Objectivists?

Again, using our understanding of mathematics and the laws of nature, we have sent astronauts to the Moon. The objective truths embedded in this accomplishment [manifestations of the either/or world] would seem to be applicable to all of us.

Only when the question shifts to “is sending astronauts to the Moon a good thing or a bad thing?”, do the components of my own argument come into play.

Then you misunderstood me. Fractions either can or cannot be reduced further. But reacting to the objective fact that Boris is unable to reduce a particular fraction down as far as it can go seems in part to be embedded in particular cultural narratives regarding the role of competition/cooperation.

Re Room 101, the powers that be can persuade/coerce some into believing any number of things that are not in fact true for all of us.

However, in English, words have been invented to define/describe addition. 2 apples + 2 apples = 4 apples. Not 5 apples. On the other hand, what if you put all 4 apples into a blender. It’s still not 5 apples, but it’s more like 1 serving of…apple sause?

On the other other hand, if you have 4 apples and I have none, are you morally obligated to share them with me? Can that be calculated objectively in the same manner that it can demonstrated that you do in fact have 4 apples?

I think you want to have it both ways.

There is a straight forward ranking here:

1. 2+2=4 and the fractions can be reduced just as Peggy said.

That takes priority over the dasein aspects.

Then one can move on to other aspects:

2. We need to decide how to effectively teach students and teach Boris specifically.

You keep posting as if that ranking cannot be established and objectivists are doing something “improper” by saying it can be established. Then it becomes weird and 2+2=5.

The ranking can be established by using “the tools of philosophy”. So philosophy is not entirely impotent.

Exactly. Things are either true for all of us or they are not. It’s just that some folks believe things that are demonstrably false and they predicate their behaviors not on what actually is true or false but on what they believe “in their head” is true or false.

But what does that have to do with this:

Some cultures steer their youth more in one direction here than the other.

But, philosophically, which is the most “effective” direction?

In other words, I don’t argue that philosophy is impotent even in the is/ought world. I suggest only that there appear to be limitations imposed its “tools” when value judgments come into conflict.

Not exactly. Most of the time you don’t acknowledge objective facts.

When I point to the deaths, torture and imprisonment in Communist regimes, you act as if it’s not a legitimate fact that can be used to make decisions about Communism. You just go on with some dasein babble. Yet it’s an objective fact just as 2+2=4. Can I ignore the deaths? Can I ignore that 2+2=4? I know dasein …

Nothing. I didn’t use those quotes in my post. So why would I be talking about those particular quotes???

The deaths there are facts. Just as the deaths rooted in capitalism rooted in, among other things, colonialism and imperialism are facts.

But then both sides are clearly able to rationalize any means necessary to secure noble ends.

But how then do we establish as a fact that capitalism or Communism is the nobler end? How do we establish as a fact that ideally human interactions revolve around “I” more than “we”?

And that’s before we get to nihilists in both camps who merely use these noble ends in order to sustain what they perceive to be in their own best interests. Call them narcissists, call them sociopaths, call them whatever.

What doesn’t change is the capacity of folks like them to presume that in a No God world “I” is the center of the universe.

Presumably you still have some remnant of religion/God that enables you to sustain some remnant of comfort and consolation when confronting conflicting goods.

I do not.

Why not just leave it at that?

You can look at the “ends” of Communism and you will see a failure. Even the “workers”, who were supposed to be liberated, ended up poorly off.

I’m not letting capitalism off the hook. But at least there is greater scope for positive changes as demonstrated by action on child labor laws, pollution control and accountability for faulty and tainted products.

You’re really obsessed with that idea.

Hell, you’re more fixated on God than I am. I don’t expect a God or messiah to save the world or to save me. I don’t even expect a stack of stone tablets to tell me what to do.

But that’s the point some argue. The failure revolves not around the noble ends pursued by Communists, but around the faulty means chosen by those who went about it the wrong way. Which, for example, is why [way back then] I more or less abandoned Leninism for the political narrative of Leon Trotsky: Global revolution.

Before I then abandoned both as objectivist.

As for the fate of the workers re “the left”, I suggest that you first read this: amazon.com/Labors-Untold-St … 0916180018

I agree. And this in my view revolves around the fact [historically] that capitalism [as a political economy] is more in sync with “moderation, negotiation and compromise” — with democracy and the rule of law.

Exactly: a remnant of all that.

My fixation on God revolves around two things:

1] that with God, a transcending font would exist to yank me up out of the hole I’m in

2] that with God, not only would the “human condition” not be essentially meaningless and absurd, but there would be one or another rendition of immortality and salvation “out there” somewhere

It’s either that or the brute facticity of an existence [ending in oblivion] that in no way am I able to grasp either ontologically or teleologically.

I don’t need to read a book. I have lived it and so has my family. I was there is the food lines, lined up to get horse meat… Both sides of my family lost their businesses. My father had to pretend to be enthusiastic about the socialist revolution. There are so many horror stories. Czechoslovakia in 1989 was a wasteland.

You have this abstract idea of Communism.

It’s more responsive to the needs of individuals.

That’s great but maybe you can’t have that. So basically you have to work with what you have and make the best of it.
God didn’t give you an instruction manual for living. Moving on from there …

Just as any number of families around the globe would insist they don’t have to read a book about capitalism. They lived the brutal [and at times catastrophic] exploitation rooted in it.

They are smack dab in the middle of this: statisticbrain.com/world-po … tatistics/

You tell me: how many folks here are the vicims of Communism? And aren’t these folks individuals “in need”? Or perhaps the believers among us might run these stats by God.

On the other hand, there may not be a way in which to actually calculate how many more “horror stories” there are relating to one political economy rather than the other.

My point though is this: it was the actual events that you and your family experienced that shaped and molded your own particular political prejudices here.

In no way however does this demonstrate essentially, objectively – philosophically – that your own assessment reflects the optimal or the only manner in which rational/virtuous people are obligated to think about these things.

Unless of course I’m wrong. But how would that be demonstrated definitively?

Moving on? After that weak “rebuttal”?

No, instead, let’s pursue it more substantively.

Once again, you are denying that there any such things as facts.

You have turned everything into identity, value judgement and political economy.

And don’t bother quoting me your usual “distinction” because you don’t use it consistently. It appears to be nothing more than a rhetorical tool.

You move on from the starting position that “there is no God”. Deal with it.

Stop talking about a God that doesn’t exist for you. Stop wanting stuff from your non-existent God. Stop asking people about God. What’s the point? You’re just going to negate everything that they say.

Once again you mock the distinction I make between an either/or world bursting at the seams with facts demonstrably applicable to all of us, and our subjective/subjunctive reactions – conflicted reactions – to those facts, insofar as we have pursued our basic needs historically embedded in one or another political economy.

Really, why on earth would you propose something so patently untrue?

Same here. As I noted recently to zero sum on the JSS thread:

[b]Like most of us, I am reasonably certain the empirical world around me is in fact applicable to all of us. 24/7 as it were. In fact, the overwhelming preponderance of our interactions with others [here or elsewhere] appear to clearly revolve around demonstrable truths.

After all, it would seem that since the Big Bang [whatever that means] a staggering proportion of material interactions happened only as they ever could have. Immutably some suggest.

Where things get mysterious however is when matter evolved into brains evolved into a consciousness able to grapple with the “philosophical” implications of it all.

Then the part where minds react to all the either/or stuff only to bump into other minds who react quite differently. Then what is the truth? Let’s call this the is/ought world.[/b]

Yet [no doubt] you will continue to level this absurd charge against me down the road.

Not really sure what your point is here, but I would never argue that all exchanges here should start with the assumption that we live in a No God world.

How on earth could I possibly know that?!!!

Instead, that just takes folks like me back to the gap between what I think I know/believe about God “in my head” here and now, and all that would need to be known about Existence itself to be sure.

Of course God is one possible explanation. Maybe even your own rendition of Him.

But: All any of us here can do is try to persuade others that our own frame of mind about these things may well reflect the optimal assessment. But I sure as shit am not arguing that I am able to demonstrate that it’s mine. I only note the manner in which I have come existentially to think myself into believing that we live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that ends in oblivion for my own particular “I”.

And then to ask others who do not believe this is applicable to them to at least make an attempt to demonstrate to folks like me why they don’t.

No, I think that the existence of God is of fundamental importance in exploring human interactions that come into conflict over value judgments.

And in all the ways that I have noted.

But thanks for the advice.

It amounts to this :

If you think that a functioning car is good then there is a way to build it. If you think that a functioning car is not good, then there are ways to build that non-functioning car.

If you think that 2+2=4 is a good answer, then 4 is the right answer. If you prefer that 2+2=5 then 5 is the right answer.

If you think truth is valuable, then you will pursue truth. If not then anything is “true” when you choose it to be true.

In other words, all facts, truth, knowledge is trumped by identity, value judgements and political economy. I see that as the natural consequence of your nihilistic philosophy. Truth and facts are essentially valueless or of equal value to falsehoods and lies. Their value comes from identity, value judgements and political economy. As I said before, a 1984 world.

It’s not that you are going say that there are no facts. But you might as well say it.

Or, re capitalism, you can note the manner in which folks like Marx and Engels imagined it coming into existence re the evolution of methods employed over the centuries by our species to provide us with means of producing basic necessities able to sustain our existence.

From their perspective, capitalism is replaced by socialism not because one or the other political economy is inherently more virtuous, but because historically/organically/“scientifically” one evolves from the other dialectically/materially.

You know, in theory. They don’t call them “left-Hegelians” for nothing.

Again, are you comparing mathematical truths with the alleged arguments/justifications embedded in the narratives of capitalists and socialists?

Note the particular context. What truths are you insisting are valuable? Are you or are you not then able to demonstrate that your moral narrative/political agenda is such that all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to embody them in turn?

And, indeed, if Mary believes that abortion is the political right of all women, and John believes that life is the natural right of all unborn, then for them that is true. And, most importantly, in believing it is true, their behaviors will become embedded in that assumption. And it is actual behaviors that precipitate consequences for others, right?

Then what? Well, from my frame of mind, we become entangled here in conflicting goods rooted largely in dasein and “resolved” by those with the political power to legislate a particular set of behaviors relating to unwanted pregnancies.

Now, what’s your frame of mind here? Are you or are you not a moral objectivist when the discussion comes up?

This is your own absurd rendition of my own take on all this. And all I can do is to wonder why [time and again] you allow yourself to be reduced down to it.

Now, I have my suspicions based on my history with objectivists over the years. But, sure, I’m [still] willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Well, it’s an absurd world so it would be pretty strange if I was not absurd.

I mean, what do you expect?

The existence of “the world” – of the “human condition” in it – is less absurd than profoundly, well, problematic. Why does anything exist at all? And why this particular existence and not another?

And who among us will go to the grave able to provide answers?

What absorbs my own attention however is the distinction between those things that appear to be true for all of us and those things that appear to be embodied more instead in dasein and conflicting goods.

Now, in a wholly determined universe that distinction would appear to be just an illusion. But if there is any capacity embodied in “I” to choose values and behaviors with some degree of autonomy, how close can we come here to an either/or moral/political narrative/agenda?

Only when objectivists of your ilk are able [effectively] to describe how your own conflicting interactions with others are not entangled in my dilemma, is there any hope at all of being able to yank myself up out of it in turn.

In other words, to embody what appears to be the only access to comfort and consolation in what appears to me to be an essentially absurd and meaningless existence that ends for all of eternity in oblivion.

Sans God, how is this even possible?

I could answer but the answers would mean nothing to you.

The only things which are true for all of us are unsaid and unthought.

Choose and the universe responds. That’s all.

There is one of your fundamental problems … you think that you need me to do something for you.

You can’t have comfort and consolation without God?
I don’t think that’s true.

No, my point is the extent to which your answers are able to be demonstrated as obligatory for all those who wish to be thought of as rational and [in some contexts] virtuous.

And how could that not revolve around an epistemological capacity to grasp both the ontological and the teleological meaning of Existence itself.

After all, each of us as individuals are able to think ourselves into believing an number of things that are profoundly meaningful to us. But when we choose to interact with others the behaviors that result from these beliefs can come into conflict. Then what?

Really, what could possibly be more abstract and abstruse than that?

Really, what could possibly be more abstract and abstruse than that?

It has considerably less to do with you personally than with those who embrace one or another interpretation of “objective morality” noting for me how it is “for all practical purposes” embodied in their interactions with others.

Of course you can. Still, on this side of the grave, that often revolves around a belief that this is embodied in choosing behaviors said to be in sync with one or another secular “script[ure]”. Call it, say, the Prismatic Syndrome.

And, in turn, you have to be able to accept the fact that sans God, “I” is almost certainly stripped of all consolation and comfort – when shuffling off this mortal coil – for all of eternity.

I would not insist that my answers are obligatory for anyone. Others are free to have different answers.

Then you have a conflict.

That’s fine.

Actually, this is practical and pragmatic. Whatever you do, you will get feedback from the universe.

I know that it’s not about me personally … you want someone/anyone outside of yourself to do something for you.

Well, in that case, you would seem to embrace my own frame of mind. This: that, in the is/ought world, answers are rooted in one or another rendition of “you’re right from your side, I’m right from mine”. In other words, with respect to those answers that cannot be demonstrated as true for all of us, they would seem to be rooted instead in a particular set of assumptions regarding human interactions that come into conflict over value judgments.

Is this the case? And, again, here, to the extent that it is not, we would need to bring our arguments down to earth – entangling them in a context we are all likely to be familiar with.

My point is always to make a distinction between those who, on the one hand, insist that moral and political conflicts can be resolved objectively when one becomes “one of us”, and those who, on the other hand, suggest that, in a No God world, answers here are rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Okay, I see what you mean. But my aim here is to shift the discussion from noting whatever it is that you do, to probing why you chose to do this and not something else. Is this predicated on a philosophically sound assessment of “how ought one to live?”, or is rooted more in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Yeah, yeah, I get this all the time. I’m a rather pathetic sort looking for someone to tell me how to live.

When, in fact, the life that I actually do live is bursting at the seams with all manner of satisfaction and fulfilment. It’s just that, given the hole I have dug for myself philosophically, my interactions with others become glumly entangled in my dilemma. I can’t just not believe “in my head” “here and now” that we live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that will all too soon devolve into oblivion.

Of course I’m on the hunt for a less debilitating frame of mind!

Well, no. These are several cases that come to mind:
“I’m right and you’re wrong.”

“I’m right and you’re right based on your assumptions which are right.”

“I’m right and the situation is unclear so it’s impossible or too difficult to determine whether you are right or wrong.”

“I’m right and I don’t care whether you are right or wrong.”

One thing to note is that you don’t need me to say that you are right. You can be wrong. It’s “allowed”.

I see you completely ignoring biology, instinct and common human needs as reasons for that “why?”. Instead you focus on the very narrow “here and now” of dasein.

Well, that’s great but you seem to be asking for help with “your dilemma”. When you are offered help, you ignore it.
And you keep asking for somebody to describe something for you : “Only when objectivists of your ilk are able [effectively] to describe how your own conflicting interactions with others are not entangled in my dilemma, is there any hope at all of being able to yank myself up out of it in turn.”

People tell you why they feel that they don’t have a dilemma but you seem to reject it as “their answer”, a product of their intellectual contraptions, which is not applicable or “satisfactory” for you. I don’t see how it could ever be otherwise. That response is built-in to your dilemma. Asking other people for an argument to get you out of your dilemma will never be a solution to your dilemma.

Either you can’t see that or your reason for asking is to pull others into your dilemma.

I have no desire or reason to join you in the hole.