Phyllo (happy Thanksgiving) - what did you make of this thread
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175698&hilit=ontological+tyranny
It influenced me gigantically, I acquired a great focus on Nietzsche’s notion of science as prejudice.
Indeed science is qua method at bottom empirical, but that method is the result still of something; we select the line of empirical inquiry based on non-universal criteria; e.g. convenience, proximity, use, etc. What Sauwelios describes as common sense perhaps, what I might cynically call opportunism - basically it is the human, all too human that is the standard to the knowledge that science is designed to acquire.
Sure, those in opposition to incest can bring that up. But how does bringing it up make the arguments of those not opposed to incest go away?
And while it is biologically factual that incestuous sex can result in birth defects, it is also biologically factual that sex between sisters, sex between brothers, sex between family members that preclude the possibilty of pregnancy, obviate that factor.
So, where is the argument – the philosophical argument – able to establish that incest is necessarily irrational and lacking in virtue?
And how might this speculation [and the “Westermarck effect”] be made applicable to the Grand Scheme: To ‘problematize’ “value”.
And, in particular, how that might relate to the point I raised above:
Okay, how is to ‘problematize’ “value” different from to problematize value? And how is that different from to not problematize value?
Let’s focus in on behaviors that do come to clash over conflicting value judgments relating to issues like incest, homosexuality and abortion.
Once again I will acknowledge this: that, as a serious philosopher, you may well be making an extremely important point here that I am simply not able to – or subconsciously willing to – understand and accept.
To argue that science ultimately rests on common sense is merely to note the obvious: that common sense here is in sync with the laws of matter, the laws of nature.
In fact, I have always been curious as to why so many folks back then thought the earth was flat. After all, if you looked up into the sky, the moon and the sun were clearly round. Why should the earth be any different?
Instead, I recall that, as a child, “common sense” then revolved more around wondering how the folks “down under” didn’t fall off the earth. It seemed we were on the “top” part, and they weren’t.
“Common sense” here clashing with the laws of gravity.
And I await patiently your reaction to all of the other points I raised above.
In particular, the part where the Grand Scheme becomes applicable to is/ought conflagrations.
And that’s before we get to Hume driving a stake between correlation and cause and effect; or Descartes pondering if in fact ontological reality might be attributed to some demon that has but “dreamed” us into existence!
Or dreamed up God to dream up us.
As for who or what dreamed up the demon…
I’m sorry but here we are back again to this:
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
And that we are still grappling with this pertaining to the world of “either/or” speaks volumes regarding the extent to which the moral objectivists claim to have, in turn, grappled with the world of “is/ought”.
Naturally, for example. 
That is one of your strangest expectations … that an argument should make another argument go away. At least a half dozen posters have told you that arguments don’t work that way , including posters that you supposedly respect like OH and Faust. And still you repeat it.
Then one could present the argument that making homosexual incest acceptable and heterosexual incest unacceptable would be discrimination based on sexual orientation. Thus the preferred solution is to make all incest immoral.
(And in homosexual situations, the young and weak may be pressured into relationships that they don’t want.)
I just said that by bringing up specific consequences, philosophers can bring it down to earth.
Are you saying that referring to aspects such as birth defects and biological aversion as shown by the Westermarck effect are not part of a philosophical argument?
Then what is a legitimate philosophical argument?
It has nothing to do with the Grand Scheme or value. You asked how philosophers would establish something “on earth” and I responded directly to that.
I quoted you and replied to the content of the quote.
I just attempted to focus on incest and the consequences and natural aversions. Immediately your tried to shift to the abstractions of value and the Grand Scheme. 
I don’t doubt that scientists pursue particular inquiries because of subjective, personal and biased reasons. However, the results of the research have to be objective and unbiased in order to be valid. Biased results will not be repeatable or useful except to people of the same bias.
Science attempts to remove subjective factors by emphasizing quantitative results, predictability and repeatability.
Which affected science , how?
Which scientists were concerned about “a demon that dreamed us into existence”?
People who do science and engineering don’t think in these ways. If you went into a university science or engineering classroom, and presented these ideas, they would laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
True - there is a deeper point to it though, which is exactly what you formulate, and this is what I took from it and developed, for it to ‘influence me gigantically’ - namely that the very criteria of " quantitative results, predictability and repeatability" are prejudices, specifically concerning the type of results one accepts as “result”, and thus about the phenomena that are eligible to produce scientific knowledge about them - and thus ultimately, about which phenomena “really exist”.
Under these criteria:
" quantitative results, predictability and repeatability"
the overriding quality of a valid object of observation becomes that it is capable of being isolated from its context without losing its qualia…
which would exclude life. Thus, reasoning one step further, what science is capable of disclosing and developing then, is something fundamentally other than life…
Hence, the Grandness of the Scheme - the sheer consequences of the mere thought, that puts science in perspective, stretch out beyond all horizons of precedent and cognition.
Huh?
John says incest can lead to birth defects. This is a biological fact. Nothing those who argue in favor of incest say can make that go away.
But:
Jane argues that, while this may be true, she is having a sexual relationship with her sister. They love each other dearly and have freely chosen to expand that love to include a physical intimacy. A sexual relationship that precludes the possibility of pregnancy.
That is also a fact.
So both sides express facts about incest that are true, pertaining to their own particular context. Facts the other side cannot make go away.
In other words, each particular sexual context involves any number of facts that can be twisted into either a pro-incest or an anti-incest moral narrative.
So how do philosophers, taking all of this into account, come up with an argument that establishes the optimal [most reasonable/rational] frame of mind? An argument that encompasses the moral obligation of all reasonable/rational men and women in regard to incest.
Where are the arguments from OH or Faust or others that make this go away?
In fact, regarding any moral conflict that we are familiar with there are similar sets of facts that can be configured into a pro or con political agenda.
Sure they can. Homosexuality is but one more example of facts on the ground that can be twisted into a political prejudice rooted subjectively in dasein and conflicting goods.
But: How does any so-called “preferred solution” not come down to subjective political prejudices rather than to one or another deontological “philosophical” argument in which one is obligated to interpret the facts as consistent with one or another rendition of this:
1] I am rational
2] I am rational because I have access to the ideal
3] I have access to the ideal because I grasp the one true nature of the objective world
4] I grasp the one true nature of the objective world because I am rational
Are not Jacob and Sauwelios and James Saint and all the other objectivists cut from the same cloth here? They might argue for different Kingdoms of Ends, but they all seem convinced that as “serious philosophers” these can in fact be derived in using the tools at their disposal.
In other words, they all hold particular personal opinions about particular behaviors and they try to stuff them into one or another scholastic analysis. Some with God, some without. But it always comes down to one or another set of so-called “natural” or “ideal” behaviors.
You may claim to have demonstrated “how philosophers would establish something ‘on earth’” here, but you and I are talking about two very different kinds of demonstrations.
Natural aversions? Says who? Both John and Jane above argue that it is “natural” to think about incest the way they do.
And “consequences” construed from what point of view regarding what particular context?
Again and again and again:
What I am looking for from moral objectivists [either sacred or secular] is something analogous to this:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin. Both in and out of church.
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.
Thus when someone asks me to encompass my point of view regarding abortion as a moral issue, as a value judgment, I can situate my actual changing perspective over time: existentially, for all practical purposes.
And I can note how this particular trajectory culminates in my dilemma above.
But: What if someone asks you? You are either willing [and able] to do the same or you are not.
Either ironic or stupid based on what I posted:
" That is one of your strangest expectations … that an argument should make another argument go away. At least a half dozen posters have told you that arguments don’t work that way , including posters that you supposedly respect like OH and Faust. And still you repeat it."
As I said, your concept of demonstration is purely subjective and therefore nobody can demonstrate anything to you unless they completely agree with what you are saying.
Westermarck. But since you choose to completely ignore his research, then you can say that there is no natural aversion to incest. Except for the fact that it is a common aversion.
Got it. There is no way to define consequences. No wonder “the kids” have a field day with you.
Sure, post the same stuff over and over.
No, I refuse to post the same crap as you.
That you allow yourself to be reduced down to intellectual drivel like this does not bode well for the future of our exchanges.
After all, this is the philosophy forum.
Best perhaps to take the route that Turd, Jacob and Satyr have chosen: Ignore the bastard!!
I tell you that OH and Faust already told you that arguments don’t make other arguments go away and you respond with this:
“Where are the arguments from OH or Faust or others that make this go away?”
Do you even read the posts? Do you understand anything that people write?
FFS
My previous two posts were full of content and you were confused and responded with that kind of nonsense and your usual cut and paste GROOT. Then you have the gall to characterize my posts as drivel. No wonder that everyone is sick and tired of interacting with you.
You stated that, “[a]t least a half dozen posters have told you that arguments don’t work that way.” I took that to mean something entirely different. This: that arguments revolving around conflicting goods don’t work the way that I construe them: reasonable given a particular set of assumptions.
After all, if arguments can be said to be reasonable given conflicting sets of initial assumptions then we arrive at this:
[b][i]
John says incest can lead to birth defects. This is a biological fact. Nothing those who argue in favor of incest say can make that go away.
But:
Jane argues that, while this may be true, she is having a sexual relationship with her sister. They love each other dearly and have freely chosen to expand that love to include a physical intimacy. A sexual relationship that precludes the possibility of pregnancy.
That is also a fact.
So both sides express facts about incest that are true, pertaining to their own particular context. Facts the other side cannot make go away. [/i][/b]
How then do you [or them] respond to that?
Or, regarding abortion, where is the philosophical argument the makes the “good” revolving around the birth of the baby, or the “good” revolving around a pregnant woman’s right to kill it go away? We can’t live in a world where both goods prevail, right? Thus neither side’s agenda succeeds in making the arguments of the other side less true. It merely revolves around a different set of initial assumptions regarding whose life/good ought to prevail.
Back again to William Barrett’s “rival goods”.
I will let others decide for themselves which of us is inclined to respond more substantively to the points that we raise in our exchanges.
Indeed, perhaps even zinnat himself might be inclined to comment on that. I could at least always count on him to be substantive.
Well, up to a point.
No. The whole concept of “laws of matter” or “laws of nature” is already a common-sense induction…
So, are you equating inner strength with a form of masochism?
In what way are freedom and necessity the same thing? 
I don’t quite know what you mean by “knowledge can’t be first” BUT as for
Don’t we ultimately base our sense of “value[s]” on what we have observed and experienced both in the positive and the negative - so value can stem from “empirical” knowledge as long as it stems from right and true vision.
Yes.
And what srill went wrong with Husserl is that he still sough for a primordial intelligence, or sense, whereas all that too is first of all a result of a taste.
no one really managed to pick that up from Nietzsche in an Analytic context. Understandable, as it causes the whole Analytic paradigm to evaporate; “A” now doesn’t equal itself, as it has no itself; “A” = q? - that is to say it asks a question beyond analysis; it questions man into the world. No longer is the question “does this exist objectively?” but “is this good enough to be recognized into the world?” And this is the question science always already answers before it offers space to think about it.
Nothing is important anymore except the power to attribute importance; Kingmakers are higher than Kings.
Do your questions place you deeper into the world, or do they make you stand outside of it, looking in - or trying - through a glass darkly perhaps?
Rhetorical question.
It just seems obvious to me:
What particular question in what particular context pertaining to what particular world: historically, culturally, experientially.
Deeper compared to what? And from what particular point of view?
Is it a point of view able to be demonstrated as in sync with that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to share?
I merely shift the focus here to that which is of interest to me: conflicting human behaviors derived from conflicting value judgments derived from the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein.
What on earth does this mean? And what does it portend regarding any particular experience that you have had?
Also, as this relates to the Grand Scheme – To ‘problematize’ “value” – what does it mean [existentially, to you] to embody this frame of mind?
Can you relate it all to a particular experience of yours?
Fixed asks if you dont experience your valuing? Rhetorical question also I hope, otherwise I have more running to do.
