Exactly. Good and bad are existential contraptions rooted in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts. Then “philosophy” was invented. Attempts were made to “think this through”. To derive [using both the tools of deduction and induction] assessments that were said to be more or less rational than other assessments.
But: what are the limits of logic here? what are the limits of what can in fact be known epistemologically?
In other words, from my frame of mind, they are made up words given the existential variables that revolve around the actual lives of those who chose to define them to mean different [often conflciting] things in different contexts understood in different ways.
Consequently, the point [my point] isn’t to assess whether Trump is or is not a great leader, but to assess the actual lives of those who argue one way rather than another. Either we can in fact know that in fact Trump is a great leader, or such assessments are rooted more in the manner in which I construe the components of my own argument above.
So, for me a “POV” is just another existential contraption. It may not be derived from what is argued to be an essential or objective or necessary truth, but those who embrace one or another set of political prejudices often react to those who oppose them as though “for all practical purposes” it was.
And this in my view is embedded in the fact that political discourse often revolves around actual policies that precipitate actual consequences that precipitate actual human pain and suffering. The philosophers can sustain their discussions about ethics up in the scholastic clouds. But the stuff “in the news” that the rest of us absorb is often considerably more gut-wrenching.
It then comes down to the extent to which actual facts about Trump can be accumulated so that the reactions to him either do or do not take into account the facts that are shown to exist.
If for example it turns out it can be proven that Trump did in fact collude with Putin to rig the 2016 election, many of his supporters no doubt will rationalize that such that Trump is still no less the great leader. As long as he sustains policies that appeal to them, those ends warrant almost any means.
The crucial point here for me though is delineated in three parts:
1] there is what I think and feel is true…what I think and feel I know: here and now
2] there is a world bursting at the seams with contingency chance and change
3] there are all the new experiences, new relationships and new sources of information/knowledge that will propel me into a particular future: there and then
So, to what extent can I assess “I” here as that which is true for all of us? What objective facts about myself can be accumulated?
In other words, in the either/or world. But: how does all of that change for “I” in the is/ought world.
I have my subjective narrative regarding this, you have yours. We can only grapple with attempts to subsume our respective points of view in that which contains the most facts able to be demonstrated. About Trump, about abortion, about any and all additional value judgments in conflict.
The tricky thing though [for me] is in taking this sort of “general description” of human interactions out into a particular context out into a particular world in which attempts are made to assess both movtivation and intention as any particular individual chooses one set of behaviors rather than another.
Here “I” have managed to think my own “self” into a fractured and fragmented abyss.
You [and other non-objectivists I have come to know over the years] have managed to anchor “I” here on more solid ground. Thus what you have come to construe [re abortion] “as a principle… freedom of choice is the bedrock of my understanding of the universe” is just another existential contraption to me. Those on the other side focus more on the fact that in exercising her own freedom of choice the pregnant women obliterates any possibility of choice for the unborn inside her. Then many on the pro-choice side rationalize that by convincing themselves that a zygote, an embryo and an early stage fetus is not really a human baby at all. Or, if it’s a late stage fetus, they might argue that the physical or mental health of the pregnant women takes precedence over the baby.
But: which is it really? What is in fact true here?
Yes, there is always that. Sim worlds, demonic dreams, sollipsism, mental illness, drugs, hallucinations, dreams. Then the part about before we were born and after we die. What is the real reality?
But I’m willing [and able] to take that leap to the evolution of life on earth begetting human sexuality begetting unwanted pregnancies begetting abortions begetting reactions to abortion. From my frame of mind there are tons and tons of facts to be mined here.
Though, sure, I can’t demonstrate that this is true…ontologically?
But “in reality” we have no choice but to either prescribe or proscribe certain behaviors in any given community. What are laws [or, say, shunning] but the enforcement of particular moral narratives?
We often punish those for doing things that in their own mind they should not be punished for. Like, for example, drug laws.
There is no getting around rewards and punishments. But why this reward or that punishment for this or that behavior? How are these narratives not embedded in the components of my own frame of mind? Here, I’m down in the hole. Others are not. Is it then even possible to bridge the commincation gaps between us? Maybe. Maybe not. But even if this is accomplished in my view it doesn’t establish anything other than just another existential contraption. One that revolves here and now around a particular consensus.
It sure does. And, as with the abortion conflict, arguments can be made that parents who smoke and have children are inflicting these carcinogens on them. Should parents then be forbidden to smoke around their children. And if they refuse to stop should the children be taken from them?
So, you basically think as I do, but have somehow managed to stitch together an existential “I” that is [subjectively] not as fractured and fragmented as my own.
And here I presume that this will [in all likelihood] be explained by our different sets of experiences, relationships and access to information/knowledge. “Realities” that we have accumulated over the course of actually living our lives. And it may be that, given this, we will only be able to go so far in explaining our own frame of mind here to each other.
In other words when I argue that…
…this may or may not be a reasonable assumption on my part. We may or may not be successful in bridging the gaps here much further.
But I think we both recognize that while there may well be an “objective truth” here that all rational men and women are obligated to subscribe to, we respect each other’s attempts to grapple with a world in which [we suspect] there may well not be.