My point though is more in imagining the reactions of philosophers, ethicists and political scientists reacting to what I construe to be political prejudices rooted in dasein.
Would they agree that this is basically what they are, or might they concoct a frame of mind said to be the moral obligation of all rational people to embrace?
And folks walking in the woods [either getting lost or not] revolves more around the either/or world. They either possess the skills necessary to find their way out or they don’t.
Again, it comes down [for me] to assessing your experiences in contrast to the experiences of others; or assessing them such that it can be determined which choices you ought to have made in order to be construed of as a rational and moral human being.
In a No God world.
From my perspective, this so-called “core” is just an endlessly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed frame of mind – “I” – rooted in a particular lived life. And from the cradle to the grave. Except for the parts that we are all able to agree reflect what is in fact true for all mere mortals in what may or may not be a No God world.
I know you think this way. For you there are no degrees of authenticity. When the gay guy with conservative parents finally admits what he has been feeling all along, he has not come closer to doing what he wants, accepting his emotions/desires, etc. It is an existential contraption.
Here though, we are still grappling with the extent to which homosexuality may or may not be embedded in genes. For some it may be entirely natural to be gay. And, since human beings are inherently a part of nature, it can also be argued in turn that any behaviors that any of us choose are natural.
But, historically, culturally and experientially, any number of conflicting memetic narratives have been broached and embraced.
So, putting the two together, what are philosophers, ethicists and political scientists to make of it? Is there a frame of mind here that transcends the existential components embedded in my own frame of mind?
I would certainly never argue that there is not one, only that no one has yet to convince me of one. But that can ever only be embodied in the “here and now”.
Now he has a new one gayness. For you it is a shift, just like any other, completely contingent, as likely to jump back to being straight again. But if like me you had made this one of the core tasks of your Life - the feeling into myself, noticing the effects of memes on my emotions, feel of myself, feel of unity, you would notice that like entropy there is in fact a direction. There are changes towards what is more stable because it fits my nature. For you there is no nature, just nurture and shifting mental, word based beliefs and contents. But smashing a glass is very hard to undo. Due to entropy, some states are more stable. Similarly some ways of being in the world suit us better, individually and even at the species level. Certain kinds of self-relation are less jumbled, split, self-suppressing…and I could give a long list of other metaphors and words that elicit for those who make this a priority or through circumstance are thrust through these states. This does not mean they are morally better. To Think that if you are not perfect, you should physically punish yourself is nto something I would argue is objectively immoral. But it is damaging for the organism. For me there are qualitative differences between states - unified in a spectrum to shattered/fragmented - and one can come closer to what one is, even if some things will change or can. Just like most people who come out as gay do not go back, especially if they were in environments where this transition brought up a lot of fear, there are facets of being in the world that feel much more natural to me, they fit me. I stop pretending, for example, that I am so nice, and realize where my anger was actually going. That persona that I myself believed was not very real. I may use it now, but I am no longer fooled. I can feel into a way of interacting with others and self-relating and notice what feels more unified. For you this is just Another existential contraption and that is because you see change as via verbal mental interactions and identity as thought content. Sure, experiences change you, but you do not Think you have the ability to test what memes are doing to you. You do not Think you can throw off ideas and/or will only do this when they are proven objectively wrong.
What interests me about speculation of this sort is in imagining those on both sides of this cantankerous political debate reacting to it. The part in other words where your “general descriptions” above bump into the actual experiences that particular individuals might have.
Out in a particular world of actual flesh and blood human interactions.
And then in imagining a particular community coming up with a set of behaviors – either prescribed or proscribed – relating to homosexuality.
How would the “best of all possible worlds” here not revolve around moderation, negotiation and compromise?
I’ll get a meme off my back if it feels bad over a long time. If I cannot come to some agreement with myself, and must for some reason be split and self-hating, how the hell would I help anyone outside of me? Oxygen mask on me first. And since I do not Believe in objective morals, worrying about them does not help me and has no attraction.
I can feel what is more the core me. You will likely say this is abstract and cannot be done or is Another existential abstraction, blah, blah. But it is actually Concrete and lived.
“You” can, “I” can’t. And what you call “actually concrete and lived” in embracing one set of values/behaviors, those who embrace an entirely opposite set of values/behaviors champion in turn. Somehow they just know – intuitively? viscerally? – that helping and hurting others revolves around that which they have come to construe as their “core” self.
But we are still back to moderation, negotiation and compromise as the best of all possible worlds here.
Something the objectivists will accept only to the extent that they still believe that their own frame of mind reflects the most rational/moral agenda. They need but convince the other side of this.
And that [psychologically] is the source of comfort and consolation that folks like me are not able to experience.
For me the memes you use to prioritize you activities are very abstract. They leave you out. They are seeking as a cipher. Again, might be just peachy for you and might even be objectively moral for all I know.
What on earth is abstract about this…
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.
…as a description of my own approach to moral values? “I” here is embedded in the actual existential trajectory of my life as it intertwines ideas/ideals in a sequence of experiences that helped to shape and mold them
Choose a value of your own and situate it out in the life that you have lived. Then note how you are still able to somehow just know what your real “core” is.
The “for all practical purposes” “I” that “works” for you here and now. And then when you bump into the points that I raise here about that you just brush them aside. Why? Because [I speculate] if you do go down that path, whatever comfort and consolation you have managed to stitch together with the “I” you have now is put in jeopardy.
And I know this in particular because “I” did tumble down into the hole I describe myself.
For you there is just this flitting self. And for the Buddhists also. Nothing more real than anything else. Just transient forms.
Yeah, but the Buddhists have this whole “spiritual” thing going for them. And, one suspects, they too are all over the map when it comes down to reacting to conflicting goods.
Consider: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_abortion
And, re this thread, any particular Buddhist will express an opinion about abortion as it reflects a point of view regarding behaviors on this side of the grave and the manner in which behaviors here and now relate to an imagined fate on the other side of it.
But even Buddhists are no less daseins.
And then there’s this part:
“True happiness, enlightenment, and freedom from suffering can be found through Buddhist teachings. A spirit is not extinguished upon death, but instead transfers into another life in one of six separate planes (three fortunate and three unfortunate).”
Any Buddhists here willing to bring their own value judgments down to earth?
Maybe it is true for you, but for me: NO there are changes that are towards a more grounded less split me and I can fallibly but clearly move towards a way of being that is less split and feel more correct and from which my organism thrives.
Now this is abstract.
Note a particular value judgment of yours and situate it out in the world that you live in.
What on earth does it mean to speak of behaviors “grounded in the organism”? And how is that reconciled with human autonomy?
This sort of thing…
Some shifts like the move from trying to be attracted to women, while one is trying to be even believing one is straight, to accepting one’s actual desires and allowing the movement towards men are really rather obvious. Startling different experiences of sex and romantic love, I would guess, as a straight guy. A clear sense, now I have moved closer to myself.
A dramatic example. But there are so many other less dramatic examples that one can go through, that are also clearly grounded in the organism. And since most belief systems out there, for example, have built in self-hate as moral (not that they Word it this way), the Changes can be just as dramatic, though often harder for others to understand. Who still Think [i]that ain’t self-hate that’s just common sense, those emotions are bad.
[/i]Just because something is sometimes, often or even usually hard to track, does not mean it is not real. And there are skills involved here. Some people have worked hard on this and some have not, and that makes a difference. I can’t make out precancerous tissue on an MRI image, but some people can.
Most people confuse the contents of their thoughts with themselves or in your case with a mere ‘I’. They identify with the content. You see the content as infinitely flexible. But that is where you both look for identity. And that text based mental, just one portion of frontal lobe activity is the most culturally affected, most easily manipulated portion of the self. You look there, hope to find something there that gets you from the hole - and while you are more alone in relation to this than objectivists, they look in the same place for change or not to change, for the I or ‘I’
I think that his not where the I is. And I think focusing there is to flutter or be always on the defensive of an I one wants to defend.
I know doing anything else is of no interest to you. But if you want to know why I am less fractured than you, it is because of how we have focused differently and what you have focusing on gives you NO GROUND to evaluate. You could be gay in a month, dislike nature or start liking being out in it, suddenly feel drawn to X, and repulsed by Y, be conservative next week, be an objectivist in a year, feel best in Latin culture…and so on.
I have no answer to your objective morals quest. But you are confused about how fluid it all is and it is no coincidence you leave nature off your list of factors in dasein and only have nurture.
…really gets me no closer to understanding this “core” self of yours. “Fluid” in what way? In other words, given an actual encounter you had with someone whose “core” self challenged one of your own values/behaviors.
You both might embrace this idea of a more or less “real me”, but that doesn’t make the conflicting goods go away. Or the part about dasein and political economy.
I was just reacting to the manner in which I construed your reaction to my search for an objective morality. As though I should just accept that there almost certainly isn’t one and move on to one or another more “pragmatic” agenda.
The context is you systematically using ‘objectivist’ as a pejorative term.
On the other hand, when I root much of the pain and suffering inflicted on “the masses” by those “show me the money” nihilists who own and operate the global economy, some will insist I am using “nihilist” here as a pejorative term.
Not quite, you are using show me the money nihilists as a perjorative term. You are ranking them. Distinguishing them from other possible nihilists. Ones like you for example.
But to the extent that I use the expression “show me the money nihilists” in a pejorative sense, I am recognizing my reactions here as just one more existential contraption rooted [re dasein] in the particular political proejudices I came to embody as a radical leftist. Ranking things here [in the is/ought world] is just another manifestion of my frame of mind.
In fact, ranking is inevitable given that the human condition revolves entirely around the need to establish “rules of behaviors” in any community of human beings.
There are – necessarily – rewards and punishments that must meted out. But which behaviors get one rather than the other?
How are the components of your moral philosophy more reasonable than mine?
We all must rank if we choose to interact with others. There is no getting around it. But most here are not in the hole that I am in when the time comes to rank.
The objectivists for obvious reasons. I’m just still fuzzy about the ranking that you do. In other words, I suspect that what seems clearer to you about “I” here is just another “psychological defense mechanism” that you have concocted in order to sustain at least some measure of comfort and consolation.
Here and now it works for you. It just doesn’t work for me. So, in that sense, as with Prismatic, phyllo and so many others here, you “win”. You feel more grounded and in control of your lives than I do.
The rest is just the part that revolves around death…the part after the grave.
In relationship to what is “really true” here what are the odds that either one of us have come even close to an actual ontological or teleological assessment?
Can you not see how this is an assessment?
That [to me] is just common sense embedded in the manner in which the human brain is programmed by the evolution of life on earth to ask “why?”
To connect the dots between “in my head” and “out in the world”?
Obviously: something or other [ontologically/teleologcially] set it all into motion.
Not to grapple with this is to be cow or a bacteria or a rock.
But to assess it all correctly? How on earth would that be demonstrated?
And here [perhaps] the only thing more mysterious than a No God world may well end up being one with God. In other words, who or what set Him in motion?
Things here are weird only to the extent that a frame of mind can be concocted which is able to be demonstrated as not weird.
No, that’s not the only way. I tried to point out contradictions between your goals and what you think of people who you think are the only ones who can help you, how you rank them in relation to you and where you see the damage coming from in the world.
The next time one of your own value judgments comes into conflict with anothers, situate a description of the exchange in the point you are trying to make here.
My own goal revolves around feeling less fractured and fragmented in confronting conflicting goods out in the world that I live in; given how I construe the embodied “I” here as an existential contraption.
Considering that one or another set of behaviors must be either rewarded of punished in order to sustain the least dysfunctional human interactions, how on earth would not ranking even be possible?
In other words:
As long as one chooses to interact with others, wants and needs will come into conflict. When on earth have they not? Given this, human communities have no choice but to rank behaviors. To assign rewards and punishments to particular sets of behaviors. That is simply the human condition.
Your first reaction to my saying that you rank was to say you didn’t. That you used nihilist sometimes as pejorative. Now you are saying that it is inevitable that one ranks.
Please note where I stated that I do not rank above. What was the specific context?
My point is only to suggest that ranking will revolve around one or another agglomeration of might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law.
And even here I make it abundantly clear that my own assessment of all this is just another existential contraption.
I’m off. It’s been interesting.
Same here. I always savor an exchange with someone who is obviously intelligent and articulate. Indeed, the fact that someone like you easily holds his own against the points I raise, allows me to better imagine that the points I make are wrong.
So, sure, maybe some semblance of “comfort and consolation” is still within reach for me.
Good luck to you in turn.