What I am here and now is inside a particular set of circumstances. Just as he is. And I react to those circumstances given all of the sets of circumstances in my life that predisposed me existentially to think and to feel one way rather than another. Just as he did.
On this thread that revolves around God and religion.
In one set of circumstances some years ago I believed in a God, the God, my God. And, in believing it, I behaved in what I construed to be the appropriate manner.
But other sets of circumstances have since come to predispose me to a No God world. And that has prompted me to come to the conclusions that I have about human interactions in my signature threads.
So, let him respond here by noting how, when one is not on the outside looking in at life, he might react to the points I raise in this thread.
For me to be a moral realist or a moral nihilist would require more knowledge about ultimate reality then I think is possible. I can talk in a limited way about my God the god of my experience although I cannot prove that such is ultimately grounded. Likewise my moral intuitions. I am learning to be open to the images my soul produces. They enrich my life and creativity. So for me these days it’s not so much a matter of believing as it is of entertaining. And I aspire to getting better at it with practice. I call what I’m doing phenomenology. One exercise involves meditating and observing the images that come. Another involves working on dream and hypnogogic images via active imagination. Based on my experience, I think that imagery underlies all thought. I’m finding that there’s more to “Know thyself” then I had previously imagined. The soul or psyche which is unconscious is the source of the imagery which is the basis of both art and religion. The predominant trends in both secular culture and fundamentalist religion cut people off from the depths of their own soul. So, at the moment, I’m espousing a mindset of openness to one’s own psyche as a source of possible transcendence.
Exactly. Especially [for me] in regard to those who insist that they have “thought up” an argument [philosophical, theological, scientific or otherwise] that allows them to view conflicting human behaviors from the perspective of the moral objectivist. That’s the crucial distinction I make. It’s just that I am then no less obligated to acknowledge that this distinction is as well no less far removed from all that would need to be known by me to grasp “ultimate reality”.
We’re all the embodiment of this predicament in my view. There is only admitting it to yourself or not.
What however do you mean by this existentially, for all practical purposes? Cite a few examples where in particular sets of circumstances your soul produced images. If I have a soul, it’s still beyond my grasp given any particular context.
Again, this sort of assessment is just another psychologism to me. An intellectual contraption embedded in a world of words that is not encompassed in turn in a description of a situation you have been in such that you can illustrate more substantively what you mean by it.
In particular, given the aim of this thread, as that relates to actual behaviors that you choose given a particular moral narrative out in a particular world/context…as that relates to what you imagine the fate of “I” to be when you are dead and gone.
Yes, you can go back here to noting the gap between “I” and “ultimate reality”. But, when I do this, I’m back to the components of own moral philosophy: nihilism.
Then what interest me is the extent to which others [in a No God world] are not “fractured and fragmented” when confronting conflicting goods. Here and now, I can’t think of a way not to be given the manner in which I have come to understand “I” in the is/ought world. As dasein. As an existential contraption ever and always subject to reconfiguration in a world awash in contingency, chance and change. Given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas.
I see no point in further explicating my point of view for you at this time. I described how it seems to me at the moment and you’ve described how it seems to you. Now, if you’re claiming ultimacy for your point of view, that’s another matter.
On the contrary, in regard to value judgments relating to God and religion, my point is to suggest quite the opposite: that “I” here is an existential contraption rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein embodied in a particular life that is embedded from the cradle to the grave out in a particular world.
I focus almost entirely here on this part:
“…actual behaviors that one chooses given a particular moral narrative out in a particular context; as that relates to what one imagines the fate of “I” to be when one is dead and gone.”
And:
“…what interest me is the extent to which others [in a No God world] are not “fractured and fragmented” when confronting conflicting goods. Here and now, I can’t think of a way not to be given the manner in which I have come to understand “I” in the is/ought world. As dasein. As an existential contraption ever and always subject to reconfiguration in a world awash in contingency, chance and change. Given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas.”
This thread was created for those who do believe in God. In order that they might address this fundamental relationshiip between “here and now” and “there and then”.
My perspective has been influenced by existential philosophy too. So, I’m not totally averse to your characterization of being in the world. For the sake of dialogue, I’ll focus on our apparent differences.
Am I wrong in suspecting that your characterization of dasein as a contraption reflects depersonalization in your particular perspectival gestalt?
Epicurus’ dictum “Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.” is helpful for quelling anxiety about death if that’s a problem for you.
Ironically but not surprisingly you talk about everything as fractured and fragmented and yet you present dasein as a whole. Whether that Gestalt tendency is a psychologism or a drive toward Transcendence, is an open question we can talk about but not resolve. There you go: a fragment. But one for all time or just our historical moment?
Asked if he believed in God, CG Jung replied, “I don’t need to believe, I know”. Any idea what he might have meant?
But: What on earth does this mean? My point in fact is to take points like this out into the world of actual human interactions and to note the extent to which the words are able to be intertwined in particular contexts.
For example, if I meet someone and the discussion turns to the killing of Soleimani in Iraq, my characterization of dasein revolves around the extent to which what “I” believe is true about it can be demonstrated as, in fact, true for all of us. And here the distinction revolves around the objective facts – Soleimani was killed in a drone strike ordered by Trump – and subjective assessments rooted only in moral and political prejudices. In other words, was this killing justified? Was it the right thing to do?
It’s this part – “I” in the is/ought world – that becomes the embodiment of dasein for me. In a No God world. Or in a world where no one is able to convince me that, through secular narratives, the answers to questions like this can in fact be determined. Deontologically, for example. Or ideologically.
What do I know of Epicurus’s life? What could he know of mine? Dasein is everywhere here. There’s death. And there is our individual reaction to it. His dictum does nothing to quell my fear of death. What does that mean? That it ought to but since it doesn’t the problem is me? Instead, to the extent I have people and things that I truly love, experiences that I never want to end, death is there to obliterate them. To obliterate “I” itself. From my frame of mind, only when the pain in my life reaches the point where it blots out all the things I live for will my anxiety be quelled.
But that’s just me. What could you or others know about that?
Instead, if someone were able to convince me that a God, the God, their God does in fact exist, and noted the path I must follow to attain immortality and salvation, why on earth would I hesitate to take it?
No, this is you completely misconstruing the manner in which I have come to understand dasein in my signature threads. There are any number of variables in my life [in the either/or world] that I am not fractured or fragmented regarding at all.
Again, we need a context here. A set of circumstances in which human beings interact. And, given the aim of this thread, one that involves choosing behaviors “here and now” as that relates to what we imagine our fate to be “there and then”.
You pick it.
More to the point, given a particular context, how does he know that God exists. How would he go about demonstrating it? How, for all practical purposes, would he distinguish what he claims to know from what I merely claim to believe about God.
I had a career in psychotherapy. To me your view of your ego as a contraption seems to be symptomatic of depersonalization. Here’s a novel who’s protagnoist shows an remarkable likeness to your depersonalized way of being- in- the- world:
“‘I’ The Contraption Searching for Heaven” by Geza Bosze
Nietzsche’s prognosis of the death of God has proven false. Christianity has returned to Russia which was atheist for 70 years and theistic religion is offering resistance right now in China where atheism is the official policy enforced by high-tech surveillance and concentration camps.
Just as with the word dasein, I use the word contraption to distinguish between I in the either/or world and “I” in the is/ought world. In regard to those factors in my life that are rooted in objective facts [biological, circumstantial, social, political, economic] my I is as solid as yours is. Provided of course that neither one of us suffer from a brain ailment [like schizophrenia] in which “I” can be twisted into any number of strange contraptions.
Now, in relationship to our beliefs about God and religion, here too there are “the facts” involved in our actual situation, and the part where “I” becomes more an existential “contraption” in that what we think we know is true revolves around how we have come to think about all of those variable in our life that predispose some to go in one direction and others to go in entirely different directions. Variables we only have so much understanding and control over. In particular in regard to the time and place into which we are fortuitously thrown at birth, and all the factors that go into our indoctrination as children.
Sure, I understand this as “I” do. You understand it as “you” do. But: using the tools of philosophy, is there a way that all rational men and women are in fact obligated to understand it?
And, if there is, bring the tools down to earth by focusing in on an understanding of our behaviors in a particular context in which our views of God and religion come into conflict.
And I am not an “artificial” man. On the other hand, I may well be a man that “here and now” am wholly compelled to type these words. And to think and feel and say and do everything only as I was ever able to. A truly natural man.
But, most importantly, I am not arguing that how I see these relationships is the way they are. Only, that given the life that I have lived so far, this is what all of the variables in my life have existentially predisposed me to think about them “here and now”.
And, in fact, the way I do see them precipitates a truly grim understanding of my current situation. Living in an essentially meaningless world that will soon topple over into oblivion. Of course I am looking for a more hopeful frame of mind.
After all, I was once one of the objectivists myself.
And, I suspect, the reaction of some here to my argument is predictable: What if it is applicable to them too?!
Not really sure what your point is here. But: Note where I have ever proposed that we do in fact live in a No God world. On the contrary, over and again I propose instead that “I” have no inherent capacity to demonstrate it one way or the other. My thoughts and feeling here and now are no less an existential contraption rooted in the manner in which [again here and now] I am predisposed to embody one set of assumptions rather than another. Just as with those who do claim to believe in a God, the God, my God.
But: believing or having faith in this God is not the same thing as demonstrating His actual existence.
Right?
We’re all basically in the same boat here. After all, for all practical purposes, we are really all just agnostics until someone – God perhaps? – is able to encompass for us an ontological understanding of existence itself.
As though Nietzsche’s own understanding of God [or will to power or ubermen] was not in turn an existential contraption rooted in a particular “I” derived from a particular historical and cultural context generating and regenerating its own unique set of experiences, relationships and access to information, knowledge and ideas.
God is dead to anyone based on all the variables that have come together in their lived life that have inclined them to one particular set of assumptions.
From my frame of mind, who cares what anyone believes “in their head” about a God, the God, my God. Instead, what can they actually demonstrate to me that, as a rational human being, I am obligated to believe in turn.
Except that with God one can always fall back on faith. More or less blind. God’s ways are mysterious. We as mere mortals could never hope to grasp them. That way anything and everything that seems unintelligible [or ghastly] to us can be subsumed in that. All the way up to and including things like the Holocaust or extinction events here on planet earth.
Right there, in your statements that I have placed in embolden font, you have negated your moral nihilism! You affirm that you have people and things that you truly love. Right there your love for others implies that they have value. Right there, you also admit that you have things that you live for, and your anxiety about death implies that life has value for you. If we extend your experience of what you value to include the survival and flourishing of all sentient beings like yourself–voila!-- we have discovered an undeniable basis for a universal moral principle in what you value!
My point is not that each of us have things and people that we love. After all, our capacity to love is built right into us biologically, genetically. Then the question becomes the extent to which the things and people we choose to love are actually only embodied in the illusion of choice. In a wholly determined universe.
No, instead, my point [given some measure of free will] is in exploring why any particular individual chooses to love these things and these people rather than those things and those people. That’s where the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein comes in.
Being able to value is an inherent component of the evolution of life on Earth. But are there things that one ought to value? And, here, in regard to death, ought one to reject suicide and continue to value life—whatever one’s set of circumstances?
How is this not more the existential embodiment of dasein rather than a problem to be solved by philosophers?
What “universal moral principle” have you established here other than what you have come to conclude “in your head”?
Unless, of course, I am missing your point altogether.
That love is built into us by evolution doesn’t support the conclusion that there is no ultimate moral truth. On the contrary it can be interpreted as evidence that morality is built into the structure of reality.
Be that as it may, by admitting love for persons and things of your own choosing, you’re already one step away from that meta-ethical position I would call moral nihilism wherein it’s totally means whether you love or not. You already rejected that position after you read it into my epicurean proposition above regarding death.
And given that you do love, how can you deny the anxiety that you might not be loving rightly, or the right persons, or loving enough? That anxiety is the expression of the moral imperative. It’s clearly the motivation behind the questioning that drives you on this thread.
I agree. In fact, over and over again, I point out that until we have a comprehensive understanding of the “human condition” as it is situated necessarily in a comprehensive understanding of existence itself, the truth about human morality can be embedded in any number of conflicting sets of assumptions.
But, in the interim, we are still stuck with defending our own values in regard to either conflicting goods or in regard to life itself.
No, this is you making claims about what I claim here. What I claim instead is that here and now moral nihilism seems reasonable to me given the manner in “I” have, over the course of living my life, been predisposed to think and to feel about it as I do. I’m certainly not suggesting that it is any less my own existential contraption. In other words, as with your own views “here and now”, ever subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas.
Right? That is how our value judgments evolve from the cradle to the grave given the ubiquitous presence of contingency, chance and change.
Well, first, of course, someone would have to convince me that they do love in the right way. And then explain to me why, since I don’t love as they do, I Iove in the wrong way. And then move on to the things that all rational men and women are obligated to either love or not to love. Again, including life itself.
And what does that involve? Well, for one thing, abandoning these general description intellectual contraptions and focusing in on a particular context. For example, if John loves men as romatic partners, is he loving in the wrong way?
Convince you? Convince me that you possess sufficient openness to ever change your positions on these issues. Meanwhile, for a laugh, try to imagine how this story might apply here:
“Kilgore Trout once wrote a story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.”
From my frame of mind, you do not even attempt to respond to the points I raised in my last post.
My last point in particular:
Instead, I become the problem. My refusal to seriously consider the arguments of others.
Of course that accusation comes up here a lot at ILP. Especially among the objectivists who are ever and always flabbergasted when others do not accept their own argument.
You’re not one of them, are you?
As for Kilgore Trout’s story, you’ll have to explain more fully what on earth that has to do with you and I discussing God and religion.
Are you putting me on? Back when I was doing psychotherapy I used to ask clients to interpret proverbs to test their abstract ability. If you seriously cannot see how the Kilgore trout story could be absurdly analogous to what we’re doing here, your repeated responses that you don’t know “what on Earth” I’m talking about may be because you lack of necessary abstract ability.
You want to play this dialogue game according to a rigid set of rules of your own design whereas what I am doing is stepping back to analyze your process of interaction as imminently instantiating a morality that you deny has objective validity. My position is that I don’t know, but I’m open to the possibility. For all I know, we could be making champagne for the gods.
The categorical moral imperative seems to me to be the case existentially on the basis that we manifestly have one life to live, so we want to get it right whatever that means to us as individuals. Your anxiety about moral issues results from that. The morality that arises out of that is embodied and situational and uncertain. But experiences teach us that we damn well better get it right because there will be consequences. So, moral uncertainty doesn’t lead me to nihilism.
I pay attention to my moral intuitions. For example, I value compassion, which I define (following Mencius) as the inability to bear the suffering of others. As such, it’s built into me. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t have other competing interests that are working in and through me either. Or that I don’t feel guilt and uncertainty about whatever road I travel or leave untraveled. I understand such to be the finite freedom of human existence.
As far as your example, “if John loves men as romantic partners, is he loving in the wrong way?” if you demonstrate you understand “what on Earth” I’ve been talking about heretofore , I might take such issues up with you. Otherwise, what’s the point?
