Clearly, there are any number of things that, over the centuries, we have managed successfully to communicate to each other.
I mean, just look around. Are there not countless interactions [relationships] that we have demonstrated to be true for all of us? Obviously. After all, how on earth would we have managed to create the many, many extraordinary facets of our collective civilizations if there was not a common overlapping empirical reality “out in the world” able to be grasped objectively “in our heads”
By, among others, mathematicians and scientists.
The world of either/or.
But what of the world of is/ought? How many questions here are there without answers? Objective answers applicable to all.
And what of the questions that probe the very Reality of Existence itself. The very Existence of Reality itself. Questions like these: youtu.be/lnIlHQLAiTA
Bare facts are, of course, everywhere. But what are the bare facts when our behaviors come to clash over conflicted value judgments? How are answers derived here without taking into account the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?
That’s the question I always probe here: How ought one to live?
In other words, we take out of ILP that which we first put into it: “I”. But ILP as it existed when this thread was created is [in my opinion] a very different place. And not for the better.
We can probably take more out of it than we ourselves actually put into it at times.
As for your last statement, I can agree with you. I can see your point. I’ve been here since 2008 I think.
Things don’t ever stay the same, do they?
Hmmm…I’ve never quite understood that saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. Is that true?
Yes, another question that precipitates conflicting answers. But, from my perspective, “I” is everywhere here. There are fundamental components of human interaction [rooted in nature] that more or less stay the same. But: What exactly are they?
Well, aside from the obvious: the need to subsist, to sustain one’s existence itself. The part that swirls around our biological imperatives: food, water, clothing, shelter, reproduction, defense.
On the other hand, I don’t pretend that is anything other than a subjunctive prejudice on my part. Rooted in dasein. Rooted in conflicting goods.
Anything other then? Are you minimizing your feelings? Don’t we have a right to be disappointed in the way things have worked out?
I’m situating my emotional reactions here in “I”, in dasein. We come into the world biologically hard wired able to be disappointed in the way particular things have worked out. But what of those who are not disappointed at all? What of those who embrace the changes here? What of those who helped to bring them about?
Is there a way then to calculate how much one ought to be disappointed by any particular change? Is there a way to calculate whether one ought to be disappointed by a particular change?
“I” don’t think so. But suppose there is? All I can do then is to come into venues like this and probe the arguments of those who have in fact come to a different conclusion.
I became a member by and large in order to discuss the philosophical implications embedded existentially in the relationship between identity, value judgments and political economy: How ought one to live?
Do you see the question: “How ought one to live” as one of those questions without answers?
Yep. And it’s right up there near the top. But there is a clear distinction to be made here between ought as it relates to behaviors that one needs to choose in order to accomplish some task, and ought as it relates to an examination of the task itself as either “good” or “bad”, “rational” or “irrational”, “moral” or “immoral”.
But I joined only because Postmodern Beatnik “banned me for life” from Philosophy Forums. And at one point [with folks like moreno, von rivers, faust etc.] there were plenty of rather sophisticated exchanges here. And I still engage in much the same sort of thing with folks like gib.
I don’t know what Postmodern Beatnik is. But why were you banned for life? Kind of drastic, I think.
This guy:
forums.philosophyforums.com/memb … 12267.html
I was called a “troll” by him there for posting the same sort of stuff that I do here.
I suspect however that any number of folks there were becoming increasingly more perturbed by the same sort of thing that any number of “serious philosophers” here are perturbed by: my insistence that, with respect to the question “how ought one to live”, philosophy be brought “down to earth”.
After all, talking about philosophy “all the time” is a far, far, far cry from the Kids pumping up the volume here and now.
What do you mean by “pumping up the volume” - some of the absurd threads and posts?
You come into ILP and note that 90% of the new posts are from the same poster. And almost all of them are basically retorts, bullshitting, personal attacks and/or spam.
Unless of course I’m wrong. This is, after all, a subjective reaction.
Did the greatest philosophers talk philosophy all of the time?
No, but when they did choose to engage in a task or in an activity that revolved around the subject of philosophy, I would imagine that is mostly what they did.
And choosing to come into a venue called “I Love Philosophy” strikes me as qualifying in that same sense.
Or, sure, maybe they left because the manner in which I critique “serious philosophy” myself was rubbing them the wrong way.
So what are you saying here? That you are solely responsible for this exodus? lol
I can only note my own experiences in places like this over the years. Some folks think about philosophy in a way that brings them closer to the manner in which Will Durant described “the epistemologists”.
And the more effective I am in my attempts to bring discussions relating to identity, value judgments and political economy down out of the scholastic clouds, the more some will head in the other direction.
In fact I can recall my own reaction to the folks that accomplished the same thing with me. You never look at philosophy in quite the same way again.
And we are almost certainly going to the grave utterly oblivious to the “ontological” and “teleological” nature of “existence” and “human reality”.
It may seem like a stupid question but does there only have to be a one-size-fits-all insofar as each individual’s life and purpose goes?
The point though [mine] is that we will go to the grave never really knowing one way or the other. Or we can go to the grave thinking that what we do know “in our head” here and now is in fact what is true.
Aren’t we biting off more than we can chew when we put this into such a panoramic landscape as opposed to an individual’s little existential journey and the personal and meaningful questions which crop up through that person’s human experience?
Can we find some answers within the inter-connectedness of others with similar psychic experiences and those which are dissimilar?
I suppose that questions of this sort are going to revolve by and large around just how close we are “here and now” to the abyss. We can probe the answer more “philosophically” when death still appears to be “down the road”. The closer we are to oblivion, however, the more preoccupied we become with the fact of it.
And, in particular, when we are atheists.
I certainly do agree that…
We may not find all the answers but I kind of think that diving into this human experience is all that we can do.
But: first and foremost that has to actually be an option. And each of us as individuals are going to be embedded in a particular context [set of circumstances] in which existentially we will be more or less optimistic about it from day to day to day.
How can you hold anyone responsible for what they think and feel and say and do if what they think and feel and say and do is only ever as they could have thought and felt and said and done?
According to law, isn’t this premise something which would first have to proven?
But isn’t that the paradox and/or the conundrum? If everything that we think and feel and do is only as it every could have been, wouldn’t any attempt to prove that this is true merely be subsumed as well in the immutable laws of matter unfolding only as matter can unfold.
I will be the first to admit however that I am not thinking this all through correctly. But those who claim that they are will have to convince me of this. And how exactly would they go about doing that if this too is subsumed in whatever reality/existence can only have ever been?
…what if we decided to change your perspective and to see something else as being possible? Not so much of a pre-determined world but one in which the folds of that universe become more open and all-embracing of something New?
Again, I am not really able to connect the dots here between these particular worlds and the world that I live in. Or, rather, the world that I think I live in.
How – empirically, phenomenally – could this be demonstrated?