An Amoral Manifesto Part I
A special extended column from our (erstwhile) Moral Moments columnist Joel Marks.
Here, of course, all the meat-eater has to do is argue that her moral narrative revolves solely around the sentient human beings in her community. There would seem to be no argument able to demonstrate that human communities must take into account the welfare of all living things.
At best there might be hard evidence that either eating or not eating meat has a significant impact on how long you live or on how healthy you are however long you live. But, again, given all of the many, many different historical and cultural and interpersonal contexts there are to be taken into consideration, how would even this be pinned down with any degree of finality?
What might a member of each camp argue is the right thing or the wrong thing to choose when confronted with that Big Mac?
And, here, the one I often zero in on is this one: The Ethical Egoist:
“Right and wrong is determined by what is in your self-interest. Or, it is immoral to act contrary to your self-interest. Ethical Egoism is usually based upon Psychological Egoism – that we, by nature, act selfishly.”
Not that there aren’t reasonable arguments against this frame of mind as well. But, again, out in a particular context, how are these conflicting arguments broached and described; and then reconciled or resolved existentially?
“By her lights” is precisely my point. How, for each of us, is this not embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in my signature threads? How, in relationship to the consumption of animal flesh, is this not a potent ingredient in your own sense of identity here.
And, then, once the philosophers and the ethicists have taken that into account, what conclusions might they come to in regard to animal rights that would come closest to the moral obligation of the rational human being?
An Amoral Manifesto Part I
A special extended column from our (erstwhile) Moral Moments columnist Joel Marks.
This part is always tricky for me. The relationship between what someone knows about something, all that can be known about it, and how this gap in and of itself can have a significant impact on their own moral reasoning.
If you go about the business of consuming animal flesh without any real understanding at all of factory farming, of the suffering that the animals often endure in order to sate your appetite for meat, it is all the easier to avoid seeing your behavior as a moral issue at all.
With these new facts, though, you might change your mind. Change your eating habits altogether.
Or you can choose to consume animal products only once you are able to assure yourself that the animals you are eating endured an absolute minimum of pain and suffering. Though no less butchered in the end.
With all other conflicting goods in turn there are facts that can be known if you make an effort to accumulate them before choosing behaviors.
But what there does not seem to be is the sort of knowledge that would enable one side or the others to demonstrate that their own facts obligate rational and virtuous human beings to behave one way rather than another.
And there is still the argument of those who could not care less about what the facts are if the fact is that the only thing that matters to them is satisfying and fulfilling their own selfish wants and needs. This is always the argument that most troubles me because it seems to require the existence of God in order make the argument null and void.
If there is no font that knows all and is all powerful, then it comes down to the conflicting moral and political narratives of mere mortals.
Thus…
Yes, but this “honest recourse” either succeeds in persuading another to adopt your own subjective assumptions about the treatment of animals, or it doesn’t. What is always most crucial to me is how exchanges of this sort are rooted in the components of my own moral philosophy. Such that even your own value judgments “here and now” are no less existential contraptions and, as such, are ever open to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new sources of information and knowledge.
And in the best of all possible worlds…
…one’s motivation and intention here can be honest or dishonest, but, for me, this too is just another manifestation of dasein.
Then I’m back to how I have never been all that successful in explaining it to others. I figure that’s because of one of two reasons:
1] my explanation is wrong…end of story.
2] my explanation is right…but is rejected by others because they simply cannot or will not accept the implications of my own frame of mind being applicable to them.
The part about becoming “fractured and fragmented” out in the is/ought world is simply more than they can accept about their own self.
After all, I remember my own grueling transformation all those years ago.
An Amoral Manifesto Part I
A special extended column from our (erstwhile) Moral Moments columnist Joel Marks.
Still, what this all revolves around [in my view] is not keeping morality in or removing morality from our lives. It is more about the word you want to use to describe that which will always be a part of any human community: rules of behavior.
How to sustain the least dysfunctional interactions by rewarding some set of behaviors and punishing other sets.
And I also believe that calling the world a “better place” will still remain an existential contraption rooted in daseins grappling with conflicting goods in a “real world” – historically, culturally and experientially – where those with the most political and economic power almost always prevail.
Turning this into an intellectual or a philosophical discussion and debate changes none of that.
This is the part that seems reasonable to me given the assumption – and that, for now, is all it ever seems to be – that we live in a No God world. Sans God there does not appear to be a way to establish beyond all doubt that any human behavior is necessarily, intrinsically good or evil. How would that be done? Especially the arguments of those who would molest children or go on a mass-killing spree, and predicate it entirely on their own selfish motivations. What do you say to them, “can’t you see that what you did is terribly, terribly wrong?!” Meanwhile their own frame of mind is rooted in variables rooted in a life so far removed from yours that a communication breakdown is inevitable.
Again, unless I am not thinking this through carefully enough and there is a philosophical, deontological assessment [in a Godless universe] able to obviate the behaviors of the narcissistic sociopaths. An argument demonstrated to be so airtight, it could not be refuted. Some may still choose to be evil, but they can’t deny that’s what they are.
But how is this still not a general description intellectual contraption? Yes, there clearly seems to be a global consensus – derived from both genes and memes – that molesting children is as close to a “universal taboo” as our species is likely to come. But enough if still happens to lead one to suspect there are other factors embedded in the human condition – also derived from both genes and memes – that allow many to rationalize going down that path anyway.
But without an omniscient, omnipotent font cognizant of, and able to punish all such behaviors, it just gets kicked back into the multifaceted, conflicted, subjective jumble of human reactions that can be all over the board.
An Amoral Manifesto Part II
A special extended column from our (erstwhile) Moral Moments columnist Joel Marks.
Of course this brings us to that age old antinomy: the head or the heart?
Only in the modern world where capitalism prevails, head or heart morality often revolves around me, myself and I. And even the amoralists are likely to be tugged in that direction. And even to the extent “I” and “we” are configured it often relates to that other distinction proliferating around the globe: “one of us” or “one of them”.
You see it in the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the globe. All that talk about coming together as one to beat this thing will always have to contend with the “but what about me?” mentality? And [of course] keeping “them” out. In America now it’s not just the Chinese but Europeans too.
It’s always going to be a tug of war between I and we and them. An ever shifting political tug of war. Though, sure, if you are still able to root this in one or another objectivist font then your morality is sustained by that. Then it all comes down to whether or not [re the coronavirus or some other calamity] events upend it all.
Still, from my vantage point, it depends always on whatever you conflate the ego with to that which either is or is not derived subjectively, subjunctively from dasein. What behaviors can be deemed reasonable in a particular context? How might the Golden Rule make sense here and now but not there and then? What new circumstances demand new points of view?
What are you selfish regarding? How did you come to be selfish regarding this? Could a new situation change this? There’s being selfish before the coronavirus outbreak and being selfish after. Or being selfish now and being selfish if the pandemic cannot be contained and explodes across the globe all the more virulently. All of this is ever and always evolving into or devolving from whatever actual facts that all can agree on.
See how arguments of this sort unfold as “general description intellectual contraptions?”
My own amoral frame of mind is derived largely from the way in which I – “I” – have thought myself into grappling with human interactions in my signature threads. My “ego” like my “superego” was fabricated by others re my fortuitous birth and then throughout my childhood, given the biological imperatives that compel me in ways I have no real access to.
Just like you. Then it’s all about the trajectory of our personal experiences, relationships and access to ideas, and how philosophers either are or are not able to take that into account in order to come up with the most rational understanding of that which we have come to call morality and ethics.
Life is like a skunk:
Sometimes it really stinks.
You get accustomed to eating meal-worms.
Life span is low.
Humanity invents “humane” as a real thing.
History isn’t a war between good and evil men.
Most “victims” are foolish.
They refuse to unify and establish a better government.
So foolish are they, that they demand change while not being willing to change.
An Amoral Manifesto Part II
A special extended column from our (erstwhile) Moral Moments columnist Joel Marks.
One thing for sure. The individual’s ego is derived from a particular mind linked to a particular set of sense perceptions embedded in a particular body out in a particular world. We can’t think and feel about the world around us from another’s point of view. There are only the factual, material, empirical continuities that we are able to communicate back and forth such that we either are or are not able to grasp what another is talking about. Things we can agree about either because there is no other way in which to think about them or because we have convinced ourselves that this is the case.
Then it can only come down to what specific interactions the discussions revolve around and dealing with any possible discrepancies when it comes down [as it always does] to establishing rewards and punishments for choosing one behavior rather than another.
That which philosophers have come to embed historically in any number of intellectual contraptions pertaining to “ethics” or “the Good”. But, really, which points of view are applicable to all of us, philosophers or not.
That’s always been my own focus here. Human beings interacted on planet Earth long, long, long before the surplus laborers we call philosophers ever came into existence.
After all, in regard to the coronavirus pandemic, what can philosophers tell us about ethical behavior that those who are not philosophers can? Here their own egos communicate just like all the rest of ours do. Demonstrably or not. Either in regard to a priori relationships or to a posteriori relationships. And especially where in regard to a set of circumstances the two must be intertwined.
In this or that context, what can we actually prove to others is in fact true.
This is all hopelessly abstract though. What does it mean to be or not to be an egoist given an actual set of circumstances in which different people are pulled and tugged by any number of variable combinations in conflicted directions. And the distinction made between egoism [preoccupation with oneself] and egotism [an enhanced sense of one’s own importance].
How might they be distinguished in regard to our behaviors in confronting the coronavirus?
It would seem that both are less likely to take others into consideration in regards to conflicting goods, but for any number of egoists, it is as though you don’t even exist at all. Whereas any number of egotists would seem more likely to embrace objectivism. They take others into account only to the extent they feel superior to them if they do not share their own moral and political agendas.
Either way it still comes down to defending distinctions between right and wrong behavior that goes beyond what someone thinks is true in their head. And an amoralist is less the embodiment of dasein when push comes to shove and an actual behavior must be chosen.
Only Biggs would still be doing philosophy during a global pandemic. But it’s times like these that an existential nihilist thrives the most and rolls his sleeves up.
Notice at this very moment none of you could care less whether descartes or leibniz was right regarding primary qualities. Like that’s the LAST thing on your minds. And the only reason it ever was on your mind is because nothing important was going on to draw your attention.
Philosophers could use a good crisis once in a while to bring them back to reality, eh Biggs?
After all, given the things that are of interest to me philosophically – morality here and now, immortality there and then – the pandemic is a perfect example of how, at the existential juncture of identity, value judgments and political power, philosophers either have something substantive to say or they don’t.
It’s just that however substantive that something might turn out to be, I am no less likely to be fractured and fragmented.
But then no one said that waiting for godot would be easy.
An Amoral Manifesto Part II
A special extended column from our (erstwhile) Moral Moments columnist Joel Marks.
All human beings share the same biological hardware that precipitated the existence of desire in the first place. And while there are indeed any number of historical and cultural and experiential contexts, there are also any number of continuities that revolve first and foremost around all that we must do as a species merely to subsist itself.
Instead, the complications begin to arise in acknowledging just how many different social, political and economic permutations that there are in a world that never stops unfolding in what, from time to time, can be a tidal wave of contingency chance and change. Isn’t that basically the case right now with the coronavirus? There are factors we all share in common in dealing with it along with all of the different – at times vastly different – sets of circumstances in which we were, are or will be experiencing it.
And if morality revolves around the practical necessity to devise rules of behavior for interacting in these considerably more perilous times, what can’t change are the distinctions made between what we believe is true about it and what we can demonstrate is in fact true about it.
This and recognizing that, in addressing it, we are always confronted “for all practical purposes” with intertwining public policies rooted more or less in one or another combination of might makes right, right makes might or moderation, negotiation and compromise.
Ah, but here is an “amoralist” who argues that “it may be universal that, let us say, one should never torture a child…”
On the other hand, this becomes universal for him only in asserting that it is true. Whereas I have no way in which to think myself into believing it myself. On the contrary, given the perspective of a moral nihilist, I am not able myself to encompass an argument that makes…
“In the absense of God, all things are permitted”.
…go away.
Now, I have never tortured a child. And I could never imagine myself ever doing something like that. In fact, my own existential self is embodied in a frame of mind that reflects fury at anyone who ever harms a child.
But since I recognize my frame of mind here as an existential contraption rooted in dasein, I can only presume that had my life been very, very different there is no way I can say that would ever have been the case.
And I have no categorical and imperative arguments in which to confront the sociopaths that do abuse children because the experiences embedded in their own lives predisposed them to want to. And they are able to rationalize this by arguing that, in a No God world, their own understanding of morality revolves solely around fulfilling their own wants and needs.
An Amoral Manifesto Part II
A special extended column from our (erstwhile) Moral Moments columnist Joel Marks.
That can get tricky. If you argue that morality is relative to particular historical and cultural contexts, you are suggesting that in any particular such context it does in fact exist. On the other hand, who is kidding whom? It’s not like historical and cultural communities exist wholly apart and separate from each other. Instead, over time new social and economic interactions invariably beget new moral and political narratives. As though morality in primitive cultures did not evolve into the modern industrial state. As though norms that prevailed in feudal interactions are not going to be profoundly uprooted with the advance of mercantile and capitalist political economies.
So, while recognizing that morality is in fact relative to a particular community in a particular time and place, that’s not to argue that morality itself becomes grounded in an objective font for those who wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous in that particular community. In regard to what the rules of behavior must be for all citizens.
Unless, of course, that is precisely what is argued. But if that is the case how is this established when conflicting goods do come into contact in regard to particular sets of behaviors. What gets rewarded and what gets punished given that the modern world is profoundly embedded in all manner of increasingly intertwined historical and cultural agendas.
Many of course will still make that leap from the need for rules of behavior to the assumption that their own rules of behavior reflect the most reasonable assumptions about human interactions – regardless of historical and cultural variables. Here in either a God or a No Gid world.
Exactly: One individual’s “strawperson” becomes another individual’s objectivist font!
And what never changes is that however you make the intellectual/philosophical distinction between objective morality, moral relativism or amorality, when you bring it out into a particular context in a particular world actual behaviors will either be more or less tolerated. Rewards and punishments never go away.
Nietzsche and Morality
Roger Caldwell responds to an analysis of Nietzsche’s morality.
So, in making a distinction between the masters and the slaves [in a No God world] it’s not that the masters are morally superior. On the other hand, they deserve to be the masters because they are seen by him to be superior in some other way.
But what is that all connected too? It does not appear to be derived from the conviction that might makes right. Instead, it seems more applicable to the notion that right makes might. They sustain their power not because, circumstantially, they happen to be in power, but because how they think and what they do actually warrants their superior positions.
And then of course you have individual Nietzscheans who historically connect the dots here to factors like race or ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation.
Until, once again, you bring these disputes out into the world of actual human interactions and try to defend that which you as an individual subscribe to as behaviors worthy of the Übermensch. The part in other words where [here] you bump into the components of my own moral narrative. A narrative that suggest these “superior” traits are no less the embodiment of daseins confronting conflicting goods.
Yes, but only in the sense that right and wrong are predicated on moral and political prejudices that emanate historically, culturally and experientially. At least relating to any particular community of men and women confronting their own unique demographics at any existing point in time in any particular place.
In other words, there do not appear to be essential truths here. But that doesn’t make the absolute necessity to devise rules of behavior go away. And here there are facts that can be ascertained and reasonable arguments all along the political spectrum to back conflicting interpretations of these facts. That was as true back when Nietzsche was around as it still is for us today.
And what is this but not the realization that genes and memes are always going to be intertwined in any actual political agenda. It just comes down to where as an individual you come to land on that spectrum which runs from objectivism on one end to dog eat dog “what’s in it for me” nihilism on the other.
Nietzsche and Morality
Roger Caldwell responds to an analysis of Nietzsche’s morality.
Here we go again. A determinist who argues that human beings are part of “a causul web that comprises the whole universe” and then reconfigures that into a will that is either strong or weak.
Morality aside, if one’s will is entirely shaped by the laws of matter compelling the brain to embody either a weak or a strong will in any particular individual what difference does that make when manifested in human interactions if those interactions could only be what nature compels?
What the hell do I keep missing here…if I actually do have the capacity to not miss it?
Same thing. Making a distinction between grasping the surface of things and grasping things in depth in a world where both are a necessary/inherent component of nature’s immutable laws is for all practical purposes to make no distinction at all. Or so it still seems to me.
Same thing. In a wholly determined universe how could anything that we think, feel, say and do not be rational if by rational we mean wholly in sync with the laws of matter?
This is something I come back to time and again because the only way morality can have any real substantive meaning in our lives is if in some way that we may or may not come to understand we are in fact free to choose behaviors other than the ones that we do.
Nietzsche and Morality
Roger Caldwell responds to an analysis of Nietzsche’s morality.
This in and of itself is a fascinating mystery. Most of us will acknowledge that the conscious mind is always in interaction with the subconscious and unconscious mind. And that mind itself is embedded further in the fascinating mystery that revolves around the limbic system: the id, instinct, libido, stem functions. Intertwined finally in the biological imperatives relating to our internal organs and our senses.
But [then] don’t many basically just shrug that part off when they are asked to defend their moral narratives? Suddenly “I” becomes this Kantian entity fully capable of zeroing right in on the most rational frame of mind enabling us to pursue the most rational behaviors.
Come on, how idiotic is this?
Yet in acknowledging this labyrinthian infusion of genetic and memetic variables, the moral objectivists among us still insist that, unless you share their own value judgments, you are necessarily and inherently wrong.
Just in terms of common sense how preposterous is that?
It would be interesting to imagine how Kant himself might react to this accusation. Any Kantians here care to take a crack at it?
But: because rational assessments are available to us given human interactions in the either/or world, some will just take the leap to the is/ought world in turn. In other words, as I often noted with Mr. Reasonable by way of an example, taking that leap from rational behavior in regard to playing the stock market [measured objectively in money made or lost] to our reactions to this behavior itself: moral or immoral?
Maybe? Maybe not? Again [as usual] what we are lacking here is an actual context in which particular behaviors are chosen and we attempt to explore our personal reactions to those behaviors given the intertwining of the conscious, rational mind, and all the other components embedded in the human brain.
Nietzsche and Morality
Roger Caldwell responds to an analysis of Nietzsche’s morality.
A fractured self. That sounds familiar. Only here the emphasis is more on the biological components of “I”. The reasoning mind is ever intertwined in what must be at times a profoundly problematic symbiosis/synthesis with brain functions that revolve around emotion, drives, instinct. Sometimes grappled with consciously but other times subconsciously or unconsciously.
Me, I just take this further [in the is/ought world] by introducing all of the many ways in which memes can precipitate a “fracturing” as well. After all, if the fragmented biological “I” was confronted with human interactions that never changed historically, culturally or experientially, we could focus on conflicting goods given a much narrower set of circumstances. But put both the genetic and the memetic splintering together and my own perspective regarding “I” becomes that much more coherent.
Again, if “I” do say so myself.
Then the part that focuses in on “human psychology” here:
Then the contributions of folks like Jung and Reich and Skinner and Rogers and Milgram and Fromm.
This tension can never go away because however you construe the “self” in human interactions, there is simply no getting around the absolute necessity to prescribe and proscribe behaviors through one or another communal incarnation of rewards and punishments.
I merely suggest that the deeper you go into the is/ought world, the more likely that “I” is, if not “fictional”, an “existential fabrication” rooted in daseins confronting conflicting goods out in a particular world where some have more power to actually enforce sets of laws that allow the community to [hopefully] sustain the least dysfunctional interactions.
Here is an interesting [and timely] take on the moral philosophy that revolves around utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism: the doctrine that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.
[b]'So what is the greatest good or the greatest harm? Mr. Biden, and the Democrats he may carry with him into government, are likely to do more good for women and the nation than his competition, the worst president in the history of the Republic. Compared with the good Mr. Biden can do, the cost of dismissing Tara Reade — and, worse, weakening the voices of future survivors — is worth it. And don’t call me an amoral realist. Utilitarianism is not a moral abdication; it is a moral stance.
'Utilitarian morality requires that I turn my face away from the people I propose to sell out: Monica Lewinsky, Tara Reade. This is agonizingly hard for me to do. Pretending not to believe the complainants — which is what is taking place with Ms. Reade — or that they’re loose nobodies, which is what much of the media did to Ms. Lewinsky, is just an escape from the hard work of moral analysis.
‘Today, the Trump-Pence ticket looks even worse. Mr. Trump, credibly accused of rape and a confessed grabber of women’s genitalia, and Mr. Pence, who will not dine alone with a woman other than his wife (whom he calls “Mother”), combine both Mr. Starr’s and Mr. Clinton’s belief systems, offering voters in one ticket the full spectrum of misogyny. Mr. Biden, that relic of the good-old-boy Senate years, seems positively benign by comparison.’[/b]
And…
[b]'Once again, philosophy offers an answer to my quest for justice. Philosophers for at least three centuries have known that there can be no call to justice in a situation of extreme scarcity. David Hume, who originated the analysis, suggested that nobody can be expected to behave justly when trying to survive a shipwreck. The great modern philosopher John Rawls called moderate scarcity, or the absence of extreme scarcity, one of the “circumstances of justice.”
'The Trump administration, and the Republican Party that he represents, are unassailably the political equivalent of Hume’s shipwreck. Offering only hatred, rejecting facts, refusing accountability, they represent the wreckage of the American ship of state. We knew that before 70,000 Americans died of Covid-19 in a spectacle of villainy and incompetence, but when you are faced with a distasteful moral choice, it can be useful to be reminded of the immensity of the stakes in making that choice.
‘It may not be just, but I’m swimming away from Mr. Trump’s sinking ship as hard as I can. If I have to, I’ll vote for Mr. Biden. I hope I’m not going to drown anyway.’[/b]
It doesn’t work for me, but if I could think myself out of believing in moral nihilism, this would probably be the agenda I’d pick.
Making An Effort To Understand
David Wong illustrates moral relativism with some telling examples.
Over and over and over again, I pursue the same “larger question”. Less what is right or wrong in any particular context, and more is this something that philosophers/ethicists are even able to determine given the tools at their disposal.
I conclude that in a No God world, they cannot. Or, rather, that I have not come upon an argument of late that convinces me that this is possible. Which explains the reaction of many to me here. It is one thing to go mind to mind in a fierce exchange over the morality of abortion or the rights of animals or homosexuality. With most, they can at least fall back on the assumption that good and evil are within our grasp here. But when someone like me suggests that [at least philosophically] this does not seem like a reasonable conclusion at all, it can perturb more than just a few to no end.
And if there is a “substantial minority” not inclined toward objectivity, not a whole lot of them come into philosophy venues online. At least given my own experiences.
This is another factor that gives me pause regarding my own philosophy. It’s one thing to focus on issues in which there is no broad [let alone overwhelming] moral consensus: capital punishment, gun laws, homosexuality…along with the conflicts noted above.
But what about things like the rape of children or torturing animals or genocide? Do I really believe – like deep down – that moral nihilism is applicable here too? A part of me is always considerably less confident about it. In part because I – or “I” – simply cannot imagine my doing things like this myself. I can’t imagine encountering new experiences or new sets of circumstances that might trigger a change of this magnitude.
But how do I demonstrate that it is completely out of the question? Philosophically or otherwise.
So, admittedly, when I focus on “situational ethics” the situations will almost always involve those conflicting goods that are not among the extremities of human behavior.
That and, in my view, the most troubling frame of mind of all: the sociopath. He or she simply rationalizes every and any behavior on the grounds that, in a No God world, all things are permitted…if you are able to think yourself into believing that it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that your our personal gratification is, morally, the center of the universe.
If there is a definitive philosophical argument able to pin that to the mat, I haven’t come across it for years now.
re: your post here… ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … w#p2766084
about my post here… ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … w#p2766020
This post of mine explains how I deal with problems that for most would be framed in moral terms and I frame in practical terms and my preferences.
It was on topic in the thread and also a response to
I think people tend not to want to look at certain things, I try to make it hard for them to dismiss them. I think this gives a better chance for the world to be more as I would like it. If people are more willing to entertain the liklihood that power will be abused in ways most people’s intuitions decide only happens somewhere or somewhen else. There is tremendous moral judgment of anyone who thinks major evil acts are not being revealed by the mass of media. I think this group is sometimes right and that post explains a bit how I deal, practically with achieving my wants. It is one specific type of reaction to what behaviors related to political agendas.
It offers no miracle solution to that or conficting moral narratives. But it is an example, a concrete one, of how I deal with one situation, of how I deal with political agendas as distorted, I think, by psychological agendas.
You have also expressed that you cannot understand why I am not F & F like you. I think our differing approaches are related to my being less F & F. We both seem to think I am less F&F. Of course such things are very hard to tell over the internet and even in person. But my sense is that since you are looking for utterly compelling universal and objective moral arguments, this gives you extra burdens.
My point of course is embedded more in the manner in which your hatred here either is or is not what I construe to be an “existential contraption” rooted in this:
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.
Or, instead, using the tools of philosophy [or science] is it possible to determine if all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to feel hatred for it.
After all, given this Brave New World, any number of individuals might support it if for no other reason than that “for all practical purposes” they greatly benefit from it. Or they have managed to think themselves into actually believing in an ideological justification for it. Or they are sociopaths who go along with it on the surface because they are able to sustain a life that furthers their own selfish interests.
Same with the coronavirus/vaccination arguments. There are those who insist that their collection of facts attached to their own objectivist moral and political font precludes anyone not sharing their own conclusions from being rational and virtuous in turn. Whereas “I” see how both sides – many sides --can cherry pick particular sets of facts that allow them to reconfigure the debate such that it merely reinforces their own existential predispositions and political prejudices. Predispositions and prejudices that, in my view, are embedded subjectively/subjunctively in dasein.
“I” myself here am more “fractured and fragmented” than you are because I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy [in my signature threads] differently from how you do. Though I am certainly not suggesting that my assessment here is more reasonable than yours. At least not necessarily.
On the contrary, over and again I point out that, so far in the 21st Century, the “show me the money” nihilists who own and operate the global economy inflict at least as much if not far more human pain and suffering around the globe.
Again, over and over I note that my own assessment here is no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein. That in fact I am not able to demonstrate that what I argue seems reasonable to me here and now ought to be reasonable to others.
Bullshit. I have noted time and again that my actual options are limited insofar as being able to go out into the world and try new things. And I argue less that others are obligated to convince me that all rational people are obligated to try new things…and more that they try to convince me that they are able to demonstrate the worth of their own arguments here.
Okay, but given what context? And how is what someone likes not a manifestation of how I construe that as the embodiment of dasein? And “intuitions” in regard to what situation? How much closer are intuitions to objective morality than to the subjective parameters I ascribe to dasein?
The mass media is no less an existential contraption rooted historically, culturally and experientially out in a particular world given particular political prejudices. And, given the capitalist political economy, dollars and cents. And all I know for sure about the MSM is they take in an enormous amount of income each year from, among others, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical industrial complex, the big banks, the Wall Street community.
My best guess is that this is rooted in the sheer complexity of any particular human personality. All of variables that go into the making of my own psychological reaction to human interactions involving identity, value judgments, and political economy, as opposed to yours and others.
But here in a philosophy venue it seems reasonable to argue that given my own understanding of these components, not being fractured and fragmented just doesn’t make sense. It’s only a matter of how “broken” one feels with regard to any set of circumstances.
Also, I’m not looking for objective moral arguments so much as exploring the arguments of those who say that they exist. And, in turn, noting the consequences of those who insist that their own political agenda is rooted in them…and, subsequently, have acquired the power to force their own agenda on others.
Finally, as I note time and again, moral nihilism creates and then sustains an existential reality whereby one is not anchored to a rigid, dogmatic font – God or No God – requiring one to always do the right thing. Or else.
Nihilists always have considerably more options when choosing behaviors.
This seems unnecessarily complicating it. I’m a social mammal. If you had a wolf in a zoo for a while. Then put her out with her pack in the wild, then captured her to put her back in the zoo, she’d probably hate it. To call something like that an existential contraptoin - as a rule like you do - is up in the clouds if anything is.
I addressed this.
I’ve made it clear that I don’t think all people are obligated. This is one of the things that made people angry at you. It’s as if you get triggered and say things you say to anyone and then often on your own, as if it applies, which it does not, in the individual case. And as if we haven’t already addressed the issue.
Of course. Though I was not rejecting, remotely, all of current society. But of course. How could you possibly think I don’t know this? What could possibly have led you to believe I did know that people have this attitude.
Which is, of course, quite possible without objectivism. You can have people who have different conclusions and these are based on cherry picking, etc., and this is not caused by political positions or moral positions. This happens in many fields and contexts all the time. Of course morals and objectivists stances can come in and often do. But you seem to think rationality cannot be undermined if you are a nihilist. Guess again.
Nope. You haven’t demonstrated that in the least. You told me a bunch of stuff as if I needed to know it, then based on this, said we have a different view on those things.
And you have never demonstrated, for example, that you are not more F&F because of trauma, particular suffering you went through, perhaps not going to therapists or not finding the right ones, or for giving yourself extra burdens, like finding perfect arguments.
You have never demonstrated any of that. You just repeat a conclusion based on something dasein based.
Though I am certainly not suggesting that my assessment here is more reasonable than yours. At least not necessarily.
Yes, I’ve noticed that and commented on that dozens of times. But they are not like you. I know that.
I tried in good faith to answer your questions. I don’t have a conclusion about why you may be more F&F which you do not address. You do not address why you eliminate dasein based reasons you might have more F&F, as listed a bit here and in the other posts.
You repeat your conclusion as if somehow you had reasoned somewhere why it couldn’t be something as simple as some facet of my parenting led me to suffer this less than you.
Yes, you make a disclaimer that you might be wrong. But you never take the effort to actually address the dasein based possibilities. The contigent factors in our lives - both experiential and genetic - that might predispose someone to focus and suffer somethign more than another.
For whatever reasons, you simply cannot do this. Even though it fits your philosophy to a T.
And perhaps you could do it, find a good argument for what it cannot be these things, but you don’t even try. For yourself, you don’t even try.
Indeed, and to the extent that objectivists can “simplify” it by insisting the hatred that they feel here and now regarding this or that is in sync with the “real me” ready, willing and able to embody “the right thing to do”, takes so much of those “complications” away.
The hatred that wolves feel is almost entirely subsumed genetically in instinct. I would never ascribe their behavior to dasein. And to the extent that human hatred is explored contextually at intersection of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy, is the extent to which it becomes anything but up in the clouds.
So you keep telling me. But not in the manner in which I addressed it myself on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
If I do say so myself.
Go back and review our own exchange on this thread. We construe “I” here in different ways.
For me, the focus on what all people are obligated to feel, comes after an exploration into why different people feel conflicting things about the same set of circumstances. Aside from the genetic components of “I”, how does this biological self come to embody particular behaviors in particular contexts given all of the variables [historical, cultural and experiential] embedded in human social, political and economic interactions. Are these memetic factors merely there to be subsumed in Satyr’s assessment of nature? Re, among other things, race and gender and sexual orientation. Culminating [at Know Thyself] in the Übermensch?
Come on, just because someone insists that they have “addressed” another’s issue here, doesn’t mean that it has been addressed to the other’s satisfaction. You do get that part, don’t you?
Because the perspectives of the realists, pragmatists, sociopaths and narcissists [however one might come to understand them] are no less embedded in dasein from my point of view. They can just shrug off morality in a No God world and be content to embody ethics from the perspective – philosophical perspective? – of “in the absence of God, all things are permitted”.
But, again, why do some come to think about the world this way while others do not? How is this not a powerful example of how dasein manifests itself from individual to individual?
Again, we would need to assess the facts provided by each side in the covid-19/vaccination debates. Which immediately puts us in touch with the gap between our facts, their facts and all of the facts there are that actually can be known. Then the part that Barrett explored re “rival goods”. Then two of my own components: dasein, political economy.
You don’t have to be a nihilist to note the manner in which rational assessments can cancel each other out.
So, I haven’t demonstrated it to you and that settles it. But you haven’t demonstrated to me how, given particular contexts, your view is different from mine. Instead, you only insist that you have.
Now, we can either try and try again given different sets of circumstances or just leave it at that.
What if something like that is not able to be demonstrated conclusively in the manner in which we demonstrate such things in the either/or world? Again, the existential/psychological variables are so complex here, we can only struggle to communicate to the best of our ability why we think, feel, say and do things one way rather than another.
“I” feel fractured and fragmented in my interactions with others in the is/ought world. And considerably less so in my interactions with others in the either/or world. I explore why in my signature threads. Others either are or not interested in reading them. If they are and do, they will react in a particular way.
Then all we can do here at ILP is to exchange assessments of these relationships given our reaction to particular situations.