“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This is basically my own point when I distinguish between [b]I[/b] in the either/or world, and “I” in the is/ought world. Though even in regard to conflicting goods there are any number of actual objective facts that can be determined as true for all of us.
And this, in my view, has got be the “for all practical purposes” demarcation. The things about yourself able to be established and your reaction to things able to be established precipitating particular moral and political value judgments.
But, sure, there is no way for me to then demonstrate that these too are not able to be pinned down as true for all rational men and women. Here all I can do is to invite others to argue that they can be. That this is the case because they have already done so. And that they are able to demonstrate to me why I am in turn obligated to share their assessment.
What the objectivists then do is to insist that, on the contrary, their very own moral and political [and even esthetic] value judgments reflect what is essentially true given the font they have come to embrace as the transcending source one turns to in order to settle any conflicts.
In other words, one is never able to accumulate at one time and in one place all of the indisputable facts about that which constitutes their identity. There are only those variables that, at any given time and in any given place, one is actually conscious of.
And, in my view, the relationship, the responsibility, and the attitude we take regarding human interactions in any particular context is always going to be profoundly problematic. Even in regard to the facts at hand.
Making the part where “I” interacts with others in the is/ought world all that much more “ambiguous, insecure, and insufficient”.