What all men ought to do

If we live in a wholly determined universe in which the human brain/mind is just more matter in sync with that which some insist are “immutable laws”, then human philosophy itself is just embedded in whatever started the space/time dominoes toppling over onto each other going back to what some argue started all of this – the Big Bang.

In other words, some claim, everything there is bursting into existence out of nothing at all.

Human interactions are simply what all of that has [so far] evolved into given the mechanical nature of the immutable laws of material interaction.

Unless of course there is an extant God.

Or, in an alleged “multiverse”, there are parallel universes with “laws” completely at odds with our own universe.

It all comes down to “mind”. Is human consciousness a special kind of matter? Has it just evolved mechanically to produce the illusion of “free will” in us, or is there a facet that we are not as of yet able to grasp such that it can be [will be] demonstrated that the words I am typing right now are only as a result of my choosing them autonomously?

Who among us can really say for sure?

And I am certainly willing to concede that my own understanding of all this “here and now” is not correct.

How about you?

"
Human interactions are simply what all of that has [so far] evolved into given the mechanical nature of the immutable laws of material interaction."

You’re gonna have to explain this to me. Where does the mechanical come in?

Freedom requires restraints.

If I love smoking cigarettes, I need reasonably healthy lungs, a mouth, hands, etc…

It is this way for everything.

In the same way, the situation with freedom is that it evolves in the individual over time, it is compatabalistic. Since you skipped my last post on the topic, or my abortion proof, which you also skipped, it’s very clear that you’re not seeking proof that shows morality is objective, or that freewill exists, and you always use the red herring of “everything is horrible if god doesn’t exist”. You’ve been sneakily trolling god on these boards for years now, and hopefully people are starting to catch on…

It comes down to whether or not it can be demonstrated that human thought itself either is or is not wholly in sync with the immutable laws of matter.

After all, what has prompted philosophical discussions down through the ages regarding “dualism”?

And out of this flows discussions regarding the human “soul” in sync with one or another “will of God”.

Or is “mind” just more matter? “Stuff” from the Big Bang that somehow managed to evolve into matter able to become conscious of itself as matter able to speculate as to whether or not that speculation itself is within its own control autonomously.

I don’t pretend to have figured it all out.

How about you?

What are the immutable laws of matter?

And then it was silent.

Well, given what may well be a staggering gap between what science knows about existence “here and now”, and all that there still is to know about it, who is to say? Definitively, for example.

Why does something exist instead of nothing?
Why does this something exist instead of some other something?

There is the matter/energy nexus. There is time for it. There is space for it. There are stars that exploded way way way way back when producing all of the “stuff” embedded in all the renditions of “reality”.

But with respect to mathematics, science, and all of the mindless empirical interactions of this “stuff”, there seems to be a consensus “here and now” [in the scientific community] that it is all somehow intertwined in…

“The Laws of Nature: All interactions in the Universe are governed by four fundamental forces. On the large scale, the forces of Gravitation and Electromagetism rule, while the Strong and Weak Forces dominate the microscopic realm of the atomic nucleus.”

But: Where the fuck [and how the fuck] do we fit the human brain into that? And how the fuck is “the mind” the same or different from “the brain”?

Then back again to the philosophical antinomies embedded in assessments like these:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism
plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

So, somehow over billions of years this “star stuff” evolved into the human brain. But what “on earth” does that actually mean “for all practical purposes”?

Me, I am officially going on the record here: “I’m really not sure.”

And then this part: dasein. :wink:

So you don’t really know?

Maybe I should have worded it what are “the immutable laws of matter?”

Nope.

On the other hand, if I can know only what I was ever going to know, perhaps the laws of matter will reconfigure and then one day I will know.

Unless of course I die first.

Which doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding this whole castle in the sky:

"It comes down to whether or not it can be demonstrated that human thought itself either is or is not wholly in sync with the immutable laws of matter.

After all, what has prompted philosophical discussions down through the ages regarding “dualism”?

And out of this flows discussions regarding the human “soul” in sync with one or another “will of God”.

Or is “mind” just more matter? “Stuff” from the Big Bang that somehow managed to evolve into matter able to become conscious of itself as matter able to speculate as to whether or not that speculation itself is within its own control autonomously.

I don’t pretend to have figured it all out.

How about you?"

That’s the same fucking boat we’re all in.

What differentiates most of us here though is that we are motivated do come into places like ILP. Why? Because questions of this sort became important to us. For whatever reason. It’s all rooted existentially in dasein.

We wonder what the answers might possibly be. Or if the answers are even accessible to or assessable by the human mind.

I just focus on distinguishing between the either/or world and the is/ought world. Between what might be made demonstrably true for all rational men and women, and what may never be more than an existential contraption rooted subjectively in dasein.

As all of this may or may not be intertwined in what may or may not be a wholly determined universe going all the way back to figuring out why there is something and not nothing at all.

And why this something and not another.

Really, what is relevance of this particular exchange in a context that mind-boggling?

I just think that if you applied the same rigor to your question that you apply to your contenders, you wouldn’t be in a hole.

Again: What on earth does this mean?

My question revolves first and foremost around this: How ought one to live?

In other words, morally and politically in a particular context out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view.

You choose the conflicting behaviors and the context.

Note the rigor to which you both describe and assess the conflict given the philosophical parameters of your own moral narrative.

Then we’re back to an exchange of this sort:

You know Iamb,
Peter I Rengel wrote what seems to be a very concrete, on the ground, description of a situation from his life. He was really very open, not being a ‘serious’ philosopher. It was open and human.

And you responded with a bunch of abstract emotionless garbage.

Whether he answered your question or not, you acted like you have no empathy at all.

How can one take your assertion that your goal is finding out how one ought to live seriously?

I don’t believe in objective morals, but if by some chance they included being without empathy, I would ignore them.

Okay, that’s your reaction to my reaction to Pedro’s reaction to Jack’s reaction to being a homosexual.

But my point revolves around the assumption that emotional and psychological reactions are no less existential contraptions emdedded and embodied in dasein.

We all come into world hard wired [biologically/genetically] to react to such things as we do. That’s a manifestation of the evolution of life on earth.

Then the part about nurture – historical, cultural and experiential [interpersonal] contexts.

So basically what you accusing me of is not reacting to him as you would. Your reaction is, what, more reasonable? more virutous? more decent? more civilized?

On the other hand, there are those who despise homosexuality. Those folks who might react to both Peter and Jack with…revulsion? So at least my reaction is, what, more reasonable, more virtuous than theirs?

Besides, this is the philosophy forum. Here what would seem to matter most of all is the extent to which we either are or are not able to close the gap between what we think we know is true about things like homosexuality and what we either are or are not able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to think in turn.

Pedro’s example did not succeed in nudging me up out of the hole that I am in.

So [perhaps] my reaction to him was out of frustration. Or the polemicist in me went a bit too far.

But I will be the first to admit that my reaction to my own reactions here is embedded in the enormously problematic complexity of any particular individual’s intentions and motivations.

That’s what it comes down to when “I” is unable to be in sync with the “real me” in sync with the right thing to do.

And I’m still basically out of sync with understanding how as a “pragmatist” you are not in turn down in that hole with me.

Somehow you have managed to put together a frame of mind that seems to make your own “I” less fractured and fragmented than mine.

Affording you [it would seem] a more comforting and consoling way in which to negotiate conflicting goods at the intersection of dasein and political economy.

What is “I” and the “real me” in this particular context? What are the differences? What are the similarities?

What does it mean to be “in sync with the right thing to do” in this context?

The context here would seem to be Karpel’s reaction to my reaction to Pedro’s reaction to Jack’s reaction to being a homosexual. And now your reaction.

You tell me: Are there or are there not those convinced that how they think about homosexuality is in sync with who they think they really are in sync with what they think a rational/virtuous understanding of the right thing to do is? This may revolve around God or around a political ideology or around a deonotolgical philosophical contraption or around the insistence that only the correct understanding of nature allows for some to become ubermen while the rest become sheep.

Their arguments will intertwine a set of assumptions [political prejudices] that reflect any number of similarities or differences.

Ask them. They’ll tell you. Then you either become “one of us” or “one of them”.

Or, again, your point isn’t about that. It’s about something more important [to you] that I keep missing.

You wrote a statement and put it in both bold and italics for emphasis, so it must be something important to you.

Yet when asked about it, you are unable to explain. Instead you write about other people.

Other people didn’t write that statement … you did. There is nothing for them to explain.

Sorry, but I have no idea what it is that you are trying to communicate to me here about your reaction to my reaction to Karpel’s reaction to my reaction to Pedro’s reaction to Jack’s reaction to being a homosexual.

The context [of late] in other words.

I see these reactions as embedded existentially [subjectively/subjunctively] at the intersection of dasein, value judgments and political economy. How then do folks react to that?

Note to others:

What explanation from me do you imagine that he is looking for? Try to reconfigure his point into something that I might be more likely to actually understand.