ILovePhilosophy.com

iambiguous wrote:

Serendipper wrote:

iambiguous wrote:Are there limitations here beyond which philosophers are unable to go?

Yes I think so because the objective is the observerless observation. All we can know is only in relation to something else.

Still, as soon as you try to grapple with the implications of this, you are so far out on the metaphysical limb that, for all practical purposes, it becomes meaningless. A universe that simply is what it is. And with absolutely no one or no thing around to know that?

Yes I think so. If there is something else, we could only see it through our subjective lens in relation only to what we already know.

Or is there in fact an argument available to all rational and ethical men and women such that they are obligated to embody it or to be seen as irrational and unethical human beings?

Serendipper wrote: If someone is obligated to embody something lest they be viewed as irrational, then you've defined objectivity in terms of popularity. Truth is merely consensus of opinion.

No, in a world where some measure of human autonomy does in fact exist, it still comes down to that which can be demonstratred to be true objectively for all of us. We just don't know the limits of that. We accept that this exchange exists for all with access to the internet. That can be reasonably demonstrated. But how is it demonstrated that my argument or your argument is closer to the objective truth?

There is no objective truth. I'm cold. Are you cold? Is everyone cold? No, it's subjective to be cold.

This exchange may exist for everyone, but everyone will see it differently, so it exists uniquely for every person. There is no objective way to discern this thread. I speak in a way I think you will understand and you read in regard to a way you think I speak.

Unless perhaps it can be demonstrated that, say, the exchange is just part of some Sim world in which you and I are merely characters in minds beyond our capacity to even grasp.

It could be. Where do your decisions come from?

Who is asking?
Me!
Who are you?
Me, over here, I'm running that guy.
Ok, then who are you?
Me, over here, I'm running that guy who is running that guy.
Ok, then who are you?
Me, over here, I'm the one in charge.
Ok, then who are you?
.
.
.

On and on forever. We can never get to the origins of our decisions because we cannot take an objective view of ourselves.

Serendipper wrote:Well, you're not even trying to convey the meaning of dasein. You're speaking in difficult to interpret vernacular and beating around the bush, then tossing me an old thread so I can rummage around and by chance possibly stumble upon the right definition. It's just not that important to me to know the definition of that word to put all this work into it especially when you won't reciprocate and put work into a succinct and clear definition to save me all this stabbing in the dark.

Since I construe dasein [out in the is/ought world] to be an existential contraption derived largely from lives/relationships that can differ in many, many extraordinary ways, it is best in my view to situate that which I construe it to mean "out in the world."

So dasein is the subjective view of the world?

Instead, you appear to want the "25 words or less" version. The meaning and the defintion of dasein.

Yes

Like dasein were an actual thing I could take out of my pocket and say, "here, this is dasein".

I can define things that can't be taken out of my pocket and displayed.

What I am interested in is how you and others react to the OP such that the points raised are either more in or more out of sync with your own "I" when confronted with conflicting goods.

Conflicting goods is a duality (either or) and is required to have existence.

There are clearly things about yourself "here and now" that are true objectively: your age,

No, it's a relationship. I lived this many revolutions of the earth around the sun. There is no objective time.

your gender, your race, your sexual orientation, your height, your weight...the place where you were born, the experiences you had, the relationships you sustained, the books you read, the films you viewed etc.

All these things exist as a relationship.

And let folks like Krishnamurti bring "general descriptions" of this sort down out of the clouds of abstraction and park them in particular contexts precipitating particular behaviors deemed to be either sick or healthy.

Assertion of things that do not exist, as objects of attainment, would seem to me sick

Serendipper wrote: The only thing we know for sure is there is nothing we know for sure.

Yes, but "here and now" there are still distinctions to be made [in the either/or world] between those relationships able to be demonstrated as true for all of us and individaul reactions to those relationships which appear [to me] to be considersably more subjective.

If something were true for all of us, what would it mean?

Serendipper wrote: I think the desire to delineate the world into dualities (right and wrong) is a way of manifesting the self. So clinging to objectivity is resisting death of the self. The only way to exist is to carve yourself out of obscurity and form clear distinctions between this and that. I am here and everything else is over there. When the lines get fuzzy, then you get fragmented. I think it's mighty perceptive of you to notice it.

Again, the problem I have with points like this is how abstract they are.

There is nothing that's not abstract except the one thing that can't be beheld because you cannot look at yourself. Everything that you think is a thing is carved out of something bigger (ie an abstraction).

Bring this assessment down to earth and note its relevance when confronting behaviors in conflict over value judgments.

Point us to a particular context that is embedded in your own life; or to one in which a great deal of news has been generated of late.

Religion, for example, is a way of manifesting oneself as a good person in relation to bad people. "I am special because I do the right thing... unlike those heathen over there." When the lines between the righteous and heathen gets blurry, then identity goes away (fragmented and fractured). If there is no good and bad, then you can't be a good person because the concept doesn't exist. All religion is arrogance and nothing can be more egotistical than true repentance.

So we practice the religion of no religion because we want to be better than those arrogant fools practicing religion, but then we find we're just as arrogant in our religion of no religion. What a trap! Freedom from the trap comes when you realize that you and the trap are the same thing, but then you lose all identity and realize that's no fun, so you'll renounce satori and go back in the game.

Good tune by Jim Croce called "Age":

I've traded love for pennies; sold my soul for less.
Lost my ideals in that long tunnel of time.
And I've turned inside out and 'round about and back and then
Found myself right back where I started again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1LvlKvr3B4

Here and now is the only place to be because there isn't anywhere else to go, but you can try.

It's just that different individuals will draw the line here in different places. Is it true objectively that human life begins at conception?

When does conception begin?

Or do we become actual human beings further on down the line? How can this be determined once and for all?

I say further down, but what defines human? If we ask people what defines being human, they'll differentiate it with regard to machines (empathy, compassion, creativity, etc). So if we apply that yardstick, at what age does a person display those attributes? Some never do. So now what? If we say humans are animate, then how do we differentiate from animals?

And, once determined, how ought rational men and women configure their moral and political narratives in regard to abortion?

According to their own convictions I suppose. Matt Dillahunty had a good argument for abortion saying that if one human doesn't have the right to parasite himself off another human without permission, then why afford that right to humans who haven't been born? That seems pretty solid.

And how is that then not an "existential contraption" more or less?[/i]

Serendipper wrote: I don't know, but why does it matter? The concept of a contraption is a contraption because contraption is a synonym for concept.

It matters because the extent to which you come to recognize that your value judgments are derived more from a particular sequence of experiences than from any deontological assessment, is the extent to which you are less likely to embrace objectivism.

I don't see much difference. Even if reason and evidence were a foundation, we still must have faith in it. There is no distinction between the absolute and the relative because whatever truth you hold will be relative to that yardstick. You either appeal to deontology or popularity or whatever foundation in accordance with how you're put together and with regard to a particular sequence of experiences.

But really, if there were an objective morality, it would exist independent of humans, which makes no sense because how can morality exist without moral agents? Morality is emergent and not absolute.

Instead, you are more likely to embrace moderation, negotiation and compromise in your political interactions with others.

Then it's just a matter of whether or not you take this as far as "I" do. Tumbling all the way down into a hole like mine.

Anytime you find yourself in a trap that you can't escape, it means you and the trap are one. It's an infinite abyss of your own making.

Again, bringing this down to earth. Bob is on trial for murdering Bill. A mountain of evidence [including fingerprints and DNA] is able to convince a jury that he is guilty. They [or the judge] then sentence him to death. What then are the facts [using either deduction or induction] that is able to establish in turn that executing him is just or moral or "the right thing to do"?

What's your own argument here? And how do you see it as either embedded or not embedded in the components of my own moral philosophy. A philosophy that revolves around the assumption that both moral narratives and political agendas revolve around arguments that revolves around "existential contraptions".

In a No God world.

Serendipper wrote: Morality is veiled "might makes right". Rather than retype it, I'll refer you to my post to Karpel viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194190&start=100#p2711863

Well, it is certainly true that when push comes to shove what counts is the extent to which you are able to enforce "rules of behavior" more to your own liking. But that doesn't make your own "liking" here any less an existential contraption to me.

I'm just saying that morality exists only because people, by virtue of numbers (might), say so (makes right). Might makes right. There is no way to know objectively if the baby that was not aborted will not grow up to be the next Hitler or the baby that was aborted could have discovered the cure for cancer.... or even if a cure for cancer is good.

This is the parable of the chinese farmer



If we can't tell what is good or bad, then how can we have rules?

KT is hell bent on insisting that his own rendition of "pragmatism" is not an existential contraption. But I certainly see it as one. He lived a particular life predisposing him to a particular set of values; but he refuses to let the implications of that disturb him as much as they disturb me. In other words, "fracture and fragment" his own particular "I" when confronting conflicting goods.

I can't think of anything that isn't a contraption because I can only think in terms of contraptions. Bruce Lee said we learn to forget meaning we practice so hard for so long that our routine becomes a part of us and is no longer conscious, but an unconscious reflex. So it transcends contraptions (conceptual/cataphatic knowledge) and enters into the non-conceptual (agnosis/apophatic) knowledge. By induction I believe we must have learned to beat our hearts at some point in evolutionary time and now it's an unconscious reflex that requires no contraptions to operate. It doesn't mean I'm right, but we had to acquire that knowledge somehow.

And to speak of grasping these relationships "epistemologically" speaks volumes regarding the gap between us.

Still, I have to admit that there may well be an epistemological foundation allowing us to assess them wholly.

Or we can just argue that in a wholly determined universe this exchange itself is inherently embedded in the ontological [and teleological?] "fabric of reality".

Pretty much, because if it weren't so, there would be no reality. But no teleology because that would undermine the purpose of purposelessness.

As for your rendition of Vos Savant's rendition of the Monty Hall problem, what on earth does that have to do with the gap between what we think we know about the universe and all that would need to be known about it in order to encompass it objectively?

Would all astrophysicists weigh in on this in the precise manner in which you do?

1000 phds said she was wrong, so it's illustration that what most astrophysicists think has no relevance. What most people know, ain't worth knowing.

I think most astrophysicists (if they were fair and honest) would say to me "maybe you're right, but who knows" because nobody knows. There are dozens of inflation theories and then variable speed of light theories and multiverse theories and who knows what else.

...how are deductions pertaining to the either/or world the same or different from deductions pertaining to the is/ought world.

Serendipper wrote: There is no difference and the ought is either/or because ought is discerned through relativity. You ought to do that, else this will happen.

Still, you have to admit this point will be easier to understand if you take it out into the world that we live in and embed it in a context in which deductions are made regarding facts able to be established and then made regarding our reactions to those facts such that some insist they indicate we ought to behave one way while others insist they indicate we ought to behave in another way.

Is it odd that you're looking for an absolute and then always tell me to bring it down to earth and relate it to something? If it's absolute, it's not relational and if it's relational, then it's not absolute. Objectivity is impossible because there is no context for it and it can't be said in terms of anything. It can't be brought down to earth and is abstract by definition.

iambiguous wrote:Are there limitations here beyond which philosophers are unable to go?

Serendipper wrote: Yes I think so because the objective is the observerless observation. All we can know is only in relation to something else.

Still, as soon as you try to grapple with the implications of this, you are so far out on the metaphysical limb that, for all practical purposes, it becomes meaningless. A universe that simply is what it is. And with absolutely no one or no thing around to know that?

Serendipper wrote: Yes I think so. If there is something else, we could only see it through our subjective lens in relation only to what we already know.

What I always come back to here is that whatever else might exists, our subjective lenses either overlap such that it can be demonstrated to exist for all of us or it can't. But if there are no conscious minds able to convey what they think does exist, what does it mean to say that it exist at all?

Sure, some seem able to wrap their head around this. I'm not one of them.

This part:

...in a world where some measure of human autonomy does in fact exist, it still comes down to that which can be demonstratred to be true objectively for all of us. We just don't know the limits of that. We accept that this exchange exists for all with access to the internet. That can be reasonably demonstrated. But how is it demonstrated that my argument or your argument is closer to the objective truth?

Serendipper wrote: There is no objective truth. I'm cold. Are you cold? Is everyone cold? No, it's subjective to be cold.

But some claims here seem to come considerably closer to that which "for all practical purposes" are construed by those who are "for all practical purposes" deemed to be rational human beings.

Would you be/feel cold buck naked at the North Pole? As opposed to, say, is it moral or immoral to strip someone buck naked at the North Pole? We might all respond subjectively to both inquiries. But who is kidding whom as to that which comes closest to whatever the objective truth might possibly be in a universe in which no one seems able to convey ontologically or teleologically what existence itself means.

Serendipper wrote: This exchange may exist for everyone, but everyone will see it differently, so it exists uniquely for every person. There is no objective way to discern this thread. I speak in a way I think you will understand and you read in regard to a way you think I speak.

True, but the fact that it does exist for all of us [sans Sim worlds, demonic dreams, solipsism etc.] seems to be clearly more true objectively than the subjective assessments regarding which of us comes closest to explaining it's existence embedded in Existence itself.

It "could" be this, it "could" be that. The distinction I make here is between the either/or and the is/ought world. In explaining where our decisions come from, the former seems considerably more reliable regarding the extent to which these decisions can be demonstrated to be true for all of us.

Serendipper wrote: So dasein is the subjective view of the world?

For me, dasein -- being thrown into the world "here and now" rather than "there and then" -- is applicable more in the is/ought world. There are things about "who we are" that are true for everyone. But with regard to our moral and political values, "I" is seen by me to be considerably more an existential contraption.

Instead, you appear to want the "25 words or less" version. The meaning and the defintion of dasein.

Serendipper wrote: Yes

Well, in that case, I suggest you take it up with the epistemologists here. Then after you have reached a consensus, bring the argument out into the world of conflicting goods. Such that "dasein"/"Dasein" can be understood more clearly by all those who wish to be thought of as rational human beings.

Like dasein were an actual thing I could take out of my pocket and say, "here, this is dasein".

Serendipper wrote: I can define things that can't be taken out of my pocket and displayed.

Okay, define freedom or justice...or time or space.

There are clearly things about yourself "here and now" that are true objectively: your age,

Serendipper wrote: No, it's a relationship. I lived this many revolutions of the earth around the sun. There is no objective time.

Technically true. That is, if, ontologically, you can define and encompass the meaning of time going all the way back to its very begininng. Or demonstrate beyond all doubt that it had no beginning at all.

And then imagine how, for all practical purposes, others would react to you refusing to say "I am 20 years old". Instead you say "I am 7,300 revolutions around the Sun old."

And then this: what about leap years?

your gender, your race, your sexual orientation, your height, your weight...the place where you were born, the experiences you had, the relationships you sustained, the books you read, the films you viewed etc.

Serendipper wrote: All these things exist as a relationship.

Yes, but these things can at least be demonstrated to have happened. At least to the extent that you are able to do so. After all, even in the either/or world a God is needed to confirm the objective truth of everything.

And let folks like Krishnamurti bring "general descriptions" of this sort down out of the clouds of abstraction and park them in particular contexts precipitating particular behaviors deemed to be either sick or healthy.

Serendipper wrote: Assertion of things that do not exist, as objects of attainment, would seem to me sick

Exist or do not exist in what particular context regarding what particular things?

Serendipper wrote: The only thing we know for sure is there is nothing we know for sure.

Yes, but "here and now" there are still distinctions to be made [in the either/or world] between those relationships able to be demonstrated as true for all of us and individaul reactions to those relationships which appear [to me] to be considersably more subjective.

Serendipper wrote: If something were true for all of us, what would it mean?

What does it mean to say that it is true that the Sun exists for all of? As opposed to this: what does it mean to say that we should completely abandon the burning of fossil fuels and rely entirely on solar power?

Bingo: there are subjective points of view, and then there are subjective points of view.

Serendipper wrote: I think the desire to delineate the world into dualities (right and wrong) is a way of manifesting the self. So clinging to objectivity is resisting death of the self. The only way to exist is to carve yourself out of obscurity and form clear distinctions between this and that. I am here and everything else is over there. When the lines get fuzzy, then you get fragmented. I think it's mighty perceptive of you to notice it.

Again, the problem I have with points like this is how abstract they are.

Serendipper wrote: There is nothing that's not abstract except the one thing that can't be beheld because you cannot look at yourself. Everything that you think is a thing is carved out of something bigger (ie an abstraction).

More abstraction. Bring these assumptions down to earth. Note the actual existential implications of them pertaining to actual human interaction in conflict.

This part:

Point us to a particular context that is embedded in your own life; or to one in which a great deal of news has been generated of late.

Serendipper wrote: Religion, for example, is a way of manifesting oneself as a good person in relation to bad people. "I am special because I do the right thing... unlike those heathen over there." When the lines between the righteous and heathen gets blurry, then identity goes away (fragmented and fractured). If there is no good and bad, then you can't be a good person because the concept doesn't exist. All religion is arrogance and nothing can be more egotistical than true repentance.

So we practice the religion of no religion because we want to be better than those arrogant fools practicing religion, but then we find we're just as arrogant in our religion of no religion. What a trap! Freedom from the trap comes when you realize that you and the trap are the same thing, but then you lose all identity and realize that's no fun, so you'll renounce satori and go back in the game.

Again, as a "general description" of religion this seems reasonable enough. But how each of us come to embody "I" in either a God or a No God world, seems clearly to be embodied all the more in the manner in which I construe the existential meaning [if not the essential definition] of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

That brings a particular religious denomination down to earth. It situates it historically and culturally and experientially in a particular context in which claims are made. Claims that either can be demonstrated as true for all of us or claims that are predicated instead on religious assumptions that cannot.

It's just that different individuals will draw the line here in different places. Is it true objectively that human life begins at conception?

Serendipper wrote: When does conception begin?

Sure, you can take it back to that. Or can take that itself back to the very definition and meaning of Existence itself. Was there a conception involved then?

Will that ever show up on a youtube video?

Or do we become actual human beings further on down the line? How can this be determined once and for all?

Serendipper wrote: I say further down, but what defines human? If we ask people what defines being human, they'll differentiate it with regard to machines (empathy, compassion, creativity, etc). So if we apply that yardstick, at what age does a person display those attributes? Some never do. So now what? If we say humans are animate, then how do we differentiate from animals?

Yes, so then it all comes down to philosophers or scientists actually being able to define...to define...human life. Whose yardstick? Whose definition? And we are animals.

And, once determined, how ought rational men and women configure their moral and political narratives in regard to abortion?

Serendipper wrote: According to their own convictions I suppose.

And how are their convictions not embodied in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

That's what I do here. I offer others a chance to bring their own value judgments out into the world of conflicting goods that we live in today. To describe them such that they do not think of "I" here as being down in a hole.

Serendipper wrote: Matt Dillahunty had a good argument for abortion saying that if one human doesn't have the right to parasite himself off another human without permission, then why afford that right to humans who haven't been born? That seems pretty solid.

It's "solid" only given its initial assumptions. As though others who argue against abortion don't have their own initial set of assumptions.

Then it comes down to the extent to which someone is willing to admit that: I'm right from my side, your right from your side. Or insists instead that their own assumptions are predicated objectively on one or another God or political ideology or intellectual [deontological] contraption or assessment of "nature".

Serendipper wrote: Even if reason and evidence were a foundation, we still must have faith in it. There is no distinction between the absolute and the relative because whatever truth you hold will be relative to that yardstick. You either appeal to deontology or popularity or whatever foundation in accordance with how you're put together and with regard to a particular sequence of experiences.

Yes, only to the extent that one is able to grasp Existence itself, are they able to jettison the part about faith. But some yardsticks -- Donald Trump is president of the United States -- seem considerally more likely to measure the objective truth than others -- building Donald Trump's wall on the Mexican border is the right thing to do.

You either grasp this distinction as I do here or you don't.

Serendipper wrote: But really, if there were an objective morality, it would exist independent of humans, which makes no sense because how can morality exist without moral agents? Morality is emergent and not absolute.

What makes no sense to me is making an argument like this as though in making it it becomes true. And that is basically what you are doing here in my opinion. You have no capacity [that I know of] to substantiate this claim.

And all I ask is that you bring it down to earth and make an attempt to at least try. In particular, as it is relevant to answering the question, "how ought one to live"?

Instead, you are more likely to embrace moderation, negotiation and compromise in your political interactions with others.

Then it's just a matter of whether or not you take this as far as "I" do. Tumbling all the way down into a hole like mine.

Serendipper wrote: Anytime you find yourself in a trap that you can't escape, it means you and the trap are one. It's an infinite abyss of your own making.

Again, what on earth does that mean? How are you not trapped in your own arguments [assumptions] about human interactions in conflict over values out of sync?

What do you do but, in regard to a conflict like abortion, take a particular political leap to the political leap of someone like Matt Dillahunty.

Assuming this and that, abortion is the right or the wrong thing to do. Assuming that your "I" is not down in the hole with my "I".

As for the Chinese farmer? Maybe.

But the bottom line is always that one way or another the consequences of what we do or of what happens to us gets entangled in good or bad in a particular context out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view.

What is contrued to be good fortune when the farmer's son is exempt from military service may be construed later as bad fortune when the enemy wins the war and confiscates the farm. You can take this sort of thing back as far as you are able.

But "for all practical purposes" there must be rules of behavior in any particular human community such that some behaviors are chosen to be rewarded and others chosen to be punished. Why these and not those?

And how close to my own understanding of this [given the components of my moral philosophy] is reasonable?

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I always start from there. As opposed to the objectivists who start with the assumption that you are either "one of us" or you are wrong.

Still, you have to admit this point will be easier to understand if you take it out into the world that we live in and embed it in a context in which deductions are made regarding facts able to be established and then made regarding our reactions to those facts such that some insist they indicate we ought to behave one way while others insist they indicate we ought to behave in another way.

Serendipper wrote: Is it odd that you're looking for an absolute and then always tell me to bring it down to earth and relate it to something?

I'm not looking for an absolute so much as a frame of mind able to yank me up out of the hole that [intellectually and existentially] I have dug for myself. There seem to be facts about human interactions that we can all agree on. But we react to those facts differently in terms of what we think they tell us about right and wrong behaviors.

And that becomes more and more apparent [to me] when we discuss our specific reactions to specific behaviors out in particular contexts. "I" for me here is constrained by the facts. The facts don't go away just because you think something else is true.

And then the part where the facts are acknowledged by everyone [John eats meat] but our reaction to the facts vary considerably [John ought to or ought not to eat meat].

Serendipper wrote: If it's absolute, it's not relational and if it's relational, then it's not absolute. Objectivity is impossible because there is no context for it and it can't be said in terms of anything. It can't be brought down to earth and is abstract by definition.

With respect to existence itself, gravity is related to electromagnetism is related to the strong and the weak interactions. This part: https://science.howstuffworks.com/envir ... nature.htm

Now, can we call these relationships truly absolute? Or, instead, are they related to forces we are not even privy to yet? Even going back perhaps to the existence of God?

To speak of "objectivity" here being either possible or impossible seems presumptive in the extreme to me.

You can't possibly know what that means. Unless, perhaps, you do. And if you do, you should take any substantive evidence you have collected and communicate it to the scientific community at large and see how they react to it.

But I suspect that if any particular one of us had actually nailed all this stuff down, he or she would be on the cover of every magazine out there.

"Existence itself finally explained!!"

iambiguous wrote:

iambiguous wrote:Are there limitations here beyond which philosophers are unable to go?

Serendipper wrote: Yes I think so because the objective is the observerless observation. All we can know is only in relation to something else.

Still, as soon as you try to grapple with the implications of this, you are so far out on the metaphysical limb that, for all practical purposes, it becomes meaningless. A universe that simply is what it is. And with absolutely no one or no thing around to know that?

Serendipper wrote: Yes I think so. If there is something else, we could only see it through our subjective lens in relation only to what we already know.

What I always come back to here is that whatever else might exists, our subjective lenses either overlap such that it can be demonstrated to exist for all of us or it can't. But if there are no conscious minds able to convey what they think does exist, what does it mean to say that it exist at all?

Sure, some seem able to wrap their head around this. I'm not one of them.

Think of it this way: If all bodies in the universe are moving, how can we know? We can only know ALL bodies are moving if there is one body that isn't.

So there are two takeaways: 1) We cannot make logical conclusions about ALL things (because there is no reference point). 2) In order for movement to exist, there must be something that is still and so existence itself is a relationship (ie movement exists in relation to what isn't moving).

So when you ask what can be demonstrated to ALL rational people, you've already left the realm of logic since it's not possible to make logical conclusions about ALL things unless we make an exception that at least one thing is different.

Let's say it's objectively true that all things are ruled by God. How do we verify that? We can only verify all things are ruled by God if there is at least one thing that isn't.

Let's say all things exist inside the mind. How do we verify that? What difference does it make to anything in the mind that it's in the mind? What difference does it make to things ruled by God that they're ruled by God? It's impossible to tell because there is nothing that is not ruled by God to compare it to. There is nothing that is not in the mind to compare it to. There is nothing that is not moving to compare it to. Objective statements are meaningless.

...in a world where some measure of human autonomy does in fact exist, it still comes down to that which can be demonstratred to be true objectively for all of us. We just don't know the limits of that. We accept that this exchange exists for all with access to the internet. That can be reasonably demonstrated. But how is it demonstrated that my argument or your argument is closer to the objective truth?

Serendipper wrote: There is no objective truth. I'm cold. Are you cold? Is everyone cold? No, it's subjective to be cold.

But some claims here seem to come considerably closer to that which "for all practical purposes" are construed by those who are "for all practical purposes" deemed to be rational human beings.

Would you be/feel cold buck naked at the North Pole?

This reminds me of the time I had taken some lsd and became scared that I might freeze to death in -10F temps precisely because I could not feel the cold... or it didn't feel cold to me. I wasn't numb, but cold didn't register as painful and I had no way to tell if I was in biological peril or not.

As opposed to, say, is it moral or immoral to strip someone buck naked at the North Pole?

It boils down to what is good for you. If you and I were at the north pole and reliant upon each other for survival and you stripped me naked to freeze in the cold, then you'd be hurting yourself. You would have to act in ways that are consistent with what is commonly called "moral" in order to benefit yourself. To say those actions are moral is pedestalizing morality into something objectively true and then by showing reverence to it is a manifestation of arrogance because now you're not doing something for your own benefit, but flattering yourself for following objective rules with the insinuation that someone else is not and that is how we get to people being burned at the stake and all sorts of righteous wars.

We might all respond subjectively to both inquiries. But who is kidding whom as to that which comes closest to whatever the objective truth might possibly be in a universe in which no one seems able to convey ontologically or teleologically what existence itself means.

It doesn't mean anything. Whatever happens in this universe cannot be remembered after the universe is gone. It's all just dust in the wind and we pretend it's not.

Serendipper wrote: This exchange may exist for everyone, but everyone will see it differently, so it exists uniquely for every person. There is no objective way to discern this thread. I speak in a way I think you will understand and you read in regard to a way you think I speak.

True, but the fact that it does exist for all of us [sans Sim worlds, demonic dreams, solipsism etc.] seems to be clearly more true objectively than the subjective assessments regarding which of us comes closest to explaining it's existence embedded in Existence itself.

It "could" be this, it "could" be that. The distinction I make here is between the either/or and the is/ought world. In explaining where our decisions come from, the former seems considerably more reliable regarding the extent to which these decisions can be demonstrated to be true for all of us.

Wherever our decisions come from is the same for all of us because we're all connected to the same spacetime fabric, but that fundamental thing can never be an object of knowledge because there is no one outside who can take an objective view.

Like dasein were an actual thing I could take out of my pocket and say, "here, this is dasein".

Serendipper wrote: I can define things that can't be taken out of my pocket and displayed.

Okay, define freedom or justice...or time or space.

Freedom is a relative term requiring an object to be free from. We can't be simultaneously free from law and crime because we're either free from crime because we're bound to law or we're subject to crime upon being freed from law. Being a slave is a good way to be free from worry, but to stand on one's own and truly be free requires lots of strife and aggravation.

Justice is retribution according to some arbitrary moral code.

Time is a relation of the movement of one thing compared to another within space.

Space is the condition resulting from a delay in the transmission of information.

Time and space cannot be separated because if there were no time, then all travel would be instant and therefore there would be no space.

There are clearly things about yourself "here and now" that are true objectively: your age,

Serendipper wrote: No, it's a relationship. I lived this many revolutions of the earth around the sun. There is no objective time.

Technically true. That is, if, ontologically, you can define and encompass the meaning of time going all the way back to its very begininng. Or demonstrate beyond all doubt that it had no beginning at all.

I think from the point of view inside spacetime (as a function of it), then time had no beginning, but from a point of view outside spacetime (if that were possible), then time would have a beginning (whatever that means outside of time). It's analogous to someone going into a black hole: from his point of view, he'd go right in, but from the point of view of someone outside, he'd take forever to make it past the event horizon.

And then imagine how, for all practical purposes, others would react to you refusing to say "I am 20 years old". Instead you say "I am 7,300 revolutions around the Sun old."

The natives used to talk in terms of "moons": many moons ago.

And then this: what about leap years?

That wouldn't apply when using revolutions around the sun. Leap years only come because we make a year a tidy number of days (instead of 365.25 days) since we can't have a 1/4 day.

your gender, your race, your sexual orientation, your height, your weight...the place where you were born, the experiences you had, the relationships you sustained, the books you read, the films you viewed etc.

Serendipper wrote: All these things exist as a relationship.

Yes, but these things can at least be demonstrated to have happened. At least to the extent that you are able to do so. After all, even in the either/or world a God is needed to confirm the objective truth of everything.

If God confirms it, then it isn't objective, but subjective according to the subjective lens of God.

And let folks like Krishnamurti bring "general descriptions" of this sort down out of the clouds of abstraction and park them in particular contexts precipitating particular behaviors deemed to be either sick or healthy.

Serendipper wrote: Assertion of things that do not exist, as objects of attainment, would seem to me sick

Exist or do not exist in what particular context regarding what particular things?

Krishnamurti said "We are talking about something entirely different: you are talking about self-improvement while I am talking about elimination of the self."

Serendipper wrote: The only thing we know for sure is there is nothing we know for sure.

Yes, but "here and now" there are still distinctions to be made [in the either/or world] between those relationships able to be demonstrated as true for all of us and individaul reactions to those relationships which appear [to me] to be considersably more subjective.

Serendipper wrote: If something were true for all of us, what would it mean?

What does it mean to say that it is true that the Sun exists for all of? As opposed to this: what does it mean to say that we should completely abandon the burning of fossil fuels and rely entirely on solar power?

Bingo: there are subjective points of view, and then there are subjective points of view.

The sun exists to everyone that exists to the sun in a transactional and codependent relationship. The sun isn't an objective thing. Solar power is free energy and seems the sensible thing to pursue. I'm not sure what you're trying to show with this.

Serendipper wrote: I think the desire to delineate the world into dualities (right and wrong) is a way of manifesting the self. So clinging to objectivity is resisting death of the self. The only way to exist is to carve yourself out of obscurity and form clear distinctions between this and that. I am here and everything else is over there. When the lines get fuzzy, then you get fragmented. I think it's mighty perceptive of you to notice it.

Again, the problem I have with points like this is how abstract they are.

Serendipper wrote: There is nothing that's not abstract except the one thing that can't be beheld because you cannot look at yourself. Everything that you think is a thing is carved out of something bigger (ie an abstraction).

More abstraction. Bring these assumptions down to earth. Note the actual existential implications of them pertaining to actual human interaction in conflict.

I don't know how.

You want action A
I want action B
Who wins?

Metaphors reign where mysteries reside. There is no way to bring it down to earth and even if I could, it would simply create something else that needed to be brought down to earth.

Point us to a particular context that is embedded in your own life; or to one in which a great deal of news has been generated of late.

Serendipper wrote: Religion, for example, is a way of manifesting oneself as a good person in relation to bad people. "I am special because I do the right thing... unlike those heathen over there." When the lines between the righteous and heathen gets blurry, then identity goes away (fragmented and fractured). If there is no good and bad, then you can't be a good person because the concept doesn't exist. All religion is arrogance and nothing can be more egotistical than true repentance.

So we practice the religion of no religion because we want to be better than those arrogant fools practicing religion, but then we find we're just as arrogant in our religion of no religion. What a trap! Freedom from the trap comes when you realize that you and the trap are the same thing, but then you lose all identity and realize that's no fun, so you'll renounce satori and go back in the game.

Again, as a "general description" of religion this seems reasonable enough. But how each of us come to embody "I" in either a God or a No God world, seems clearly to be embodied all the more in the manner in which I construe the existential meaning [if not the essential definition] of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

That brings a particular religious denomination down to earth. It situates it historically and culturally and experientially in a particular context in which claims are made. Claims that either can be demonstrated as true for all of us or claims that are predicated instead on religious assumptions that cannot.

We come to embody "I" because we're trained to.

In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to the sensation of being one with the universe.[1] According to Rolland, this feeling is the source of all the religious energy that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every belief and every illusion.[2] Freud discusses the feeling in his Future of an Illusion (1927) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). There he deems it a fragmentary vestige of a kind of consciousness possessed by an infant who has not yet differentiated himself or herself from other people and things.[3]

Freud argues that the "oceanic feeling", if it exists, is the preserved "primitive ego-feeling" from infancy. The primitive ego-feeling precedes the creation of the ego and exists up until the mother ceases breastfeeding. Prior to this, the infant is regularly breastfed in response to its crying and has no concept that the breast does not belong to it. Therefore, the infant has no concept of a "self" or, rather, considers the breast to be part of itself. Freud argues that those experiencing an oceanic feeling as an adult are actually experiencing a preserved primitive ego-feeling. The ego, in contrast, comes into existence when the breast is taken away, and involves the infant's recognition that it is separate from the mother's breast, and therefore, that other people exist. Freud argues that it would not necessarily contradict psychoanalytical theory for this primary ego-feeling to coexist along with the ego in some people. The main argument for this is that psychoanalytical theory holds that all thoughts are preserved in a conservation of psychic energy. Therefore, the "oceanic feeling" described as a oneness with the world or a limitlessness is simply a description of the feeling the infant has before it learns there are other persons in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling

It's just that different individuals will draw the line here in different places. Is it true objectively that human life begins at conception?

Serendipper wrote: When does conception begin?

Sure, you can take it back to that. Or can take that itself back to the very definition and meaning of Existence itself. Was there a conception involved then?

Will that ever show up on a youtube video?

Or do we become actual human beings further on down the line? How can this be determined once and for all?

Serendipper wrote: I say further down, but what defines human? If we ask people what defines being human, they'll differentiate it with regard to machines (empathy, compassion, creativity, etc). So if we apply that yardstick, at what age does a person display those attributes? Some never do. So now what? If we say humans are animate, then how do we differentiate from animals?

Yes, so then it all comes down to philosophers or scientists actually being able to define...to define...human life. Whose yardstick? Whose definition? And we are animals.

When things began is an abstraction (a cutout from the whole continuum and artificially labelled a thing). There are no things or events except the one thing and the one event.

And, once determined, how ought rational men and women configure their moral and political narratives in regard to abortion?

Serendipper wrote: According to their own convictions I suppose.

And how are their convictions not embodied in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

That's what I do here. I offer others a chance to bring their own value judgments out into the world of conflicting goods that we live in today. To describe them such that they do not think of "I" here as being down in a hole.

I'm more than happy to play along, but it takes a good deal of energy to figure out what you're meaning with these obscure terms like dasein, conflicting goods, here and now. Talking to you is expensive in terms of blood glucose lol

Serendipper wrote: Matt Dillahunty had a good argument for abortion saying that if one human doesn't have the right to parasite himself off another human without permission, then why afford that right to humans who haven't been born? That seems pretty solid.

It's "solid" only given its initial assumptions. As though others who argue against abortion don't have their own initial set of assumptions.

Then it comes down to the extent to which someone is willing to admit that: I'm right from my side, your right from your side. Or insists instead that their own assumptions are predicated objectively on one or another God or political ideology or intellectual [deontological] contraption or assessment of "nature".

The only way to refute his argument would be to explain how you're different from a fetus such that a fetus has the right to parasite itself off someone else but other humans do not.

Well, maybe the fetus has extra rights because it's innocent, but isn't that true of babies in general? So then even babies should have the right to parasite from other humans. At what age does that right terminate? Do we pull the plug after that age? And what about animals? They're innocent too! So we should have animals attached by tubes to people to keep them alive? Is any human fair game or only the mother? Can we snatch people from walmart parking lots and harvest their organs for innocent babies so they can grow up to be sinners and have their organs reclaimed for more babies? All this is silly. It's much easier to say the rigths of a fetus do not supersede the rights of anyone else.

Serendipper wrote: Even if reason and evidence were a foundation, we still must have faith in it. There is no distinction between the absolute and the relative because whatever truth you hold will be relative to that yardstick. You either appeal to deontology or popularity or whatever foundation in accordance with how you're put together and with regard to a particular sequence of experiences.

Yes, only to the extent that one is able to grasp Existence itself, are they able to jettison the part about faith. But some yardsticks -- Donald Trump is president of the United States -- seem considerally more likely to measure the objective truth than others -- building Donald Trump's wall on the Mexican border is the right thing to do.

You either grasp this distinction as I do here or you don't.

Is it objectively true that the bishop moves diagonally in chess? What happens if someone changes the rule? Nothing happens because it's not objective, but relational. Some people don't consider Trump to be president.

Serendipper wrote: But really, if there were an objective morality, it would exist independent of humans, which makes no sense because how can morality exist without moral agents? Morality is emergent and not absolute.

What makes no sense to me is making an argument like this as though in making it it becomes true. And that is basically what you are doing here in my opinion. You have no capacity [that I know of] to substantiate this claim.

And all I ask is that you bring it down to earth and make an attempt to at least try. In particular, as it is relevant to answering the question, "how ought one to live"?

What is objectively true would be true regardless of opinions, so if it were wrong to murder, then it wouldn't be possible to murder. Since it is possible, then its not objectively wrong. Objectivity exists independent of ANY observer.

Instead, you are more likely to embrace moderation, negotiation and compromise in your political interactions with others.

Then it's just a matter of whether or not you take this as far as "I" do. Tumbling all the way down into a hole like mine.

Serendipper wrote: Anytime you find yourself in a trap that you can't escape, it means you and the trap are one. It's an infinite abyss of your own making.

Again, what on earth does that mean? How are you not trapped in your own arguments [assumptions] about human interactions in conflict over values out of sync?

What do you do but, in regard to a conflict like abortion, take a particular political leap to the political leap of someone like Matt Dillahunty.

Assuming this and that, abortion is the right or the wrong thing to do. Assuming that your "I" is not down in the hole with my "I".

I'm starting to think you want to be in the hole and are fending off all attempts to pull you out because that's where you want to be. That's fine because I sometimes think I like being in a depressed and gloomy state: as long as things are bad, then I know everything is ok

As for the Chinese farmer? Maybe.

But the bottom line is always that one way or another the consequences of what we do or of what happens to us gets entangled in good or bad in a particular context out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view.

What is contrued to be good fortune when the farmer's son is exempt from military service may be construed later as bad fortune when the enemy wins the war and confiscates the farm. You can take this sort of thing back as far as you are able.

Right, there is no way to tell what is good or bad.

But "for all practical purposes" there must be rules of behavior in any particular human community such that some behaviors are chosen to be rewarded and others chosen to be punished. Why these and not those?

It's completely arbitrary. Deer wouldn't have long legs if predators couldn't run fast. The societal organism will adapt to whatever rules are imposed and it honestly doesn't care. The whole race can go extinct and it makes no difference because life could re-evolve billions of years from now or possibly in another universe in an amount of "time" impossible to quantify and no alternative carries any more appeal than any other.

Further, the moment you impose rules, the organism will evolve ways around them. It goes immediately to work in response to your change no differently than antibiotics train bacteria to be resistant, so the implementation of rules is an exercise in chasing your tail in a cat n mouse game where having a better cat just results in more clever mice.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I always start from there. As opposed to the objectivists who start with the assumption that you are either "one of us" or you are wrong.

I call them dogmatists.

Still, you have to admit this point will be easier to understand if you take it out into the world that we live in and embed it in a context in which deductions are made regarding facts able to be established and then made regarding our reactions to those facts such that some insist they indicate we ought to behave one way while others insist they indicate we ought to behave in another way.

Serendipper wrote: Is it odd that you're looking for an absolute and then always tell me to bring it down to earth and relate it to something?

I'm not looking for an absolute so much as a frame of mind able to yank me up out of the hole that [intellectually and existentially] I have dug for myself. There seem to be facts about human interactions that we can all agree on. But we react to those facts differently in terms of what we think they tell us about right and wrong behaviors.

And that becomes more and more apparent [to me] when we discuss our specific reactions to specific behaviors out in particular contexts. "I" for me here is constrained by the facts. The facts don't go away just because you think something else is true.

And then the part where the facts are acknowledged by everyone [John eats meat] but our reaction to the facts vary considerably [John ought to or ought not to eat meat].

Ought only exists in relation to a goal. If you want ________, then you ought to do _____________. If you don't want anything, then there is no ought.

Serendipper wrote: If it's absolute, it's not relational and if it's relational, then it's not absolute. Objectivity is impossible because there is no context for it and it can't be said in terms of anything. It can't be brought down to earth and is abstract by definition.

With respect to existence itself, gravity is related to electromagnetism is related to the strong and the weak interactions. This part: https://science.howstuffworks.com/envir ... nature.htm

Now, can we call these relationships truly absolute? Or, instead, are they related to forces we are not even privy to yet? Even going back perhaps to the existence of God?

They are related to duality. Where did duality come from? Well, duality come from unity: the coin has heads and tails because it's one coin.

To speak of "objectivity" here being either possible or impossible seems presumptive in the extreme to me.

Objectivity cannot exist unless it is observed and if it is observed, then it's no longer objectivity, but subjectivity because it could only be observed through a subjective lens given by how the subject relates to the object.

For example, let's say another universe exists, but we are unable to detect it in any way whatsoever. That universe would be objective because it's not part of a subject/object relationship and yet it exists; it's just sitting there all alone in the middle of nothingness. But because we have no way of detecting that universe, we can't say that universe exists. And if we could detect that universe, then it would not be a universe, but simply part of our own.

You can't possibly know what that means. Unless, perhaps, you do. And if you do, you should take any substantive evidence you have collected and communicate it to the scientific community at large and see how they react to it.

They wouldn't see it as fashionable.

But I suspect that if any particular one of us had actually nailed all this stuff down, he or she would be on the cover of every magazine out there.

"Existence itself finally explained!!"

This knowledge is 1000s of years old and went out of fashion long ago.

Serendipper wrote:

iambiguous wrote:What I always come back to here is that whatever else might exists, our subjective lenses either overlap such that it can be demonstrated to exist for all of us or it can't. But if there are no conscious minds able to convey what they think does exist, what does it mean to say that it exist at all?

Sure, some seem able to wrap their head around this. I'm not one of them.

Think of it this way: If all bodies in the universe are moving, how can we know? We can only know ALL bodies are moving if there is one body that isn't.

So there are two takeaways: 1) We cannot make logical conclusions about ALL things (because there is no reference point). 2) In order for movement to exist, there must be something that is still and so existence itself is a relationship (ie movement exists in relation to what isn't moving).

So when you ask what can be demonstrated to ALL rational people, you've already left the realm of logic since it's not possible to make logical conclusions about ALL things unless we make an exception that at least one thing is different.

But in a universe where there are zero, zip and absolutely nada conscious entities around to discuss and debate this, what possible difference could it make whether there are entities that don't move?

Given a complete understanding of how and why existence does in fact exist at all, there is [presumably] an objective truth. There are bodies that are still or there are not. But with no mortal minds on earth, no extrateresstrial minds or no Gods around to know this, what exactly does that mean?

The squabble over white swans and black swans would have been entirely moot with no minds around to create a narrative in which to discuss and to debate it.

Serendipper wrote: Let's say all things exist inside the mind. How do we verify that? What difference does it make to anything in the mind that it's in the mind? What difference does it make to things ruled by God that they're ruled by God? It's impossible to tell because there is nothing that is not ruled by God to compare it to. There is nothing that is not in the mind to compare it to. There is nothing that is not moving to compare it to. Objective statements are meaningless.

But if there are no minds around to even ponder the question, it all comes down to the relationship between an existing God and all that encompasses existence.

But: There are no philosophers around to even bring up anything relating to this. The subjective/objective debate exists only because there are minds able to broach it in the first place. No minds no meaning.

Then the part where the meaning that any particualr mind attributes to "I" may well be entirely determined by the laws of nature.

...in a world where some measure of human autonomy does in fact exist, it still comes down to that which can be demonstratred to be true objectively for all of us. We just don't know the limits of that. We accept that this exchange exists for all with access to the internet. That can be reasonably demonstrated. But how is it demonstrated that my argument or your argument is closer to the objective truth?

Serendipper wrote: There is no objective truth. I'm cold. Are you cold? Is everyone cold? No, it's subjective to be cold.

But some claims here seem to come considerably closer to that which "for all practical purposes" are construed by those who are "for all practical purposes" deemed to be rational human beings.

Would you be/feel cold buck naked at the North Pole?

Serendipper wrote: This reminds me of the time I had taken some lsd and became scared that I might freeze to death in -10F temps precisely because I could not feel the cold... or it didn't feel cold to me. I wasn't numb, but cold didn't register as painful and I had no way to tell if I was in biological peril or not.

But all of this is unfolding in a particular mind that either will or will nor perish in any particular context. Cold is perceived subjectively but there are certain biological parameters in which the capacity to perceive it is either sustained or not.

As opposed to, say, is it moral or immoral to strip someone buck naked at the North Pole?

Serendipper wrote: It boils down to what is good for you. If you and I were at the north pole and reliant upon each other for survival and you stripped me naked to freeze in the cold, then you'd be hurting yourself.

Not if killing you allowed me to consume you in order to sustain my own existence. In other words, in a context in which a rescue team was on the way and it was only a matter of surviving long enough for it to reach me. Good and bad here are points of view. And these are clearly more subjective than the objective parameters embedded in the either/or world of cold and human biology. And how this then factors into living or dying.

We might all respond subjectively to both inquiries. But who is kidding whom as to that which comes closest to whatever the objective truth might possibly be in a universe in which no one seems able to convey ontologically or teleologically what existence itself means.

Serendipper wrote: It doesn't mean anything. Whatever happens in this universe cannot be remembered after the universe is gone. It's all just dust in the wind and we pretend it's not.

What always boggles my mind here is how folks manage to think themselves into believing things like this are true with no capacity to actually demonstrate empirically that it is true for all rational human beings. Instead, it is true for them "in their heads" based on a set of assumptions they make about the existence of existence itself.

Serendipper wrote: Wherever our decisions come from is the same for all of us because we're all connected to the same spacetime fabric, but that fundamental thing can never be an object of knowledge because there is no one outside who can take an objective view.

This is more of the same to me. You assert something to be true based only on an intellectual contraption that you have concocted to explain 1] why something exists rather than nothing and 2] why this something and not something else.

Serendipper wrote: I can define things that can't be taken out of my pocket and displayed.

Okay, define freedom or justice...or time or space.

Serendipper wrote: Freedom is a relative term requiring an object to be free from. We can't be simultaneously free from law and crime because we're either free from crime because we're bound to law or we're subject to crime upon being freed from law. Being a slave is a good way to be free from worry, but to stand on one's own and truly be free requires lots of strife and aggravation.

Okay, but when you take this assumption out into the world of actual conflicting goods, how is it determined what the meaning of freedom is when John demands the freedom to own guns and Joe demands the feedom to live in a world without them?

And how is it demonstrated that either point of view is not just a manifestation of a wholly determined universe?

And how do we connect the dots between any particular answers that any particular one of us might give and an ontological definition and meaning of existence itself? And then to demonstrate the extent to which there is also a teleological component here?

Serendipper wrote: Justice is retribution according to some arbitrary moral code.

Any particular moral code is embedded first and foremost in prescribing and proscribing rules of behavior that revolve around sustaining human life itself. Capitalism? Socialism? Fascism? Anarchism? Survival of the fittest? One or another rendition of Plato's Republic?

Justice would seem to be largely ensconced in specific historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts re any actual community of men and women.

Serendipper wrote: Time is a relation of the movement of one thing compared to another within space.

Space is the condition resulting from a delay in the transmission of information.

Time and space cannot be separated because if there were no time, then all travel would be instant and therefore there would be no space.

Again, as though you actually do have access to an understanding of time and space going all the way back to whatever brought them into existence in the first place.

Instead, you think this:

Serendipper wrote: I think from the point of view inside spacetime (as a function of it), then time had no beginning, but from a point of view outside spacetime (if that were possible), then time would have a beginning (whatever that means outside of time). It's analogous to someone going into a black hole: from his point of view, he'd go right in, but from the point of view of someone outside, he'd take forever to make it past the event horizon.

But how could thoughts of this sort not be predicated on certain sets of assumptions that may or may not be shared by others? Who is the one able to settle it once and for?

Black holes as they are understood now, and black holes as they will be understood 10,000 years from now. Can we even begin to grasp the intelligence gap here?

Or this:

Serendipper wrote: If God confirms it, then it isn't objective, but subjective according to the subjective lens of God.

Yes, it is always fascinating to speculate about these things. But to speak of them as though you can actually know what is in fact true here? Well, that is something I no longer imagine as within my own reach. Or within the reach of any mere mortal grappling to understand All There Is as an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in what may well be a multiverse.

Or this:

Serendipper wrote: Krishnamurti said "We are talking about something entirely different: you are talking about self-improvement while I am talking about elimination of the self."

Again, with respect to a particular human being interacting with other human beings in a particular context out in a particular world what of earth does that mean?!

How does "I" go about elimating his or her self? At best they can isolate themselves completely from all other conscious beings and commune with nature or with God. But their body will always be demanding food and water and shelter and protection. That part of "I" is either sustained or it perishes by tumbling over into an abyss that may or may not be oblivion.

What does it mean to say that it is true that the Sun exists for all of? As opposed to this: what does it mean to say that we should completely abandon the burning of fossil fuels and rely entirely on solar power?

Bingo: there are subjective points of view, and then there are subjective points of view.

Serendipper wrote: The sun exists to everyone that exists to the sun in a transactional and codependent relationship. The sun isn't an objective thing. Solar power is free energy and seems the sensible thing to pursue. I'm not sure what you're trying to show with this.

I'm making a clear distinction between the extent to which human beings can in fact know that the sun is as close as we are ever likely to get to calling something an objective thing, and the seeming inabilty of particular value judgments about solar energy to be construed in turn as anything other than subjective/political opinions.

Serendipper wrote: There is nothing that's not abstract except the one thing that can't be beheld because you cannot look at yourself. Everything that you think is a thing is carved out of something bigger (ie an abstraction).

More abstraction. Bring these assumptions down to earth. Note the actual existential implications of them pertaining to actual human interaction in conflict.

Serendipper wrote: I don't know how.

You want action A
I want action B
Who wins?

Metaphors reign where mysteries reside. There is no way to bring it down to earth and even if I could, it would simply create something else that needed to be brought down to earth.

More abstraction. You want action A in a particular context. Someone else wants action B. Therse are objective facts. But how are philosophers able to determine which action reflects that most rational and virtuous action?

And to what extent is what you think you want here predicated more on rational discourse than on the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here?

And someone partial to Romain Rolland "oceanic feeling" or freud's "primitive ego-feeling" would have to bring this down to earth. What do they mean in regard to particular behaviors that we choose in particular contexts given [in turn] what we think is true "in our head" about all of it in either a God or a No Go world.

And, once determined, how ought rational men and women configure their moral and political narratives in regard to abortion?

Serendipper wrote: According to their own convictions I suppose.

And how are their convictions not embodied in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

That's what I do here. I offer others a chance to bring their own value judgments out into the world of conflicting goods that we live in today. To describe them such that they do not think of "I" here as being down in a hole.

Serendipper wrote:I'm more than happy to play along, but it takes a good deal of energy to figure out what you're meaning with these obscure terms like dasein, conflicting goods, here and now. Talking to you is expensive in terms of blood glucose lol

Okay. Choose a context. Choose a set of behaviors in conflict. The whole point of bringing the discussion here down to earth is to make the terms less obscure. To connect them with the thinking of people who choose one thing rather than another. To note those objective facts that all rational men and women can agree are true for all of us.

Serendipper wrote: Matt Dillahunty had a good argument for abortion saying that if one human doesn't have the right to parasite himself off another human without permission, then why afford that right to humans who haven't been born? That seems pretty solid.

It's "solid" only given its initial assumptions. As though others who argue against abortion don't have their own initial set of assumptions.

Then it comes down to the extent to which someone is willing to admit that: I'm right from my side, your right from your side. Or insists instead that their own assumptions are predicated objectively on one or another God or political ideology or intellectual [deontological] contraption or assessment of "nature".

Serendipper wrote: The only way to refute his argument would be to explain how you're different from a fetus such that a fetus has the right to parasite itself off someone else but other humans do not.

Sans God, how could any mere mortal know beyond all doubt what the unborn have a right to? And, despite how different I might be from the fetus, I would not myself be around now if I had been aborted.

It always comes down to those who insist that the unborn have a "natural right" to life and those who insist that pregnant women have a "political right" to choose abortion.

Show me an argument able to demonstrate that it is either one or the other?

Serendipper wrote: Even if reason and evidence were a foundation, we still must have faith in it. There is no distinction between the absolute and the relative because whatever truth you hold will be relative to that yardstick. You either appeal to deontology or popularity or whatever foundation in accordance with how you're put together and with regard to a particular sequence of experiences.

Yes, only to the extent that one is able to grasp Existence itself, are they able to jettison the part about faith. But some yardsticks -- Donald Trump is president of the United States -- seem considerally more likely to measure the objective truth than others -- building Donald Trump's wall on the Mexican border is the right thing to do.

You either grasp this distinction as I do here or you don't.

Serendipper wrote: Is it objectively true that the bishop moves diagonally in chess? What happens if someone changes the rule? Nothing happens because it's not objective, but relational. Some people don't consider Trump to be president.

Sure, if you want to go that far out on the "what is reality?" limb, almost anything can be rationalized. But few are going to argue that it is immoral to recreate chess so the that the bishop can move both diagonally and horizontily/vertically.

And others can be just as adament that Trump is not president of the United States as they are that building the wall on the Mexican border is immoral.

"In our head" we can think that anything is true. We can think that Trump is just a character in a Sim world or a creation in some demonic dream. So all it can ever come down to in the end is in closing the gap between what we think is true and what we can demonstrate is in fact true for everyone. With even that problematic given the gap bewtween "I" here and a whole understanding of existence itself.

Serendipper wrote: But really, if there were an objective morality, it would exist independent of humans, which makes no sense because how can morality exist without moral agents? Morality is emergent and not absolute.

What makes no sense to me is making an argument like this as though in making it, it becomes true. And that is basically what you are doing here in my opinion. You have no capacity [that I know of] to substantiate this claim.

And all I ask is that you bring it down to earth and make an attempt to at least try. In particular, as it is relevant to answering the question, "how ought one to live"?

Serendipper wrote: What is objectively true would be true regardless of opinions, so if it were wrong to murder, then it wouldn't be possible to murder. Since it is possible, then its not objectively wrong. Objectivity exists independent of ANY observer.

Again, as an intellectual contraption, this is true for you because it is in sync with all the assumptions you make about the meaning of "objective truth", "opinions", "murder" and "observers".

But put these elements out in a particular context in which different people construe the meaning of a particular killing in conflicting ways and then what?

A particular killing may or may not be demonstrated to have in fact been a murder given the law in any actual particular human community. But different individuals interpreting the facts of the killing in different ways may or may not agree on whether the killing ought to have been illegal. Some may insist it is justified, while others insist it was not.

In other words, we may well not live in a world where there is an objective truth here that transcends the subjective opinions of the observers. They may all agree that Jim killed Jack. But they may not all agree that the killing was justified.

Unless of course we live in a wholly determined universe where so called "subjective opinions" are an illusion.

Serendipper wrote: I'm starting to think you want to be in the hole and are fending off all attempts to pull you out because that's where you want to be. That's fine because I sometimes think I like being in a depressed and gloomy state: as long as things are bad, then I know everything is ok

No, I am looking for others convinced that they are not down in this hole, to bring their own value judgments out into the world as I do here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

They either will or they won't. And we will either agree that they have or we won't.

But "for all practical purposes" there must be rules of behavior in any particular human community such that some behaviors are chosen to be rewarded and others chosen to be punished. Why these and not those?

Serendipper wrote:It's completely arbitrary.

On the contrary, it is embedded first and foremost in subsistence. And then the extent to which particular historical, cultural and experiential memes, shaped and molded by nature, are in turn able to reconfigure nature into any number of actual social, political and economic permutations. People just don't embody particular thoughts and feelings and behaviors out of the blue.

Again, the exception here being a world in which everything --everything -- unfolds only as it ever could have.

But even here we are back to why it is this way and not some other way.

Serendipper wrote: Is it odd that you're looking for an absolute and then always tell me to bring it down to earth and relate it to something?

I'm not looking for an absolute so much as a frame of mind able to yank me up out of the hole that [intellectually and existentially] I have dug for myself. There seem to be facts about human interactions that we can all agree on. But we react to those facts differently in terms of what we think they tell us about right and wrong behaviors.

And that becomes more and more apparent [to me] when we discuss our specific reactions to specific behaviors out in particular contexts. "I" for me here is constrained by the facts. The facts don't go away just because you think something else is true.

And then the part where the facts are acknowledged by everyone [John eats meat] but our reaction to the facts vary considerably [John ought to or ought not to eat meat].

Serendipper wrote: Ought only exists in relation to a goal. If you want ________, then you ought to do _____________. If you don't want anything, then there is no ought.

That is an ought embedded more in the either/or world. John wants to eat meat. Okay, what ought he to do to accomplish this? Well, he can hunt the animals down himself, he can purchase it in the grocery store, he can steal it from someone. He either does in fact accomplish it or he doesn't. But that is different from the ought embedded in the is/ought world.

Ought he to be a hunter? Ought he to steal? Ought he to eat meat at all?

And human goals...how are they not embedded/emdodied largely in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein?

And then conflicting goods. And then political economy.

With respect to existence itself, gravity is related to electromagnetism is related to the strong and the weak interactions. This part: https://science.howstuffworks.com/envir ... nature.htm

Now, can we call these relationships truly absolute? Or, instead, are they related to forces we are not even privy to yet? Even going back perhaps to the existence of God?

Serendipper wrote: They are related to duality. Where did duality come from? Well, duality come from unity: the coin has heads and tails because it's one coin.

I have no idea what "on earth" something like this means. Let alone how it relates to the manner in which I construe the subjective/objective distinction relating to conflicting goods in a No God world.

To the extent that gravity and the other forces are true "absolutely"...how is that related "for all practical purposes" to this duality coming from unity. A coin is a man-made thing embedded in, among other things, the manner in which any particular community goes about sustaining the means of productions. Money, in other words. But there are any number of ferocious conflicts that revolve around what is deemed "just" in regard to the use and the distribution of money in any particular community.

To speak of "objectivity" here being either possible or impossible seems presumptive in the extreme to me.

Serendipper wrote: Objectivity cannot exist unless it is observed and if it is observed, then it's no longer objectivity, but subjectivity because it could only be observed through a subjective lens given by how the subject relates to the object.

Yeah, I sometimes come close to understanding things like this "theoretically". But when actual flesh and blood human beings observe actual phenomena out in a particular world, there are still going to be those things that reasonable people can agree are true, and those things which are deemed true given an attachment to a particular set of moral and political prejudices. Which I then largely subsume in dasein.

iambiguous wrote:But in a universe where there are zero, zip and absolutely nada conscious entities around to discuss and debate this, what possible difference could it make whether there are entities that don't move?

The point is that movement only exists in relation to something else. There is no such thing as objective movement. Conscious entities are beside the point.

Given a complete understanding of how and why existence does in fact exist at all, there is [presumably] an objective truth.

Restate it this way "Given a complete understanding of how and why relativity does in fact exist at all, there is [presumably] an objective truth." Why? Why does objectivity need to exist in order for relativity to exist?

There are bodies that are still or there are not. But with no mortal minds on earth, no extrateresstrial minds or no Gods around to know this, what exactly does that mean?

Why would conscious minds change the meaning? Without conscious minds, it means nothing; with conscious minds, it means nothing.

The squabble over white swans and black swans would have been entirely moot with no minds around to create a narrative in which to discuss and to debate it.

Exactly, but that doesn't mean it's objectively meaningful.

Serendipper wrote: Let's say all things exist inside the mind. How do we verify that? What difference does it make to anything in the mind that it's in the mind? What difference does it make to things ruled by God that they're ruled by God? It's impossible to tell because there is nothing that is not ruled by God to compare it to. There is nothing that is not in the mind to compare it to. There is nothing that is not moving to compare it to. Objective statements are meaningless.

But if there are no minds around to even ponder the question, it all comes down to the relationship between an existing God and all that encompasses existence.

But: There are no philosophers around to even bring up anything relating to this. The subjective/objective debate exists only because there are minds able to broach it in the first place. No minds no meaning.

I say meaning doesn't exist even with the minds. Or the meaning only exists relative to the minds.

Then the part where the meaning that any particualr mind attributes to "I" may well be entirely determined by the laws of nature.

Yes but instead of looking at what that means about the "I", look at what that means about the laws of nature.

Consciousness is not a complicated form of mineral, but mineral is a simple form of consciousness. Whatever it is that makes us "I" is a native property of the universe.

Not if killing you allowed me to consume you in order to sustain my own existence. In other words, in a context in which a rescue team was on the way and it was only a matter of surviving long enough for it to reach me. Good and bad here are points of view. And these are clearly more subjective than the objective parameters embedded in the either/or world of cold and human biology. And how this then factors into living or dying.

Maybe if you didn't eat me, I would have been the next Hitler. Hitler was in the trenches of WWI and credits god to saving him for a purpose, so if some rogue soldier would have shot him, which would have been considered immoral, how moral would the consequences be?

We might all respond subjectively to both inquiries. But who is kidding whom as to that which comes closest to whatever the objective truth might possibly be in a universe in which no one seems able to convey ontologically or teleologically what existence itself means.

Serendipper wrote: It doesn't mean anything. Whatever happens in this universe cannot be remembered after the universe is gone. It's all just dust in the wind and we pretend it's not.

What always boggles my mind here is how folks manage to think themselves into believing things like this are true with no capacity to actually demonstrate empirically that it is true for all rational human beings. Instead, it is true for them "in their heads" based on a set of assumptions they make about the existence of existence itself.

Should we assume meaning and require empirical demonstration that meaning is absent?
Or should we assume lack of meaning and require empirical demonstration of meaning?

Should we assume __________ exists and require proof that it does not?
Or should be assume _________ does not exist and require proof that it does?

I don't know why you put the burden of proof at my doorstep and I don't know why you put so much faith in empirical observation, especially popular ones. That seems like a whole string of logical fallacies.

First you require me to prove something does not exist, with empirical evidence of its nonexistence, then you require me to do it in such a way that most people would agree. It's impossible.

Serendipper wrote: Wherever our decisions come from is the same for all of us because we're all connected to the same spacetime fabric, but that fundamental thing can never be an object of knowledge because there is no one outside who can take an objective view.

This is more of the same to me. You assert something to be true based only on an intellectual contraption that you have concocted to explain 1] why something exists rather than nothing and 2] why this something and not something else.

This is just logic. I've not asserted anything but logic. If something exists, then it is connected to everything that it exists to, which makes the maximum possible things in existence = 1.

Serendipper wrote: Freedom is a relative term requiring an object to be free from. We can't be simultaneously free from law and crime because we're either free from crime because we're bound to law or we're subject to crime upon being freed from law. Being a slave is a good way to be free from worry, but to stand on one's own and truly be free requires lots of strife and aggravation.

Okay, but when you take this assumption out into the world of actual conflicting goods, how is it determined what the meaning of freedom is when John demands the freedom to own guns and Joe demands the feedom to live in a world without them?

This is the same as a disagreement with a girlfriend: she wants to go out and I want to stay in, so who wins? I've never been able to answer that question.

In the case of John and Joe, we could ask more people and make a popularity contest of it. There is no objective answer since the question is essentially should all ice cream be chocolate or vanilla.

You could say that public safety is objective, but I don't want to be safe and would prefer having some elements of danger lurking about.

And how is it demonstrated that either point of view is not just a manifestation of a wholly determined universe?

It's determined by randomness.

And how do we connect the dots between any particular answers that any particular one of us might give and an ontological definition and meaning of existence itself? And then to demonstrate the extent to which there is also a teleological component here?

If there were teleology, there would be no point. If god planned everything and is guiding everything, then why do anything? Why don't you talk to yourself? Because you already know what you will say. There is no point in asking yourself a question if you already know the answer.

Serendipper wrote: Justice is retribution according to some arbitrary moral code.

Any particular moral code is embedded first and foremost in prescribing and proscribing rules of behavior that revolve around sustaining human life itself. Capitalism? Socialism? Fascism? Anarchism? Survival of the fittest? One or another rendition of Plato's Republic?

Why sustain life? Is that individual life or the collective's life? We want to live and sustain our species because if we didn't, we wouldn't be here, but that doesn't mean that wanting to live is objective; it just happens to be conditional to living in the environment that happened to come about.

Serendipper wrote: Time is a relation of the movement of one thing compared to another within space.

Space is the condition resulting from a delay in the transmission of information.

Time and space cannot be separated because if there were no time, then all travel would be instant and therefore there would be no space.

Again, as though you actually do have access to an understanding of time and space going all the way back to whatever brought them into existence in the first place.

Seems to be common sense to me. How could we have time without space and space without time?

Serendipper wrote: I think from the point of view inside spacetime (as a function of it), then time had no beginning, but from a point of view outside spacetime (if that were possible), then time would have a beginning (whatever that means outside of time). It's analogous to someone going into a black hole: from his point of view, he'd go right in, but from the point of view of someone outside, he'd take forever to make it past the event horizon.

But how could thoughts of this sort not be predicated on certain sets of assumptions that may or may not be shared by others? Who is the one able to settle it once and for?

I don't see how popularity is relevant. Either it makes sense to you or it doesn't and if it doesn't, then why not?

Black holes as they are understood now, and black holes as they will be understood 10,000 years from now. Can we even begin to grasp the intelligence gap here?

If we could, there would be no point in going forward.

Serendipper wrote: If God confirms it, then it isn't objective, but subjective according to the subjective lens of God.

Yes, it is always fascinating to speculate about these things. But to speak of them as though you can actually know what is in fact true here? Well, that is something I no longer imagine as within my own reach.

This isn't rocket science. If god is the subject, then his view is subjective. If god is the object, then who is the subject?

Or within the reach of any mere mortal grappling to understand All There Is as an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in what may well be a multiverse.

If our universe came from a multiverse, then the multiverse is simply part of our universe. If the multiverse is not part of our universe, then our universe didn't come from it.

Serendipper wrote: Krishnamurti said "We are talking about something entirely different: you are talking about self-improvement while I am talking about elimination of the self."

Again, with respect to a particular human being interacting with other human beings in a particular context out in a particular world what of earth does that mean?!

How does "I" go about elimating his or her self? At best they can isolate themselves completely from all other conscious beings and commune with nature or with God. But their body will always be demanding food and water and shelter and protection. That part of "I" is either sustained or it perishes by tumbling over into an abyss that may or may not be oblivion.

By realizing there is no difference between you and everything else that is going on. There is no organism + environment, but either an organism with no environment or an environment with no organism; the differentiation is an illusion and the feeling of "I". This isn't something you can accept overnight because it takes time to grow the neural pathways to behold it before you could even judge it true or false. I'm about 2 years in and I still don't have my head fully around it.

In the bible it says "Choose this day whom ye shall serve", but how can we choose anything when all we know was from indoctrination? I grew up in Christianity and only now, from the outside, do I feel like I can even make a choice. I think likewise that you can't choose anything until you get out of your hole and can see clearly to make a choice.

Serendipper wrote: The sun exists to everyone that exists to the sun in a transactional and codependent relationship. The sun isn't an objective thing. Solar power is free energy and seems the sensible thing to pursue. I'm not sure what you're trying to show with this.

I'm making a clear distinction between the extent to which human beings can in fact know that the sun is as close as we are ever likely to get to calling something an objective thing, and the seeming inabilty of particular value judgments about solar energy to be construed in turn as anything other than subjective/political opinions.

The sun is not an objective thing and couldn't even be discerned by dark matter. All dark matter would feel is the gravity, which could be more dark matter. The sun only exists as a sun because there are things acting as not-sun.

Serendipper wrote: I don't know how.

You want action A
I want action B
Who wins?

Metaphors reign where mysteries reside. There is no way to bring it down to earth and even if I could, it would simply create something else that needed to be brought down to earth.

More abstraction. You want action A in a particular context. Someone else wants action B. Therse are objective facts. But how are philosophers able to determine which action reflects that most rational and virtuous action?

On a coin flip, is heads more rational and virtuous than tails? If someone resonates with your position, they will say you are more rational; if they resonate with my position, they will say I am more rational. It's still subjective. Even if everyone on earth agreed with you, it would still be subjective.

This is like the value of money being determined by subjective valuing vs the government setting the objective value. Right now $1 is worth 1/1200 ounce of gold because the last trade says so, but the gov could set the price and it would be true even if no trades are placed and regardless what anyone thinks about it. Objectivity is true independent of any observers. Subjectivity is conditional to observation. So if everyone on earth decided this is what money should be worth, it would still be subjective, because it matters what subjects observe.

And to what extent is what you think you want here predicated more on rational discourse than on the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here?

I don't understand that question.

And someone partial to Romain Rolland "oceanic feeling" or freud's "primitive ego-feeling" would have to bring this down to earth. What do they mean in regard to particular behaviors that we choose in particular contexts given [in turn] what we think is true "in our head" about all of it in either a God or a No Go world.

It just means your decisions come as a result of all the variables in the universe instead of just a few variables.

Serendipper wrote:I'm more than happy to play along, but it takes a good deal of energy to figure out what you're meaning with these obscure terms like dasein, conflicting goods, here and now. Talking to you is expensive in terms of blood glucose lol

Okay. Choose a context. Choose a set of behaviors in conflict. The whole point of bringing the discussion here down to earth is to make the terms less obscure.

So by "bringing down to earth" you mean examples?

To connect them with the thinking of people who choose one thing rather than another. To note those objective facts that all rational men and women can agree are true for all of us.

Like in the money example, even if everyone agreed, it would still be subjective because it depends upon subjective interpretation, which just happens to be reproducible across all humans. Surely you can see that just because 100% of people prefer vanilla over chocolate that it's still a subjective interpretation; it's just that all the subjective preferences happen to align.

Serendipper wrote: Matt Dillahunty had a good argument for abortion saying that if one human doesn't have the right to parasite himself off another human without permission, then why afford that right to humans who haven't been born? That seems pretty solid.

It's "solid" only given its initial assumptions. As though others who argue against abortion don't have their own initial set of assumptions.

Then it comes down to the extent to which someone is willing to admit that: I'm right from my side, your right from your side. Or insists instead that their own assumptions are predicated objectively on one or another God or political ideology or intellectual [deontological] contraption or assessment of "nature".

Yeah I guess so, but even God's opinion is subjective.

Serendipper wrote: The only way to refute his argument would be to explain how you're different from a fetus such that a fetus has the right to parasite itself off someone else but other humans do not.

Sans God, how could any mere mortal know beyond all doubt what the unborn have a right to? And, despite how different I might be from the fetus, I would not myself be around now if I had been aborted.

It always comes down to those who insist that the unborn have a "natural right" to life and those who insist that pregnant women have a "political right" to choose abortion.

Show me an argument able to demonstrate that it is either one or the other?

You're right. There are those who subjectively interpret that the unborn have rights and there are those who subjectively interpret that women have rights; it's the chocolate vs vanilla preference again; pepsi vs coke. There is no right answer, just those who believe one way and those who believe the other. If god exists, then he has an opinion too, I suppose. But if abortion were objectively wrong, then it wouldn't be possible; abortion would be independent from anything anybody thought about it. We all have to die and why does it matter if it's 80 microseconds or 80 years from now? Once it's all over, no one will know any different.

Serendipper wrote: Is it objectively true that the bishop moves diagonally in chess? What happens if someone changes the rule? Nothing happens because it's not objective, but relational. Some people don't consider Trump to be president.

Sure, if you want to go that far out on the "what is reality?" limb, almost anything can be rationalized. But few are going to argue that it is immoral to recreate chess so the that the bishop can move both diagonally and horizontily/vertically.

And others can be just as adament that Trump is not president of the United States as they are that building the wall on the Mexican border is immoral.

"In our head" we can think that anything is true. We can think that Trump is just a character in a Sim world or a creation in some demonic dream. So all it can ever come down to in the end is in closing the gap between what we think is true and what we can demonstrate is in fact true for everyone. With even that problematic given the gap bewtween "I" here and a whole understanding of existence itself.

Trump could give an order and everyone simply says "no". Trump only has power because the people are willing to play along and pretend he does.

Serendipper wrote: But really, if there were an objective morality, it would exist independent of humans, which makes no sense because how can morality exist without moral agents? Morality is emergent and not absolute.

What makes no sense to me is making an argument like this as though in making it, it becomes true. And that is basically what you are doing here in my opinion. You have no capacity [that I know of] to substantiate this claim.

And all I ask is that you bring it down to earth and make an attempt to at least try. In particular, as it is relevant to answering the question, "how ought one to live"?

We could think of gravity as objective since I can't think of anything immune to it and just to illustrate that we do not have a choice about whether to obey it. We don't protest in the streets about whether or not to observe gravity. If morality were like gravity, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But gravity isn't objective either since it's conditional upon spacetime, but it's close enough for an example. Anything that exists as a function of spacetime will be subject to gravity (since gravity affects spacetime itself). Dark energy could be independent of gravity, but I'm not sure.

Serendipper wrote: What is objectively true would be true regardless of opinions, so if it were wrong to murder, then it wouldn't be possible to murder. Since it is possible, then its not objectively wrong. Objectivity exists independent of ANY observer.

Again, as an intellectual contraption, this is true for you because it is in sync with all the assumptions you make about the meaning of "objective truth", "opinions", "murder" and "observers".

But put these elements out in a particular context in which different people construe the meaning of a particular killing in conflicting ways and then what?

Then we'll get a range of subjective opinions.

A particular killing may or may not be demonstrated to have in fact been a murder given the law in any actual particular human community. But different individuals interpreting the facts of the killing in different ways may or may not agree on whether the killing ought to have been illegal. Some may insist it is justified, while others insist it was not.

In other words, we may well not live in a world where there is an objective truth here that transcends the subjective opinions of the observers. They may all agree that Jim killed Jack. But they may not all agree that the killing was justified.

Unless of course we live in a wholly determined universe where so called "subjective opinions" are an illusion.

Well they are nothing more than subjective opinions. We could nuke the earth and that's no more right or wrong than anything else, but if you want the species to go on, then it would be wrong from your point of view. Others may see humans as a disease and support extinction for some other goal. There is no right or wrong; just one big "whatever party" If it were not so, then there would be no point to it.

Serendipper wrote: I'm starting to think you want to be in the hole and are fending off all attempts to pull you out because that's where you want to be. That's fine because I sometimes think I like being in a depressed and gloomy state: as long as things are bad, then I know everything is ok

No, I am looking for others convinced that they are not down in this hole, to bring their own value judgments out into the world as I do here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

They either will or they won't. And we will either agree that they have or we won't.

Krishnamurti said "Here is my secret: I do not care what happens." I can't get there yet because I care about things still.

Joke:

The oldest man on earth was interviewed and asked his secret. He responded, "I don't argue." The interviewer said "Naw, that can't be it. There must be something else." The old man said, "Yes, you're probably right."

Not caring what happens is truly a secret power.

Alan Watts said "You better learn to let go because there's no way of hanging on."

Grandma said "Everything comes out in the wash."

But "for all practical purposes" there must be rules of behavior in any particular human community such that some behaviors are chosen to be rewarded and others chosen to be punished. Why these and not those?

Serendipper wrote:It's completely arbitrary.

On the contrary, it is embedded first and foremost in subsistence. And then the extent to which particular historical, cultural and experiential memes, shaped and molded by nature, are in turn able to reconfigure nature into any number of actual social, political and economic permutations. People just don't embody particular thoughts and feelings and behaviors out of the blue.

Yes, they desire things. They want to survive and so they create antibiotics to train bacteria to be resistant to everything they can thrown at them. Likewise they create laws to make smarter criminals. Evolution works against everything we do because every uke needs a nage.

Again, the exception here being a world in which everything --everything -- unfolds only as it ever could have.

If the universe were rewound and started over, it would happen in some different way.

But even here we are back to why it is this way and not some other way.

Randomness. It just happened this way.

Serendipper wrote: Is it odd that you're looking for an absolute and then always tell me to bring it down to earth and relate it to something?

I'm not looking for an absolute so much as a frame of mind able to yank me up out of the hole that [intellectually and existentially] I have dug for myself. There seem to be facts about human interactions that we can all agree on. But we react to those facts differently in terms of what we think they tell us about right and wrong behaviors.

And that becomes more and more apparent [to me] when we discuss our specific reactions to specific behaviors out in particular contexts. "I" for me here is constrained by the facts. The facts don't go away just because you think something else is true.

And then the part where the facts are acknowledged by everyone [John eats meat] but our reaction to the facts vary considerably [John ought to or ought not to eat meat].

Serendipper wrote: Ought only exists in relation to a goal. If you want ________, then you ought to do _____________. If you don't want anything, then there is no ought.

That is an ought embedded more in the either/or world. John wants to eat meat. Okay, what ought he to do to accomplish this? Well, he can hunt the animals down himself, he can purchase it in the grocery store, he can steal it from someone. He either does in fact accomplish it or he doesn't. But that is different from the ought embedded in the is/ought world.

Ought he to be a hunter? Ought he to steal? Ought he to eat meat at all?

There is no ought.

With respect to existence itself, gravity is related to electromagnetism is related to the strong and the weak interactions. This part: https://science.howstuffworks.com/envir ... nature.htm

Now, can we call these relationships truly absolute? Or, instead, are they related to forces we are not even privy to yet? Even going back perhaps to the existence of God?

Serendipper wrote: They are related to duality. Where did duality come from? Well, duality come from unity: the coin has heads and tails because it's one coin.

I have no idea what "on earth" something like this means. Let alone how it relates to the manner in which I construe the subjective/objective distinction relating to conflicting goods in a No God world.

To the extent that gravity and the other forces are true "absolutely"...how is that related "for all practical purposes" to this duality coming from unity. A coin is a man-made thing embedded in, among other things, the manner in which any particular community goes about sustaining the means of productions. Money, in other words. But there are any number of ferocious conflicts that revolve around what is deemed "just" in regard to the use and the distribution of money in any particular community.

A force is a duality: something imposing a force and something receiving a force. Energy is +/-. Everything is made of the same "stuff" just different frequencies, polarities, states. A force in spacetime is the same as a moves of a bishop in chess: there are rules that pertain only to that game. Forces do not exist outside of spacetime because we need space and time in order to have a force.

To speak of "objectivity" here being either possible or impossible seems presumptive in the extreme to me.

Serendipper wrote: Objectivity cannot exist unless it is observed and if it is observed, then it's no longer objectivity, but subjectivity because it could only be observed through a subjective lens given by how the subject relates to the object.

Yeah, I sometimes come close to understanding things like this "theoretically". But when actual flesh and blood human beings observe actual phenomena out in a particular world, there are still going to be those things that reasonable people can agree are true, and those things which are deemed true given an attachment to a particular set of moral and political prejudices. Which I then largely subsume in dasein.

Even if everyone sees the same thing, that still doesn't mean the thing is objective, but just that everyone's subjectivity happened to align.

Serendipper wrote:

iambiguous wrote:But in a universe where there are zero, zip and absolutely nada conscious entities around to discuss and debate this, what possible difference could it make whether there are entities that don't move?

The point is that movement only exists in relation to something else. There is no such thing as objective movement. Conscious entities are beside the point.

If a gigantic asteroid is about to smash into Earth such that all conscious minds [like mine] are obilterated, that is somehow different [for me] than when the next gigantic asteroid smashes into the planet with absolutely no conscious minds around to even be aware of it. The same objects are moving and colliding, but no one around to react to the collision. No one around cognizant of the fact that it happened at all.

Always it comes back to the marvel of matter evolving into mind somehow able to become aware of itself as mindful matter. And then the part where there either is or is not actual human autonomy embedded in it all.

Given a complete understanding of how and why existence does in fact exist at all, there is [presumably] an objective truth.

Serendipper wrote: Restate it this way "Given a complete understanding of how and why relativity does in fact exist at all, there is [presumably] an objective truth." Why? Why does objectivity need to exist in order for relativity to exist?

My point though is in imagining a unviverse in which the brute facticity of existence is what it is [is what it must be] but there is no actual awareness in existence to know this. No God. No human minds. No anything at all able to point this existence out and to explore why and how it came to be what it is. How could "meaning" be relevant at all [or even exist] in universe in which there is nothing or no one able to broach it in the first place? Conscious minds can't change the meaning of something when there are no conscious minds around able to bring something up in the first place.

The squabble over white swans and black swans would have been entirely moot with no minds around to create a narrative in which to discuss and to debate it.

Serendipper wrote: Exactly, but that doesn't mean it's objectively meaningful.

If swans reflected the highest form of consciousness on the planet what would black and white mean to them? How would their reactions not be entirely embedded in instinct? With human minds however meaning evolves to the point that this is discussed philosophically. Or scientifically. Meaning without the minds of men and women would seem to be a very different thing. Or it could be argued that it couldn't exist at all. But that is still predicated on the extent to which our minds have some measure of autonomy embedded in them. Otherwise even the meaning exchanged by philosophers would be no less a reflection of nature unfolding only as it ever could have.

Serendipper wrote: I say meaning doesn't exist even with the minds. Or the meaning only exists relative to the minds.

I can only react to this by pondering the existential implications of it in regard to actual human interactions. If someone asks, "what does it mean to be a virtuous human being?", different individuals will give us different answers. So, in regard to your point of view here, how would you contribute to the discussion?

Meaning or no meaning in what sense? And how to understand the relationship between "I" and "laws of nature" in that particular context?

You believe that...

Serendipper wrote: Consciousness is not a complicated form of mineral, but mineral is a simple form of consciousness. Whatever it is that makes us "I" is a native property of the universe.

...but how on earth would you go about demonstrating that this is in fact true given all of the "unknown unknowns" that you are no less as entangled in as all the rest of us?

Not if killing you allowed me to consume you in order to sustain my own existence. In other words, in a context in which a rescue team was on the way and it was only a matter of surviving long enough for it to reach me. Good and bad here are points of view. And these are clearly more subjective than the objective parameters embedded in the either/or world of cold and human biology. And how this then factors into living or dying.

Serendipper wrote: Maybe if you didn't eat me, I would have been the next Hitler. Hitler was in the trenches of WWI and credits god to saving him for a purpose, so if some rogue soldier would have shot him, which would have been considered immoral, how moral would the consequences be?

Sure, maybe. Maybe lots and lots and lots of things. But how are philosophers to react to this in terms of "meaning"? What does "maybe" mean here? And how can we determine if the meaning that we impart to it is a meaning that we constructed of our own "free will"?

Serendipper wrote: It doesn't mean anything. Whatever happens in this universe cannot be remembered after the universe is gone. It's all just dust in the wind and we pretend it's not.

What always boggles my mind here is how folks manage to think themselves into believing things like this are true with no capacity to actually demonstrate empirically that it is true for all rational human beings. Instead, it is true for them "in their heads" based on a set of assumptions they make about the existence of existence itself.

Serendipper wrote: Should we assume meaning and require empirical demonstration that meaning is absent?
Or should we assume lack of meaning and require empirical demonstration of meaning?

Meaning about what though? In what context? And how would our assumptions not be predicated entirely on all that we do not know about the existence of existence itself?

The part about what we think we mean is either able to be connected to the world that we live in or it can't. In America, many are asking themselves, "what do the mid-term elections mean?" What do they tell us about the future of America? How is meaning understood here in terms of what is present and what is absent?

There are lots and lots of empirical facts here that everyone is able to acknowledge are true. But what the facts are said to tell us about America...? Meaning here becomes considerably more ambiguous and problematic. And political.

Serendipper wrote: I don't know why you put the burden of proof at my doorstep and I don't know why you put so much faith in empirical observation, especially popular ones. That seems like a whole string of logical fallacies.

The burdon of proof here is applicable to all of us. We all make arguments about what we believe is true, but are we able to substantiate our claim such that it is demonstrated that all rational men and women are obligated in turn to sahre it?

Then it's just a matter of being specific regarding what we do believe is true.

Serendipper wrote: First you require me to prove something does not exist, with empirical evidence of its nonexistence, then you require me to do it in such a way that most people would agree. It's impossible.

Note where this is the case. All I ask of you [of everyone] is to demonstrate how and why what you believe is true "in your head" is in fact in sync with with an ontological understanding of existence itself.

That's what may well be impossible. Why? Because we have no seeming capacity to even grasp if the human mind is capable of grasping this.

Instead, what I encounter over and again here are folks who make claims like yours. They believe something is true, but all we have are the assumptions they make about the components of either "human reality" or of "existence" itself.

And that's more a manifestation of human psychology to me. But we seemingly have no capacity in turn to determine if human psychology itself is not just more dominoes toppling over onto each other re the ubiquitous "laws of matter".

Serendipper wrote: Wherever our decisions come from is the same for all of us because we're all connected to the same spacetime fabric, but that fundamental thing can never be an object of knowledge because there is no one outside who can take an objective view.

This is more of the same to me. You assert something to be true based only on an intellectual contraption that you have concocted to explain 1] why something exists rather than nothing and 2] why this something and not something else.

Serendipper wrote: This is just logic. I've not asserted anything but logic. If something exists, then it is connected to everything that it exists to, which makes the maximum possible things in existence = 1.

The logic of existence? You are actually convinced that your understanding of these relationships reflects the most rational manner in which to grasp existence itself.

Even though there are countless others propagating their own TOE around the globe. All of them convinced "in their head" that they and only they really know what they are talking about.

It always puzzles me how they can not grasp this as a psychological component of "I" in a profoundly mysterious universe.

Serendipper wrote: Freedom is a relative term requiring an object to be free from. We can't be simultaneously free from law and crime because we're either free from crime because we're bound to law or we're subject to crime upon being freed from law. Being a slave is a good way to be free from worry, but to stand on one's own and truly be free requires lots of strife and aggravation.

Okay, but when you take this assumption out into the world of actual conflicting goods, how is it determined what the meaning of freedom is when John demands the freedom to own guns and Joe demands the feedom to live in a world without them?

Serendipper wrote: This is the same as a disagreement with a girlfriend: she wants to go out and I want to stay in, so who wins? I've never been able to answer that question.

In the case of John and Joe, we could ask more people and make a popularity contest of it. There is no objective answer since the question is essentially should all ice cream be chocolate or vanilla.

You could say that public safety is objective, but I don't want to be safe and would prefer having some elements of danger lurking about.

In other words, "winning" or "losing" here is always relative to a particular set of initial assumptions. Which I then suggest revolve around my own understanding of the existential juncture that is identity, value judgments and political power. Out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view. And then the extent to which logic is even applicable in the is/ought world.

And how is it demonstrated that either point of view is not just a manifestation of a wholly determined universe?

Serendipper wrote: It's determined by randomness.

But what does randomness mean in a world that is beyond wholly grasping? If, in fact, it is.

And you need to bring it down to earth. In regard to, say, the Caravan that is marching through Mexico toward the U.S. border, how would you explain/describe randomness to the folks involved here?

Serendipper wrote: Justice is retribution according to some arbitrary moral code.

Any particular moral code is embedded first and foremost in prescribing and proscribing rules of behavior that revolve around sustaining human life itself. Capitalism? Socialism? Fascism? Anarchism? Survival of the fittest? One or another rendition of Plato's Republic?

Serendipper wrote: Why sustain life? Is that individual life or the collective's life? We want to live and sustain our species because if we didn't, we wouldn't be here, but that doesn't mean that wanting to live is objective; it just happens to be conditional to living in the environment that happened to come about.

I agree. But that doesn't make all the conflicts that revolve around the fact of sustaining it go away.

Serendipper wrote: Time is a relation of the movement of one thing compared to another within space.

Space is the condition resulting from a delay in the transmission of information.

Time and space cannot be separated because if there were no time, then all travel would be instant and therefore there would be no space.

Again, as though you actually do have access to an understanding of time and space going all the way back to whatever brought them into existence in the first place.

Serendipper wrote: Seems to be common sense to me. How could we have time without space and space without time?

What does it mean for infinitesimally tiny specks of existence like you and I to talk about "common sesne" given the staggering vastness of the universe? the multiverse? Sure, some are able to just shrug that part off and argue that their own frame of mind is the right one. But then we're back to the manner in which human psychology itself comes into play here. Not that any particular argument is the right one but that this argument does in fact exist so why not your argument?

Serendipper wrote: If God confirms it, then it isn't objective, but subjective according to the subjective lens of God.

Yes, it is always fascinating to speculate about these things. But to speak of them as though you can actually know what is in fact true here? Well, that is something I no longer imagine as within my own reach.

Serendipper wrote: This isn't rocket science. If god is the subject, then his view is subjective. If god is the object, then who is the subject?

On the other hand, what is rocket science next to grasping the precise relationship between Existence, God and human interactions? More to the point [mine] grappling with this in regard to a particular context that most will be familiar with.

You say things like this...

Serendipper wrote: If our universe came from a multiverse, then the multiverse is simply part of our universe. If the multiverse is not part of our universe, then our universe didn't come from it.

Serendipper wrote: The sun is not an objective thing and couldn't even be discerned by dark matter. All dark matter would feel is the gravity, which could be more dark matter. The sun only exists as a sun because there are things acting as not-sun.

...as though only a fool couldn't grasp how truly [and simply] logical your explanation is. As though "common sense" itself tells us these things.

Which [again] leads me to speculate that it is not the substance of these claims that matters to you as much as the certainty with which you embrace them. You know these things. You are able to subsume the psychological "I" into this knowledge and then congratulate yourself on having figured it all out.

Or, rather, that is the manner in which "I" -- "here and now" -- have come to think about it.

More abstraction. You want action A in a particular context. Someone else wants action B. These are objective facts. But how are philosophers able to determine which action reflects that most rational and virtuous action?

Serendipper wrote:
On a coin flip, is heads more rational and virtuous than tails? If someone resonates with your position, they will say you are more rational; if they resonate with my position, they will say I am more rational. It's still subjective. Even if everyone on earth agreed with you, it would still be subjective.

This seems more about how "technically" philosophers make a distinction between "subjective" and "objective". Whereas I am more interested in exploring how, in whatever manner you make this distinction, it is made applicable in turn to conflicting assessments of what is deemed to be rational behavior in any particular context. Flipping a coin and it coming up either heads or tails is rational in the sense that it will be one or the other. But if someone switches the conversation to Anton Chigurh's decision to leave the fate of someone living or dying to a flip of the coin -- how rational or virtuous is that?

Same with the government and dollars and gold. There are the facts that can be ascertained and there are the arguments about what the facts tell us about rational or irrational behavior.

And someone partial to Romain Rolland "oceanic feeling" or freud's "primitive ego-feeling" would have to bring this down to earth. What do they mean in regard to particular behaviors that we choose in particular contexts given [in turn] what we think is true "in our head" about all of it in either a God or a No Go world.

Serendipper wrote: It just means your decisions come as a result of all the variables in the universe instead of just a few variables.

Okay, but that still doesn't bring them down out of the scholastic clouds. In what particular context might someone feel these things? And if their feelings are intertwined in all of the variables that encompass the universe how is that not just another rendition of determinism? They feel what they do only because they were never able not to.

Serendipper wrote: I'm more than happy to play along, but it takes a good deal of energy to figure out what you're meaning with these obscure terms like dasein, conflicting goods, here and now. Talking to you is expensive in terms of blood glucose lol

Okay. Choose a context. Choose a set of behaviors in conflict. The whole point of bringing the discussion here down to earth is to make the terms less obscure.

Serendipper wrote: So by "bringing down to earth" you mean examples?

I mean particular contexts in which your arguments are fleshed out existentially. A text that is illustrated with actual human interactions that we can all react to.

What aspects of these interactions are able to be confirmed as true for all of us and what aspects are embodied more in "existential leaps" to one set of values rather than another.

Then it comes down to the extent to which someone is willing to admit that: I'm right from my side, your right from your side. Or insists instead that their own assumptions are predicated objectively on one or another God or political ideology or intellectual [deontological] contraption or assessment of "nature".

Serendipper wrote: Yeah I guess so, but even God's opinion is subjective.

Many who believe in God argue that He is 1] omniscient 2] omnipotent and 3] omnipresent. And that He is the creator of All There Is. How then would you [would anyone] go about arguing that these assumptions are either demonstrably true, demonstrably false or, if demonstrably true, that God's point of view is still subjective.

Serendipper wrote: You're right. There are those who subjectively interpret that the unborn have rights and there are those who subjectively interpret that women have rights; it's the chocolate vs vanilla preference again; pepsi vs coke.

Only no one will ever be killed or be arrested for murder if they choose chocolate over vanilla or Coke over Pepsi. There are conflicting goods and then there are conflicting goods.

The fact of a particular abortion is independent of what any individual thinks is true. Here there is a right answer. But in a No God world, the consequences for mere mortals being able or unable to establish a "right anwer" in regard to the morality of it is, in my view, more in sync with the components of my own argument. And the hole I have tumbled down into as a result of believing this argument is reasonable. All I can then do is to search out the arguments of those who don't think like me.

Serendipper wrote: Trump could give an order and everyone simply says "no". Trump only has power because the people are willing to play along and pretend he does.

Or they may genuinely embrace his order as in fact "the right thing to do". My only suggestion is that both Trump and those who either support or don't support him, create and/or react to particular orders [his or their own] given the manner in which I construe the components of my moral philosophy "here and now".

Then the part where we grapple with what philosophers are in fact able to discern about all of this essentially/objectively/necessarily.

Then the part where, whatever it is that individual philosophers do discern about all of this [in venues such as this], they were ever able not to given some measure of autonomy.

Serendipper wrote: What is objectively true would be true regardless of opinions, so if it were wrong to murder, then it wouldn't be possible to murder. Since it is possible, then its not objectively wrong. Objectivity exists independent of ANY observer.

Again, as an intellectual contraption, this is true for you because it is in sync with all the assumptions you make about the meaning of "objective truth", "opinions", "murder" and "observers".

But put these elements out in a particular context in which different people construe the meaning of a particular killing in conflicting ways and then what?

Serendipper wrote: Then we'll get a range of subjective opinions.

I'm still not following you.

This part:

"....so if it were wrong to murder, then it wouldn't be possible to murder. Since it is possible, then its not objectively wrong."

As a general description of human interactions revolving around a particular killing deemed legally to be a murder, whether it is right or wrong is embedded in the points of view derived from a particular historical, cultural and experiential context. Some will argue that though this killing was possible it doesn't make it either right or wrong. Necessarily in other words. All that can be establish is that the killing did in fact occur. And possibly there will be enough evidence that no reasonable man or women could doubt who did the killing. But whether this killing can be justified morally as "the right thing to do" is the part that "here and now" doesn't seem possible to establish. Not from my frame of mind.

It wouldn't be possible to murder someone if there were no laws against it. But how to decide which killings ought to be illegal?

Where does philosophical logic end and all that we don't know about existence begin?

That is an ought embedded more in the either/or world. John wants to eat meat. Okay, what ought he to do to accomplish this? Well, he can hunt the animals down himself, he can purchase it in the grocery store, he can steal it from someone. He either does in fact accomplish it or he doesn't. But that is different from the ought embedded in the is/ought world.

Ought he to be a hunter? Ought he to steal? Ought he to eat meat at all?

Serendipper wrote: There is no ought.

Tell that to actual flesh and blood human beings who grapple with what they ought to do over and over and over again. If only from the cradle to the grave.

There is what you need to do to achieve some goal in the either/or world. But there seems to be only what you think you ought to do in the is/ought world. And the extent to which others are not troubled by the manner in which I introduce the components of my own argument.

With respect to existence itself, gravity is related to electromagnetism is related to the strong and the weak interactions. This part: https://science.howstuffworks.com/envir ... nature.htm

Now, can we call these relationships truly absolute? Or, instead, are they related to forces we are not even privy to yet? Even going back perhaps to the existence of God?

Serendipper wrote: They are related to duality. Where did duality come from? Well, duality come from unity: the coin has heads and tails because it's one coin.

I have no idea what "on earth" something like this means. Let alone how it relates to the manner in which I construe the subjective/objective distinction relating to conflicting goods in a No God world.

To the extent that gravity and the other forces are true "absolutely"...how is that related "for all practical purposes" to this duality coming from unity. A coin is a man-made thing embedded in, among other things, the manner in which any particular community goes about sustaining the means of productions. Money, in other words. But there are any number of ferocious conflicts that revolve around what is deemed "just" in regard to the use and the distribution of money in any particular community.

Serendipper wrote: A force is a duality: something imposing a force and something receiving a force. Energy is +/-. Everything is made of the same "stuff" just different frequencies, polarities, states. A force in spacetime is the same as a moves of a bishop in chess: there are rules that pertain only to that game. Forces do not exist outside of spacetime because we need space and time in order to have a force.

Then I'm just back to this: "I have no idea what 'on earth' something like this means." How does this "force" pertain to coins/money being exchanged in a just or an unjust manner in any particular community?

When the either/or world begins to segue into the is/ought world what is the practical significance of this duality? And how is it related to the arguments voiced by the hard determinists pertaining to the laws of matter in space and time said to be immutable and applicable to all matter. Including brain matter.

Serendipper wrote: Objectivity cannot exist unless it is observed and if it is observed, then it's no longer objectivity, but subjectivity because it could only be observed through a subjective lens given by how the subject relates to the object.

I sometimes come close to understanding things like this "theoretically". But when actual flesh and blood human beings observe actual phenomena out in a particular world, there are still going to be those things that reasonable people can agree are true, and those things which are deemed true given an attachment to a particular set of moral and political prejudices. Which I then largely subsume in dasein.

Serendipper wrote: Even if everyone sees the same thing, that still doesn't mean the thing is objective, but just that everyone's subjectivity happened to align.

Yes, but with respect to the either/or world, our subjective observations of actual physical things can be demonstrated with considerably more physical evidence than the observations we make regarding how we ought to react to this thing that we are seeing. Thus an aborted fetus can be placed on a table and all rational men and women can agree that this particular "thing" is in fact a dead fetus.

But what can they then tell us is "in fact" true about the morality of aborting it?

That is the distinction I make between an objective truth and a subjective opinion.

iambiguous wrote:

Serendipper wrote:The point is that movement only exists in relation to something else. There is no such thing as objective movement. Conscious entities are beside the point.

If a gigantic asteroid is about to smash into Earth such that all conscious minds [like mine] are obilterated, that is somehow different [for me] than when the next gigantic asteroid smashes into the planet with absolutely no conscious minds around to even be aware of it. The same objects are moving and colliding, but no one around to react to the collision. No one around cognizant of the fact that it happened at all.

Always it comes back to the marvel of matter evolving into mind somehow able to become aware of itself as mindful matter. And then the part where there either is or is not actual human autonomy embedded in it all.

Consciousness is not a complicated form of matter, but matter is a simple form of consciousness. There cannot be discontinuities between mind and matter or else one of them are conjured by magic from nothing since "complexity" cannot be an answer to where something came from, but instead, consciousness is inherent in matter to varying degrees according to complexity. So, matter isn't unconscious, but less conscious.

My point though is in imagining a unviverse in which the brute facticity of existence is what it is [is what it must be] but there is no actual awareness in existence to know this. No God. No human minds. No anything at all able to point this existence out and to explore why and how it came to be what it is. How could "meaning" be relevant at all [or even exist] in universe in which there is nothing or no one able to broach it in the first place? Conscious minds can't change the meaning of something when there are no conscious minds around able to bring something up in the first place.

As I said previously, there is no discontinuity of consciousness along the spectrum of complexity, so there was never a universe without consciousness of some degree.

The earth is conscious of the sun, evidenced by the fact that it interacts with it. If the sun were the only thing existing in the universe, then it would not give light or have gravity or any properties whatsoever because properties only exist in accordance to what kind of a you you are as a beholder of the sun.

The squabble over white swans and black swans would have been entirely moot with no minds around to create a narrative in which to discuss and to debate it.

If swans reflected the highest form of consciousness on the planet what would black and white mean to them? How would their reactions not be entirely embedded in instinct? With human minds however meaning evolves to the point that this is discussed philosophically. Or scientifically. Meaning without the minds of men and women would seem to be a very different thing. Or it could be argued that it couldn't exist at all. But that is still predicated on the extent to which our minds have some measure of autonomy embedded in them. Otherwise even the meaning exchanged by philosophers would be no less a reflection of nature unfolding only as it ever could have.

Meaning is only relative to the particular game you're playing and not something that objectively exists. Meaning regarding black and white swans relies on the existence of black and white swans in relation to the observer that observes them.

Serendipper wrote: I say meaning doesn't exist even with the minds. Or the meaning only exists relative to the minds.

I can only react to this by pondering the existential implications of it in regard to actual human interactions. If someone asks, "what does it mean to be a virtuous human being?", different individuals will give us different answers. So, in regard to your point of view here, how would you contribute to the discussion?

If you want to be virtuous, then you need to become an inhuman machine. I think "virtuous human" is an oxymoron because even if someone were to be perfectly virtuous, then he'd either be contaminated with purity or become a mindless machine incapable of transgression and unable to be virtuous because of it. Trading iron chains for gold chains doesn't produce freedom.

Serendipper wrote: Consciousness is not a complicated form of mineral, but mineral is a simple form of consciousness. Whatever it is that makes us "I" is a native property of the universe.

...but how on earth would you go about demonstrating that this is in fact true given all of the "unknown unknowns" that you are no less as entangled in as all the rest of us?

Because if matter were not a simple form of consciousness then we're left explaining how complexity of matter engenders consciousness from nothing. How does complexly arranged dead stuff = life? Does life just magically appear like a witch's brew upon adding the last ingredient? It's much easier for me to believe the life-property is inherent to everything and the degree to which it is alive is a function of complexity. So it's not that you are alive and the rock is dead, but you are more alive than the rock... or maybe it's that you are alive in many more ways because you're perceptive in many more aspects of the universe.

Serendipper wrote: Maybe if you didn't eat me, I would have been the next Hitler. Hitler was in the trenches of WWI and credits god to saving him for a purpose, so if some rogue soldier would have shot him, which would have been considered immoral, how moral would the consequences be?

Sure, maybe. Maybe lots and lots and lots of things. But how are philosophers to react to this in terms of "meaning"? What does "maybe" mean here? And how can we determine if the meaning that we impart to it is a meaning that we constructed of our own "free will"?

I'm just saying that because there exists one scenario in which it's beneficial to kill me that it means you cannot have an overarching law that states killing is always wrong.

Serendipper wrote: Should we assume meaning and require empirical demonstration that meaning is absent?
Or should we assume lack of meaning and require empirical demonstration of meaning?

Meaning about what though? In what context?

Should we assume the meaning of something exists and require empirical demonstration that the meaning is absent?
Or should we assume things have no inherent meaning and require empirical demonstration of meaning?

I'm just saying you're putting the burden on me to prove something does not exist while I think it's more prudent to assume nonexistence until existence has been substantiated. Do you disagree? How do you prove something is objectively meaningful? (That is, meaningful outside of all contexts.) You can't because meaning is only meaningful in relation to context. Meaning is subjective by definition.

And how would our assumptions not be predicated entirely on all that we do not know about the existence of existence itself?

Existence is the relationship of subject and object. Subject exists in relation to object and object exists in relation to subject. Existence of existence would be the case where existence is the object that exists in relation to some subject.

The part about what we think we mean is either able to be connected to the world that we live in or it can't. In America, many are asking themselves, "what do the mid-term elections mean?" What do they tell us about the future of America? How is meaning understood here in terms of what is present and what is absent?

What do the elections mean in relation to the future of america? They don't mean anything objectively, but only with regard to the future of america.

Serendipper wrote: I don't know why you put the burden of proof at my doorstep and I don't know why you put so much faith in empirical observation, especially popular ones. That seems like a whole string of logical fallacies.

The burdon of proof here is applicable to all of us. We all make arguments about what we believe is true, but are we able to substantiate our claim such that it is demonstrated that all rational men and women are obligated in turn to sahre it?

Newton didn't release all his ideas at first because he said the people just weren't ready. Who knows if we know all he discovered. If 1 out of 400 people are able to perceive something, then how on earth is the 1 able to empower the other 399 in order to share it?

Instead, what I encounter over and again here are folks who make claims like yours. They believe something is true, but all we have are the assumptions they make about the components of either "human reality" or of "existence" itself.

I'm pretty sure all my claims are rooted in logic. I'm not claiming special insight that only I am privy to or suggesting magic as the cause of things.

And that's more a manifestation of human psychology to me. But we seemingly have no capacity in turn to determine if human psychology itself is not just more dominoes toppling over onto each other re the ubiquitous "laws of matter".

Neurons are much different than dominoes.

Serendipper wrote: This is just logic. I've not asserted anything but logic. If something exists, then it is connected to everything that it exists to, which makes the maximum possible things in existence = 1.

The logic of existence? You are actually convinced that your understanding of these relationships reflects the most rational manner in which to grasp existence itself.

Even though there are countless others propagating their own TOE around the globe. All of them convinced "in their head" that they and only they really know what they are talking about.

If I'm being illogical, then show me the illogical part, but all you're doing is saying that I should take pause by the fact that I'm confident 1+1=2; that my confidence somehow means I'm wrong. I've been confident about many things and have been wrong and I've been confident about many things and have been right, so confidence doesn't mean anything; either it makes sense or it doesn't.

Serendipper wrote: This is the same as a disagreement with a girlfriend: she wants to go out and I want to stay in, so who wins? I've never been able to answer that question.

In the case of John and Joe, we could ask more people and make a popularity contest of it. There is no objective answer since the question is essentially should all ice cream be chocolate or vanilla.

You could say that public safety is objective, but I don't want to be safe and would prefer having some elements of danger lurking about.

In other words, "winning" or "losing" here is always relative to a particular set of initial assumptions. Which I then suggest revolve around my own understanding of the existential juncture that is identity, value judgments and political power. Out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view. And then the extent to which logic is even applicable in the is/ought world.

Yeah, I guess so, if I'm reading that right. Even if everyone agreed, it would still only be a collection of unanimous subjective interpretations.

And how is it demonstrated that either point of view is not just a manifestation of a wholly determined universe?

Serendipper wrote: It's determined by randomness.

But what does randomness mean in a world that is beyond wholly grasping? If, in fact, it is.

And you need to bring it down to earth. In regard to, say, the Caravan that is marching through Mexico toward the U.S. border, how would you explain/describe randomness to the folks involved here?

Because the caravan is a larger organism, it's a little easier to predict what it will do, but increasingly harder to predict what the smaller elements will do until we come down to the fundamental particles which are absolutely random.

Serendipper wrote: Justice is retribution according to some arbitrary moral code.

Any particular moral code is embedded first and foremost in prescribing and proscribing rules of behavior that revolve around sustaining human life itself. Capitalism? Socialism? Fascism? Anarchism? Survival of the fittest? One or another rendition of Plato's Republic?

Serendipper wrote: Why sustain life? Is that individual life or the collective's life? We want to live and sustain our species because if we didn't, we wouldn't be here, but that doesn't mean that wanting to live is objective; it just happens to be conditional to living in the environment that happened to come about.

I agree. But that doesn't make all the conflicts that revolve around the fact of sustaining it go away.

It just means that sustaining life is an arbitrary goal, but you can pretend it's not; you can pretend it's meaningful because it's completely arbitrary whether you do or not.

Serendipper wrote: Time is a relation of the movement of one thing compared to another within space.

Space is the condition resulting from a delay in the transmission of information.

Time and space cannot be separated because if there were no time, then all travel would be instant and therefore there would be no space.

Again, as though you actually do have access to an understanding of time and space going all the way back to whatever brought them into existence in the first place.

Serendipper wrote: Seems to be common sense to me. How could we have time without space and space without time?

What does it mean for infinitesimally tiny specks of existence like you and I to talk about "common sesne" given the staggering vastness of the universe? the multiverse? Sure, some are able to just shrug that part off and argue that their own frame of mind is the right one. But then we're back to the manner in which human psychology itself comes into play here. Not that any particular argument is the right one but that this argument does in fact exist so why not your argument?

You mean what about the argument that this only seems right in my head? When I listen to Alan Watts I sometimes wonder if I am the stupid one or if he is. Is it that he doesn't know what he is talking about or that I can't see what he's saying? I don't know how to tell and this is why genius and stupidity are often confused.

Serendipper wrote: If God confirms it, then it isn't objective, but subjective according to the subjective lens of God.

Yes, it is always fascinating to speculate about these things. But to speak of them as though you can actually know what is in fact true here? Well, that is something I no longer imagine as within my own reach.

Then why are you seeking something that you know for sure that you cannot find?

Serendipper wrote: This isn't rocket science. If god is the subject, then his view is subjective. If god is the object, then who is the subject?

On the other hand, what is rocket science next to grasping the precise relationship between Existence, God and human interactions? More to the point [mine] grappling with this in regard to a particular context that most will be familiar with.

I think you're overcomplicating it. You're deifying "existence" and making the concept of "God" incomprehensible by definition and therefore proclaiming any conclusion drawn invalid on the basis of a strawman you put together for the very purpose of stifling revelation.

It's as if you're saying, "I'm not going to accept any answer you give because these things are to difficult to understand and you can't presume to understand them because if anyone could, then it would trivialize everything which means I'm searching for something that I've defined as impossible to find because finding it would mean it wasn't worthy of being found."

Serendipper wrote: If our universe came from a multiverse, then the multiverse is simply part of our universe. If the multiverse is not part of our universe, then our universe didn't come from it.

Serendipper wrote: The sun is not an objective thing and couldn't even be discerned by dark matter. All dark matter would feel is the gravity, which could be more dark matter. The sun only exists as a sun because there are things acting as not-sun.

...as though only a fool couldn't grasp how truly [and simply] logical your explanation is. As though "common sense" itself tells us these things.

Which [again] leads me to speculate that it is not the substance of these claims that matters to you as much as the certainty with which you embrace them. You know these things. You are able to subsume the psychological "I" into this knowledge and then congratulate yourself on having figured it all out.

Most of what I say is just parroting Alan Watts who is parroting some ancient people. My name literally means "someone who bumbles into things" so I either stumble upon something someone said or I stumble upon a revelation myself, but either way it wasn't anything I did that deserves congratulations.

More abstraction. You want action A in a particular context. Someone else wants action B. These are objective facts. But how are philosophers able to determine which action reflects that most rational and virtuous action?

Serendipper wrote:
On a coin flip, is heads more rational and virtuous than tails? If someone resonates with your position, they will say you are more rational; if they resonate with my position, they will say I am more rational. It's still subjective. Even if everyone on earth agreed with you, it would still be subjective.

This seems more about how "technically" philosophers make a distinction between "subjective" and "objective". Whereas I am more interested in exploring how, in whatever manner you make this distinction, it is made applicable in turn to conflicting assessments of what is deemed to be rational behavior in any particular context. Flipping a coin and it coming up either heads or tails is rational in the sense that it will be one or the other. But if someone switches the conversation to Anton Chigurh's decision to leave the fate of someone living or dying to a flip of the coin -- how rational or virtuous is that?

How about the cops who left the decision of whether to arrest someone up to a coin flip and then, even though the flip designated not to arrest, they arrest her anyway? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 847470002/

That's not very virtuous if you ask me, but asking me is subjective.

And someone partial to Romain Rolland "oceanic feeling" or freud's "primitive ego-feeling" would have to bring this down to earth. What do they mean in regard to particular behaviors that we choose in particular contexts given [in turn] what we think is true "in our head" about all of it in either a God or a No Go world.

Serendipper wrote: It just means your decisions come as a result of all the variables in the universe instead of just a few variables.

Okay, but that still doesn't bring them down out of the scholastic clouds. In what particular context might someone feel these things? And if their feelings are intertwined in all of the variables that encompass the universe how is that not just another rendition of determinism? They feel what they do only because they were never able not to.

It is determinism, but not pre-determinism because the fundamental events are random (causeless) and unpredictable.

Then it comes down to the extent to which someone is willing to admit that: I'm right from my side, your right from your side. Or insists instead that their own assumptions are predicated objectively on one or another God or political ideology or intellectual [deontological] contraption or assessment of "nature".

Serendipper wrote: Yeah I guess so, but even God's opinion is subjective.

Many who believe in God argue that He is 1] omniscient 2] omnipotent and 3] omnipresent.

We have refuted that in another thread. Omni+anything is impossible.

omniscient - god couldn't know what it's like not to know something.

omnipotent - god couldn't be small and nimble while being large and immovable at the same time.

omnipresent - if god were everywhere, then he wouldn't exist for the same reason that if a whole magnet were north with no south, that north also wouldn't exist. In order for god to exist as god, there needs to be a place that isn't god.

And that He is the creator of All There Is.

Did he create it from nothing? How? Obviously there was potential in nothing to be something, but potential isn't nothing, but something. If god is all there is and he created something, then he created it from himself because there is nothing else to work with.

How then would you [would anyone] go about arguing that these assumptions are either demonstrably true, demonstrably false or, if demonstrably true, that God's point of view is still subjective.

God is the subject and not-God is the object that God is observing, so it's a subjective situation where God exists in relation to not-God and not-God exists in relation to God. God + not-God is the object that has no observer, so it's an objective situation with no subjective lens.

Serendipper wrote: You're right. There are those who subjectively interpret that the unborn have rights and there are those who subjectively interpret that women have rights; it's the chocolate vs vanilla preference again; pepsi vs coke.

Only no one will ever be killed or be arrested for murder if they choose chocolate over vanilla or Coke over Pepsi. There are conflicting goods and then there are conflicting goods.

Yes but the preference that murder is worse than choosing vanilla is the same preference; it's just something you happen to fancy.

The fact of a particular abortion is independent of what any individual thinks is true. Here there is a right answer. But in a No God world, the consequences for mere mortals being able or unable to establish a "right anwer" in regard to the morality of it is, in my view, more in sync with the components of my own argument. And the hole I have tumbled down into as a result of believing this argument is reasonable.

The empirical evidence so far seems to indicate that you want to be in the hole: everything must have meaning and that meaning must be so important that no one could understand it because if anyone could understand it, it wouldn't be special enough for your idea of how things should be. So you've embarked on a voyage in search of what can't be found so you can lament not being able to find it, lol, probably to expiate your sins or whatever guilt from being maladjusted to a screwed up society. I can relate. I gleaned a lot from Alan on this topic: as long as I suffer, everything is ok.

All I can then do is to search out the arguments of those who don't think like me.

That's very wise!

I'm still not following you.

This part:

"....so if it were wrong to murder, then it wouldn't be possible to murder. Since it is possible, then its not objectively wrong."

As a general description of human interactions revolving around a particular killing deemed legally to be a murder, whether it is right or wrong is embedded in the points of view derived from a particular historical, cultural and experiential context. Some will argue that though this killing was possible it doesn't make it either right or wrong. Necessarily in other words. All that can be establish is that the killing did in fact occur. And possibly there will be enough evidence that no reasonable man or women could doubt who did the killing. But whether this killing can be justified morally as "the right thing to do" is the part that "here and now" doesn't seem possible to establish. Not from my frame of mind.

It wouldn't be possible to murder someone if there were no laws against it. But how to decide which killings ought to be illegal?

Let's say the speed limit is 55 because that's a fast as your car will go. That's an objective limit because it's independent of observation.
But if the speed limit were set to 55 by the gov, then the limit depends on your ability to obey it and isn't an objective limit.

Murder is possible and is only wrong because we say it's wrong, just like the speed limit. If it were objectively wrong, it wouldn't be possible to transgress it.

Falling off a ladder results in injury. It's not like you'd slip and the supreme court would have to decide whether or not falling is the right thing to do. If God or the universe or nature or some objective authority expected us to do something, then it wouldn't be possible not to do it.

We've merely decided that it's better for everyone if we demonized murder so we wouldn't have crazies out killing random people because we might be one who may be killed and we just happen to want to continue living.

Where does philosophical logic end and all that we don't know about existence begin?

Self-inspection is always an infinite regression, so there is no place where what we know ends and what we don't know begins.

Serendipper wrote: There is no ought.

There is what you need to do to achieve some goal in the either/or world.

Right.

But there seems to be only what you think you ought to do in the is/ought world.

Relative to some goal (Living long, getting rich, making god happy, etc).

And the extent to which others are not troubled by the manner in which I introduce the components of my own argument.

The church population is still quite high I think.

Serendipper wrote: A force is a duality: something imposing a force and something receiving a force. Energy is +/-. Everything is made of the same "stuff" just different frequencies, polarities, states. A force in spacetime is the same as a moves of a bishop in chess: there are rules that pertain only to that game. Forces do not exist outside of spacetime because we need space and time in order to have a force.

Then I'm just back to this: "I have no idea what 'on earth' something like this means." How does this "force" pertain to coins/money being exchanged in a just or an unjust manner in any particular community?

When the either/or world begins to segue into the is/ought world what is the practical significance of this duality?

Duality underpins everything because everything needs context to manifest. So we have the thing in the context of the not-thing and that's dualism. But because the two are in a codependent relationship where one cannot exist without the other, they are one thing.

And how is it related to the arguments voiced by the hard determinists pertaining to the laws of matter in space and time said to be immutable and applicable to all matter. Including brain matter.

Hard determinists are wrong because randomness has been proven to exist.

Yes, but with respect to the either/or world, our subjective observations of actual physical things can be demonstrated with considerably more physical evidence than the observations we make regarding how we ought to react to this thing that we are seeing. Thus an aborted fetus can be placed on a table and all rational men and women can agree that this particular "thing" is in fact a dead fetus.

But what can they then tell us is "in fact" true about the morality of aborting it?

That is the distinction I make between an objective truth and a subjective opinion.

Right, the fetus is on the table independent of all observation, but the morality of it depends on observation.

Serendipper wrote:Consciousness is not a complicated form of matter, but matter is a simple form of consciousness. There cannot be discontinuities between mind and matter or else one of them are conjured by magic from nothing since "complexity" cannot be an answer to where something came from, but instead, consciousness is inherent in matter to varying degrees according to complexity. So, matter isn't unconscious, but less conscious.

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:

My point though is in imagining a unviverse in which the brute facticity of existence is what it is [is what it must be] but there is no actual awareness in existence to know this. No God. No human minds. No anything at all able to point this existence out and to explore why and how it came to be what it is. How could "meaning" be relevant at all [or even exist] in universe in which there is nothing or no one able to broach it in the first place? Conscious minds can't change the meaning of something when there are no conscious minds around able to bring something up in the first place.

Serendipper wrote:As I said previously, there is no discontinuity of consciousness along the spectrum of complexity, so there was never a universe without consciousness of some degree.

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

Serendipper wrote:The earth is conscious of the sun, evidenced by the fact that it interacts with it. If the sun were the only thing existing in the universe, then it would not give light or have gravity or any properties whatsoever because properties only exist in accordance to what kind of a you you are as a beholder of the sun.

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".

If someone asks, "what does it mean to be a virtuous human being?", different individuals will give us different answers. So, in regard to your point of view here, how would you contribute to the discussion?

Serendipper wrote:If you want to be virtuous, then you need to become an inhuman machine. I think "virtuous human" is an oxymoron because even if someone were to be perfectly virtuous, then he'd either be contaminated with purity or become a mindless machine incapable of transgression and unable to be virtuous because of it. Trading iron chains for gold chains doesn't produce freedom.

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?

Serendipper wrote: Consciousness is not a complicated form of mineral, but mineral is a simple form of consciousness. Whatever it is that makes us "I" is a native property of the universe.

...but how on earth would you go about demonstrating that this is in fact true given all of the "unknown unknowns" that you are no less as entangled in as all the rest of us?

Serendipper wrote:Because if matter were not a simple form of consciousness then we're left explaining how complexity of matter engenders consciousness from nothing. How does complexly arranged dead stuff = life? Does life just magically appear like a witch's brew upon adding the last ingredient? It's much easier for me to believe the life-property is inherent to everything and the degree to which it is alive is a function of complexity. So it's not that you are alive and the rock is dead, but you are more alive than the rock... or maybe it's that you are alive in many more ways because you're perceptive in many more aspects of the universe.

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

Serendipper wrote:
I'm just saying that because there exists one scenario in which it's beneficial to kill me that it means you cannot have an overarching law that states killing is always wrong.

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.

Serendipper wrote: Should we assume meaning and require empirical demonstration that meaning is absent?
Or should we assume lack of meaning and require empirical demonstration of meaning?

Meaning about what though? In what context?

Serendipper wrote:Should we assume the meaning of something exists and require empirical demonstration that the meaning is absent?
Or should we assume things have no inherent meaning and require empirical demonstration of meaning?

I'm just saying you're putting the burden on me to prove something does not exist while I think it's more prudent to assume nonexistence until existence has been substantiated. Do you disagree? How do you prove something is objectively meaningful? (That is, meaningful outside of all contexts.) You can't because meaning is only meaningful in relation to context. Meaning is subjective by definition.

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.

...we seem [to] have no capacity...to determine if human psychology itself is not just more dominoes toppling over onto each other re the ubiquitous "laws of matter".

Serendipper wrote:Neurons are much different than dominoes.

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.

Serendipper wrote: This is just logic. I've not asserted anything but logic. If something exists, then it is connected to everything that it exists to, which makes the maximum possible things in existence = 1.

The logic of existence? You are actually convinced that your understanding of these relationships reflects the most rational manner in which to grasp existence itself.

Even though there are countless others propagating their own TOE around the globe. All of them convinced "in their head" that they and only they really know what they are talking about.

Serendipper wrote:If I'm being illogical, then show me the illogical part, but all you're doing is saying that I should take pause by the fact that I'm confident 1+1=2; that my confidence somehow means I'm wrong. I've been confident about many things and have been wrong and I've been confident about many things and have been right, so confidence doesn't mean anything; either it makes sense or it doesn't.

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:

What does it mean for infinitesimally tiny specks of existence like you and I to talk about "common sesne" given the staggering vastness of the universe? the multiverse? Sure, some are able to just shrug that part off and argue that their own frame of mind is the right one. But then we're back to the manner in which human psychology itself comes into play here. Not that any particular argument is the right one but that this argument does in fact exist so why not your argument?

Serendipper wrote:You mean what about the argument that this only seems right in my head? When I listen to Alan Watts I sometimes wonder if I am the stupid one or if he is. Is it that he doesn't know what he is talking about or that I can't see what he's saying? I don't know how to tell and this is why genius and stupidity are often confused.

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:

Yes, it is always fascinating to speculate about these things. But to speak of them as though you can actually know what is in fact true here? Well, that is something I no longer imagine as within my own reach.

Serendipper wrote:Then why are you seeking something that you know for sure that you cannot find?

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.

Serendipper wrote: This isn't rocket science. If god is the subject, then his view is subjective. If god is the object, then who is the subject?

On the other hand, what is rocket science next to grasping the precise relationship between Existence, God and human interactions? More to the point [mine] grappling with this in regard to a particular context that most will be familiar with.

Serendipper wrote:I think you're overcomplicating it. You're deifying "existence" and making the concept of "God" incomprehensible by definition and therefore proclaiming any conclusion drawn invalid on the basis of a strawman you put together for the very purpose of stifling revelation.

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.

Serendipper wrote:It's as if you're saying, "I'm not going to accept any answer you give because these things are to difficult to understand and you can't presume to understand them because if anyone could, then it would trivialize everything which means I'm searching for something that I've defined as impossible to find because finding it would mean it wasn't worthy of being found."

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?

Serendipper wrote:
On a coin flip, is heads more rational and virtuous than tails? If someone resonates with your position, they will say you are more rational; if they resonate with my position, they will say I am more rational. It's still subjective. Even if everyone on earth agreed with you, it would still be subjective.

This seems more about how "technically" philosophers make a distinction between "subjective" and "objective". Whereas I am more interested in exploring how, in whatever manner you make this distinction, it is made applicable in turn to conflicting assessments of what is deemed to be rational behavior in any particular context. Flipping a coin and it coming up either heads or tails is rational in the sense that it will be one or the other. But if someone switches the conversation to Anton Chigurh's decision to leave the fate of someone living or dying to a flip of the coin -- how rational or virtuous is that?

Serendipper wrote:How about the cops who left the decision of whether to arrest someone up to a coin flip and then, even though the flip designated not to arrest, they arrest her anyway? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 847470002/

That's not very virtuous if you ask me, but asking me is subjective.

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 fact of a particular abortion is independent of what any individual thinks is true. Here there is a right answer. But in a No God world, the consequences for mere mortals being able or unable to establish a "right anwer" in regard to the morality of it is, in my view, more in sync with the components of my own argument. And the hole I have tumbled down into as a result of believing this argument is reasonable.

Serendipper wrote:The empirical evidence so far seems to indicate that you want to be in the hole: everything must have meaning and that meaning must be so important that no one could understand it because if anyone could understand it, it wouldn't be special enough for your idea of how things should be.

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.

iambiguous wrote:

Serendipper wrote:Consciousness is not a complicated form of matter, but matter is a simple form of consciousness. There cannot be discontinuities between mind and matter or else one of them are conjured by magic from nothing since "complexity" cannot be an answer to where something came from, but instead, consciousness is inherent in matter to varying degrees according to complexity. So, matter isn't unconscious, but less conscious.

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?!"

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.



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".

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...?

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.

My point though is in imagining a unviverse in which the brute facticity of existence is what it is [is what it must be] but there is no actual awareness in existence to know this. No God. No human minds. No anything at all able to point this existence out and to explore why and how it came to be what it is. How could "meaning" be relevant at all [or even exist] in universe in which there is nothing or no one able to broach it in the first place? Conscious minds can't change the meaning of something when there are no conscious minds around able to bring something up in the first place.

Serendipper wrote:As I said previously, there is no discontinuity of consciousness along the spectrum of complexity, so there was never a universe without consciousness of some degree.

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

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.

If someone asks, "what does it mean to be a virtuous human being?", different individuals will give us different answers. So, in regard to your point of view here, how would you contribute to the discussion?

Serendipper wrote:If you want to be virtuous, then you need to become an inhuman machine. I think "virtuous human" is an oxymoron because even if someone were to be perfectly virtuous, then he'd either be contaminated with purity or become a mindless machine incapable of transgression and unable to be virtuous because of it. Trading iron chains for gold chains doesn't produce freedom.

How then does this relate to an issue like animal rights or abortion or the role of government?

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.

How is your own moral narrative acted out in your interactions with others?

The only possible moral foundation is pure selfishness.

Interactions that come into conflict because you can't make opinions meet about that which is said to constitute virtue?

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!"

Serendipper wrote:Because if matter were not a simple form of consciousness then we're left explaining how complexity of matter engenders consciousness from nothing. How does complexly arranged dead stuff = life? Does life just magically appear like a witch's brew upon adding the last ingredient? It's much easier for me to believe the life-property is inherent to everything and the degree to which it is alive is a function of complexity. So it's not that you are alive and the rock is dead, but you are more alive than the rock... or maybe it's that you are alive in many more ways because you're perceptive in many more aspects of the universe.

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

What form of substantiation would you accept?

Serendipper wrote:
I'm just saying that because there exists one scenario in which it's beneficial to kill me that it means you cannot have an overarching law that states killing is always wrong.

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.

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".

Serendipper wrote: Should we assume meaning and require empirical demonstration that meaning is absent?
Or should we assume lack of meaning and require empirical demonstration of meaning?

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.

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?

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 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.

Serendipper wrote:If I'm being illogical, then show me the illogical part, but all you're doing is saying that I should take pause by the fact that I'm confident 1+1=2; that my confidence somehow means I'm wrong. I've been confident about many things and have been wrong and I've been confident about many things and have been right, so confidence doesn't mean anything; either it makes sense or it doesn't.

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.

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.

What does it mean for infinitesimally tiny specks of existence like you and I to talk about "common sesne" given the staggering vastness of the universe? the multiverse? Sure, some are able to just shrug that part off and argue that their own frame of mind is the right one. But then we're back to the manner in which human psychology itself comes into play here. Not that any particular argument is the right one but that this argument does in fact exist so why not your argument?

Serendipper wrote:You mean what about the argument that this only seems right in my head? When I listen to Alan Watts I sometimes wonder if I am the stupid one or if he is. Is it that he doesn't know what he is talking about or that I can't see what he's saying? I don't know how to tell and this is why genius and stupidity are often confused.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Yes, it is always fascinating to speculate about these things. But to speak of them as though you can actually know what is in fact true here? Well, that is something I no longer imagine as within my own reach.

Serendipper wrote:Then why are you seeking something that you know for sure that you cannot find?

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.

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.

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

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.

Serendipper wrote: This isn't rocket science. If god is the subject, then his view is subjective. If god is the object, then who is the subject?

On the other hand, what is rocket science next to grasping the precise relationship between Existence, God and human interactions? More to the point [mine] grappling with this in regard to a particular context that most will be familiar with.

Serendipper wrote:I think you're overcomplicating it. You're deifying "existence" and making the concept of "God" incomprehensible by definition and therefore proclaiming any conclusion drawn invalid on the basis of a strawman you put together for the very purpose of stifling revelation.

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote:It's as if you're saying, "I'm not going to accept any answer you give because these things are to difficult to understand and you can't presume to understand them because if anyone could, then it would trivialize everything which means I'm searching for something that I've defined as impossible to find because finding it would mean it wasn't worthy of being found."

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?

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.

Serendipper wrote:How about the cops who left the decision of whether to arrest someone up to a coin flip and then, even though the flip designated not to arrest, they arrest her anyway? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 847470002/

That's not very virtuous if you ask me, but asking me is subjective.

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.

I agree.

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.

Yep.

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote:
Alan Watts...
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!

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.

Serendipper wrote: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".

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.

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

Instead...

Serendipper wrote: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.

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...

Serendipper wrote:As I said previously, there is no discontinuity of consciousness along the spectrum of complexity, so there was never a universe without consciousness of some degree.

I rejoin...

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

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

Serendipper wrote: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.

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"...

How then does this relate to an issue like animal rights or abortion or the role of government?

You respond...

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

Serendipper wrote: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.

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

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.

Serendipper wrote: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?

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?

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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".

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.

Serendipper wrote:There is no proof of anything, but only a level of substantiation that you're willing to accept.

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

iambiguous wrote:

Serendipper wrote:
Alan Watts...
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!

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.

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8hT3oDDf6c

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

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

Did he?

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



Start around 31:00

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.

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



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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: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".

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Serendipper wrote: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.

From my frame of mind, your "assessment" here is just that.

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

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.

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.

And when you go here...

Serendipper wrote:As I said previously, there is no discontinuity of consciousness along the spectrum of complexity, so there was never a universe without consciousness of some degree.

I rejoin...

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

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

Serendipper wrote: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.

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"...

How then does this relate to an issue like animal rights or abortion or the role of government?

You respond...

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0052970

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.

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 https://www.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. https://www.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 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12784934

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

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?

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.

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

Not sure what you're asking.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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

I don't know.

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.

Serendipper wrote: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?

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?

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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".

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

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.

Serendipper wrote:There is no proof of anything, but only a level of substantiation that you're willing to accept.

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.

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

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

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?

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

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

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.

Serendipper wrote: I don't have a choice in what I believe. Do you?

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.

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

Serendipper wrote: I think that pre-dated my existence here and you've seemed fairly harmless so far.

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.

Serendipper wrote: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

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

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?

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

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

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.

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

Serendipper wrote:Not sure what you're asking.

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

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?

Serendipper wrote: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.

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:

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.

Serendipper wrote:There seems to be proof because it's proof you're willing to accept as proof.

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.

...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.

Serendipper wrote: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?

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:

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

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

iambiguous wrote:

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

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.

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.

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



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.

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?

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

What predictions can we make about our own behaviors given the assumptions that Watts make?

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

Do they allow us to more rationally judge our own behaviuors and the behaviors of others?

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

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.

Serendipper wrote: I don't have a choice in what I believe. Do you?

I don't know.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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? https://www.sciencealert.com/amyloid-pr ... -rna-world

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

Serendipper wrote: 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.

In a wholly determined universe the difference is only what it ever could have been. What seems random is only an illusion.

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.

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?

Probabilistic. Not deterministic.

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

One can't exist without the other.

Serendipper wrote: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.

But they are robots because they could never not be robots.

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

Yes, it's a probability.

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".

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).

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?

Serendipper wrote: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.

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?

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



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?

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

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.

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.

People like to do different things. Assuming some level of "free will" why do they often choose different [sometimes conflicting] things?

Probability.

Is there a way to figure out the things they ought to choose?

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

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?

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

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?

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.

Serendipper wrote:There seems to be proof because it's proof you're willing to accept as proof.

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.

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

...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.

Serendipper wrote: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?

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?

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

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.

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

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

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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".

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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."

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:

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

Okay, but with regard to what?

What predictions can we make about our own behaviors given the assumptions that Watts make?

Serendipper wrote: What predictions can be made about our behaviors by knowing anyone's assumptions?

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?

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.

Serendipper wrote: I don't have a choice in what I believe. Do you?

I don't know.

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

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 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?

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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...

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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?

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.

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

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

Serendipper wrote: 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

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: Being a flash of consciousness between 2 eternal darknesses doesn't seem like much of an existence.

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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 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".

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

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?

Serendipper wrote: 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.

In a wholly determined universe the difference is only what it ever could have been. What seems random is only an illusion.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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?

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?

Serendipper wrote: Probabilistic. Not deterministic.

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?

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".

Serendipper wrote: What's not a contraption?

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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?

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.

I am willing to accept certain proofs because they seem to be backed up [demonstrated] as that which all rational 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.

Serendipper wrote: So you're looking for an explanation you can put in a jar? I'm lost.

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.

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?

Serendipper wrote: I don't see the difference in the contraptions. I could use medical contraptions to pluck apples from a barrel.

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: Popular subjectivity is not objectivity. And if there is no "I", there is no "all of us".

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".

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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.

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".

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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?

iambiguous wrote:

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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.

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.

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".

Your view is a contraption lol

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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.

I don't know... they didn't ask him.



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? <too long to type>
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.

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.

Right.

Serendipper wrote: 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."

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:

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

Okay, but with regard to what?

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.

What predictions can we make about our own behaviors given the assumptions that Watts make?

Serendipper wrote: What predictions can be made about our behaviors by knowing anyone's assumptions?

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 agree.

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.

Serendipper wrote: I don't have a choice in what I believe. Do you?

I don't know.

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

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?

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.

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.

What's existence itself? Where does it exist?

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?

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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

There are no dots. The dots are abstractions.

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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?

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.

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?

But where is the hardcore empirical proof of the claims they make?

Where is the empirical proof that empirical proof is relevant?

Sooner or later you reach that point in their argument where the words are connected only to other words defined and defended by them.

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.

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

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

The ones you're posing as questions.

Serendipper wrote: 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

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.

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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 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".

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?

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

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?

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

Serendipper wrote: 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.

In a wholly determined universe the difference is only what it ever could have been. What seems random is only an illusion.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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?

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

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?

Serendipper wrote: Probabilistic. Not deterministic.

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?

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

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".

Serendipper wrote: What's not a contraption?

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.

So, what's not a contraption?

Serendipper wrote: 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?

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.

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?

I am willing to accept certain proofs because they seem to be backed up [demonstrated] as that which all rational 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.

Serendipper wrote: So you're looking for an explanation you can put in a jar? I'm lost.

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?

Yes

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

No

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?

No

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

I don't see your point.

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?

Serendipper wrote: I don't see the difference in the contraptions. I could use medical contraptions to pluck apples from a barrel.

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.

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

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.

Serendipper wrote: Popular subjectivity is not objectivity. And if there is no "I", there is no "all of us".

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".

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

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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.

A knife cannot cut itself. Where is the gap?

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".

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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?

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.

And no one will argue that had the bishop not been made to move diagonally this would have been immoral.

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.

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?

There are no laws of matter.

Serendipper wrote:
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.

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.

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".

Serendipper wrote:Your view is a contraption lol

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote:Right.

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

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

Serendipper wrote: 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.

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

Serendipper wrote: There are no dots. The dots are abstractions.

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.

But where is the hardcore empirical proof of the claims they make?

Serendipper wrote: Where is the empirical proof that empirical proof is relevant?

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...

Serendipper wrote:So then you're saying that you know there is [no] way of knowing which returns us to my other question which is why are you seeking what cannot be found?

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.

...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?

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

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

...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.

Serendipper wrote:So, what's not a contraption?

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.

Serendipper wrote: I don't see the difference in the contraptions. I could use medical contraptions to pluck apples from a barrel.

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.

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

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?

Serendipper wrote: Popular subjectivity is not objectivity. And if there is no "I", there is no "all of us".

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".

Serendipper wrote:Demonstration to everyone doesn't make it objective. It's just coincidence that everyone saw it the same way.

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.

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.

Serendipper wrote:A knife cannot cut itself. Where is the gap?

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:

Serendipper wrote: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.

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

And no one will argue that had the bishop not been made to move diagonally this would have been immoral.

Serendipper wrote: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.

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.

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?

Serendipper wrote:There are no laws of matter.

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".

Serendipper wrote:
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.

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: 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.

Uh-oh, KT is being "cranky" again!

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: He wants to find out how to live by online discussion with people who he challenges to prove how one [aught] to live.

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: 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.

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

Karpel Tunnel wrote: He often admonishes people to be concrete, but what he means by this is to include in their verbal proofs specific issues or events.

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: 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.

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: IN TERMS OF THE OP, HOWEVER, THIS IS ALL ILLUSION. STUFF HAPPENS.

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".

iambiguous wrote:
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

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

surreptitious75 wrote:

iambiguous wrote:
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

Your moral philosophy is not their moral philosophy is the simple answer to this.

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.

surreptitious75 wrote: 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

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?

iambiguous wrote:

surreptitious75 wrote:
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

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 cant 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 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

iambiguous wrote:

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 cant all be right of course but they all claim to be

Now what does that tell you about objectivism ?

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.

surreptitious75 wrote:

iambiguous wrote:

surreptitious75 wrote:
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

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 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

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?

surreptitious75 wrote: 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 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.

surreptitious75 wrote: 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

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?

surreptitious75 wrote: 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

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:

iambiguous wrote:

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?

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.

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?

Karpel Tunnel wrote: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.

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: 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.

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.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: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.

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.

iambiguous wrote:Sure, as a "general description" of human interactions it could any one of them.

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.