These are not universal truths...

All you do is sit on your throne and say “NO”.

I have better things to do than trying to show you anything.

Do I reduce you down to “retorts” like this more or less than you allow me to do it?

A new thread perhaps?

You’re not “reducing” me to anything. I gave you some feedback.

There are reasons why almost nobody here wants to talk to you any more.

A new thread will end up like all your threads.

Yes, for someone who thinks there is no way, that he knows of, to resolve disputes over values, he hasn’t the slightest concern about turning threads dealing with what other people value into threads that (SHOULD) deal with what he values. And if they don’t, he gives them pejorative labels, and then goes on hijacking. It’s trolling, and he got happy when you gave him arguments he is very comfortable dealing with since they allow him to repeat himself.

Fine. We can leave it to others to decide for themselves which seems more reasonable. And then the extent to which reason of this sort reflects [technically] a universal truth.

Indeed, and this is as close as I have come to understanding it:

On the other hand, talk about an existential contraption!! :sunglasses:

I would certainly hope so. :wink:

We’ll need a context of course. =D>

[size=50][like shooting fish in a barrel, he mused][/size]

Which says that you don’t understand it at all.

It has almost nothing to do with your philosophy and almost everything to do with how you post.

You are the issue.

In that case, note a particular post of mine that best exemplfies this in regard to examining “universal truth” on this thread.

What exactly are you saying here about “how” I post?

After all, from my point of view, those points have everything to do with my philosophy.

And, it seems to me, how I am posting them is by way of examining determinism, the ontology of existentence and “I” in the is/ought world re the actual points I make about them in my posts.

No, I think that what perturbs you most are the arguments that I make. The closer I come to convincing you that they may well be applicable to you, the more perturbed you get.

If, for no other reason, that has been my experience with objectivists of your ilk going back to long ago.

In any event, as Gib pointed out, you’ve been going after me for years now. You keeping huffing and puffing about me, yet continue to respond to my posts.

You know what they say. If you’re down in a hole [philosophically or otherwise] stop digging.

Only that’s not really an option for me. “I” am the hole.

You ask for answers but as soon as someone responds, it’s …

  • general
  • an existential contraption
  • words defending words

Or you ignore what they wrote and repeat your own points.

The possibility that someone is correct about something is strictly forbidden:

And you think that you are having a discussion when you respond like this?? A discussion about philosophy??

It’s a farce.

Did I mention that you stereotype people?

Not surprising since you appear to have no interest what they have to say.

Note top others
He calls ‘objectivists’ anyone who thinks his own perspective is superior to another.

The only acceptable answer is we:
We are all equally ignorant - replacing the Abrahamic ‘we are all equally sinful’ or the Marxist ‘we are all equally poor’ (or ought to be so) - and we must stop fighting and collectively come to mutually beneficial compromises.
This is the Utopia he promotes with nihilism
He chips away at confidence, cultivating - he imagines - uncertainty so as to produce a surrender to the collective project.
His psychology is based on his own loss of trust in his own senses and judgments. He wants to make this universal.

He is the one who wants to ‘change the world’.

It’s anyone who thinks that there are answers that “mere mortals” can figure out.

He insists that knowledge and understanding are always out of reach. We must admit to a collective ignorance and incompetence.

When he throws in determinism, control and guidance are also out of reach. We must admit to a collective powerlessness.

Exactly. He wants to make his own weakness into a universal truth.
He’s been disillusioned by the Abrahamic one-god, and then Marxism - its secular form - and has lost all trust in others, as an expression of his loss of confidence in his own judgments.
He concludes with a defensive annihilation of all ideas as equally in error, and because there are no absolutes he easily finds a gap to exploit and to dismiss all ideas.

He concludes, because someone else taught him how, that the only ‘solution’ to bring about the utopia the other ideologies failed to bring about, si to admit that we all are equally ignorant - emphasis on the ‘equally’.
Nihilism reduces all to parity - no distinctions, no variations, no gradations, no superior/inferior.
Either all are one, or all are nil.
With no god - absolute oneness - then nil.
Like I said…any expression of confidence and certainty, is ‘objectivism’ in his demented mind. the only acceptable attitude is humility, admittance that nobody knows the truth, and a surrender to the collective.
We are all proletariats, or we are all sinners.
Salvation can be found in the collective.

A neurotic.

You are wasting your time with him.
Every time you pay attention to him he considers ti a victory - like he is making a difference, bringing about this ‘better world’ he imagines.
He is beyond reason, and help.
He was told of the power of the nil, and he yields it passionately. Waiting for the final nil - Godot.
This is his final retribution against existence that failed to deliver what he once considered inevitable.

Again, cite some examples of this from this thread. Or cite the most egregious example. You make this claim as though in making it, that, in itself, makes it so.

Or, sure, we can just let others make up their own minds about it. That works for me. Here and now.

Look, either someone thinks that in regards to discussions of Communism or abortion or how I post here, their own take on it reflects either the optimal or the only rational point of view, or, like me, they suggest instead that value judgments of this sort are embedded existentially in dasein…ever and always subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas.

You do the math. :wink:

No, he suggests that in regard to “I” in the is/ought world, an objectivist is someone who believes that his or her own value judgments reflect the most rational and the most virtuous manner in which to differentiate right from wrong, good from bad behaviors.

As for this…

It is [in my view] little more than intellectual gibberish in search of a context in which to connect the dots between the definition and meaning of the words used to defend other words, and actual behaviors in conflict out in the is/ought world.

This part:

See what I mean?
He is against objective morality, then demands that others defend it, because he needs to nullify it to feel he is making a difference.
The only correct answer is 'there is no morality, so why don’t we agree to disagree and then stop the bickering and come to a concession’.

The idea that morality does not require an absolute, like god, to be objective, independent from subjectivity, alludes him. He can only think in absolutes.
He is used to attacking the other absolutist side of the paradigm, and is helpless against this out of the nihilistic paradigm possibility.

The idea that abortion, thieving, adultery is neither good nor bad in any universal senses but only in reference to a ideal, a motive, an objective, alludes him.
He cannot process this, so he goes back to the poem and repeats it and each time he is convinced he is making a ‘good point’ and ‘destroying the opposition’ - the strawman he’s been burning as he waits for the end.
If you show any certainty, you are an evil objectivist.
The only correct attitude is humble subjectivity. An admission that we are all EQUALLY ignorant…equally sinners…equally proletariats…and morality is a social construct…in other words a meaningless human artifice.

You can’t reason with this.
This is gone…he’s waiting for the body to follow his mind into the nil.

In the past, you noted your own assessment of Communism. One which, in a manner that I have yet to grasp, is intertwined with your assessment of objective morality and God.

I then challenged that frame of mind with my own: that “I” here is embedded existentially in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts. And that depending on the unique set of experiences, relationships and access to ideas that one has, their understanding and assessment of Communism is rooted subjectively/subjunctively in the manner in which I have come to understand human identity in my signature threads.

How does that constitute proof that I have no interest in what you have to say about Communism?

Other then [given my own experience with objectivists over the years] to have an interest in what you say about it is to agree with what you say about it.

If god doesn’t say so, then it must be an us versus they say so.
So why not come to a compromise so that we all say so?

He cannot think outside this premise.
That something can be objectively probable and still not a product of subjective whimsy, is beyond his mind’s ability to process.
That’s where he’s trapped…in the hole in his own mind.
He wants to change the world, or pull it into his dilemma with him…as a final act of vengeance.
Nothing to work with here.
It’s already gone.

Double whammy.
Permit me to ignore the next recitation of the poem.

Very well said. But I think we are now preaching to the choir. It is also a victory for him, or a vengeance as you accurately put it, if the thread continues focused on him, because this allows him to ‘respond’ and potentially ‘play the victim’ or say we are focusing on him rather than his ideas, with some hint that it is because we have been triggered into terror.

I think it is useful to point out when he starts hijacking threads and to perhaps warn off people who start finding their shoes or feet sticking in his goo.

But then we gotta ignore him.

The body will form a cyst around cancerous tissue, to deny it nutrition, to wall it off. But if we keep building the wall, after the cancerous tissue is walled in, well, that causes other problems.