What is Dasein?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACUY_66IdfM[/youtube]

Awe. I feel as though I’ll truly know Dasein when this entire thread is thrown into the final Re: Post.

But in context above, where the gratitude meditation was brought in by Phyllo, it had to do with the practical issue of choosing thoughts that work for you. You asked for how this could work for him, he mentioned the journals. Now it might have made you happier if he had said specifically what it did for him, but there is research that shows that doing this works and that one can consciously change thoughts over time.

How is this relevant to your topic?

Well, you refer to where you are as a hole. That metaphor tends to mean, between humans, a place with negative aspects, unpleasant ones. So you have been bringing in emotions through that. You have also talked about how objectivists- that is anyone who disagrees with you, whether they are objectivists or not - are afraid when heading to your hole via your powerful rhetoric. In this context, showing that there is a way out of the hole, one that neither contradicts your non-objectivism nor contradicts objectivism in general, is relevant to the context you have presented the issue.

IOW you can either try to show that this way of getting out of the hole does not work OR you should, it seems to me, never again mention the hole and that you’d want to get out of it AS IF the only way out is to have your dilemma of contrasting goods solved. You don’t need to give up the issue of conflicting goods and that conundrum, but you can stop presenting the issue in the context of the hold, other people’s fears, your bravery for staying in the hole and facing it and so on.

If you try the gratitude journal for a significant amount of time - or any of a bunch of other approaches, including ones by non-objectivist buddhists, say - and you still find yourself in an emotional hole, you could ask for more help with that, but it is a separate issue.

The whole brave nihilist in the hole where others fear to tread self-presentation game is a farce you can drop. One does not have to be in the hole, even if one does not solve that conundrum, though you could keep it up for intellectual reasons, never fear.

I agree this may well be the case. But it is all no less situated in a particular set of experiences that each individual will in turn come to interpret/embody in his or her own unique way.

And then I come back to this:

…what does [gratitude journaling] really have to do with the relationship between the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, as that relates to the hole I am in when confronting conflicting goods?

Cite examples from your own life here.

Perhaps. But I suspect the baby would still be dead. And I suspect the relationship would still have imploded because of this. But, sure, who really knows how things might have been different had they employed this tool.

How about this:

You take this suggestion to the Society, Government, and Economics board. You try to convice Peter Kropotkin and Uccisore [who is back] to give it a go. Then, after a few weeks, we calibrate any differences in their exchanges with others.

No, probably not. But how on earth would I even begin to explain that to you? How would I manage to convey all of the countless existential variables over the years that have come together to predispose me here and now to suspect that it would not be an effective tool for me. Given the points that I raise regarding dasein on this thread.

On the other hand, when you are able to note the manner in which this tool has succeeded in keeping you out of the hole I’m in…

What we need here is someone sufficiently perceptive enough to determine whether you misconstrue me more or less than I misconstrue you.

The thing about determinism is that it seems clearly to be in the realm of what we call an “antinomy”: “a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox.”

Right?

What’s particularly strange here for me is that this seems to be an issue that transcends dasein…and yet is still not able to be pinned down as either this or that.

Again, this falls into the gap between those things that we think we know here and now and all that would need to be known in order to pin down Existence itself ontologically.

Cue Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”.

Or, with God – or with something analogous in nature – teleologically?

It just seems reasonable to me that moral nihilists [narcissists, sociopaths, global capitalists etc.] would have more options available to them because they don’t have to calculate each behavior as either the right thing or the wrong thing to do.

They simply ask themselves, “is this what I want here and now”? And then, in acknowledging that others may well not share in or tolerate their answers, calculating the odds of getting caught and punished.

The thing about determinism is that it’s not useful when making decisions. It’s one of those things that seems useful when looking back but only to rationalize actions.

Superficially that seems to be true but is it true? A moral nihilist will reject options which are based on objective morality or inherent morality. For example, someone who believes that “man is inherently honorable”, can choose an action which relies on that belief. A moral nihilist would not choose it.
If one has “faith in God” then that opens up all sorts of possibilities, some of which are completely unsupported by empirical evidence or logical reasoning. Very risky actions or “unrewarding” actions become valid options.

Intuitively, I think the non-nihilist has more choices or he has a richer set of choices even it there are fewer in number.

Of course, I can’t demonstrate it. :smiley:

One can propose it.
They can choose whether or not they want to try it.

But neither of them thinks that he has a problem. Right? Why would they be receptive to it?

OTOH, you seem to be asking for help. Aren’t you?

It’s not that difficult to explain or understand. You won’t try it for several possible reasons …

  • you don’t think that it will work for you, in spite of the fact that scientific studies have shown it to be effective.

  • you don’t really want to change your thinking. You derive some security, comfort, pleasure or satisfaction from your current thinking.

  • it’s too much effort for you.

It keeps me out of the hole because it shows me that I have control over my thoughts and my life. When I have adopted a poor intellectual contraption then I can drop it and pick up another one. I’m not helpless. I’m not trapped.

It has to do with value judgments, indications of emotional states indicated by the word ‘hole’. You want out of a hole, here’s a way out backed by science. This doesn’t mean it has solved the conflicting goods conundrum, but you could pursue answers to that SIMULTANEOUSLY with coming out of the hole. It might be an intellectual issue, but no longer the emotionally charged one.

I haven’t kept a gratitude journal, but I have shifted focus away from mental issues and fears onto other things and this minimized the emotional holes, if not solving the conundrums. Ship of Thebes type persistence of self through time really bothered me, especially when I was younger. Instead of feeding the hole - in trying to find some way that my self must necessarily continue through time despite material replacement- I engaged with life. The issue is still there, though I am not longer a materialist, which I consider a meaningless term. I cannot demonstrate to others that there must be a persistent self, however once I put an emphasis on engaging with life, rather than mulling over something I could not solve then and which scared me, I was no longer in a hole.

If you want there to not be a hole, you might try some form of engaging with life. Mine focused more on desires and trying to find a way to do things I wanted to do. The gratitude journal is a reframing and focusing on specific aspects of life that lead to a sense of well being. Both are relational - as my desires involved other people and positive relations.

You might find that the conundrum can be come at in new ways when you are not in the hole. You might find that it is still a conundrum but you are not in the hole and life is better. You might even find, as I did, that the obsession with the conundrum is an avoidance. This does not mean it is unimportant, but your motivation for focusing on it this way, may well be about or in large part about something else.

Well, of course we don’t know what fictional people would have experienced. It amazes me what you think down to earth talk is.

Maybe you like the hole. Or maybe the conundrum gives an excuse not to engage with life, and this is appealing for all the reasons addictions are appealing.

That’s your thing. The thing of others is that there was never any possibilty that you either could or would not choose these words to encompass it.

My thing is that I do not seem to have the capacity to resolve these enigmatic human interactions definitively.

The mystery is still mind as matter…matter as mind. And how to explain the two intertwined in whatever the nature of existence itself is.

The idea that somehow a “compatibility” exists here has never been something I have ever really been able to fully grasp.

If you invent or build a mechanical contraption to execute prisoners and it functions properly then all of the components in the contraption interact as so many dominos toppling over onto each other from beginning to end. The contraption itself is “mindless”.

Now, the individual who invented this contraption and the individual who constructed it are said to be “mindful”. They are argued to have autonomously chosen a sequence of behaviors that the contraption itself is completely oblivious to. But if the immutable laws of matter are such that there was never any possibility of their choosing any other sequence of behaviors, how are they really any different from the contraption itself? Other then in speculating that the mind is capable of believing that it “freely chose” to behave as it did. The illusion of autonomy.

How are we not just one more of nature’s contraptions?

How superficial is it to those who own and operate the global economy? To those who have the political and economic power to sustain the following global demographics: globalissues.org/article/26/ … -and-stats

How superficial is it to those who are thumped by the sociopaths and the narcissists day after day after day?

They interact with others only insofar as it sustains the interest of…

1] me
2] myself
3] I

Moral nihilists are not unlike the rest of us. Their individual motivations and intentions are often extremely complex. Rooted partly in a calculated consideration of good and bad behaviors, and partly in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above.

And, as always, I’m less interested in what others claim to believe and more in what they can demonstrate to me as that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe.

Otherwise, claiming to believe something like “morality is inherently objective” is as far as they need go.

Again, bring this down to earth. Suggest a context in which both the nihilist and the non-nihilist entertain possible behavioral choices. If the nihilist is not bound by one or another moral obligation embedded in one or another theistic/atheistic political agenda, how could she not but have more options available to her?

I may simply be misunderstanding you here.

When “others” are able to tell me what I will write before I write it, then I will be impressed. I bet that they can’t even say what they themselves will write before they write it.

I’'m not saying that we are not “nature’s contraptions”. I’m saying whether we are or we are not, is irrelevant to living.

Let’s just agree that you didn’t understand my point.

Every approach to life is going to put some options on the table and also to take some options off the table.

It’s not clear what the option count would be when comparing a nihilist to a non-nihilist. It’s not clear that more options are necessarily better. Quality of options seems to be an important factor.

Then we understand the meaning of an intellectual contraption differently.

From my perspective an intellectual contraption is basically a bunch of words defining and defending another bunch of words in a “general description” of human interactions out in the is/ought world. As that pertains [on this thread] to the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

The words don’t really make any reference to a context in which the meaning can be explored more substantively.

Let’s imagine a context then in which a moral nihilist calculates his behaviors. As opposed to someone who has convinced herself that in any particular context there is a right way in which to behave and a wrong way. If one wishes to be thought of as a rational and virtuous human being.

You choose the context.

It seems reasonable to me that the moral nihilists can rationalize any number of behaviors not available to the moral objectivists. The behaviors only have to secure and then sustain whatever happens to be construed as in the moral nihilists best interests “here and now”.

But, sure, I’ll be the first to admit I may well be thinking this through incorrectly. And that an effective argument from someone may well nudge me in another direction in turn. But even if it does that doesn’t necessarily mean it is either the optimal or the only rational frame of mind. How on earth might that be demonstrated?

To a determinist there should be no difference in terms of options. This should not even need to be pointed out. How the individual thinks about what she is compelled to choose might vary between the two, but each was going to do precisely what each did, all the epiphenomenal static notwithstanding.

It would appear that all thoughts are intellectual contraptions. All thoughts are based on words and general descriptions.

What sort of thinking would be the exception? I can’t think of anything.

Again, as I noted above, …what does [gratitude journaling] really have to do with the relationship between the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, as that relates to the hole I am in when confronting conflicting goods?

Only when we bring the metaphor out into the world and discuss it “in context” are we likely to make this particular “general description” of yours any clearer. Re my “abortion trajectory” above [applicable to me regarding all other conflicting goods], I’ve explained the manner in which I perceive myself as being down in a hole.

How then do you perceive yourself otherwise? Out in the is/ought world embedded in your own conflicted interactions with others.

As I noted to Phyllo above:

No, probably not. But how on earth would I even begin to explain that to you? How would I manage to convey all of the countless existential variables over the years that have come together to predispose me here and now to suspect that it would not be an effective tool for me. Given the points that I raise regarding dasein on this thread.

Sure, if it works for others, fine. And I certainly believe that it could. I just don’t think that “here and now” it would work for me. And, after all, there have been dozens and dozens of such “self-help” devices show up on the best seller lists over the years. They work for some and not for others. But each of us as individuals “in the moment” are going to make an assessment as to whether they think it might work for them.

And how would that not clearly be an existential contraption rooted in dasein?

Man, if you think that I am boasting because I believe we live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that ends for all eternity in oblivion then I have no illusions about changing your mind.

The important point for you being that you manage to escape tumbling down into the hole yourself.

But until you are willing to bring your “general descriptions” above down to earth, I doubt that I will ever truly understand what unfolds “in your head” when you yourself are faced with an existential crisis revolving around the question most near and dear to me in these discussions: How ought one to live?

  1. I don’t think you are boasting about your belief, I think you are boasting that in comparison with objectivists you feel your fear, while they run away. YOu may not be conscious of how you are a) claiming to be psychic there and b) complimenting your own bravery…but there it is.

I don’t care if there are objective morals or not. There are other holes that have caused a great deal of pain, but that one does not. You see the world in binary terms. If someone disagrees with you about something they are an objectivist.

Seriously, you cannot understand things repeated to you in a variety of different forms. I care about people and this motivates my actions. Empathy affects the way I behave and make decisions. But I do not think there are objective values nor do I assert there are not.

Look at the abstract ‘general description’ of the issue you make ‘How ought one to live?’ some abstract universal person out of context. Waht is your favorite issue? Abortion. I really doubt as the aging vet you are now, you are frozen, not knowing whether to get an abortion or suggest it to your girlfriend or daughter. It is just a nice abstract conundrum to throw at enemies. Chosen because it is one of the gnarliest. A weapon.

You have no idea what I have faced or experienced or how hard it is to live in a world where one is not up in one’s head trying to find some abstract ‘ought to’, but is on the ground every day feeling a lot of empathy. When I was a kid I decided that if there was a god, then that God would need to explain certain things. If God could not to my satisfaction, I would oppose God. And this came out of my anger at the way existence tortured and killed those I loved.

Get that? I don’t care what the objective morals are, if there are objective morals. I am constituted to dislike certain things. So even if I should meet a God who said, sure it’s a good thing, since I am God, for people to be tortured forever, I would not accept that. Not because I think I have objective morals that trump gods, but because that is what i am.

You word it precisely, perfectly correctly. You have a cowardly existential crisis ‘in your head’.

In your head. IN YOUR HEAD

All the while accusing others of being abstract.

And notice what you said, and then I will have no hope of convincing you.

What possible justification, either from empathy or morals would lead you to want to drag someone else into your heady abstract crisis? i mean, even if you are right. Or, perhaps especially if you are right.

Why hope for that with me or others?

Yes, I am sure that many people have trouble getting your mentalized position. I don’t have any trouble getting it.

My trouble is with your lack of empathy in what you do here and the lack of introspective insight you have about what you are doing. The death in life you carry out here while patting yourself on the back. Do I think this is objectively immoral? Nah, I simply hate it.

Does this mean I think you are objectively immoral? Nope and I don’t care. Maybe you are, but I don’t know that.

See if you have the ability to imagine the crisis that leads one to accept oneself and ones desires and caring and love in this world, as it is, and not stay up in my head blabbing on and on about an epistemological issue as you do. And you have the nerve to call others epistemologists.

Your like some guy getting frustrated trying to pick up a pen with his toes and failing over and over. Get up, use your hand, and do something loving. If you are not loving, then please continue being up in your head and impotent.

My point though is still the same. Even if they agree to try it and share their results with us…

…what does it really have to do with the relationship between the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, as that relates to the hole I am in when confronting conflicting goods?

How would this particular technique be relevant here? They will either go there or they won’t.

They would either be able to demonstrate to me how gratitude journals facilitated them in staying out of the hole or they wouldn’t. But even then one way or another does this necessarily establish it as an antidote — something to keep all rational and virtuous men and women from falling down into the hole?

And I’m asking less for help from them than for a narrative that might allow me to yank myself up out of it.

Really? So how come on thread after thread and post after post so many of us here seem unable to effectively explain that which seems reasonable to us?

Clearly, if I would just nod my head and embrace the points you raise regarding gratitude journaling, everything explained would be easily understood.

And, of course, the same with you finally grasping the existential nature of the hole I’m in.

Okay, but where are scientific studies that make a compelling connection between that and this: …what does [gratitude journaling] really have to do with the relationship between the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, as that relates to the hole I am in when confronting conflicting goods?

Obviously, we will have to agree to disagree about this. On the other hand, what could possibly be more comforting than to construe human moral and political interactions in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that, for “I”, ends for all eternity in oblivion.

Good for you then. You believe it. And that’s all it takes. And for many, many years I once took comfort in believing it too. I just can’t anymore.

Actually, value judgments and emotional states that I construe as being rooted existentially in dasein: An “I” embedded out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially; a world awash in contingency, chance and chance.

Bring your science out into a particular world. Speculate as to how it might reflect on a particular set of conflicting goods.

How exactly do you use science to keep youself out of the hole? Because short of “solving the conflicting goods conundrum”, we’re still stuck with either might makes right or moderation, negotiation and compromise. And please note for me a moral or political conflagration of late that is not emotionally charged. Emotions like thoughts are something we all come into the world equipped to embody. But how ought we to think, how ought we to feel about, say, aborting a human baby?

For that matter, how ought we to think, how ought we to feel about calling a human fetus a baby at all? What does science tell us is in fact true objectively here?

Note to others:

Once again I try to yank this sort of rumination out into the world that we live in. How, in his interactions with others in which conflicts arise as a result of conflicting vlaue judgments, is he not down in the hole that I am in?

How are individuals “engaging in life” not embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein out in the is/ought world? How would keeping a gratitude journal actually keep you out of the hole that I am in? Has anyone here accomplished this? Then let’s discuss it more substantively.

How about you, Phyllo?

As some here know, these are not fictional people at all. They were once close friends mine. Their relationship with each other and [over time] their relationship with me disintegrated over this dead baby. I bring it up over and again because this very real down to earth context was crucial, instrumental in the disintegration of my own objectivist frame of mind.

But that’s all embedded in the mystery [so far] of mind as matter itself. The immutable laws of matter are applicable to all matter or they are not. And mind is just another manifestation of matter in nature or it is not.

Dualism is in fact something that philosophers have struggled with now for millenia. Right?

Or think of dreams. I fall asleep and I have these [at times] extraordinary dream sequences. So, was I able to articulate what that sequence would be before I fell asleep?

Are you able to describe the dreams that you will have tonight?

It’s all simply mind-boggling because we can’t pin it down yet in any definitive manner. Or maybe it actually has been. But what counts is still whether or not you and I are privy to it. And the extent to which the explanation is something that all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe.

Whatever – ontologically, teleologically – that means.

What seems relevant to me is the extent to which what we choose to think and feel and do is within our capacity not to have chosen instead. If living is really beyond our control as autonomous beings, that puts a whole other spin on, among other things, this exchange that we are having.

Okay, but I can’t help but be intrigued by the manner in which you construe the existential realtionship between that tiny percentage of folks who do own and operate the global economy and the vast majority of folks who have virtually no say at in how it all unfolds.

Of course if we do live in a wholly determined universe this relationship is basically set in stone.

True, but if you are determined to opt only for that which you construe to be the right behavior, this seems more restrictive than the choices afforded those who calculate everything from day to day to day based on what “here and now” they feel will sustain only that which they desire for themselves. Deontology seems to broach and then sustain a one size fits all moral obligation for those who wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous.

But it still all comes down to the extent to which any of us really do have what is construed to be a “freedom of choice”.

Still, admittedly, the deeper I go into “grasping” this the more uncertain I seem to become about what really is rational here.

To the determinist what should or should be would seem to be wholly subsumed in only whatever could have been.

But, with respect to mind as matter and matter as mind, what on earth does that mean relating to the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein out in a world of conflicting goods embedded historically in one or another manifestation of political economy?

On the other hand, in discussing this [assuming some level of autonomy] how would we situate the meaning that we give to the words we use out in the world of conflicted human behaviors?

I really don’t get this point of view.

Two doctors can discuss abortion as a medical procedure in an intellectual contraption. They use words to define and defend other words in what may well be just a sequence of descriptions about abortion in general.

But if need be they can bring folks to any actual abortion they are performing and connect the dots between the words they use and the stuff that they are doing to a particular human fetus in a particular woman saddled with an unwanted pregnancy.

But what of an exchange between ethicists regarding the morality of aborting [killing] what many construe to be a wholly innocent human being? Sure, they too can go on and on discussing ethics technically, using the jargon of, among others, the epistemologists.

But sooner or later the technical talk will be embedded in an actual abortion in an actual existential context or it won’t be.

And, when it is, how is an argument formed such that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace it in much the same manner that all rational doctors are obligated to embrace the physical description of an abortion performing effectively as a medical procedure.

There’s a crucial distinction I see here that many whom I construe to be moral objectivists seemingly do not.

That’s the part I’d like to discuss here and now. As it pertains to the meaning I convey regarding dasein.