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.
The important point for you being that you manage to escape tumbling down into the hole yourself.
I don’t care if there are objective morals 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.
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.
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.
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?
So, what do you do? Provide us with yet another – even more protracted – “general description”:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
Why don’t you give it a go yourself.