Making iambiguous's day

Then we are back to the “God” conundrum. Is God the main force behind everything or did we invent God in order to have something to call the main force behind everything?

But what on earth can the difference really be here if whatever does unfold unfolds only as it ever could have unfolded. “We” invent “God” and both are along for the ride.

Again: Whatever that means. And then [for me] we are back to noting the distinction between what we think it means “in our head” and that which we are able to demonstrate that all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

Only [somehow] the obligation has to be rooted in autonomy.

When you note that…

…I always come back to that. Yes, here and now, this is what you believe in your head. But you are either able to demonstrate to others why they should believe it of themselves too or you are not.

And that comes down [for me] to the extent to which you can take those words out of your head and connect them empirically, phenomenally to the world that we live and interact in. Could Descartes have been successful here? Or are these speculations [from both sides] ever based on assumptions that mere mortals have no capacity to reconcile and resolve?

After all, why not, “I think as I only ever could have thought, therefore I am only as I ever could have been”?

Yes, but are we not then back to speculating about the extent to which the refocusing itself is autonomous? You see what you must see. The infinite regress then going all the way back to whatever or whoever set into motion the immutable laws of matter. If in fact they are immutable. If in fact they have not always been around. But how then do we wrap our heads around that?

To wit:

[b]time

For a period of two to three years between the ages of nine and twelve I was in thrall to puzzlement about time. I would lie awake in bed at night in the dark thinking something along the following lines. I know there was a day before yesterday, and a day before that and a day before that and so on…Before everyday there must have been a day before. So it must be possible to go back like that for ever and ever and ever…Yet is it? The idea of going back for ever and ever was something I could not get hold of: it seemed impossible. So perhaps, after all, there must have been a beginning somewhere. But if there was a beginning, what had been going on before that? Well, obviously, nothing—nothing at all—otherwise it could not be the beginning. But if there was nothing, how could anything have got started? What could it have come from? Time wouldn’t just pop into existence—bingo!–out of nothing, and start going, all by itself. Nothing is nothing, not anything. So the idea of a beginning was unimaginable, which somehow made it seem impossible too. The upshot was that it seemed to be impossible for time to have had a beginning and impossible not for it to have had a beginning.

I must be missing something here, I came to think. There are only these two alternatives so one of them must be right. They can’t both be impossible. So I would switch my concentration from one to the other, and then when it had exhausted itself, back again, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong; but I never discovered.

space

I realized a similar problem existed with regard to space. I remember myself as a London evacuee in Market Harborough—I must have been ten or eleven at the time—lying on my back in the grass in a park and trying to penetrate a cloudless blue sky with my eyes and thinking something like this: "If I went straight up into the sky, and kept on going in a straight line, why wouldn’t I be able to just keep on going for ever and ever and ever? But that’s impossible. Why isn’t it possible? Surely, eventually, I’d have to come to some sort of end. But why? If I bumped up against something eventually, wouldn’t that have to be something in space? And if it was in space wouldn’t there have to be something on the other side of it if only more space? On the other hand, if there was no limit, endless space couldn’t just be, anymore than endless time could.

Bryan Magee, Confessions Of A Philosopher
[/b]

But in regard to “the same basic thing” we are still “stuck” [so far] in understanding 1] how matter evolved into a mind able to conclude that eating meat is wrong and 2] whether or not in fact eating meat is wrong.

With the latter [prong 2], dasein, conflicting goods and political economy seem to be the most reasonable components of any assessment. At least to me. I just don’t know if I have come to that conclusion autonomously. And, more to the point, I don’t see how I can go about determining it.

Logic may be to the words that we choose what arithmetic is to the laws of nature. Some words correspond literally to the world around us and other words are merely subjective/subjunctive reactions to that which we perceive “out in the world” to be. Or that may just be an illusion in that what we “feel” is also only that which we could ever have felt.

But: Do we or don’t we have a way to prove any of this? It’s just that the neuroscientists seem to be on more solid ground than the philosophers. Not that they could ever have not been?

And then back again to this:

Perhaps others reading this thread might then be more inclined to probe the prong that most fascinates me.

We simply think about these things differently. If the hope that I feel is inherently embedded in a mind that could only have evolved to feel that hope, it all just becomes “mechanistic” to me. We are machines no less than the machines that we invent. We have just evolved the capacity to delude ourselves that that we choose to think and feel and do is of our own free will.

Worse [perhaps] we have no capacity to actually resolve this other than in how “nature” has pre-wired us to resolve it.

We don’t even really know what that might possibly mean. Teleologically for example.

Thus:

An act of introspection that they could only ever have had.

Still, from my perspective, one way or the other here is but one more rendition of “six of one, half a dozen of the other”. Conventional or unconventional wisdom is but the illusion of wisdom in that things could only have been as they turned out to be. We may as well call the immutable laws of nature themselves “wise”. To speak of someone being wise suggests the idea that they might have chosen or done something that was not wise. Instead, they were able to make the distinction autonomously and thus earned the accolade.

How then is mind not matter? In fact, in speculating about this, it allows some to take/make that leap to God. But, in my view, only “in their head”. They “think up” certain intellectual assumptions that “theoretically” lead to God.

But it can never really be taken wholly out of their head and communicated to others empirically, phenomenally. Other than by insisting that the world we experience around us is a necessary manifestation of God.

It might come to that. It depends on the extent to which it may or may not seem possible [from your end or mine] to bridge the gaps. With speculations regarding prong 1, I am in way over my head. I am not well educated [of late] regarding many of the technical points that you raise. The sort of stuff that revolves epistemologically around the “philosophy of mind”. Instead, I am far, far more intrigued by the extent to which those who are proficient in making intelligent inferences here are able to bring their conclusions out into the world of conflicting goods.

So, sure, maybe we have taken this particular excahnge as far as we can go. Here and now.

On the other hand, perhaps it is really not for “you” or “I” to say. Autonomously as it were.

Here is what it still revolves around for me:

The divide here is [to me] of fundamental importance:

The objectivists among us are arguing that the distinction between “one of us” and “one of them” can be rooted in one or another rendition of “right makes might”. But: if I succeed in yanking that out from under them they are left only with “might makes right” or “democracy and the rule of law”. And they tend to be averse to that precisely because in my view their “objectivist mentality” is rooted far more in this particular psychological contraption:

[b]
1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.[/b]

And, thus, if this is the case, both philosophical realism and political idealism more or less collapse. Yet it is here that they have come [existentially] to embed “I”. So, they have everything to lose here if my own frame of mind is deemed more reasonable. And I know this in part because I lost my own objectivist frame of mind to dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

In other words, you still have a morality. So your own sense of identity here would seem no less threatened if my dilemma above is deemed a rational [even an optimal] perspective. Somehow you are able to connect the dots between “I” and an understaning of reality that allows you to avoid [or to at least minimize] the angst embedded in my dilemma. I just don’t understand how that “works” “in your head” when your own values come into conflict with others. Despite your attempts to explain it. But, again, that may well be rooted more in my own failure than yours.

But, when you note, “I might just use a bit of common sense or conventional assumptions and values shared by most people”, these are no less existential contraptions to me. They are situated out in a particular world [historically, culturally, experientially] and, sans God, are ever the subjective/subjunctive contraptions of mere mortals.

But I am still as perplexed as ever regarding that leap from a mind that revolves almost entirely around biological imperatives [the octopus and the shark] to a mind able to invent what we call “camouflage” in order to facilitate a successful outcome in, for example, what we call “war”. We can even camouflage our intentions in our day to day interactions with others by adopting personas or by wearing masks or by playing language games. After all, what do all other creatures on earth know of “irony”?

But: how are these transactions governed [more or less] by the components of my own [presumably autonomous] understanding of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy? What can we know here? And how is what we can know able to effectively arbitrate when our values come into conflict?

True, but at the same time others are following this exchange. And that which I am unable to communicate to you [or you to me] “here and now” might resonate more intelligibly to/for them. Perhaps there is a frame of mind [or will be] able to more effectively bridge the gaps between us.

Angst itself is always situated out in a particular world. And it is experienced by a particular mind embedded in a particular set of circumstances. Two sets in particular:

1] the extent to which “here and now” you are ensconced in a set of circumstances in which your values are being challenged by another. Especially when the stakes are high.
2] how close you are to the abyss – to death, to oblivion, to nothingness. To exploring the relationships that I probe here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=186929

Unfortunately, I see these as little more than existential contraptions as well. The accumlation of experiences that we have, experiences that come to manifest themselves as, say, “intuition”, are no less triggered by “I”. We can take a leap, sure, but this is no less as subjective/subjunctive as a leap to God.

Or so it seems to me.

But no less problematic, no less entangled in my dilemma.

This is basically the crux of our exchange. I don’t really know what you do mean when you make this distinction. Human reality revolves, first and foremeost, around subsistence, around reproduction, around defense. And that revolves around making choices. Now, these choices are made by minds able to choose. And to choose in a way that, if one presumes some level of autonomy, are very, very different from the choices made by every other living creature on earth. Why? Because the choices that we make seem to transcend mere biological imperavtives. We think not only of the way the world is but how it might also be otherwise. And that is right around the corner from how it ought to be otherwise. And somethow prong #1 and prong # 2 are intertwined here.

But how?

First, of course, there is the question of whether how one explains their beliefs and values is only ever as they could could have explained them. In that case [it would seem] the distinction between prong #1 and prong #2 is necessarily subsumed in this. In other words, from my frame of mind, it is a distinction without a difference. Unless there is in fact a frame of mind – God – able to make one.

But it would seem that the bottom line for all of us is that in whatever manner we come to encompass mind “theoretically”, the moment we choose to interact with others our minds are going to encounter other minds that reject particular thoughts and feelings and behaviors that we choose.

Then what?

Then the maner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy seems entirely relevant. But how is that related to the ontological nature of my “mind” itself?

You note:

And, as ever, I come back to this: What “on earth” does that mean? The super-ego as I understand it is above all else an existential fabrication/contraption rooted in dasein rooted out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially. From the cradle to the grave.

Far, far, far more than the ego and the id.

I’m not sure I understand this argument. It sounds like you’re saying that we’re either completely free or we have no causal efficacy in the universe whatsoever. But that’s like saying a piston in a car engine isn’t contributing anything to making the car run because it is bound by the laws of physics. True, it has no free will, but it’s still a participant in the overall activity of the car engine, it is one of the forces causing the car to run.

You will only ever be able to ask these questions when you’re not in the midst of having the experience (seeing the reality of things, thinking the truth of axiomatic proposition, experiencing the badness of pain, etc.). When you pull away from the experience and focus rather on the concept of the experience, you will be able to contemplate all kinds of possibilities that the experience itself rules out. The experience itself is its own verification. It’s like wondering if pain really is undesirable or we’re just made to think so because we could not have not thought so. When you actually feel pain, you see that it’s undesirable. When you actually visualize two objects and two other objects, you see that there are four objects all together. How can you visualize two objects and two more objects and at the same time be visualizing five objects? But you can certainly pull away from that visualization and contemplate the abstract notion that maybe 2 + 2 = 5 and we’re just determined to think it’s really 4. If you stay in that abstract state of contemplation, you’ll never get the verification you so strongly desire.

Yes, I realize my answer doesn’t help you here. But this is one of those case where it was just the answer to your question.

Thank God for that.

Yes, by laws of mind (ex. I feel like introspecting).

You realize “conventional wisdom” is just an expression.

By now it should be clear I don’t require the will to be free for my ideas to hold.

Why should it be? Obviously, the correlation between mind and matter means that certain instances of one are instances of the other, but there is also a matter of scope here. The materialist, in believing that mind reduces to matter, would say that mind is an instance of matter, but matter exhausts a greater scope in the sense that some instances of matter are not mind. As I would have it, the correlation is the reverse of this: I believe that matter reduces to mind, and therefore I would say that matter is an instance of mind (sensation in particular) but mind exhausts a greater scope in the sense that some instances of mind are not instance of matter (abstraction, for example).

There is also the sense in which all instances of mind can be represented as matter, but I would not confuse the representation for that which is represented. For instance, even though I said above that abstraction is an instance of mind that isn’t an instance of matter, abstraction can still be represented as matter–it only needs to be translated into sensory form (in particular, a sensory experience of certain brain activity, the kind neuroscientists will tell you corresponds to abstract thinking). But at the end of the day, brain activity is a sensory experience, not abstract thought.

In my case, the concept of God that I reached was a side implication that fell out of my theory–what I was aiming for was to explain consciousness.

That’s because I don’t identify myself with my morality. The ‘I’ we have been discussion, as it concerns me, is ‘I’ as a subjectivist. If you were able to tear down my subjectivism, I might undergo some kind of prong #1 crisis. But as it concerns my morality, that isn’t rooted in any “ism” that I hold strongly to–rather, it is rooted in emotions and instincts–the kind I assume most human beings share in common–I feel guilty about hurting people, I would never steal from a child, I would feel horrible about raping a woman, I could never bring myself to kill another person–as a social animal, all these things are instinctually wired into my brain. They’re not the kind of thing that get switched on or off by a rational argument (though arguments and “isms” can override them, but that requires years of conditioning and a lot of social pressure). It’s like I said above, my subjectivism points me to my conscience for moral instruction, but my conscience draws only on feelings, intuition, instinct, etc., and only the most basic, universal kinds.

So on the point of what happens when my own values come into conflict with others–first of all, I don’t go out looking for trouble, trouble would have to find me (i.e. I’d have to be confronted by a group that seemed to think my basic moral instincts and intuitions were outrageously wrong). Then it’s a question of what I would do in such a situation. Would I try to argue back? Argue back with points about why my morality is right? Points that I would have to whip up on the spot? Would I try to ignore them? Evade the situation? And what if they persisted? If they persisted, then maybe I ought to fall back on the law for protection, call the police, etc. ← But that’s not the same as defending my morality with my best rationality cap. But to get to your point, I suppose we are to imagine that I would raise certain arguments in defense of why my morality, rooted in instinct and intuition as it would be, is right and theirs is wrong. And then if I took your point about dasein and the groundlessness of arguments such as the ones I would make into consideration, it probably wouldn’t bother me so much because I would be very much aware that I’d be coming up with those arguments only as a strategic maneuver in order to get out of the sticky situation I ended up in–in other words, I wouldn’t care whether I was ultimately right or ultimately wrong–as long as my arguments worked to convince them of their mistakes and allow me to escape the situation. This doesn’t render me into a prong #1 crisis because, as I said, I don’t identify myself with my morality, or with the arguments I would have to whimsically come up with on the spot in that situation. I don’t invest a lot of value in those arguments, in other words, so I don’t undergo an identity crisis if they turn out to be vacuous.

Yes, but in a prong #2 situation, where I’m forced to argue certain points in order to get out of a sticky situation, the fact that they’re existential contraptions is not what concerns me, its whether the arguments work or not to get me out of the situation. I’m trying to convince them, not myself.

Thought, and the wonders it helps us achieve, are, at base, no different than the octopus’s apparently “instinctual” sensations and experience–like I said, it’s just a matter of complexity and predictability. Whereas the octopus’s knee jerk reaction (almost literally) of camouflaging in response to the detection of a predator is more or less as predictable as pressing a button, the human reaction to some kind of threat, say in a war, is far less predictable because, when he brings thought to the table as a tool for strategizing and self-defense, he can come up with all kinds of intelligent and unique responses. Thought is just a far more complex and versatile mental experience.

The only reason it seems to provide us with a sense of “really” knowing reality for what it is is because it provides us with an extension of our experience of reality, an extension from the reality provided to us by sensory experience. But would you say that sensory experience feels any less like an acquaintance with reality than thought? And isn’t sensation just a complex of simpler elements of sensory data–color, lines, light, dark, hot, cold, soft, hard, loud, quiet, etc.–the octopus’s experience is just a simpler version of this. Only the quality of its experiences are different from anything we are familiar with, and so we cannot imagine what it feels like. But if we could–and this is my point–we would say: Ah, that would make me want to camouflage too–just like the sensation of burning on the hand would make one want to pull away from a hot stove, even though from the point of view of an alien species, this might look like a mechanical reaction (which it is, but no less accompanied by real experience, experience that serves as the reason or justification for engaging in the behavior).

These metaphysical musings have never been about knowledge for me. They have only ever been about trying to make sense out of abstract confusing philosophical thought, making a cohesive meaningful picture that could pass as “possible”–if nowhere else than “in your head”–it’s an exercise in putting to rest the confusion or the lack of understand over things that can’t be verified or demonstrated anyway. ← What else you gonna do with these thing?

Are you sure about that? Are you sure what I’m calling the “conscience”, or “intuition”, can’t be traced to certain areas in the brain, or certain patterns of brain activity? If neuroscientists were able to map the kinds of experiences I’m associating with the “conscience” or “intuition” to brain areas or brain activity, would that count as a “demonstration” for you? Would that convince you that they are more than just existential contraptions?

Ah, yes. Change to what, should be the question.

Still though, my point was that you still have a purpose–whether or not the word “purpose” denotes an abstract concept, and therefore an existential contraption–your brain is trying to accomplish something here, help you to survive in some way. It will accept certain points, certain arguments, and it will reject others–all depending on whether they help or hinder what it is you’re trying to accomplish. If it hinders, it will resist accepting, and this will be experienced as “not making sense”. ← This was my point. You’re saying that you don’t see how changing your purpose, what you’re trying to accomplish, will show you a way out of your dilemma. I’m saying: give it chance. If I’m right about our purposes, what we are trying to accomplish, determining what our brains can make sense out of and what they can’t, then changing our purpose, what we are trying to accomplish, can unexpectedly make that which previously didn’t make sense all of a sudden make sense. You may all of a sudden see a way out of your dilemma.

^ This seems to be a catch-22 you’re stuck on–you seem to be insisting that one make sense out of one’s suggested way out of your dilemma before you can bring yourself to try their approach, but trying their approach is the only way that you are going to make sense out of their suggestion.

I don’t know how they’re intertwined, but this is what I’ve understood characterizes your dilemma:

1. We are dasein-based creatures who are entangled in a world in which we come into conflict over contradicting beliefs and value judgements, and that there appears to be no objective way of demonstrating who is ultimately right and who is ultimately wrong, or whether there even is a right and wrong. ← That is certainly a dilemma. It’s the prong of your dilemma I’m calling “prong #2”.

2. Upon realization of 1), one questions one’s own beliefs and values, one realizes that if all such beliefs and values have only ever been existential contraptions, arrived at arbitrarily, then this applies to one’s own beliefs and values no less than it does to everyone else’s. Thus, insofar as one has identified him- or herself with one’s own beliefs and values, one begins to question one’s own identity–the ‘I’ fragments. ← This too is certainly a dilemma, an even more profound one. It’s the prong of your dilemma I’m calling “prong #1”.

The point to emphasize here is that in order to become entangled in prong #1, it would seem necessary to first be entangled in prong #2. So insofar as prong #1 and prong #2 may or may not be intertwined, I think there is a point at which they meet. First, one undergoes the dilemma of prong #2, then when one draws the implications of that to one’s self, he or she undergoes the dilemma of prong #1. They seem to meet where prong #2 leads one to prong #1 through the former’s implications for the latter.

Well, again, what if one day, neuroscientists are able to point to specific spots in the brain, or identify certain patterns of brain activity, and say: that is the conscience? Would that make a difference to you?

We can never be completely free given the gap between that which we might desire/want “in our head” and that which we either are or are not able to acquire. Options are everything out in the world of actual human interactions.

But: If the desires/wants/thoughts/feelings etc., that emanate from inside our head could only have ever done so then the “causal efficacy” embodied in “I” here is just another kind of piston to me.

Unless of course mindful matter has a property that sets it apart from mindless matter in interacting in sync with matter’s immutable laws.

It would be as though there was an omniscient God “out there somewhere” who does know everything that we are ever going to think and feel and do. We think and we feel and we do things and, then, just as with the car, our lives move forward. Only we are programed by the all-knowing God to think that this is all of our own volition.

But, sure, maybe I’m not thinking this through in the optimal manner. And yet what “on earth” can that possibly mean in a wholly determined universe?

“Compatibilism” just doesn’t “click” for me. No, we are not pistons in an automobile engine. But, still, as with the pistons, we do only that which we are “designed” to do.

Either that or I am making sense of it all only as I ever could have.

Because everything that we do is inherently in sync with that which we could only have done. You focus on something because you must focus on it. Matter then unfolds over time as it must creating a new condition prompting you to refocus on it as you must.

Again, maybe you are relating something important here that I keep missing. But if I cannot not miss it what then does that really mean?

From my frame of mind, I am either able to pull away from an experience because that is something I can choose to do of my own volition, or my mind [still in sync with the immutable laws of matter] has evolved to the point where I am able to fool myself into thinking I have done so of my own volition.

I always come back to this though: If you are writing only that which you ever could have written here and now and I am reading only that which I ever could have read here and now, pulling back from it is just another inherent component of an exchange that is rooted in whatever brought into existence the immutable laws of matter themselves.

Which then begs the question about the mind of God. Is it in sync with the immutable laws of matter? In other words, did God invent these laws more or less than He discovered them?

More to the point: How do we address it without first having access to whatever it is that is wholly responsible for the existence of existence itself?

You suggest that…

But how would this abstract “analysis” be integrated into the reality of our exchange itself? How would you typing these words and me reading them be fully explained such that you could walk us through the mind/matter interactions based on the actual analytic components [assumptions] of the argument?

And, thus, I’m back again to this: what on earth do you mean here?

Pertaining either to, say, the choice to abort a baby [prong 1] or the reaction to the abortion as a moral quandary [prong 2]?

Somehow you seem able to yank this conception of “I” out of my own dilemma [if that is what you are doing] but I simply don’t grasp what you are talking about here “for all practical purposes”. Like me, you are out in a particular world embodying particular values that evolved from the complex intertwining of nature and nurture. The part about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy doesn’t just go away for me.

Had the genes and the memes been differrent in your life you might have no compunction at all in raping someone, in hurting someone, in killing someone.

In fact, this is the part of my own rendition of “I” that most disturbs the objectivists. Somehow they must convince themselves that they do the right thing because 1] there is a right thing to do and 2] they do it because they are a good person.

But this is still all just an existential contraption to me.

From my frame of mind all of this is subsumed in dasein. Each individual out in a particular world evolves a particular identity that intertwines all of the countless variables rooted in both nature and nurture. They choose this rather than that. Subjectively/subjuntively. An “I” fabricated as a child into an existential contraption ever evolving over time from the cradle to the grave in a world bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change.

Then [from my frame of mind] you are entangled in my dilemma. You have just managed to create a greater distance between “I” and “angst”.

I too embrace “whatever works”. I just don’t know if that reflects the optimal frame of mind or if in fact there is an objective argument out there that I am simply not privy to here and now.

Far less predictable, but only because we lack the capacity to compute it. But the computation may still exist. It’s like being able to predict precisely what the weather will be at any particular location a year from now. All of the weather variables will interact only as they must in order to create those exact weather conditions. Or, rather, will if human behaviors are just more matter in the equation. We just don’t have the capacity to calculate it. But [in my mind] there is still that enigmatic distinction between how the octopus computes its camouflage and how we do.

Matter evolved from the simple to the complex, sure, but how does that really describe this distinction in such a way that we can more clearly grasp the difference between an octupus changing color in order to evade a shark and you or I camoflaging our personality in order to evade someone out to do us harm?

All I can do here is note how existentially I have to come to embody by own judgments in this contraption:

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
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 then to note that the extent to which this can be traced to “certain areas in the brain, or certain patterns of brain activity” is the extent to which it may all just be the illusion of autonomous choice.

If my brain “is trying to accomplish something” and “I” really am just along for the ride then my own “survival” is just one more domino in that long, long, long chain going all the way back to whatever the hell this might possibly mean.

Yep. Yet even here making the assumption that some level of autonomy is a factor at play in the choices we make.

What is completely “arbitrary” – fortuitous – is the particular world into which we are “thrown” at birth: historically, culturally, experientially. And, then, from the cradle to the grave, “I” is always situated – situated existentially in particular contexts. And within each context there are those things/relationships that seem applicable to all of us. The world of either/or. But then in interacting, we encounter the world of is/ought. And our reactions here seem to be considerably more problematic, subjective, subjunctive.

Would that there could be a link here to, say, a youtube video in which the point that is being made is illustrated step by step by step as it pertains to human interaction as that pertains to the relationship between the two prongs.

I’d wonder then if we could determine if they did so of their own volition.

Right… So if I decide to pick up the remote and turn on the TV, it may not have really been a choice, but it was still ‘I’ who did it.

It’s not a matter whether or not the refocusing is determined, it’s what you see when you refocus. I’m saying that you can only question the validity of what you would see when you refrain from refocusing.

Then you’re stuck.

Address what? Mind? We have immediate direct access to our own minds. Why do we need access to that which is responsible for the existence of existence itself?

Read my book.

That’s not what prong #1 is–again, prong #1 is the dilemma of the ‘I’ fragmenting, not aborting babies.

I don’t know how my analysis of the relation between mind and matter pertains to the choice of aborting babies or the reaction to abortions as a moral quandry. Again, I was just answering your question “How then is mind not matter?”

Even if there was, I’m not sure how you would accept it given that you haven’t yet resolved your problem of our place in a deterministic universe.

There certainly is a distinction.

There is the scientific way of explaining it and then there is the philosophical/subjectivist way:

The scientific way would simply be to peer into the octopus’s biology and figure out how the neurons are interconnected and how certain chemicals are released and bound to neural receptors and what neural pathways connect to what glands, organs, parts of the octopus’s body, etc. and finally how that results in the skin changing color. Then we would compare that to what goes on in a human brain that makes us figure out and attempt to camouflage.

The philosophical/subjectivist way is a lot more daunting task. And my theory of mind would simply say that it is driven by an experience that is particular to the octopus and foreign to us–that means we cannot imagine it–but if we could, we would experience it as maybe a desire to camouflage, or an imperative to secrete certain hormones. And keep in mind, what we recognize as “camouflage”, the octopus may recognize as something completely different.

This doesn’t really answer my question. If the “conscience” or “intuition” can be shown to be an experience that arises from specific brain activity, would you still call it an existential contraption? ← That was the question. If yes, then everything is an existential contraption, even the concrete world you see before you (it too is experienced because of brain activity–specifically in the visual cortex). If no, then what I’m calling the conscience and intuition is grounded in something a little more concrete than abstract existential contraptions.

But then this would apply to any brain part. Indeed, it would apply to any scientific statement. It would apply to you when you think you’ve identified something definitively. This line of questioning is the ultimate in Cartesian skepticism. You ought even to be skeptical about your own arguments about dasein. ← Why do you even think they make sense when you only think them because you couldn’t have ever not thought them?

So, in a wholly determined world, how does the human mind wrap itself around the following distinction:

1] The remote control – an inanimate object – is a device programmed to turn on the TV.
2] I choose to use the remote control to turn on the TV.

The remote control has no conscious understanding of what it means to turn the TV on. I do. But I turn the television on only because I could not not have turned it on. Anymore than a properly functioning remote control could not have turned on a properly functioning television.

How am “I” here not then but one more necessary component of this entirely material sequence?

Would not the matter that we call “mind” need to be equipped with a quality that we have come to call “free will” or “autonomy” or “volition”?

Let’s just say that “compatibilists” are able to grasp this sort of thing in a manner that I am not. At least not “here and now”.

What I see however is only what I was ever going to see. Why? Because I was never able – of my own volition – to refrain from refocusing.

And here I just go around and around and around.

Thus:

Yes, but am I stuck because I am failing to think this through properly – in a manner such that I would not be stuck? Or is being “stuck” the only thing that I was ever going to be anyway?

How is the human mind not just but one more component of Existence? What makes it extraordinary is that, as far as we know, it is the only matter able to become conscious of itself as matter encompassing whatever it is that allowed matter to exist.

The question here [as I see it] is the extent to which the mind is able achieve at least some level of autonomy.

What I believe is that morality is based on the necessity to create “rules of behavior” in any particular human community. And this is derived from the fact that we come into the world with wants and needs that “out in the world of actual human interactions” come into conflict. Sometimes the conflict revolves around ends, sometimes around means. But each of us has accummlated a “sense of reality” here. I just happen to predicate my own on the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. And that has precipitated my dilemma above.

Then [obviously] I come to venues like this one in order to explore one or another alternative “sense of reality”. What else is there?

From my frame of mind, your morality is just another existential contraption. And unless others are willing to acknowledge the extent to which “I” here is just a fabricated concoction rooted existentially out in particular worlds awash in contingency, chance and change, they are able to “think themselves” into believing that their “I” somehow reflects this “real me”, the “me” that has come to grasp the one true distinction between right and wrong, good and bad.

The fact is that given the extent to which there are variables in your life that you do not either fully understand or are not fully in control of, these “alternatives” were always possible, are still always possible. One new experience and your moral sense of reality can become subsumed in an entirely new sense of “reality”.

Thus:

And I’m suggesting that the subjunctive “I” is no less an existential contraption.

But, again, from my frame of mind, this too is no less an existential contraption. To the extent that I am able to nudge others here to my own frame of mind is the extent to which the “angst” may well creep in. After all, I didn’t just wake up one morning and tumble over into my dilemma. And my reaction to it has as well evolved over the years.

That’s true. On the other hand, doesn’t that quandary ever and always hover over all of us?

But would not the scientists basically do the same regarding human camoflage? We may well just be octopi with brains able to delude oursleves that we are able to be more clever when we trick our opponents. But, really, biologically, isn’t it just the same sequence of matter intertwining only as it ever could have out in any particular world. For any particular species.

Maybe, but I’m back to trying to imagine the sequence unfolding if, unlike the octopi, we do possess some level of autonomy. And, even then, to the extent that we might feel the need [the desire] to camoflage oursleves in our interactions with others there are still the parts embedded in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

No, in that case the only “contraption” would appear to be Existence itself.

But then we are back again to this: What does that mean?

But, sure, you can argue that in a wholly determined universe, everything and anything is an “existential contraption”. But how would be define the meaning of a word like “contraption” as it applies to Existence Itself?

Since my arguments about dasein are clearly just another existential contraption, even if it could be shown that I have some capacity to think and feel of my own volition that it is a reasonable frame of mind, I am still acknowledging that it may well not be.

Remember, compatibilists only believe that free will is the condition under which you get what you want or intend, not that it defies the laws of nature.

Yeah, because it’s real.

Those aren’t mutually exclusive.

Morality as “rules of behavior” that a community arrives at and agrees upon in order to maintain a semblance of social cohesion is definitely very different from feelings of guilt or inspiration, of anger or love, of pressure from society or a desire to help society. It’s the latter which I’m calling “morality” and they all play a pivotal roll in constituting one’s conscience. To me, the conscience is just a set of feelings, instincts, and intuitions, not a set of clearly defined rules. At best, it is a set of tendencies. That’s why for me, there is no “objective morality.” Instead there are feelings that arise “in the moment”–senses of right and wrong, of guilt or sympathy–that, at least in my case, so happen to coincide with what most people call “moral” and “immoral”.

Are you telling me you’ve never felt guilt? Never felt inspired to help another person?

We’re both trying to nudge each other closer to each of our respective frames of mind. What seems strange to me is why you would want to bring another person into a state of angst rather than allow that other person to being you out of angst. I can appreciate that most likely it’s because you feel that if you could just get another person to understand what it’s like to suffer the angst of your dilemma, they might be able to offer a way out of it–and that you feel you cannot take a blind leap and trust that another person’s advise or point of view is more than just an existential contraption, that you need to see it for yourself first.

^ This is the crux of your problem. You’re so ready to dismiss the advice others give you in response to your requests for it, so ready to dismiss the answers to the questions you yourself pose, in virtue of the fact that they’re just going to come across as “existential contraptions” that you don’t even allow yourself the opportunity to be persuaded by them. If you could only be persuade, for example, that 2 + 2 really does equal 4, you’d have an epiphany: Hmm… maybe that does make sense after all… and then all the quandaries about whether it only makes sense because it could not have ever not made sense go away. You suddenly see why it makes sense–why it has to make sense. ← The logic is there, the answers are there. You just have to allow yourself to believe in something objective again.

I can understand where you’re going with this. Obviously, my 2 + 2 = 4 example is just a place to start–math 101 so to speak–and I understand how it’s hard to see the manner in which the logical of that example carried over to the logic of whether abortion is morally right or morally wrong. But that’s where my relativism comes in. Once you think in relativistic terms, it’s incredibly easy: abortion is right for the pro-choice faction, but wrong for the pro-life faction.

You think Turd ever questioned whether the validity his thoughts were really grounded or just forced upon him because he could never have not had those thoughts? You remember that example? The rant you linked us to at which Turd was ranting something about politics? He seemed pretty certain in his convictions, didn’t he? You think that state of mind came along with even a remote sense of self-doubt? I don’t think so. His post reads like he’s absolutely cock-sure of his opinion. Why? Because all the validity you need is in the moment of having the experience–whether that be a thought, like Turd’s, or feelings of guilt and inspiration, like mine, or feeling trapped in a dasein-based dilemma, like yours… it’s not really a matter of whether these thoughts, feelings, insights, etc. are really valid or not–they’re valid on their face–it’s a question of how you can have conflicting, yet still valid, thoughts, feelings, insights, etc.–the pro-life advocates being right and at the same time the pro-choice advocates also being right. ← And again, relativism fixes this nicely.

Yes, but again, I don’t know why you think this has to be a “delusion”. Just as the piston is still a player in the operations of the engine, the ‘I’ is still a player in our contrived plans on how to camouflage. Yes, it all comes down the natural laws, but you seem to think of these laws as “outside” the immanent physical systems that they govern. The way I see it is that our conscious subjective reasons for camouflaging, and hashing out the plans for how to camouflage, are the laws of nature that make it happen.

I’d drop the term of opt for “hallucination”.

Because that’s the only thing you can do. But then doesn’t that seem reasonable? Doesn’t it seem to “verify” your convictions? (hint, hint, nudge, nudge ).

In a wholly determined universe, we might think that we have volition, we might feel that we have volition. But, as with the remote control, we function solely within the laws of physics. Mind is just this mysterious matter that has somehow evolved [only as it ever could have evolved] to embody this illusion of choosing freely.

And now matter has evolved to the point where the minds of neuroscientists are compelled to discover how this works.

But: The only way they will come to understand why it works how it works is to discover the ontological nature of existence itself.

But, again: Whatever that might possibly mean.

In particular when we shift gears and explore the extent to which teleology is a factor too.

And, unlike the remote control, it does. Only it does so because it could not not have done otherwise. So it would seem this makes us both entirely different and entirely the same as mindless matter. Or the mindful matter of the shark and the octopus – they “choose” only as they have been programed genetically/instinctively/naturally to do so per the laws of matter embodied in the evolution of life on earth. Of which we are just the most recent incarnation.

But they are no less compelled to believe this, right? We get what we want or intend, but only because we are compelled to want and intend this instead of that.

If I am stuck because I fail to think this through properly, I am either able to freely choose to think it through in another way [the right way], or I am not. And, if I am not, that was never going to change.

But both aspects – in an enormously complex interplay of variables – are inherently intertwined organically [historically, culturally, experientially] in any particular community out in any particular world. To subsist and then to sustain the community, rules of behavior are vital, necessary. Our emotional reactions however are just one more manifestation of this in the mind of any particular individual in any particular context.

And it is here that I introduce the components of my own assessment: dasein, confliicting goods, political economy.

For me “conscience” is mindful matter that intertwines nature and nurture, id and ego, instinct and reason, consciousness, subconsciousness and unconsciousness, into a frame of mind such that, unlike any other matter before it, is able to make that mysterious leap from the world of either/or to the world of is/ought. If, in fact, even that is not just an illusion in a wholly determined world.

And this part…

“…there are feelings that arise ‘in the moment’ --senses of right and wrong, of guilt or sympathy–that, at least in my case, so happen to coincide with what most people call ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’”.

…is [for me] just subsumed in this part…

Yes, but, again, the actual guilt that I feel is just the embodiment of dasein. Had the variables in my life been very different – had, for example, I not been drafted and sent to Vietnam – I may well have never felt this guilt at all. Or I may well have felt inspired to hurt rather than help this person.

In other words…

Yes, but I always interject here to point out the crucial distinction between that which can be assessed as either true or false, and that which we believe “in our head” to be either one or the other but which we are not able to demonstrate empirically, materially [out in the world of human interactions that come into conflict] that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

And that is the difference between the worlds encompassed by mathematics, science and logic and the worlds embodied instead in human value judgments, identity and political economy.

On the contrary, what I do here is to note the angst that I construe as being embodied in this…

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

…and probe the narratives of those who argue that their own behaviors are not.

It is only to the extent that they come instead to see my own arguments as more reasonable that they are ever likely to feel this angst.

And yet, paradoxically, being entangled in my dilemma can also precipitate a liberating frame of mind. Why? Because to the extent that you are convinced that morality is just an existential contraption, is the extent to which you are not anchored to “doing the right thing”.

On the other hand, that is just right around the corner from the narcissistic sociopath isn’t it? With moral nihilism, you can go in either direction: might makes right or democracy [moderation, negotation, compromise].

With the objectivists, on the other hand, they start out with one or another rendition of right makes might.

All I can do here is to point out the many times in the past that I was in fact unable to dismiss the arguments of others – and found myself abandoning Christianity for one or another new objectivist frame of mind: Objectivism, Marxism, Trotskyism, democratic socialism, social democracy, liberalism.

And, come on, how could you ever possibly be certain that I don’t allow myself the opportunity to be persuaded by others?

You would have to be inside my head “here and now” and know with a degree of certainty what my motivations and intentions actually are. And “I” will be the first to admit that I don’t even know that for sure myself.

I don’t have to be persauded [nudged] that two chickens plus two more chickens equals four chickens. That is true objectively for all of us.

But suppose someone tries to persuade [nudge] me into believing that eating the chickens is immoral.

Unless I am misunderstanding your point here.

But what does this sort of “analysis” have to do with an actual particular abortion out in a particular context out in a particular world? The pro-choice folks come up with their incredibly easy answer and the pro-life folks then parry with their own.

Then what?

And how are the answers that they come up with any less embedded existentially in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

Again, I can only assume that I am not really understanding your point.

Yes, Turd – like Satyr/Lyssa, James S. Saint, Jacob, AutSider, uccisore etc etc etc – is a run of the mill moral/political objectivist. And some of these folks stick God in there somewhere and some don’t.

But it still always comes down to the extent to which they are able to force their own moral agendas on others “out in the world” by acquiring the capacity to enforce particular laws and political agendas.

What they might think [in their head] about “morality” here at ILP is of little or no consequence to/for the rest of us, right?

And [from my frame of mind] the extent to which they cannot persuade me that their own value judgments are not subsumed in the manner in which I have come to understand the existential realtionship between identity, morality and power is the extent to which I am not likely to be “nudged” more in their own direction.

Sure, I will readily acknowledge that you are conveying something important that is just not within my grasp here and now. Or, on the other hand, I am conveying to you something equally important if elusive.

But it is as though you are arguing that the reason we choose to adopt various personas in our interactions with others – the games that we play – is what creates the interactions in the first place. As though to suggest that the reason the dominos topple over as they do is in order to create the design/pattern that we see on the floor.

“I” am a player but the play unfolds only as it ever could have. And then we discuss the extent to which the part that I play in it is a “delusion”.

To speak of something as reasonable is to suggest that it might have been spoken of in an unreasonable manner. But if it is spoken only as it ever could have been spoken then the idea of an unreasonable utterance seems, well, silly?

That’s right, and either way we can say you “failed to think it through properly.” (assuming I’m thinking it through properly)

Whether or not this is true, it is useful to note that we obviously mean different things by “morality”.

I think this leap is made because the conscience prescribes actions–actions that determine future outcomes, future states of affairs–actions that, in virtue of not yet having occurred, don’t quite fall under the “is” category–they present opportunities to make the world into something that hasn’t yet come to pass, and therefore requires different visors through which to be seen than the “is” visors–namely the “ought” visors. In asking what actions to take, we are asking: what outcome ought to occur.

My point is that if you’ve actually felt guilt, felt inspiration, then we’re talking about something subtly different than an “existential contraption” (I’m assuming that term refers to abstractions or concepts–for example, divinity, cooperation, war, weekends–which aren’t quite the same thing as emotions or feelings). If you want to say that anything the brain produces is an “existential contraption” then there is no limit to what counts. The brain produces our visual experiences of the world–if this counts as an “existential contraption”, then you have as much reason to doubt the reality of the concrete world you see everyday as you do the morality of aborting babies.

To the extent that you allow yourself to be persuaded by others, you are able to pull yourself out of your dilemma. But from what I gathered, what keeps you stuck in your dilemma is the fact that any objectivist frame of mind offered to you is going to come across as an existential contraption. My point is that if you allow yourself to be persuaded by one or another objectivist frame of mind at all, it’s because you decided in that moment to suspend your usual practice of labeling that frame of mind an “existential contraption”.

Ok, it’s just that your response to this was to point out that we can only ever be convinced of this because we couldn’t have not been convinced of this–i.e. we only believe it because we are determined to believe in it–as if it might be blatantly false and yet we would still be convinced of it.

Then they have to decide whether or not they actually want to resolve their differences. If not, then they have to go to war. Otherwise, they begin the process of moderation, negotation, compromise.

But that’s them. I was responding to you and your dilemma of not having an objective answer the question of what’s really morally right and morally wrong. I’m trying to explain that if you agree with me about the experience being its own verification (the example of 2 + 2 = 4 being the most obvious case), then it’s just a matter of picking one or another morality–which ever “speaks” to you, which ever seems most plausible–and allowing yourself to be persuaded by it. I’m saying it’s the same psychological process by which you are persuaded that 2 + 2 = 4, except a lot more complex and difficult to demonstrate. If Turd can do it, so can you. Every human brain has the capacity to be persuaded by one or another objectivist morality. The only reason you are “stuck” is because you’re trying to be stuck. It isn’t that difficult for a human brain to be persuaded by a rational-sounding argument, or to be persuaded by one’s personal feelings or preferences. But you seem to have committed yourself to an impossible standard, a standard that doesn’t allow you to be persuaded as easily as that. You go so far as to require a demonstration that a proposed objective morality is true despite that you can only be so convinced because you are determined to be so convinced, that you could not have not been so convinced. But how could you ever recognize such a demonstration? I’m saying that this approach is a deadend and that you are better off backtracking, being more open to an objectivism that “speaks to you”–even if you know it’s your own bias and emotional prejudices that fuel your belief in it–at least it’s a way of having something to believe in.

Yes, our emotional biases, personal history, subjective ways of looking at things, will all culminate together to give rise to convictions and so-called self-evident truths that clash with those of others, others who are going through the same life process. ← In that regard, what I’m offering to you is not a solution to your dilemma–at least not prong #2 of your dilemma–and I’ve made that clear many times in this thread–what I’m offering you is a potential way out of prong #1 of your dilemma–a way of believing in something that doesn’t result in the fragmentation of the ‘I’–and that will make prong #2 a little more bearable.

Well, it’s in order to create something–or to achieve some objective, serve some purpose–the pattern of dominoes we end up seeing is just how it’s represented to us through the senses. What that pattern feels like to the dominoes themselves, I couldn’t even guess, but I know it would be the objective they are aiming for (and whatever they’re experiencing would be the reasons/justifications).

So then your own view doesn’t seem reasonable to you?

No. It simply means that it was one way (reasonable) rather than another (unreasonable). You are comparing in your mind what was at one moment in time (reasonable) with what was at another moment in time (unreasonable). This is a comparison between two memories. It’s also possible to compare a memory, what was in the past, with a fantasy, what never was in the past but was merely fabricated in your mind. Either way, none require that our past is mutable. And it isn’t. Our past is immutable. Nobody can go back in time and change how they acted. Also, nobody can pause the flow of time in order to choose how they will act the next moment. Time flows, it does not wait, decions are made at each instant with zero hesitation.

Bottom line [one of them]: we believe that the other may or may not have failed to think it through properly, but we have no way in which to determine [to demonstrate] which one either did or did not.

And that’s before we take it out into the world of actual is/ought interactions. Or explain how both prongs are intertwined “in reality”.

Sure, but what we can’t resolve is whether or not there is a meaning here that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace. And, if there is, whether or not it is within their capacity to embrace it autonomously.

But the conscience [from my frame of mind] is no less an existential contraption. And it exist all along the political spectrum such that “right” and “wrong” behaviors become entangled in conflicting goods out in a world where, ultimately, power prevails.

Then it becomes a matter of whether or not future opportunities are already encompassed in a present that was already encompassed in a past. Thus to call them “opportunities” is just another manifestion of the illusion of free will.

Again: If “I” was never not going to feel this guilt, what counts then is that the guilt felt is inherently part and parcel of my own particular existence unfolding only as it ever could have.

In other words, in terms of how events actually unfold, how is the existence of mindful matter really any different from the existence of mindless matter other than in producing this illusion that the events unfold because I willed them to unfold one way rather than another?

That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around here.

First of all, to the extent that mind is just more matter embedded in immutable laws, whatever I choose to do is only as it ever could have been.

But, assuming some level of autonomy, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to establish a frame of mind such that the manner in which I root morality in dasein and conflicting goods is obviated – subsumed in a moral narrative that all rational men and women are in fact obligated to embody.

In other words, let the objectivist demonstrate to me how the behaviors that they choose are not merely political prejudices embedded in a psychological defense mechanism allowing them to convince themselves that a “real me” can be in touch with “objective morality”.

If free will is an illusion then everything that we do is inherently part and parcel of the existential mechanism called “I”. It always revolves around the extent to which “I” is autonomous. I merely suggest that this autonomy, if it does exist, is circumscribed by the manner in which I root “I” subjectively/subjunctively in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

But that doesn’t make the objective reality rooted in mathematics, science, nature, logic etc., go away.

We invented the word “chicken” in the English language because chickens actually do exist. And we invented numbers because sometimes there are more than one of them. So if I say, “take my 2 chickens, put them with your 2 chickens and then you’ll have the 4 chickens needed to pay your debt” that can be understood as objectively true for all of us.

The words exactly correspond to the context. It can never be blatantly false if in fact it is unequivocally true. And it is true in either a wholly detrmined world or in a world where I could have freely chosen not to give you my chickens.

Back then to the part where you are making some important point here that I keep missing.

I merely shift gears to prong 2 and speculate on an exchange in which one of us argues that eating chickens is immoral in a world where we do in fact have some capacity to freely choose not to eat them.

But my point [embedded in my dilemma] is that there is no resolution here. There is only might makes right or democracy and the rule of law. Unless of course, within any particular human community, everyone is able to agree on a frame of mind embodied in right makes might.

Until, that is, they bump into another community also invested in right makes might — but it it’s a different right.

And thus all of this…

…is no less entangled [for me] in an existential contraption. I take my leap but I have no illusion that it is anything other than a subjective/subjunctive leap.

That, in other words, in a world of contingency, chance and change, any new experiences, new relationships and new sources of information and knowledge may well prompt me to leap in another direction instead. It’s always profoundly precarious and problematic.

Again, how can you know this? I am stuck because the manner in which I have come “here and now” to construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy seems reasonable to me. As it relates to conflicting behaviors out in the world of is/ought.

No, I merely note that folks on both sides of an issue like abortion are able to articulate “rational sounding arguments”. But we can’t live in a world where both arguments prevail. Then I suggest that “moderation, negotiation and compromise” seems the least dysfunctional recourse.

Instead, the objectivists insist that only their own standard must prevail. And it has become the one true standard because “in their head” they are convinced of it.

Okay, you take that leap to an “objectivism that speaks to you” and you either permit women to choose abortion or you don’t.

Me, I cannot just not believe that both sides make reasonable arguments. I cannot just not be tugged and pulled in both directions.

So, what do you do? You take that same leap but somehow in your head you convince yourself that it was the right one. But it’s the right one only because that is the particular leap that you took.

The part about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy doesn’t go away, but at least you are able to shove them away far eoungh to feel less fractured and fragmented than someone like me. You have been able to construct a psychological scaffold in your head such that it all feels a little less unbearable to you.

Then on to this:

I guess we’re stuck here then. I read the point you make here but I am not able to understand how it is related to the point I made that prompted it.

We create something in order to achieve some purpose. So, is that more the cause or the effect?

It would be like someone in, say, North Korea who, at a domino toppling event, created a design that depicted Kim Jong-un as an immoral monster. Now, in a world where human autonomy is a factor, what can we say about his aim such that the manner in which we react to his value judgment is different from the manner in which our senses react to the design itself.

If what I do feel is only as I ever could have felt it, then to speak of that as reasonable is only to further what could only have ever been.

Chickens are existential contraptions.

A dasein dude can ask “which particular chicken in which particular context” you are talking about.

He can say that the definition of chicken is just a bunch words dependent on the meaning of other words.

He can say that two or more people can have a conflict about what a chicken is or is not. And nothing will make those arguments go away.

He can say that you can’t demonstrate a chicken so that all reasonable men and women are obligated to accept that it is a chicken.

None of this bothers Iambig. For him, “chickens actually do exist”. He manages to maintain this arbitrary division between the objective world and the world of identity and value judgements.

Carry on.

Again, down to earth:

1] Is it reasonable or unreasonable to speak of a Senate vote on Neil Gorsuch to fill a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court?

2] Is it reasonable or unreasonable to speak in favor of a yes vote?

With the former it is easy to speak of an unreasonable frame of mind. It is unreasonable to argue that Neil Gorsuch is not being voted on to fill this vacancy. It is in fact unreasonable.

Now, how would it be demonstrated that either a yes vote or a no vote reflects the optimal or the only rational point of view. Rather than, as I surmise, being embedded in particular political prejudices.

How, in other words, would our reaction to the vote not be embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

What will your reaction be if the Republicans nuke the proceedings?

Well, chickens do exist if that’s what you mean.

Here’s one account:

“Proof that fearsome T-Rex evolved into a chicken. Palaeontologists have long accepted that birds are a form of dinosaur. Now the theory that the most feared dinosaur of all, Tyrannosaurus Rex, evolved into the modern-day chicken has been given scientific backing with the discovery of some pre-historic collagen.” From the Daily Mail, U.K.

dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … icken.html

Not pertaining to the actual evolution of the chicken embedded in the evolution of life on earth. That transcends dasein as I have come to encompass it re the world of is/ought.

In the is/ought world dasein revolves largely around the question of consuming the chicken — eating the flesh of animals.

Is this in fact rational or irrational?

Is this in fact something that philosophers and scientists can ascertain?

No, he can say that a definition of this sort – “a domestic fowl kept for its eggs or meat, especially a young one” – is true objectively for all of us. These words [among English language speaking folks] are simply words that we invented in order to describe what a chicken is.

No, not pertaining to the definition above. Yes, pertaining to the arguments broached regarding the rights of animals.

Not this dasein dude.

Unless of course this is all just an exercise in irony on your part. Tongue in cheek as it were?

It’s an exercise to determine if you can see the biases and the arbitrary way that you draw the line between objective and non-objective.

You can’t see.

I won’t waste any more time trying to explain it to you. I will always remember this with a chuckle.

Note to others:

He’s got me, right?

I think you’re changing the subject.

If I understood you correctly, your point was that the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable makes no sense in the case that “everything that happened in the past could not have happened any other way”.

This phrase simply means that we cannot go back in time. Because we cannot go back in time, we cannot change our past decisions. It does not mean that if we COULD go back in time and attempt to change our past decisions that the outcome would be the same.

To say that the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable makes no sense simply because we cannot go back in time is akin to saying that the distinction between white skin and black skin makes no sense simply because a white child’s father cannot go back in time and choose a black woman as his wife.

One is either reasonable or not. This is, however, a property, not of one’s being as a whole, but of a single moment in one’s life. Thus, one can be reasonable one moment and unreasonable another. One can start one’s life as an uninterrupted sequence of unreasonable moments, and then, through practice and education, gradually shift to an uninterrupted sequence of reasonable moments.

But of course not everyone can do so. One must be capable of improvement. If one is not, one will forever be unreasonable.

The only relevant question is the meaning of reasonable/unreasonable.

No. He’s saying that he did not have the option of choosing between reasonable and unreasonable actions. The configuration of the universe made him act in a certain way.

The definitions of reasonable and unreasonable are irrelevant.

This is what he said:

It appears to me that he’s saying that the idea of unreasonable decisions seems silly in the case that we cannot go back in time and change our decisions.

I also want to comment on this:

This is an anthropomorphism. The process of calculation, which only sentient beings such as humans can engage in, is ascribed to the universe. The universe, these naive determinists say, determines every event using certain calculations (a.k.a. laws.) The universe as some kind of God that performs mathematical calculations . . .

No it isn’t. I’m not making claims about the universe having will or making decisions or anything of that nature. He’s an atom bouncing around in a mechanical universe with no ability to choose or decide or control anything.

If you think that the universe operates by laws, no less by immutable laws, rather than that sentient beings such as humans create laws based on their limited forever-expanding experience, i.e. a set of observations they have accumulated throughout their lives, in order to assume the unknown, and most importantly, to predict the future so that they can prepare themselves for it, then that is an example of anthropomorphization.

But I wasn’t responding to what you said in that sentence. I was responding to what Biguous has been saying in this thread and on this forum in general.