moral question with, “just self-value” or “it’s all self-valuing” and you will see how inadequate that approach really is.
Morality-as-such does exist, just as reason-as-such or logic-as-such exists. Morality is a higher tectonic plane within the larger, broader tectonics of rationality/logic. Morality only applies to certain kinds of beings, such as ourselves, it does not apply to frogs or blades of grass, much less to rocks or atoms.
Once life gets complex enough to understand and model itself, to develop systems of language capable of expressing immutable truths and facts and logic, then this life gains access to the moral realm. This is also because such life has already gained implicit access to the moral realm, because if it had not then it would not be capable of the kinds of things required for life to become complex enough to understand and model itself and to develop systems of language capable of expressing immutable truths and facts and logic. Frogs and blades of grass do not “understand and model itself and to develop systems of language capable of expressing immutable truths and facts and logic”, but we do. Likewise, the higher tectonic aspect of reason/logic that we call morality does not apply to frogs and blades of grass, but it does apply to us humans.
What? But all different sorts of moralities exist because all humans are different, and cultures evolved differently and under different conditions. Also, morality isn’t always obvious and creates the appearance of dilemmas that we must logically reconcile away the contradictions of. Morality is an expression of active, conscious valuing; as such, we have different and often competing values, not only amongst each other but also within ourselves, and thus it takes time and work to try and reconcile all those values to the most consistent and true standards.
Morality can be a compromise, but isn’t always. Some values are not to be compromised.
I am not using logic in the way an analytic positivist or a mathematician uses it. I am using it in the way tectonics, VO and the daemonic use it – which is to say, the proper philosophical way. And from that proper philosophical purview, everything is logical. There is literally nothing that does not have its logic, its reason for being (also, see the principle of sufficient reason, which is irrefutable).
No, morality and philosophy are ultimately the same thing, just as reason/logic and philosophy are ultimately the same thing, or truth and philosophy are ultimately the same thing. It is just difficult to figure out the specifics, to actually work through the moral, rational’logic problems and contradictions and all the nuances within the values therein. But that difficulty does not mean the task is not essentially important, or certainly that this task doesn’t exist as you seem to be implying.
I’m not disagreeing with the impossibility of nothingness. Well actually I am, because things cease to exist all the time, and thus not-existing are “nothing”. But I know what you mean by the idea. However, the fact that nothingness is impossible (ontologically speaking) has nothing to do with what I am taking about here with regard to morality, reason, logic, and completing/conflicting values and with the difficulty and necessity of working through all that.
Then you are saying that reason and logic are impertinent. To me, that is an absolutely ridiculous and anti-philosophical thing to claim.
You need to understand that I see morality as more or less the same as reason and logic. Morality is a more limited range within the broader rational/logical. Everything is rational and logical, without exception, but only some things are moral… why is this? Because some things (like ourselves) are so rational and logical that they enter into a higher more derivative domain of the rational-logical space, this higher domain being what has been called “morality”.
That is like saying reason and logic are only justifiable if they perpetually sustain as themselves. That doesn’t make sense. Reason and logic are what they are, period. Beings such as ourselves come about to understand them, but we do not create them, and they do not depend on us nor on themselves. 2+2 would still equal 4 even if no beings existed anywhere to know this fact. Logical formulations like if p then q would still exist even if no logical beings existed anywhere. Morality is just like this, except that morality describes a limited, higher and more derivative range within the general rational-logical space.
So I supposed we can allow someone to be raped, tortured, and murdered without saying that is bad, in your view? No, I disagree. There are clearly parts of existence that are bad, and we are clearly able to know something about this. We don’t know it perfectly, we sometimes make mistakes and some of this knowledge is in the gray area where we don’t know it well enough yet, but that doesn’t mean that such a knowledge does not exist.
Every human being knows that “bad” means something. They may not know exactly what to put in that category and what to leave out of it, but they know that such a category exists and means something. This fact cannot be denied, especially not by philosophers.
I agree. And that is exactly what I am trying to do here.
I agree. That is also what I am saying. And this is also a moral truth, the [i]rational/logical /i requirement to, at times, stake one’s life for certain values.
No disagreement from me on this point.
Yes, but I do not yet see how you see it that way.
Many bad things exist, this is a fact.
Many bad things keep existing. This is also a fact.
Yes, all beings will act on their own values, this is true. But not all values are the same, and not all beings have the same capacity to act on whatever values they hold.
I am quite comfortable passing preventative judgment on the kidnapping, rape and torture of babies. Aren’t you?
You are misunderstanding my position quite deeply here if you think I am claiming anything close to a basis for totalitarianism. Preventative judgment against things like kidnapping, rape and torture are not “the basis of all totalitarianism”, there are huge degrees of differences here with regard to specific ‘preventative judgments’.
What a blatantly irrationalist, relativist, postmodernist sort of question to ask. I am actually shocked to see you ask this. I mean that. Deeply shocked. So I will assume you are being devil’s advocate here or something.
I cannot overstate how absolutely I disagree with this. We do not need to have the power to “change” something or someone else in order to identify truthfully what that something else or someone else is. The two categories aren’t the same at all.
How can you possible confuse the category of having power over something with the category of being able to understand/identify what something is?
We all do that mentally, this is what philosophy means. It has nothing to do with “having power over”, unless you’re simply talking about having power over our own ideas and thoughts and minds, in which case what you said about having power to change another’s behavior wouldn’t make any sense.
I have already explained why morality exists. It is the same as why reason or logic exist; they are necessary expressions and rules of this sort of existence which is possible to exist. 2+2 must equal 4, there is no other possibility. This is definitional and necessary. The principle of sufficient reason is also definition and necessary. This is why morality exists, because there is a certain upper tectonic range of reason/logical law that applies to certain kinds of being capable of reaching that level, namely, ourselves as humans. In order to get to the point of being human we absolutely had to become capable of reaching somewhat into that moral-logical-rational realm, because aspects of that realm re-made us along the way.
But my point was that by trying to understand what is good or bad from an angle of “what upholds itself” makes no sense, not only because it doesn’t actually answer the questions we might pose but also because it is hopelessly circular, as is the formulation of the will to power by Nietzsche. "Whatever is good is whatever has power, therefore good simply means “powerful”. Yeah, but we all know that is bullshit. Philosophy dies if that sort of thinking becomes our way. As I think it died with Nietzsche, sadly.
Might and right are not the same. I am quite sure you don’t believe might and right are the same thing, and yet everything you are expressing here seems to indicate that you do believe that.
You objectively exist, and the reasons why and how you exist are also objectively the case. Whatever subjectivity, so called, can be said about your existence always already comes from and points to objectivity. There is no “pure subjectivity as such”, ever, as if something could somehow not objectively exist or not have objectively existing reasons why it is what it is.
Yes, and that is also objectively true for every other being in existence as well.
No. While it is true there is no god, it is not true that because of this fact there is no given morality. We do not need “god” for there to be given morality. Morality comes from our higher capacities of reason and logic, truth-seeking and truth-needing.
Why do you think we need “god” to have a “given morality”? Morality does not come from god, god comes from (the fact that we are capable of responding to the fact of) morality.
So you are not prepared to say that kidnapping, raping and torturing babies isn ostensibly bad and whoever thinks it isn’t bad is deranged? I find that quite hard to believe.
I missed the point where you seemingly became a relativist. But I can see how VO can possibly lead in that direction, in the absolute extremum. But I think that is a very dangerous and erroneous way to interpret the idea of self-valuing.
And thinking about values sanely is, for example, to say that kidnapping and raping and torturing babies is bad. There are immutable truths. It is just difficult to find them, perhaps. Or perhaps not, in certain cases. But in any case we shouldn’t simply give up on the idea and become radical relativists.
Right, and disclosure and decryption actually means something. It is getting us more truth, closer to that “immutable truth” thing that is always held up as the ultimate goal. Just because we aren’t at the goal doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that we should not aim for it.
Radical relativism is the antithesis of philosophy, because it is the antithesis of a capacity for reason and discriminating consciousness as such. Eventually we need to plant a flag somewhere and defend that.
My point was that not all rationality, logic, valuing, or reality are the same. There are different regions and kinds and contexts of rationality and logic, there are different values and valuings and different kinds of values and valuings, and what we mean by “reality as such” or “truth” is simply the sum total of everything, of all of those differences however and whatever they happen to be.
I never said any being is bad. I have said certain actions are bad, like kidnapping, raping and torturing babies. That one (I sure hope, at this point) we can at least agree on.
I want to explore the logical chains of various moral claims. I am already doing that on my own, because so far no one has been interested in doing that with me. If you want to start helping that would be great, I would appreciate it. It is very difficult work, but not because we do not know what moral truths are, rather because we must raise that knowledge into articulate and clear language and logical chains, as you say. That is very difficult to do, and luckily not necessary to do for most people to have basic moral knowledge. But before engaging that very difficult work we need to come to agreement that it actually means something (beyond simply “I am expressing my own personal relative feeling”) to say “good” or “bad”. And I don’t think we are there yet.
Again, I would love to get into the gritty detailed logic of a moral claim. But certain things must be understood first or at least alongside that; namely what I mentioned above, that "It is very difficult work, but not because we do not know what moral truths are, rather because we must raise that knowledge into articulate and clear language and logical chains, as you say. That is very difficult to do, and luckily not necessary to do for most people to have basic moral knowledge. But before engaging that very difficult work we need to come to agreement that it actually means something (beyond simply “I am expressing my own personal relative feeling”) to say “good” or “bad”. "
So are you, so is everything in existence.
Yes they are, at least at the biological and psychological levels they certainly are, or else they would immediately die and/or go insane.
Slaves do not have selves? Of course they do.
That is a terribly demeaning and incorrect way to look at it. People can lose power, be defeated, make mistakes, or become enslaved and this does not mean they “stop existing”. But I do understand and appreciate the higher moral standard for freedom, good and self-responsibility you are expressing and trying to advocate here.
Of course they have existence, and structural integrity. It is just different than your own and, in many cases, less precise and clarified. It is more goo-like in some ways, definitely. But that is not at all the same as saying they themselves are entirely goo.
You cannot judge the entirety of anything by one or two aspects of it. Especially when you actually come to understand the reasons why those aspects are the case (in the example of Clinton voters for example (all of whom are certainly not all the same)), and then you start to understand the whole person much more clearly, rather than conveniently and inaccurately pre-judging it in the entirety in a black and white manner.
I am glad we agree on this point then, that survivability/growing and moral goodness mean two different things. It is important to get that point firmly established for this dialogue to make any progress here.
I do not look down upon animal consciousness at all. Merely because I understand how and why non-human animals have consciousness different from my own, does not mean have “very low thinking” on it.
Again, you are talking about ontology where I am talking about morality. You use “bad” simply to mean “doesn’t function well”, which to me is basically an ontological issue. And yes I understand that you have Nietzsche’s view that “bad” and “evil” are absolutely different things. I personally do not really agree with that, in the moral sense I see bad and evil as upon the same sliding scale, “evil” simply means “more bad” or perhaps “approaching maximally bad, in being bad with intention and full consciousness and enjoyment of it”.
I won’t get into this area, since we already know we do not agree and it would be counterproductive.
Humans have the greatest responsiveness to values of all animals, in part because we respond so internally and in such complex ways to values. As for moral hygiene, I also want to see more of that.
Yes, but again we are using the term “bad” in entirely different ways.
Since (to me) it seems you do not believe that morality really means anything, it seems silly for me to continue here. But I will do so anyway, maybe something can come of it.
Well, you have addressed that you will not use the term “bad” to mean “morally bad”. But the issue I raise here is that strength/health is not necessarily related to moral quality. So assuming you actually think ‘moral quality’ means something (maybe in a philosophical sense at least?), you would still need to address the fact that I am stating that health/strength/“power” are not the same as having moral quality and whether or not you agree with that.
Maybe you really do not think that ‘moral quality’ means anything, and this is all a moot point. I honestly do not know.
There are huge differences. DNA for one thing, consciousness and a self for another. Also, animate and inanimate objects act differently and have different requirements to keep existing. They also value differently. Thus I cannot see how there are “no differences” between them.
I think you are saying that both animate and inanimate objects are self-valuing. Yes of course, I agree. Just as I would agree with a statement like " both animate and inanimate objects exist" or " both animate and inanimate objects have rational/logical basis for themselves" or " both animate and inanimate objects are subject to the principle of sufficient reason". But these observations about one shared property between animate and inanimate objects does not mean there are no differences between animate and inanimate objects. To claim so would be a clear fallacy.
I have two balls, one is larger and orange and the other is smaller and white (basketball and golfball). It is true that both are balls, and thus share some properties such as being designed to be spherical and be used in games; but it is not the case that there are no differences between a basketball and a golfball.
Molecules combine or stick to each other to form larger meta-molecules, yes. Atoms stick together to form molecules. Cells stick together to form organs and living beings. I agree that in certain circumstances materials trend toward increasing size and/or complexity. But in other circumstances they tend the other way, into entropy via energy loss.
To a point. They accumulate more of their kind of molecule together in one place, until they can no longer do that. And there are reasons why they do that, and also reasons why they cannot keep doing that forever. Also there are reasons why at other times they break down and fall apart rather than keep growing.
Yes, there are a whole host of facts associated with understanding how this all came to be. But my point was that we cannot ignore natural selection and its role in all this life we see around us, and in how life grows differently and for different reasons than does non-life.
I know how Nietzsche thinks about the will to power. I just explained why I think that is wrong. What do you think about the explanation I gave? If you disagree with it, then were do you see the error in it?
It takes certain contexts to allow for this. At basic, gravity moves basic material together leading to stars and planets, and stars exploding leads to the distribution of higher elements throughout the universe; eventually some of those elements settle on planets, and if the conditions are right then life can form. But absent those conditions, everything reaches a maximum threshold of depth, density and complexity and just stagnates there for a while until it eventually falls apart again.
So for me, the context is critical, as are the reasons why the specific contexts are so critical.
I agree with this, and I like the view that it is all one continuous process. But again, we must realize the importance of context and conditions. Without proper context and conditions, which are arrived at by accident (like a planet just happening to form within the habitable zone around a star) then the density/depth/complexity reaches a clear peak and just remains there, until eventually decaying again.
For example, just above you said you see no difference between animate and inanimate objects. Yet there are clearly differences between them, so why do you not see those differences? Because by the idea of self-valuing you have equated the two together as one thing, because both self-value (which is true). To me, this operation is a neutralizing in a top-down manner by imposing one standard (i.e. “does it self-value?”) and one standard only, and then using that one standard as the only measure with which to understand something. Nietzsche also does this with the will to power in his attempt to ‘naturalize’ life and consciousness.
But you didn’t address my point. My point was: “reducing morality to “surviving/growing” makes no sense at all, because we can understand both of these things separately and as being quite different”.
Your highest level analysis would need to account for these sort of distinctions as I just outlined above. Maybe you do that, but I haven’t seen you do it so far, and so far you seem to be going out of your way to not account for them but rather to reduce them away entirely as if they did not exist or as if they were meaningless.
I think VO is great. But I do not consider it the end of all philosophy. There are other important philosophical contributions to add to VO, including tectonics and the daemonic. Taking these three together would, in my view, create as close to a perfect philosophy as is presently possible.
I’m not really disagreeing with this, at least I think so.
I do not make “facile, easy, quick and superficial judgments”.
Yes, and close to what Heidegger said on the subject with being-there and being-in-the-world. Phenomenology is important.
A new math will be needed, that is for sure. But I suspect that the self/consciousness will never be articulable in purely mathematical symbolism of any sort. We need words, concepts, ideas; we need philosophy, which is thinking and understanding. The vagueness and imprecision of language is very important and must balance out against the clarity and precision of language, in order for philosophy to be realizable.
I’m done here.
I guess I’ll give up trying to work in this topic too, then.
Sometimes it is a very good idea to let something go, to give it a breather, and then at some point, the mind is refreshed and may or may not come back with something which at least appears to be new.
So that IS a GOOD.
[b]From whatever you wish to know and measure you must take your leave, at least for a time. Only when you have left the town can you see how high its towers rise above the houses.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Right, everything has a cause, even when it cannot be inferred from past observations.
Because Void and the supposedly irrefutable princinple of sufficient reason say so.
Not because I said so, because it is true. If you disagree, please offer your refutation of the principle of sufficient reason. I’ll wait.
I’m particularly interested in how you’ll demonstrate or explain how it is possible for something to exist or occur for which no reasons are the case. And be careful how you use any reasoning in your demonstration, so as not to beg the question.
See the problem yet? It is absolutely impossible to explain how something has literally no explanation. The very idea that something could have no explanation for what it is and why/how it is the case is simply the destruction of reason and thinking as such. But again, I’ll wait for your argument backing up your claim that the principle of sufficient reason isn’t irrefutable.