And around and around we go.
Here is how I think about “I” at the existential juncture that is identity, value judgments and political economy:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
Now, with regard to an issue like abortion, to what extent are your own value judgments understood by you given that at one end of the spectrum are those who, re God, ideology, deontology, enlightenment etc., believe that they are in sync with the real me in sync with the right thing to do. While those at the other end of it [folks like me] see their value judgments as “existential contraptions”…moral and political prejudices rooted in dasein, confronting conflicting goods ultimately “resolved” by those in any particular community who have the political and economic clout to call the shots. Legislatively, say.
You see this in the abortion wars all the time. Those that are adamant at either end of the political spectrum, those who are willing to accept moderation, negotiation and compromise, and those, even in acceding to democracy and the rule of law, who recognize how thinking and feeling about their own value judgments [b]never gives them any real solid ground to stand on.[/b]
I’m simply trying to ascertain the extent to which you feel more or less fractured and fragmented than I do out in a particular context when for whatever reason others challenge what, as a political prejudice rooted in dasein, you believe about abortion.
For me it is in how I have come to believe this instead of that because of the points I raise here on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
How is it different for you…given your own intertwining of experiences and what, among other things, philosophy has taught you about identity, conflicting goods and political power intertwined in turn to your reaction to a particular set of circumstances.
MOST important however: You never demonstrate that your fragmentation is actually caused by your beliefs or lack of them. This is assumed. And others must assume that their lack of fragmentation is caused by their belief system.
But my point is that this sort of thing can never be fully understood or demonstrated other than by way of trying to grapple with your own personal experiences out in a particular world understood in a particular way, given your own particular access to information, knowledge and ideas.
Thus, taking into account all of those experiences and access to information, knowledge and ideas that you did not encounter. How your life and your thinking about it might have been profoundly different given a different trajectory. And then the part where, in a world of contingency, chance and change, new experiences and ideas can reconfigure “I” again. And then the part where philosophers are able to take that into account in attempting to pin down the optimal or the only rational thinking and feeling and behaving. In regard to abortion or any other conflicting good.
The rest is just you back up in the clouds of general descriptions. It’s not so much that you “focus in on me” as that in doing so you remain embedded in your intellectual contraptions. We need a context. An attempt on our part to explain [to the best of our ability] what goes on inside our head when we either experience a situation in which our moral philosophies come into conflict with others, or in regard to a conflicting good [like abortion] that is always popping up on the news.