Where did it go?

Again, I’m puzzeled by this. What are you trying to tell me here that I must be missing?

There are things that we can know that transcend particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts. Things that transcend what we think we know when what we think we know is not in fact true. We can know truths embedded in mathematics and science and natural laws and the rules of language. No matter what experience anyone has in whatever context there are still actual facts intertwined in human interactions that revolve around things like Communism and abortion.

But what I assume that you assume here is there will be/can be no interpretation of the “external reality” that is ever likely to convince you to become a Communist yourself.

Communism as a historical phenomenon is [in my view] embedded existentially in a particuar sets of political prejudices embedded in a particular set of experiences.

Then it comes down to those who insist that their own experiences have enabled them to pin down what Communism really is.

What they say it is. And if others don’t say the same thing then they are wrong.

And they are wrong, right?

After all, if you don’t insist that they are then you are acknowledging that given a different set of assumptions and a different set of experiences, they are able to convince themselves in turn that you are wrong.

So what’s crucial here [for the objectivists] is this: that somebody must in fact be either right or wrong.

I merely embed this frame of mind [psychologically] in this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

A-experiential means separate from experience.

Science is entirely based on experience. We only claim there are natural laws because we observe them. If we didn’t observe gravity then there would be no natural law of gravity. Same goes for rules of language … we notice certain rules to it.

Mathematics need not match any physical reality. It only needs to be consistent. It’s constructed that way. We observe which mathematical constructs are in sync with reality and which are not.

IOW, I have no idea what you mean by “transcend particular … experiential context”.

If you have never seen ice, then you don’t know the natural laws governing ice formation. You are ignorant of the experiential truth. You will learn about it when someone, who has studied ice formation, tells you about it.

If I thought that society would be better under communism, then I would be a communist.

I already covered this in another thread. Not all assumptions are the same … some are invalid, some poor, some could be good or bad, some are good. Some reasoning is invalid, some is poor, some could be good or bad, some is good.
People are wrong when their assumptions or reasoning are wrong.

Okay, so knowledge and therefore truth is based entirely on experience.

Several problems arise.

Experiences are complicated and human senses are limited. It’s possible to be mistaken or confused about what is being experienced.
For example, there is a highway where cars “roll uphill”. One could think that one is experiencing a “reverse gravity”. A closer investigation with measuring tools shows that there is actually slight downward slope.
The other day I saw broken branch on the ground, which at first impression looked like a big spider.

When one does not experience something personally, then one is relying on the descriptions of other people. These descriptions can be unclear, ambiguous and by necessity only pass on a small fraction of an experience.

Furthermore, some people outright lie.

Error and deception cloud the truth.

The difference between science and something like politics is that science does not an evaluation statement to an experience.

Science does not say “this is good” or “this is bad”. Politics does. It’s an extra statement on top of the statements about an experience.

That evaluation statement is based on goals and wants. So you are going to get a lot of different evaluations coming from different people.

(Then along came postmodern science and the evaluations started to be added to science as well. :imp: )

Yes, the experiences [material interactions/relationships] explored by science are still embedded in all there is yet to be discovered about why something exists rather than nothing, and why this something and not another.

Which necessarily involves a who knows how complex an entanglement between genes and memes, nature and nurture, perception and conception, deduction and induction, a priori and a posteriori “reality”.

But there still seems [to me] to be a clear distinction to be made between what science can tell us about the laws governing phenomenal interactions, and what ethicists can tell us about the gap between what individuals choose to do and what it is said that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to do.

What I mean is that for a doctor performing an abortion the biological parameters are what in fact they are. There are “the facts” that are embedded in the objective reality of human sexuality and pregnancy.

But for the ethicists reacting to the abortion as a moral or an immoral behavior, there would appear [to me] to be be only subjective/subjunctive narratives rooted in dasein and conflicting goods.

But no one argues that water ought to turn into ice at 62 degrees farhenheit so that there will be considerably less icestorms resulting in considerably less human pain and suffering resulting from falls and automobile accidents.

Or, once again, I’m missing your point here.

Exactly. You might have new sets of experiences and come into contact with new information and knowledge that reconfigures your thinking.

The only alternative is an argument able to in fact demonstrate once and for all that societies either will be or will not be better under Communism.

But we don’t live in that world now, do we? We live in this one:

Right, like those who still embrace socialism over capitalism won’t assume their own assumptions are more valid. That their own “reasoning” isn’t closer to the optimal or the only truth with regard to the role that political economy has played in human interactions down through the ages.

Jesus Murphy

Yeah, but in your examples above there may be confusion and ambiguity and uncertainty and lies, but there is an objective truth that we can all eventually come to understand.

Not much here in the way of experiencing conflicting goods in an is/ought world construed from the subjective perspective of dasein.

You won’t get much in the way of an argument from me here. But with respect to these “evaluations”, my point revolves entirely around the assumption that the three components of my own moral philosophy are important considerations when attempts are made to defend them out in the world of actual conflicting human behaviors.

Politicians and social scientists can in fact use particular collections of objective truths in discussing things like abortion and Communism and climate change.

But there does not appear to be the equivalent of the “scientific method” when it comes down to assessing the obligation of all rational human beings when the evaluations themselves come into conflict.

Only those who insist that, through the evaluations of their own God or ideology or philosophy or understanding of nature, has this already been accomplished.

Re the OP on this thread, the assumption seems to be that God and religion exist by default. Those who don’t believe this are therefore encouraged to go elsewhere.

Yet how many scientists who ponder the existence of God would start the discussion on that note?

Had to Google that one:

urbandictionary.com/define. … s%20Murphy

Not exactly sure what this – if it actually is this – has to do with either the OP or our own discussion. But I do suspect that sooner or latter we’ll come to the part about dasein. :wink:

Not necessarily. Even if we set aside that rational scientists have disagreements and non-scientists, even smart ones may never be convinced of particle wave duality, for example, scientific epistemology allows, as a rule, for revision. And in fact on many issues, has, just like your political beliefs, gone through revisions over time. There were problematic metaphysical ideas in Newton’s models. More evidence came in and then Einstein’s took over. This revising has continued. New evidence, new models, new senses of what reality is.

There are many many examples where scientific consensus about objective reality was then revised. And we cannot know, given the very nature of empirical/inductive work, which fact or model currently accepted will later be revised upon finding new evidence, via new technology, via anomolies, etc.

And this is especially true of fundamental nature of reality type stuff. That is cosmology, ontology - which science has positions on. That is, it is especially true of areas where religion tends to weigh in.

The is/ought distinction is not neat in terms of this category we can work out and put to rest for all rational people and this category we cannot.

And this is not even getting into what you, a guy waking up in bed uses to decide what it true - his memory of the scientific research he read and his intuitions about how solid this research was and his memory is. And a fragmented, depressed person with no sense of self or an ‘i’, how solid are his assessments of his intuition.

It means that we are back on your hobbyhorse. And this thread is effectively dead.

Dasein is a German word so it has a capital D.

Loan words don’t necessarily (or usually) import their parent language’s grammatical rules.

I think that all text in German would look rather silly if every word began with a capital, right ~ more than just a bit over the top. Imagine it. :-"

Revision, yes. But is this just getting us closer to understanding the very, very big and the very, very small as, in fact, they are, or, instead, is there no “the way they really are” at all? But one thing you almost never see among scientists exploring these physical/phenomenal relationships are debates over whether what is discovered ought to be something else instead.

No is going to argue that gravity should be such that when we fall from a great height we float to the ground instead.

Here I can only return to the example in which it seems clear that an obvious distinction can be make: between that which biologists and doctors know about the objective relationship between human sexuality, pregnancy and abortion and that which ethicists can claim to know about the morality of these relationships.

Biologically, sexually and medically, there is what can be known objectively for all in our species; and then that which is expressed subjectively in personal opinions regarding right or wrong behaviors that revolve around contexts in which the objective facts are exchanged.

Are moral opinions in turn embedded in a “fundamental reality”?

Yeah, in a wholly determined universe.

Do we live in one?

I am not sure exactly what you mean here, but if you mean that some scientists get certain results they are never told they should have other results, you are wrong. And it can take decades or more before the original results are more generally accepted, those that have been. There may be others where because the results indicate something that does not fit with the general paradigm, where they have not be accepted and their future is in question, despite being correct. It is not just about qm and cosmology. Take a look at, for example, plant intelligence studies and the resistence to them over the last 25 years. Or animal intelligence. And that’s just off the top of my head in biology. Brain conclusions change often. There is revision happening all over the place. Yes, our everyday life type issues - jump up and achieve escape velocity does not happen - though that’s not quite science, that’s everyday experience - but you are quite incorrect that it is only at the extremes of size that we are revising.

But its not phenomena that science revises. What a weird counter example. Science can and has several times revised what gravity is, or actually, better put, what is happening in phenomena like the one you described: masses attracting, the curvature of space-time, gravitons. I don’t know what they think this phenomenon is now, but I’ll bet there isn’t full consensus and that chances are still open for further revisions. And that’s your handpicked example. And by the way, I am not saying that all is issues are as open to revision as all ought issues, I am saying that the boundary is not as neat as you present it. Further revision itself parallels, your bemoaning the potential revision of your current positions and your bemoaning your own revision, over your life history, of past positions. That is neatly parallelled within the history of science.

At any given moment there will be some general consensus about those scientific areas of knowledge, but they are open to revision, and have been revised. IOW they can change, have changed and it is likely will change. (Some of these changes may influence the other debate also, though that is a separate issue)

You have a binary vision. IS issues work like this. Ought issues work that that. It ain’t binary. The existential threat of revision in a person’s ought realm is paralleled in the IS realm of science.

And you even went so far as to say that there is an objective truth that we can all come to understand. We don’t know that we will come to all of those or those on specific issues. We do not know what revisions are coming, waht we are capable of finding or noticing, how our built in biases may keep us from EVER coming to certain objective truths.

Please do not do what a lot of people do in discussion forums.

Because I have challenged your binary thinking on this issue, it does not mean that I think Is and ought are precisely the same. I am criticizing your neat boxes. This does not mean that I think there is nothing different. Try to have a nuanced response and try not to confuse an argument that X is not always the case, with Y is always the case. There are conflicting evaluations by different scientists on many issues. Some of these may not be resolved soon or ever. We don’t know which scientific conclusions will be revised.

Scientists might get results other than what was expected. Or they might get results other than what they thought they ought to get given how they thought they understood the relationships between the components of space and time, matter and energy.

But sooner or later the results will either be in sync with the objective laws of nature or they won’t. Here the “unknown unknowns” seem to revolve around the question of whether these gaps can be closed entirely re a TOE in sync with the actual physical reality of the universe.

The ontological truth perhaps? Then this part: Is there a correspnding teleological truth as well?

For me, teleology would seem to revolve around God. The universe not only exist as it does but it exists that way for a reason. The universe has a “purpose”.

And, if so, how might the is/ought world of human interactions fit into that?

And if there’s one thing that we are reasonably certain of, it is that no other life form on Earth grapples with the is/ought world quite like the human species does. In fact, what might be more interesting to probe is the possibility of other highly intelligent life forms on other planets. What might they think of all this?

My point however is aimed not at the gap between what science knows about gravity here and now and all that can be known about it, but on imagining a time when we do know all there is to be known about it and discovering a moral component we had never even imagined could exist in discussing it.

What is “neat” about the gap that I always come back to? The one between what we think we know about [even] the either/or world, and all that would need to be known about the existence of existence itself in order to encompass it in an objective truth applicable to all mere mortals.

Obviously: If the minds of mere mortals are capable of grasping an ontological understanding of existence itself, there will be many, many revisions regarding our current understanding of human biology, sexuality, pregnancy and abortion.

I merely note the enormous gap between what we knew about them going back to pre-Socratic times, and what we know about them now.

And then noting the complete lack of an equivalence relating to the morality of human sexuality and unwanted pregnancies.

What great advances have we made in grappling with the conflicting goods embedded in either the “natural right” of the unborn to life or the “political right” of women to snuff it out?

If anything with the advent of feminism as a historical phenomena the arguments only get that much more complex.

In the either/or world, things either revolve around the binary assumption “true”, “not true”, or they don’t. What of the is/ought world? Where are the binary guidelines here?

Again, unless, perhaps, the is/ought world is but another manifestation of the either/or world in a wholly determined universe.

I have never argued that there is an objective world we can understand, only that there might be one. That, in our interactions with mathematics, the laws of nature, empirical facts and the logical rules of language, there appears to a “reality” in which “correlation” will do just fine until an actual “cause and effect” reality is pinned down.

And, in turn, that this may well encompass the is/ought world…even if human autonomy is factored into it. I merely note time and again that “here and now” I – “I” – am not able to believe this.

In other words, your “neat boxes” into which you cram my “neat boxes” are, in my view, still no less existential/intellectual contraptions.

Even the notion of natural laws is starting to be whittled at. That these change over time is seeming more possible - and that’s within mainstream science. But basically I agree with you. But it doesn’t change what I said. We, humans, not in some bird’s eye view where we can see the natural laws or the truth and then compare that with what scientists say, find even our scientific explanations and conclusions open to revision and that revision has and likely will continue to happen, and this will likely to, as it has already, include revisions in our sense of what and who we are, such as revisions into brain, identity, cognition.

If one is disturbed by the potential for revision around ought, as you are, the ‘is world’ revisions that have already taken place and potentially will continue to take place
do not make the two realms very different related to that issue.

If that was your point it was not a good example. And according to scientific philosophy itself, we never reach that time when we KNOW, as in, there, that’s it, we have the final knowledge. That is built in to science. That is precisely one of the traits scientists consider an advantage over religious knowledge or ‘knowledge’ as they would view it. That scientific knowledge is always open to revision, period. It is always the current best explanation. Perhaps we will or have already hit the truth, now, but we cannot know that in some final way, according to scientific epistemology. That is part, but not all, of its strength.

Well, obviously I am pointing out a way it was neat. It would seem reading your posts, that revision in the ought realm, is not something we face in the is realm. But we do. You haven’t really conceded any points. But I have been pointing out in the last couple of posts here things that do not fit with the neat is/ought distinction as you presented it. The ought realm in your rendition if filled with confusion, with changes over time, with uncertainty. And this I obviously agree with. But we experience this in the IS realm also. To be in a hole fragmented has to do with what you know and can know and cannot know, with changes over time (that is, revisions), with confusion and uncertainty. That is present in the IS realm. Yes, there are differences. But there is also overlap. And one could easily fall into a whole over what science presents and further the fact that one cannot know if what one considers true, for example about the self, based on science, will not be overturned tomorrow. You are not a hole about that. I assume, then, that you must have a contraption, according to your logic, that does not make you feel in a hole about that.

No, you do not merely note that. You have made it clear that part of your hole is based on the fact that your own moral positions have changed throughout your life and now you consider it possible that they will continue to change. This is part of your existential crisis. At no point when making the, for you, clear distinction between is/ought, do you mention or seem to realize that the same existential crisis - regarding revision - potential is there in the IS realm, when one bases one’s knowledge on science, because science also has and will go through revision. I point this out and instead of saying, oh, that’s true, The IS realm also presents that exitential instability, you focus on a different, though yes related, issue that is part of your hole. I have already said that I do not consider the two realms to have the same issues. I was pointing out that the hard line distinction as you present it is not a hard line. I even highlighted that just because I am saying that your position is too much one way, I do not mean the complete opposite.

You also implied that the revisions to come will be about the infinitesmal and the astronomic. I point out that this is not the case, and with examples. You do not concede this point, you simply do not respond.

Well, perhaps that complexity is an advance. But that’s an aside; my point, as I said is not that there are no differences, just that the neat boxes you have them in are not so neat. I focused on one issue, and your rebuttal is focused on another, related, but not the same issue.

Great, I wish you could demonstrate that by showing that your beliefs are open to revision. I point out that what is part of your hole is also present in relation to the IS realm since this realm is also open to revision. Something that clearly plagues you about your own experience of the ought realm is present in the IS realm, and not just about stars and quarks, but about brains and minds, cognition and emotions, animals and plants, gravity and more. That tomorrow the consensus may be quite different about very intimate parts of our lives.

how do you respond to a potential for revision? o You respond by not acknowledging anything, by focusing elsewhere.

I am sure you will label this a contraption on my part. Which is perfect because calling everything disagrees with you a contraption, or anything that points out how misleading you frame something a contraptoin, or in this case will add nuance to the way you describe two categories, a contraption…
makes revision on your part impossible. You won’t even revise how you explain things. Perhaps you really knew all that I am pointing out already. Were that the case, you could say. OK, I knew that, perhaps the way I expressed myself was not clear. And there is revision in how you describe the IS/OUGHT categories. But, no, everything you have said and how you have said will not be revised. You will admit in the abstract that it may be a contraption on your part, but somehow nothing will ever make you revise that contraption. You were never even unclear. All criticism is a contraption, which you will then add, is your perspective. A perspective that cannot be revised.

IOW you have found a set of contraptions that make your truths, unlike scientific truths, utterly unrevisable. You can and will always go on saying ‘from my perspective that is a contraption, though mine may also be contraptions.’ The lovely thing about science is that while it recognizes this possibility, that the current explanation may be a contraption, it allows revision based on best explanation. But you have found a perfect defense system against revision.

All you needed to do was acknowledge that yes, revision takes place in the IS realm and one might not have thought that reading my more simplified dichotomy. I still see a difference between those realms, but my description was not clear. You could then explain why your overwhelming focus is on revision in the ought realm and why you are not in a hole about the revision potential and history of examples in the IS realm in science.

You tend to treat is as neatly binary, when we, as humans, do not experience those two realms in a binary way. We find ourselves having seen in the past and continuing through the present, many instances of IS REALM knowledge changing, some of this about the most intimate parts of our sense of self. And we know this may happen tomorrow also. And this would also affect HOW ONE OUGHT TO LIVE? should there be an answer to that question, which I doubt but which is one of your overriding questions.

You whole has to do with preferences/morals. An OUGHT hole.

No IS REALM existential angst because that is a different kind of drawing conclusions.

I point out that that in the is realm of science there is also revising, that we as humans in this life, are also subject THERE to revision and changes. That given that science functions via paradigms and models, there is contingency present also, as we work our way forward in time towards hopefully better explanations. That as we live it there could just as easily be existential angst and instability there also.

None of which is arguing that moral are the same as the objects of scientific inquiry or that scientific knowledge and moral opinions are the same thing.

But int he context of an existential crisis, a hole, which is in part based on the ever present and clear past presence of revision, the two realms overlap.

And there are people in holes about that too. There are people very disturbed by QM and relativity and determinism and the fact that we cannot even be sure the implications about us involved in these things will be relevent tomorrow, given that science can revise. I know people who are not very concerned about finding objective morals, but are in some kind of whole over IS realm changes in paradigm especially those parts that have to do with selves, but also the nature of reality. You do not have that hole. I would guess that part of your sense that you do not have an I but rather an ‘I’ is influenced by science, and that is part of your hole, but the fact that ideas about the self/brain/cognition/motivations, for example, may undergo revision at any time, is not a hole for you. You, given your assumptions, must have a contraption that gives less weight to that hole and perhaps others that give more weight to the OUGHT hole instability, lack of certainty.

And you have found a way to keep yourself from revision.

Peachy.

I know this post had many abstract aspects. I know, you think it is all my contraptions.

What wonderful accusations from someone who posts as abstractly as anyone else, does not notice concrete examples, and who is participating in a philosophy forum.

It’s like the opposite absurdity of someone telling their lover that they are being too concrete and then saying that the way they are touching now is never a contraption.

To me what happens here is concrete. I point to things said as parts of concrete interactions between people. Given that you are house-bound, this is actually rather positive. I consider you to be participating in life and your act, here, as real instances of concrete lived experience. YOu are actually doing things in the lives of others, things that affect or may affect them. To me that is at least as concrete as a discussion of abortion, in general. You did/said this - with a quote to demonstrate it - and here’s what that makes me think of. Here’s my criticism. Here is what is going on in me.

I know you think like in Archive X, that the answer is ‘out there’ and we should talk about things that have happened in the past to us as individuals or top what is happening elsewhere to other people and only that is concrete. And that’s fine and dandy and fits perfectly with this forum…also. But it is not more concrete than focusing on what actually happens here between the parties who are here.

Someone who asks me to demonstrate how my preferences are actually objective, which you did a few days ago, asking me and PHyllo to do this, is someone who is not noticing the concrete individual - me, in this case, the question made sense to ask Phyllo - who has made clear I would not have such an answer, nor would I even think such an answer possible.

I find myself swamped by generalisms, spoken to as if I was any interlocutor, retold things hundreds of times that I clearly understand, my points responded as if they were other points

and then accused of being abstract or as merely relaying contraptions

by someone who seems not even to notice me as a particular discussion partner or the particular points I make. Or his own level of abstraction…

You seem to want change. How could that change possibly happen?

""The “hole” that I am in starts with three assumptions:

1] that had I lived my life differently, I may well have accumulated different preferences
2] that any one preference is no less able to be rationalized than any another
3] that ultimately what counts is who has the political power to enforce one set of values/behaviors over the others""

Re: 1 - lets reverse the setup of 1; “had I had different preferences, I’d have lived my life differently”.

I know the hole digs itself but this should get you out. If you want. Men love being in holes…

Preferences is where it all starts.

Ie had you not had a preference for oxygen you’d have been stillborn, and no opportunity to try and change your preferences.

Indeed, and in a wholly determined universe all revisions are only ever as they could have been. Including the revisions in my own moral trajectory from an objectivist to a nihilist.

But what I still construe is a gap between what we know about, say, the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction in the either/or world and the arguments in the is/ought world about whether or when or where they should be used.

Similarly, objective facts can be noted regarding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. What then are the equivalent facts regarding the conflicting arguments over whether he ought to be confirmed?

I take my own existential leap here recognizing that it is embodied in a political prejudice rooted in dasein and conflicting goods and political power.

You take your own pragmatic leap but are [seemingly] less concerned with or by those factors.

“Scientific philosophy?” And how close is that to an ontological understanding of what needs to be known about the existence of existence itself?

What I am looking for instead is an argument aimed at narrowing the gap between revisions in the either/or world and revisions in the is/ought world. With regard to interactions in the either/or world, there’s a difference between wishing they were something else, and demanding that they ought to be.

This part:

This to me is just an attempt to suggest that with respect to either the either/or world or the is/ought world, there’s no getting around the possibility of or the potential for revision. Like if we go out far enough on the “reality” limb, the biological components embedded in the medical procedure used to perform an abortion may well be in sync [re revisions] with the moral arguments of those who are either for or against using it. Both equally open to revision.

Back again to the neat box that you put my neat box in. And me being considerably more fractured and fragmented in mine than you are in yours. So, in that sense, it might be argued that here and now your “I” actually “wins”. :wink:

As for your seeming obsession with my seeming obsession for “contraptions”, we just don’t think about “I” out in the world of conflicting goods in the same way. Maybe we can narrow the gap here, maybe not.

To wit:

All I can continue to recommend is that we bring these abstract “assessments”, “analyses”, “general descriptions” down out of the scholastic clouds and situate our understanding of “revisions” and “contraptions” in a context most here will be familiar with. You claim to have done so. Okay, but it didn’t take. So, try again.

Why don’t you and I and folks like Phyllo grapple with an issue like Communism. On another thread. Revisions abound here. Moral and political contraptions pop up all along the ideological spectrum.

Right?

But, then, after I note this re the assumptions embedded in my is/ought hole…

…it’s straight back up into the potential for holes that you see re the either/or world:

Yes, this may always be true. And that’s before we get to the “reality” embedded [for some] in Sim worlds, and in demonic dreams, and in solipsism; and in the many, many assumptions entangled in any number of “spiritual” or “enlightenment” philosophies.

What really can be entirely ruled out here?

But the bountiful revisions that seem particularly prone to bring about calamitous conflicts in our day to day interactions with others seem clearly [to me] to revolve around the assumptions that are made about the is/ought world.

It is here that the assumptions I make regarding the components of my moral philosophy and the assumptions you make regarding yours bring about a “sense of self” that result in a considerably more or a considerably less deconstructed “I”.

I’m merely grappling with and groping about for an understanding of your “I” here that might actually have an impact on how “I” have come to understand these relationships myself here and now.

You are the one [by and large] who seems intent on injecting “hostility” into the exchange. And I suspect it goes beyond polemics with you. And I have further suspicions regarding what might motivate you to make me the issue.

In fact the rest of your post here more or less revolves around what I construe to be a psycho-babble “analysis” of what makes me tick.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for your own rendition of this…

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

A way for me to understand how, with regard to a value near and dear to you, you came to intertwine what you think and feel about it in a sequence of experiences and relationships that shaped and molded “I” here over the years.

Isn’t that really as close as I am ever likely to get to “noticing the concrete individual” that has become your very own “I” here and now?