I mean foundation. That which one can turn to in order to demonstrate/establish one’s moral obligation to the woman.
Some will claim that this is God and offer one or another narrative from one or another religious denomination. Others will claim that this is Reason and offer one or another technically proficient deontological assessment. Or there are those of Satyr’s ilk who insist it all revolves around that which can/must be construed as “natural behavior”.
You claim to understand what I am asking, but you are very, very reluctant to then intergrate your own “empirical-rational reality” out in a particular context out in a particular world. What specifically is the “empirical-rational reality” with respect to, say, the conflicting goods that swirl around issues like DACA. What are the “dreamers” owed?
Or, again, choose your own issue. Surely, there must be occasions when you bump into others that do not share your own values. How, with regard to a specific incident of late, did you encompass “empirical-rational reality” for them in order to argue that your own frame of mind is more conducive with “progressive” human interactions “in the future”?
But then [from my frame of mind] you take the exchange straight back up into the scholastic clouds:
Whether any of this is philosophically/technically true is one thing. Making the assumption that it is philosophically/technically true and then integrating the implications of this truth out in the world of conflicted human interactions is [from my frame of mind] something else entirely different.
To wit:
Some insist that abortion/homosexuality/consuming animal flesh/owning chattel slaves etc., is moral. Others insist that abortion/homosexuality/consuming anomal flesh/owning chattel slaves etc., is immoral.
So, using your own understanding of “empirical-rational reality” as the font/foundation, how would one best go about making a rational distinction between the conflicting oughts that do in fact exist “out in the world” that we now live in, and a moral narrative/political agenda most clearly in sync with that which you construe to be “progressive” interactions among us at some point in the future?
My argument is that until we discover the precise nature of Existence itself, even the either/or world is just a set of assumptions rooted in our current understanding of mathematics, the physical laws of nature, and the rules of logic.
There’s just no getting around this for me. Until and unless, of course, someone is able to convince me that their own understanding of these relationships here and now is in fact in sync with an ontological/teleological understanding of All There Is.
But then of course this: who am I to argue that they are either necessarily right or necessarily wrong? And even this is assuming that I actually have the autonomy necessary to make such distinctions “on my own”.
And then you insist that:
As though in “stating” this, that makes it so. Come on: How on earth could you possibly know this other than as a function of all the assumptions that you make in your own intellectual contraptions/inventions above?
Indeed, as soon as I bring all this down to earth…
…you are quick to demur:
And I can only scratch my head and wonder what that has to do with the consequences — the empirical reality — that may soon be unfolding for the actual flesh and blood human beings that are involved here.
Including the fate of the “dreamers” in America. Hell, the government itself might even be shut down.
On the other hand, sure, what do these folks know about the “technical” issues here?