But that’s my point about objectivism. Whether rooted in religion or reason or ideology or deontology or nature, there have been hundreds and hundreds of arguments – hopelessly conflicting and contradictory arguments in many respects – embracing what you have just said.
The only difference then being that they are predicated on their own argument/analysis/assessment, and not yours.
You either grasp [as I do here and now] the psychological element that seems embedded in this or you don’t.
Here I can just imagine all the “serious philosophers” trying to pin down precisely what Kant meant by God, by “transcendental idealism”. Technically.
But, sans God, mere mortals of your ilk [who are anything but omniscient and omnipotent] still manage to insist that they and they alone have accumulated just enough knowledge to grasp what those “absolute moral laws” will be.
If only in the future.
Only [with me] that is almost never explored existentially pertaining to particular contexts and particular conflicting behaviors.
Again, I’ll let the “Kant scholars” sort all this out such that the definitive argument/analysis/assessment is finally subscribed to by all of them.
Has this in fact already been accomplished? Has there come to be one optimal understanding of the man and his ideas?
In any event, with an omniscient/omnipotent God, one would seem either obligated to tell the truth to the murderer and disclose the location of the woman [if lying is always wrong], or, instead, in this, that or some other context, it might be okay to lie.
And the actual contexts of course could number in the thousands.
So, in a No God world, you tell me: what would you say to the murderer?
And in what particular context? Would your answer change with the changing contexts?
In other words, there have been folks here who have argued for a universal morality, and those who insist that an objective morality does exist…but only pertaining to each and every particular context.
Why on earth would anyone want to grasp what a square circle is when by definition they describe two different shapes? Do you often confuse the two? I suspect though that this may well be another “technical” discussion that is way over my head.
On the other hand, existence itself can either be wholly understood or it cannot. And, either way, how succinctly would any mere mortal be able to fit their own moral narrtive into whatever may or may not be All There Is.
Indeed, from my perspective, the only way in which you are able to fit it all in is by stuffing it all inside your own particular intellectual contraption.
In other words, sometime in the future human interactions [in the is/ought world] will finally be revealed as wholly in sync with your own “progressive” assumptions here and now.
Only you won’t at least broach that future by situating your “progressive morality” in the present.
What would the argument sound like pertaining to a particular conflicting good? And how are you not entangled in my own dilemma in describing this?
Thus:
Once again, you had the opportunity to flesh this exchange out substantively by bringing these abstractions down to earth. From my frame of mind then you really do need to ask yourself why you refuse to.
This seems somewhat analagous to Satyr’s “genes ever and always trump memes” dogma. There is a “natural” way to behave that, going all the way back to the caves, trumps any and all renditions of culture.
Perhaps you should take up your own narrative here with him over at KT. See what he gets wrong according to you or what you get wrong according to him. My point though revolves around the assumption what while both of you believe that only one of you can be right, it is always going to be one or the other. And certainly not the multitudes who embrace their own entirely different narrative.
You would both insist [to each other]:
My point in other words.
Then I note this:
And how do you respond? By, once again, doing the same thing:
Another “world of words” defining and defending itself up in the scholastic clouds.
In my own opinion of course. After all, who am I to actually demonstrate that my own intellectual contraption here isn’t just another “philosophical” rendition.
All I can do here is to situate my own value judgments [in a No God world] in an “assessment” that does in fact come down to earth.
This one:
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.
Will you or will you not provide me with a similar trajectory? Such that I might more clearly understand the existential evolution of your own thinking here.
