What is Dasein?

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?

As far as I’m concerned, " deciding if what you decided is only ever as you could have decided" is the action of one person and the decision is easy.

The way that you interpret it seem to be that “all reasonable men and women” must decide “what you decided is only as you could ever have decided”.

I see that as irrelevant and pointless. Not surprising that it appears to be a big problem.

As I pointed out, reading an argument is not going to yank you out of the hole. Unfortunately, that’s all there is in an internet forum and therefore I have tried to show you various ways to look at the issue in the hopes that one would jostle you into action.

Since you won’t or can’t take action, then there is little to do but continue to babble or simply stop.

What do “individual renditions” really have to do with it?

The quote says that you ought to accept what there is and make the best of it.

I don’t hate Communists at all. That’s your interpretation.
Communism has consistently failed. It typically descends into totalitarianism. Most Communists are idealists who close their eyes to the misery and failure. They are promoting it as “the next time it will be real communism” … perfect and without any problems. That’s naive and dangerous.

Again, Mary loved John. John loved Marry. They both loved me and I loved them in turn.

Then Mary got pregnant. Within a few months that loves was basically in tatters.

How then would one go about yanking the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above up out of this.

More to the point: When you are intertwined in a particular conflict revolving around conflicting goods, how, for all practical purposes, do you yank yourself up out of the hole?

Describe examples of this.

It would seem to me there are three options.

1] one of you is stronger then the other and can impose his own agenda
2] you both come to agree that there is an optimal moral solution
3] you both agree to moderate your own point of view, and begin negotiations in order to compromise your behaviors

And that’s not even counting the rather pervasive agendas [in the world today] of the narcissists and sociopaths who only see a hole when they can’t get what they deem to be in their own self-interest.

In the interim though, I’m still waiting for the manner in which you subsume dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in a description of your interactions with others that come to clash as a result of opposing value judgments.

Again, Phyllo merely subsumes the right thing to do in regards to things like Communism in a reflection of his own political prejudices.

How about you? What “for all practical purposes” works for you?

All I can do here is to note that which I pointed out to Phyllo above:

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 should do what they do.

Indeed, I have accumulated any number of distractions that serve me quite well: music, film, PBS, the Science Channel, my “signature” threads here at ILP, my virtual exchanges with folks online. I sure as shit don’t wallow in that hole! It’s just always there when I bump into conflicting goods.

Okay, if you don’t believe in objective morals [and presumably God] how then do you make that crucial distinction between your value judgments as the embodiment of dasein and the extent to which the tools of philosophy enable you to be more rather than less convinced that one rather than another behavior is the right thing to do? As a “social mammal”. Walk us through a particular reaction “in your head” when you bump into another with conflicting value judgments. And note how that is then translated into a working solution given a particular context.

This is so far removed from my actual frame of mind, I can only attribute it to the complex variables embedded in dasein when two individuals try to communicate how they think and feel about these things.

Okay, just out of curiosity, with respect to the question as it relates to one of your own answers, how do you go about discussing and analzying it.

When “I” am confronted with the question, “How ought one to live?” I am confronted in turn with the components of my own moral philosophy: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

And all I can do, to the best of my ability, is to explain what they have come to mean to me “here and now”; and to note how they have come [existentially] to impact the evolution of my own value judgments over the years.

And then to ask others to note how my own subjective narrative here is out of sync with theirs.

And then, together, ponder the extent to which philosophers might grapple with this “out in the world” of actual human interactions that do come into conflict over moral and political value judgments.

My own narrative however grapples with the manner in which “you” [as an existential contraption] become who you think you are out in a particular world living a particular life. And then in noting any number of contexts whereby that which makes one person feel good results in making another person feel bad.

Then what? You know, philosophically.

Well, some folks argue easily that it is only as they ever could have decided, while others argue easily that it isn’t.

There, that’s easily resolved.

No, the way I interpret it [rather ambivalently] is that I’m not really sure if all reasonable men and women are free to decide how to decide anything at all.

I merely note that, with respect to dasein, even if we do embody some measure of autonomy here, it is circumscribed by the manner in which I construe human interactions in the is/ought world.

As, in other words, an existential contraption. Some of which are either down or not down in the hole with me.

Why me?

You have books that you can freely consult … Aristotle, Socrates, Epicurus, Epictetus, etc. They discuss the question.

My feeble posts are little in comparison.

Yeah, that’s life. You can choose how much you want to do to prevent that person from feeling bad.

Ooops, I forgot that you’re a falling domino with not control over yourself. What is there to grapple with, in that case? You’re not “doing” anything in that case.

I’m not sure about lots of stuff and it really doesn’t matter that I’m not sure.

For example, If I’m playing a game of chess I’m not sure if I’m choosing the “optimum” move or not. Sometimes one can calculate the sequence of moves to a win or material or a win of the game, but that’s the minority of moves. I pick what I think is a good move, based on personal experience and principles of play that I learned from “the masters”. Looking back after the game( or during the game), I may realize that some moves were clearly dumb. I use that “analysis” in future games.

I don’t think that life, morality and ethics is much different.

I don’t have access to a “here and now” exchange with these gentlemen. But I sure as shit would be curious to know how folks here who embrace their philosophies today might imagine their answers to the question “how ought one to live?” By imagining in turn their reactions to the components of my own argument.

Given the answers that they would provide as it relates to an actual “self” embodying a set of value judgments that come into conflict with another out in a particular world where conflicting behaviors must eventally come to terms with who has the power to enforce one particular moral narrative and political agenda.

But how do we account for the manner in which “you” choose one thing rather than another? And the manner in which different people choose conflicting things? Is “I” here largely embedded existentially in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above, or is there in fact a font [God, Reason, Nature etc.] able to resolve these conflicts such that all rational men and women are obligated to share it.

I don’t know if “in fact” I do or do not have access to some level of autonomy. Again, the arguments from both sides here can be both profoundly persuasive and profoundly problematic.

But one thing for sure: The objectivists among us are absolutely certain.

Go ahead, ask them.

Maybe, but there is still the distinction between those things we are uncertain about that can in fact be described/encompassed by others with a fair degree of certainty [mathematically, scientifically, logically, etc], and those things that appear instead rooted in the manner in which, among other things, I construe the meaning of dasein above.

Chess? A game in which there are fixed rules, with moves that any particular human brain either will or will not have the capacity to calculate better than another human brain. A game in which computers have been programmed to out “think” even the most sophisticated flesh and blood “masters”?

A game in which the is/ought world relates only to such things as “ought a parent push their children into spending all of their time learning the game?” or “ought we to pursue some form of affirmative action in order to encourage more women to pursue the game?”

Note to others:

What do you think? Are calculating the moves when conflicts erupt over such things as abortion and gun ownership the same thing as calculating moves in a chess match?

Or am I still missing a crucial component of his argument?

A distinction which is not helpful as I live my life, basically because I don’t have access to that knowledge. I’m always limited by my experiences and abilities.

For example, if I need to tie off a boat and I don’t know much about knots them I’m faced with uncertainty on how to do it. The fact that there are people who know how to do it, that there are effective knots and ineffective knots which have been scientifically verified does not help me in the least.

Sure, later I could research knots, practice and use them in the future. But I can do the same research with respect to ethics. If I was in situation that did not work out as I hoped, then I any number of “experts” who can give advice on how to improve the results. The quality of life of the expert and his/her ability to deal with particular situations, is evidence that the advice and techniques work.
I can certainly try it out in my life.

Not that uncertainly will go away. And if it does, then it may be replaced by hubris.

Yes, a game. I’m playing a game in a particular context … a personal state (tired, irritated, focused, distracted), an opponent that I probably did not select and who I may know nothing about. I have a certain knowledge and skill and so does my opponent. The existence of masters and computers able to precisely calculate the variations does enter into the game beyond what I and my opponent have learned from them prior to the start of the game.

What you seem to miss is that what you post is a looking back.
You’re not interested in “how ought one to live?”, you’re interested in “how ought one have lived?” … yesterday, last month, last year.
A lot of the things that you bring up are irrelevant while playing the game.

Okay, with respect to an ethical conflict that most here are likely to be familiar with, draw a comparison between the knots example above and the gap between your current value judgment regarding this conflict and the value judgments of those who are trained as ethicists to encompass an argument far more likely to secure the optimal “quality of life” for all those involved in the conflict.

What on earth are you actually arguing here? There clearly is a gap between those who know very little about knots and those who know practically everything about them.

But how would that gap be closed with respect to conflicting goods? For example, how would it be encompassed pertaining to, say, the construction of Trump’s wall on the border with Mexico? One can clearly imagine a huge gap between those who know little or nothing about building such a wall and those who are experts. But how about the gap between those who argue that it is wrong to build this wall and those who argue that it is right?

It seems we are more or less in sync about chess as a game embedded in a set of either/or rules long established; and in which individual minds will be more or less equipped to master them.

But what of the is/ought examples that I noted above? What is the equivalent here when we bring in our own “expert” ethicists to resolve these or other conflicting goods?

I don’t understand your point here. The past, present and future are just manifestations of the same human condition. How they are implicated in a chess game is one thing, how they are implicated in conflicting value judgments that may revolve around the game of chess something different.

Or so it certainly seems to me “here and now”.

Unless, of course, you or others are able to persuade me that “in reality” “as a matter of fact” they are not really all that much different at all.

You take what you’ve learned from the past about chess into the present such that in the future you will have learned all that much more. You play chess better.

Now, with respect to any particular moral conflict that might come along in playing the game, how do we determine in turn which frame of mind reflects the most rational assessment? You become a better ethicist.

I’m arguing that whether one is talking about knots or abortions, one is making a decision based on current experience, limited knowledge and uncertainty. That does not prevent people from deciding or learning. The existence of experts makes no difference to the decision that one is making in the present.

No. You don’t understand what I’m saying about it.

The past, present and future are not equivalent. The evaluations used in each is very different. It’s the difference between evaluating whether to should draw a card while playing a card game and evaluating whether you should have drawn a card after the game is over. Since in the latter case, you know the result of the game, the evaluation is not the same.

You keep asking the same thing over and over. And you ignore all the responses.

Funny thing. I don’t recall a single time when you understood something that I wrote. Did that ever happen? :-k

I’m growing weary of iambiguous and his problem.

If free will doesn’t exist, then it matters not to such a person, whether you discuss it or not. (Logical conclusion) when something doesn’t matter, people don’t discuss it.

The act of iambiguous discussing this, shows blatantly that he agrees freewill exists.

We will clearly have to agree to disagree about this then. There are decisions made by doctors who perform abortions that are predicated on the objective knowledge they must accumulate relating to human biology – knowledge pertaining to sex and pregnancy. Then knowledge pertaining to a particular set of learned skills that successfully brings an unwanted pregnancy to an end.

And the doctor performing it can be either a Communist or a fascist, a man or a woman, gay or straight, black or white, liberal or conservative, atheist or religious, American or Russian, short or tall, fat or thin.

I’m merely pointing out the obvious: that there is no equivalent of this once we shift gears from abortion as a medical procedure to abortion embedded morally/politically in conflicting goods.

The experience, knowledge and certainty that a doctor can acquire in order to in fact abort a pregnancy is there for all to see.

What experience, knowledge and certainty must an ethicist acquire in order to establish abortion as in fact either moral or immoral?

Does or does not the game of chess revolve around long-established rules regarding how the pieces either can or cannot to moved? Are these rules not applicable to all players? Are not some players able to move these pieces such that they either win or lose the game?

And yet in the film Searching For Bobby Fischerviewtopic.php?f=24&t=179469&p=2465377&hilit=Searching+for+Bobby+Fischer#p2465377 – the narrative focuses in turn on issues that revolve instead around the is/ought world. Ought the father have driven his son to focus so much of his time on the game? Ought the father have pushed the son into approaching the game as one in which winning and losing took precedence over love of the game itself?

Was the son’s decent, caring, compassionaite personality [defended fiercely by his mother] an obstacle that had to be yanked out of him in order to ruthlessly crush the competition. As, for example, Jonathan Poe had been taught?

Let’s focus the beam there.

That’s your distinction. Mine revolves more around the skills required to calculate choices in playing a game like poker and the skills required to calculate whether it is moral or immoral to gamble on a poker game.

The past, present and future are all involved in these calculations. But the success rate is there to be seen among the players. But what of the ethicists? How do we calculate their success rate?

Well, from my frame of mind, your frame of mind seems intent on convincing us that, when push comes to shove, there really is no difference between accumulating knowledge to play the game and accumulating knowledge to assess any moral conflicts that might arise as a result of playing the game.

It’s really as simple as that, right?

Just for the record…

To the best of my recollection, I recall instances on other threads when you rather handily explained my own point of view to others. In fact, I recall pointing that out to them.

You do seem to grasp more than others my own basic understanding of dasein out in the is/ought world. You’re just hell bent on reminding me again and again and again that never, ever, [b]ever[/b], will “I” as an existential contraption there be applicable to YOU. :wink:

Come on, how hard can that be?

Here I keep going back to dreams. I don’t know about the dreams of others, but in mine I am absolutely convinced “in the dream” that I am freely calling the shots. However preposterous the twists and turns, it’s all my own doing.

Now, sure, I wake up in the morning. And then I know for sure that I am really calling the shots. At least given the extent to which I can ever really understand the world around me; and in turn am willing to acknowledge that my options are often limited. Quite beyond my control at times.

But if mind is matter and matter immutably interacts per the laws of nature, how do I go about ascertaining for certain that “I” is not so much an existential contraption, as an existential mechanism?

Sure, some here will blatantly insist they grasp this going all the way back to how and why Existence itself came to be.

I’m just a bit more uncertain here myself.

Edit.

Or take the plot unfolding in the 4th episode of the second season of Westworld – “The Riddle Of the Sphinx” : www.ign.com/articles/2018/05/14/westwor … the-sphinx

Here there is an absorbing exploration of/examination into the matter of identity as, technologically, we get closer and closer to an increasingly more sophisticated AI world. One in which mind as matter and matter as mind become increasingly more blurred.

In particular the sequence revolving around James Delos.

You tell me what to make of it?

See. I didn’t write that. I wrote …

  • all thinking consists of contraptions.

  • I would call them tools rather than contraptions.

  • I have control over which ‘tools’ I use.

  • I try out ‘tools’ which appear to be effective.

  • I drop ‘tools’ which don’t work for me.

  • it doesn’t matter if ‘I’ is merely an existential contraption. I don’t dwell on that.

Iambiguous, I believe you DO NOT understand what ‘dasein’ proper is prior to inventing your own definition and version of ‘what is dasein’. Todate I have spent more than 2 months full time on Being and Time [still ongoing and need to spend more time], so I have a reasonable grasp of it.

In addition I don’t believe you understand what is ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ as well.

It is due to your ignorance of the above terms that you interpret them in your own version and thus ended in a mess down the inauthentic path and more so with an evil intent [subconsciously] to trap others into your hole.

Btw, can you give an idea of what is your understanding of what is dasein-proper as in Being and Time, plus the terms authentic and inauthentic. In addition, explain what is the difference between your own version of dasein and the original version in BT.