Ramification in Causality is meaningless lie of the human

Okay, but are you actually able to demonstrate this such that both the scientific and the philosophical communties react, “Wow, why didn’t we think of that?!”

Bottom line [mine]: that you claim to know this is one thing, that you are able to substantiate how and why all rational men and women are obligated to know this too…?

That’s where I will always take speculation of this sort: out into a world that encompasses our day to day subsistence embedded in our day to day interactions to sustain it. In other words, a conscious awareness of what? Of what particular relationships in what particular context construed from what particular points of view?

Then this part:

Yes, you said that but what is there really left from my end but this: What on earth does that mean?

This is just another “world of words” to me. There is nothing [that I can discern] connecting them to the world that we live in other than the assumptions you have concocted “in your head”.

How then does this relate to an issue like animal rights or abortion or the role of government? How is your own moral narrative acted out in your interactions with others? Interactions that come into conflict because you can’t make opinions meet about that which is said to constitute virtue?

Again, I have no real understanding of how you would go about substantiating this beyond just making the claims themselves.

As a moral nihilist [in a No God world] I agree. And sans “right makes might” that would seem to leave two alternatives: might makes right or moderation, negotiation and compromise. The rule of law.

But you provide no actual existential context. Meaning is subjective in that “I” is a genetic and memetic construct from the cradle to the grave. But there is clearly meaning that can be conveyed [in the either/or world] such that it would be deemed objective. For example, what does it mean to perform an abortion? This can in fact be described whereby the meaning is applicable to all of us.

On the other hand, if we live in an entirely determined universe, even human subjectivity would seem to be just another mechanical aspect of the interaction of matter.

Yes, but if both are matter and matter is inherently in sync with that which explains existence itself, nothing is ever anything other than what it must be. Mind here is just a mystery that science and philosophy continue to grapple with.

Yes, and that is exactly what folks like James S. Saint once noted in turn. Only he constructed his own fantastical conclusions out of “definitional logic”. Given his definitions embedded in his premises then [of course] his conclusions.

What I do is to note that in regard to 1] the is/ought world and 2] the really Big Questions, we do not appear able to reach a definitive conclusion regarding what either does or does not “make sense”. Just different sets of assumptions regarding what the words in the arguments themselves are said to mean.

Then it seems [to me] to come down to this:

From my point of view this always comes down to our ability to connect the dots between what we think is true in our heads and coming up with ways in which to demonstrate that all rational men and women are likely to agree.

Then back to the gap between the either/or world and the is/ought world.

And then the gap [in the either/or world] between things able to be proven and things that revolve more around sheer speculation and conjecture.

This part:

Because there is still that gap between what I think I know [and cannot know] and the realization that in a world of contingency, chance and change, I can never really now for certain what awaits me in the way of new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas.

Providing of course that human autonomy is not essentially an illusion.

None of us really seem to have any way in which to know for sure if our own point of view either oversimplifies or overcomplicates existence. Why? Because an understanding of existence itself may well be far beyond the reach of the human mind.

No, I’m saying I will accept an answer that someone gives to a particular question given their capacity to demonstrate why I should accept it.

What else is there for any of us?

Feom my perspective virtue is an existential contraption rooted historically and culturally in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. And always embedded in a profoundly problematic interaction of genes and memes.

And subjectivity here may well be just a psychological illusion.

The empirical evidence is what it is. If you embrace the “natural right” of the fetus to live, then women are forced to give birth. If you embrace the “political right” of the women to choose an abortion then the fetus is killed.

The hole that I am in revolves around the assumption that philosophers and scientists cannot devise an argument that makes these conflicting goods go away. And that “I” here is “existential contraption”. And that ultimately right and wrong comes down to those who have the power to enforce a particular political agenda.

Thus, all I can do is to note how others are able to convince themselves that they are not in a hole here.

Heck I don’t know. Alan Watts said it in the late 60s and it’s plastered all over youtube with 1000s of views.

Listen from 23:19 to 25:20.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_fbWxCMEo[/youtube]

See, all I’m saying is that minerals are a rudimentary form of consciousness, whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals. See? What they want to do is to say everything is kind of bleagh! Whereas what I want to say is hooray, you know? Life is a good show!

He’s saying it depends how you want to look at it: do you want to put the world up or put it down?

He also said of the 4 models of the universe: Ceramic, Automatic, Organic, Dramatic, that the atheistic fully-automatic model was the dumbest because he couldn’t see how life could come from nonlife and intelligence from dumb junk. That seems reasonable to me and rather than having to explain how life comes from nonlife, which seems like an impossible problem, just have degrees of life. It fits Occam’s razor.

So it’s the simplest solution, it’s the most logical solution, and it’s the most edifying solution. The alternatives are more complex, require more difficult beliefs, and require that humans either be mere machines or reprobate beings in need of “saving”.

I think my assessment is pretty convincing, it complies with all rules of logic, and it doesn’t require believing in a creation god or some magic that bestows the life property on lifeless matter that has reached a certain complexity. It simply posits that everything is part of the same thing and there are no discontinuities between things.

It means what it means I guess. Consciousness doesn’t end with decreasing complexity. Whatever it is that causes consciousness is already in the matter. Consciousness doesn’t get created suddenly by complexity, but the consciousness that already exists gets more complex.

I don’t know how it relates to that, but I’m just saying the best way to become virtuous is to become a robot.

Some old chinese fella said virtue is not virtue, because it draws attention to itself as virtue, therefore it isn’t virtue. True virtue doesn’t draw attention to itself, therefore it is virtue. Virtuous acts can only be done for selfish reasons and therefore they can never be virtuous.

The only possible moral foundation is pure selfishness.

We shouldn’t endeavor to be virtuous when making decisions because that leads to arrogance. I don’t want animals to suffer. I’m not being virtuous; I just don’t like it. I also don’t like being flogged and it has nothing to do with virtue. I don’t like what I don’t like.

Thinking in terms of virtue is quite dangerous because that’s how the atrocities of righteous wars are committed: “We’re doing God’s work!”

What form of substantiation would you accept?

Who enforces the rule of law? The might making the right. Where does the power come from? The numbers of the people and majority constitutes “might”.

It’s a question meant to determine the default position we should take: should we assume meaning exists and require demonstration that it doesn’t or should we assume meaning doesn’t exist and require demonstration that it does?

Should we assume god exists until there is reason to believe he doesn’t or should we assume god doesn’t exist until there is reason to believe he does? Which is the best default position?

Should we assume unicorns exist until there is reason to believe they don’t or should we assume unicorns don’t exist until there is reason to believe they do? Which is the best default position? How could I prove unicorns don’t exist?

If there is no evidence that intrinsic meaning exists, then why start with that position and then require others to disprove what there is no evidence for?

Yes of course, we’re like robots, but the life property is in the matter. If all we are is chemical reactions, then chemical reactions are more than we think they are.

Ok, James was wrong and you’ve identified his error. Where is my error? Don’t say I talk in the clouds and need to bring it down to earth because I don’t know how I can learn my error from that. Show me specifically where I’m going wrong.

From my point of view it usually comes down to someone being too proud to admit they were wrong (not saying you are, but just saying). That is why Max Planck said science progresses funeral by funeral: it’s not that the old are converted to new ways of thinking (because that would mean they would have to admit that were wrong), but that they eventually die and a new generation takes over. The problem is we’re technologically in the 21st century and neurologically in the stone ages. Our animal brains can’t divorce logic from emotion and our technology evolved faster than our brains to handle it.

“Ought” is only relative to a goal that we made up.

There is no proof of anything, but only a level of substantiation that you’re willing to accept.

There is no such thing as a rational person who can be a judge because “rational” is only relational to some standard that is completely fabricated. Being well-adjusted to a profoundly sick world is no measure of rationality. When you say “a claim that all rational people would accept”, you’re saying a group of people who are well-adjusted to a standard that you simply made up should be the judge of the rationality of something that I made up.

If you knew what awaited you, then it wouldn’t be an experience, but a memory. You can’t have a game if you already know who the winner is. If it’s mate in 5, then we give up and start a new game where it’s not obvious who will win. Not knowing what’s going to happen is conditional to experience.

Anatomy is only relative to spacetime and it is an illusion in that respect. Is a virtual world an illusion? The virtual world exists relative to the computer the same way the real world exists relative to the spacetime construct. Nothing that exists inside the spacetime construct would exist outside the spacetime construct the same way that things inside the virtual world do not exist outside the virtual world, but are real inside the virtual world.

Can we have a positive without a negative? Or how can we have a thing without a contrasting background of nothing? No thing can exist in and of itself. If existence has any meaning whatsoever, it is always in terms of something else. When my father didn’t understand someone, he would always ask “as opposed to what?” because knowing what someone is not talking about makes it easier to figure out what they are talking about. What a thing is, is defined by what it is not, and therefore every thing that exists only exist in terms of everything that it is not, which means every thing is conditional to everything else and cannot be an objective thing.

Sure, if it seems sensible, you should accept it (not sure you’d have a choice since I couldn’t believe in santa claus if I wanted to), but if it seems nonsensical, you should be able to point out the parts that are that way so I can either help you understand or realize it’s time to abandon the theory in pursuit of the truth.

But mostly you’re saying if my ideas are so great, then why hasn’t the community caught on, but I think Max Planck answered that and Alan Watts talked a lot about fashions in science, implying that it’s not currently fashionable to think this way (science has embraced absolute atheism in order to combat christianity, so any allusion to panvitalism is out of fashion until christianity is finally purged and then we’ll find science gravitating toward the void left by the theists.)

These ideas are 1000s of years old and I am not their genesis. The only thing I credit myself with is finally getting my head around what Alan was talking about, and it only came after 2 years of obsessive struggling. There is nearly zero chance that someone coming from a western background would be able to understand eastern philosophy after only a session or two because the amount of deconstruction and reconstruction is so vast that it requires actual neuron growth or rearrangement which simply takes time to happen.

I agree.

Yep.

The hole is also a contraption.

So we have a contraption caught in a contraption because of contraptions and the contraption can’t believe other contraptions aren’t hiding at the bottom of a contraption to escape contraptions. My question is who is it that realizes all the contraptions are contraptions? If contraptions exist, then someone made them.

Sure, if someone is actually able to thnk themselves into believing what Watt believes, it can in turn provide them with a soothing psychological narrative that allows them to endure all the shit that life can throw at us.

Some can, some can’t. It depends in large part on how deep the shit is at any particular point in their life. And then the manner in which I root thinking of this sort in dasein.

But believing that rocks and glasses possess a primitive form of consciousness is one thing, demonstrating that they do…?

Did he?

But that’s the surreal beauty of human consciousness. All you have to do is to believe that something is true. It doesn’t necessarily actually have to be true.

And Watts was no less in the same boat that we are. He had no capacity [that I am aware of] to close the gap between what he thought was true “in his head” and a definitive [ontological] account of existence itself.

And he had no capacity [that I am aware of] to demonstrate that even what he thought was true he was able to think up autonomously.

Good for you. No, seriously. You have in fact succeeded in thinking up a way [here and now] to look at yourself “out in the world around you” that allows you access to considerably more comfort and consolation than many. And, with any luck, you might even manage to take this frame of mind to the grave with you.

Unless of course I am even more successful in yanking it out from under you. Perhaps you should quit while you’re ahead. :wink:

You can see how ruffled, how agitated I have managed to make a few others here.

Instead…

From my frame of mind, your “assessment” here is just that. It’s an argument. It’s an argument embedded largely in a world of words. And [therefore] its logic is predicated almost entirely on accepting the definitions that you give to the words that comprise a particular set of assumptions about both existence itself and the teeny, tiny speck that comprises the human race in it.

And when you go here…

I rejoin…

And [in my view] all that is really left for you is this…

You believe this. Here and now. But maybe not there and then. That, of course, is all existential.

But when I try to yank all of this “down to earth”…

You respond…

And how on earth would you – could you – go about demonstrating that? Of course, in a wholly determined universe isn’t that basically what we already are?

But if autonomy is a part of us, how does someone become a “purely selfish robot” when, in the course of living their life, they stumble into one or another set of conflicting goods?

As for the part about “doing what I like”, how is this not embedded in the profoundly problematic parameters of dasein?

Is it even possible to turn virtue into an intellectual constraption that is more abstract?

What I am always concerned with here is this: the extent to which one is able to demonstrate that whatever is assumed it is a rational assumption.

And that means taking the assumptions out into the world of human interactions: Whose “default position” in what context?

Indeed, and what we think they are may well be but more chemical reactions. And then going all the way back to whatever finally explains the existence of chemical reactions in this particular somethingness instead of another particular somethingness.

Instead of a nothingness at all.

I’m not arguing that you are in “error” so much as consigning the errors themselves to what I construe to be just another rendition of James S. Saint’s “definitional logic”.

There seems to be considerable proof of many, many things in the either/or world. We just don’t know how even this world – embedded in the ceaseless correlations that unfold day after day after day in the lives that we live – is explicable going all the way back to an understanding of existence ontologically.

But no mere mortal just makes up the things around him that appear to be in sync with the laws of nature. It’s only a question of whether or not his brain/mind is no exception.

But where is the equivalent of that seeming objectivity in the is/ought world?

Okay, but the only way in which to probe these contraptions more substantively – more substantially – is by bringing them out into the world that we live in. At least to the best of our ability.

What parts of them can be connected to the things that seem to be true for all of us and what parts cannot.

It’s all in how you look at it, but even though I know that, I still can’t control how I look at things. My friend says I’m always pessimistic and I asked her why I do that. She didn’t know and neither do I. Maybe it’s a male thing. Maybe I like being depressed. She lives by the motto that things always work out in the end and if things aren’t ok, then it’s not the end. That never did anything for me, but some people like it. Considering that I realize all this, I can only conclude I like being in the hole.

Groovy tune:

youtube.com/watch?v=f8hT3oDDf6c

[i]Down in a hole and I don’t know if I can be saved
See my heart I decorate it like a grave
You don’t understand who they thought I was supposed to be
Look at me now a man who won’t let himself be

[Chorus]
Down in a hole, feelin’ so small
Down in a hole, losin’ my soul
I’d like to fly
But my wings have been so denied[/i]

Yeah sorta. Here’s another talk on the same subject:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHCrjvB7Umg[/youtube]

Start around 31:00

[i]Now our 19th century mythologists want to describe this limit in terms of this one; he wants to say that consciousness is nothing but a very complicated form of mineral. Why can’t you go the other way and just as easily say mineral is a very simple form of consciousness? That works, doesn’t it? I mean after all here is this mineral, I knock it [bangs the gong] and it says that to me. This is a rudimentary form of consciousness. This thing inside is not making a noise to itself, because that requires ears, but in some way this thing is going “boing” to itself, it’s shaking like that and that’s its consciousness, its response, its resonance. It isn’t totally unconscious, but its consciousness is extremely simple.

Now you may think I’m spinning fairy stories, but is that any more of a fairy story than to say that your consciousness is nothing more than chemistry? I mean, you think you’re conscious and that you have this high-and-mighty state of affairs, but actually, if we look at this very realistically, all this is just colloidal substances bubbling around. See, both that story and the other story can be made to seem equally fanciful, but the question is this: if I say about the Gong, “look my friend, I respect you because you are a little bit conscious, you relate to me or you’re kind of a younger brother.” And you know, there’s something endearing and warm about this attitude to things whereas if I say, “Pst, you’re just a piece of metal and as a matter of fact, I’m just a piece of metal too.” That’s a kind of insult.

Now the people who believe that are really suicidal maniacs; they want to put themselves down. They are against their own life and they take a great pride in being that way, and they call it being realistic. I’m only saying it’s a better gamble to take it the other way and say the best thing you can say about it, that this is a living being, but not so much of a living being as something that wanders along and wiggles.[/i]

If that doesn’t do it for ya, have a look at this:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHaxzroYxg[/youtube]

I’m tempted to make a thread of that video. How do those little critters know where to go and what to do? They unzip and copy dna at the speed of a jet engine. It’s mindblowing! How the hell do molecules learn to organize themselves into dna and proteins that copy dna?

And I have no reason not to believe that this wouldn’t happen anywhere in the universe which means whatever it is that makes us, us, is in all matter everywhere.

I don’t have a choice in what I believe. Do you?

Probably so, since he said, “Everybody has a metaphysical assumption that they can’t prove. Watchout for it!”

In his worldview there is no such thing as autonomy because there is nothing to be autonomous. You don’t have freewill nor are you determined because there is no you to be determined. Or he would say there is nothing that is not you. Either way works. There is no organism and environment, but the organism-environment. God is sitting at the bar having a sword fight, pitting one hand against the other with cocktail swords. “Let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth.” One hand is you and the other hand is everything else. Everything is part of the universe and the universe is making it all go.

I’m not sure if it’s good for me that I’ve stumbled upon the realization that I don’t exist lol

Well the good thing about that is you can’t yank the rug from under me without supplying me with a new and better one :wink:

I think that pre-dated my existence here and you’ve seemed fairly harmless so far.

Anyway, haven’t we decided you like being in the hole and are looking for an answer that you already know can’t be found? Obviously we’re just shooting the shit and aren’t seriously expecting to get anywhere :obscene-drinkingcheers:

Yep, I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone so I guess it’s my assessment :slight_smile:

Sure, I define a nomenclature and then use it to convey information. I have to tell you how to decode what I say, so I define terms to start.

Existence is relationship because I can’t think about it any other way. If the totality of everything = T, then does T exist? What do you mean by saying T exists? What does it exist in relation to if there is nothing that is not T? Where does it reside? What is it a function of? What does it affect? Positing some concept of objective existence is like speculating what the universe looks like from the outside, where what it means to “look” is only defined inside the universe. I mean, you can infer T exists because obviously it must, but the inference really has no meaning. How do you talk about the existence of something that has absolutely no affect on anything?

So, the only way I know to define existence is as a relationship.

What’s the difference in instinct and conscious thought? For one thing, instinct is retrieved-instruction fetched via the amygdala while cognition is yet-to-be-determined information contingent upon variables that are fairly random.

Now this: journals.plos.org/plosone/artic … ne.0052970

[i]Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala.

The brain activity in these two regions alone could predict whether a person is a Democrat or a Republican with 82.9% accuracy.[/i]

The Amygdala is in the limbic system, which is the the oldest part of the brain in terms of evolution and is responsible for “fight or flight” and instinct.

The Insula is in the cerebral cortex, which is the thinking part of the brain and much higher evolved, although we don’t yet understand what role the insula plays.

The point is that when presented with risk, the democrat engages in deliberate thought while the republican responds like an animal… and this is 82.9% accurate.

Corroborating study here ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/

So if you want to be virtuous and moral, you will no doubt also want a sense of duty, and such are consistent with: The Religious Right who are robots dogmatically following lines of code printed in the bible; the military grunts who follow the code issued by those who actually do the thinking; those who pledge allegiance to the flag and the eternal preservation of the current configuration of the constitution which includes article 5 which states the constitution can be changed. All of which are mostly republican and 82.9% of them are making decisions without cognition and are therefore robots. And even though they’re mindless machines, they congratulate themselves for being virtuous, but narcissism isn’t virtue in my opinion, especially when predicated on the virtue of mindlessness.

You’re wanting a line of code to follow and it’s just not possible. You’ll have to use your noodle to cross each bridge as it comes rather than already having all the answers by virtue of reducing every problem to fit your list of laws. Don’t get lazy:

Low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427384

Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.

The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12784934

Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideologies scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-conten … 421206.pdf

Selfishness is an artifact of autonomy because if autonomy doesn’t apply, then there is no self. If freewill applies, then the organism can only do what’s in its best interest. If freewill doesn’t apply, then there is no organism. Robots can’t be selfish because there is no self.

Selfless acts do not exist. Phyllo, KT and I beat this subject to death in another thread.

Not sure what you’re asking.

I don’t know.

Anyone’s default position and in whatever context it applies.

Should we assume there is a god and then look for evidence that there isn’t? Or should we assume there is no god and look for evidence that there is?

I don’t see why it matters who is taking the default position.

All I know is James and I didn’t get along too well.

There seems to be proof because it’s proof you’re willing to accept as proof.

I’m not so sure because mortals are required for blue to exist since without eyes there could be no color. The extent to which we call things into existence hasn’t been thoroughly explored.

There is no ought and no objectivity. Objectivity is the observerless object, the thing that has no affect on anything, and that sort of thing can’t be described in any meaningful way as existing.

How does bringing the contraption out into the contraption make it less of a contraption? If everything is a contraption, what significant does the word have?

You’re still thinking that a collection of subjective opinions constitutes objectivity, but it doesn’t. What seems true for all or most of us is completely irrelevant because it’s possible that everyone could be wrong.

Well, in a wholly determined universe, it would seem that how we think we look at things is actually the only way that we were ever able to look at things. On the other hand, in a very different universe, certain mndful matter [like you and I] would instead have at least some meausre of control over how we look at [and interpret] things.

Depending on the context. And the extent to which we are able to demonstrate that what we think we know is in fact true.

This sort of thing is embodied in dasein. Given the life that she lived, she has come to think this. And, in thinking this, it comforts and consoles her. Now she will resist mightily any frame of mind [like mine] that might upend it.

Back to Watts…

I agree that the evolution of somethingness from whenever it began [if it even began at all] reaches the point where seemingly mindless matter becomes “life”. And that life evolves further into minds. And minds evolve further into “self-conscious” entities actual able to know this.

But: How on earth to explain it?

Watts gives it his best shot. But as with so many other philosophical and scientific narratives out there we have no way in which to either verify or falsify his speculative claims. Let alone to take his assumptions down to the molecular level. And then to finally connect the dots [definitively] between the very, very small and the very, very big.

We can only applaud those like Watts who do grapple with it seriously and then make their leaps of faith by way of their own particular “explanation”.

Sure we can go “the other way” and argue that minerals are just another form of consciousness. And then take that back to the fundamental building blocks of matter/energy itself.

But how do we go about setting up the experiments to prove it? What predictions can we make about our own behaviors given the assumptions that Watts make? Do they allow us to more rationally judge our own behaviuors and the behaviors of others?

I don’t know. But that’s my point. I intuit on a visceral level that I do. But how then is my “gut feeling” here connected to a definitive explanation of existence itself?

It’s like, on a certain level, we all recognize that seemingly ineffable/inextricable gap between “I” and “all there is”; but some like Watts are still able to convince themselves that they really have come the closest to bridging it. And, again, from my frame of mind this is more a manifestation of human psychology instead. In considering his own “metaphysical assumptions” you can’t help but note how certain he seems to be regarding his conclusions. His narrative sounds like another rendition of pantheism to me. The universe is everything and we [and everyone else] are “at one” with it. Can only be at one with it.

And you can’t get a broarder foundation onto which to anchor “I” than that, right? You may have come to the realization that you don’t exist but better that one than none at all.

From my frame of mind human psychology seems most plugged into belief itself. It’s not what you believe but that you are able to believe. In something. Something that is bigger than the infinitesimally tiny speck of existence that “I” is in its 70 odd year journey to oblivion. Then the even more intriguing possibility that this belief itself is but another inherent manifestion of the laws of matter themselves.

True. Once you go this far out on the “something instead of nothing” limb all of our speculations become bascially innocuous. And precicely because the answers seem to have so little [if anything] to do with the lives we live from day to day.

But I don’t like the hole that I am in. And I don’t know that there isn’t an answer to be found. I don’t even know if “I” have any autonomy in groping to find out.

And then the connection between that and the parts that seem very serious indeed.

In a wholly determined universe the difference is only what it ever could have been. What seems random is only an illusion. But in probing this how do we determine that the probing itself is not just another inherent component of matter unfolding and interacting only as it ever can?

Thus applying equally to both Republicans and Democrats. And to both the advocates of human autonomy and the advocates of hard determinism.

But they are robots because they could never not be robots. Or, given some measure of human autonomy, there is always the possibility that in a world of contingency, chance and change a new experience, a new relationship or access to new information and knowledge, could result in them changing their minds.

That this is doesn’t happen very often [in an autonomous world] reflects what I construe to be the “psychology of objectivism”. People seem hard wired to believe anything that allows them to anchor “I” to one or another moral and political foundation. And however one uses his or her “noodle” here, the parts about dasein, conflicting goods and political power don’t go away. “I” is still seen by me to be an “existential contraption”.

And the conservatives have their own rendition of “low-level thought” re the liberals.

What does that really have to do with the manner in which I construe “I” as an existential contraption shaped and molded out in a particular world in which behaviors are in turn able to be construed and judged in conflicting ways? Unless human beings are mechanisms programmed by nature to choose only what they are never able not to choose?

My guess: your conclusions are predicated on a set of assumptions that ultimately are unable to be either entirely verified or entirely falsified.

At least not with respect to an actual context.

People like to do different things. Assuming some level of “free will” why do they often choose different [sometimes conflicting] things? Is there a way to figure out the things they ought to choose? I root that in this: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Because they are in fact able either to demonstrate that their own default position reflects the most rational starting point or they are not. A God, the God, my God is either there to be grasped by all rational/virtuous human beings, or, instead, No God is.

In fact though, pertaining to this particular context, there does not appear to be any definitive conclusions reached. But in the either/or world there do appear to be many such contexts. The default frame of mind is able to be reconfigured into actual engineering feats or in actual technologies.

Not so in the is/ought world. And not so regarding quandaries that neither science nor philosophy seem able to pin down.

Thus:

And I am willing to accept certain proofs because they seem to be backed up [demonstrated] as that which all rationaly men and women would seem obligated to believe.

That’s really all there is until an ontological explanation for existence is able to be established as the mother of all default positions.

There are contraptions in the either/or world that can be grasped and utilized by all able to grasp and to utilize them objectively. For example, the medical contraptions used by obstetricians to either bring an unborn baby into the world or to abort it.

But what scientific contraptions are available to them in order to decide when the unborn actually does become a “human being”? And what ethical contraptions are available to them when deciding if abortion either is or is not the right thing to do?

There are things that are applicable to all flesh and blood human beings who find themselves in the context that we call an “unwanted pregnancy”.

Distinctions can be made here, in my view. Not all contraptions are created equal. But some do seem applicable to all of us.

In other words:

No, I’m speculating that with regard to what we think we know here and now about all of this, there is a fundamental gap between that and and all that can be known given a wholly comprehensive understanding of existence itself. And I’m speculating that with regard to what we think we know here and now about all this, we do not seem able to grasp definitively whether we are even able to grasp what we think we know about it autonomously.

But, in the interim [whatever that means], there appear to be relationships that can more readily be demonstrated to be true for all of us. In whatever manner in which one chooses to understand the meaning of the word “objectively”.

In other words, re the world of mathematics, the laws of nature, empircial interactions and the logical rules of language.

I’m not sure how to think about this. If you had a free will, could you decide to prefer coke to pepsi? Could you decide to prefer pain to pleasure? It would seem the only way to accomplish that is to spontaneously change how you’re constructed in order to perceive the world in the way you willed.

In a video where Watts played god and allowed the audience to ask him questions, someone asked if we have free will and his reply was “to the extent that you know who you are.” I don’t know what he means by that. How is knowing who you are, disconnected from that which is determining you? I’ve been mulling that for 2 years and have gotten nowhere.

He discussed that here in one of my favorite presentations (complete with crackling firewood in background):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7vFOU8e0wU[/youtube]

Along about 8:00 he describes the view of people called: scientific empiricists, logical analysts, or logical positivists and they hold that only statements that are empirically verifiable have meaning. If a statement has no way to be verified, then it has no meaning. A statement that has been de-verified, or proven wrong, is meaningful, but wrong. He says this method of thinking has been so persuasive in academia that any type of idealism is extremely unfashionable. Then he continues pointing out things they failed to consider and can’t explain, such is how a cause influences an effect.

He says, “you cannot use the language of illusion, that is to say, the language of accurate, separative description too far without getting into confusion. Push your nominalism and it becomes realism. Push your scientific materialism and it turns into mysticism. Investigate mind and you turn up matter. Investigate matter and you arrive at mind.”

There are no separate things and there is no way for an aspect of the universe to take an objective view of itself.

Well, grab a mineral and see if it’s conscious. If it is responsive, then it is conscious.

What predictions can be made about our behaviors by knowing anyone’s assumptions?

If there is no you, then yeah, probably so.

What do you mean that you don’t know? Can you, by force of will, decide to believe in santa claus or not?

The gut feeling is generated by the same fundamental forces that make everything else go. That doesn’t take away from consciousness as much as it adds to everything else.

Yes pantheism or panvitalism is essentially it. Before you dis him, you should study him. How can you proclaim he hasn’t found truth if you haven’t taken the time to investigate it? Is it because you already know the problem is too hard to be solved, so how could anyone have solved it?

Can the problem be solved or not? If yes, then why not Alan? If no, then why waste your time trying to solve it?

Furthermore, you’re not giving constructive feedback with an appeal to impossibility. You’re like “I don’t know what’s wrong with your view, but since it’s impossible to solve, I do know you’re wrong.” I don’t know what I can learn from that lol

Being a flash of consciousness between 2 eternal darknesses doesn’t seem like much of an existence.

Now you got it! But what does that say about matter? You’re putting life down by saying it’s nothing but matter, but why not go the other way and say matter is a little-bit alive?

Where does life end and sterile matter begin? Is a virus alive? A prion? Self-replicating molecules? sciencealert.com/amyloid-pr … -rna-world

What do you mean random is only an illusion? John Bell disproved hidden variable theory in the 60s. There are no hidden variables determining outcomes of quantum random events. The universe cannot know the outcome of an event before it happens.

Probabilistic. Not deterministic.

One can’t exist without the other.

True, but if their environment had been different, they may not have become robots.

Yes, it’s a probability.

What’s not a contraption?

“psychology of objectivism” = “psychology of popular subjectivity”

But yes, morality is constructed for the sense of “I”. It’s something to be arrogant about; take pride in and define oneself. Morality is the existential contraption (the contraption employed to define “I” as existent).

Because your question only has meaning in the context of freewill. If freewill doesn’t exist, then there is no “I” to have questions about.

Even if freewill applies, any being could still only do what’s in its best interest and that’s a function of how the being is put together.

That’s the morality argument:

FWD to 4:00

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDwr8Ptq3gc[/youtube]

If murder is wrong because god says it’s wrong, then morality is arbitrary (depends who you ask, in this case, god).

If murder is wrong because of some force outside of god or because of how god is put together, then god is unnecessary for morality.

Whether you have autonomy or not seems beside the point because even if you did, you’d still freely will what you will as a function of how you’re assembled, even if the real you is made of spirit stuff.

Even the bible acknowledges this in Romans 9:

9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son.
10 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;
11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)
12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

You can falsify it easily by citing one selfless act. I say it’s impossible since people have been trying to find an example for generations. This should be philosophical common knowledge by now and I thought it was until I met Phyllo.

Probability.

No. You can’t discern the cause of causeless events.

Should we assume there is a god and then look for evidence that there isn’t? Or should we assume there is no god and look for evidence that there is?

If we assume there is a god, then which god do we assume? What conclusions do we draw about the character of this unsubstantiated being? Why is this a prudent default position?

Should we assume there are monsters under the bed until there is evidence that there isn’t? Who is going to be brave enough to gather the evidence?

So you’re looking for an explanation you can put in a jar? I’m lost.

I don’t see the difference in the contraptions. I could use medical contraptions to pluck apples from a barrel.

Popular subjectivity is not objectivity. And if there is no “I”, there is no “all of us”.

But the knower is not different from the known, so you absolutely cannot ever be in possession of a wholly comprehensive understanding of existence itself.

In a spacetime universe such as ours, animate beings utilize oxygen; just like in a chess game, the bishop moves diagonally. That’s not objectivity because each is subject to the particular and arbitrary rules specific to each context. We can’t say it’s objectively true that oxygen is required to live because there may be instances in this universe or another universe where it isn’t so.

What we prefer [re value judgments] is still no less rooted in dasein. My point is that there does not appear to be a way in which to determine whether all rational people ought to prefer coke or pepsi. Or whether in any particular context one ought to prefer this particular pleasure to that particular pain.

There are those who choose to be sadists, there are those who choose to be masochists.

Pleasure would seem to be that which we are [genetically] hard-wired to prefer. But for every man or woman who feels pleasure in eating meat, there are others who are pained by it.

These choices in my view are largely “existential contraptions”.

Is this God Watts played omniscient? If so, how could the extent to which you know yourself not already have been known by God? You can’t know everything and not know everything there is to know about everyone. Past, present and future.

And it is one thing to know things about yourself able to be demonstrated as in fact true — your gender, your place of birth, your height, the color of your eyes, the schools you attended, the sports you play etc.

Another thing altogether to demonstrate that what you think is right or wrong regarding any particular moral conflict is in fact true.

Here I always suggest that “analysis” of this sort be brought down to earth. What particular statement is someone making in what particular context regarding what particular thing. What can be confirmed as a reasonable meaning for all rational human beings.

All hopelessly abstract in my view. It’s not about anything in particular.

He speaks of God, of “verifying” him. But verified or not what particular people think is true about God is deemed meaningful to them. And then they act on their beliefs. And the things they choose to do may impact you in any number of ways — good or bad.

So, what does that mean?

To “mean” something is often going to be problematic. Just go to the dictionary:

[b]Mean: intend to convey, indicate, or refer to (a particular thing or notion); signify.

synonyms: signify, convey, denote, designate, indicate, connote, show, express, spell out, stand for, represent, symbolize, imply, purport, suggest, allude to, intimate, hint at, insinuate, drive at, refer to[/b]

Okay, but with regard to what?

One would need to choose a particular context, note particular behaviors, and then, based on a particular set of assumptions, predict future behaviors.

What else is there?

I may think that by force of will I can decide to believe in Santa Claus [or God] but how would I go about determining [and then demonstrating] that what I think/will here is not that which I was only ever able to think/will?

When I say “I don’t know” I am only going back to that gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known about existence itself in order to know something like this.

I just point out that seems applicable to everyone else in turn.

But who is able to connect the dots between these “fundamental forces” and any particular things that they think, feel, say or do?

In other words…

Come on, there are dozen and dozens of folks out there who, down through the ages, have argued for one or another TOE here. And they can all make that claim. But [generally] what it comes down to is this: you can only properly have studied them if you come to agree with them.

But where is the hardcore empirical proof of the claims they make? Sooner or later you reach that point in their argument where the words are connected only to other words defined and defended by them.

Here it’s stuff like RM/AO or Value Ontology or the intellectual contraptions of folks like ecmandu and phemonenal_graffiti.

Again: What particular problem relating to what particular context precipitating what particular behaviors construed from what particular point of view?

I’m not appealing to impossibility. I’m only pointing out that “here and now” Watts’s arguments are not sufficient to either yank me up out of the hole I have dug for myself on this side of the grave, or obviate the fear of oblivion that I embody re the other side of it.

Of course I could suspend everything I am doing and do nothing else but read everything that he has ever written; and come to truly understand everything that he has done.

But then all the other autodidacts would insist I should be doing that in regard their own intellectual gurus instead.

Instead, I note the hole that I am in here and now and the hole I’ll be in after I am dead and gone. And I ask them to explain to me why they don’t think about it as I – “I” – do given the componnents of my own philosophical narrative: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in a No God world.

From that perspective true, but from the perspective of the 27,000 days [on average] that each of us is around from the cradle to the grave a whole lot of existence can go on.

Where have I ever said that? I don’t either put life down or say it’s nothing but matter. I suggest instead that our reaction to our own particular life is largely rooted in dasein evolving out in a particular world experienced in a particular way. And that I have no way of knowing the extent to which “I” is inherently the embodiment of so-called “immutable laws of matter”.

This is something that science continues to explore. And I always come back to what seems to be the biggest mystery of all: how matter becomes mindful of itself as matter and then…maybe more than that?

That cognition like things “fetched from the amygdala” are all inherently intertwined in the immutable laws of matter. And what the universe can or cannot know is no less embedded in whatever brought into existence existence itself. What can the universe know at all sans God?

These are all still mysteries science is just beginning to grapple with. Imagine what scientists – or, for that matter, philosophers and theologians – will have to say about them 1,000 years from now.

Will Watts be acclaimed then…or scoffed at?

Okay, but how does one make that distinction until one is able to grasp the extent to which human autonomy is or is not essentially an illusion embedded in human psychology?

Well, there are contraptions in the either/or world that we can take apart and put back together again. And, in so doing, explain why [objectively] the whole is the sum of the parts.

But the intellectual contraptions devised to make arguments about 1] relationships in the is/ought world or 2] grappling with the truly Big Questions are often comprised of parts that are predicated only on subjective/subjunctive assumptions backed up only with sets of definitions and meanings.

The whole is the sum of particular variables and factors more or less embedded in “I” as an existential contraption.

In my view [and in the view of many others] it seems incumbent upon those making the claim that something either does in fact exist or is in fact true to demonstrate that all rational men and men are obligated to believe it.

It’s just that in regards to value judgments or answers to the Big Questions such demonstrations still seem beyond our reach. And it seems those who claim that this is false need to demonstrate why they think this.

Again, down to earth.

Donald Trump is now president of the United States. Can this be demonstrated such that all rational men and women are obligated to concur?

Donald Trump is doing an excellent job as president. Can this be demonstrated such that all rational men and women are obligated to concur?

Donald Trumps policies are as a result of his own autonomous choices. Can this be demonstrated such that all rational men and women are obligated to concur?

There are explanations and jars and then there are explanations and jars. Some clearly more demonstrable than others.

Yes, but unlike the contraptions used by doctors to [as some insist] kill human babies, few will argue about the morality of how one plucks apples out of a barrel.

Then it comes down to the extent to which any particular subject who claims to believe something is true objectively is able to demonstrate it. And “I” is no less an existential contraption. We simply don’t know [beyond all doubt] if “I” is able to choose autonomously or, if “I” is able to, which choices made in the is/ought world are essentially/necessarily right or wrong.

Or, rather, so it seems to “me” “here and now”.

If “I” “absolutely cannot ever be in possession of a wholly comprehensive understanding of existence itself”, this merely reinforces the point I make. Because even this point is embedded in that gap.

Again, my point is no less circumscribed by the gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known about existence itself.

Who really knows what the objective truth about oxygen is? And no one will argue that had the bishop not been made to move diagonally this would have been immoral. And how do we go about determining whether the rules created in chess are necessarily in sync with either human autonomy or the immutable laws of matter?

Correct. So what’s the problem?

My point is that you cannot decide to prefer coke to pepsi because there is no you independent of you that could not be influenced by how you are put together.

Your view is a contraption lol

I don’t know… they didn’t ask him.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1LzVN8nqg0[/youtube]

When did you become god? Now.
Will you marry me? No.
Do you sleep on your stomach or back? Sleeping is like politics: you sleep on your right side and when you’re tired of that, you sleep on your left; and when you’re tired of that you sleep on your back; and then you sleep on your stomach.
If you are god now, what were you yesterday? Now.
How do we become god? You don’t become god.
Am I also god? Yes.
Are we then the same person? No. Remember: three persons, but one god (ie the trinity). LOL
Tell us about satan. Satan is the district attorney; the left hand of god. Jesus, the defense, sits on the right.
Is Job god too? Yes, but he doesn’t know it.
Why do you hide from the sight of so many? Why do YOU hide? It’s for the same reason you’re hiding.
Does man have freewill? Man has freewill to the extent that he knows who he is; not otherwise.
Where does he get freewill from? Where I got it from.
Does woman have freewill too? To the extent that she knows who she is, yes.
Are you more or less god than the rest of us? I am no more god than any of you.
So you only have the power of knowing who you are? Well, that is saying quite a bit, yes.
What is not god? There is nothing that is not god.
How do you learn who you are?
Is boredom a problem? Yes, boredom is of course THE problem.
If we are all supposed to love each other, then love wouldn’t exist because there would be no hate to contrast it. Correct, but that’s not a teaching but a koan.
Is there a heaven, purgatory, hell? The hereafter is of course now because there is nowhen else than now, and if you want to make hell of it, you can make hell of it.
What is death? Death is an undulation in consciousness. How would you know you’re alive unless you’d once been dead?
Why was it unnecessary for Jesus to have material possession but necessary for you? It wasn’t unnecessary for him. He consorted with gluttoners and winebibbers.

Right.

Surely you recognize that if you’re going to insist that everything have a context that you cannot take in the whole of everything. The context of mind is matter. The context of matter is mind. Nominalism is the context for realism. You cannot verify your foundation of empiricism with empiricism.

I agree.

I don’t know LOL

You seemed to have been implying that you could choose to believe any ole hippie nonsense and I was just pointing out that I don’t think we have a choice in what we believe.

What’s existence itself? Where does it exist?

There are no dots. The dots are abstractions.

You’re saying confirmation bias is the only way to research?

So how did I come to believe in Watts before I listened to him?

Where is the empirical proof that empirical proof is relevant?

That’s the same point he makes. If you’re going to use words, with what words will you define the words that define the words? That’s why he doesn’t give reality a name, but just bangs a gong or claps his hands to signify what there is.

The ones you’re posing as questions.

So which guru are you currently studying? You’re implying you wouldn’t want to waste your time by studying everyone, so as a solution you study no one. Usually I hang with someone until I find holes in their arguments, then move on to the next. Watts is the only one that I can’t refute anything he says.

So then you’re saying that you know there is know way of knowing which returns us to my other question which is why are you seeking what cannot be found?

Well mindfulness is either fundamental or a product of complexity (ie magic).

Watts is just repeating what has been said 1000s of years ago, so probably it will still be said 1000s of years from now.

Why does one need to grasp autonomy before accepting the most substantiated scientific fact in all of history?

So, what’s not a contraption?

Right, so should we assume there is a god and then look for evidence that there isn’t? Or should we assume there is no god and look for evidence that there is?

Yes

No

No

I don’t see your point.

Why do they argue the morality of one but not the other?

Demonstration to everyone doesn’t make it objective. It’s just coincidence that everyone saw it the same way.

A knife cannot cut itself. Where is the gap?

No one can know what oxygen objectively is because what oxygen is depends on what kind of a you you are. There is no objective oxygen and it doesn’t make sense to think that there could be.

Why not? Is it not immoral that pawns are sacrificed? Why not make the king fight his own battles instead of conscripting the pawns into being the first line of defense? Well, if we did that, it would merely be another rule of the game and subject to the proclivities of the creator of the game.

There are no laws of matter.

My point is that whatever is behind [or explains] the existence of existence itself led to my birth in this particular world.

[Unless of course my own “I” is some mind-boggling contraption in a sim world or in a dream…or just another domino in a wholly determined universe]

Now, over the course of living my life I came to prefer neither coke nor pespsi. I like them both. And there does not appear to a way in which to determine whether rational men and women ought to prefer one over the other. It’s a matter of “personal taste”. And all of the genetic/memetic factors that go into that.

But: What on earth does this point have to do with your point:

My point is that you cannot decide to prefer coke to pepsi because there is no you independent of you that could not be influenced by how you are put together.

This, in my view, is just an intellectual contraption that really tells us nothing at all.

Here my view is encompassed in a word contraption. But those words either can or cannot be connected to the world around us. Words used to describe or convey interactions in the either/or world seem to be applicable to all of us. Words used to describe or to defend moral narratives seem more in sync with subjective/subjunctive “personal opinions”.

Then it comes down to choosing a particular context/set of behaviors and examining the extent to which the words that we choose are able to convey things able to be demonstrated as true for all of us.

Okay, then, for all practical purposes, what are the existential implications of this being right given human interactions in conflict?

Over and again I point out that the “whole of everything” embedded in all of the “unknown unknowns” we are not yet privy to seems to be a given for all of us. Still, in a particular context relating to particular human interactions what on earth does, “you cannot verify your foundation of empiricism with empiricism” mean?

In the interim though, we all take our existential leaps regarding the relationship between mind and matter in order to convey what we construe to be true or false [here and now] about human interactions.

The dots are a figure of speech. But the gap between what you describe as “fundamental forces” and the choices that you make from day to day don’t go away unless you can connect them. And we don’t even appear to have connected enough of them [yet] in order to determine if consciousness itself is not but another of nature’s dominoes.

Well, if by empirical evidence we mean “the information received by means of the senses, particularly by observation and documentation of patterns and behavior through experimentation” science seems to make use of it re the laws of nature. Engineers and the inventors of technology [like computers] seem to find it especially reliable.

It’s just when we come to the is/ought world that it becomes considerably more problematic. The “problems I’m posing as questions” revolve around conflicting goods by and large. And the role played by dasein and political economy when individuals come to acquire sets of value judgments. And here Watts seems to be no less problematic than the rest of us. It’s not a question of “refuting anything he says” so much as probing the extent to which anything he says is able to be either verified or falsified.

As for this…

Why? Because I have no way of knowing for certain that it cannot be found. I only think that “here and now”. Thus all I can do is to come into places like this and seek out the narratives of others.

Because in a wholly determined universe we are [presumably] only able to grasp that which we were always going to grasp.

Exactly. But some would seem to be considerably more problematic than others. And all we can do is to focus the beam on a particular context and attempt to explore the extent to which it is constructed of parts able to be wholly grasped and made applicable to everyone [like the contraption we call an automibile engine]; or, instead, construed from conflicting subjective points of view [like abandoning the automobile in favor of mass transit – the contraption we call the environmental movement].

In regard to the former, Watts and all the rest of us are confronted with a seeming objective contraption: an automobile engine. It is what it is and could only be that because it is in sync with what we have come to know about the laws of nature.

In regard to the latter, however, Watts and all the rest of us take particular existential leaps to political contraptions rooted in the manner in which [subjectively] I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political power.

I can only assume that I am missing your point here. The distinction seems rather clear to me. A dead baby or an apple plucked out of a barrel. Which is more likely to generate discussion and debate among philosophers or ethicists?

Back to Trump. Is it or is it not reasonable to say it can be demonstrated that Trump is “here and now” president of the United States? Is this or is this not as close as we are likely to come to an objective reality? Acknowledging that, sure, Trumpworld may well be but a concoction in some entity’s sim world or dream.

Or, indeed, that it really is only a coincidence that everyone seems to think that this is so.

How is the existence of the knife and this observation of yours not in turn embedded in the gap? The truly problematic aspect of the distance between “I” and “all there is” would seem to revolve more around how enormously difficult it is to grapple with the existence of existence itself. Talk about a phenomenally enigmatic chasm between the knower and the known.

Next thing you know we’re saying things like this:

And this explains what exactly? And not just in regard to oxygen.

Sure, one might live in a world where chess is deemed a religion. The moves are part of some sacred truth and anyone who dares to not move as one must move, is thought to be an infidel.

But that is not how the overwhelming preponderance of our species think of chess. It’s a game. You make a wrong move and you lose. But few will insist that this makes you evil.

There certainly appear to be forces at play – gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces – that seem to be applicable to all of us here on earth.

We just don’t really know for sure what is behind them.

Cue those truly bizarre things like “dark energy”.

I think there is some swingroom. If you believe something that makes you suffer and find the desire not to believe it, you can look for counterevidence. You can check your own logic. You can seek experiences that might lead to different beliefs.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one mode of doing this. You believe X about work, the opposite sex, your own abilities, what will likely happen, and the therapist challenges this belief with logic, counterexamples, questioning, assignments that will lead to experiences that counter the belief.

One can do this on one’s own.

One can lean in a direction. (I am not saying this is always a good thing, but it’s a thing)

Similarly with positive beliefs one might want to have. One can engage in practices, try to have experiences that lead to the formation of a new belief.

You can’t sit around the house and will yourself to believe something. At least I can’t.

Though it seems like some people can manage to do this. For some people positive thinking actually seems to work. (one of the reasons I do not think we are all the same. And I do not mean quantitatively in various qualities, but qualitatively as a whole essence)

I think Iamb assumes that anyone believing something that does not fit with what he thinks it is parsimonious to believe does this to comfort themselves. A conscious or unconscious choice to believe something to eliminate suffering. His posts can imply his belief in his superiority to these people he labels objectivists.

He wants to find out how to live by online discussion with people who he challenges to prove how one out to live.

That implies that he thinks he can change his beliefs and also that others can change his. That he need have no experiential component to learn something and a host of related ideas about learning, belief and the self.
He often admonishes people to be concrete, but what he means by this is to include in their verbal proofs specific issues or events. He does not, ironically, mean to actually be concrete, which would mean to give him an experience of something different from what he has experienced. A discussion of what happened with a specific dog or act, is still abstract and unlikely to change very much. It is words on a screen. But that is his chosen method of changing his beliefs.

I think that is a foolhardy pursuit.

And since the goal is to find out how one, how everyone, how all individuals, ought to live, it is an even more abstract and contexless endeavor. IOW he does not try to find out how he ought to live, this particular man.

Not to say this is wrong, this last, but it is as far from concrete as possible.

In practical terms it is a process for statis, not for change.

IN TERMS OF THE OP, HOWEVER, THIS IS ALL ILLUSION. STUFF HAPPENS.

Uh-oh, KT is being “cranky” again! :laughing:

Anyway, what in particular is being thought about? There are things we think are true that we are able to demonstrate are true. Why? Because they are in fact true.

I think Donald Trump is president of the United States. Also, I think it is in fact true that particular policies of his cause certain people in certain contexts to suffer. Those families being separated as a result of his immigration policy, for example. But then comes the part where some people think those policies reflect the right thing to do, while others insist it is the wrong thing to do.

Some are absolutely adament about it. In particular, the moral objectivists on both ends of the political spectrum.

Okay, using the tools of philosophy how might one resolve this conflict.

By being “pragmatic”? In what sense? And how are the value judgments derived from pragmatism not in turn the embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

Let KT address this in particular.

No, I want to assess the extent to which others are able to live while not being entangled in the components of my own moral philosophy.

Others have changed my beliefs a number of times in the past. And I have succeeded in changing the beliefs of others. It’s not an uncommon occurrence. Except with regard to objectivists. Why? Because, based on my own experiences, objectivism is rooted more in human psychology than in the quest for wisdom.

It’s not what you believe but that you believe.

One or another existential rendition of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

Not admonish so much as merely request that they bring their intellectual contraptions relating to conflicting goods down to earth. They either will or they won’t.

No, the goal is to grapple with those who insist that, through one or another God or ideology or deontological assessment or take on nature, mere mortals actually can know how one ought to live.

KT has concocted his own rendition of pragmatism here. And it works for him. It provides him with just enough comfort and consolation so as not to be “fractured and fragmented” as “I” am.

Stuff happens. What’s next, “it’s beyond my control”?

Really, imagine going through life and every time someone confronts you with a moral or political context that deeply troubles them, you say, “well, stuff happens”.

Your moral philosophy is not their moral philosophy is the simple answer to this. There will be other factors too such as life experience and how they see the
world in philosophical terms or even if they do see it in those terms. Also free will allows everyone to think for themselves therefore there will be a variety
of opinion. Diversity of thought is the norm not the exception here. What would be unusual would be if everyone thought the same with no real difference

But what fascinates me is not the fact of this. After all, who doesn’t know that? Instead, it is in exploring the variables that come into play such that each of us comes to acquire different [and often conflicting] philosophies.

The part where identity and value judgments are shaped and molded existentially out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

What can be communicated here as close to the “objective truth” as mere mortals are ever likely to get?

Instead, the objectivists among us lay claim to it already.

As are the diversity of objectivists. Think about it. There have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them down through the ages. All laying claim to one or an other rendition of The Real Me in sync with The Right Thing To Do. Only the fonts change.

They can’t all be right, of course, but they all claim to be.

Now, what does that tell you about objectivism?

Is this really a moral or a political or a philosophical or a religious thing? Or is it a psychological component of a genetic self “thrown” adventitiously at birth into any number of vast and varied memetic contexts?

Its about the time honored tradition of the human ego imposing its view upon others because it thinks that it knows what they dont know but need to know
The reality is that no one individually or collectively has possession of absolute truth but many hold onto the idea for psychological / philosophical reasons

I however prefer uncertainty to false knowledge because uncertainty is at least real

I am not psychologically conditioned to filling in the gaps with bullshit just to convince myself that I know what the meaning of existence is
I see no actual evidence for such a thing and am not concerned about it either so just accept it which is all I can do but still do so willingly

Others are free to live their lives according to their absolute truth although managing to convince yourself that X is true doesnt automatically make it so
However many of them do contain truth in some lesser form so it is important to understand this so what can and can not be used can then be separated
A simple example as I have previously mentioned is The Golden Rule which exists in all the major belief systems and can be adopted by absolutely anyone

Well, it could mean that they are all wrong to think one can know at all. It could mean only some of them are right in the main and all the others are off. It could mean that this process has survival value and there is a triangulation over time that confuses heuristics with morals.

IOW perhaps humans are moving towards a set of guidelines that help with survival (and perhaps sense of well-being) through deciding on what ‘one ought to do’. They confuse this with some objective good, but they are contributing to the survival of homo sapien genes, something that might necessitate greater well being.

It could be that some few or a single person had a direct line to the deity and the rest didn’t so the rest are wrong.

Who knows.

But those are some of the possible things that could be true given what you have said about the diversity of people’s opinions on how one should live.

There are likely other possibilities too.

When someone asks what it means, it can be a rhetorical question, as if the answer is obvious, and as if there is just one answer.

Which is why some people choose to question instead of making their own assumptions explicit. This can create the illusion that they bear no onus for their own beliefs.

Then it comes down to the extent to which you construe the ego – “I” – as more or less an existential contraption. Why one viewpoint and not another? How, over the course of actually living our lives, do we come to acquire one rather than another moral and political narrative?

I agree. But I also recognize that “I” have no way [seemingly] to demonstrate that this too isn’t just another existential contraption.

After all, just because I don’t believe in an “absolute truth” here, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. And embedded in either a God or a No God world. We are all basically stuck here taking one or another “leap of faith” to a frame of mind that [existentially] we use “for all practical purposes” to guide our behaviors.

I’m just down in a hole here that most others are not. Fractured and fragmented in ways most others are able to avoid.

Of course this just tugs me the direction of a whole new slew of imponderables: determinism. Are any of us really free at all here?

Truth here from my frame of mind revolves around that which you are in fact able to demonstrate is applicable to all of us.

And the Golden Rule would seem to be no less an existential contraption rooted in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts. Do certain things unto others because you would want them to do that unto you.

But how about abortion? How is the Golden Rule apllicable here when confronting conflicting goods.

On the one hand, some would not want others to abort them in the womb, while some would not want others to force them to give birth.

Sure, as a “general description” of human interactions it could any one of them.

So, what we need then is a context in which to configure/reconfigure these abstract conjectures into a set of actual behaviors able to be or not to be defended against conflicting assessments of “the right thing to do”.

Which particular problem do we wish to solve?

Yes, and, for all practical purposes in a No God world, what else is there?

Then in contemplating this at the intersection of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy, some tumble down into the hole that I am in and others do not.

But ought one to tumble or not tumble down in it?

Can one come up with a solution to a problem like abortion that “pragmatically” enables us to intertwine the points raised by Trump in his SOTU speech last night and the points raised by those who either choose or perform abortions?

A way of thinking about it so that “I” is considerably less “fractured and fragmented”?

Yeah, it’s done by some. It’s just not able to be accomplished “here and now” by me.

True. But the distinction I keep coming back to is the one between those who insist that their truth is wholly in sync with objective reality and that if others don’t share it they are necessarily wrong.

Here I have no clear idea of the point being made. What question is being raised in regard to what context such that we can more reasonably assess and evaluate the answers that are given. And perhaps even come up with the must rational assessment and evaluation of them all.

So what you implied was the only possible truth given the existence of different objectivisms was not the case. You were wrong. Thank you.
And of course it was a general description, given that you made a general description and then drew a general conclusion. I am not sure you know what citation marks mean.

There is no such thing as a universal truth for such a concept cannot be empirically demonstrated
Instead it is something entirely subjective based upon our life experience and acquired knowledge
As we change then our understanding or perception of what that truth is might also change as well
We choose from many narratives and select the one that most characterises who we are personally
We may have limited free will but within that constraint we are free to choose the narrative for us
But it is an eternal work in progress so is not set in stone even if the fundamentals remain the same

That is not truth as such but a perception of what you think truth is or should be. The truth in question is philosophical not scientific or mathematical so the
notion of universality does not apply. To show this let me use your example of abortion : there is no way to demonstrate the moral right or wrong of it [ or in
deed any moral issue ] You do not arrive at a decision through logical deduction as it is not an issue that can be referenced from such a perspective. All moral
issues are a potential infinity of shades of grey sandwiched between the twin absolutes of black and white. Getting universality from that is next to impossible