What is Dasein?

Good by definition embodies and manifests the desirable. By definition, everyone has to be good.
If nobody was good, only the undesirable gets manifested. The reason I state it is true by definition is because the undesirable is by definition what nobody wants.

That says that there is one defined ‘good’ and that the multiple actions and states of living can be reduced to that one ‘good’. But that’s too simple.

For example, someone desires to be physically powerful. If he uses that physical power against others, then he may be called evil.

But he is unlikely to use that physical power against all people. In fact, he may use it to help some people and hurt other people. Therefore some may consider him good.

And physical power is not manifested at all times. So when he is not using it, is he good or bad?

When “summed up” is he good or bad?

Is ‘good’ what you think of yourself or what others think of you? Who evaluates?

If someone has the power to do it, they would put us all into our own individually hallucinated realities based upon our desire, while making it impossible to hurt other beings, besides how we may desire to hurt ourselves.

Sure, medical science has had its own learning curve down through the centuries. There may well have once been doctors who argued for the nose as the starting point regarding any rational abortion procedure.

You got me.

Reduced to a retort? Again? I’ll chalk it all up to a particularly shitty mood that you are in. Again.

And, no, I don’t enjoy being in the hole at all. For example, even my reaction to Trumpworld is brutally sucked down into it.

On the other hand, forever is more or less right around the corner now.

I’m guessing it will be oblivion.

And how on earth might one go about actually demonstrating this? Such that everyone in the entire universe deemed both rational and virtuous would concur?

True enough. Some people do like them, some people don’t. Then what?

Or suppose someone came along and insisted that all rational men and women are obligated to like them. Then what?

Or suppose someone came along and argued that all men and women were morally obligated to eat them. Then what?

Okay, so how would philosophers go about establishing what all rational moms and dads are obligated to want…are obligated to do?

Personally. That’s my point.

In other words, to what extent do your value judgments today revolve around a particular set of experiences, relationships, sources of information and knowledge etc., accumulated out in a particular world. Yours.

Or, instead, to what extent can philosophers account for all of the unimaginably vast and varied experiences, relationships, sets of ideas etc., that millions upon millions of individuals may have come to embody in order demonstrate the optimal or the only rational assessment available to those who wish to be deemed here as virtuous human beings.

Are you still here? :wink:

Really, is this a serious philosophical question?

And where is the the most serious philosophical answer to be found?

To be found somewhere in the arguments here perhaps: google.com/search?ei=y1fvWo … Ix5dDnqtrM

And how on earth would I even begin to defend the points I raise about dasein as the optimal frame of mind?

My first theorem about objective morality is true by definition. To make the statement “there is no morality” requires moral impetus, namely, that you thought it good to make the statement. Now, I’ve been raising the point for years, that self contradiction is an ornament males use to attract females in the species. It is not surprising that lots of males have very intricate ornaments of self contradiction; the reason being, if you can contradict YOURSELF and still be ALIVE, it appears to the brain that such a being has supernatural powers, that they are God.

Not only can I account for what is the proof that morality is objective, I can even calculate for people who use ornaments of self refutation (denying the argument).

Part of the reason abortion is such a testy subject for people emotionally is because, when you pick a crowd, you’re implying with infallible logic that they shouldn’t have been born; even touching upon this subject gets people very emotionally intense.

I’ll remove that tension between each other by stating matter of factly, that if this world was a better place, NONE of us would have been born. I’m not discriminating here to that regard for the living. That is an existential burden we all share, the only way to combat it is to solve for realities where everyone gets everything they want without hurting anyone.

You asked: what’s my moral that all people can agree upon? Just that: everyone getting everything they want without hurting anyone.

That is as axiomatic as: it takes a moral being to state morality is false, fake.

Okay, then I will rephrase it. You said your piece and I said my piece. I’m not interested in going over the same ground. There is nothing more that needs to be posted.

If you won’t or can’t take any action to get out, then you might as well enjoy the hole. It’s not entirely without its positive points.

Summed up in song as : “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

Seems to be part of the investigation of life, so it’s a philosophical question.

There are answers in various places.

There are some of them. That wasn’t hard.

Agreeing on it is one thing, bringing it about in the world of actual conflicting human interactions…?

Why on earth are men and women, inhabiting the planet now for thousands of years, still unable to achieve this lofty goal? Why, instead, are there still countless moral and political conflgrations revolving around conflicting goods?

Could it be that what some want still today comes into conflict with what others want? Could it be that in getting what some want it necessarily involves hurting others.

Again: Mary wants to abort her “clump of cells”. John wants her to give birth to his “baby”.

So, here, by definition, axiomatically, what constitutes an objective moral solution?

And how are mere mortals able to realistically transcend the arguments I raise above regarding the existential – lived – relationship between identity, value judgments and political economy?

You argue that…

All I can do yet again is to imagine you outside a Planned Parenthood clinic and, in the midst of a tumultuous clash between fiercely pro-life and fiercely pro-choice advocates, pointing this out to them.

Succeeding in making a clear distinction between their emotional and intellectual reactions. Succeeding such that the manner in which I construe the role of dasein in their reactions is handily subsumed in the manner in which “in your head” you imagine a world where everyone does get what they want without hurting anyone.

Assuming of course I am able to understand your point at all in a world where, “I’m saying what I think I mean and you’re hearing what you think I’m saying”.

I never tire of going over the same ground here myself. Not regarding that which I construe to be [by far] the most important philosophical question of all: How ought one to live?

As a Christian? As an Objectivist? As a Marxist? As a socialist? As a social democrat? As a liberal? As an existentialist? As a nihilist?

That’s been my own particular path. And, with so much at stake [both before and after the grave], I don’t imagine I will ever stop asking it. Or asking others for their own answers.

Here, of course, you have no idea what particular options are available to me. There’s that ever widening gap between what I’d like to do and what I am actually able to. Besides, there are literally hundreds upon hundreds of folks out there all clamoring to insist that you do what they do.

Then the part where “out in the world” they intertwine the components of their own success stories in the components of mine. And note how with respect to the existential relationship between identity, value judgments and political economy, they are not in the hole I’m in.

I’m just grappling to understand how that might be done — given the manner in which I have managed to convince myself that [philosophically or otherwise] it doesn’t seem really possible at all.

As a “general description” that can be a comforting option indeed. Until you start in on who there actually is to love under what set of circumstances given the options that are realistically available to you. And [of course] the reactions of others less inclined to see the circumstances as you do.

Let alone imagining “serious philosophers” grappling with it such that “technically” a frame of mind can be attained said to be the obligation of all rational people to embrace. If only theoretically.

And, from my point of view, in a No God world.

I agree. My point was more to suggest there are folks who never seem inclined to take it out that far. Let alone grappling with the implications of their own behaviors if there really is nothing at all in the universe other than matter toppling over onto other matter only as it ever could have.

Though, let’s face it, for some this might be comforting indeed.

No, the hard part revolves around reading the arguments and then deciding if what you decided is only ever as you could have decided.

That part seems pretty easy as well.

Yeah, we noticed.

I don’t need to know. There are positive points to it no matter what your current status or options.

:-k Unless you’re a hermit, there is someone to love.

Just want to emphasize the context.

The most important thing for him to know, according to him, is: how ought he live?

This is the core question related to morals, morals generally being rules for how one relates to other people.

When you suggest and others have suggested certain practical moves out of the hole, he makes it seem like there are no options for love. Then one wonders what important answers he needs around how to live - something you may be getting at when you mention the hermit.

He does not like being in his hole but is not willing to take practical research validated steps to move out from the hole. He is also cut off it seems from any person to potentially love - even though people do develop great affection over the internet and Skype is probably an option even if he is bedridden. Certainly contact over the internet is possible, given the number of posts we are looking at.

He could takes steps to minimize the harsh emotional aspects of the hole AND maintain his interest in solving the issue of conflicting goods. These two processes are not mutually exclusive.

Unless he has the intuition that they are, for him.

That he might lose interest in presenting this issue if he had a social life. At least it seems like he is claiming he does not have one.

And suddenly it seems like an issue of self-care conflated with, yes, a real philosophical conundrum. And that actually hits me as sad this time.

Enjoy the hole. I understood when you said that to him.

But maybe enjoy is not quite the right word.

I would guess most of us could come up with things that hurt us that we cling to for a variety of reasons, where even feeling better seems like some betrayal of an ideal or a giving in. I really don’t know.

It comes off as a rejection of life.

I don’t really believe in objective morals. I do find that I am a kind of social mammal. Some social mammals will rescue injured or trapped animals of other species. I don’t think they are objectivists.

But what do you do when the trapped animal want to remain stuck in the mudhole? And not only that, accuses all comers as being too abstract. Might be time to pull back your trunk and stop trying to help.

I’m always surprised/amused when he says that. He never really discusses the question. He doesn’t analyze it. Maybe that’s because the answer is obvious.

You ought to live in a way that makes you feel good.

That’s the only answer that fits in with his nihilist/dasein philosophy.

If someone suggests an answer, then Iambig would have to try it in order to determine if it is right for Iambig. What more could there be to it?

In a recent post, he indicated that his current life is fine. (I don’t remember the exact phrase that he used and I can’t find the post.)
I doubt that he is completely cut off but who knows. He probably would not discuss it, if asked.

“Accept” the hole.

He seems like a man always dissatisfied with “what is”.

He likes to talk and he wants to have someone to talk to. Talking about the mudhole is more important that trying to escape.

Well then, sure, that settles it.

Either that or it is settled for you only because there was never any possibility of it not being settled for you. Just as there was never any possibility of my not choosing to point this out to you.

Now we only have to demonstrate why this is not really true at all.

You first.

Good catch.

I’m not arguing there are not positive points to it. I am pointing out that from my frame of mind it does little or nothing to yank me up out of the hole I’m in. Given the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above…given the manner in which I construe human behaviors that come into conflict in the is/ought world.

Someone could utilize it while ensconced in that dreaded nightmare perceived by some to be either Communism or capitalism. But that doesn’t appear to resolve the conflicting goods here. Other than as a manifestion of daseins interacting out in a particular world while experiencing it in a particular way. In other words, being predisposed existentially to go down particular political paths.

Of course we all know the manner in which you resolve it, don’t we?

How then are our own individual renditions of love not also embedded in dasein? We all come into this world hard-wired biologically to both receive and to give love. But look at the countless historical, cultural and experiential embodiments of it. Not unlike hate for that matter.

If not everyone loves to hate Communists as you do, sure, they can find others to love to hate. But how is that in turn not embedded in dasein? Is there a philosophical assessment that captures who or what we ought to love [or hate] essentially, objectively, universally?

Indeed, ought we to love or to hate Donald Trump?

How on earth would that not be the embodiment of dasein?

Shall we cue the liberals and the conservatives? In order to settle it once and for all?