Not only is it not as crippling, I don’t feel crippled at all. My identity will always be in flux, but right now, I’m definitely sure that I’m a subjectivist (and a relativist).
From what I understand, the crippling effect of recognizing the nature of prong #2, and drawing it to its logical conclusion vis-a-vis the groundlessness of all our values and “isms” (not just moral), is that when we recognize the groundlessness of our “ism”, we recognize the groundlessness of our “ist”–that is, if we identify ourselves with our “ism” we call ourselves an “ist” (for example, I believe in determinism, therefore I am a determinist), so if the “ism” crumbles, so does the “ist”–we end up in an existential crisis of sorts in which we no longer know who we are.
But there’s a hidden assumption in the above. It assumes all “isms” are subject to this–subject to crumbling at the realization of our position in the world as dasein-based creatures caught up in interpersonal conflicts with each other over moral value judgements and prejudices, and that our “isms” are latched onto or invented, bringing with them all the rationalizations and objectivist justifications that we can muster, as a means of standing our grounds in the midst of this conflict. But clearly, not all “isms” crumble at this realization. You yourself continue to believe in the reality of the physical world (you hold onto empiricism). You also admit to being a nihilist.
What I was trying to argue earlier in this thread is that it depends on the content and the logical structure of the “ism” in question. The realization that we are all dasein-based creatures caught up in conflict is a proposition. It has implications for other propositions. What those implications are depends on the logical structure, the internal content, of those other propositions.
In order to understand why my “ism”, and therefore my “ist”, doesn’t crumble at this realization, you have to understand what my “ism” is saying. Is it saying something that is in conflict with this realization? Is it unaffected? Are they codependent on each other? But you seemed not to want to go out on the metaphysical branch (which is what my theory is), so at this point, my subjectivism is rather black boxed for you. (Keep in mind that as much as metaphysical flights of fancy may be a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo, they are thought patterns with a certain logical structure, and that structure will still have implications for sudden realizations of all kinds; the effect of these implications on one’s sense of identity is unpredictable unless you thoroughly understand the structure itself).
Fair enough. Keep in mind, though, that showing something to be true is not always equivalent to convincing someone. Many people can be convinced by something that has been notably less than “shown” and there are those who will remain steadfastly ignorant in the face of being shown undeniable proof. In other words, even if one could demonstrate something that “shows” something to be a fact in reality (such that all rational men and women are obligated to concede), you may not see a difference in the patterns of behavior and/or reactions of others compared to any other instance of someone trying to argue their point to someone else.
Hmm, well, so much for morality requiring God.
This shows a concern on your part for an all-or-nothing solution to conflicts (which I questioned at the end of my last post to you). But supposing we had an all or nothing solution to the problem along the lines of community consensus–suppose the whole world was the “community” and everyone somehow agreed on a moral consensus–then your point still stands that it doesn’t make their consensus the objective moral truth. So I take it you would still have a qualm with this. I further take it, therefore, that your concern is indeed with finding an objective demonstration of the truth of such a consensus, a demonstration that all rational men and women would be obliged to agree with. But as I’ve been emphasizing throughout this thread, and as you seem to concur with now, this wouldn’t necessarily end the conflict–it would merely give us some guidance on which side to support and which side to resist. The side that we resist, however, will in all likelihood continue to stand up for the moral values they have held all along.
Well, given what we seem to have established just now (i.e. in regards to what is more of a dilemma to you: demonstrating who’s right or ending conflict), I can see why my approach, though an alternative to the tradition objectivist approach (as I’m calling it), wouldn’t resolve your dilemma. It wouldn’t be a “demonstration” of objective truth (not necessarily) except in the relativistic sense that it would be the truth to those involved. (Keep in mind, however, that even if there were a demonstration of objective truth to be had, my approach might still be useful in uncovering it.)
You might just have an abrasive personality–a drive to enter into conflict with others–and this just doesn’t work out in the world where people will retaliate and there will be consequences. Here on the internet, however, you have a kind of “safe haven” from which to challenge and argue with people without risking any serious consequence to yourself (except that you will sometimes piss people off and get on their bad side). I imagine that if in your past, you’ve actively participated in activist movements (Marxism, feminism, etc.) then you’re not adverse to engaging with people out in the world. But I imagine that, by the same token, your experiences with this have been less than satisfying. I can see how, after a while, one who participates in socially active lifestyles such as this might become, not only exhausted by the unfavorable reactions and animosity one would receive from the opposition, but disillusioned to the inefficacy of trying to convince others of the validity of one’s own moral position, at least via the traditional objectivist approach (and then your nihilist/existential philosophy comes in). This disillusioning would certainly kill any motivation to continue trying, which may be when you decided to seclude yourself from the world (but you tell me).
Yes, if what’s ultimately driving the theist is to convert the atheist. Keep in mind my example was really a Mickey Mouse example–I don’t think that would actually work in the real world (unless the theist was an absolute push over)–but it’s the kind of approach one might take that would play on what the opposition already believes, not on what one’s self believes in an attempt to push it on the opposition as a replacement for what the opposition believes (which is why I was saying that arguing for proof of God’s existence would work against this approach). In the real world, an atheist who decides to use this approach would have to come up with something a lot more sophisticated than “conflicting with me isn’t very loving” but it would be in the same vein of utilizing what the theist already believes.
But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the theist was hellbent on converting the atheist (probably not the most appropriate choice of words). I think my approach would still work but you’d really have to embrace a subjectivist frame of mind in this case. In other words, you would have to allow yourself to be convert (at least temporarily) and then begin work on utilizing the theist’s beliefs (which you now also believe) to accomplish your goal (if the goal is not accomplished already–i.e. the conflict is ended now that you’ve been converted). The reason this requires being a thorough going subjectivist is that, for the subjectivist, there is no absolute truth, and therefore one wouldn’t feel he is going against the truth, or his values, by switching over to another’s view (it would be like an Einsteinian relativist, who begins by saying that it is we who are moving when we walk down the street, deciding to switch perspectives in the middle of a conflict with someone who insists that it’s really the street moving backwards; the Einsteinian should have no problem with this since his own beliefs say that either perspective is valid). Of course, there may still be more work to be done after this point (if the conflict is really serious, then it’s most likely over something of far more reaching consequence than whether or not God exists, most likely over moral obligations to do something in the world), but in getting over the conflict of conversion, the (former) atheist can now work with the theist to arrive at a conclusion about how to act in the world that works more smoothly with his original goals (it’s easier to reason with someone who believes you are on their side rather than in conflict with them).
And yes, there is the possibility that the conversion itself may change the former atheist’s ultimate objective, but this shouldn’t be taken for a foregone conclusion; and furthermore, the subjectivist approach that I’m imagining would allow for an active process of submitting to conversion–by which I mean a psychological process that the subjectivist can control and customize (thought systems are very much like computer programs–they are incredibly versatile); the subjectivist, in other words, can adapt his beliefs in such a way that it satisfies the opposition’s need to have him converted while at the same time maintaining the feasibility of attaining his original goal.
Keep in mind, this is in response to your point that “On the contrary, my argument is that this almost certainly does not exist; and, if not, what then is our best hope to sutain the least dysfunctional social, political and economic interactions?” If you agree that we cannot establish a universally applicable demonstration of the objectively correct morality, then this is the next best hope (as far as I’m concerned). The fact that whatever consensus we come to as a community is subject to change or to challenge by another community is merely a few of the imperfections of “the next best thing” ← It’s the “next” best thing because it isn’t perfect.
It’s as if you acknowledge that the ideal solution (i.e. establishing a universally demonstrable objective morality) is impossible yet you cannot accept this fact.
Ok, so the elusiveness of this ideal solution (to wit, what I mentioned above) more or less is your dilemma.
Yes, so it seems like, despite being disillusioned to its impossibility, you still need a demonstration of a particular objectivist morality in order to get out of your dilemma.
Well, here, in my view, a frame of mind like this is sustained to the extent to which it is not put to the test out in the world of actual moral/political conflicts. Conflicts in which there are actual existential consequences that you have to live with. Or endure.
Which is why [in my view] more folks are not subjectivists/relativists/moral nihilists. They need to believe [psychologically] that their value judgments are not just leaps of faith, political prejudices, existential fabrications/contraptions rooted in dasein.
They need to believe that when goods come into conflict, their own values reflect the most rational and virtuous manner in which to embrace an issue. As a “cause” for example.
They need to believe that “right makes might” reflects the noblest approach to political economy.
So, to what extent are your own values put to the test in conflicts with others? To what extent are you forced to live with consequences that trouble you, impale you, enrage you?
That’s why I always focus the beam here on exploring actual reactions that we experience in particular contexts in which our values are challenged by others.
I ask folks to note these particular contexts in which conflicts occur and then the extent to which they are not entangled in my dilemma above.
Or are they as entangled as I am but have come to embody a frame of mind that enables them to just shrug it off more effectively than I am able to?
Again: I ask them to note an example of a particular conflict that they have encountered. In other words, in the manner in which my experience with John and Mary and Mary’s abortion set the stage for upending my own objectivist frame of mind.
Yes, I recognize that in calling myself a moral nihilist, I am creating a frame of mind in which I too am making a distinction between “one of us” and “one of them”. But I also recognize that this too is rooted in dasein. And that moral nihilism may in fact not be the most reasonable frame of mind here. But all I can do then is seek out the narratives of others. In search of one able to convince me to change my mind. After all, lots of folks in the past have succeeded in doing just that.
Yes, but empirical truths/facts are intertwined in the world of either/or. The world that physicists and chemists and astronomers and mathematicians etc. explore and decypher. The world in which engineers are able to reconfigure the scholastic/theoretical stuff into actual technologies that work precisely because they are predicated on a world that [so far] seems entirely embedded in either/or.
You can be a hardcore moral objectivist or a hardcore moral nihilist and that stuff doesn’t change. Dasein [as I understand it here – viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529 – is basically moot.
This however is the sort of “analysis” which [over and again] I have the most difficulty grappling with as it relates to actual contexts in which value judgments come into conflict. Conflicts that precipitate actual existential confrontations – as small as a fist fight or as consequential as a world war.
And out on the metaphysical branch we come to grapple with such imponderables as determinism. If we live in a wholly determined world this exchange itself is only as it ever could have been. Out towards the very end of that metaphysical branch, all of us are forced to acknowledge 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.
Only this: Things become all that more problematic once we shift gears from either/or to is/ought.
The problem here [from my perspective] is that I have not encountered such a demonstration. We would need to have a context in which either a God, the God, my God was shown to exist or, sans God, an argument rooted in Reason emerged able to demonstrate that either aborting an unborn baby was more rational/virtuous or protecting the right of women to choose abortion was more rational/virtuous.
Until then, yeah, my qualms remain. I just don’t equate my own qualms with the objective truth.
And, sure, in a world that is not entirely determined, the measure of human autonomy that might exist would still be more or less able to choose to be sync with either God or Reason.
What I often ponder here is this: What if I had come to embrace moral nihilism right from the start? Could I have managed then to take that political trajectory from the RCP and the SWP, to NAM, DSOC and finally DSA?
Existentialism was always there percolating in the back of my mind. I was fascinated with the Camus/Sartre “split”. It’s just that I was always able [back then] to take that leap to Marx. Until I bumped into Mary’s abortion and William Barrett. Then slowly over time I became less and less of an objectivist. Finally, I met a Thai woman who introduced me to folks like Derrida. Then I really began to question all the more the relationship between words and worlds.
I’m not really sure how to react to this because my own focus is always on the extent to which an analysis [a set of assumptions] of this sort is applicable to prong #2.
With God you have that crucial transcendental font that [ultimately] renders subjectivism either moot or enables subjectivists to defer to God when their value judgments come to clash.
My problem with God though remains the same: the extent to which He is said to be omniscient. Once you go there, how can you speak realistically of human autonomy? And once that goes how can you speak realistically of dasein/conflicting goods/political economy at all?
Of course this might fall into that category we call “the best of all possible worlds”. Acknowledging that this is always expressed “here and now” and as a political prejudice.
What I cannot accept [so far] is any argument that might possibly resolve this. This in my view is right around the corner from, “why does anything exist at all?”, or, “why is existence this way and not some other way”?
Except that once you interject “is/ought” into the mix, it only becomes all the more mind-boggling still.
And I don’t argue that ideal/natural solutions don’t exist, only that “here and now” I don’t believe that they do. But that in itself is still just a frame of mind “in my head”.
In other words:
Sure, that comes a lot closer than arguing that it does not exist.
Period.
Really, how the hell would/could “I” possibly know that?!! It’s just that many an objectivist over the years has gotten pissed off at me because I dared to suggest that this might be true of them too.
They simply have too much invested psychologically in their “one of us” mentality. The Good Guys. The Only Ones Who Really Have It All Figured Out.
Sure. If it does exist then it either is or is not able to be demonstrated sans God.
The problem with objectivists however [Satyr/Lyssa there, Turd, Jacob, James S. Saint here] is this: As soon as you reject their own narrative/solution [almost always encompassed in one or another Intellectual Contraption] you become “one of them”. You get on their shit list. Then they either ban you to the dungeons, put you on ignore, or shift gears to huffing and puffing.
And you see that your moral nihilism doesn’t fragment nearly as easily. Some philosophies, in virtue of what they say, are affected differently by special facts and propositions (such as the realization of prong #2) that are brought into the mix.
Sure, I understand that, but what I’m saying is that in order to understand how the practices of a particular “ism” pan out in such conflicts, you first need to understand what such “isms” are saying (in general, apart from context)–otherwise, there’s no way of knowing what behaviors a particular “ism” will prescribe–if religion A says “defeat your enemies” while religion B says “submit to your enemies”–knowing this makes the behaviors of adherents to each religion very predictable–but if you want to jump straight to the context of conflict, without understanding what the “isms” involved are saying, you will be missing vital pieces of information that won’t allow you to make such predictions nearly as easily.
Yes, I can see how that would heighten the imperative to be sure we know what the moral facts of life are (and even when we feel we know them all, the question remains whether there are any moral secrets hidden in the unknown unknowns). But before we go there, please run by me once more how going to the extreme ends of metaphysics leads to knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns?
But they do seem to be correlated. Objective demonstration, no qualms; less than an objective demonstrations, qualms.
This all sounds very interesting, but I have to confess I’m not all that familiar with the Camus/Sartre split, or Mary’s abortion and how that relates to William Barrett, or the intricacies of Derrida’s philosophy (although I think he’s the father of desconstructionism, isn’t he?). But I guess you’re relaying to me the path you’ve walked to get where you are now.
As I said above, my conception of God is more a consequence of my subjectivism than a foundation, and therefore the way my God is conceptualized depends not on tradition or religious orthodoxy, but on what my subjectivism actually says. Without going into that, I will say that the closest my God comes to being omniscient is to say that all knowledge that happens to exist (in the minds of intelligent beings) is had by it. But does my God know everything? To me, that’s an incoherent notion. (I do believe that this God feels everything, but I draw a sharp distinction between feeling and knowing.
Are you saying that it is reasonable to hold out for the hope that, one day, we will have a universally applicable moral standard that can be absolutely and objectively demonstrable?
Possibly, this could have to do with their penchant for drawing boundaries or distinctions. You know–us vs. them, fact vs. falsehood.
My interest however revolves more around the extent to which any theoretical speculation about human consciousness becomes applicable to a particular consciousness in a particular existential context. As this pertains to conflicting value judgments.
My reaction here however doesn’t really change. In a particular context where values come into conflict, how would any “alternative mind states” effectively transcend the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?
I could achieve an alternative mind state through drugs or meditation or some other method, but in interacting with others socially, politically and economically, how would conflicts be resolved other than re 1] might makes right 2] right makes might or 3] democracy and the rule of law.
The bottom line [mine]: How this actually plays out “in reality” when value judgments come into conflict. Given a particular frame of mind, you choose to behave in a particular way in a particular context and this triggers particular [positive/negative] reactions in others. How then would the manner in which you embrace “subjectivism” obviate the dilemma that [as a moral nihilist] I would find myself in?
Thus when you suggest…
…I am unable to grasp how this might be applicable to any particular context in which values [religious, political or otherwise] do come to clash. Not in the manner in which thngs become clearer [for me] given the components of my own dilemma.
That “clarity” [for the moral nihilist – this one] becomes hopelessly entangled in ambiguity and ambivalence.
What, in any particular context, does it mean to speak of “the moral facts” from the persective of a mere mortal ensconced in a particular historical, cultural and experiential context? A particular set of personal experiences, personal relationships, personal interactions with particular ideas and knowledge?
Now, from the perspective of an omniscient God there are no unknowns. Mere mortals however are far, far, far, far from being omniscient.
Thus, regarding an issue like abortion, there appear to objective truths that can in fact be established as applicable to all – human biology, the sexual libido, becoming pregancy, the medical act of aborting a fetus.
But what are “the facts” regarding the ethics of abortion? Given the vast and the varied contexts in which any particular abortion might occur — and the vast and the varied intellectual and emotional reactions to it — how [realistically] could all that would need to known in order to render an objective assessment be accumulated?
What would that argument sound like?
And then how would that particular assessment be integrated into what would also need to be known regarding the nature of Reality and Existence itself?
Revolutionary Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, the New American Movement, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the Democratic Socialist of America. Those were groups I was once a member of. My political trajectory before I abandoned objectivism.
The Camus/Sartre “split” pertained by and large to the extent to which human interaction revolved more around “I” or “we”. Mary’s abortion is embedded in 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.
And Supannika introduced me to folks like Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Adorno.
And, in particular [for me], Richard Rorty and ironism:
[b]* She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;
*She realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;
*Insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself. [/b]
Then it all comes down to what this is applicable to. And this [again, for me] lies in distinguishing the world of either/or from the world of is/ought.
Then the problem revolves around my failure [yet] to grasp it. In particular the practical implications of it re prong #2. And as that pertains to the dilemma in which I am entangled.
Perhaps we will never succeed in closing this gap. But that often happens in exchanges of this sort here. We are puzzled as to why others are not able to understand that which seems so perspicuous to us.
Again, my reaction is always the same: How does your “certain conception of God” become applicable for all practical purposes out in the world of human interactions that come into conflict over values?
How do you take him “out of your head” in order to convey a meaning to someone who challenges a particular behavior of yours?
Also, how can you really trust what your subjectivism “says about him”? How do you move beyond the extent to which this too is embedded in dasein — in the particular trajectory of your lived life that precipitated particular experiences, relationships, ideas etc… Existential variables that [from my perspective] become largely a fabricated frame of mind? A frame of mind that, given the manner in which I construe these things, is always subject to further change given new experiences, relationships, ideas etc.
When you note…
…I think…
If all knowledge [of all things?] is had by your God, how do you reconcile this with human autonomy?
And again: How would you be able to take this belief out of your head and to demonstrate why it is a frame of mind that all reasonable men and women ought to subscribe to.
Is it possible that you believe this because, emotionally, psychologically, it is a comfort and a consolation of sorts? Something [finally] to anchor the subjectivist “I” to?
I am merely pointing out that, of late, I have not come across an argument that might persuade me to believe that such an objective moral standard does in fact exist.
As for whether this might be a “good” thing or not, what counts first and foremost is that it does in fact exit. If in fact it does exist. Here of course what counts is the extent to which there are consequences for choosing not to abide by the standard demonstrated to in fact exist.
That’s why many ecclesiastics embrace Hell, and many secular ideologues embrace reeducation camps and prison and execution.
No, by “accept”, I simply mean to agree with. And my dilemma is rooted in this. If my dilemma were in fact resolved with an argument that convinced me of one or another objective standard, that would not necessarily resolve it for others.
One would have to reach the point where [for all reasonable men and women] rejecting the objective moral standard would become the equivalent of rejecting 1 + 1 = 2, or rejecting the laws of nature, or rejecting the logical rules of language.
Well, this sort of imponderable evokes Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns again.
How does the mind [whether “subjectivist” or “objectivist”] even begin to grapple with the very essence/nature of Existence itself? In fact one of the unknown unknowns might well revolve around the extent to which the human mind is even capable of answering this.
Don’t we all go to the grave oblivious to The Answer here? Don’t we all go to the grave clinging instead to that which we believe or think we know “in our head”?
Should we drop the subject then? I mean, we could probe into it. Obviously, there must be some ways in which my view on consciousness impact my behavior in particular situations; it’s just that my views touch primarily on ontological and metaphysical questions–how things are–and not so much on how one should act in this or that situation, or on what counts as “right” and what counts as “wrong”. What this means is, for one thing, that I’m not going to be totally resolved about my answers to your question–as in: this is definitely what I would do–and for another thing, even if I were resolved about my answers to your questions, I couldn’t say with any accuracy how much of that is influence by my philosophies on consciousness and how much on other things in my life. If that’s less than satisfactory to you, perhaps we should drop the subject.
Drug use is thought to be immoral–in fact, they’ve got laws against it–I thought that would be obvious.
But I don’t protest my right to use drugs, I’m not a lobbyist. I’ll usually do them in the privacy of my own home.
The closest I’ve come to conflict with others over my drug use is a few times here on ILP (actually, come to think of it, I’ve gotten into huge fights with my ex over it, but I’m separated from her now). I’ve gotten a bit of flack over it and a few jabs here and there at ILP, but I don’t know if that satisfies your inquiries. We could get into my issues with my ex, but I may have to draw a line if it came to revealing personal information about her. If I were to bring my views on the moral permissibility of drug use to the level of politics, I’d probably choose method 3).
Like I said, my subjectivism only permits me (so far) to obviate prong #1 of your dilemma–I have not encountered any conflict thus far that would bring my “ism” crashing to the ground and so my “ist”–my ‘I’–has not fragmented. But the dilemma of prong #2 remains alive and well (though I don’t seem to be in as much angst over it as you seem to be).
Are you saying that if one explains his philosophy to you in the abstract, or in general, without giving concrete examples of how it would be implemented in the real world, then you have trouble understanding it? But given a series of concrete examples, you can then infer the abstract or general template of his philosophy? Sort of an inductive method rather than a deductive one? No wonder you shy away from metaphysics.
Well, what you seem to be getting at is the utility of metaphysics to establish certainty (and how little utility it might actually have in this department). But my point is not so much that metaphysics can lead us to the truth (and secure a sense of certainty about this truth), but just that people have metaphysical beliefs. The impossibility of absolute certainty in respect to metaphysics may discourage certain people like you from pursuing it, but this is not true of everyone. There’s a whole shmorgas board of philosophers–from Aristotle, to Augustine, to Hegal–who delved deep into metaphysics and left the world with specific philosophies to follow. I’m not going to say they found certainty, let alone speculate on whether or not they thought they found certainty, but I’m just going to point out that it can be done–clinging to a particular metaphysical philosophy, that is, and feeling “certain enough” to give it your mental stamp of approval (i.e. the green light to say: this is what I believe). Once that’s accomplished, it will run on your brain like a computer program and determine how you react in specific situations. And my further point is: that behavior can’t be determined unless you understand at least something of the content of the metaphysical philosophy in question. You don’t have to believe it–let alone recognize its certainty–you just have to know that it’s the philosophy you’re dealing with–the program running on the neurological computer that’s presently making your life difficult.
In fact, the analogy to computer programs works perfectly here: how you would resolve a war going on between a bunch of robots? Well, understanding the software programs running through their CPUs might be a good start.
Thank you for that. (Trust me, I tried googling those–weird shit came up that I know you didn’t mean).
It might have something to do with your comment above–that you find it difficult to grasp abstract or general perspectives without being given at least a few concrete examples. Admittedly, I’m being very abstract in the above. I mean, I’m trying to supply some concrete, albeit hypothetical examples (with the theist and the atheist and how the latter tries to engage the former) but these are just hypothetical and I am having a tough time trying to image an actual real world example that’s happened before.
Again, what I mean by “fabricate” seems slight different from what you mean. So whereas we both agree that being dasein based creatures living through our hands-on experiences results in all sorts of existential fabrications/contraptions, this to me only means that they are “invented”, whereas you seem to also think of them as “false” (again, my analogy to baking a cake comes in: we invent it but that doesn’t make it unreal).
Further, I’ve never really felt the need to “prove” my subjectivism–either to myself or someone else–I’ve always thought of it as more of a “proposal” than a fact (i.e. I tend only to present it as a proposal of a certain metaphysics that we might accept). Indeed, I’m not sure how one would go about “proving” it–it seems to fall in the camp of one of those “unfalsifiable” theories as they say. That coupled with the fact that the theory itself says that whatever existential fabrication/contraption one invents supplies its own reality fosters a frame of mind in which I feel satisfied that everything I need in order to accept the theory is there in the theory itself–which is another way of saying I rely more on the theory’s own inner logical integrity than on whether or not it matches the actual state of things “out there”.
I won’t deny the theory can be wrong, that it might not match the actual state of things “out there” after all–but given that I think of it as a “proposal” only and that I recognize its unfalsifiability, the rest is all just a matter of how I feel about accepting it on that basis or rejecting it on account of some inner need to cling to something I can verify empirically/objectively. And all that “accepting” means here is that it’s just the latest philosophy that has landed on my brain, and that it has survived so far, and that I feel no need to reject it (i.e. it’s allowed to stay). I’m fully aware, like you, that my continued experiences in the world, with people, with new philosophies and outlooks, with challenges to my current philosophy, will always have the potential to upheave my current philosophy… it just hasn’t happened yet.
Well, like I said, “God” is a conclusion my subjectivism comes to, not an anchor on which it hinges. The subjectivism itself brings me comfort, but that’s true of anybody and the “ism” they hold onto (it’s the feeling of “this works for me”). Again, finding comfort in a philosophy isn’t necessarily grounds to invalidate it. One can easily imagine a philosophy that brings comfort and at the same time is true. ← So long as this is the case, the fact that my philosophy brings me comfort isn’t sufficient to upheave it.
Or that it doesn’t. This was in response to you calling my “next best thing” a political prejudice. Which I acknowledge. It’s always possible that there is something better of which I am not thinking. So I take you simply to be pointing out a fact rather than holding out hope.
Yes, the idea that metaphysics can actually enable one to arrive at “knowledge” with absolute certainty, let alone knowledge that you’ve covered all knowledge (i.e. there are no more unknown unknowns), is folly in my opinion. This is why I don’t use metaphysics for this purpose. However, as a proposal, my theory puts a spin on the question of how we can know the very essence of Existence itself: it says that it is in the nature of existence to be completely exposed. That is, for example, when you look at an apple, not only do you see that it exists, but what you see of it (and what you experience of it in general–through sensory perception, thoughts, emotions, everything) is all there is to the apple. My theory says that experience is the essence of existence. This is in opposition to the Kantian theory of noumenal things-in-themselves, things that exist “hidden” from our experience, inaccessible and unknowable. My theory says that in order for a thing to exist, it has to be experienced, and it has to be experienced as the essence of its existence. So if this proposal is true, then we can know the essence of existence–it’s there right in front of our eyes–the catch being, of course, that that’s a emphatic “if”. So it remains that I don’t actually know that my proposal is true, and therefore I can’t claim to actually know the essence of existence–I just have a theory.
Yes, but if you really believe it in your head, there really is no practical difference between arguing that X is the case and arguing that you believe X is the case.
And perhaps we can entice others who are
considerably more skeptical of my rendition of it.[
/quote]
Sorry to be so late to the invitation, but have noticed this forum in conjunction to current events and find it fitting. Hope to fill in the discussion with Gib along the way.
Intentionality has very much to do with basic things, such as trying to get out from under a miscinceivedly characterized grey area of establishing juncture between conflicting values and the consequential use of power. The identification now standing in this grey area has shifted from the nihilistic position of perceiving this, replaced by the Nietczhean focus on power for it’s own sake.
Therefore this slide is a populist misrepresentation, and the identity as such as it is suffers the fate of a reduced periphery of perception, and has been shelved there. Here the objective and subjective worlds beg the question of differing values, thus, the nihilistic contraption just as suspect as the unnecessary out of the world abstractions which brought them into focus in the first place.
But they were consequential to the events surrounding the violent war ridden 20 th. Entury, so they were far from groundless.
It is the intentional use of power which can re focus the elements surrounding values, and place them into the position they deserve to be, the activation of movement away from clarity surrounding the contextual determinants of relating them to each other, re establishing, what for die hard Kantians are very problematic to begin with.
Holding, intending to hold principles , go far, in terms of resisting attempts to derail such attempts.
The existential epoch does not necessarily dictate a total nihilistic collapse, even with the demise of a credible ground.
Biggy seems to be a nihilist through-and-through, and I’m not sure that needs to be replaced by a Nietzschean will to power. I think Biggy would agree that everyone’s striving in the conflict to reach a level of domination over the other guy.
Yes, this is what I questioned with Biggy a few times in this thread; he seems to be relatively certain about his nihilism though–even though in principle I think it’s subject to the same criticism it permits Biggy to level against all other “isms”–but that just goes to show that however vulnerable a philosophy in principle, the philosopher himself can hold true to that philosophy without necessarily any struggle.
Meh–one could say that the wars of the 20th century were for the most part the result of what Biggy’s calling existential contraptions/fabrications, and that maybe nihilism is the best way to go if you want to mitigate war as much as possible.
But isn’t power itself arbitrary? The powerful elites of today certainly impose their values on those under them, but it’s just random chance who gets to be those powerful elites, for tomorrow a different elite, with different values to impose, will take their place. This is definitely problematic for a Kantian–that is, one who is always trying to keep clear the categorical imperative; with ever shift values in a world of ever shift powers, the Kantian has his work cut out for him trying to translate the current values of the day into the categorical imperative which he aims to keep constant.
When is it beneficial to hold to one principles and when is it beneficial to adapt one principles? Is the best survival strategy always to remain inflexible amidst the flux? Or should one change his values and principles in order to meet the trends of the day?
This is true. Human thought is very versatile and innovative.
Here I just bump into the same uncertainty. I’m not really able to comprehend how this frame of mind is applicable regarding interactions in which we must choose to do one thing rather than another. It’s like trying to wrap my head around the idea of determinism. If consciousness is just mindful matter and matter [all matter] obeys immutable laws then even prong #2 issues dissolve into…inevitability?
It’s the difference between thinking about what it means to think about doing something and actually doing it. There may be no difference at all. But that involves an understanding of “mind” that is way beyond me.
And then there’s the part where I make a distinction here between the world of either/or and the world of is/ought. Again, the human mind may be such that this distinction itself is only an illusion.
But how might this be demonstrated philosophically?
This may well be something that I never fully understand. The preponderance of human behaviors/interactions do not involve conflicting value judges. Instead, they revolve around conscious minds choosing particular goals/objectives and then coming up with behaviors that must be chosen in order to accomplish the task.
If you are pregnant and don’t want to be then you can choose to have an abortion. At least in most parts of the world. This is applicable to the conscious minds of all women in this situation. The “angst” part only comes about when others react [subjectively] to what the mind must choose in order to stop the pregnancy.
But “understanding” here pertains to either agreeing with or not agreeing with the definition and the meaning given to the words used in the analysis/argument itself.
Now, if two doctors are discussing abortion as a medical procedure, the words here reference aspects of human biology that are the same for all pregnant women. And even in regard to exceptional cases, the words pertain to the actual physical interactions in any particular pregnant body.
Thus they can understand each other clearly [in the abstract] without having to actually perform an abortion.
When ethicists discuss the morality of killing the baby, they too can understand each other in an abstract exchange. But sooner or later their arguments get around to resolving the dispute. And unlike with the doctor, who either successfully aborts the baby or does not, there does not appear to be a way for the ethicist to either succeed or fail. Both can make reasonable arguments. But neither can make the points raised by the other go away.
Here there are so many possible combinations of existential variables, who could possibly wrap their mind around them all? And that’s before we get to the ubiquitous subjunctive reactions — reactions rooted in minds that respond emotionally in turn. And then the parts intertwined in the more primitive parts of the brain. And the parts buried in the subconscious and the unconscious mind.
This may well all be fathomed some day by neuroscientists. But by philosophers?
I still come back to this:
1] encompass a philosophy of mind, of consciousness, of choice, of behavior
2] note a particular context in which your mind, your consciousness, your choice, your behavior came into conflict with another
3] how are the two connected
4] how is your mind not entangled in my own dilemma above
I’m not discouraging folks from probing into the ontological – and, perhaps, teleological – nature of Existence and Reality itself. Nor in exploring the part that “consciousness” plays in it. Instead, my own fascination revolves around the parts where the world of either/or becomes entangled in the world of is/ought. How ought one to live in this world?
Or is even that just another manifestation of the either/or world?
What’s making my life problematic is the manner in which, in connecting the dots as I do between dasein, conflicting goods and political economy, it has engendered my dilemma.
Now, where that fits into “metaphysics”, others are either able to explain to me or they are not. I simply acknolwedge the fact that their failure may well be more a reflection on me than them.
But if philosophers around the globe today really were close – or considerably closer than philosophers going all the way back to the pre-Socratics – to solving the mystery of Existence and Reality metaphysically, isn’t that all we would be talking about?
The individual mind of a child is fabricated to reflect the reality of the world of adults. Still, some of what the child is taught is true for all, while other things are rooted considerably more in particular moral and political narratives/agendas.
From my frame of mind, these beliefs are less false than they are not true objectively.
Unless perhaps they are true objectively. But in order for this to be the case others would have to demonstrate [to me] how they are able to in fact establish this.
In other words, to establish that a particular abortion either is moral or immoral in the same manner in which the facts of the pregnancy itself can be established; or in the manner in thich doctors perform the abortion as a medical procedure.
Nope, I can’t wrap my head around this at all. I have no idea how something like this could be anything other than an “intellectual contraption”. With the God of the Christians, Moslems and Jews, I can at least imagine Him as an “entity” “up there” in “Heaven”. But your God here is a complete cypher to me: “a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure.”
As I noted above:
Then it is not likely that you will ever convey to someone like me how your conception of God is applicable to the world that we live and interact in.
Yet I always come back to pondering what “on earth” something like this might possibly mean pertaining to a particular context out in a particular world. “Completely exposed” how? And how/why does being/feeling “completely exposed” matter when you are faced with choosing one thing rather than another.
Either in the world of either/or, or the world of is/ought?
Admittedly, much of this is beyond my capacity to pin down. And, in part, that is why arguments that champion determinism can sometimes be so appealing. Things are as they are because they are not some other way. And they are not some other way because there is no other way that they could ever have been.
We’re ignorant by design.
Yet there are any number of examples in which what some once believed to be true “in their head” [the earth is flat etc.] turned out to be false. Thus there is always the possibility in these cases – in the world of either/or – to change minds. In other words, to demonstrate that what you do believe “in your head” is in fact what all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe.
With human behaviors that come into conflict over value judgments [rooted at least in part in dasein and in a particular political economy], what are all reasonable men and women obligated to believe then?
And is this a hurdle to understanding the frame of mind itself or understanding its implications for how to act in the world?
And usually, only for the one who’s the target of these reactions. Most of us understand that these kinds of friction exist between people, but as spectators only hearing about it from afar, not really having close relations to the people involved, it’s hard to feel angst. The people who are in the thick of these conflicts definitely feel angst, and most likely people who have lived through experiences like this. The latter most likely have a heightened sensitivity to these kinds of things–even as bystanders just hearing about it–they become “triggered” as they say.
Given that, in your past, you’ve been more closely involved with conflicts of this sort, you may be more sensitive to the issues of prong #2 than the rest of us, and so to you it is a big deal, even just philosophically, and it may perplex you why others don’t seem nearly as concerned about it. ← This may be your answer. It may not be that others have a philosophy or an approach to the conflicts of prong #2 that you don’t, it may just be that they haven’t been involved in conflict as much as you have.
I think a general principle that behooves all philosophers is to refrain as much as possible from contradicting well established scientific fact. Whatever we end up learning about the brain scientists, philosophers ought to follow.
I’m not sure whether this is a yes or a no to my question. Seems more like a set of instructions/questions you’re asking others to observe in order to help you understand their views.
The move from 1) to 2) seems kind of odd: it’s like asking one to encompass a theory of how the body works, and then to note a time when his body came into conflict with another (say in a war, for example). How would his theory about his body change what happens when it gets shot by bullets?
I suppose you might mean to ask: how would he explain in terms of his theory what happens to his body when it gets hit by bullets, in which case I guess you’re asking me to describe what happens when I enter into conflict with another in terms of my theory of consciousness. Is that what you mean?
Would it be fair to say then that your interest in metaphysics lies along a specific branch–the metaphysics of morality and its relation to the world of either/or–but that the crux of the problem is the same as that found in all other branches of metaphysics: that finding certainty in the insights one arrives at remains indefinitely elusive? (This sounds like just another way of phrasing your dilemma.) It’s just that unlike questions of consciousness, being, transcendentalism, questions of morality and how that is practiced in the world of either/or is of tantamount importance, and so it tends to compel one to take it seriously?
Well, many philosophers think they are close. Problem is they all disagree with each other. And I’m sure that is all that’s talked about amongst that small handful of philosophers.
Yes, we all have our criteria for accepting truth.
My God is the universe–plain and simple–I’m a patheist. I think sans God, you would probably understand the concept of knowledge existing in the minds of intelligent beings, and that it follows from this that such knowledge also exists in the universe. So I would think the problematic part is: how is God the universe?
The reason this is cryptic to you is (partly) because I haven’t layed out all the gory details of my philosophy, just some of the conclusions I’ve come to. This is why I wrote a book.
Maybe not. But it is a two way street. As I said above, I wrote a book to (hopefully) accomplish this purpose, but you’d have to be interested in reading it.
It was just a commentary on the metaphysical problem of the nature (or essence) of existence–not meant to explain why it matters when choosing one thing rather than another.
Indeed! I think we already came to an agreement on this one–there is no objective answer (right?).
In fact, the irony is, I’m writing the last of chapter of volume 3 of my book in which I explain the roll of the philosopher in society: to be the guides of thought for mankind.
In any case, my statement is that philosophy ought to follow science, not scientists. There is no shortage of scientists who over step their bounds and philosophers not only have the right to whistle blow when they are doing so, but that is one of their most vital functions in society. You mention the conservation of energy, I always bring up physicalism. Physicalism is not science, it is a philosophical extension to some of the science that has been discovered about the brain. It says that science has solved the problem of consciousness (that consciousness is just the operations of the brain). But this is a philosophical conjecture based on what, at best, is only properly interpreted as a correlation between brain states and subjective experiences. If it actually is science–i.e. what has actually been observed and measured–then I think it’s a healthy thing for philosophers to keep their thoughts aligned with it, or at least not to contradict it, don’t you? What my statement is really meant to admonish against is going the way of the Creationist. I don’t think that philosophers ought to do that (the least of all reasons being that there are mountains of falsifying evidence against it). But if the philosopher can present a well reasoned theory that stands as an alternative to the mainstream science of the day, and it fits all the evidence so far accumulated, then apart from considerations of how healthy such a theory is for society, I see no issue with that.
I very much agree, but there are more detailed concerns that get in the way:
Science is the Philosophy of Observational Verification. There are other forms of verification, such as the Philosophy of Logic.
The good philosophers know that verification cannot ever occur without logic. They also know that any logic should be verified as much as possible. Neither should be without the other. But observation cannot always occur, such as the Big Bang Theory. Logic forbids the theory. The BB is actually an oxymoron. But to a scientist, it seems as a possibility. Scientists are not taught thorough logic, merely math … usually applied to prior presumptions.
So if a scientist says that the BB is highly probable, and a philosopher says that the BB is necessarily bogus, who decides?
To a philosopher, such a question should be easy to answer. But neither the philosopher, nor the scientist have the actual authority over what is to be promoted into society and thus to their next generation peers.
So who should have authority over when to listen to a scientist and when to listen to the philosopher?
There are other types of philosophers for that: Philosophy of Sociology and Philosophy of Ethics. But then scientists want that authority too.
If the framework of mind itself is such that how we interact in the world is only as we ever could have interacted, folks react to that in differenty ways. But if the reactions are in turn only as they ever could have been…
Well, how exactly does the mind wrap itself around that?
Nothing would seem to be more fundamental than finally figuring out if mind is just matter interacting…mechanically?
But how would that be accomplished if it is presumed that any efforts to establish it are themselves only as they ever could have been.
And the implication here is that angst itself is situated existentially out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view. The philosopher might note that in reacting to the same unwanted pregnancy different individuals feel more or less angst. But: is there a way to determine the extent to which all rational men and women ought to feel angst? How is that not largely the embodiment of dasein?
Basically, yes. Imagine following someone around who embraces subjectivism as you do. Eventually, he/she becomes entangled in a prong #2 context. It is then that I would probe the extent to which subjectivism might be construed as more or less relevant to the manner in which I react: entangled as I am in my dilemma. My frame of mind here almost always revolves around the question “how ought one to live?” when the choices being made by particular inidviduals come into conflict.
My own interest here would be more in regard to the distinctions that can be made between subjective experiences that are more or less rooted objectively in a particular reality and our reactions to them which may well not be. For example, the experience of drinking a glass of wine overlaps considerably for all of us. As opposed to the experience of, say, being employed to pick the grapes to make the wine. Far fewer of us ever had that experience. But it is in this regard that prong #2 contexts emerge. And that revolves around certain political and economic prejudices regarding the wages being paid and the conditions of employment and all of the contention that swirls around immigration issues.
How then would being or not being a subjectivst come into play here?
Whether we move from the general to the specific or the specific to the general there still seems to be a crucial distinction to be made between probing the reality of abortion as a medical procedure and probing it as a moral quandary. Whether in the abstract or pertaining to an actual real time abortion.
“Consciousness” either makes a smooth transition from one to the other, or mind itself is matter of a whole different sort. That’s what I focus on. The difference between mind as it relates to that which we can all be in agreement about and minds that come into conflict when the parts revolving around either/ore become entangled in the parts revolving around is/ought.
It may be that a language is not available that will allow us to finally close the gap when we have disagreements regarding something as fundamental as the nature of mind itself.
As for the body in war, there are any number of things that medical science can predict/conclude pertaining to particular contexts. Again, where I reconfigure the beam is in the direction of that which is said to constitute a “just war”. Ought America to have invaded Iraq? The trauma inflicted on hundreds of thousands of bodies as a result of that choice is not much in dispute. You either lose your legs to an IED or you don’t.
More or less.
You came into conflict with others before you became a subjectivist.
You come into conflict with others after you became a subjectivist.
So, for all practical purposes, what’s the difference?
Here it would seem to come down to one’s understanding of the word “metaphysics”.
In the dictionary:
Philosophy.
concerned with abstract thought or subjects, as existence, causality, or truth.
concerned with first principles and ultimate grounds, as being, time, or substance.
In other words, with things that some speak of as “ontological” or “teleological”. To wit: understanding conflicting human behaviors in the context of grasping the very nature of Reality or Existence itself.
And given that none of us really grasp this [aside from what I construe to be the intellectual/scholastic quacks like James S. Saint who more or less claim to] we are left to fend for ourselves when in fact our behaviors do come into conflict over value judgments.
Yes, that’s how it works “in reality”. It is what men and women believe to be true that motivates their behaviors. And it is their behaviors that have consequence. And in fact the consequences are real whether what those who precipitated them believe is true or not.
There are many who genuinely believe in Trump’s political agenda. There are many who genuinely believe in Clinton’s. And depending on who is elected there may well be any number of dramatic consequences. But: the consequences that some embrace others will loathe.
And they will do so without a thought being given to the dilemma that impales me.
But pertaining to particular matters there are facts applicable to all of us. And though some [as subjects] may not accept them it doesn’t make the facts go away. And since there are facts there is a greater likelihood of persuading the skeptics of their existence.
With value judgments however there are merely subjective interpretations of what the facts mean vis a vis the choices we make. There do not appear to be choices able to be disclosed as in fact the obligation of all reasonal/virtuous men and women to pursue.
With Christianity [and other such denominations], God can be captured in a world of words. A scripture is concocted and God becomes the embodiment of it. And then there is the part about before and after the grave.
But how do we do the same with “the universe”? The only way that I can grapple with it is to imagine a wholly determined world in sync with the immutable laws of matter.
But then we’re still stuck there with this:
why something and not nothing at all
why this something and not some other something
And does the “the universe” really have anything substantive to say about our moral and political agendas?
For cosmologists there is no equivalent of the 10 Commandments or of Heaven and Hell. There would seem to be just the brute facticity of it all in what may well be an essentially absurd and meaningless existence.
It’s cryptic to me because I am not able [palpably] to grasp it relating to that which is of interest to me philosophically. And what might tempt me to read the book is something in it that persuades me otherwise.
Yes, and then you eat the apple and are “completely exposed” to that. But the apple was poisoned by someone who wanted you dead and you are “completely exposed” to that. The contexts here are virtually infinite. And who gets to say what it means to be “completely exposed” to something in which value judgments do come to collide. Or in probing what it means to have an identity.
How are we “completely exposed” in the voting booth when choosing between Trump and Clinton?
In other words, when do we reach the point where that cannot actually be pinned down with any precision? Where it becomes almost entirely a subjective frame of mind that “here and now” you find applicable to one and only one conscious “I”?
That’s like saying logic is groundless because it can only be as it ever could have been. I mean, it’s true: if you say “All volkors are skybets, this is a volkor, therefore it is a skybet.” then it appears, in the moment of thinking that, that it could not be any other way. That doesn’t mean it’s groundless, it means it’s true. The only thing that determinism entails is the possibility in principle that our reasoning might be the ramblings of madness–I just don’t think that’s how it is in practice.
It’s worse with physical determinism because there you’re not dealing with mental subjective experience, but contingent facts of the world. ← Here you get no reasoning, no justification, for why things are as they are. And so it becomes conceivable that there is no reasoning, that’s it’s all some absurd flux of chaos–though still deterministic (<-- that’s possible).
It is largely embodied in dasein. But since we’re talking about “angst” in particular, there is an additional dimension to this discussion. It is true that some of us feel more angst over prong #2 than others, and it is true that this strongly indicates our embodiment in dasein, but it also strongly indicates a problem–a dilemma you might say–and so while I do enjoy a good philosophical discussion with my peers here at ILP, trying to figure out the puzzle of whether we should feel angst or not, I also see people in angst. My concern over whether or not you (or I) ought to feel angst is eclipsed by an impulse, when I see angst in others, to try (in whatever meager way I can) to suggest to them ways out of their angst.
It depends on the character of the particular prong #2 situation.
Going back to my example of drug use, for instance, let’s say I was caught by the cops on the street corner for smoking marijuana (not that I’d ever do that). The last thing I’d do is try to reason my subjectivism about consciousness and being to them. What I’d actually do would probably be to try to be as polite and conciliatory as possible, maybe researching ways to get off with the least severe conviction legally allowed–IOW, I’d do what most everybody else would probably do.
On the other hand, if I were in a conflict with an anti-drug group over the internet, I might bring my subjectivism into use. But here’s the catch–and this is something I’ve been trying to convey but without much success–it wouldn’t be just by the traditional objectivist approach (remember that terms means: simply asserting your reasons for believing in your “ism” in the hopes of convincing the other ← There’s a definition for you). It would be this: my subjectivism has taught me to be far more mindful of other people’s mental states than it has the “objective truth” as my “ism” would have it. It focuses me on other people’s psychology. With that in the background of my subjectivist point of view, I more readily attempt to apply the principles of psychology to deal with others in prong #2 contexts. ← Note that this is different from simply explaining my subjectivism to others in a prong #2 context. I offered the approach of “reverse psychology” earlier as an example (although that’s kind of a mickey mouse example in my opinion). Reverse psychology can work as an approach to dealing with people in a prong #2 context, but it obviously is not the “traditional objectivist approach” because it is certainly not just an attempt to explain what you actually believe in the hopes of convincing the other.
I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for–I’m guessing it seems too “manipulative” and you’d prefer an approach that involves just “being honest” with others about what you think–even if that means risking disagreement–but an approach that leaves others powerless to contest with your impeccable reasoning. ← Is that what you’re looking for?
It wouldn’t be easy–that’s for sure–but as a subjectivist, my approach would be to, at first, try to keep the peace as much as possible, and for however long I can do that, try to gain experiences (which might just be limited to understanding different points of view) that help me form a rapport with the other person. This might result in me submitting to the other person’s point of view (but at least I would be somewhat, kind of, in agreement with them at that point) but it can also supply me with plenty of cognitive/mental material with which to try to persuade (in an amicable, diplomatic manner) the other towards my point of view, or at least a peaceful settlement. The point is: with more understanding of how the world looks from the other person’s perspective, the more easily one can deal with that person.
Would it be fair to paraphrase this as the question of monism vs. dualism?
I know. That’s my point. What happens to the body is not affected (so we would think) by that body’s “ism” (the person’s residing in it). You have to understand that when you ask me how my subjectivism pans out in a prong #2 situation, this sounds exactly the same to me: if I were in a situation where an angry mob of anti-drug protesters decided to gang up on me and threaten my life, I would just run and hide. And I don’t think it matters what “ism” is in question here. You could talk about an angry mob of anti-abortionists ganging up on an abortion rights activist, or an angry mob of marxists ganging up on a capitalist, or an angry mob of atheists ganging up on a theists–probably, the reactions would be the same: run and hide–just like the reaction of the body to bullets would be the same regardless of the “ism” held by that body.
Well, let’s be clear at the start that the difference wouldn’t be seen in the midst of the conflict. If I felt significantly threatened, I think I would just run and hide.
But let’s say after the mob went home and I came out of my hiding place, I went home and contemplated what just happened to me. Let’s say I think about it in term of my theory of consciousness.
I would say this: I have certain ideas about my rights to drug use (again, really, just alternate mental states, but whatever). The mob of anti-drug advocates also have ideas about my rights to drug use–they differ–I feel one has the right to alter one’s consciousness for the sake of mental exploration, they do not. Now in the thick of conflict, what’s happening, in terms of my theory of consciousness, is that their thoughts about drug use, along with their attitudes, feelings, past experience, etc., is culminating in the entailment of extraneous non-human experiences corresponding to the actions of the body–some of which manifest as speech, some of which manifest as bodily action (some of those might involve violence and even killing)–these “offenses” (let’s just call them that) are material/sensory representations of those extraneous experiences that I mentioned are entailed buy their thoughts, attitudes, feelings, past experiences, etc… In other words, their bodies–whatever it is they do as a means to conflict with me (verbally, physically, whatever their bodies do) can be mapped onto subjective, qualitative, first-person experience just as much as their brain activity can. But I call the former “non-human” because it corresponds to bodily movements, not brain movements, and so even though I believe some kind of subjective experience is still being had by their bodies, it is not had by their brains specifically–what this means, in the end, is that it is experienced unconsciously (the difference between conscious experience and unconscious experience is a whole other can of worms in my philosophy–maybe we’ll get to it later–suffice it to say, only specific parts of our brains have conscious subjective experiences).
In any case, those physical bodily actions give way to other physical effects–violence, say with the body’s finger pulling triggers on guns, give way to bullets being fired and wounding other bodies–words, as another example, result is sound waves being emitted through the air and being detected by the ears of other bodies; all this physical activity continues to correspond to some kind of subjective experience–at this point, however, the quality of that experience is anything but human–we are not talking about brain activity anymore, but non-human physical events–but my theory says that there continues to be subjective experience nonetheless–it’s just that the quality of that experience is unimaginable to us because our brains don’t have the capacity to mimic the experience.
But in the end, those physical actions do end up impact our brains. Being shot by a bullet hurts–hearing offensive words from others “hurts” (our feelings). This is because all this physical activity–from the point of ideas in their (the mob’s) head to the point of the physical effects of their actions impacting ideas and feelings in our heads–is one continuous seamless stream of subjective experience. It’s just that at a certain point in the process (when their ideas lead to actions), these subjective experiences cease to be conscious (and imaginable), and when they become conscious and imaginable again (in virtue of impacting another’s brain), they are conscious and imaginable to a different mind.
^ That’s how I would explain the dynamics that go on in prong #2 contexts in terms of my theory of consciousness–I know it’s a lot to chew in a few short paragraphs, but again I stress, I wrote a whole book on this so as to expand all that in palatable bites.
And I still don’t think this really helps you. Though you are asking for how others would interpret the nature and dynamics of prong #2 conflicts in terms of their “ism”, I think you are expecting that some may be useful to you and some may not be. I’m afraid mine probably is not helpful.
So you mean that metaphysics has (so far) not helped us to resolve the issues of prong #2?
But do you consider yourself to be a metaphysicist? At least of morality? Objectivity? Nihilism?
Well, it impales everyone, of course, but you seem to be one of the few who understand what’s impaling them. Many, today on Nov. 11, 2016, will feel that Trump impales them (figuratively speaking), but you at least know that this is just a specific instance of the more general instrument of impalement, which we are calling in this thread “prong #2” (and for some, extending as far as prong #1).
right, which is why with subjective interpretations, we can do whatever the hell we want with them.
Yes, I’m very careful in my identification of universal consciousness (as we can call it) with God–it’s definitely not the Abrahamic God, which brings with it a whole mythology of 10 Commandments and Heaven and Hell. It’s the universe as atheists and scientist depict it–except with conscious/subjective experience.
I will contest, however, the interpretation of it all being a meaningless existence. Conscious/subjective experience, as far as I’m concerned, is rooted in meaning–it may be absurd meaning, conflicting meaning, incomprehensible meaning, but there is meaning in everything nonetheless (as far as I’m concerned).
(It’s funny, I recall a conversation with Arcturus Descending in which I tried to point out how indistinguishable a meaningless universe would be from a universe chock full of meaning that was incomprehensible.)
And that’s fine. I’m just saying the options there for you if you want (and I’ll still give it to you for free of you want). And if you’re not interested, and I’m not able to persuade you, we might consider moving onto something else.
Well, that might sometimes happen. Someone who suffers from delusions or hallucinations (someone like Random Factor) might be forced into the position of coming to grips with the fact that he is the only one who sees the world as he does, but given the fact that his delusions or hallucinations are persistent, he would have no choice, short of forcing upon himself with extraordinary mental effort an extreme skepticism towards his own visceral experiences, but to arrive at a point of view according to which he is the only one who sees these things.
As a relativist, this is an option to me. It’s not one I’d prefer to take, but you could do it.
I think the key in these scenarios is to drop the (objectivist) assumption that reality has to be a constant–it is a changing, and sometimes paradoxical, flux. And as far as human consciousness is concerned–being evolved to perceive a single constant reality–it has no choice but to undergo reality transitions when it experiences this paradoxical flux. We are not built to process reality as a paradoxical contradictory flux, and so we must, on occasion, go through changes in our perceptions and beliefs, our values and our outlooks on life–I call these “reality transitions” but we don’t experience them as reality transitions–we just call them “changing our minds”.
From my frame of mind it is the fundamental question for all philosophers, scientists and theologians: do we have any capacity to freely choose what we think and feel and do?
If all that they do [that we do] is only as it ever could have been, what on earth can that possibly mean?
For example: for all practical purposes.
So, you tell me: were you fated by the immutable laws of matter to think this, to post this here — or is there an aspect of human consciouness able to tweak these laws and to allow for some measure [however that might be understood] of “autonomy”?
Okay, there are the signifiers – words, signs – and there are the things so signified. But if this relationship is autonomic how is that really any different [metaphysically or otherwise] from the mechanical relationship between the components of, say, an automobile engine?
We don’t command the heart to beat or the liver to function. Is the brain itself just one more organ in that regard?
And how would we determine this independently – independently of – the laws of matter?
I’ll be the first to admit though that the manner in which I think about this might be flawed. But then what does it really mean to articulate flawed thinking in a world that is wholly determined? What [realistically] does it mean to speak of something as inevitably flawed?
Me, I can’t [realistically] even imagine how a human mind can possibly wrap itself around this. Why? Because it is the mind that is trying to discover the nature of itself.
Yes, this makes sense to me. Well, to the extent that I understand what you mean. There is angst as a philosophical problem and there is the actual existential angst embodied in someone that you care about. Sure, for all practical purposes, you do what you can. But [for me] the part about dasein and conflicting goods [embedded in my dilemma] is no less debilitating if, for example, the angst my friend is feeling revolves around a particular existential context like an unwanted pregnancy.
The irony here being that it was my experience with Mary and John that triggered the angst that I feel now with regard to dasein and conflicting value judgments. Always [for me] it goes back to prong #2.
In other words…
But [for me] how the character of any particular context is construed is embodied in a subjective point of view embedded in dasein and conflicting goods. At least in situations where the manner in which two individuals characterize it come into conflict.
But what is of interest to me is exploring why, if it is the last thing that you would do, why/how it has any substantial/substantive relevance at all. And what of those who argue that smoking marijuana is something that should not be illegal in the first place. That’s the part where almost all of the conversations revolve. And that’s the part where the components of my own philosophy [moral nihilism, ironism] pertain.
Or so it seems to me.
I really do appreciate your attempts to communicate this to me. But try as I might I am still unable to grasp how this might be applicable to the parts of philosophy that most interest me. Though, admittedly, that may be more reflective of my own failure to comprehend what you have in fact succeeded in communicating to others. I am always intrigued more by the relationship/gap between that which we either can or cannot be honest about. Between the more or less rock-solid objective world of either/or and the far more subjective, interpersonal speculations that [to me] are built right into the world of is/ought.
Yes, the parts that are intertwined in dasein and conflicting goods. And it is the objectivists here – turd and uccisore and fixed cross leap to mind – who basically argue that this is not the case at all. They insist that if you think like they do about right and wrong then you are able to transcend this and discover/invent the most rational and virtuous narrative of all: their own.
But: the closer they come to my own frame of mind the more they recognize it as a threat. So they put me on ignore, or refuse to discuss it or leave the forum altogether in order to avoid it. They simply have too much to lose if my point of view is seen by them to be more reasonable than their own. And I know exactly what this entails because I exhibited the same fierce resistance to nihilism myself when my own objectivist frame of mind was threatened.
Yes, that’s the part in my narrative that revolves around choosing democracy and the rule of law over might makes right and right makes might. The part that revolves around moderation, negotiation and compromise.
But unlike others who embrace this in “the best of all possible worlds” I am still plagued by 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 it is this that others [even the democracy advocates] are unable to grasp in the manner in which I do. It is just too pessimistic – even catastrophic – to think like this about your own value judgments.
Whereas your own frame of mind [here and now] seems more in sync with this:
This to me however revolves around attaining and than sustaining a political consensus. And I recognize it in turn as part and parcel of that “best of all possible worlds.” But [for me] there it is: that gnawing dilemma.
We perceive the world around us in a particular way embedded in a particular historical and cultural context. And from within the parameters of a particular set of personal experiences. How then are the individual variables out in this particular world – thousands upon thousands of them that ever evolve over time and across space – anchored to what any particular philosopher or a scientist or theologian calls “reality”. Trying to untangle deduction from induction would seem to be as problematic [to me] as trying to untangle nature from nurture in exploring and explaining the behaviors that we choose. For me, there are no “smooth transitions” that a particular “consciousness” can make here. There are only existential leaps of faith to one point of view [here and now] rather than another. It’s less a question of “monism” or “dualism” [for me] than of being overwhelmed by any attempts to make distinctions of this sort at all.
And in choosing objectivism as The Answer this allows the objectivists to make all of that go away. It comforts and consoles them psychologically to imagine that there is an answer. And, as luck would have it, it’s their answer!
It’s like the Man In Black character played by Ed Harris in Westworld. He is ever intent at getting to the bottom of this one particular reality. If he can figure out what is really going on there he will finally have solved…
…solved what exactly?
Will he have finally discovered the particular “ism” that motivated Robert Ford to create this world? And suppose he does? How would that not too be embedded in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?
Yes, that makes sense. But I always come back to the extent which it is even possible to achieve a level of consciousness that makes my dilemma go away. For the moral and political objectivist, the whole point here [if largely subconsciously] is to avoid my dilemma at all cost. Subjunctively, they need to believe less that they are right than that right and wrong itself exists. That’s the part where I become particularly threatening.
Unless of course I’m wrong. And though many mock me for tacking that onto particular post of mine, they fail to grasp the extent to which that is in fact part and parcel of the dilemma that “I” am entangled here pertaining to the world of is/ought. The prong #2 world.
Actually, I am utterly perplexed regarding how the conscious human mind can grapple with this at all.
It would seem that the only way to comprehend it is to conclude that we interact in a wholly determined world where even explanations themselves are only as they ever could have been.
Again, that way “metaphysics” would seem to revolve more around 1] why something and not nothing and 2] why this something and not another something instead.
But what on earth does that/can that/will that ever mean?!!
To, for example, mere mortals.
I consider myself to be an infinitesimally tiny speck in an infinitesimally immense universe that may well be but an infinitesimally tiny speck in the multiverse.
In other words, to even ask such questions seems, well, ultimately senseless?
But we are hard-wired to anyway.
My point is that the objectivists here have figured out a way to trick themselves into believing that my dilemma is something that I have tricked myself into believing in order to avoid admitting that their own support for Trump or Clinton reflects the obligation of all rational and virtuous men and women.
On your own thread above we clearly see this objectivist frame of mind in action. And [I speculate] it is precisely the fact that I threaten it that uccisore and his ilk avoid at all cost the sort of discussion the we are having here.
Again, they have so much to lose if they abandon their own particular ideological font. “I” is the last thing they wish to confront.
At best they can argue [as you point out] that not all subjective realities are equal. Yes, “reality transitions” are possible because there is a collection of objective facts that can be attached to any number of conflicting political prejudices.
From my perspective however this becomes the “heart of the matter” only to the extent that “in your head” you have come to believe that it is. But there does not appear to be a way in which you are able to demonstrate that other “consciousnesses” ought to think that way too. For me this is more of what I call an “intellectual contraption” in which the analysis is true only to the extent that tautologically the premises/assumptions are true.
But how to actually show that they are? How does one get past “theory” here?
And it would seem the most important factor here is the extent to which a “universal consciousness” is able to be anchored to an actual teleology rather then to the brute facticity of an essentially absurd and meaningless world.
Again though: Whatever that means.
In other words, what, “for all practical purposes” or “theoretically”, does it mean to speak of “the experience of the universe as a whole”. Other than the way in which any one particular individual fits all the pieces of a “reality” together “in his head”. Similarly pertaining to the speculations that revolve around “the mind of God”.
Again, I see your analysis here as [psychologically] an attempt to come up with something [anything] that acts as a foundation onto which you can anchor “I”.
But I don’t mean this as a criticism. Why? Because in my own way I am doing the same thing. I just come to different conclusions here and now.
Which [as always] takes me back to this:
Then it all comes down to being or not being entangled in my dilemma. And in that respect all I can do is to explore the subjective narratives of those who argue that they are not entangled in it. While at the same time being entangled in a frame of mind that [here and now] cannot even imagine how [in a world sans God as I understand it] one cannot be.
I really don’t understand how one cannot be a moral nihilist. But I also understand that far, far more aren’t than are. So, one of the possibilities of course is that my thinking is flawed.
I don’t argue that human interaction is meaningless, only that there does not appear to be an essential, objective meaning that intertwines 1] before I was born 2] my conscious existence now and 3] after I die into a single teleological truth.
But this would seem to be the case only in a context in which you die and the rest is oblivion. If that is not the case [and this is clearly assumed by millions] then the Whole Truth to you is revealed in “paradise”.
That is why in my view objectivists of uccisore’s ilk are intent on linking the part about before we die to the part about after. They assume that only if one thinks and feels and behaves as they do is there a chance to pass muster on Judgment Day.
Thus for folks of his ilk, Trump’s political agenda is the more “Christian” of the two. And then if you point out that Donald Trump’s actual life could not possibly be further removed from the life of Jesus Christ, he will come up with a rationalization to “prove” that you are wrong.
I don’t know about freedom (that’s a whole other ball of wax and is highly dependent on how you define “freedom”), but I would just point out that even if we live in a deterministic universe, that doesn’t mean our thoughts and our positions on things is inescapably irrational or meaningless (as in, we would think that way anyway, even if it was irrational and meaningless)–in fact, I would argue quite the opposite: that we come to the conclusions we do because of the rationality we see in them–and this is why it could not be any other way.
Though I’m not saying we are infallible logic-chopping robots–just that the physical forces that determine the things our brains do is mirrored, in the subjective experience, by a rationality that really does inhere in our thought processes. ← This isn’t always formal logic per se (as the professional logician would have it) but it is a sense that we are being rational when we think through our thoughts, which is actually there in our thoughts and is the reason why we are drawn to the conclusions we are drawn to.
In other words, the apparent rationality of our thoughts is why our brains are determined to act as they do–it is why things can’t be any other way.
Again, this isn’t really a matter of “freedom” for me, or the lack thereof–I’m not really settled on the matter of whether we are truly free or not, but that doesn’t matter–my theory is certainly compatible with a strictly deterministic picture of reality: so let’s assume full determinism. In that case, yes I was fated by the immutable laws of matter (or mind) to think and post everything I am saying in this thread. But again, that (to me) doesn’t make any of it meaningless or irrational–on the contrary, to me it means that my reasons and my rationalizations and such are the reason why I was lead, immutably, to write these things down on this forum. In other words, the deterministic course of events finds its roots in subjective experience, and when found there, it turns out that the necessity which drives it all is “completely exposed”–you see not only that it is necessary, but why it is necessary (which is what makes it necessary).
Yes, that’s the trap we fall into when we attempt to examine ourselves from the third-person point of view. We attempt to imagine a “self” or a “mind” or a “consciousness” as though it were there before us, ready to be studied, to be examined–scientifically, objectively–but from the first-person point of view, we examine ourselves subjectively–what that means is that we simply note what we’re experiencing, we note what it feels like to be in situation X–for example, what it feels like to taste a pineapple or to listen to a particular song or what it’s like to be threatened by an angry mob. Noting these things to one’s self is a simple task. We simply have the experience and form a thought about how that experience feels–we don’t have to turn around and look at ourselves as if to observe the experience from the third-person point of view–we simply have to have the experience and allow it to take its course (which involved, among other things, allowing it to settle into thoughts, memories, insights, etc.–all things which allow us to “understand” what we’re experiencing).
In that exercise, we amass a wealth of information on what the mind (or consciousness) consists of–what subjective experience consists of–for all subjective experience amounts to is just what things feel like to us–and once we’ve got that, we have everything we need. There is no need to “step outside” the experience and see it from the third-person point of view because, as far as I’m concerned, there isn’t such a thing–subjective experience just exists in a first-person mode of being.
Ironically, the logical conclusion to be drawn from this is: subjective experience doesn’t feel mental at all. When I describe what a car looks like, for example–even though I’m describing my visual sensory experience–the rendition I’m forced to deliver is that of a car in the outer world–featuring properties belonging to the car itself–in other words, when subjective experience is laid bare–completely exposes, as it were–what you get is just the state of reality itself–hence my theory that reality and subjective experience are one and the same (essentially: idealism 101).
So does this mean when you sympathize with others over their angst, like you do with Mary and John, you also question (philosophically) whether, as a rational human being, you ought to sympathize? Perhaps as a way of finding reason to be detached? Detachment, if taken to extremes, might be a way out of the prong #2 dilemma. ← It’s the whole reason Buddhist monks live in monasteries.
I’m not sure I follow. Are saying that the character of the particular prong #2 situation is dependent on how the one entering into it construes that character? Well, sure! Of course! But we’re talking about me, aren’t we? What would I do, as a subjectivist, entering into a particular prong #2 situation? I can just tell you how I construe it. I can even give you some background experiences if you like. And I did give you two example situations: 1) being pulled over by the cops for smoking dope, and 2) getting into a heated discussion with an anti-drug group on the internet. ← My reactions, as a subjectivist, in these two situations would be very different indeed, and only in situation #2might I bring up my theory of consciousness. The fact that how I react in these two situation, and how I construe them coming into them, is rooted in dasein seems, I would think, irrelevant.
But I don’t think everything we believe necessarily serves some substantial purpose towards solving prong #2 dilemmas–at least not directly. Your whole approach will, when people are cooperative, lead you to other people’s beliefs and values (objectivists or otherwise) but you shouldn’t expect that what you find there will be obviously useful towards resolving prong #2 dilemmas. Most of the time, what you’ll find is just the answers to your inquiries–you probe, they deliver; it’s not fair to follow that up with: but how is that relevant to prong #2? They are merely answering your questions.
Hmm… I find it interest how you say that we cannot be honest about the subjective world of is/ought. But in any case, I’m beginning to think that the approach I’m proposing to dealing with prong #2 situations (not solving, but dealing with)–i.e. the alternative to the “traditional objectivist approach”–is not useful to you if you say that it is not “applicable to the parts of philosophy that most interest” you. What I’m trying to propose is an approach (to dealing with prong #2 situations), which is based on a philosophy, but is not philosophy itself (although you could make it into philosophy quite easily, but not necessarily the area of philosophy you’re interested in).
In a manner of speaking, what I’ve been trying to convey is that my own philosophy–subjectivism–has lead me to a certain psychology–a certain mode of conducting myself in life and the world that comes with a slightly different view on human psychology, including myself–and this has evolved into a practice–one that is applicable to prong #2. The problem is–it only starts with philosophy (my subjectivism), but beyond that, to really reap the benefits of it, you have to put it into practice… thus the best approach to tackling prong #2 situations (the one that works for me, at least) is not to be found merely on the level of philosophy.
You might think of it in the same vein as any philosophy might lead to a certain practice–like Pythagoreanism leading to mathematics, or Francis Bacon and Newton leading to science, or St. Augustine leading to Christianity–only mine leads one to practice eximining one’s own mind and applying the principles he learns from that to others.
Yes, I do think they confound the two–the ability to attain ultimate objective truth and that their personal beliefs are the truth.
I’m sure the animosity that typically arises in heated discussions has a lot to do with it as well. Disagreements between points of view often begin because you don’t want to just abandon our own points of view at the drop of a hat for that being proposed by another. We arrive at our points of view as a matter of adaptation (to our environment, to our social network, to our lifestyles, etc.), so when another comes along and attempts to drive it out to make room in our minds for their own, our brains detect this as a threat–like a virus being downloaded onto a computer, even if that virus was a functional program for the computer from which it came. The initial reaction is to disagree, and when the disagreement continuously fails, aggression comes next. ← At this point, however, the threat becomes more the person than the point of view. And when aggression fails, violence and war, and then the threat is more about death and bodily harm–simply ignoring the argument or walking away notwithstanding.
Yes, it isn’t the ideal solution, just the “best” we can come up with (at least, insofar as the goal is to avoid violence and war, as opposed to finding the objective moral truth). Even in the best of all possible worlds, this approach won’t always make everyone happy–for example, when fighting over scarce resources: we can negotiate and decide that we each get half the resources–but those resources are still scarce, and they will eventually run out–which means we are still worse off than we would be in a scenario in which either of us fought the other and won.
You’re right, it’s probably a mix of both for all of us (but I doubt each one of us is exactly midway between the two extremes). Nevertheless, as algorithms, they are like night and day, and with algorithms, it makes no sense to talk about one that is “midway” between two alternatives. They can be both used at the same time, and I believe the brain does this, but they are most likely determined by two different neural sub-systems in the brain; what this means is that, like with any neural sub-system in the brain, one will usually be used or will be more efficient than others. I had the impression earlier in this thread that you relied on getting concrete examples from others in order to understand the main gist of their point of view, which would indicate an inductive way of thinking; I just thought maybe you were more of an inductive thinker than a deductive one (though, like with most people, you probably use a mix of both).
Will have to watch that movie.
Right. It would be nice to be able to say: I know I’m right.
Insofar as we objectify all such metaphysical explanations (i.e. think of it in 3rd person), it will always be rendered, in the final analysis, as contingent, not necessarily. Objectified explanations can easily serve to explain why some phenomenon is necessary, but not without introducing an infinite regress: why is that explanation necessary? It’s like passing on the mystery of a phenomenon that at first appears to be contingent–like why do rocks exist–onto an explanation that at least functions to explain the original phenomenon as necessary but, in turn, needs another explanation to account for it–like the atomic structure of the rock, which would entail the necessity of the rock’s existence along with all its particular properties, itself requiring an explanation: why do atoms exist? Why do sub-atomic particles exist?
This is an essential character of 3rd person accounts, of objectification–objects are contingent, not necessary–so long as phenomena are explained in terms of smaller, more fundamental phenomena (smaller, more fundamental objects), the contingency is only pushed further down the line.
This is why I say that necessity is to be found in subjectivity–it’s the only reason the ancient Greeks discovered the utility of logic in thought–necessity is to be found in mind, not matter–which is why I believe that consciousness is the basis for everything.
Right, and in my books, “objective facts” are simply ideas that tend to pull one in a particular direction, very rarely allowing one to return. For example, if you believe the world is flat, and then someone shows you the objective facts that prove to you the world is round, it’s very hard to go back.
Yes, we all are.
It may not be a matter of flawed thinking so much as not understanding certain other perspectives according to which there can be a morality. It’s like the glass is half-full/half-empty distinction–it’s not like one is right and the other is wrong (in fact they’re both right)–except where the two perspectives are far more complex, therefore meaning that making the switch from one to the other is far more difficult if you’re used to one and have relatively little experience with the other.
Yep, and this is what I contest. I say it is all meaningful (given my beliefs of universal consciousness and principle #3 about meaning)–before, during, and after your short existence on this Earth.
Does he have to? It wouldn’t surprise me, but it is a sign of feeling threatened when, in philosophical debates, one opts to object with one’s contender over things that they don’t need to. For example, I know many Christians who don’t feel it is our place to even try to be more Christ-like. They feel that this is precisely what the ransom was for: as humans, we are imperfect, we faulter, and sin–it is within our nature as finite beings–so while there is a moral obligation on each of our shoulders to try to do some good in this world, it is limited to whatever extent is reasonable for human beings, and the rest can be “compensated” by the ransom–that is, by asking for forgiveness from Christ. But if you challenge certain people on the point that one, or someone they look up to, is not acting very Christ-like, and they feel threatened by this challenge, they will go to such lengths to try and prove that they or the one they look up to is acting Christ-like.
Now, I don’t know if this is Ucci, or any of the other objectivists on this board, but there is certainly the type (I knew one personally in university).
Admittedly, in a determined universe, I have never really been able to wrap my head around “compatibilism”. Assuming of course I am correctly understanding what it means.
I always come back to this: that the manner in which I understand it now is nothing other than the only manner in which I ever could have understood it.
In other words, given the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of determinism.
Same with freedom. In a wholly determined universe, how would the definition/meaning that one gives to it be anything other than the only definition/meaning that one ever could have given to it? I just get “stuck” here all the time.
To speak of “rationality” here seems, well, problematic. It all comes back to the mystery of mind. To mindful matter.
Bottom line: We will all go to the grave thinking one way or another about it. But it does not appear possible to demonstrate that how we think about it now is how all rational men and women are obligated to think about it. And if death does equal oblivion the extent to which any particular human rendition of “reality” equals rationality seems equally moot.
In other words, while some may take a measure of psychological comfort in believing that…
…it does almost nothing to comfort me. And if I do believe that “in my head” “here and now” my reaction is only as it ever could have been, well, for all practical purposes, what does that actually mean?
And that [of course] is before we get to the second prong. In a world of conflicting goods embodied subjectively in dasein, what does it mean to speak of “rationality” here?
From my frame of mind, it all comes down to matter interacting – interacting necessarily – in the only possible manner in which it can interact with other matter given the laws of matter. The matter in the mind and the matter in the engine are just different configurations of matter itself. That’s always the part I can’t get beyond.
Mind is matter able to invent the matter we call an “engine” but that does not make it any less matter in sync with that which matter must be: ever in accordance with it’s own laws.
Therefore: who/what made the matter we call “mind”. And for any possible reason and/or purpose?
You speculate that…
Well, this sounds a lot [to me] like the ghost in the machine. And how on earth would we then translate that into a context in which one mind argues for the “natural right” of the unborn to live while another mind argues for the “political right” of women to kill it?
My visceral reaction: So what? All of this is no less intertwined in the fact that the brain is matter and that matter obeys a set of laws. The mystery then shifts to the origin of these laws. God, for example?
And why this set of laws and not another? Or, given the gap between what science knows now and all that would need to be known – re QM, dark matter, dark energy, time and space, before the Big Bang etc – how close are any of us “here and now” to grasping all this?
It means that I can well imagine others grasping the same situation and reacting very differently. The objectivists on the other hand will try to tell you that there are reactions here that are more or less reasonable, more or less virtuous. And yet [of course] this is all measured using their own definitions and meanings. Their own “analysis”. Their own assumptions and premises.
I am “detached” only in the sense that I am not able to confidantly attach my sympathies here. I recognize the extent to which my reaction is largely an existential contraption. And it is this reaction itself that so disturbs the objectivists. It begins to dawn on them that this might well be applicable to them too.
And then, as with me, their own “I” here begins to crumble.
Then we clearly have a “failure to communicate”. There are the objective facts that can be ascertained regarding both contexts. And then there are the subjective/subjunctive reactions to the facts that precipitate conflicting moral/political agendas. Which precipitate behaviors that in turn come into conflict that precipitate actual consequences.
If philosophers were able to concoct an “analysis/argument” enabling both parties to concur on the optimal reaction, one party may still react to the contrary, but at least it could be demonstrated/shown that this reaction was [from the perspective of rational human beings] the wrong one. Or at least not the optimal one.
My point though is still the same here:
Whether you do agree with them or not is [from my point of view] no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein. Both sides make reasonable arguments: conflicting goods rooted in a conflicting set of premises.
And there does not appear to be an argument available that would enable us to grasp the “right answer”. And the extent to which you [and others] don’t think like this is the extent to which, unlike me, you [and others] are not 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.
Well, that’s my point: suggesting the things philosophers think that may well be [for all practical purposes] impotent regarding the world of conflicting value judgments.
My reaction here is always the same though: to what extent are the answers that you give able to be demonstrated as applicable to all rational men and women; or, instead, reflect only that which you claim to know or claim believe “in your head”.
That’s not really what I am arguing. Objectivists on both sides of the abortion wars are being honest when they argue for their own political prejudice. But they refuse to accept that their narrative/agenda is just a subjective/subjunctive prejudice rooted in dasein and conflicting goods. So my point revolves around the extent to which philosophers are able to establish where the truth lies. That way one side can still honestly argue for their own narrative but we are able to demonstrate that their honesty comes to naught in that it is not in sync with what is rational.
On the contrary, that’s all it is to me: useful. It seems to reflect the necessity to establish a political concensus in any given community. But many who do embrace democracy as the best of all possible worlds still believe that in “moderating their views and in negotiating and compromising” with those on the other side, they are still on the side of God or on the side of Reason or on the side of Nature.
Here and now, however, that is not an option for me. Your “I” still seems considerably less fractured and fragmented than my “I” here.
The “I” in other words that the objectivists are most disturbed by.
Classic objectivism. Both react to the Trump victory as they do because each is convinced that Trump comes closest to embodying their own political prejudices.
Only they are not seen as prejudices at all are they? Their own moral and political [and religious] values are construed instead as reflective of the whole, objective truth. Trump won because in a rational world he ought to have won.
But neither one of them will discuss this with me. Turd has me on ignore, and every time I broach my own narrative with Uccisore he merely scoffs and immediately falls back on defending his own ideological/objectivist agenda.
Again, both simply have too much to lose to go about this discussion as you and I are.
Here though I interpret human interaction as revolving by and large around the arguments that folks like Marx and Engels made. Or as Bob Dylan once suggested:
Democracy don’t rule the world/You better get that through your head/This world is ruled by violence/But I guess that’s better left unsaid
That’s the part where political economy comes into play. And that’s the part that political idealists avoid like the plague. Why? Because that’s the part about as far removed from “up in the clouds” as it gets. Well, not counting those academic Marxists who insist on taking it all back up there anyway.
We don’t really know what [ultimately] the human brain is wired to figure out. We know only that it is clearly wired to connect the dots between “in my head” and “out in the world”. And [to me] the objectivist mind here is rooted more in the mystery embedded in our subjunctive reactions to the world around us. And how, in turn, that is intertwined in those parts of the brain that are considerably more “primitive”.
In other words, the part where philosophy gives way to human psychology gives way to the naked ape gives way to the very first instances of “mindful matter”.
When it comes down to the deepest mysteries embedded in Existence Itself, how could we ever really know where contingency ends and necessity begins? Think about it: The human mind down to rocks down to atoms down to quantum interactions down to…God?
Or down to whatever brought into existence Existence Itself?!
Sure, it’s fascinating to speculate about this. But [I suspect] no less futile.
All I ask of folks here like Kropotkin and Uccisore is that they probe the extent to which the components of my own argument may well be relevant to them. But they won’t go there. Though I have my own suspicions as to why.
Which just takes me back to that crucial, fundamental distinction I make between the world of either/or [the Earth is either round or flat] and the world of is/ought [how should Earthlings live their lives socially, politically, economically].
With the latter, however, what arguments/evidence can be accumulated such that one side or the other finds it “very hard to go back”?
In any event, all I can do is to explore “frames of mind” that think about these relationships – these existential relationships – differently than I do. And they will either nudge me in a different direction or they won’t.
And, as I often point out to folks like Phyllo, “for all practical purposes” they have me pinned to the mat. Why? Well, not only are they able to talk/think themselves into believing that they have chosen the right behaviors on this side of the grave, but, for some, they are able to connect the dots between virtue on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side of it.
[b][u]None[/b][/u] of that is within [b][u]my[/b][/u] reach. At least not “here and now”.
And yet from my perspective this is but one more example of a particular man able to “talk/think himself into believing” something that “in his head” comforts and consoles him. I just don’t see any actual substantive evidence that this is “in fact” true.
You “do believe in a sort of ‘afterlife’”. But, well, what exactly does that mean? It doesn’t seem to convey anything that I am really able to sink my teeth into.
For all practical purposes in other words.
That you are able to believe it though seems to be the point. Or, rather, that’s my point. But this is not a criticism. It is in fact an open admission that while you are able to believe it, I am not. Me, I’m still tangled up in my dilemma and staring down into the abyss that is oblivion.