Peter Kropotkin: modern words:
doubt, uncertainty, vagueness, enigma, equivocation, inconclusiveness,
obscurity, indeterminateness, unclearness, equivocacy,
and all of these words are under ambiguity in the Thesaurus.
and the antonyms for ambiguity are:
certainty, clarity, clearness, definiteness, explicitness, lucidity……
I can see which words are words that describe the modern world better…"
IAM: Again, we’ll need a context. Centuries ago, any number of things in the either/or world seemed ambiguous, inexplicable, uncertain, obscure to many. They were attributed to the gods. But now today science has been able to provide the “moderns” with explanations such that actual objective facts are there to be found by those who are willing to go looking for them.
Instead, the ambiguity and uncertainty remain embedded far more in the is/ought world…the world of conflicting moral and political value judgments.
K: The words themselves are the context…and I disagree with your interpretation,
again a word of ambiguity, in regards to the past… human beings were far less
ambiguous then today… but why K… because they could depend upon god being
the “guarantor”… in other words, despite the uncertain and inexplicable universe,
god was still a fixture and however obscure to humans, still in charge…
thus the need for faith in god… to remove the skin deep ambiguity and see
the certainty that god promised…if only we believe, have faith in…
K: the world of conflicting moral and political value judgments is a modern concept…
it certainly didn’t exist during the middle ages and it certainly didn’t exist during
the Renaissance… read history as I have done, and see that the world was black
and white, good and evil, right or wrong… ambiguity as a concept didn’t really
exist until Kierkegaard… read Kant or Hegel and there is no, none ambiguity
about either one…
K: now we have another word which pretty well describes the modern world, nihilism…
what is the connection between nihilism and ambiguity?
Nihilism is the nagation of human beings and their values
and ambiguity is 1. doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention.
2. an unclear, indefinity, or equivocal word, expression, meaning, etc:
so we understand that nihilism rises first which is the negation of human beings
and their values… this negation leads us to ambiguity because it is the values
which identify as being human and those values are/were destoryed in
the rise of capitalism and the rise of the industrial age…"
IAM: Yes, if you wish to pursue nihilism in these “general description” “intellectual contraptions” that’s your prerogative. But my own rendition of it does not “negate” human beings and their values, it situates them existentially out in a particular world awash in contingency, chance and change.
It tries to make a distinction between the meaning of words able to be clearly understood and connected to the world around us – “Trump”, “wall”, “Mexico”, “illegal”, “immigrants” – and the meaning of words that are instead rooted more ambiguously in dasein – “justice”, “freedom”, “right”, “wrong”, “good”, “bad”.
K: think historically… the words “intellectual contraptions” or “Nihilism” or “Dasein”
“freedom” didn’t exist until at the earliest, the French revolution…….what you are engaging
in is a critique of modern existence…which could only, only exist during our “modern” age…
the words contingency, chance, change changed in meaning because of modern science
and its understanding of the universe as being contingent, lacking purpose, accidental…
random, see Darwin or quantum mechanics or Schrodinger’s cat…
you are thinking “past” in thinking that there are definite meanings and terms
answered… no, that is the point, the modern point… I cannot say… if we hold these
values and we engage in this action in this way, this will be justice… the universe
is too random, to accidental to work in this fashion…all we can give is
this vague understanding of the concept of “justice” and we can’t even
properly, as you wish, say if we act with justice in the case of abortion,
and justice in the case of abortion means we allow or we disallow abortion…
and we allow or disallow abortions for this reason or that reason…
we cannot go there because the universe itself is random and accidental…
you want specific answers for specific cases and the reasons why…
and I cannot give you that… there is to much interpretations, ambiguity
in our modern world to say, yes, the specific answer for that specific case
and the reason why is………it just doesn’t work that way… if we have only
one specific and one specific cause only, yes, yes we can say specifically
the answer to abortion, what is justice in regards to abortion is…
but we cannot… there is no one answer to any one specific case…
the world is too random, to subject to chance to allow us to give
one specific answer to one specific case and why that answer is justice…
it simply doesn’t work that way… I am sorry… I truly am… because
the universe would be so much easier if we could pin down
one specific answer to one specific case and why…
abortion is wrong because it isn’t just… that is just another
interpretation… and saying abortion is right because it is about
freedom of choice is just another interpretation…
everything, every answer, every question is simply just another
interpretation, just another ambiguity in life…
I simply cannot give you what I don’t have…
certainty, a positive, secure, satisfied, self-confident answer to
any of your questions… because certainty doesn’t exist… at least
not in our ambiguous world…I don’t even have answers to my questions…
which is why I am always in doubt…
Peter Kropotkin: if we hold to the value “justice”, then we are not being ambiguous are we?"
IAM: In what set of circumstances? Based on what set of assumptions regarding that which is said to encompass just values or unjust values?
What the moral and political objectivists do [in my view] is to stuff justice here into two bags: the “one of us” bag and the “one of them” bag. Then – presto! – ambiguity and uncertainty are gone!! The is/ought world becomes just another extension of the either/or world. And that presumably will always “comfort and console” folks like you and Wendy.
Just as it surely once comforted and consoled me.
K: as I have stated earlier, it doesn’t matter under what set of circumstances and what set
of assumptions we have… the nature of “nature” is simply too chaotic and random, to
ever believe we can pin down circumstances or assumptions, to connect the dots,
as it were…the “connecting the dots” you call for, assumes that we have a
secure, undoubtful, convinced universe… it is not…our universe is random,
chaotic, doubtful, uncertain, questionable and thus any attempt, any attempt to connect
the dots will fail because every single circumstance and every single assumption including
such values as justice and hate and love… has too many ambiguities,
too many uncertainties about it to be of use, to use…
every single circumstance is full of ambiguity… simple as that…
and to pin it down, to connect the dots is impossible because of the
ambiguity, because of the different interpretations we can pile upon
any circumstance, upon any assumptions…
Peter Kropotkin: Now one might say, we can equally hold to the negative values and distance
us from ambiguity… that is certainly the hope of all those deplorables……
but we cannot, for reasons already shown, hold onto negative values…
individually and collectively
IAM: Note to others:
If you were to bring this general description assessment down to earth and connect the dots between what you think he means here and a context that you are familiar with, how might it help us to better understand his own interpretation of justice/“justice”.
In other words, positive and negative values in regard to what particular conflicting behaviors in what particular situation?
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K: and every single particular conflicting behavior and every single situation and every
single value such as justice, is full of interpretations which means full of ambiguity…
the very ambiguity of our lives prevent us from answering the questions you ask…
I cannot, cannot under any circumstance, connect the dots, in the way you ask,
because the very pattern of the dots is random and chaotic which leads us
to random and chaotic answers…
our universe, our lives, our society is ruled by chance and randomness
and accidental and is contingent upon forces outside of us…
you may as well ask, …god is…
and I will ask, which god, the buddhist god, the christian god, the hindu god,
the jewish god… there are so many interpetations to the idea of god,
so many different possibilities to god, that we cannot connect the dots about
god unless we cheat and define god so narrowly that only a very narrow
defination about god will work and such a narrow definition about god
isn’t really god, is it? if you have interpretations and possibilities, then
you cannot, cannot under any circumstances define god or any other
random concept because there are so many interpretations and possibilities
for every single concept in existence…what is justice? as I can think of
10 or 12 different interpretations or possibilties for the concept of justice,
that I cannot answer the question, what is justice? it is the very ambiguity
that is present in concepts like justice that makes it impossible for us to define
such concepts…to connect the dots requires one and one only fixed
possibility and one and one only possibility doesn’t exist…….
Kropotkin