Ramification in Causality is meaningless lie of the human

He never examines the conflict resolution process or any sort of problem solving methods.

He just points out that people have different ideas which results in conflict. And his solution is always “moderation, negotiation and compromise”.

That’s the only place the “discussion” goes.

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?

The Christian God by any chance?

And, if so, any particular denomination?

That’s two separate issues - resolving conflicts and feeling fractured.

I don’t see you compromising, negotiating or being moderate.

That is your preferred solution. Right?

So why are you not doing it? Why are you not leading by example?

What actual effort are you making?

ADDING ANOTHER QUESTION:
What does your solution to our conflict over Communism look like?

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.

I have presented a hypothesis. What is the hypothesis I have presented recently a few times about why I am not in a hole and you are? Hint: it related to contraptions not just giving comfort.

I understand the distinction.

Nope. I suppose it is possible you are not really trying to understand . but I NEVER THINK THIS IS A REALLY YOU DO NOT BECOME CONVINCED OF MY VALUES. I don’t think like that, being a non-objectivist. More sophisticated? I have never said or implied that. You are projecting on me.

[/quote]
Why does it have to be abortion? I gave a description of how I handled a conflicting goods situation. I had partial success in getting others to do as I preffered. Other days I do not succeed. Sometimes I am afraid or too pessimistic to try. I am fairly skilled with words, but it only goes so far in the world. I accept that, though of course I am frustrated some times. Many things I wish were different in the world. I accept the fact that I cannot now present an argument that will convince everyone to do as I would wish. I do not believe there are objective values. I do not think the project of trying to find them is a good place to put my energy. I do not think it is wrong for me to participate in life and try to problem solve, despite my lacking knowledge of objective values. I do not judge myself for striving for what I prefer and strving to make it better for what I care about, even though it is possible I will change my mind some day.

Now the onus on you is to show that I should, really, be down in your hole.

Holy crap I’m falling behind :open_mouth:

I have to go back a whole page to find my last post lol

Yes, wants/needs, internal/external, subject/object. The discussion with you is the same as the discussion with KT, but the labels are different.

Can you control what you want? If not, then how is a want different from a need? Are you breathing because you want to or because you need to? Do you want to go on living or do you need to?

If you do what you ought to do, then you’re still doing what you want to do. If I ought to do X, and I want to do what I ought to do, then I want to do X.

So not wanting to piss people off is greater than wanting to do the thing that might piss people off, even though it’s something you originally wanted to do before you realized that people could be pissed.

Right so we create some arbitrary rules to facilitate cohabitation. We don’t need to follow them, but if we want peace and friendship, we may want to follow them.

Yes I agree, but I’m still not sure what “rooted in dasein” means.

But rationalization implies purpose. If he is rationalizing, then he wouldn’t be torturing animals for fun (no purpose), but possibly to please the gods who will bless the crops or send rain. Rationalization is trying to find a purpose to justify the action.

I’ll take a swing at it like a blindfolded kid groping for a pinata lol

You said “Or the thought put into the choice not to have any rules at all?”

So there are 3 possible outcomes:

  1. Put thought into whether we should have rules and determine: yes, we should have rules.
  2. Put thought into whether we should have rules and determine: no, we shouldn’t have rules.
  3. Realize the futility in answering the question and stop thinking about it.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxi-IUnCN_8[/youtube]

This bit from the Pirates of the Caribbean illustrates:

[i]Will : My father was not a pirate. [takes out his sword]

Jack : Put it away, son. It’s not worth you getting beat again.

Will : You didn’t beat me. you ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight, I’d killed you.

Jack : Then that’s not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it? [moves one of the sails so that the yard catches Will and swings him out over the sea] Now, as long as you’re just hanging there, pay attention. The only rules that really matter are these – what a man can do and what a man can’t do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can’t. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you’ll have to square with that someday. Now, me, for example, I can let you drown but I can’t bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesy, savvy? So… [swings him back on board and offers him his sword] can you sail under the command of a pirate? Or can you not?[/i]

You’re right. Rules of behavior are contraptions. Assessment of moral obligation is a contraption. Thoughtful derivatives of those are also contraptions. The only way to escape the contraptions is to stop thinking and that can only come by realization of futility and I suppose you’re right once again if futility is implemented as a contraption to attain the goal of freedom from contraptions.

This bit by Alan Watts who was (I think) quoting krishnamurti:

If you stay here and listen to me, you’re fooling yourself.
If you leave, you’re fooling yourself too because you still think that’s going to help.

So we can try by “trying” and we can try by “not-trying”, but as long as a goal exists, which is nothing more than a desire, then contraptions will abound. So how do we get rid of desire without desiring to get rid of desire? Realization of futility is the only way, but we can’t implement futility as a contraption either, as if to say “I’m going to do the foolish thing until I finally realize it’s foolish” because that won’t work since you already have knowledge of the plan and now you have a goal and desire once again.

This is why (evidently) the buddhist gurus set their students on a rigorous training discipline until they realize it’s futile without first letting them know that’s what he’s up to. The students think “Oh boy! Now we’re at serious business here. We’re on the road to some serious enlightenment!” All the while they are wasting their time, but the point is to finally see it was a waste of time. Oops… I guess I let the cat out of the bag lol.

We can’t have the religion of no religion
We can’t have the rule of no rules.

We can just have no religion and not be religious about it.

“Fun” is just a placeholder for “purposeless”. No one could tell you why something is fun for them because there is no “why”. If there were a “why”, it wouldn’t be purposeless.

Why am I going for a walk? I have no idea; it just seemed fun. Why does a buddha sit like that? No reason; it’s just comfy. Why meditate? If you meditate for a reason, you’re not meditating.

The wholly determined mechanistic dominoes or switches in a computer could never yield any sort of sentient being because there is no mechanism to even generate an illusion of freedom of will since hard-determinism applies and there can be no variation whatsoever. Failing to be able to prove it is more an inability to put thoughts into words sufficient for certain conclusion, but I still hold that its truth is more or less self-evident, depending how evident things are to each person. To me it seems obvious that a mechanistic process could never be sentient, but it’s not obvious to everyone and I do tend to get pushback.

What I mean by “mechanistic” is like cogs in a machine: if one cog turns, the other cog won’t do anything randomly, but it will respond with 100% certainty. The universe is not like that. The universe functions on randomness rather than 100% certainty.

Quantum mechanics is the most successful quantitative theory ever produced. Not a
single one of the untold thousands of experiments done to test it has ever found the basic
principles to be in error, and the agreement can sometimes go to ten significant figures
(as in some predictions of quantum electrodynamics). Quantum mechanics also underlies
vast realms of science, from physics to chemistry to some aspects of biology (probably).
All that we have studied so far in this course is, to some extent, an approximation to the
fundamental quantum physics. astro.umd.edu/~miller/teach … ture21.pdf

QM is THE most tested because it is so strange, but because of that, it is also THE most substantiated.

It took a while, but hidden variable theory was eventually disproved by John Bell, who showed that there are lots of experiments that cannot have unmeasured results. Thus the results cannot be determined ahead of time, so there are no hidden variables, and the results are truly random. That is, if it is physically and mathematically impossible to predict the results, then the results are truly, fundamentally random. askamathematician.com/2009/1 … andomness/

So it’s not a matter of not being able to locate the hidden variables that determine our universe, but it’s that the variables have been proven not to exist. It’s not that we can’t predict results because we’re too stupid, and, say, in 1000 years we’ll be smarter, but the results cannot be predicted because prediction is simply not possible. (And my reasoning for that is the universe cannot know what it will decide until it has decided.)

Assuming that it’s easier to have nothing and assuming that easy things are favored by “whatever there is” because if wastefulness we’re favored, then a mechanistic process would exhaust itself and cease to exist, then we have to assume that there is some overarching purpose for the existence of the universe since its existence neither conforms to efficiency (having nothing) nor wastefulness. IOW, the expenditure of energy must have some reason, goal, desire, purpose and that purpose would be subverted if purpose existed within the universe itself.

An analogy:

  1. You go on vacation. You scratch your head and decide where on this earth you want to go. The whole world is open to you.
  2. You go on vacation. The whole thing is planned in advance and you’ll be required to follow the itinerary without deviation.

The purpose of #1 is not to have a purpose because the point is to get away from work (that which is purposeful). There is no purpose to #2.

There is no other conclusion. If there are 2 things, you’d need to explain how one thing could relate to the other thing, and if you did that, you’d join the things together into one thing by their relation. So there can only be one thing (the universe is the only atom - atmos = the indivisible). If there can only be one thing, then that one thing cannot look at itself and any effort of self-examination will result in randomness (causeless). It’s just logic man :slight_smile:

It will always be a mystery. Sure, we may learn more minutiae, but we’ll never arrive at the point of self-inspection.

Your purpose is to connect the dots, but why do you want to connect the dots? (Because it’s fun :wink: )

I think we can freely do it, but not freely want to do it. Whether or not this is fun to me is totally out of my control.

Only if you choose not to choose.

I don’t think Rand went into it deeply enough. Objectivity isn’t something that can be said to exist because existence is relational and contextual, but objectivity is not and it stands alone in nothingness with no context. I’ve struggled and struggled to refute James’ claim that things with no affect cannot exist, but I’ve got nothing. I even came up with an idea that the universe could exhaust some particles to places that could never be seen and we could never know about the exhausting process itself, but then realized I may as well be speculating about pink unicorns and teapots floating around in places that could never be seen. What’s the sense in that? Things whose existence could never be realized and could have no affect, are not things we could say exist because existence is relational.

Objectivity is abstract existence and abstract is the opposite of relational existence.

[i]Abstract:

adjective

  1. thought of apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances: an abstract idea.
  2. expressing a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object or instance, as justice, poverty, and speed.
  3. theoretical; not applied or practical: abstract science.[/i]

The abstract is off on its own, disconnected from everything, and doesn’t exist. Likewise, objectivity doesn’t exist, or can’t be said to exist.

But it’s not mechanical. The universe isn’t a machine, it’s more like a plant. It doesn’t function like Newtonian balls, but it grows and sends random branches into barren places to die while branches that just happened to find sun will bear fruit. The whole thing is completely pointless random happenings that are going on.

I think the “rooted in dasein” concept is something I will have to learn over time because it doesn’t seem like anything that I can be succinctly told lol

If you have no way of knowing, then you are ignoring dasein, right? How could dominoes toppling over give you an impression of dasein? If it were true, then everything would have dasein.

If there is a god, he is part of the universe per the proof of the existence of only one thing. God could be dreaming all this, but if he were, then it would be random and not having every minutiae planned and predetermined. Who plans their dreams? The one thing there is not is the old man on the throne barking orders to everything as if that would have any purpose. Who goes to a play with a script in their hand for the actors to follow it? Would you really want to watch a movie that YOU made?

My basis for believing the universe would replay differently is the existence of randomness. Having the existence of randomness fairly well established, it seems rather hard to believe the universe would playout the same way time after time.

The breathing exercises in buddhism are meant to aid in realization of the futility of deciding whether breathing is something you do or something that happens to you. Eventually you’re supposed to realize that it’s all you. Alan says “If I am foot, I am the sun.” It just a matter of where you draw the line between what is you and not you, or finally realizing there is no line.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uieXYC4bPPI[/youtube]

What god? What do you mean? Any god will suffice.

There are no separate things; just the one thing. There is no god and not-god.

I’m not sure how you’re seeing it that way. I claimed: If G exists, then G is part of U. Then I proved the maximum possible tally of things, which is one. So if the max number of things is one, and if U exists, and if G exists, then G and U can only be one. What part is circular?

I’d describe it more like: popped into my head and birthed out.

Well the is/ought world is a subset of the either/or world, right? Things only exist in context. Words are only words because of the contrasting background, so we can only conceive of dualities. If dualities vanish, then so does any concept of existence.

Yep.

One is legislative and the other is judicial, but in order to demonstrate good or bad, one would have to have concept of them.

What do you mean? Rules are made to be broken! :wink: The news of late is filled with reports of those who ignored the rules and went on shooting rampages within communities.

You’re trying to systemize the infinite, which is to say you’re trying to get to the root of yourself and it can’t be done.

I see what you’re saying.

What’s the difference between biological architecture and that of value judgements? Is your mind in your head or is your head in your mind?

Right, there is no organism and environment, but there is the organism-environment.

Fun activities may not be the same for everybody, but nobody could tell you why something is fun because the “why” doesn’t exist.

Every motivation can have an explanation except that which is simply regarded as fun. I’m doing __________ so that I can do ___________ so that I can do __________, which is fun, and I don’t know why I’m wanting to have fun.

I want to go to college so I can get a degree so I can get a good job so I can get money so I can buy things which I can have fun with and I don’t have anymore information about it. There is no purpose to the things I want to buy with the money except to have fun with.

I don’t resonate with teleology at all and feel I’ve made some good arguments against it. I think there are two motivations: self-improvement and fun. One is innocent and the other is arrogant.

The dictionary defines purpose as

[i]noun

  1. the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.
  2. an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.
  3. determination; resoluteness.[/i]

#1 describes it as simply a reason for a happening while #2 adds the intention. So at the least, purpose means “the reason for this or that” and the reason may or may not be intended. If the reason is intended, then I think that means teleology.

I think you’re right that in a no god world there would be no purpose. There would be an explanation of the series of events leading up to a happening, but no underlying purpose behind it.

I don’t see how.

muse

verb (used without object)
to think or meditate in silence, as on some subject.

So amuse means to not think or meditate in silence.

Muse is purposeful and amuse is not.

Amusement parks are places to go in order to not think. I never thought about the word like that: Not-thinking-parks :banana-jumprope:

Right.

Communism? If only I had the right method I would be swimming in a direction that would allow me to truly understand and correctly evaluate it.

In your direction, for example.

In reacting to things like Communism or abortion or putting Brett Kavenaugh on the Supreme Court, a “method” is just another existential contraption. You convince yourself that you have found one in sync with who you most are in sync with the most rational manner in which to behave.

Then you convince yourself further that it is not just another psychological defense mechanism to sustain the comfort and the consolation that they were designed [by nature] to bring about in making the human condition a little less precarious.

Might I then suggest a discussion between you and KT on the role that pragmatism might play in reconfiguring dasein, conflicting goods and political economy into less threatening components of a moral philosophy?

How can the result not be an existential contraption? You’re basically insisting here that, with respect to Communism, your own predilection toward objective morality like KT’s propensity to embrace pragmatism, make the components of my own moral philosophy…go away? You just don’t let the existential implications of them [that I note above and elsewhere] bother you in the way that they bother me.

But then that’s not an existential contraption either.

Again, let’s focus this criticism on a particular context involving conflicting goods. How about your own reaction to Communism?

Show us how the arguments I make with Phyllo substantiate your claim that I do not “display compromise, moderation and negotiation here”. That I am “utterly uncompromising about what the focus is.”

What on earth are you talking about here?

Same here. Let’s choose a context involving conflicted value judgments and discuss it. You can then note the manner in which this accusation plays out when I discuss the components of my own moral philosophy “out in the world” of actual human interactions.

Your own moral and political “preferences” are, in my view, able to comfort you considerably more than the “existential leaps to particular political prejudices” that I make are able to comfort me.

And this, I speculate, revolves around the manner in which your own thinking [here and now] takes you further away from the manner in which I construe the “self” [in the is/ought world] as an existential contraption – more so than a frame of mind able to be in sync with one or another objective morality font.

But that in my view is no less embedded in the life that you lived predisposing you to one set of conclusions rather than another.

There does not appear to be a way for philosophers or scientists to pin down the most reasonable way in which to think about these relationships.

All we can do [it seems to me] is try to describe what goes on in our heads when we are confronted by others who reject [or even attack] our own values.

I’m in pieces here more so than you are. Why? Because I recognize the extent to which my own “preferences” are derived more from the actual trajectory of my life than from anything that philosophers or objectivists are able to propose.

Your “pragmatism”, in my view, is just a frame of mind that puts less weight on the part where had you lived a very different life you would embody very different values.

It can be any value “preference”. Abortion is just something I go back to because it was the issue that happened to reconfigure my own objectivist contraption into moral nihilism.

And my abortion trajectory roots my own values not just in a single context but over the course of my entire life. It attempts to intertwine over time experiences that I had and ideas that I came into contact with.

So, pick a “preference” and do the same. Let’s see how your thinking did evolve over time given new sets of experiences and relationships.

And, given how crucial this interaction is, what can philosophers then conclude about, among other things, deontology or utilitarian approaches to human interactions? In other words, given how important my own assumptions here may or may not be.

As I have noted elsewhere, that is not my argument. Knowing almost nothing about the life that you’ve life, who am I to to say what you should or should not do with respect to conflicting goods? I’m just trying grasp how, through your own rendition of pragmatism, your “I” is not in as many pieces as mine.

Nope. No evidence of this, just random speculation. I have never said that my preferences are derived from anything other than my experiences and my genetics/tendencies I was born with. You are just making stuff up here.

Nope. My pragmatism is ‘doing stuff to achieve what I want’. It has nothing to do with how I arrived at preferences. YOu are making stuff up. I problem solve given my preferences. So do you. That’s it. It has nothing to do with the weight I put on my other lives I might have had and what preferences I would have had.

By the way, you seem to be assuming you know how much weight one SHOULD NECESSARILY PUT on that. How did you figure that out?

It seems like you are saying that you know how one should emotionally react to the fact that preferences and values can change over time AND how strongly one should react to that. I believe that mine can. I know that they have. I think there is every chance that some will. This does not make me fragmented and in a hole. You seem to think your reaction, the weight you place on this would be everyone’s reaction, unless they have a contraption. Here you are calling my pragmatism a comforting contraption. But it isn’t. It is simply what all mobile creatures and many immobile ones do given they have preferences. It does not say a thing about how much weight I should give to the fact that my values may change. You are making stuff up, and it seems you do this because, it must be true that anyone not suffering like you around these issues is either an objectivist or has some other contraption. You, of all people, with a philosophy based on dasein, are in an ironic position when you universalize your reactions.

And you did not answer the question or use the hint.

Can you see why I thought you considered it inevitable that any non-objectivist is either in your hole or has a comforting contraption? I did because you constantly assign me such contraptions, despite their being not the slightest bit of evidence that I have them.

Sure, wants and needs get all tangled up. But in order to subsist from day to day there are clearly things that you need: access to food and water and shelter; protection from those who wish to do you harm. Though here the conflicts generally revolve more around means than ends.

Or take sex. As a species we rely on sex to procreate each new generation. But given that sex can be engaged for the sheer pleasure of it, we have come to want many, many different kinds of sex. And in any number of different contexts. Conflicts abound here.

So, we need some things. How then ought we to go about procuring them? We want many, many other things. How then ought we to differentiate between the good things and the bads things.

Me? I cue dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Again: We need to bring these “general descriptions” down to earth. What in particular are you doing that pisses others off and why in particular are they pissed off about it?

In any event, we need to establish rules of behavior in any particular community. But the rules are always embedded in the historical, cultural and experiential interaction of genes and memes. And generally predicated on one or another rendition/interaction of might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law.

The part about “rooted in dasein” revolves basically around the fact that…

1] as children we are all indoctrinated [re rewards and punishments] to embody one set of rules rather than another
2] as adults the rules that we subscribe to are generally derived from the experiences, the relationships and the access to ideas that unfold in the course of living our lives.

The manner in which I describe dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Others then can either agree or disagree regarding the extent to which this description is applicable to their own “I” out in the is/ought world.

The purpose of the things that we do – i.e. what we tell ourselves the reasons are – are no less existential contrapments to me. The important point [mine] is that philosophers/ethicists/political scientists etc., seem unable to concoct an argument such that all rational men and women are able to embody only those behaviors they are morally obligated to choose.

The thought that we put into the rules here are, in my view, historical, cultural and interpersonal manifestions of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

The thought that some put into having no rules at all is still just another existential frame of mind to me.

To fight fair or not to fight fair is construed by different people in different ways in different contexts. Why do some come to one conclusion and others another? Is there a way to determine [either universally or context to context] what one is in fact obligated to do?

The “rule of no rules” is always only going to be applicable to a particular situation understood in a particular way. The rest [to me] becomes all entangled in language game. The gaps that sometimes come to exist between words and worlds. One can argue that having fun is their purpose for doing something. Then “technically” we can go on and on regarding the extent to which this is logically or epistemologically sound.

As for the role that human autonomy plays in all of this, that can range from reconciling it with the “will of God” to grappling with “free will” in a wholly determined universe. Here and now the “truth” still seems far, far beyond our reach.

Thus when you argue that…

…I have to ask how an infinitesimally tiny and insignificant speck of exaistence like yourself can possibly imagine that what they think they know about all of this here and now is wholly in sync with all that would need to be known about the ontological and/or teleological nature of Existence itself. And that’s presuming that this universe is not but one of an infinite number of additional universes.

And that’s presuming there is No God.

And all QM let’s us know is just how far removed we may well be from successfully grappling with Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”.

Again, when someone makes the sort of assertions that you make here, I presume it is a manifestation of human psychology more so than such disciplines and science and philosophy.

Your arguments are bursting at the seams with assumptions. But, then, how could they not be? And being or not being on vacation doesn’t change that.

And then when I point this out:

You insist:

As though through “logic” alone, one can explain why something exists rather then nothing at all, and why this something and not another.

You give us a world of words. Words said to be true because more words say so. How “on earth” would you go about actually demonstrating this re experiments and predictions? What empirical evidence is there to back this up? Other than your assumptions about it?

One thing for sure though: There’s no way in hell I will ever be able to falsify it. And James S. Saint is no longer with us. Able to connect the dots between his own set of assumptions here [RM/AO] and the Real God.

Right from the start I own up to the fact that my own purpose here is hopelessly – ineffably, inextricably – tangled up in dasein. There are just too many variables [and variable permutations] from the past I either did not understand or were beyond my control. What seems most pressing to me is to connect the dots between the either/or and the is/ought world as that has implications for the fate of “I” having tumbled over into the abyss.

Then [again] back to the things that you assert/insist are true:

So [again] I have to ask myself how your pourpose here in coming to these conclusions is related to my purpose in probing the philosophical parameters of “how ought one to live”?

As “infinitesimally tiny and insignificant specks of existence”?

As for the part that a God, the God, my God might play in all of this?

Cue yet another avalanche of assumptions.

Go in whatever direction that you want, whatever direction makes you feel good. Then you won’t need to feel fractured.

If you believe your own philosophy, then “my direction” must be as good as any other.

I personally don’t care if you go in “my direction”. I have not need for some kind of confirmation which your agreement would bring me. LOL

Oddly enough, one can use methods in math, science, engineering, history, archeology, geography, etc.
Then suddenly we get here (wherever here is) and methods are useless, according to you.

Okay, then pick an existential contraption that you like and go with it.

By the way, “in sync with who I most am” means nothing to me.How can the result not be an existential contraption?

What are “threatening components of moral philosophy”? I have no idea.

Okay, then it’s all existential contraptions and there is no way to escape that fact. You can simply accept it and move on.
Nobody can give you an argument that says otherwise. There is no reason to be critical of people who have other existential contraptions … including all objectivists.

Problem solved.

It could be that you just like gibbering on the internet, claiming to be fractured, asking for help and bugging objectivists. Go with it.

(Unfortunately in that case, there is obliviously an element of confusion which is bound to arise.)

In the sense that I used ‘pragmatism’ as self-description, it cannot. All it means is I, like you, like all mammal, do things to achieve what I want. It offers nothing soothing, does not weigh in on what is important or not, what should get more or less weight. It is a purely description term for what, my repeated example, mammals do. Mammals without contraptions. The fox smells wolves and moves in the other direction. That’s it. It’s not a philosophy. (in the sense I meant it. I’d have to look up the various official PRAGMATISMS to see what those would entail, but since I do not follow them, it doesn’t matter in this context). You’ve been running with this for a while and I am partly responsible for using that term in the way I meant in a philosophy forum. But as I meant it, it simply cannot do what you keep attributing it doing.