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.
I should clarify. It’s not that I don’t care what the objective morals are, if they are. It’s that that does not even necessarily solve the problem. It’s harder than that. God tells me what is good. What if I don’t like it? Science tells me what to do. What if my gut keeps saying, no, that is horrible? You seem to be yearning to not have responsibility for your choices. You seem to yearn for a God or other absolute source of truth to tell you what to do. That seems very empty to me, but I do sympathize, it is not easy having to accept who you are.
It’s a straight recognition that as soon as a person thinks, he is using a map to interact with the external world. He has some choices about which map to use. He can change maps. Some maps work better than others in particular situations.
That’s the unique personal way that you “construe the meaning of dasein”. If other people don’t see things that way, then they don’t have your problem.
But try to explain it to you. I just tried to explain why determinism is useless as a philosophical approach to life and you didn’t get anything that I said.
I have tried to introduce many ideas which I think would be helpful to you, but to no avail.
An aspect of your hole is that you have no control over being in it and you can’t pull yourself out of it. A gratitude journal would demonstrate to you that you can change your thinking, that you are not trapped in the hole, that you have some control.
Of course, you keep ‘proving’ that you are trapped by refusing to try any way of getting out.
I have tried to discuss it “substantively” in this thread.
I don’t rule this out. It is a possible motivation given the extent to which I will never fully grasp my own intentions. After all, are not the components of my own psychology not also embedded existentially in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein? How could I ever possibly unravel the thousands upon thousands of experiences that I have had in order to determine how and why I am “here and now” predisposed to think, feel and act as I do.
Of course that is also applicable to everyone else in turn.
And [as always] I readily admit that we may well not live in an essentially absurd and meaning world in which “I” topples over into the abyss for all of eternity.
But “I” can only be convinced of this or not.
Okay, but when you choose to interact with others you will find that most folks in fact do. And they will judge your own behaviors accordingly.
I see the either/or world as one in which something either can be demonstrated as true for all of us or it cannot. Providing of course we don’t go so far out on the metaphysical limb – the quantum limb? – that nothing can ever really be demonstrated definitively.
In the is/ought world however my own rendition of dasein construes human interactions as a clash between existential contraptions. Subjective/subjunctive “vantage points” revolving around particular sets of political prejudices out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially.
So, what do you do? Provide us with yet another – even more protracted – “general description”:
Yes, this…
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.
…is in my head. But the words are also anchored to a set of actual experiences such that I am able to describe the evolution of this particular value judgment of mine.
I merely suggest that this “existential trajectory” is applicable to all other conflicting goods as well.
You will either appraoch your own value judgments in this manner or you won’t.
You claim that you are “constituted” to like or dislike certain things. Okay, so how did you acquire this “constitution” in a way that is very much different from the manner in which I construe my own likes and dislikes? Rooted in dasein above. And what happens when you bump into others who are “constituted” to like what you dislike and dislike what you like. You tell them you don’t care about objective morality…that you are what you are. And then they tell you that they do care about it…and that you ought to be the way they are.
Let’s call this, say, the real world.
Again: you will either bring this accusation down out of the clouds and explore it with me pertaining to a particular context or you won’t.
Note the manner in which, relating to an experience that you had involving conflicting goods, my description of dasein is clearly not a description of you.
Do you hate it because all reasonable and virtuous men and women are – philosophically? – obligated to hate it, or is your reaction here embedded more in that “constituted” self you carry around with you in order to rationalize the choices that you make?
From my frame of mind, your frame of mind is just another rendition of dasein. Dasein “constituted” as it were.
Okay, bring this particular epistemological contraption “out into the world”. As it pertains to an experience from your own life. I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to convey here about being “constituted” so as to “accept oneself and ones desires and caring and love in this world”.
I’ll leave this to others to deconstruct. And then to reconstruct the point they imagine you are trying to convey here by noting examples of doing something “loving” out in their own particular world.
The point though is that while the problem may well persist at least the objectivists are able to demonstrate to others that, if they wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings, there are in fact right and wrong behaviors in which to choose.
Either derived from an extant God or an extant Reason.
And the point out in the real world is that if you choose to act contrary to the objective truth there may well be negative consequences imposed on you. You get punished.
And since it has been clearly demonstrated that what you did is objectively immoral, how hollow might your protestations be construed?
Your responsibility then is to acknowledge this and either choose or not choose to be a contrarian.
[b]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.[/b]
The maps that the doctors use revolve around what either can or cannot be known about human biology – as that relates to sexuality, pregnancy and abortion.
Some maps here are clearly more accurate than others.
But when the discussion shifts to moral calculations involving sexual relationships and dealing with the consequences of them, the maps take us in many different and often conflicting directions.
Exactly! So, if I do perceive it as a problem, all I can do is to go in search of those folks who do not.
But if determinism is in fact the way of the world how is your explanation and my reation to it, not only as they ever could have been?
How could I not not get anything you said?
Your idea seems to revolve around the assumption that how you think and feel about something like Communism is how others should think and feel about it in turn. Otherwise [it would seem] what they are thinking and feeling about it is wrong.
Look, I can understand how keeping this journal might lighten the load insofar as I am down in the hole but I’ve come up with all these things that I am still grateful for. But I am no less down in the hole. At least as it pertains to my own nihilistic assesment of moral narratives and political agendas.
All I can do [it would seem] is to go in search of those who were also down in this hole; and then after employing the journal technique changed their thinking and managed to yank themselves up out of it.
And, come on, there are hundreds upon hundreds of self-help techniques, life style changes, religious dogmas, spititual journeys, politcal spiels etc., which promise you one or another rendition of spiritual enlightenment or salvation.
But only those who were down in the hole that I am in and managed to yank themselves up by using one of these contraptions are likely to convince me that I can do the same. But even then I will expect them to react in an intelligent and challenging manner to the components of my own frame of mind.
Until one of us is equipped intellectually to articulate an argument that is able to be demonstrated as the optimal or the only rational way in which to construe and to react to these relationships, we are stuck here with “you’re right from your side and I’m right from mine.”
On the other hand, it would seem rather silly for one doctor to argue that an abortion is best performed by going up through the vagina while the other insists it is best performed by going down through the nose. And both of them falling back on “you’re right from your side and I’m right from mine”.
Nope. All I can do is to note the actual existential trajectory of my own views on abortion above, and to ask others to do the same regarding a value judgment near and dear to them.
And then let folks decide for themselves which seems most reasonable.
But one thing I have not done of late is to insist that mine is in fact the obligatory stance that all rational men and women are obligated to take.
But you don’t listen to what they say or try what they suggest.
Your typical reactions are
Iambig can’t do it
it’s not going to work for Iambig
and
it only works if Iambig thinks as the other person and Iambig refuses to do so
Typical.
News for you … if you are to get out of the hole, you have to think differently from how you are now thinking.
That’s your evaluation before you make any effort. You already predict the results without raising a finger.
Why would you do that when you already know that it won’t work for you?
Let me guess … you won’t try any of them.
That’s like saying that only a doctor who cured himself of a disease can cure you of the same disease. You won’t go to a doctor who never had the disease.
And the people who are trying to help you out are not doing that?
I can understand this up to a point, sure. But can I ever fully understand it?
Think of all the hundreds upon hundreds of experiences you had growing up that 1] you have long since forgotten and/or 2] you had little or no control over.
This then gets all tangled up in the subconscious and the unconscious mind.
I recall once as a boy being told by relatives in a context that is totally obscure to me now that I reminded them so much of my father. So, clearly, my father was instrumental in shaping and molding “I” up to that point. But how? How would “I” had been different had I another father? Re, for example, the film Toto Le Hero.
There are so many facets of who you think you are today that are ineffably and inextricably buried in all of the complex interactions you had with others on that profoundly problematic sojourn from the cradle to the “here and now”.
This is meant only to convey that which I do recall regarding the evolution of a particular value judgment of mine and the manner in which my thinking over the years is clearly embedded in a particular set of experiences.
Had those experiences been very different how might this have predisposed me to think about it in another way?
In other words, how do philosophers take that into account when attempting to pin down the optimal or the most rational frame of mind regarding any particular value judgment. As that becomes intertwined in actual conflicting human behaviors.
What of your own existential sojourn here? Or are you still insisting that the manner in which you construe Communism has in fact already succeeded in transcending the points I raise here.
It means the ambivalence embedded in my reaction to the conflicting goods subscribed to by “sides” in the abortion wars, is applicable in turn to all of the other moral and political conflagrations that pop up in the various forums here. Or on the news.
And that this is just a personal opinion of mine embedded in the existential contraption construed as “I” interacting with others out in a world awash in contingency chance and change.
As opposed to those who insist that the manner in which they have come to understand the difference between right and wrong behaviors does in fact reflect the optimal or the only rational frame of mind.
That’s your translation. But my translation of your translation is more along the lines of…
“If you did listen to what they said, then you would agree with what they said.”
Indeed, from my own experiences over the years, that is the first rule of “objectivist club”.
As I noted above, they are either able to convince me that their own particular self-help method is worth trying or they are not.
Just as I ask them to bring their own particular objectivist narrative out into the world of conflicting behaviors; and then to note how they are not down in the hole that I am in. They are either convinced this is worth trying or they are not.
Where the lines are drawn in the “how ought I to live?” world are always going to be problematic.
After all, look what is at stake: psychological equillibrium and emotional equanimity. Comfort and consolation.
No, I have to be convinced that how others think is more constructive. Sure, if you reconfigured your argument and finally convinced me that how you think about Communism is the way I [and all other rational men and women] ought to think about it then, with regard to that particular set of conflicting goods, I’m up out of the hole. And it may well work for all the others too.
But what [in my view] you won’t acknolwedge is the extent to which you really do insist that those who don’t react to Communism as you do are just plain wrong.
What [I surmise] disturbs folks like you and folks who embrace Communism wholeheartedly, is a frame of mind [mine] that suggests there may well be no way in which to resolve this one way or the other. That, using components of both socialism and capitalism, the best of all possible worlds might be reflected instead in moderation, negotiation and compromise. Which, for example, in the welfare state, it is. For all practical purposes.
Clearly then if it can be asserted that I am the problem here then this certainly lets you off the hook. You can embrace your tirade against Communism while blaming those who don’t think the same way about it as not really making any effort to.
That is the psychology of objectivism!
Not until I am convinced to. But given all the moral narratives and political agendas I have abandoned over the years, I sure tried some of them that worked. Until they stopped working.
Why don’t you note in turn all of the arguments from others that you came to subscribe to – techniques and methodologies that changed your thinking and your behaviors over the years.
Diseases are embedded in human biology. A doctor is either able to demonstrate that she had a disease in which she was able to cure herself or she can’t.
But how do doctors who refuse to do abortions on moral grounds demonstrate to doctors that do perform them that they ought not to?
Not when they refuse by and large to take their own moral narratives out into the world of actual conflicting goods.
The components of moral nihilism revolve around the seeming fact that philosophers are not able to devise arguments that do in fact resolve conflagrations that have plagued the species going back now thousands of years.
Or, if particular objectivists argue that they have, then let them bring the components of their own assessments “down to earth”.
Of course you and others will insist that in fact you and they already have. But I am either convinced of this or I’m not. I merely acknowledge that just because I am not does not mean that this settles it.
My point is quite the opposite. That because doctors are educated sufficiently to grasp human biology with considerable sophistication there are facts and procedures that can be demonstrated to be true objectively for all of us.
No rational doctor would insist that going down through the nose is the most effective way in which to abort a baby.
But which medical professionals are able to demonstrate when, from the point of conception to the actual birth, this new life is in fact a human baby? A baby that ought not to be killed?
Which philosophers are?
From my way of thinking this clearly is an important distinction to make. Either a woman is pregnant or she is not. Either she wants the baby or she does not. Either she chooses an abortion or she does not.
But ought she to choose an abortion? Is that the right or the wrong thing to do for those who wish to construe themselves as rational and virtuous human beings?
