Sure, wants and needs get all tangled up. But in order to subsist from day to day there are clearly things that you need: access to food and water and shelter; protection from those who wish to do you harm. Though here the conflicts generally revolve more around means than ends.
Or take sex. As a species we rely on sex to procreate each new generation. But given that sex can be engaged for the sheer pleasure of it, we have come to want many, many different kinds of sex. And in any number of different contexts. Conflicts abound here.
So, we need some things. How then ought we to go about procuring them? We want many, many other things. How then ought we to differentiate between the good things and the bads things.
Me? I cue dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
Why? Because if you do what you want to do [for “fun” or not] it can piss the others off.
So not wanting to piss people off is greater than wanting to do the thing that might piss people off, even though it’s something you originally wanted to do before you realized that people could be pissed.
Again: We need to bring these “general descriptions” down to earth. What in particular are you doing that pisses others off and why in particular are they pissed off about it?
In any event, we need to establish rules of behavior in any particular community. But the rules are always embedded in the historical, cultural and experiential interaction of genes and memes. And generally predicated on one or another rendition/interaction of might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law.
The part about “rooted in dasein” revolves basically around the fact that…
1] as children we are all indoctrinated [re rewards and punishments] to embody one set of rules rather than another
2] as adults the rules that we subscribe to are generally derived from the experiences, the relationships and the access to ideas that unfold in the course of living our lives.
The manner in which I describe dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Others then can either agree or disagree regarding the extent to which this description is applicable to their own “I” out in the is/ought world.
Suppose Jack has “fun” torturing animals. His purpose could be to exorcise the pain inflicted on him by others, or it might be just to entertain himself.
If we ask Jack why he is torturing animals his answer could only be “I don’t know” because all fun activities have that answer, and if they didn’t have that answer, then the activity would be purposeful instead of purposeless.
Maybe, but Jack’s answer is still embedded in dasein out in a world where some are able to rationalize torturing animals while others insist that it is necessarily immoral to do so.
But rationalization implies purpose. If he is rationalizing, then he wouldn’t be torturing animals for fun (no purpose), but possibly to please the gods who will bless the crops or send rain. Rationalization is trying to find a purpose to justify the action.
The purpose of the things that we do – i.e. what we tell ourselves the reasons are – are no less existential contrapments to me. The important point [mine] is that philosophers/ethicists/political scientists etc., seem unable to concoct an argument such that all rational men and women are able to embody only those behaviors they are morally obligated to choose.
The thought that we put into the rules here are, in my view, historical, cultural and interpersonal manifestions of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
The thought that some put into having no rules at all is still just another existential frame of mind to me.
To fight fair or not to fight fair is construed by different people in different ways in different contexts. Why do some come to one conclusion and others another? Is there a way to determine [either universally or context to context] what one is in fact obligated to do?
The “rule of no rules” is always only going to be applicable to a particular situation understood in a particular way. The rest [to me] becomes all entangled in language game. The gaps that sometimes come to exist between words and worlds. One can argue that having fun is their purpose for doing something. Then “technically” we can go on and on regarding the extent to which this is logically or epistemologically sound.
As for the role that human autonomy plays in all of this, that can range from reconciling it with the “will of God” to grappling with “free will” in a wholly determined universe. Here and now the “truth” still seems far, far beyond our reach.
Thus when you argue that…
What I mean by “mechanistic” is like cogs in a machine: if one cog turns, the other cog won’t do anything randomly, but it will respond with 100% certainty. The universe is not like that. The universe functions on randomness rather than 100% certainty.
…I have to ask how an infinitesimally tiny and insignificant speck of exaistence like yourself can possibly imagine that what they think they know about all of this here and now is wholly in sync with all that would need to be known about the ontological and/or teleological nature of Existence itself. And that’s presuming that this universe is not but one of an infinite number of additional universes.
And that’s presuming there is No God.
And all QM let’s us know is just how far removed we may well be from successfully grappling with Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”.
Again, when someone makes the sort of assertions that you make here, I presume it is a manifestation of human psychology more so than such disciplines and science and philosophy.
Your arguments are bursting at the seams with assumptions. But, then, how could they not be? And being or not being on vacation doesn’t change that.
And then when I point this out:
What always boggles my mind here is how folks can actually say – believe – things like this: as though they did have access to all that would need to be known about the universe in order to fully explain it.
You insist:
There is no other conclusion. If there are 2 things, you’d need to explain how one thing could relate to the other thing, and if you did that, you’d join the things together into one thing by their relation. So there can only be one thing (the universe is the only atom - atmos = the indivisible). If there can only be one thing, then that one thing cannot look at itself and any effort of self-examination will result in randomness (causeless). It’s just logic man
As though through “logic” alone, one can explain why something exists rather then nothing at all, and why this something and not another.
You give us a world of words. Words said to be true because more words say so. How “on earth” would you go about actually demonstrating this re experiments and predictions? What empirical evidence is there to back this up? Other than your assumptions about it?
One thing for sure though: There’s no way in hell I will ever be able to falsify it. And James S. Saint is no longer with us. Able to connect the dots between his own set of assumptions here [RM/AO] and the Real God.
Your purpose is to connect the dots, but why do you want to connect the dots? (Because it’s fun )
Right from the start I own up to the fact that my own purpose here is hopelessly – ineffably, inextricably – tangled up in dasein. There are just too many variables [and variable permutations] from the past I either did not understand or were beyond my control. What seems most pressing to me is to connect the dots between the either/or and the is/ought world as that has implications for the fate of “I” having tumbled over into the abyss.
Then [again] back to the things that you assert/insist are true:
The universe isn’t a machine, it’s more like a plant. It doesn’t function like Newtonian balls, but it grows and sends random branches into barren places to die while branches that just happened to find sun will bear fruit. The whole thing is completely pointless random happenings that are going on.
So [again] I have to ask myself how your pourpose here in coming to these conclusions is related to my purpose in probing the philosophical parameters of “how ought one to live”?
As “infinitesimally tiny and insignificant specks of existence”?
As for the part that a God, the God, my God might play in all of this?
Cue yet another avalanche of assumptions.