But you are asking someone who finds the term “universal truth” incoherent to provide an example of a universal truth. Do you actully read any of my posts?
And you cannot provide a definition of “personal opinion”?
Is english your first language?
Don’t be too harsh. Im convinced that he sometimes does kind of read a few lines of a post. More in a scanning fashion looking for a keyword he can “ask a question about” but still, he sometimes does let his eyes linger on the posts he responds to. It cant be more than a few seconds but hey, he’s… him.
Let’s approach iambiguous this way:
Iambiguous wants to be bossed around to the minutiae like a robot so iambiguous can have the best path/life, but also claims that if everything were mechanical then we cannot be held accountable for what we do, because we don’t decide, atoms do.
He throws this contradiction into almost every post, “I have no choice, so tell me the right thing to do, I bet you can’t do that!! Haha!! I’ve got you guys!!”
No, all you’re doing Iambiguous is contradicting yourself.
You DEMAND the cosmos be robotic, if it’s not robotic, there’s no morality, if it is robotic there is no morality.
That last sentence is the most important in terms of iambiguous, because, Iambiguous is ultimately arguing that even if god exists, there’s no morality.
All Iambiguous is arguing is that morality is a false belief.
I have more where that came from, but, at this juncture, I wonder what Iambiguous response is.
Gasp! Yet another post in which the actual substantive points I raise are reconfigured into an argument that the problem here is me.
As though the fact that he construes “universal truth” to be incoherent need be as far as he goes in demonstrating that in fact it is incoherent. To, for example, anyone he deems to be a rational human being. Whereas out in the world that we live in there are any number things/relationships [embedded in the either/or world] which may or may not be universal truths going back to a definitive understanding of existence itself. But are nonetheless accepted as true objectively in the interim.
Again, in regard to human behaviors revolving around the manufacture, sale and use of guns, there are facts galore. And, for all practical purposes in our interactions from day to day, we treat these facts as if they were “universally true” given our current understanding of the laws of matter.
It’s just that the objectivists among us insist that their moral narratives and political agendas are in turn a reflection of an objective truth applicable to all us. And some do go so far as to call their value judgments “universal truths”.
As for his obsession with definitions, that doesn’t surprise me. Those who pursue the art of concocting “general description” “intellectual contraptions” are often preoccupied with what words mean technically.
That way they can do battle with other serious philosophers up in the clouds of abstraction. World of words philosophers. Cue Will Durant’s “epistemologists”.
Now, he will either bring his own definition of “universal truth” and “personal opinion” down off the academic skyhooks and situate them in a context embedded in an actual discussion of an issue like gun control, or he will continue to hold me responsible for failing to be a “serious philosopher” here like him.
As though that’s a bad thing. 
[size=50]don’t you just love polemics![/size]
First tweedle dee, then tweedle dum!
I dare him to bring VO down out of the “serious philosopher” clouds. First he can define it. Then he can define “universal truth”.
Then he can note how his definitions are applicable to a discussion of human interactions revolving around the manufacture, sale and use of guns.
Or in regard to any other context in which a discussion of universal truth might be expected.
Just for the record…
What I am arguing is that morality is understood by a particular individual out in a particular world in a particular way. And that some are convinced their value judgments reflect the objective truth in a particular context. While, in fact, others are convinced that, no, their value judgments do reflect a universal truth. In either their own God or No God world.
In other words, go to any planet in any solar system in any galaxy in our universe and only those who do not think about morality in exactly the same way that he does are harboring a false belief.
Go ahead, ask him.
All I suggest in turn is that discussions of this sort may well be a manifestation of a wholly determined universe inextricably embedded in the gap between what any particular one of us think we know about universal truth and morality here and now and all that can be [must be[ known about them going back to a definitive understanding of existence itself.
On the other hand, as has at times been tip-toed around here and on other threads, some of us have special circumstances when it comes to that which we think is true. Our brains are not all wired the same. But that’s just one more factor that needs to be taken into account of course.
Iambiguous,
Your last post was word salad. I don’t say that too often to people.
Objective truth IS universal truth
Subjective truth ISNT universal truth
But you’re word salad here is that objective truth and universal truth are different.
Here’s the deal iambiguous, if it’s true for all POSSIBLE beings, it is a transcendent truth, not merely subjective (a non truth)
I actually haven’t thought much about guns in my life.ive told you before that moral proofs are like mathematical proofs, one may take a few hundred years to solve.
But for the pleasure of your court, I did direct my mind towards guns for a moment.
The first place my mind goes are the limits.
Should we outlaw candlesticks?
What about nuclear bombs?
People who aren’t allowed to buy firearms and choose the quick death of suicide by cop, are very happy firearms exist.
I’d was also making notes about hunting when processing the equations… about 10% of the population has the biochemistry to derive and metabolize nutrients from animal protein, otherwise they will die the horrible death of hyperalkalinity.
Guns work best.
Guns are between butter knives and nuclear warheads.
One could argue that we don’t need to hunt anymore because of domestication…
Those are notes from me pondering guns for about 5 minutes, and trying to place it in a binary proof structure.
lieutenant biggses whole operation here is financed by two villainous philosophical principles that have been known to take down entire book shelves of philosophy. those are, of course, the naturalistic and is/ought fallacies. and, in his own unique way, he wields them with surgical precision. this is why biggs has the reputation of being the everlasting gobstopper of ILP. now you might think you’ve gotten around these two problems, but you ain’t… and prolly never will. if it could be done, it’a been done already.
so what he’s saying, essentially, is no amount of philosophical theory will ever be the thing that is able to persuade you that what you are doing is THE rational thing to do. rather your final verdict must always rest on a leap of faith, a hunch, a feeling, a habit, whatever you wanna call it… but it sure as shit ain’t some indisputable axiomatic logical conclusion you’ve reached after some omniscient examination of all the known facts in/about the universe. if such a thing were even possible, there wouldn’t be so much disagreement among philosophers. 2000 years and philosophy has not solved a single problem it believes exists. and this can be for a couple reasons; either the problems are linguistic (and not conceptual) pseudo-problems, or it lacks the tools to produce solutions to the real problems. in either case, we have an epic fail… ain’t that right, biggs?
lights cigarette, kicks feet up on desk, and gazes incredulously at ILP
You have a desk now?
iam - i have made the case probably hundreds of times that “universal truth” is an incoherent term. I’m not going to argue it each time.
You are dishonest, intellectually and otherwise. That is the big problem with you - you are dishonest.
“Flip seven red” is incoherent. You may disagree, and claim that I must justify this in some indisputable way, which is a dishonest position, because we both know that there are no indisputable synthetic arguments. You would be the first to say this, unless it’s the one argument you make - that without God, moral judgments are mere opinion.
But there is a lot of real estate between metaphysical certitude and whim. All of which you ignore.
There is nothing objective about my views, for that is impossible. There is nothing universal about them, for that is nonsensical. If you know what “objective” and “universal” mean, in any way, then you know at least enough about my claim to actually engage it.
Knowledge has been commonly formulated as certitude. But this is like Russell’s clean plate. You can always clean a plate a little more, but there is a point at which we accept it as clean. We can call it clean because if you don’t draw the line somewhere, we’ll never eat off a clean plate.
I don’t expect everyone to see that “universal truth” is incoherent. But I have argued for it, ad nauseum.
Here’s the problem - I cannot argue my entire philosophical view to make a single point, every time I make a single point. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you ignore everything between indisputable truth and extemporaneous half-formed caprice. It is no wonder that your personality shatters so regularly. But this willful ignorance of everything outside your simplistic binary formulations is just plain dishonest. You are not arguing in good faith.
If you cannot form any conception of a difference between opinion and gospel truth you have no business commenting on a thread I began in good faith.
You are a troll, and I wish the management of this forum would please censure you.
Promethean,
I’ve given that answer already on these boards:
Contradiction is the ornament that our species uses, the conspicuous consumption to call for and attract mates, it is the mating call of this species to prove that you have enough resources to cannibalize your own rationality and still be alive.
Neither you, nor iambiguous or past philosophers have refuted me here.
You know why past philosophers never figured this out? Because they were ALL dickheads, thinking with their dicks, just trying to get laid.
Now, try to grasp for just a moment the revolution my thought system truly is.
You’re posturing to either try to get laid or fit in with people trying to get laid, as is iambiguous. And that’s not philosophy - that’s hormones and/or cowardice
I can’t grasp any of it because it makes no sense to me.
I think you’re too far gone, E, and there’s nothing I can do.
sulks
Ornaments for mating are like male deer antlers, peacock feathers and intricate dances, bird calls…
You get the picture now.
In HUMANS!!! Ornamentation is self contradiction, it displays the most POWER!!
I don’t care about no deers and peacocks and shit, man. know what Nietzsche said about them? He said they were God’s second blunder.
An incoherent term. In other words, as you define the meaning of it makes it so. Whereas my own interest revolves around the extent to which you can intertwine the definition of the term itself in a set of circumstances in which some claim that particular facts relating to actual human interactions relating to the buying and selling of firearms are objective, universal truths. Others go further and insist that their value judgments relating to the 2nd amendment here in America are in turn the embodiment of objective, universal truths.
Fine, That’s one man’s opinion.
But I keep offering you the opportunity to take your definition of universal truth and personal opinion – as terms – out into the world and through an examination of an issue like gun ownership, engage me in a discussion such that you make all the more clear how and why I am “dishonest—intellectually and otherwise.”
Unless of course “flip seven red” is the agreed upon code words used in some clandestine transaction.
Again, in regard to a discussion/debate on the right to bear arms, what would this mean? What particular arguments from either side might be examined in regard to what you mean by “indisputably synthetic”?
And I am always the first to acknowledge that my own assessment of the relationship between God and morality is just another existential contraption. In other words, it is not predicated on or rooted in an argument [philosophical or otherwise] that I am able to demonstrate. It is based on the assumptions I make regarding any particular individual’s assessment of this relationship as rooted in the manner in which I assess the existential – lived – relationship between identity, value judgments and political power in my signature threads.
You will either take accusations of this sort out into the world of conflicting goods related to issues like gun control or you will continue to insist the above is true based solely on how you define each term.
Okay, note particular facts that exist in regard to gun ownership around the globe. You can Google it and accumulate all sorts of statistics that both sides of the political debate will accept.
Take the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Is the existence of this Amendment itself an objective truth? Would it be true in turn for all rational, intelligent creatures throughout the universe?
Well, that depends in part on the extent which determinism is a universal truth throughout the universe. But how on earth could that be other than one man’s/woman’s opinion?
And then the part where we probe the relationship between what you insist is “impossible” and “nonsensical” and all that would need to be known about the existence of existence itself.
Right?
Or is pointing out things like this just another example of why it is impossible and/or nonsensical to have a discussion with me here.
At least after you have defined the meaning of all the terms.
What knowledge regarding what things or relationships in what context? I picked gun control above. But by all means pick something else. Something in which distinctions might be made between facts able to be demonstrated as true for all of us on earth [and possibly across the universe] and opinions that are rooted more in subjective/subjunctive personal accounts.
And how does that change my suggestion that we take the arguments and the definitions down out of the scholastic clouds and introduce them to the world of extant human interactions. Make those critical “for all practical purposes” distinctions between things and relationships clearly more in sync with, among other things, the laws of matter.
Note to others:
How is this not but one more example of a “general description” “intellectual contraption” in which his aim is to reconfigure the points I make above into an attack on me personally. Let him bring his “defined terms” down to earth and engage them in a substantive discussion of gun ownership. Which actual arguments from either side reflect only “plain dishonest” “binary formulations” and “willful ignorance”?
Or, instead, is his aim to engage with other serious philosophers willing to eschew human interactions altogether and focus instead on whose defined terms come closest to being technically correct.
Look, there is room for both discussions among philosophers. But I always make it clear that my own interests here revolve around how definitions deemed to be technically correct by the serious philosopher expresses any actual use value and exchange value insofar as an understanding of “universal truth” is said to be more or less coherent in a particular context.
Any “conception”? How about taking the conceptions that we form about truth and testing them empirically, materially, phenomenologically in our interactions with others? How could anything in philosophy be more important than that?
You really mean that don’t you? And, in my view, that speaks volumes about one of us.
Besides, if you really felt that way about me, why would you engage me in an actual substantive exchange like this one: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194906&p=2726844#p2726844
I have my own suspicion, of course, but I will leave it to others to make up their own minds.
If I may, in most countries in which it is legal to hunt big game, the entire animal may be harvested and taken as property… in which case the hunter would have a legal right to possess bear arms.
Yep.
But that’s corporal biggs alas. Though I’d almost certainly be just a buck private in the Faustian army of serious philosophers.
You know, before they court martialed me.
and/or
iam - you just don’t fuckin’ get it. The existence of the 2nd amendment is not an “objective truth.” That’s because “objective truth” is a bullshit phrase. I started out in this thread making this claim, essentially. If you’d like to argue that there is such a thing as an objective truth, then please define it and state your case.
This is just more of your passive-aggressive dishonesty. You know that I do not acept that “objective truth” has any useful meaning, yet you ask me if something is an objective truth.
That’s just fuckin’ stupid.
This has got nothing to do with philosophy, serious or otherwise. It’s just stupid.
Objective / universal truths are items that are true for all Possible beings!
There is one for sure that exists: no being wants their consent violated.
Here’s what iambiguous keeps dodging:
We can know for a fact that existence is ‘immoral’, if a beings consent is being violated.
As is the current case. This is the antithesis of purpose.
The question then becomes, “will it always be that way?”
If we can prove that it will, we can define existence from an ethics standpoint as ‘immoral’.
That’s a factual, objective, universal answer that’s all true by definition.
We know CURRENTLY that existence is ‘immoral’ (it likely isn’t sentient - which is why I put the word immoral in quotes), we may be able to prove it will always be that way, and be able to prove that it is ALWAYS ‘immoral’
This is how ethics and philosophy is done. We look at the limits and examine the argument from there.
I’ve taken it a step further by explicating a logically consistent moral non zero sum, non consent violating alternative (hyperdimensional mirror realities). If existence never becomes this, then we can easily assert that existence is inherently and unalterably ‘evil’.
What do we do with that knowledge?
None of you have made the case yet that universal ethics are impossible. I just told you what you need to prove to make that case; that consent violation is going to happen no matter what.
So, if someone takes you to the National Archives Building in Washington DC, and you see the actual U.S. Constitution containing the Second Amendment, that’s not an example of an “objective truth”?
Okay, then define what you construe to be an “objective truth” here and explain how in reference to this particular context “objective truth” is a “bullshit phrase”.
I would define an objective truth as a particular thing or relationship able to be demonstrated as true for all of us given the extent to which it can be demonstrated in turn that in the either/or world it exists in sync with the laws of matter.
Excluding those scenarios out on the very end of the metaphysical limb. Those more surreal realities revolving around sim worlds and dream worlds and solipsism and matrixes. Matrixes with “oracles”.
And, in turn, conflicting goods embedded in dasein out in the is/ought world.
Assuming we have some measure of free will, we can opt for the Second Amendment being true for all of us. So, when someone asks me if the existence of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is an objective truth, I say that, yes, in the world that I live in here and now it can be demonstrated to exist. But all of this is still embedded in the gap between what I think I know now and all that can be known about…everything?
Note to others:
What do you make of this? What [no doubt highly technical] point do I keep missing?
No, what is just fuckin’ stupid [to me] is how over and again I keep asking you to take your definition of “objective truth” out into the world of conflicting goods. The part where different individuals hold different opinions about what is true and the part where out in this world these differences of opinions precipitate behaviors that clash and lead to all manner of terrible consequences. Something that a whole lot of people would conclude is just another example of an objective truth in our world.
How then given your own definition of objective truth do you explain why this assertion is not to be construed by others as your own rendition of an objective truth?
And how in reacting to this seething – childish? – fulmination of yours are we to differentiate an objective truth from a universal truth?