a new understanding of today, time and space.

zinnat introduced them [to me] on the Fallacy Of Subjectivity thread:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=190059&p=2605013&hilit=zinnat+groot#p2605013

From wiki:

“Since his film premiere and animated series debut, Groot has become a pop culture icon, with his repeated line ‘I am Groot’ becoming an Internet meme.”

And folks at ILP can quite readily point to my own repeated lines on this thread and on so many others. It’s just common knowledge here. I’ve been thumped with that accusation over and over and over again. And it ain’t wrong.

But, uh, maybe we should take this to another thread?

Edit:

Actually, it goes back to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=190236&p=2602174&hilit=groot#p2602174

Oh that groot. Yeah I knew who groot was and saw the movies, but I couldn’t make the connection between the iambiguous glossary of words and phrases and the character.

from prior post: I think I have a solution…
you may be able to see the problem…

I have been accused of not bringing my solutions to the ground…
I am weaving theories in the air and not being aware of the
I am not engaging in a particular context, a particular set of
conflicting goods…in other words, say gun control or abortion,
what are my “solutions” given the current reality of modern day America?

It is suggested that I bring this “general description” assessment of “values”
down to earth and explain how my “values” is worked out in the “real” world…

the problem as I see it isn’t about “working” out my values in the real world…
the problem is discovering what my values are…

for example, if I act without any recourse to my values, my actions are
mindless, “ad hoc” (ad hoc means “for this”, “for this situation” it is used
to describe something that has been formed or used for a specical and immediate
purpose without prior planning… ad hoc means temporary, improvised, makeshift)

and we cannot hold ourselves to such actions as gun control or abortions using
ad hoc thinking… we must engage in such thinking with something more permanent,
something that is useful today and tomorrow…

in thinking about abortions or gun control, I must base my actions about
such matters based upon the values I hold… if I call myself “pro-life”
and hold that all life is sacred, then my actions in regards to abortions
becomes quite clear…if I instead belief in a woman’s right to choose,
then my actions become also quite clear…the actions we take
are dictated by the values we hold…….

the values you accept dictates the actions you take…

it is really that simple……

it isn’t enough to engage in some discussion about what to do about
gun control or abortion, we must hold to some values before we can even
hold a discussion about any actions we are to engage in…

to take the discussion of values out of the clouds must mean we first
engage in the discussion about our values and then and only then can
we discuss the conflicting goods of abortion or gun control…

to act without any understanding of values is to act “ad hoc”
makeshift and improvised with no thought to time, past, present or
future…… whereas values give us some manner to act past, present
and future…it is by values that we can begin to discuss those actions
we are to take on the ground…… some understanding of values
means that sometimes a meeting of the minds on specific actions
like abortion or gun control, cannot be achieved… if you are inflexible
and dam and determined that abortion is flouting god’s laws, then
there is really no room for engagement between two opposing viewpoints…
there can be no agreement between opposing and conflicting viewpoints…

in my long life, I have seen two sides dig in on the question of values
and no possibility of rapprochement or reconciliation existed…it happens…
is this the case in modern America today? the two sides of the left and right
have dug in and have different values about such idea’s as abortion and
gun control and education and voter rights and with such digging in, no
possibility of reconciliation exists… now what?

that is the true question of our modern age………
we have dug in about our values and there doesn’t seem to
be any middle ground……… now what?

and from this comes the rather silly idea of breaking America apart into
different countries or breaking a state like California apart…that isn’t
the answer, but what is the answer?

I can’t say… all I can say is we must engage in an understanding
of our values before we can engage in any actions…

the truth is really simple in this regards…

the values you accept dictate the actions you take…….

that is the only thing I know for sure…….I cannot speak to the rest…

the conflicting goods or conflicting values that exists in America
cannot be solved by violence or separating the country…
we must engage in some dialogue between the two sides…

more then likely it will be the left that brings about the peace because
the left is about dialogue, consensus building, tolerance…
so it would seem to me, that any solution must come from the left…

but and this is important, it cannot come from the left forsaking their values
any more then it can come from the right forsaking their values…
to abandoned our values is to abandoned what makes us human
as I have engaged in an understanding of what it means to be human
and the negative and positive discussion of what it means to be human
cannot be dismissed…are we to rise above to become more human,
or are we to lower ourselves to become human/animal?

that is the basic distinction between the left and the right…
do we rise to become human, more human or do we lower ourselves
to become more instinctual, more animal?

our engagement with values is one way we can rise to become human,
all too human…… we cannot become too engaged with actions until
we have worked out our values for “the values you accept, dictate
the actions you take”

so before we begin discussions between the left and right and before
we decide on any actions, we must be clear about what our values are…
we must be, within ourselves, clear about what values are we to engage with
and what those values mean?

so as in any journey, we must begin within ourselves………

so, what the values that are going to drive your actions?

so, ask yourself, in regards to say, gun control, what actions should I take?

and the answer comes from the values we choose…

but then one might ask, why those values and not another?

values are simply another way of asking ourselves what is important?

I value justice, I value freedom…I accept those values as values worth
holding on to…and one might again ask, why those values and not other values?

because I think that human beings do better with those values instead of
the security values… but Kropotkin, why?

and that is how we go down the rabbit hole… doubting every single
choice and decision we make… it is kinda like the dog chasing its tail…

yes, we could doubt ourselves until the cows come home, but at some point,
you think to yourselve, I am comfortable with certain values…and I will stick
with them… but Kropotkin, that isn’t very philosophical?

No, no it isn’t…but it is human…the world isn’t black and white,
or right or wrong or good or evil… it is various shades of gray…
and the choices we make need to reflect that gray in our lives…

sometimes, we have to just pick an area and run… it may not
be logical or rational or philosophical, but it is, what it is…

we humans live in that messy gray area where sometimes logic
and rational thought and philosophical thought isn’t going to
solve our questions…

love for example… it is messy and exists in that gray area
where logic and rational thought and philosophical thought
isn’t going to help one to understand love…

and yet, love maybe one of the most important aspects of being human…
and yet we cannot define it, we cannot measure it, we cannot
time it or weigh it or number it… it just is………and to
measure it or weigh it or be scientific about love isn’t going to
help one find out what love is or solve our questions about love…
you just have to go through it… leap as it were into love……

you cannot be logical or rational or philosophical about love……

and you can’t be logical or rational or philosophical about certain parts
of our human lives…….

but Kropotkin, you have punted on some of the most important questions
of being human… no, no I haven’t…I simply accept that for us human beings,
sometimes logic and rational thought and philosophical thought isn’t enough
to solve our very messy questions of existence… sometimes the answer to
existence is found within that existence… simply by being, we find answers
we weren’t looking for…

but Kropotkin, you don’t make any sense… perhaps, perhaps… perhaps
I will make sense once you reach a certain point in your life, perhaps not…

sometimes, there are no answers to our questions…… that isn’t logical or rational
or philosophical but it is true………

Kropotkin

as I alluded to earlier, perhaps some of our questions of existence is
answered during existence and can only be answered during our existence……

we cannot define love or rationally explain love or weigh love
or time love… but we can experience love… I have loved
the same woman for over 25 years and I believe she has loved
me for 25 years… but we cannot logically or rationally explain
our love or why it has lasted for such a long time… it is…
and that has to be enough for us…our being in love is its own
explanation…we might suggest that existence is its own
explanation… we exist and we can’t explain it any further…perhaps…

so where does that leave us?

with an understanding that some parts of our lives, some aspects are
beyond analysis, beyond understanding, beyond any possible explanation…

and only in existence with those parts, those questions like love,
can we begin to offer up a vague solution or a vague answers…

but how can we know what questions are outside of our range of understanding
and what questions are within range? all we can do is push all questions until
we decide what questions can only be answered by experience itself……
or what questions we can answer logically, rationally, philosophically…

in other words, all questions are on the table until shown to be otherwise,
to be unable to answer logically, rationally, philosophically puts those
questions off the table… for the moment… perhaps later we might
be able to answer these questions without having to experience them…

What is life?

Is that a question we can answer logically, rationally,
philosophically? perhaps the best way to answer the question of “what is life”
is to experience life, to engage in life as best as we can…….to live, to love,
to challenge, to experience is the only way we can “know” life or to explain life…

as we each experience life differently, this is why we explain life differently?

as we love differently, that is why we explain love differently?

as our experiences in life is different, our questions are different…
perhaps that is why IMP and I understand the questions of life
differently…perhaps that is why we answer the question of life
differently?

because my experience with love is different then some people,
that is why I see or understand love differently………

in one sense, all answers about life is right and in another sense,
all answers about life is wrong…….because our experiences are different,
our answers are bound to be different… but that doesn’t make them wrong,
just different… and in that difference we must apply the value of tolerance
because we cannot outright say, he is wrong about love or he is wrong about life
because life and love offers us different experiences and thus we understand love
and life differently… I cannot tell you for sure if that difference is wrong,
I can only say it is different… and thus we must be tolerant of others
in their explanation of life or of love… we cannot in all honesty, say that
if they love someone, anyone, that is wrong…we cannot justify intolerance
in who people fall in love with… again, consensual and above 18…for rather
obvious reasons…….but I cannot use my experience in life or in love to
judge another persons experience in life or in love…my experience is
my experience and their experience is their experience……

this is why the “liberal” viewpoint of tolerance and forgiveness is better
suited for people…because we cannot honestly say one way is better then
another in regards to love… and we cannot honestly say one life choice
is better then another in isolation…but and this is important, we don’t live
in isolation… we exists with each other…… and we cannot be so tolerant
that we allow others to murder or to harm another, verbally or physically…
that isn’t right either………….

in other words, we travel a line that often gets twisted and misshapen…

what is right and wrong often gets twisted in our desire to reach our
goal of happiness… if we better understood what really makes us
happy, a lot of the world’s misery would go away… but that is a post
for another day………….

Kropotkin

Second that notion.
I do not see am other option for man kind , with the wrong side of the double edged of sword of Damocles hanging over us, with increasing certainty.

M: Second that notion.
I do not see am other option for man kind , with the wrong side of the double edged of sword of Damocles hanging over us, with increasing certainty."

K: the real question is the one unspoken question, what is the “real”
relationship between the “individual” and “society”?

Kierkegaard and Ibsen thought about the one, the “individual” whereas Marx
and Hegel thought about the many, the society/group…

but we haven’t resolved that question and therein lies much of
society/state problems…… when I wrote about our search for
our individual happiness, how we search for love, that search
is an individual search… but we are social creatures… we,
by evolution, exists as social creatures, we must, must reside
within a group or society… we cannot physically, mentally, emotionally,
exist by ourselves……. and within that framework, we must search for
our individual happiness… so within that framework, society’s system,
we search for love… and if our love disrupts or decreases the system’s
energy, we must deny that love…so for instance, adults loving children,
pederasty damages society and so must be banned upon that grounds…

so the real question is the relationship between the individual and society…

and so our modern quest to understand the relationship between the one and
society goes on…….

Kropotkin

No, my point is less about examining particular solutions in particular contexts, and more about examining the extent to which any proposed solutions are embedded in the lives that we live. More so than in the abstract arguments embedded in “general descriptions” of human interactions.

And here it only makes sense to bring the arguments themselves down out of the clouds.

Instead, in my view, this is where you stay:

So, back again I then go to this: How on earth does this “general description” “world of words” assessment deal with the points I raise in my signature threads?

From my frame of mind, we discover our values in and through the actual trajectory of our lives. Those on both sides of the gun control and abortion debates can make your argument above.

But, then, as well, if they have become objectivists as a result of the same existential trajectory, they insist that all rational people must be either pro-life or pro-choice. Pro-citizens or pro-government.

They can’t accept that their own value judgments are existential contraptions rooted in dasein. That their own values are derived from a world of contingency, chance and change. A world where values are always subject to reconfiguration given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge.

Instead, they stick to a frame of mind like this one:

Once again, in my view, there is nothing different between a liberal objectivist noting this and a conservative objectivist noting it in turn. It’s just that it is their understanding of values that leads all truly rational men and women to choose to act as they do “down on the ground”.

In other words, doesn’t this basically describe the moral objectivists on both sides?

Now what? Well, in my view, the “best of all possible worlds” still revolves around “moderation, negotiation and compromise” given a political format embodied in “democracy and the rule of law”.

Only, unlike the objectivists, I am still down in my “hole” even here — “fractured and fragmented” given the manner in which I have come to understand “I” at the intersection of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

But that’s where folks like you and Wendy don’t want to be. Or, rather, so it seems to me. You are able to connect the dots between value formation, value judgments and political actions such that you feel considerably more at one with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.

Trust me: I’ve been there myself. With God and with No God. I know how comforting and consoling it is to feel “grounded” in a sense that, even if politically the other side prevails, we know that we are on the right side morally.

Nothing could be less simple in my view. Why? Because it involves taking all of the factors at play here – genetic, memetic, historical, cultural, interpersonal, individual – and thinking that if only we truly do understand the creation of our own values we can come to act them out “morally”.

Which, given the points raised in my signature threads, is not at all the way things play out in the real world.

Instead, from my frame of mind, the enormous complexities at play in the real world is the last thing the liberal and conservative objectivists are interested in examining.

Instead we get stuff like this:

More or less the manner in which many conservatives would assess the situation. Only it’s the liberals and their values fucking everything up.

Again, the only time these “general descriptions” give way to actual discussions of policy relating to particular contexts involving particular conflicting goods, is when the objectivists trade political prejudices. Then each side accuses the other of being woefully obtuse when it comes to understanding the true nature of “values”.

This part:

And Kropotkin tells them why. Then Wendy tells them why, instead, her own values must prevail.

No, that is where [b]I[/b] am now. Down in my “hole” “fractured and fragmented”. I might champion “moderation, negotiation and compromise” as the best of all possible worlds, but I am still no less imploded, no less splintered in my reaction to issues like abortion and gun control.

What I am unable to do [anymore] is to think myself into viewing all of this as you do:

You say that…

But that’s not how you sound when you are castigating IQ45 for building his wall, or for backing the NRA or for pandering to the pro-life folks.

Here it is more the stuff of the “one of us” vs. “one of them” folks. And that is precisely what I no longer have access to myself.

But then up you go:

In other words, as I see it, thinking yourself into a frame of mind that provides whatever it takes to sustain at least some measure of comfort and consolation when you look out at a world bursting at the seams with very, very real human pain and suffering.

I get that part. I really do. I’m just not able to accomplish it myself anymore.

I don’t mean to ignore you Iam, but I have other fish to fry today……

what if, what if life is a test…

and what if the various moralities we see, are test…
for example,

A. the ancient Mayans where thousands were slaughter to
fullfill some religious concept

B. where it was socially acceptable for older men to have
“relationships” with younger men… pederasty was socially acceptable…
and expected…

C. where incest was acceptable as in the Pharaohs practice
incest and the house of Hasburgs was inflicted with genetic
disease after so many generations of inbreeding…

D. where one was stoically like the Romans…

E. or the religious like the bible, the old testament…
for example the story of Abraham and his attempted sacrifice of
his son Issac…that was a test of Abraham’s faith…

we are tested in so many different ways in this life……

how does our current morality test us? does our current morality
even ask us much to do? Not really… the bar in our society is
really, really low… we don’t even have to obey the 10 commandments…

ask IQ45 who has broken most of them and probably all of them……
and yet he is the American standard of morality as the president is
ground zero for American morality and has been for generations…

to test faith, upon what do we require from people?

we require nothing more from people outside of the two great crimes of our modern age…
stealing and insubordination……… taking what isn’t yours
and disobeying the authorities………

how do we test this theory?

name me our great “American moralities”?

Kropotkin

when challenged to what their morality was, most people
would simply say, “I do whatever the law is”
thus exposes the great problem…that morality is
simply the law… and morality isn’t the law…
the law at one point or another has allowed incest
and slavery and Jim Crow laws and prevented interracial marriages
and treated women as property first by their fathers, then if death took
the father, her brothers then at marriage her husband…and
legally one could only vote if you held property and was a white male…

to take the law as morality is false because the law is simply
a listing of the bigotry and biases and prejudices of an age…

but is the law a simply listing of the bigotry and prejudice of an
age or does the law have some eternal properties that can be held
true throughout time?

it is said, that the law of god is eternal and yet, the laws of man has
made exceptions to every part of the 10 commandments…
thou shall not kill… unless one is fighting for one’s country…
thou shall not kill… unless one is a policeman “protecting” his life…
thou shall not kill…unless in Florida and “stand your ground” law allows
one to kill…….
thou shall not kill…unless one has temporary insanity…

the great number of exceptions to “thou shall not kill” seems to suggest
that god’s law really doesn’t mean much…

and sticking with the great American “morality”… there are far fewer
exceptions to “thou shall not steal” then there are to “thou shall not kill”
where we hold stealing to be of greater offense then then killing…

the law reacts with far greater power in offences of stealing then it
does in killing…in other words, a man who murders has
a far greater chance of escaping punishment then does a man who
is caught stealing…and a wealthy man who does either, murder or steals
is far more likely to escape punishment then a man of color or a poor man,
because the law takes notice of one’s wealth and skin color and punishes
accordingly…in other words, the law punishes selectively depending
upon one wealth or title or skin color………and selective punishment
depending upon one’s status has little or nothing to do with “morality”…

for morality has nothing to do with one’s wealth or skin color or title…
but morality has everything to do with one’s actions regardless of one’s
situation in life… morality isn’t about the color of one’s skin nor does
it have anything to do with wealth nor does it have anything to do with
one’s status or title…………but the law does engage with such superficial
matters and thus the law pretends to be about morality and the law isn’t
about the law nor is it about morality… it is simply a tool that uses
the societies prejudices and biases and bigotry as its standard…….

so we have at the bottom, the law…
then the next level is morality…
do we have another level above morality?

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……

a question for us “moderns”

Kropotkin

a man came into my store and shot another man to death……

discuss that ethically………

Kropotkin

if we are to accept and understand the bible…

then the man who killed is wrong……

thou shall not kill………

it doesn’t matter under what circumstances may
have occurred…….thou shall not kill…

if we were Christians… but that particular brand of human
being no longer exists…Kierkegaard showed us that…

so, a man shoots another man to death…

discuss ethically…

Kropotkin

this is not a genuine philosophical problem. we’d wax endlessly in philosophy if we tried to work it out. the solution is the pragmatic return to the old ways of thrasymachus…

It remains the same in the year you live in, see
Cause if I pull out some heat, nigga, you’ll go kick in
And that’s just the rules set by the fool from the ol’ school
When it’s time to duel, you get two men
Two heaters, one street, one clock
And when it strike twelve one of y’all gon’ drop

promethean75: this is not a genuine philosophical problem. we’d wax endlessly in philosophy if we tried to work it out. the solution is the pragmatic return to the old ways of thrasymachus…

K: actually, this might be the one genuine philosophical problem we have…

ethics or otherwise known as morality… same thing…

“ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves
systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right
and wrong conduct. the field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns
matters of VALUE, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called
axiology……”

at this point, I will bring in a related matter…

the other day I was in Berkley CA, not very far from me…and I was
heading toward a very good bookstore there called “Moes”…
I bought a book on history… and that got me to thinking…

how does the historian engage in history and how does the
philosopher engage in philosophy and how does the scientist engage
in science? Now the question I was thinking about was this, how does
one practice their craft, say a historian, reveal about the other
crafts, say philosophy or science…so, a historian might engage
in some person, event or time period… so a historian might
engage in the Vietnam war or he might ask about the American
attitude about the Vietnam war or he might engage with
Kennedy’s or LBJ attitude to the war or he might give a history
of the war… he can isolate on one person or one time period
or one event within that war…he can go to original sources
and/or news accounts of his area of interest… he could go to
other sources say, what the French or the British thought about the war…

he engages in the past, present and the future of his area of interest…
what did the Vietnam war mean to Vietnam and what does it mean today?
that is an historical understanding of the Vietnam war…

so how does this compare to a philosopher interest… say,
one is interested in Ethics… how would one go about engaging
in ethics? you can go historical and survey ethics from an historical
perspective… the Egyptians thought of ethics as…
and the Mayans thought of ethics as…and follow the history of ethics from
a certain time period to another time period or to our time period…

the second way of understanding ethics is to engage in a study of ethics
based on various philosophers… so we can follow ethics philosophical/historically
from philosopher to philosopher, so we can follow ethics from the pre-Socrates
to Socrates to Aristotle to St. Augustine and what each person believed or thought
about ethics…and we can carry this method all the way to modern philosophers
like Nietzsche or Heidigger………Nietzsche understanding of ethics relied on
Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”… if you don’t understand the “Nicomachean ethics”
you don’t understand Nietzsche view of ethics… that is another method of understanding
ethics… you can use the historical method or you can use the philosophical/historical
method… or you can study ethics as practice today…a sociological method
of understand ethics… using the way we practice ethics today to understand
ethics………

so how would this compare to a scientist understanding?

a scientist would see an event, say an apple dropping out of a tree…
and he would try to understand that event… first he would try to
understand if the event had a human beginning… did the apple fall
because of something a human did? then the scientist might investigate
if there was some historical understanding of the event…did anyone
else see this event and what was their conclusion of it? did the event
have some natural cause to it? and if so, what was the natural cause?

today, we have Newton to thank for our understanding of the apple, but
try to think about the apple falling down before Newton? How would
you go about investigating an apple falling out of a tree if you didn’t
have Newton to guide you?

so we have a couple of different methods of investigating
events, people or time periods……

so, once again, how would we go about investigating ethics?

we could use the historical method… follow the history
of ethics, which would mean we could either
follow the intellectual understanding of ethics,
follow what philosophers and/or religious thinkers
thought about ethics…….

which leads us to another method of investigation…
the religious method…god himself has dictated
our ethics… how are we to engage in our conduct to
other human beings and to god?

thinkers like Kierkegaard thought that the only matter at hand
was to understand our relationship to god… to be a good Christian…
as he said…if we get that right, the rest of the problem would
solve itself… what problem? the problem of our conduct to
other human beings, both individually and collectively…

I exist individually… and that is what Kierkegaard thought matter most…
not as a group, for within the group thought K. lies untruth…

I can only approach god as an individual… not as part of a group…

but the basic and most fundamental understanding of human beings
lie within one fact, we are social creatures…if we existed alone,
we would have no need for ethics, nor any need for philosophy or history,
or economics or art or government…ethics only exists because
we are social creatures… we must engage with our fellow human beings…
if we do not engage with other human beings, we develop mental problems,
such as anxiety and other mental issues that come from isolation from
human beings…that is why solitary confinement is the worst punishment
we can force upon people… it literally drives people insane…

so how do begin our engagement with ethics?

we begin by understanding the word, ethics…

the English word “ethics” is derived from the ancient Greek word,
“Ethikos” meaning “relating to one’s character” the very basis of
ethics is involving to “one’s character”… which itself come from
“ethos” meaning “character, moral nature”……

the very basic understanding of the word “ethics” begin by
understanding that ethics is about “one’s character” “one’s moral
nature”……….

some have said that “most people confuse ethics with behaving
in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law,
and don’t treat ethics as a stand-alone concept” but how does this
notion of “ethics” involving “one’s character” have to do with
“ethics in behaving in accordance to social convention, religious belief,
and the law?” one doesn’t need character to engage in “ethics” socially
as in social convention or religious belief or the law……all that is needed
there is simple compliance… not understanding nor character, just compliance…

the very question of “ethics” stands within the Kantian question of “how should we live?”

what should my engagement with my fellow human beings be?

we have enough to begin to think about ethics…

let us think about what ethics means to me, both individually
and collectively?

Kropotkin

we perform a marxist-foucaultean archaeology of ruling class ideology to plot the gradual, isomorphic development of each ethico-moral paradigm and to what socio-economic age and circumstances it pertained to.

what we are looking for is the ruling hegemony of philosophical thought at each stage. in other words, what brand of bullshit existed in what century, and what asshat is responsible for making it up.

K: perhaps…

so, how would we go about investigating, understanding “ethics”?

according to my friends at “Wiki” from whom I have stolen most
of my stuff involving ethics so far, there are three major areas of
study within ethics today,

1. meta-ethics, concerning the theoretical meaning and reference of
   moral propositions, and how their truth values (if any) can be determined…

2. Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining
   a “moral” course of action…

3. applied ethics, concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted)
   to do in a specific situation or a particular domain of action…

so, meta-ethics is a branch of philosophical ethics that asks how we
understand, know about, and what we mean when we talk about what is
right or wrong……… a meta-ethical question is abstract and relates
to a wide range of more specific practical questions. For example,
“is it ever possible to have secure knowledge of what is right or wrong?”
that is a meta-ethical question……

how do we “know” what is right and wrong… it could be considered
to be similar to questions of epistemology: which is the study of knowledge…
how do we know? the study of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge…
and here the limits of our understanding of right and wrong…
this is the theoretical branch of the study of right or wrong…
the theoretical study of ethics…not the practical application…

then we have “moral skepticism” which is a class of metaethical theories
that all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge…….
they claim that moral knowledge is impossible in the theoretical understanding
of ethics…… Morals skepticism is opposed to moral realism: the view that there
is knowable and objective moral truths…members of this viewpoint is
Hume, Stirner and Nietzsche…the conclusion of each comes down to this…
“we are never justified in believing that moral claims are true and even more so
we never know that ANY moral claim is true”

the next understanding is the “Normative ethics” which is the study of ethical actions…
it is the branch of ethics that investigates the set of questions that arise when considering
how one ought to act, morally speaking…….
Normative ethics is distinct from meta-ethics because normative ethics examines standards
for the rightness and wrongness of actions, while meta-ethics studies the meaning
of moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts…

we shall stop here and think about this…

Kropotkin

No problem. My interest [as always] revolves around the manner in which we have come to understand moral nihilism in different ways. And I am always more intent on bringing “philosophical discussions” of this “out into the world”. In other words, embedded in contexts in which folks like liberals and conservatives argue from what I construe [politically] to be an “objectivist frame of mind”.

and the final area we have is applied ethics…
that is concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted)
to do in a specific situation or a particular domain of action…

now we can use applied ethics for a particular field of application:
bioethics, business ethic, machine ethics, military ethics, political ethics,
public sector ethics, publication ethics, relational ethics, animal ethics…
there are lots of areas of applied ethics…

now in regards to the questions of ethics, we can do an historical study
which means we think about ethics historically…
so one facet of ethics historically is what might be called, Virtue ethics,
which describes the character of an moral agent as a driving force
for ethical behavior, and it is used to describe the ethics of Socrates,
Aristotle and other early Greek philosophers… self-knowledge
was considered necessary for success and inherently an essential good…

for Socrates, a person must become aware of every fact (and its context)
relevant to his existence, if he wishes to attain self-knowledge. He posited
that people will naturally do what is good if, if they know what is right.
Evil or bad actions are the results of ignorance… any person who “knows”
what is truly right will automatically do it, according to Socrates…while
he accorded knowledge to virtue, he similarly equated virtue to joy… the truly
wise man will know what is right, do what is right, and therefore be happy…

for Aristotle, when a person acts in accordance with virtue this person, will do
good and be content… unhappiness and frustration are caused by doing wrong,
leading to failed goals and a poor life……… happiness was held to be the ultimate goal…
and the practice of virtues is the surest path to happiness…

if we look at various ethical systems after Aristotle, we find that the
Greeks pretty much defined the ethical systems we work with today…

for example, the Greeks worked out Stoicism and hedonism and Epicureanism…

three such examples of the ethical life…

and not until Kant do we find another ethical system…

we have other lesser well known ethical systems, State consequentialism,
consequentialism, Utilitarianism… research those on Wiki at your convenience…

and we reach the Kantian portion of the show…

Deontology: is a approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from
examining acts, or the rules and duties that the person doing the act strove to fulfill…

which is oppose to consequentialism, which is the rightness is based on the
consequences of an act, not the act itself…

under Deontology, a act may be considered right even if the act produces a bad
consequence, if, if it follows the rule or moral law… according to deontological
viewpoint, people have a duty to act in a way that does those things that
are inherently good as act…(truth telling for example)….for Kant,
it isn’t the consequences of actions that make them right or wrong, but
the motives (expressed as maxims) of the person who carries out the action…

so now we have the groundwork of ethics laid out…
but we still don’t any theory to work out…
and we don’t have any practical matters to work out…
so, what next?

I would suggest that we take time to understand ethics as
it has been practiced since the beginning of time,
the religious ethics…

for most of human history, ethics has been guided by a religious
context…what is right, what is ethical, right and wrong has
been determined by god and the religious framework that
a society has in place…the ancient Greeks ethics was
worked out in regards to the Greek religion, what was ethical
was decided by god and their laws… the bible is one long
argument for this description of the ethical… both in the old
testament and the new… and in both, god is the only basis for
ethical behavior…….

and the last 2000 years has been one long test of this theory of
the ethical by the religious…think about the word, god and the word, good,
at least in English, the relationship cannot be denied… now other languages
may have a different understanding, but in English…….

when the religious lost its hold on the public, when ism’s and ideologies
was no longer how people viewed ethics, in other words, god is dead,
also meant his ethics was also dead… what/how are we going to
act ethically if there is no religious basis of ethics? that is the question
of Nietzsche…… what is the basis of morality without the rules of god?

upon what rules are we going to act ethically if we aren’t going to act
religiously? what standards are we to use to decide if an act is right or wrong,
or ethical? if we don’t have a religious basis for our ethical standards?

this is the “modern” question and the question upon the last 200 years
has been working out… what is right and wrong if there is no god or a
religious basis for our actions?

and here we stand… the most important question we “moderns” have,
upon what standards are we to use to judge what is “moral”?
upon what basis are we to judge right or wrong?

what is ethical given we have no agreed upon basis for judgement?
no already agreed upon standards for what is right or wrong?

now we are ready to engage in ethics/morality……

Kropotkin

ok, we now take leave of our friends at wiki…

let us take two distinct and separate events…
one is abortion and the other is the death penalty…

both are bitterly fought in the U.S…

if you look into history, rare if ever, was there a
legal remedy for abortions… there was always folk
solutions for abortions and history is full of these
folk remedies for abortions… from the Greeks and Romans
into the modern age, say before the 20th century…
you can read about folk solutions to bringing about abortions…

not until the 20th century was there ever legal questions… and
before that is because of the Christianity there were ever any questions…

the crimalization of abortion occured in modern times…
and that is based upon religous precepts… for example,
their wasn’t laws against abortion until 1821…
and the number of laws increased against abortion
up til the civil war…and what do we know about the U.S. up until
the civil war period? the great awakenings of the U.S…
for example, the first great awakening was from 1730 to about 1740…
there was a tremendous religious revival in America during these years…
the second great awakening was roughly from 1790 to about 1840 with
each decade gaining strength in religous fevor…so we have just before the
civil war a great religious awakening…

the third great awakening began roughly around 1850 and lasted roughly
to 1900… into this mix we get our anti-abortions laws……

the 4th great awakening, and some deny this, came about
during the 1960’s to the early 1970’s… but having lived during this era,
I believe that the 4th great awakening came during the 1980’s and is still
going on…it is tied up in the cultural wars that have plagued this country
since 1980’s…and is tied up into the strength of the religious right that
has tied up American’s into wasted cultural wars that has cost America dearly in
the progress of America since 1980’s…

the battle for or against abortion is tied up in the context of
American history… let us say, you remove the religious context
of abortion… what is left?

the abortion wars of the last 40 years is tied up into two conflicting
classes of people… we have a conflict of interest in the abortion wars…
those who believe that abortion is a sin against god… or those who
believe that abortion is a woman’s choice to her body…

let us further examine this… those who oppose abortions claim
to be defending the rights of the unborn… but can we claim to
defend the rights of the unborn by those who have no vested interest
in that child’s birth? for example, if my wife is pregnant and others, for
religious purposes, deny her right to an abortion… but they have
no vested interest in my wife’s pregnancy… it doesn’t effect them…
those who oppose abortion do so based on their own interpretations
of religious laws… which my wife doesn’t believe in… so why do we
allow religious beliefs to become secular law? if we were to do so,
then we are no longer a representative democracy, we are a theocracy…
which is government by divine guidance or by officials who are regarded
as divinely guided… in many theocracies, government leaders are
members of the clergy and the state’s legal system is based upon
religious law… examples of theocracies include Saudi Arabia, Iran,
and the Vatican… but the problem with, one of, with
being a theocracy is deciding upon which religion is
the one true religion… how do we decide upon which religion
is the “true” religion? do we use Christianity? if we do so, then
we are guilty of basing our government and religion upon
our childhood indoctrinations… indoctrinations we haven’t yet
overcome………

should abortions be barred or should they be allowed?

depending upon where one sit’s, it can be either!

you can host a great deal of arguments in which barring
abortions is favored and you can host a great deal of arguments
in which abortions can be allowed……….

but Kropotkin… I want to know the “truth”… how can we
know what is the truth? favor abortions or ban abortions?

we can try to use ethics/morality to understand this question…

how do we use ethics to systematizing, or defending or
recommending a course of action, the right or wrong of abortion?

we have been given three basic area’s of study:
the meta-ethics concerning the theoretical meaning and reference
of moral propositions, and how their truth values (if any) can be
determined…

we have the Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining
a moral course of actions…

and we have applied ethics, concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted)
to do in a specific situation or a particular domain of action………

so we have the:

the meta-ethics is the abstract understanding of abortions…

the normative is the general understanding of determining
a course of action regards to abortion

and the applied ethics, is concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted)
to do in a specific situation or concerning a particular domain of action…
regarding to abortion……

meta-ethics would be an abstract look at abortion from a historical
viewpoint… abortions were legal, for the most part, historically…
and this gives us one understanding of a viewpoint of abortions…

we have the normative ethics, in which we create values upon
which we can then make choices in regards to abortions……

I am pro-life and thus I am oppose to abortions…

I am pro-choice and thus I favor abortions…

values which determines one viewpoint on abortions…

and then we have the practical application to abortions…

but the practical applications of abortion cannot be
decided by outside forces such as anti-abortions forces based
upon religious values because the practical application is by
definition is done by the one who is doing the practical application…

if I were to make a choice, a moral choice, I must make a choice
under some system…… be it abstract or normative or practical…

and in our understanding of abstract, it means the many and
the normative can mean the many or the few and the practical
can only mean the one… we cannot practice a test for example
using the many, for the many won’t take the test, only the one will take
the test and only the one is influenced or impacted by that test…
the many isn’t impacted by one person taking a test… just as
abortion doesn’t impact the many, it only impacts the one…
practical application only impacts one and that is the person who
is doing the practical application…….

in taking a driving test, who is impacted? the many, the few or the one?

after the test, afterwards then the many, the few and the one is impacted,
but not during the test…

you have to show how having an abortion is somehow impacting
the many, the few or the one… one might argue that an abortion
impacts the fetus… but a fetus isn’t aware of or isn’t in any way, shape, or form
aware it is alive… it is non sentient, not aware… now recall, because
of my birth defect, my mother was given a choice to have an abortion,
(which to this day, she denies, but I have heard otherwise and that is my story)
if she had aborted me, I would not have been aware of, nor was I sentient…
if we were to allow the argument that sentience isn’t a factor, then
we are faced with the problem of thinking that radiation treatment
isn’t doable because it kills none sentient cells… anything that is non sentient
is now given protection under this very strict interpretation of not being
to kill anything that is alive……

we cannot, under this idea, to allow any type of damage to skin or cells
or body parts because they are alive, even though they are none sentient…

we cannot operate on people because that operation will kill skin cells
being operated under, even though they aren’t sentient… we have made
modern medicine impossible because it will kill alive cells…

if we are to understand the religious argument correctly,
then we cannot now allow any type of damage to occur to
any type of living cells…

now recall, a fetus is just a collection of cells…
if we prevent the abortion based on a fetus being alive,
then we have ended modern medicine because it kills
collection of cells every time modern medicine engages…

and sentience isn’t a factor, at least according to anti-abortion forces…

so carried to its logical conclusion, we cannot allow modern medicine
to happen because it does the exact same thing as an abortions…

are the force oppose to abortions willing to carry their objections to
its logical conclusions?

Kroptkin

our next take is on the death penalty…

if we look at the death penalty historically,
we see that capital punishment has been practiced
since the beginning of time…we have two theories behind
capital punishment, one is punishment, an eye for an eye
and the other is prevention… if people are punished for
actions taken, it might prevent such actions…

for example, in English history, capital punishment
in England during the 18th century, the number of capital
offences to more then 200 different offences including pickpocketing
during which while people were being hung for being pickpockets, the crowd
was being worked by people pickpocketing… capital punishment
has never been shown to change any type of behavior of people…
so we are left with capital punishment as being strictly a form
of punishment… and putting someone to death for being a pickpocket,
is simply out of proportion to the crime being committed…

there has to be proportional cause and effects of capital punishment
to punishment……………

we have more to go, but I am tired after a long day of posting…
so later…

Kropotkin

as time is limited, work in less then an hour…I shall
forsake capital punishment at this time and discuss something else…

in my prior take on abortion and capital punishment and ethics,
I could have taken an entirely different argument, I could have
gone completely different in my argument for or against abortion
or even ethics…

but that is one of the problems with ethics and life and existence…
the ambiguity that exists in ethics and life and existence…

as human beings, it isn’t about the certainties that we have that
define us, but it is our ambiguous nature that defines us…

what is true and certain today, isn’t so true or certain tomorrow…

our philosophies must reflect the ambiguity that exists in our life…

values like justice and love and charity and hope all exist within a state
of uncertainty and that uncertainty lies within the ambiguity that defines our lives…

philosophy is a search for certainty and certainty doens’t exists within
any part of the human existence… one might say, but we are all going to die…
I can’t say that for sure… I can’t even state if all human beings that have existed
have died, I can’t know for sure if all human beings who have existed, have died…
that is simply nothing more then speculation on my part…

reduced to it basic elements, existence has two states, on and off…
I am existing and aware of it right now… that is the on state,
or I am not existing and I cannot be aware of that…that is the off switch…

everything else is momentary, temporary, full of ambiguity…

but Kropotkin, you have not discussed this or you have missed that…

yep, that is part of the ambiguity of our lives… we cannot
see parts of our own lives and we cannot see the whole picture of existence…

at most, we deal with a small part of existence and we must include that
in our report to humanity…………think of it like the spectrum of light,
we humans can only see a small slice of the spectrum of light that exists,
and we react as if that small slice of light is the entire spectrum of what is
possible, but it isn’t… it is a small sliver that what we can see with our human eyes…

and our report to our fellow human beings must include the fact that we can only
see a small portion of light within a much larger spectrum of possibilities………

we exists within ambiguity and we must finally acknowledge that fact
and philosophize within that ambiguity that is existence…

Kropotkin…