From my perspective, the main distinction here is more in line with that which the KT objectivists always bring up: natural morality.
In the beginning – think the opening scene from the film 2001 A Space Odyssey…or the entire film Quest For Fire – “natural morality” had little or nothing in the way of historical or cultural contexts. At least not in the manner in which we have come to understand these things today. In other words, rooted in, among other things, “civilization” and “enlightenment”. Back then, at the birth of the species, it was far closer to the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, might makes right.
Period.
And back then people basically lived in small, homogeneous communities in which there was a clearly defined place for everyone and it was just understood that everyone would go to the grave clearly embodying his or her place.
Re dasein, how far has the modern industrial state come from that?
Well, as always, it depends on who you ask.
But there are those among us today who will insist – in reflecting one or another rendition of Nietzsche’s “will to power” – that modern moral philosophy is largely just a sham. Or a scam. That, in a Godless world, we are “beyond good and evil”. But: in order to qualify as “one of us” you have to agree that what is “natural” pertaining to human behavior is what “we” say it is. And, at KT, that is always what Satyr/Lyssa says it is.
In other words, abstractly, in the lectures. In a scholastic “analysis” that is said to constitute “serious philosophy”. Serious philosophy that is said to encompass a “general description” of the human condition.
And we have the same sort here in turn.
My point though is this: Yes, perhaps, it might be possible that philosophers can accomplish this. That one day they will. But what would that argument even begin to sound like such that the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein and conflicting good is rendered more or less moot?
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.
That seems reasonable to me. And this is when I suggest one of three possible “models” that aim to achieve it:
1] might makes right – a purely autocratic regime
2] right makes might – a theocratic regime; or one propelled by political ideology; or one [theoreticallly] sustained by philosopher-kings
3] democracy and the rule of law – the modern industrial state
I merely point out in turn the manner in which [in the modern world] political and economic power will always be crucial factors in determining what those laws will be. In other words, the global economy owned and operated by the moral nihilists concerned by and large only with this: show me the money.
Though, sure, two individuals, in sharing a respect for the tools of philosophy, might use them in order to come to an agreement when one of their own value judgments come into conflict.
I merely note the gap between this and any assumption that might form between them that their own resolution reflects a frame of mind such that if others do not embrace it in turn they are wrong. Or, for the KT ilk, they become “retards” or “morons” or “imbeciles”.
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).
You may not need a “generalized formula that is universally applicable”, true; but, in the absence of it, it would seem to always come down to the particular circumstantial parameters of this or that abortion; and then the subjective/subjunctive points of view regarding an understanding of them. But how does that obviate the points I raise regarding dasein and conflicting goods? We are still confronted with the real world implications of either allowing the baby to live or allowing the woman [and the doctor] to kill it.
And the same sort of thing can be noted regarding all of the other moral and political conflicts that have ever divided the “civilized” and “enlightened” world now for centuries. What has really changed from the time of, say, Plato and Aristotle?
As opposed to what has in fact changed regarding medical science and its capacity to perform abortions with considerably less risk to [and considerably more comfort for] the pregnant woman?
As for the relationship between abortion and rape, the fact that an innocent unborn baby exists as a result of a rape doesn’t make him or her any less dead if aborted. Is this then the “right thing to do”? How can this possibly be determined objectively?
My own frame of mind here then becomes entangled in this:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
And that is when I ask the moral objectivists [either pro-life or pro-choice] to note how they are not entangled in it themselves.
Well, other than by noting that “in their head” they do not “believe” that they are. Or that they simply just “know” that they are not.
In other words:
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 my point revolves entirely around challenging those who insist not only that it does have to be objective, but that they have in fact already discovered/invented what the actual objective resolution is. And that, of course, is precisely when I confront them with the manner in which I myself construe these conflicts [instead] in terms of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
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.
Okay, note one that is. Note one in which if you don’t share that frame of mind you are necessarily being irrational; or you are wrong; or, if you act otherwise, you are behaving immorally.
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 make it quite clear regarding what I construe to be an “objectivist mind”. It is one in which the objectivists argues that you must share their own values or emulate their own behaviors. In other words, if you do embrace their own alleged rational and logical premises than your conclusion will in turn reflect the objective truth. Why? Because theirs does.
Otherwise you are “wrong”. You are not “one of us”.
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.
Yes, I can basically agree with this. In fact, you might even call it my point. Then we can shift gears so as to explore the manner in which I came to this conclusion based on the manner in which I scrutinize human interactions that come into conflict from the perspective of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
As opposed to the components of your own argument that had persuaded you to think like this.
…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.
Yes, this is largely what I seek to explore here at ILP:
[b][i]In my view, one crucial difference between people is the extent to which they become more or less self-conscious of this. Why? Because, obviously, to the extent that they do, they can attempt to deconstruct the past and then reconstruct the future into one of their own more autonomous making.
But then what does this really mean? That is the question that has always fascinated me the most. Once I become cognizant of how profoundly problematic my “self” is, what can “I” do about it? And what are the philosophical implications of acknowledging that identity is, by and large, an existential contraption that is always subject to change without notice? What can we “anchor” our identity to so as to make this prefabricated…fabricated…refabricated world seem less vertiginous? And, thus, more certain.[/i][/b]
In other words, using the tools of philosophy, what can we know to be true for all of us: having already recognized the extent to which as children we are basically indoctrinated to view the world [morally and politically] as others instruct us.
And it should be noted that while it is “indoctrination”, it is often imparted lovingly. In other words, out of a genuine conviction that you are teaching your children to believe that which is the one true distinction between right and wrong.
That’s why it is invariably so effective.
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.
I don’t doubt that the manner in which I peruse [and then construe] these things [these relationships] might not be reflective of a truly sophisticated frame of mind. That, in other words, those who do have a far more sophisticated understanding of philosophy as a discipline, might be able to poke any number of holes in the arguments I make.
“I” is after all the most complex and enigmatic form of matter that has ever evolved from the Big Bang; or from whatever it is that first brought existence itself into existence. Whatever that might possibly mean.
But it does seem reasonable to me that a distinction can be made between those aspects of my “self” that are anchored biologically, demographically, factually etc., in the “objective truth”, and those aspects which seem to be considerably more problematic. Contingent instead on the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein as it pertains to one’s sense of identity, one’s moral and political values, one’s emotional and psychological reactions to events in the world around us.
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.
Yes, I believe that most folks embrace a set of moral values because 1] they are indoctrinated as children in a particular historical and cultural context to embody one frame of mind rather than another and 2] because they had a particular set of personal experiences, relationships, sources of information/knowledge etc., that predisposed them to go in one rather than another direction.
And that these existential components are deeply embedded in them such that they may or may not be privy to [aware of] just how much [or how little] control and understanding they really have of or over these enormously complex interactions. Some obviously more so than others. But even to the extent that one thinks this through long and hard, they are still confronted with the gap between what they think they know about them and all that would need to be known in order to actually be fully or wholly informed.
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.
On the contrary, an objective understanding of the laws of nature is precisely what makes it possible to engineer all of things [objects] that most of us just take for granted. Including this very technology that we use to exchange these abstractions.
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.
From my frame of mind, in a world sans God, moral nihilism seems to be the most reasonable manner in which to address conflicting value judgments that precipitate conflicting behaviors.
On the other hand, moral nihilists are just as capable of precipitating and inflicting human pain and suffering as are the moral objectivists. Even more so if you focus the beam in on those who own and operated the global economy. After all, I suspect that very few of them are motivated by…deontological considerations?