Well, there are obvious differences–money, for example–but you must be talking about something much more abstract–perhaps how me must adapt our natural instincts? As a response to my comment about synchronizing philosophy with our basic animal needs, it is true that philosophy emerged long before any considerations of what its pragmatic uses might be (how we ought to live), but if philosophy has funneled down to that question, it can only be because that question has been deemed by modern philosophers as the most important, and that is because of our modern understanding of our position in the game of survival. This could change if our understandings of the world and our cultural values change.
I don’t profess to know this. Moreover, I don’t even know how it could possibly be applied. Most people who end up getting into conflicts over their values and belief, regardless of whether it stems from dasein or whether there is an objective way of settling such matters, just want to win the conflict. They aren’t interesting in a generalized formulaic solution to such conflicts that a team of philosophers may have come up with, let alone understand it or even heard of it.
This is why I’m placing all my bets on 2); that is, two individuals doing a bit of philosophy to solve their differences. Option 1), though possible in principle, is entirely impractical, even if it one day happens.
Well, for one thing, option 1) amounts to a generalized formula for resolving all differences between conflicting human values and beliefs rooted in dasein, whereas 2) amounts only to a solution to a particular problem (between two particular men); say, for example, an employer and a manager were disputing the prospect of highering a man of a different race (say X). The employer is an X-ist while the manager is not. They can engage in philosophy to raise and attempt to answer the question: is someone who is X but has Y in their blood (say Y is the race of the employer and manager) still subject to the same treatment as someone who is X through-and-through? If this question is as yet unanswered between the two men, then there is the opportunity to do a bit of philosophy to arrive at an answer that satisfies them both.
For another thing, option 1) is the approach whereby the formula is arrived at first, and then it awaits conflicts in the world to be applied to, whereas 2) starts with a conflict and then philosophy is engaged in to arrive at a solution.
With respect to the conflicting goods clearly embedded in an issue like abortion [the birth of the baby vs. a woman’s right to kill it] there either is an optimal resolution amongst philosophers or between individuals or there is not.
Yes, but when you funnel it down to a particular conflict, like abortion vs. the right to life, you don’t need a generalized formula that is universally applicable. You can come up with solutions that make sense in the abortion vs. right to life conflict but may not make sense in other conflicts, and if it is between a particular set of individuals, the solution they come up with may not be satisfactory to other individuals in conflict over the same issue (for example, the particular individuals in question may be debating the right for a women to abort her child because she was raped, whereas the same debate may come up at a later time between different individuals but the woman in question was not raped).
What happens all the time? Sure, between two particular individuals an agreement can be reached in which both parties are able to overlap philosophically. But how is this the same as establishing that their agreement is a reflection of the objective truth?
Does it have to be objective? If a conflict is resolved, is that not all that matters?
But let’s see if we can answer your question anyway. Obviously, not all conflict resolutions are going to be objective, but that doesn’t mean none of them are. I guess it depends on what you mean by “objective”: do you mean using objective means (i.e. rationality and logic) to arrive at conclusions, or do you mean arriving at objective “truth”? I think it’s easily possible to be rational throughout a debate such that an impartial logician could give his assessment saying, yes, the arguments are objectively valid. But I don’t think it’s possible to arrive at an objectively true conclusion around issues of morality or value judgements, if that’s what you mean, conclusions such as “abortion is wrong” ← I don’t think there’s anything objective about that.
Well, other than in the form of a political consensus reached in any particular community [or in one or another world of words i.e. Plato’s Republic], when has such a network ever been established such that particular behaviors have been shown either to be or not to be in sync with an “ideal” or a “superior judgment”? A frame of mind in which dasein as I understand it becomes moot?
Well, given that your interest is in arriving at objective truth, I think the chances of this happening are dismal. I’ve been thinking more in terms of using philosophy for individuals to reason out their differences, but to arrive at objective truth is a different and much taller order. But if there is any hope at all, it might be in observing how individuals work out their differences using philosophy and reason and trying to extract a pattern or common methodology. If there is such a pattern or methodology to be discovered, it might be raised to the level of a generalized formula that can be applied to any human differences. But again, I must stress that it most likely will not be a formula that can be imposed on individuals–they most likely will have to mutually agree to use it on their own initiative.
Yes, but increasingly in the modern world the child becomes an adult and acquires more autonomy. How then, in choosing more for herself, is she able to embrace behaviors said to be rational and virtuous rather than irrational and lacking in virtue? How is dasein any less implicated in her life given that what she chooses will still revolve largely around the experiences that she has [and does not have] the people that she meets [and does not meet] and the knowledge/information that she comes into contact with [and does not come into contact with]?
Are you asking how it’s possible to escape the effects of dasein given autonomy and maturity? In other words, it is thought by many that through the freedom we acquired after maturing and gaining our autonomy, we can “rise above” all our past conditioning and indoctrinations, that we can see what really matters, objectively, rationally. And I think there is some truth to this, but it too is no doubt greatly influence by a culture that encourages rising above petty biases and inherited values and beliefs (assuming we know how to identify them).
It’s an interesting question as it requires distinguishing between whether such a thing is merely possible and whether it happens to any great degree. Even in thinking about the nihilists who seem to be capable of dismissing the ideas of morality and values and religious beliefs, etc., it must have been their dasein, their life circumstances and experiences that lead them to their nihilistic stance; and even if we could say that such a nihilistic stance is “objective truth” in the final analysis, they would still at least look like just another force in the social tapestry of conflicting values and positions.
Once you come to grasp them as I do, moral objectivism is no longer an option.
That would be the rational conclusion to come to, I would think. But the irony is with the type of people you’re talking about: those who grasp the implications of dasein, as you say, but then proceed to inquire about an objective and universally applicable methodology for resolving interpersonal conflicts rooted in dasein using the tools of philosophy. This conviction must hinge on the belief that there is the potential for human thought to look at the world through objective and impersonal spectacles, and I think there is, but as I said earlier, this potential is confounded by more than just a few variables: how can one be sure they are viewing the world with truly objective spectacles instead of yet more of dasein’s effects, for example? Also, how to know whether the person you’re dealing with (the person you’re in conflict with) is willing and able to do the same. And given that this is possible, will it provide everything we need to resolve all conflicts revolving around value judgements? I mean, having the ability to view the world objectively does not convert inherently subjective value judgements to objective truths–they just fail to show up on the radar.
In other words, as though, if you stripped away all of the existential layers of your life, you would get to the “core you” – the essential part able to grasp the way the world really is objectively. Including the part that revolves around “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “evil”.
So this is an “I” which is projected to exist beyond “genetic makeup, my congenital predispositions, my gender, the color of my skin, the purely demographic components of my life…” This would be an extremely difficult “I” to prove the existence of, extremely difficult to prove the persist of.
In whatever manner others might construe the meaning of philosophy, my own interest in it revolves around its limitations – limitations pertaining to conflicting human behaviors that revolve around conflicting goods embraced in the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein.
And you believe arriving at objective solutions to the conflicts arising from dasein is one of those limitation.
Well, not me. I don’t doubt the objective reality of mathematics or the laws of physics or the logical rules of language.
Ah, but here, we’re talking about the objective reality of abstract things, not concrete objects. A lot of nihilists would dismiss the reality of these things on just these grounds, but I can still see how they would be relevant to your questions. Your question, if I may paraphrase, is whether philosophy is capable of establishing the objective legitimacy of certain conclusions revolving around moral value judgements (and other such things) even if that entails talking about purely abstract concepts. It’s important, therefore, to not be nihilistic about these things.
Instead, my interest in nihilism revolves around the relationship between human identity, moral values, political ideals and political economy.
These are the things whose reality you doubt, correct?