In any particular community of human beings, wants and needs come into conflict. As a consequence, there are always going to be instances in which what you want to do becomes entangled in that which others insist you ought to do. Why? Because if you do what you want to do [for “fun” or not] it can piss the others off. So, folkways, mores, laws – rules of behavior – are established to sustain the least dsyfunctional set of interactions. Or [perhaps] to sustain what some insist are the must “just” interactions.
Predicated either on one or another variation of might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law.
My point then is only to suggest that these rules of behavior are largely social constructs rooted in history, culture, and individual experiences. Rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
As opposed to one or another religious, ideological, deontological or natural assessment of the is/ought world.
Maybe, but Jack’s answer is still embedded in dasein out in a world where some are able to rationalize torturing animals while others insist that it is necessarily immoral to do so.
Okay, Mr. Philosopher, settle this for us.
On the other hand, what does this really have to do with the point that I’m making? Rules of behavior are either existential contraptions [more rather than less] or are derived from one or another assessment of moral obligation derived from one or another philosophical argument. Kant et al.
Or, sure, it might all be derived from a God, the God, my God.
As for “fun” here, something in particular is deemed to be fun by a particular individual in a particular context. She tells us why this is fun to her and we react. And this in my view revolves more around “I” as an existential contraption; rather than the “real me” said to be in sync with the “right way” to have fun.
You can’t prove it. Exactly. We simply do not know where the idea of human autonomy fits [wholly] into whatever it is that is “behind” the existence of existence itself.
But if human consciouness is but more matter inherently in sync with the mechanistic rules of matter, who is to say what is possible or impossible here?
Then [for me] back to this:
I have these absolutely extraordinary dreams in which whole worlds play out in my head. All manufactured by my brain even though “in the dream” I seem as real as I do during the hours that I am awake.
QM is a world that we have just barely begun to explore. Or are you speculating that a 1,000 years from know we will understand it in the same way?
What’s that got to do with the illusion of purpose in a wholly determined universe? The mystery is still the nature of human consciousness itself. Surely, the most extraordinary matter so far. Then the part about God and sim worlds and solipsism and the multiverse.
What always boggles my mind here is how folks can actually say – believe – things like this: as though they did have access to all that would need to be known about the universe in order to fully explain it.
Yours [like mine] is still largely a “world of words”. As you noted above, you can’t “prove” any of it. So, lets just stick to the part about how, ontologically and teleologically, it is still largely all a “mystery” to us.
Though, by all means, we can have “fun” speculating about it. After all, it is all inherently fascinating. Or, sure, we can assign a purpose to it. Like mine: connecting the dots between what the universe is and how we ought to behave in it.
Assumming this is something that we can do “freely”.
And as Rush noted above even not to choose is a choice. Only Rush was construed by many to be advocates of Ayn Rand. And with her each individual was free to think about everything in exactly the same manner that she did. The objective individual as it were.
Then ask yourself: which part of my life is this most applicable to?
As for flipping coins and Monty Hall and PHDs and Marilyn vos Savant, all of these interactions either unfolded with some measure of human autonomy, or “free will” here is merely an illusion embedded in the mechanical fact that all of it was only ever going to or able to unfold exactly as it did.
But I have no way of knowing if this exchange itself is not just more dominos toppling over onto each other. Dominos set up by God? Dominois set up by whatever brought into existence – out of nothing at all? – everything that there is?
Even feelings of “futility” – or Vish – may just be another manifestation of the beating heart.
Nothing. But my point is still the same: the extent to which what one posits is able to be demonstrated as that which all rational men and women are obligated to posit in turn.
And then the extent to which positing itself is or is not autonomous. Or, instead, autonomic. Like the beating heart.
More words defining and defending more words. What God? In what particular universe? Impacting the things that I do in what particular way?
The claim and the proof going around and around in circles. Like the dog chasing its tail.
Same with all the other claims. Worlds consisting entirely of words yanked out of your head.
And here they revolve basically around relationships in the either/or world. Whereas from my frame of mind things like dasein and conflicting goods are relevant more in the is/ought world.
But: In a wholly determined universe this distinction in and of itself is just another illusion.
That our reactions to Communism are largely existential contraptions rooted subjectively and subjunctively in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
Makes an argument like you do in order to “demonstrate” the errors in it.
I acknowledge that my argument is just another existential contraption rooted in the components of my own moral philosophy: nihilism in a No God world. But that others are able to provide me with what they construe to be objective facts/truths that may or may not prompt me to change my mind.
That may or may not happen. It depends on what they actually post about Communism. And the extent to which they are able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to think as they do about it.
No, I point out that I was once a Communist myself. I once believed that “scientific socialism” was the most rational explanation for the evolution of political economy on planet earth. I measured other reactions to it ever and always from atop my objectivist perch.
Then all that began to crumble out from under me.
I came to embrace the components of moral nihilism. But I certainly do not argue that my “I” – “here and now” – offers arguments that never have anything wrong with them. That’s your own existential rendition of me.
Meanwhile you sustain a considerably less fractured and fragmented sense of identity. And out in a world in which there is considerably more comfort and consolation to be had in believing in an objective morality that is more or less linked to one or another God.
Defending concepts of good and bad is one thing, demonstrating that actual behaviors are either good or bad another thing altogether.
However nonsensical or silly the debate might be, there is no getting around rules of behavior in any particular human community.
And here others are either in the hole that “I” am in, or they are able to rationalize the choices that they make as in sync with the real me in sync with the right thing to do.
Then noting their particular font of choice.
But not entirely arbitrary. Instead, “I” is rooted for each individual in being “thrown” out into a particular world historically, culturally and experientially. Then being indoictrinated as a child to embody one particular sense of reality rather then another. And then accumulaing a particular set of experiences in a world awash in contingency, chance and change. All the way to the grave.
Again, you would have to bring this down to earth. Biological architecture is one thing, the architecture of value judgments another thing altogether.
Or, rather, they are intertwined in a particular sequence of genes and memes understood from a particular point of view but able to be evaluated only subjectively and subjunctively.
That’s not actually an acknowledgement of anything. It simply restates and reinforces your idea that you’re right based on your assumptions and experiences and others are right based on their assumptions and experiences.
It can be summed up as : “I’m always right. I’m never wrong.”
And it also means : “I don’t care what you think or say. Nothing to do with me.”
It’s interesting that you don’t say that our reactions are entirely existential contraptions.
That’s probably because you recognize that biology determines some of our reactions. That would be the objective aspect of morality and ethics. Which is why similar morality and themes occur throughout the world.
One never actually gets around to discussing it.
It gets lost in “optimum”, “obligations”, “demonstrations”, “dasein” and “existential contraptions”.
How could I? There is clearly a historical record containing any number of historical facts relating to historical events like the rise of Communism or fascism. My focus is always on how we react to those facts from within a particular set of assumptions attached to a particular set of moral and political prejudices.
Or, in your case, religious prejudices?
Or why stop there? One could argue that biological imperatives are rooted in a wholly determined universe.
Or one could argue as Satyr’s clique/claque does over at KT, that they and only they have come to grasp the one true nature of these biological imperatives. As, for example, they relate to such things as gender and race and sexual orientation and being Jewish.
Fun is what any particular individual in any particular context says that they feel while behaving in a particular manner or in experiencing something in a particular way.
Then there are the reactions of others to this.
They may or may not be able to imagine describing this behavior or experience as a “fun” thing to do. They may note that this person’s idea of fun is at the expense of another person who is experiencing anything but fun.
Fun: “enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure.”
We come into the world hard-wired biologically to embody this mental, emotional, psychological and/or physical sensation in reacting to the world around us. Whether you want to call it a “thing” or “the absense of a thing.” And whether it is embedded in a set of value judgments or not.
A “purpose” too is always understood in a particular context that is understood in a particular way. What do we tell others when they ask us why we are doing what we do? When they ask for the reason or the purpose behind it? And here dasein is marbled through and through our answers. Just as “conflicting goods” are when my purpose for doing something results in a set of behaviors that others construe to be bad.
Are some purposes inherently/essentially/necessarily more rational than others? Are they in turn inherently/essentially/necessarily more virtuous than others?
Says who? Based on what set of assumption regarding human interactions?
The purpose of things like the eye on the butterfly wing is embedded in the either/or world. Unless of course it can be demonstrated that God exists and intended it to be that way. It’s all embedded in random mutations. And we have no way in which to determine if teleology plays a part in this or not. In Nature.
At least to the best of my knowledge.
But what of the reaction of those of our own species to others who go out and capture butterflies, kill them, and then mount them in a display case? And then when asked why they do this, they say, “it’s fun”.
There would appear to be no purpose in a No God world. Purpose [to me] implies a conscious mind aiming to do one thing rather than another for one reason rather than another. Imagine for example that the human species here on earth are the only species of animal in the entire universe able to think and to talk about purpose in this way. Then next month the really big one – asteroid, comet, super nova, gamma ray burst etc – takes out all human life on earth.
What then of “purpose” in a universe in which there are no conscious minds [self-conscious minds] around to discuss and debate it?
Can fun or purpose even exist in a mindless universe?
I can only repeat myself by noting that my own argument here is just another existential contraption.
And in acknowledging that I still don’t grasp what you construe to be so important in your reaction to that.
I am a nihilist “here and now”. Meaning that there and then [in the past] I was not a nihilist. I was an objectivist instead. Meaning that there and then [in the future] I may be something else altogether. Thus the manner in which fun is understood and prioritized by me is ever and always subject to change given new experiences etc.
Evil is believed to exist by some. Okay, let them demonstrate that what they construe to be Evil [or fun for that matter] does in fact exist objectively.
With you though, I struggle to grasp how your own “I” out in the is/ought world is less deconstructed than mine. Given that you reject Good and Evil yourself.
My position here is going to be reacted to by those who either do or do not believe that objective morality does in fact exist amidst human interactions. In a God world, sure, that makes sense to me. But in a No God world?
Here, in my view, other people’s priorities are no less existential contraptions than my own. And it is the gap between the manner in which I construe the implications of these existential fabrications/contraptions [re “I”] out in the is/ought world and the manner in which your own pragmatic contraptions are construed to work for you that most interest me.
After all, with the objectivists the implications embedded in moral certainty for “I” is obvious.
My own priorities regarding an issue like abortion revolve around a pro-choice point of view. But I recognize that as just a political prejudice rooted in the life that I have lived. And my position clearly leads to what others consture to be bad or evil consequences for the dead baby.
But somehow “pragmatism” enables you to fit “I” here into a slot that leaves you feeling considerably less ambivalent.
But then [alas] you seem compelled instead to go on and on and on up in the clouds of abstraction:
What values expressed in what context from what moral vantage point? Why one set of priorities rather than another?
Yes, as a matter of fact, you do. But only given the manner in which I construe a moral value embraced by someone who does not believe in objective morality. You just call it being “pragmatic” instead.
What you “add” to the discussion [in my view] are the reasons that you feel this way about abortion rather than that way. Which I then root in dasein in a manner in which you don’t. But that still doesn’t clear up [for me] how your pragmatism here is able to hold your own “I” together more firmly than moral nihilism does mine.
Which I then suspect is but another manifestation of dasein.
Here I return time and time again to one of zinnat’s “groots”:
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.
This example because it marks that crucial turning point in my life when I came to abandon objective morality. And because this sequence became more and more the template for all of my subsequent encounters with conflicting goods.
This experience became the first shovel of dirt to be excavated from my “hole”.
And “pragmatism” doesn’t work for me as it works for you because my frame of mind when embodying “moderation, negotiation and compromise” is no less an existential contraption.
In other words, in reacting to this I didn’t share your own assessment above. I did not confirm that your defense of this man is more reasonable than my own reaction to him. If it had made a difference to me then I would be in sync with your own point of view.
Yes, I get this all the time from the objectivists. I’m just unable to grasp it from someone who shares my own assumptions about objective morality. That in all likelihood it does not exist in a No God world.
But let’s move on to another context. A conflicting good that generates headlines “in the news”. One in which most here will have a point of view that is either objectivist, pragmatic or rooted in moral nihilism.
You choose it.
In the interim though it’s back up into the clouds:
Note an example of this pertaining to a set of conflicting goods likely to be familiar to most of us here. How are you confused? How are you conflicted? How do you come to embody a particular moral and political narrative such that you appear [to me] to be considerably less fractured and fragmented?
This “project” that you imagine me undertaking is mostly in your head. I spend a few hours a day in philosophy forums. And even then a lot of my time revolves around my “signature” threads here at ILP. The rest of the day I am doing other things – listening to music, watching movies, tuning in to the televsion programs I like, listening to the occasional NPR broadcast, following the news.
And to the extent that you approach conflicting goods as you would “going shopping” is admittedly the sort of pragmatism that is brand spanking new to me. I can’t even imagine it myself. Given that the consequences embedded in conflicting goods is often horrific to any number of men and women.
As for objectivists “running from me”, that too seems to be something that you have concocted in your head about me. Common sense tells us that in believing in objective morality, one must believe in turn that there is a “real me” able to be in sync with “the right thing to do”. And it is from this frame of mind that [psychologically] one is able to feel comforted and consoled. And thus to the extent that my own frame of mind is able to deconstruct that frame of mind is the extent to which any number of objectivists are going to react to me has they often do here. Some even resorting to what I call “huffing and puffing”, retorting, making me the issue.
Even in your own posts here the sarcasm is evident. And that’s right around the corner from contempt. So, why do I bring this out in you? Or are you also a polemicist at heart?
Or, perhaps, you are just inclined to be “smug” in these exchanges “by nature”?
Smugness is certainly something that I can project in turn. But I am about as far removed from being truly smug as one can be from down in the hole that I am in. I am no longer able to feel any degree of certainty regarding my own value judgments. My “I” here really is “in pieces”. And the abyss [nothingness] is right around the corner. I am only left with my “distractions” as I wait patiently [though sometimes impatiently] for godot.
Then back again to this part:
Note to others:
Link me to instances where he actually does bring this discussion out into the world of conflicting goods. Instead, in my view, he merely argues that he has done so repeatedly. Then he goes on and on and on in psycho-babble mode explaining me to myself and others. I become the issue.
I would really appreciate it if others here will link me to all of the many specific contexts in which he claims to have brought his “pragmatism” down to earth.
In particular those revolving around conflicting goods that pop up over and over and over again out in the world that we live in.
How does a “pragmatist” argue one way or the other about issues like abortion or gender roles or gun control or animal rights or homosexuality?
As a moral nihilist, I am always down in the hole that “I” have broached here. How then is that different from what KT professes here? That’s the part that most intrigues me. He doesn’t believe in objective morality but his own brand of relativism [situational ethics]leaves his own “I” considerably more intact.
You missed KT’s point. He did “invite you inside his head” when he was challenged. He did describe how he “engaged”.
Your assessment of KT’s position and your reaction to the man’s point of view is not the issue. Being “in sync” with KT’s point of view is not the issue.
The issue is how the conflict was approached and resolved. That’s what you actually asked for in the first place.
Instead you turn it into a case of “taking sides”.
Absolutely not what I meant. Not in the slightest. Not at all, never said that, never expected that.
Really rude.
You kept asking. I showed you what I did in a concrete situation. Of course it did not resolve conflicting goods. Of course it did not convince everyone. I don’t think such arguments exist. I don’t think there are objective values. I don’t think that even if there were and I knew them I would have the skill to convince everyone.
What I meant by saying nothing happened is, that you kept demanding that I do this, and so I did.
Then you kept asking me to do it, after I did, as if I hadn’t. As if I was afraid or doing it would reveal something I couldn’t deal with.
But the truth is I don’t believe in objective values. I shared an example of how I handle conflicts. I handle them pragmatically, to the best of my abilities and energy and the priorities of the day. I know that I cannot eliminate all conflicts and have no magic wands. My giving a concrete example did not drive me down into a hole. My not being able to convince you or everyone does not drive me down into a hole. I do not expect to be able to do this. I do not hold myself responsible for doing that.
Of course like anyone I wish I could make it better for what I care about. Of course I would like it if more people agreed with me. But I have neither of your two extremely rigorous contraptions: that I must find the argument that convinces everyone, that I cannot act in the world and try to make things the way I prefer, unless I am sure I will never change.
You went on and on about how I should give an example. I did. I did it honestly as the non-objectivist I am.
It didn’t even register on you that I had done it.
And now your interpretation of my reaction to your really rude disinterest in my carrying out a task you requested, is to say I expected you to be convinced that you should react the same way.
SEriously, do you read what I write?
I don’t want to have another outburst of cursing.
You so, so desperately want my not suffering the way you are to be caused by some kind of objectivism or contraption that you project all sorts of things on me and my posts, and then also can’t even remember when I have done things or what my beliefs which I have repeated are. Or so it seems. It seems like you want to have me in a box. For reasons: there, I don’t have to worry about him not being in my hole, he’s X, and that is not disturbing. Someone who is X and not in a hole is not disturbing.
But I am not X. So stop projecting it on me. There are more possibilities, it seems, then you consider. Maybe that makes you uneasy, so you have to have me in a box you feel comfortable about. Who knows?
No, the issue for me is always this: How with respect to conflicting value judgments in a No God world construed to be lacking in objective morality, he is able to “resolve” such conflicting assessments and not feel fractured and fragmented as I – “i” – am.
I try to make this distinction clear over and over again with him. He offers an explanation and it does not resonate with me. So the problem [from his frame of mind] obviously becomes me. I’m not truly understanding the point that he is making. Why? Because I am not really trying too. Or my thinking is just not as sophisticated as his is.
Just as with you and Communism: if only I would make a more concerted effort to understand it as you do, the conflicting goods would melt away for me too.
Anyway, once he notes the manner in which his views on an issue like abortion are embedded in the sort of trajectory I provide above, we will have something more concrete to exchange moral philosophies regarding.
Of course with you there’s also that part about God, isn’t there?
My point is only that if you understood the components of my own moral philosophy in the manner which I have come to construe them as an adjunct of moral nihilism in a No God world, you might be persuaded to shift your point of view. Just as if I understood the manner in which pragmatism works for you, I might be the one to shift.
I have offered you an existential trajectory in regard to my views on abortion as a moral construct [combining both philosophy and experience] resulting in a “sense of self” that is fractured and fragmented.
How given the evolution of your own value judgments here do you imagine that you are not as deconstructed as I am?
All I can presume is that you are able to shrug off the manner in which I relate my own thinking here. I loved Mary and she wanted the abortion, I loved John and he wanted the baby to be born. There was no resolution once I had abandoned my objectivist frame of mind and came more and more to concur with William Barrett regarding “rival goods”.
How was my reaction then [that Mary’s frame of mind was more “just”] not an existential contraption rooted in a particular set of political prejudices? Why would I not feel drawn and quartered in dealing with a situation in which one way or the other one of best friends was going to truly pained and deeply troubled? It tore them apart.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to approach this as the equivalent of “going shopping”.
Somehow apparently [if I understand you] you are.
The rest is just you “psycho-analyzing” me again. You get me but I don’t get you. And that has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that your argument [like your intellect] is simply more sophisticated than mine.
And, if, as a result of this, you do feel less fractured and fragmented [and thus more comforted and consoled], well, that’s just a bonus.
Not from my frame of mind. The two are – ineffably, inextricably – linked in a No God world in which value judgments are derived existentially from daseins clashing in a world awash in conflicting goods. I can’t resolve these conflicts precisely because “I” am tugged and pulled in opposing directions. Ambiguity and ambivalence are everywhere for me.
Why? Because I don’t have a God or an ideology to fall back on anymore.
But my point is precisely that even to the extent that I do these things, my reasoning can only be just another existential contraption. There are liberals and conservatives willing to moderate their views, negotiate and make compromises regarding things like abortion. But these revolve entirely around means – democracy and the rule of law – not ends. Most are still convinced that their moral narrative reflects a more rational and virtuous assessment of the issue.
Thus to the extent that I champion these things as the best of all possible worlds, the components of my argument don’t go away. I don’t feel any less fractured and fragmented.
Right. Because you don’t have any method. You’re treading water and you’re exhausted but you’re not getting anywhere. If you had a method then you would be swimming in some direction.
A pragmatist will pick a stroke and a direction and he/she will start moving.
Okay, you’re reasoning will be an existential contraption but you will have a particular result which is not a contraption. The result will be in the real world. Assuming that you even go beyond talk and actually take some actions.
And as you point out above he does not display compromise, moderation and negotiation here. He is utterly uncompromising about what the focus is. His discussion partner may want to focus on his behavior, or an epistemological issue he is not interested in, etc. His response is to repeat his position, or say that that issue/topic/comment does not resolve confliciting goods, or label the other person or the person’s position either explicitly or implicitly pejoratively.
It’s a very abstract and restricted part of the real world here, but it is a part of it, and he does not exhibit the values he says are the only ones that make sense given we are sans God, etc.
