Since we can only react to the manner in which mr reasonable has described the life that he lives here, we can only assume that in fact it is a true and accurate description. He lives a particular life, has accumulated a minimal of frustrations in the act of it, and, insofar as he understand these things “in his head”, it is a “good” life.
This may in fact all be true.
But then this can describe almost anyone. A Nazi, a Communist, a Christian, an atheist, a liberal, a conservative, a masochist, a sadist, a humanist, a sociopath, etc., can all claim this of their own lives.
Right?
How hard can it then be for the serious philosopher to acknowledge that [re each individual] this may well be a reasonable assessment of the facts at hand?
Instead, where things become considerably more problematic is precisely at the social, political and economic junctures in which the life that mr reasonable construes to be “good” come into conflict with the lives of those who construe the behaviors that he chooses to be “bad”.
Then what for the value ontologists? Then what for the serious philosophers? Then what for the moral objectivists?
Then what for those who speak of others as being “spiritually advanced”.
It’s as though to say that as long as you can convince yourself that your own values [and behaviors] are advanced spiritually, that’s as far as you need to go. Let everyone else who chooses values completely at odds with your own embrace the same frame of mind and maybe, if you are lucky, you will never cross paths.
That may well be true but how is it related to the OP?
In other words, this being the philosophy forum, I am curious to explore your reaction to the point I raised above with Fixed Cross. How far removed do you suppose I am from understanding the point he makes about you?
I don’t actually see you viewing yourself in that way. But then again, I hardly know you.
Well, I kind of agree with you there. There’s a school of thought which says that some people are just born with a good temperament - more or less happy-go-lucky. Good mix of brain chemistry does that too.
True - this is the thing which I have to learn. I sometimes take too much to heart. Balance is called for BUT at the same time do we want to turn off our hearts to all negative things in the universe?
We, all of us, have to grow out of this and that. What about you, MR?
Again, you will either respond to my points below or you will not. I’m more than willing to allow others to judge for themselves that which you choose to either do or not do.
Okay, you have decided that you want to earn a good living…maybe even become wealthy. You told yourself that this is a good thing. You chose to invest in stocks as the way in which to accomplish this. You told yourself that this is a good thing. That this is the reasonable, natural, ideal thing for a rational man to do.
You know, based on the way in which “in your head” you think the world actually/naturally “works”.
Now, all of this is in fact – objectively – true. If in fact all of this is --objectively – true.
Then you meet a women. You like her. You’d like to become involved with her.
But it turns out that she is a socialist. She believes that becoming wealthy or playing the stock market is not a good thing at all. That in fact it is a bad thing. That, instead, a good thing would be for you to stop doing what you are doing and to join her in upending the capitalist system and installing [as a revolutionary or as a democratic socialist] socialism in its place.
Now, how would the political philosopher react to this? What is the argument that he/she can broach/sustain/demonstrate such that the conflict is resolved?
And how is the manner in which your point of view and the woman’s point of view [above] able to transcend the manner in which I construe these relationship as embodied largely in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?
Note to the serious philosophers:
Is this technically sufficient? Or, am I, instead, posing this in an entirely inappropriate manner?
How would the more professional philosopher go about engaging this instead?
A professional philosopher wouldn’t talk about that kind of stuff. It’s not up high enough on the skyhooks. A couple of assholes in a bar might stumble around some horrible conversation where they debate who’s right and wrong. But a philosopher wouldn’t. The problems you’re describing aren’t inherently philosophical. They’re problems of politics. So you would ask a politician maybe what he thinks, because a philosopher would find this kind of shit to be within the scope of another school of thought altogether. Philosophy isn’t down on the ground, in the real world. They just have some people who dabble in that shit so that people like you can feel like they’re participating. When you’re in the company of a bunch of professional philosophers, the morality/existential/ethics crowd sits on one side of the room discussing politics, and the philosophers sit on the other discussing things that are too far up on the skyhooks to be of any interest to you, or any pertinence to your questions.
Sure, it can be argued that the function of philosophy is [technically, analytically] to examine the language that we use in our interactions. In other words, to examine the extent to which our utterances are either in accord with or not in accord with the logical rules language. Or in examining the extent to which we either can or cannot [epistemologically] know something.
The philosopher then becomes akin to the scientist, exploring the extent to which something either is or is not true…either is or is not factual…either is or is not verifiable…either is or is not falsifiable.
And of course my point here is to suggest a distinction that revolves around the limitations of philosophy. A “professional philosopher” might eschew examining your relationship with the woman because he/she concludes that this is not something that philosophy ought to concern itself with.
And I agree. In a world sans God, value judgments like these are embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy; as this has evolved historically, culturally and experientially.
But that doesn’t change the fact that you want to be involved with someone who will not be involved with you unless you make that existential leap to her own point of view regarding what you do to earn a living.
And it doesn’t change the fact that those aspects of human interactions most likely to “make the news” are the ones that revolve precisely around that which philosophers may well be [in the end] impotent regarding.
So, with respect to those instances in which your values do come into conflict with others, what is the role of philosophy?
And how are the values that you do hold [and defend here] not by and large the embodiment of dasein, in a world of conflicting goods, and in a world such that what really counts is the extent to which you have the capacity [power] to enforce your own subjective narrative/agenda?
In fact, we may well basically be on the same page here. In other words, I agree: these are more [far more] political than philosophical problems.
But: what of those who insist that their moral and political values are not embedded 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.
From my frame of mind, some objectivists here want it both ways. They want to argue that philosophers are unable to propose deontological solutions, but at the same time their own values are still said to reflect the only “natural” or “ideal” manner in which a reasonable man or woman ought to behave. And that in turn their own sense of identity is not an existential contraption at all but reflective of who they really are.
Still, within the domain of philosophy are the ethicists. And then, either through God or through Reason…either through philosophical realism or political idealism…any number of them have crossed that line and proposed one or another narrative/agenda implicating actual flesh and blood human interactions out in a particular world.
Is that foolish of them? Or are they just being pragmatic regarding that question which most preoccupies us: How ought one to live in a world where value judgments are ever and always coming into conflict.
The first example just isn’t a fact. You don’t have to make existential leaps to other’s points of view any reason. You can simply lie.
The 2nd might not be a fact, but I don’t think something being newsworthy is cause for it to become a subject of philosophy.
You should be glad that my interest in this is so low. The reason that I know you are a troll is because your issue is a simple one that can be resolved plenty of ways. You just don’t want to hear it because you are mentally ill.
“within the realm of philosophy are the ethicist”?? Maybe that’s what the ethicists think, but the philosophers don’t agree. “Philosophy becomes akin to science”? As if that’s some kind of insult to philosophy. If you understood philosophy and could grasp epistemology, then you wouldn’t be going around thinking that nothing can be known, and you wouldn’t be going around thinking that equivalent rhetoric = equivalent reality. Some things we can know based on the way we combine observations with a methodology that’s constructed to rule out certain possibilities and to guarantee certain necessities are accounted for.
You seem to want the difference between right and wrong to be constructed the same way as our knowledge that mixing certain chemicals yields certain results. That’s not how knowledge works. There are varying degrees of certainty that can be ascertained given the conditions under which we gain knowledge, and the kind of knowledge that we can gain under those conditions or another kind.
What’s so hard about this for you? You have to know that the world isn’t the way you claim it is. I don’t understand why you’re so deeply committed for seeing it the way that you do.
Sure, you can lie. Of course the Kantians might object.
Yes, that’s certainly one way to look at it. You can watch the news from day to day and argue that philosophy has no role to play in it. That when folks like Plato and Aristotle explored, among other things, ethics and politics it all revolved formally/epistemologically around philosophical realism.
But then…
Note to others:
A Satyr by any other name?
When have I ever argued otherwise? Instead, my argument pertains more “for all practical purposes” to the “use value” and the “exchange value” of intellectual contraptions like this out in the world that we interact in. And, in particular, when those interactions come into conflict.
Again, you seem convinced that the role of the philosophers here is to just punt everything to the politicians.
And yet even here I agree. It’s just that some folks embrace a particular moral and political narrative/agenda that revolves around one or another rendition of “right makes might”. And while they may not justify being “one of us” by way of a philosophical argument, they still huff and puff at those they deem “one of them” as though there really was a way in which to differentiate right from wrong, good from evil.
Some do this “naturally” by way 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
But not you? You just somehow, what, “intuit” that you’re right?
On the contrary, my reaction here is that this is, well, reasonable. I merely root it instead in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
And then to folks like you I try to probe what unfolds “in your head” when your own values come into conflict with others. How are you not entangled in my dilemma?
After all, perhaps one day I will come upon a frame of mind that allows me to yank myself up out of it.
Again:
How do you claim that the world is when your own values do come in conflict with others? How are reasonable men and women able to make a proper distinction here when it comes to rewarding or punishing particular behaviors?
What I said, but you failed to comprehend, is that your main goal is to make sure that your dreaming is undisturbed.
I never said that your dreaming is easily distributed. In fact, I said the opposite, that you’re a stable dreamer, thus rather difficult, though certainly not impossible, to disturb.
Indeed, my point was that you’re a zombie without a pulse.
How can I so much as try to raise your pulse if I know that you do not have one?
Of course, strictly speaking, this is is not true. You do have a pulse it’s just that your heart is beating at a very slow rate.
You are nearly dead yet you think this is strength.
That would be my definition of what it means to be a hedonist.
I don’t actually see you viewing yourself in that way. But then again, I hardly know you.
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