To iambiguous

Then we are back to our exchange on other threads regarding the issue you construe as an adequate example: Communism.

All I can do [as I did] is note the distinction that I make between that which you are able to convey as true for all of us regarding it, and that which I argue is embedded more in the “existential contraption” that was your own particular “I” in conjunction with it.

And then to note how those who react to capitalism as you do to Communism are in much the same existential boat.

Which brings us to the extent to which philosophers/ethicists can settle this dispute once and for all by providing a moral/political narrative/agenda that all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to share.

And then with you how this is all situated in your refrain about God and religion.

On the contrary, the moral and political objectivists insist that of course there is.

But it’s got to be theirs.

Right?

Sure there are. There are any number of variables here able to convey any particular “self” concretely. Where you are, what you are doing, your age, your place of birth, your family members, your height, your weight, the events that you experienced in your life. True objectively for you, true objectively for all of us.

Or, rather, true depending on ones access to the facts.

More huffing and puffing about the problem being me.

Okay, let’s redo the discussion regarding Communism [or pick another value judgment] and you can expose more specifically what you are accusing me of here.

Are you still here? :wink:

Reposting: I figured iambiguous would miss this message, which I’m willing to discuss at depth

Well, on the surface he is asking for a method to resolve all conflicting goods without force. IOW for an objectivist to step forward, show via text arguments that will and should convince all rational people and continue to do so one all issues. I say on the surface because his could be a rhetorical position, as in he does not think they can and mainly wants to throw the gauntlet down and watch the objectivist fail or run. These are not mutually exclusive, also. He could be doing the latter rhetorical posturing but also be at the same time hoping for the former type of objectivist to appear, winning him over and lifting him up from his hole, not via self-help ideas, even if these are scientifically supported.

I don’t think it is possible to satisfy what he is interested in, and in this I mean also that even if some method existed, it would likely take large periods of time and involve more that just text based interactions. Think Truth and Reconciliation processes coupled with demonstrations and statistics and films and long debates and…multiplied by millions. Maybe we are doing that but it ain’t gonna be proven in his lifetime.
There are also possible processes where universal ideas of the good or preferences become accepted, whether or not these are objective being another issue. IOW perhaps one day no groups at least and very few individuals will think owning a slave is OK. That issue could potentially resolve. It would not mean that it has been determined that slavery is objectively bad, just that people, no doubt in part via argument and discourse and propaganda and life experience moved towards agreement.

It is not clear to me if he would be happy with solutions where conflicting goods disappear, but no scientific repeatable process was found to prove one or neither of those goods was OBJECTIVELY correct.

We, as social mammals, might find ways of relating that we all think are the best. Which is different from saying they are GOOD. WE might find agreement on some, resolve only some conflicting goods. Probably we have resolved, in the main, the issue of whether football (soccer) should be legal to play, at least as children.

However I would bet the house on his never being satisfied that an objectivist has met his criteria. One can only hope he enjoys the process and I suspect he does.

That’s my take on his Sisyfusian task or provocation or both and whether it has been successfully met wihtout his noticing it.

Okay, let’s concentrate on this because it’s fairly typical.

Instead of exploring “how ought one live” in a discussion, you dismiss the answers as some objectivists insisting on something … forcing their views onto you.

Not even a simple proposal on how to live has been made and you already have your back up.

The irony here being that back in my own objectivist days – as a Christian, a Unitarian, a Marxist-Leninist, a Trotskyist, a Democratic-Socialist, a Social Democrat – I was clearly a terrible discussion partner. Why? Because if you didn’t share my values, you were, quite simply, wrong.

And boy did it feel good to think that!!

And then irony number two:

My current frame of mind is embedded in what “I” construe to be an essentially meaningless world that ends for all of eternity in oblivion. A world in which a hopelessly fractured and fragmented “I” is unable to take but profoundly problematic leaps of faith to one or another moral and political value.

And, wow, how comforting and consoling that is!!!

Just describing how the threads progress. (or rather don’t progress.)

Talking to you is like reading page 1 of a book over and over. It’s impossible to get off page 1 because you keep bringing it back there.

First of all, I readily acknowledge that there may well exist such an objective methodolgy for resolving moral and political conflicts.

The existence of an omnipotent and omniscient God for example.

My point is to make the assumption [and that’s all I can ever really do here] that we live in a No God world.

What then might an objective methodolgy be for determining how one ought to live in a world of conflicting goods? How might any particular mere mortal go about demonstrating that it is.

That’s the – inherently? – tricky part about these exchanges. Some are noting to others what “in their head” “here and now” they think it might be. But do they really have a way of closing the gap between what they think they know here and now is true, and all that would need to be known [ontologically] about the nature of existence itself?

Some will argue in turn that in a determined universe there is really no capacity to argue anything here autonomously, freely.

I merely probe further by grappling with the implications of all this in the is/ought world.

There is in fact what I am, but there is in fact only that which I think “I” ought to be in order to be in sync with what may or may not be the “real me” out in a world where my value judgments may or may not be existential contraptions rooted in a particular set of political prejudices in a world teeming with contingency, chance and chance such that I have no way of knowing for certain how new experiences, relationships and ideas might reconfigure “I” into the embodiment of a whole other frame of mind.

Then I speculate that this may well be applicable to all others too.

I just know that it has already happened many times to “me” in the past.

No, let’s concentrate instead on a point of contention that we have discussed previously: Communism.

This part:

[b][i]All I can do [as I did] is note the distinction that I make between that which you are able to convey as true for all of us regarding it, and that which I argue is embedded more in the “existential contraption” that was your own particular “I” in conjunction with it.

And then to note how those who react to capitalism as you do to Communism are in much the same existential boat.

Which brings us to the extent to which philosophers/ethicists can settle this dispute once and for all by providing a moral/political narrative/agenda that all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to share. [/i][/b]

How are you not arguing that if others wish to grasp the most reasonable reaction to it, they will come to embody yours?

And how have you demonstrated to me that in fact it is yours?

And my point is that, down in the “hole”, as soon as I note arguments that attack Communism, I can note arguments that embrace it.

Conflicting goods predicated on particular sets of assumptions regarding the human condition.

Clearly, for example, if one presumes that human interactions revolve more fundamentally around “we” than “I”, that will precipitate political narratives/agendas very different from those who presume the opposite.

Karl Marx took this in one direction, Adam Smith in another.

Ok, Mr. Philosopher, using the tools at your disposal which narrative makes more sense?

Observation: what makes sense between ideologies , is not based on an either/or plane of reference. Or does so retroactively, but that level mainly produce an optical effect- maybe an illusion and bottom line , the now famous delusion .

Perhaps that is the level that a neo-Kantian ism - Heiseggerinism , neo Platonism can land us, argued after the fact.

But to choose between the sensible and the nonsensible?
On what basis?

Obviously this major difference can not any longer be argued, so there goes the Vienna Circle Positivist argument. Mayne its time.

Its just as difficult to convince people to move on, in this case Sasseure and school, as it is those whose assumptions are retroactively based on opinions of others, (as opposed to outers)

If, on page one, I note the extent to which, morally and politically, “I” have, existentially, tumbled down in this…

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

…I can only go in search of others who are not down there with respect to their own conflicted interactions with others out in the is/ought world.

The rest is just folks arguing that they have done this and the extent to which their arguments either do or do not resonant in some manner with me.

The point then being that if others see that I am just not getting their point, they can move on at any time.

So what I saw here in this thread was the possibility of him saying: That’s not page 1. Page one is what I want to discuss. I will ignore everything else. I think that would be fine, since if one gets bogged, there were big signs that it would be a bog.

Think of it as someone coming to a forum looking for a specific better mouse trap design. Any post that is not that design, he will not respond to. Posts that appear as attempts to create the mouse trap, in the format he wants, he will respond to, no doubt arguing that it does not catch the mouse he wants caught.

You want to question his criteria, his behavior, his assumptions, his arguments?..that is not doing page 1.

IOW he is the critic of people’s attempts to page 1. He does not care about their criticism of his page 1, his approach, his responses.

If he kept it clear like this. Not an interaction for all, but certainly one that a philosophy forum can encompass.

I am just trying to praise the approach taken in this thread where Ecmandu is not attempting to page one.

If iamb responded like this in general, I think it would lead to clarity. We would not confuse his participation with something more based on compromise and a mixing of goals and interests, nor would we confuse his participation as being part of a dialogue where both parties deal with critique, where both parties together determine the focus. I would be something simpler with one specific goal. Take it or leave it.

I see him as responsible for making it clear to people he is not interested in their goals or feedback or interests. From there, no problem.

I’d also add, to the brainwashing system iambiguous uses, he does bible thumper reverse psychology =

If god doesn’t exist, we have to be mortal and without morals!!

Then saying he doesn’t believe in god to throw us off the scent.

Actually, I’ll say this about iambiguous for fact, everything he writes is about trolling at its core that if god doesn’t exist, people must be mortal and there must be no ethics…

The rest is just a cover.

Don’t believe me? Pay attention to the only thing he asserts without cancelling itself out!

Having just arrived here, I’m a bit late to this discussion but must admit that I’m finding it rather intriguing.

You say, Iambiguous, in the quote above, that IF “there are not objective values “I” can reach, then…”

Elsewhere, you mention that you would find improved certainty re: this topic to be a desirable thing.

I am tempted to offer the counter that there are ‘objective’ values you can reach, that you would be able to discern, if you viewed your subjective plight from the somewhat unique epistemological POV that I have come to embrace.

For centuries philosophers have obsessed about absolute certainty, climaxing with Hume’s doubts about causation. I go a step beyond Hume’s skeptical approach and declare that: (Virtually) ALL KNOWLEDGE IS GUESSWORK. When the test we want to subject our various examples of ‘objective knowledge’ to is that of absolute certainty, almost none of that which we call “knowledge” survives the test.

I know at this current moment that “I” exist. I know that I am currently experiencing various sights/sounds/feelings. I can ‘remember’ existing previous to this moment. I don’t know when I close my eyes to sleep at night if there will be another day tomorrow. I don’t know if I will continue to exist five minutes from now. When the ultimate test of our ‘knowledge’ is that of absolute certainty, the number of things we can cite which satisfy that condition can probably be counted on a single hand.
All else is guesswork.

BUT, we discover, our guesses are not without value. Every time I embrace the guess that there will be another day tomorrow, I am rewarded with yet another validation that my guess was a good one. As scientists are quite aware, we’ve discovered over time that there are a lot of guesses we’ve made and recorded re: the material world that have continually proven to be accurate, pretty much without fail. But in spite of our virtual certainty re: these guesses, we cannot—as Hume correctly pointed out—be absolutely certain that what we saw occur five minutes ago will occur again five minutes from now.

(So yes, most of our ‘empirical’ knowledge—guesses—are contingent upon continued validation. Karl Popper agrees with me :slight_smile: )

In a sense, it is accurate to describe Minds as ‘guessing machines.’ That is what we do, make guesses and see if they hold up over time. My point is that that is good enough. We are in Plato’s Cave and cannot perceive things ‘as they are’, as Kant pointed out, but so what? Our guesses are good enough.

It is much more difficult to achieve certainty (or rather high levels of confidence in our guesses) when our guesses are of the analytical a priori type, but still, we are able to eliminate certain of those guesses when we see that they contradict other metaphysical guesses that have been proposed by various thinkers.

I have come to assert certain guesses re: the Mind’s mental experiences which focus on our experiences with pain & pleasure. These painful/pleasurable experience are caused by by a variety of ‘Needs’ that are externally imposed on Minds as a condition of their existence. Based on observation, to exist is to be in need.

I further assert that ALL values are traceable to these Needs, needs which were imposed on us as a condition of our very existence. So another guess we can embrace which seems to be confirmed by our experiences, is that these Needs are universally experienced, which of course would mean that all human beings have in fact the same ultimate values. But because our guesses about what precisely those needs are vary from one human to the next, the ‘values’ we Minds embrace are also going to vary from one human to the next.

Subjectively, values are indeed guesses that individual Minds come up with, but the actual values that Minds should rationally embrace are those which are based on an accurate understanding of what our Needs are. And so, from this thread of reasoning, I assert that all humans have the same ultimate values because we all have the same needs (the sources of all experienced pain/pleasure).

What really starts to develop this conceptualization in a useful direction is when you take into consideration the specific mental needs that Minds must deal with which are responsible for all the forms of mental pain that humans experience (not associated with any incident of tissue damage to the corporeal host). As this is topic can get quite involved, I’ll save it for later.

What I am suggesting to you is that Sartre’ belief that we are ‘condemned to be free’ is ultimately based on a false assumption re: the imagined ability he believed The Will has to create/annihilate needs. I acknowledge that yes, The Will/Mind has the ability to intentionally deprive the host of need-satisfaction (e.g., hunger strikers) but there is absolutely nothing that the Will/Mind can do to avoid the consequences (pain) of need-deprivation. Nor can a need be created that does not already exist.

I further assert that because our needs are externally imposed on us, there is meaning and purpose in this life that has nothing whatsoever to do with our wishes/choices. Ultimate meaning/purpose can be deduced from an improved understanding of what precisely our clutch of purely mental externally imposed needs are, which is yet another topic to explore at another time.

So perhaps the conundrum you have been turning over in your mind is ultimately traceable to what I am describing as an inaccurate initial premise: that there are no ‘objective’ values…

Nice place you guys have here… :slight_smile:

Agree with most of your points.

Popper stated, the best ‘objective’ knowledge we have, i.e. scientific theories are at best merely polished conjectures [by subjects].
As such objectivity is intersubjectivity [btw not Husserl’s].

As re objectivity, I believe objectivity must be complemented with subjectivity to achieve optimal results for the well being of humanity.

Absolute objective morals do not exist but we need to establish objective moral laws by the most solid grounding to facilitate the application of moral laws to ethics for the well being of humanity.

I like to approach this issue from a methodological solipsism starting point, where I observe that the only thing I know with absolute certainty is my own thoughts. But then, I observe that I have a portal to The Real World via my body’s sensory organs and as I go about dealing with the needs that have been imposed on me by my existence, I notice from observing my reflection that my portal—my body—looks like the bodies of other humans, so I figure it is a pretty good guess that these other humans might “think” like I do, but without having much certainty at first.

But as I interact with the other humans, I discover that I can communicate with them re: the tasks of survival by using sounds that are associated with first particular objects, and then others that refer to various actions we all take. It is with language, in its advanced state, that we discover that these other human persons “think” like we do. It is a guess, but it is one that is continually rewarded with validation.

After a while, we don’t entertain many active doubts about whether or not the other humans we interact with are Minds, like we are, that are able to control these bodies that existence has given us. We act on that guess and are continually rewarded with results that validate it, once again. So yeah, I guess this constitutes an “intersubjectivity” which we casually refer to as “objective truth”, even though most of the ‘knowledge’ we share and have so much faith in is actually contingent upon continued validation from experience.

Without these corporeal portals to The Real World that existence has given us, and the opportunity they have given us to find a way to communicate with other human bodies, we might never have been able to arrive at the guess that there are indeed Other Minds that exist outside of our own minds. It’s a guess, but it’s one that really seems to work well, repeatedly justifying our faith in it.

I actually have something to say on this topic that you might find interesting:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194122

My point revolves more around making what I construe to be that crucial distinction between those who either can or cannot design a better mousetrap and those who either can or cannot design an argument that would morally justify trapping a mouse [or a raccoon or a beaver or a fox] in the trap.

There is no page one regarding the former other than a demonstration that your trap is in fact the better [or even the best] design. Dasein here revolves solely around the existential variables in your life that would predispose you to want to design a better trap. Then you either can or you can’t.

But what of the morality of it?

Just one more conflicting good:

digginginthedriftless.com/2013/ … -trapping/

And how on earth would the values of any one particular “I” here not be profoundly implicated in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein? Every individual has his or her own set of experiences that predispose him or her to a particular frame of mind – a moral and political prejudice.

And when they come into conflict around a particular exchange in a forum like this one, who is to decide which argument reflects either the better or the best “design”?

What constitutes “clarity” here?

Again: What particular goals regarding what particular contexts in which goals out of sync precipitate conflicts?

Oh, jeez, how to create a muddle about an analogy about goals. It wasn’t meant to be a perfect analogy for your goal.

Do you think anyone here other than the new guy is unfamiliar with your position?

Amazing. The only way I mentioned clarity in relation to you was regarding what you want to discuss and what you don’t want to. Yet, this triggered you to repeat your core issues as if these are not already understood by everyone here, except the new guy. Blather to him. Thelovely trend you started in this thread is fading into the past.

Talk about obtuse. I was writing to other people. You did not understand or you don’t care to. Just keep making your requests for the answer to conflicting goods and stick to that. You treat everything else as if it was a request for you to restate your request and explain why you are making that request. IOW your posts become noise or pop up advertising. They are not responses.

Well, if you need an abortion, there is the knowledge of who to go to in order to obtain one. And while it may not be an absolute certainty that a qualified doctor is the one to choose, it is, for all practical purposes, probably as close as mere mortals can come to it.

But if you are uncertain as to whether this abortion is moral or immoral, who would you go to here in order to come as close to absolute certainty as you can?

Yes, even the either/or world is subject to Hume’s differentiation between empirical correlation and ontological cause and effect, but that is basically because there would appear to be a gap between what any one of us think we know [about anything] and all that would need to be known [about everything] in order to achieve absolute certainty.

Even here though we have no seeming capacity to be absolutely certain that “I” is not part of some Sim world, or a character in some demonic dream. Think of how absolutely certain we think we are in a dream. “In the moment” everything seems as real as when we are awake. Unless your dreams are different from mine.

Again, consider the distinction between needs in the either/or world applicable to all of us – food, water, protection from the elements, defense from enemies – and the conflicts embedded in the is/ought world regarding how best to procure them – capitalism? socialism? fascism? anarchism? religion?

There are those things here able to be reasonably demonstrated as true for all of us, and those things that reflect more a subjective/subjunctive narrative embedded [in my view] in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. At least in regard to a particular context out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view.

Then comes what I construe to be a “general description” of human interaction:

With respect to an actual existential moral and political conflagration widely known, what constitutes “an accurate understanding of what our Needs are”? And what “ultimate values” can we ascertain when conflicting goods are defended?

For too abstract in my view. We need to reconfigure these words by situating them out in a particular world construed from conflicting value judgments.

For example, the “zero tolerance” policy that was embraced by the Trump administration down on the border with Mexico. How is your “analysis” applicable there?

Name one. And how do you differentiate ‘objective’ values from objective values?

Objective in what sense?

From my frame of mind, an objectivist is someone who believes that, with respect to an issue like immigration, there is a way to frame a value judgment in sync with the “real me” in sync with the manner in which all rational/virtuous men are obligated to think and feel.

Their way.

I try to wrap my head around this as a “general description” of human interactions, and, sure, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone felt the same way?

Then we get to the part where actual flesh and blood human beings – religionists, atheists, capitalists, socialists, anarchists, fascists, liberals, conservatives, individualists, collectivists, libertarians, communitarians, etc., etc., etc., make actual attempts to reconfigure these lofty ideals into an extant political contraption best able to “achieve optimal results for the well being of humanity”.

Yes, we can prescribe and proscribe particular sets of behaviors such that, objectively, the laws are applicable to everyone.

But then when the conversation flips instead to connecting the dots between the law and an ethical syllabus said to be most in sync with “the well being of humanity”…???

Here I contend that the moral/political objectivists among us are more in sync psychologically with this:

[b]1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.[/b]

The rest – literally – is history.