What we prefer [re value judgments] is still no less rooted in dasein. My point is that there does not appear to be a way in which to determine whether all rational people ought to prefer coke or pepsi. Or whether in any particular context one ought to prefer this particular pleasure to that particular pain.
There are those who choose to be sadists, there are those who choose to be masochists.
Pleasure would seem to be that which we are [genetically] hard-wired to prefer. But for every man or woman who feels pleasure in eating meat, there are others who are pained by it.
These choices in my view are largely “existential contraptions”.
Is this God Watts played omniscient? If so, how could the extent to which you know yourself not already have been known by God? You can’t know everything and not know everything there is to know about everyone. Past, present and future.
And it is one thing to know things about yourself able to be demonstrated as in fact true — your gender, your place of birth, your height, the color of your eyes, the schools you attended, the sports you play etc.
Another thing altogether to demonstrate that what you think is right or wrong regarding any particular moral conflict is in fact true.
Here I always suggest that “analysis” of this sort be brought down to earth. What particular statement is someone making in what particular context regarding what particular thing. What can be confirmed as a reasonable meaning for all rational human beings.
All hopelessly abstract in my view. It’s not about anything in particular.
He speaks of God, of “verifying” him. But verified or not what particular people think is true about God is deemed meaningful to them. And then they act on their beliefs. And the things they choose to do may impact you in any number of ways — good or bad.
So, what does that mean?
To “mean” something is often going to be problematic. Just go to the dictionary:
[b]Mean: intend to convey, indicate, or refer to (a particular thing or notion); signify.
synonyms: signify, convey, denote, designate, indicate, connote, show, express, spell out, stand for, represent, symbolize, imply, purport, suggest, allude to, intimate, hint at, insinuate, drive at, refer to[/b]
Okay, but with regard to what?
One would need to choose a particular context, note particular behaviors, and then, based on a particular set of assumptions, predict future behaviors.
What else is there?
I may think that by force of will I can decide to believe in Santa Claus [or God] but how would I go about determining [and then demonstrating] that what I think/will here is not that which I was only ever able to think/will?
When I say “I don’t know” I am only going back to that gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known about existence itself in order to know something like this.
I just point out that seems applicable to everyone else in turn.
But who is able to connect the dots between these “fundamental forces” and any particular things that they think, feel, say or do?
In other words…
Come on, there are dozen and dozens of folks out there who, down through the ages, have argued for one or another TOE here. And they can all make that claim. But [generally] what it comes down to is this: you can only properly have studied them if you come to agree with them.
But where is the hardcore empirical proof of the claims they make? Sooner or later you reach that point in their argument where the words are connected only to other words defined and defended by them.
Here it’s stuff like RM/AO or Value Ontology or the intellectual contraptions of folks like ecmandu and phemonenal_graffiti.
Again: What particular problem relating to what particular context precipitating what particular behaviors construed from what particular point of view?
I’m not appealing to impossibility. I’m only pointing out that “here and now” Watts’s arguments are not sufficient to either yank me up out of the hole I have dug for myself on this side of the grave, or obviate the fear of oblivion that I embody re the other side of it.
Of course I could suspend everything I am doing and do nothing else but read everything that he has ever written; and come to truly understand everything that he has done.
But then all the other autodidacts would insist I should be doing that in regard their own intellectual gurus instead.
Instead, I note the hole that I am in here and now and the hole I’ll be in after I am dead and gone. And I ask them to explain to me why they don’t think about it as I – “I” – do given the componnents of my own philosophical narrative: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in a No God world.
From that perspective true, but from the perspective of the 27,000 days [on average] that each of us is around from the cradle to the grave a whole lot of existence can go on.
Where have I ever said that? I don’t either put life down or say it’s nothing but matter. I suggest instead that our reaction to our own particular life is largely rooted in dasein evolving out in a particular world experienced in a particular way. And that I have no way of knowing the extent to which “I” is inherently the embodiment of so-called “immutable laws of matter”.
This is something that science continues to explore. And I always come back to what seems to be the biggest mystery of all: how matter becomes mindful of itself as matter and then…maybe more than that?
That cognition like things “fetched from the amygdala” are all inherently intertwined in the immutable laws of matter. And what the universe can or cannot know is no less embedded in whatever brought into existence existence itself. What can the universe know at all sans God?
These are all still mysteries science is just beginning to grapple with. Imagine what scientists – or, for that matter, philosophers and theologians – will have to say about them 1,000 years from now.
Will Watts be acclaimed then…or scoffed at?
Okay, but how does one make that distinction until one is able to grasp the extent to which human autonomy is or is not essentially an illusion embedded in human psychology?
Well, there are contraptions in the either/or world that we can take apart and put back together again. And, in so doing, explain why [objectively] the whole is the sum of the parts.
But the intellectual contraptions devised to make arguments about 1] relationships in the is/ought world or 2] grappling with the truly Big Questions are often comprised of parts that are predicated only on subjective/subjunctive assumptions backed up only with sets of definitions and meanings.
The whole is the sum of particular variables and factors more or less embedded in “I” as an existential contraption.
In my view [and in the view of many others] it seems incumbent upon those making the claim that something either does in fact exist or is in fact true to demonstrate that all rational men and men are obligated to believe it.
It’s just that in regards to value judgments or answers to the Big Questions such demonstrations still seem beyond our reach. And it seems those who claim that this is false need to demonstrate why they think this.
Again, down to earth.
Donald Trump is now president of the United States. Can this be demonstrated such that all rational men and women are obligated to concur?
Donald Trump is doing an excellent job as president. Can this be demonstrated such that all rational men and women are obligated to concur?
Donald Trumps policies are as a result of his own autonomous choices. Can this be demonstrated such that all rational men and women are obligated to concur?
There are explanations and jars and then there are explanations and jars. Some clearly more demonstrable than others.
Yes, but unlike the contraptions used by doctors to [as some insist] kill human babies, few will argue about the morality of how one plucks apples out of a barrel.
Then it comes down to the extent to which any particular subject who claims to believe something is true objectively is able to demonstrate it. And “I” is no less an existential contraption. We simply don’t know [beyond all doubt] if “I” is able to choose autonomously or, if “I” is able to, which choices made in the is/ought world are essentially/necessarily right or wrong.
Or, rather, so it seems to “me” “here and now”.
If “I” “absolutely cannot ever be in possession of a wholly comprehensive understanding of existence itself”, this merely reinforces the point I make. Because even this point is embedded in that gap.
Again, my point is no less circumscribed by the gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known about existence itself.
Who really knows what the objective truth about oxygen is? And no one will argue that had the bishop not been made to move diagonally this would have been immoral. And how do we go about determining whether the rules created in chess are necessarily in sync with either human autonomy or the immutable laws of matter?