How do you know someone is a phenomenologist?

Let the record show indeed. :wink:

Does the record bother you?

Say, enough not to continue on our investigations?

Because you seemed very interested about it just a moment ago.

Just in case, forget the record.

"So what would be wise for who here?

‘How might phenomenal interactions here actually be distinguished?’

By who?"

That is: by what particular person?

It never ceases to amaze me how these ponderously “intellectual” folks continue to come up with truly twisted ways in which to wiggle out of bringing their technical skills [and “analysis”] down to earth.

The point here [presumably] is to pin a phenomenon down epistemologically. To capture it in a bunch of words defining and defnding another bunch of words.

I give them a particular. But it’s not the right particular. My particular is flesh and blood. Their particular is anything but.

Or, sure, maybe I’m not broaching the particular here correctly. Why don’t one of you try.

Anything to actually bring the discussion out into the world that we, you know, live in.

My friend, my good friend, what is particular about this?

“How might phenomenal interactions here actually be distinguished?”

That is almost the definition of abstract, lacking flesh and blood. Who is it that wonders what who might distinguish?

You know, in terms of flesh and blood?

See, they seemingly can’t help themselves. All they can do [apparently] is to bend over backwards to keep the exchange up on the sky-hooks.

Maybe it’s a genetic thing embedded in the actual DNA of the inveterate scholastic.

Hell, I can’t even get him to grapple with the phenomenon the whole fucking world is obsessed with these days: Trumpworld.

"See, they seemingly can’t help themselves. All they can do [apparently] is to bend over backwards to keep the exchange up on the sky-hooks.

Maybe it’s a genetic thing embedded in the actual DNA of the inveterate scholastic."

I am not lying. I am not being fasciecious. This is exactly what I think about you whenever we have an exchange. And also on this particular occasion.

“Hell, I can’t even get him to grapple with the phenomenon the whole fucking world is obsessed with these days: Trumpworld.”

Even this!

My name is Pedro Ignacio, I am flesh and bone, and you are asking me what “one” might think about a “phenomenon…”

Can you not bring it down to Earth?

True, this exchange is unfolding down here on earth.

So, I guess that’s as close as I’ll ever get to it with him. :sunglasses:

“So, I guess that’s as close as I’ll ever get to it with him.”

Well, if you ever gather the courage to bring your abstract castles in the sky down to Earth, I’ll be happy to be a part of it.

You can start, when you are ready, with one of your alleged particular situations.

Sabara

As many will note [complain], what I always do here is to copy and paste the very first set of phenomenal interactions – the very first “particular situation” – to upend a philosophy of life rooted in objectivism:

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.

The point being to note that distinction between the objective facts embedded in my life [phenomenally] and my subjective/subjunctive reaction to the facts as my moral narrative changed over the years.

Eventually, I evolved/devolved into what I construe to be a moral nihilist rooted phenomenally in the manner in which I came to understand the existential relationship between identity, value judgments and political power out in the particular world that I – “I” – live in.

“I” here being subsumed in this interpretation of “human identity” out in the is/ought world: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

As a consequence [since then] all of my “particular situations” are basically just configurations of the manner in which I describe the “hole” that “I” have dug myself into in groping to encompass the meaning of any and all phenomenon I come across in the course of living my life such that others [philosophers for example] might argue that I am being more or less rational, more or less virtuous.

How about you?

Note for us the seminal experience that nudged you in the direction of your current view of interacting phenomena. And the manner in which you either do or do not make a distinction between the either/or world here and the is/ought world.

Or, again, sure, you can “wiggle, wiggle, wiggle” out of it by insisting that my own reactions here are not sufficiently abstract [or technical] enough to qualify as a serious philosophical discussion of phenomenal interactions between actual flesh and blood human beings out in a particular context, out in a particular world.

Interactions in particular that come into conflict. How might a technically proficient philosopher describe and then examine those behaviors so as to capture what is essentially unfolding between those on one side of the moral divide and those on the other.

A simplified version of interpreting the above: the either either or problem of resolving conflicts within perimeters of real and abstract constructs, is the realization that they are logically connected to the degree of willfullness to acquire legitimacy vis. this tendency to reduce the phenomenology.

If situations arise, where the identity in question is challenged, then the more the reduction submerged the identity into an either this or that mode.

The existential jump takes place into the upper or lower phenomenal phenomenal regions, but ultimately it searches for an exit, retaining a safety zone, with pure categories , understanding that above or below those safety boundaries, a total fall or or rise above not be occasioned.

That safety zone protects identity from total dissolution or complete and abstract fall.

It’s not a simplified version that I am after here. I am instead after a version in which the point you raise above can be illustrated. Illustrated such that it in any particular context in which human beings interact, its meaning can “for all practical purposes” be made clearer.

It’s just that for me, clarity in the either/or world and clarity in the is/ought world encompass approaches to phenomena that are not always in sync. At least not “in my head”.

However we finally come to think about the existence of things that are not immediately perceived by us, human interactions do in fact seem to exist such that we can describe them objectively in some ways while not being able to evaluate them objectively in the realm of morality.

Unless of course we can. Then the problem would be either 1] I have not myself come across a proof of this yet or 2] I have come across it [here for example] but I am not able to grasp it. Or [perhaps] I am not intellectually sophisticated enough to grasp it.

This all gets really, really mindboggling though. Berkeley had to presuppose the existence of God as the transcending font able to encompass the existence of all things even when you or I are not connected to them.

But in a No God world what is the next best thing?

And how does the next best thing react to the manner in which I construe a human identity out in the is/ought world?

"
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."

What’s the situation here? What is your question? What ought who to do about what? Particular people, mind you, not hypothetical examples which this whole thing could very well be. Convincingly. Like I can convince you that I’m me.

You wanted me to bring down to Earth a number of things I wrote about. Which things? Regarding what?

We are being PARTICULAR. Because we want to bring it DOWN TO EARTH, FLESH and BLOOD.

Just reminding you.

Because, let’s be real iambiguous, for a man who complains about lack of particulars and flesh and blood so much, you sure are careful to avoid them!

Uh, I think we’re done here. :laughing:

Or, sure, maybe… :wink:

I have a friend. Jack. He is gay and doesn’t want to be. Why? I think because a person in his life told him he better be and better be it in the way that person says. That’s certainly a good reason not to want to be.

Jack is a good close friend of mine. Sometimes he makes passes at me. I think he thinks that if a straight man seduces a straight man in secret, then it is not gay. This causes him a fucking world of pain. Which, because I am his friend, causes me pain.

What would you have me do? Wonder about phenomenology or some bullshit? Fuck you.

I want my friend to be free.

It is also a fact that my friend hurts people because of his frustration. I want to stop this as well.

But I value him as a person more than I want him to stop hurting people. My objective is his health, not morality. Because he is my friend and I care about him.

I would like to tell my friend that he will be more powerful, not less, if he accepts his desires. I want to tell him that gayness is far from the only thing the fucking machine appropriates and makes shitty, and he should just deal with it regarding that person that tells him he shouldn’t be.

But. And this is a big reason why we are friends, he has some fucking pride on him. So I cannot approach him in public. And I know enough about wanting someone to know that if a girl I want says anything to me in private, even if it is to tell me how she will never be mine that way, I will find a way to construe it as she wants me that way.

What would a lover of wisdom like me do in this situation? First of all, tell him that it’s not abouy coming out of the closet or some faggety ass modernist shit like that. It is simply to accept his desires and build THEM into his conscious self rather than the goddamn soul eating machine.

Not provide him with some stupid ideal form. Gay is not an ideal form. It is just a convenient word for a man who often desires other men sexually.

But here’s the catch! I know there is a deep cruelty in me. So I hesitate to do anything about this because I fear it will wind up being a cruel thing somehow.

I have accepted this will to subjugate into my conscious self where care about other people also is. So I just turn it on myself. I subjugate ghosts in myself. It’s been pretty fruitful. Sometimes people jump in while I do it and they have a choice: allow the ghost I am subjugating to be subjugated in him or protect the ghost.

If I see the person is in any actual danger, I hit the self immolate button and give him an exit. I figure, if he is brave, he will subjugate the ghost. If he is not brave, then he is of no interest to me and might as well leave.

By simplification I did mean a logical simplification which is less complex at the same time. Since You are a nihilist, You must realize that a before the threshold of where the either or was the primary signifier, exclusion of one guaranteed the absolute inclusion of the other. So either reality or a logical system not meeting certainty.

The absolute certainty guarantees that hole or abyss, toward which doubt, or states of it, fall or is reduced toward- an existential hole.

It is simpler and more connected to reality. the kind of real reality described in ‘realism’, as an art form.

I must confess, I feel a lot more comfortable in that reality than the abstractions which break reality into the kind of parts which don’t male much sense nowadays.

In aesthetic terms , I am bracketing my safety zone as well. and find comfort with aestheticians such aa Kierkegaard, in my fall. But the tension. Is overwhelming , nevertheless, since art plays a limited role in my life.

Icarus was burned by the sun because he got too close to the sun, and that metaphore plays out for people with ideals that have to navigate though a complex , conflicted world.