Gib wrote:It means choosing the morally correct side.
Magnus Anderson wrote:Well, what you just did is you replaced one vague phrase with another. So I have to ask, repeating myself in a sense, what does "the morally correct side" mean?
These words either mean something or they mean nothing. They refer to some events that can be experienced or they do not.
It's not enough to simply regurgitate words and phrases. One must also understand them.
What kind of event, or a sequence of events, does he, I mean Biguous, want to bring about?
How do you experience being on "the morally correct side"?
That is the relevant question.
You didn't answer that question.
Magnus Anderson wrote:What kind of event, or a sequence of events, does he, I mean Biguous, want to bring about?
How do you experience being on "the morally correct side"?
That is the relevant question.
Magnus Anderson wrote:What is more likely is that he's looking for universal and eternal agreement between people. Perhaps what's happening is that he realized that this is an impossible goal and now he's suffering due to his inability to give up on this impossible goal.
But he will never confirm this. In fact, he's going to deny it by claiming that agreement is not what he's after.
I guess he's quite simply uncooperative. In general, people without, or with very poor self-consciousness, are uncooperative.
Gib wrote:Whatever answer you require is going to require shuffling around words--that's how one delivers answers or defines terms and phrases. How do you define X? Well, X = a, b, and c. <-- You substitute "X" with "a, b, and c". The key isn't to reach for something above and beyond a different set of words; the idea is to find the right set of words that satisfies the questioners requirements. Sometimes the right set of words is more than just a another sentence, sometimes it's a whole paragraph, sometimes several... the object is to put together some set of words whose effect is to trigger an idea in the questioner's mind such that he says: "Oh, that idea. Now I understand."
Obviously, my rephrasing above doesn't trigger such an idea in your mind, so I'll have to try something else (although at this point, it's like taking shots in the dark). How 'bout this:
You come across a child wounded in the ditch. What's the right thing to do: 1) leave the child to die, or 2) get the child to a hospital? Intuitively, most people would feel 2) is the morally correct thing to do. It's not something that necessarily requires elaborate rational thought--it's usually a gut feeling; furthermore, it's not something that's always right (ex. the child may grow up to be the next Hitler), but insofar as the feeling goes, it would probably seem to most people that 2) is the right choice.
Biggy doesn't even know what event or sequences of events would count as an objective demonstration of the morally right choice. He simply asks objectivists to present one if they can.
Gib wrote:I can answer what the experience of being on "the morally correct side" is--it's the same as the experience of intuiting the morally correct choice in the scenario above (with the child in the ditch)--only Biggy wants more than just an intuitive experience--he wants something that proves even beyond experience that such an intuition is correct. But I don't know how he can get beyond experience, especially when it comes to morality.
As long as spouts the dasein stuff, he is king of the mountain - unassailable. Only his thoughts about everything are right for him. He can accept or reject any argument on the basis of any whim. Total control.Biggy doesn't even know what event or sequences of events would count as an objective demonstration of the morally right choice. He simply asks objectivists to present one if they can.
If you want others to do something, then you must have a clear idea of what you want them to do. Otherwise, you cannot say it is YOU who want them to do something. And even if we ignore this, and assume that it is YOU who wants them to do something, then you wouldn't be able to measure whether they did what you supposedly wanted them to do or not.
In other words, if you're asking others to demonstrate that their side is “the morally correct side” then you must know what this means otherwise you won't be able to measure their performance.
It's akin to people asking for proof of God without knowing what that entails (because they don't understand what the word “God” means.)
They are simply asking to be manipulated -- to be “swept off by their feet”.
Magnus Anderson wrote:
I think you're changing the subject.
If I understood you correctly, your point was that the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable makes no sense in the case that "everything that happened in the past could not have happened any other way".
Magnus Anderson wrote: One must be capable of improvement. If one is not, one will forever be unreasonable.
Magnus Anderson wrote: The only relevant question is the meaning of reasonable/unreasonable.
phyllo wrote:If I understood you correctly, your point was that the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable makes no sense in the case that "everything that happened in the past could not have happened any other way".
This phrase simply means that we cannot go back in time. Because we cannot go back in time, we cannot change our past decisions. It does not mean that if we COULD go back in time and attempt to change our past decisions that the outcome would be the same.
No. He's saying that he did not have the option of choosing between reasonable and unreasonable actions. The configuration of the universe made him act in a certain way.
The definitions of reasonable and unreasonable are irrelevant.
gib wrote:iambiguous wrote:Again: If "I" was never not going to feel this guilt, what counts then is that the guilt felt is inherently part and parcel of my own particular existence unfolding only as it ever could have.
In other words, in terms of how events actually unfold, how is the existence of mindful matter really any different from the existence of mindless matter other than in producing this illusion that the events unfold because I willed them to unfold one way rather than another?
That's the part I can't wrap my head around here.
Are you referring to the fact that if we are just mindful matter, then we can't be responsible for any of our actions? Or be obligated to act in any particular way?
iambiguous wrote:First of all, to the extent that mind is just more matter embedded in immutable laws, whatever I choose to do is only as it ever could have been.
gib wrote: There are other ways of defining "choice" than "violating the laws of nature".
iambiguous wrote:But, assuming some level of autonomy, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to establish a frame of mind such that the manner in which I root morality in dasein and conflicting goods is obviated -- subsumed in a moral narrative that all rational men and women are in fact obligated to embody.
gib wrote: There doesn't have to be. Intelligent men and women all around the world subject themselves to being persuaded by one or another objective-sounding arguments for this or that morality all the time. Unless your brain suffers some kind of critical defect, so can you.
iambiguous wrote:We invented the word "chicken" in the English language because chickens actually do exist. And we invented numbers because sometimes there are more than one of them. So if I say, "take my 2 chickens, put them with your 2 chickens and then you'll have the 4 chickens needed to pay your debt" that can be understood as objectively true for all of us.
The words exactly correspond to the context. It can never be blatantly false if in fact it is unequivocally true. And it is true in either a wholly detrmined world or in a world where I could have freely chosen not to give you my chickens.
Back then to the part where you are making some important point here that I keep missing.
I merely shift gears to prong 2 and speculate on an exchange in which one of us argues that eating chickens is immoral in a world where we do in fact have some capacity to freely choose not to eat them.
gib wrote: Yes, I see your point that a line is drawn between "is" and "ought"--but when you bring in the argument that we cannot do anything, feeling anything, be convinced of anything, given that it could not have been any other way, I don't see how the is/ought line is relevant.
gib wrote: The only difference I see is that when it comes to "ought" questions, the determining laws of nature that operate on our brains seem to force us to arrive at radically different conclusion--we ought to eat chickens vs. we ought to be vegetarians, we ought to allow a woman her free choice to abort her unborn baby vs. we ought to defend the life of that unborn baby--whereas when it comes to "is" questions, the determining laws of nature that operate on our brains seem to force us (with the exception of a few abberations and occasional brain farts) to arrive at the same conclusion.
gib wrote: But as I see it, they are still laws of nature that could just as well force us to to arrive at fallacious and delusional conclusions, shared among us all as they may be. This is why I say that the argument about being stuck in a deterministic universe applies even to mathematical logic and concrete sensory experience.
iambiguous wrote:Okay, you take that leap to an "objectivism that speaks to you" and you either permit women to choose abortion or you don't.
Me, I cannot just not believe that both sides make reasonable arguments. I cannot just not be tugged and pulled in both directions.
So, what do you do? You take that same leap but somehow in your head you convince yourself that it was the right one. But it's the right one only because that is the particular leap that you took.
The part about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy doesn't go away, but at least you are able to shove them away far eoungh to feel less fractured and fragmented than someone like me. You have been able to construct a psychological scaffold in your head such that it all feels a little less unbearable to you.
gib wrote: My point is that insofar as you are able to do this too (and you are), you are not "stuck" in your dilemma.
iambiguous wrote:It would be like someone in, say, North Korea who, at a domino toppling event, created a design that depicted Kim Jong-un as an immoral monster. Now, in a world where human autonomy is a factor, what can we say about his aim such that the manner in which we react to his value judgment is different from the manner in which our senses react to the design itself.
gib wrote: I would simply say that there is a wide diversity of different configurations according to which our brains are wired, configurations that determine how we react to such value judgements. Comparing this to how our brains are configured to process visual information such as the pattern of dominoes depicting Jong-un, there seems to be very little diversity.
iambiguous wrote:If what I do feel is only as I ever could have felt it, then to speak of that as reasonable is only to further what could only have ever been.
gib wrote: What you are doing here is, at one moment, allowing yourself to see the reasoning of your own views (your nihilism, your arguments about dasein, the reality of your dilemma), and then in the next moment, withdrawing from those views and looking at them as existential contraptions of a brain that could never have not had those views.
gib wrote: My point is that you can withdraw yourself into this skeptical frame of mind with anything, and that if you ever want to be convinced of something, stop this habit of withdrawing. You know I'm right because, with the exception of these moments when you withdraw, you are convinced of the reasoning of your own views. <-- And further, I'm saying that it's no different with anyone else and their views.
Magnus Anderson wrote:From what I've gathered so far, Biggy wants a way of knowing that when he picks one side of a moral conflict over another--say pro-life over pro-choice--he's made the right decision. <-- I think it goes deeper than this, but that seems to be what he's willing to discuss on the surface.
And what does "the right decision" mean?
What exactly does he want? Does he even know what he wants?
phyllo wrote:He wants confirmation that he did nothing wrong in his life, that he made no mistakes and that he could not have done anything in any other way. He wants to feel that he cannot be criticized by others and he need not criticize himself. That is what brings him peace.Once again: what does Biguous really want?
Ironically, I may be describing your motivation perfectly ... and you don't even realize it.iambiguous wrote:phyllo wrote:He wants confirmation that he did nothing wrong in his life, that he made no mistakes and that he could not have done anything in any other way. He wants to feel that he cannot be criticized by others and he need not criticize himself. That is what brings him peace.Once again: what does Biguous really want?
It's sad when I am able to reduce you down to this sort of Satyrean retort.
Or, sure, I can give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are just poking me here with the irony stick.
gib wrote:Magnus Anderson wrote:And what does "the right decision" mean?
It means choosing the morally correct side. Biggy is disillusioned to the fact that everyone who argues one side or another of a morally controversial subject has their own rendition of a "rational justification" for that side. Because of this, he has given up simply weighing the arguments of each side and coming to the most rational conclusion he can on that basis. Instead, he wants something beyond this, something above rational-sounding arguments. He wants something on the order of a mathematical proof that demonstrates which side is right and which side is wrong.
gib wrote: This is difficult for me to explain not only to Biggy but to anyone because it hinges on my theory of consciousness and meaning, on all subjective experience being rooted in its own unique brand of "justification".
Biggy wrote:Look, we can go into great "technical" depth here regarding what "philosophically" it means to "make the right decision".
phyllo wrote:As long as spouts the dasein stuff, he is king of the mountain - unassailable. Only his thoughts about everything are right for him. He can accept or reject any argument on the basis of any whim. Total control.
I'm sure that he enjoys sitting in bed and passing judgement on the arguments :
"No."
"You have not convinced me."
"You have not demonstrated it to me."
"Try again."
And as long as he does it, people keep coming back and talking to him. If he was ever convinced by an argument, then the conversations might end and then what would he do.
He's got a sweet situation here.
Magnus Anderson wrote:But in the case that you do not understand what these words mean, no amount of elaboration on your part will help me identify what you mean -- because you mean nothing.
Magnus Anderson wrote:And this is what I suspect. You are using Biggy’s words without understanding them. Biggy is using other people's words without understanding them. These other people are using other people's words without understanding them. And so on.
In social systems with centralized authority, I might be able to trace the origin of these words and then determine whether they mean anything at all, but in social systems with decentralized authority, such as the ones we have today, I will end up running in circles, each person referring me to some other person, and then only if they are honest enough to admit they are using other people's words.
Magnus Anderson wrote:That question simply asks what would you do in such a situation. Additionally, it might also be asking what do you want others to do in such a situation.
Magnus Anderson wrote:As such, there is no guarantee that people will come to agreement. They may or may not agree. If they don't, each one will have their own answer to the question.
Is that what “the morally correct side” means?
I don't think so.
Magnus Anderson wrote:If you want others to do something, then you must have a clear idea of what you want them to do. Otherwise, you cannot say it is YOU who want them to do something. And even if we ignore this, and assume that it is YOU who wants them to do something, then you wouldn't be able to measure whether they did what you supposedly wanted them to do or not.
In other words, if you're asking others to demonstrate that their side is “the morally correct side” then you must know what this means otherwise you won't be able to measure their performance.
It's akin to people asking for proof of God without knowing what that entails (because they don't understand what the word “God” means.)
They are simply asking to be manipulated -- to be “swept off by their feet”.
Magnus Anderson wrote:I understand what this means. Your "intuiting the morally correct choice" would be my "doing what you're most comfortable with".
Magnus Anderson wrote:However, I will disagree this is what these people mean by "the morally correct side". As you say, Biggy wants more than this, which is to say, something else, but without ever bothering to define what that is.
He's skipping an important step: he has to define what he's asking others to prove. And because this is not his word, this means he has to try to understand how others are using it.
phyllo wrote:He wants confirmation that he did nothing wrong in his life, that he made no mistakes and that he could not have done anything in any other way. He wants to feel that he cannot be criticized by others and he need not criticize himself. That is what brings him peace.Once again: what does Biguous really want?
Gib wrote:Well, not always. It sometimes feels comfortable, but other times it's a really gruelling decision to make. For me, morality is always the voice of the conscience, which is to be distinguished from what feels good in the moment, and also from rationalizations (for example, the way a nihilist might rationalize that morality doesn't exist though he might have to fight feelings of guilt and remorse over harming others).
[..]
^ The point is, that's what morality is. It's listening to your inner voice speak of "right" and "wrong", not "comfort" or "discomfort", not "I came up with a good argument" or "I failed to come up with a good argument", but "right" and "wrong" whether you like it or not.
Magnus Anderson wrote:Good conscience is nothing other than absence of discomfort -- tension, stiffness, etc -- within the body.
Magnus Anderson wrote:Discomfort is created when some impulses are over-expressed and others are under-expressed. It is resolved by weakening the over-expressed impulses and strengthening the under-expressed ones.
The path towards good conscience can be uncomfortable -- not because it is what we want, but quite simply because the path itself is rocky, making it very likely for us to stumble into discomfort -- but the conscience itself when it is clean is comfortable, far more than bad conscience can ever be.
Gib wrote:Huh? So if I do what's right according to my conscience, I will be free of bodily pain? If I take a bullet in a war, feeling that I'm serving my country, the wound won't hurt? If I'm dying of cancer and I bequeath my estate to my children in my will, the pain from the cancer will no longer hurt?
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