Challenge to iambiguous and surreptitious both

[Ecmandu]

I'm not going to bother with your baiting other than to say Iambiguous and I are very different in approach and philosophy.

I will say this though, and I truly believe it.

There are no lords or emperors or kings... female as well, there is only prime logos.

You and iamb are not prime logos beings to the extent I am.

[Karpel Tunnel]

You and iamb are not prime logos beings to the extent I am.

May very well be true. I am not an abstraction, even one that governs the universe. I am a complicated being.

[iambiguous]

From my perspective, he seems to live entirely inside his head. He has recreated the reality around him to fit snuggly into this "world of words" that allows him to ensconce "I" into a frame of mind that allows him in turn to connect the dots between his own rendition of "the real me" and the "right thing to do".

I thought it was interesting because the summation works rather well for you also....

When have I ever denied that my own narrative here is no less an existential contraption? How many times have I acknolwedged that I have no capacity to demonstrate substantively that others ought to share my own frame of mind?

I simply note how in my own subjective opinion "here and now" I -- "I" -- construe myself as having tumbled down into a hole in which my own value judgments are seen to be rooted in dasein, out in a world of conflicting goods, predicated in the final analysis on who has the political power to enforce one set of rewards and punishments over another.

Then I ask those who do not share this frame of mind to bring their own value judgments "down to earth"; so that we can focus in on a particular context and exchange moral narratives and/or political agendas.

In the manner in which, say, Phyllo and I have done with regards to Communism.

...except for the two things cited at the end

"the unreal me" and the "seeming impossibility of finding the right thing to do coupled with the need to prioritize finding it anyway over all other things' would be my replacements.

Okay, let's zero in on a conflicting good most of us here will be familiar with. We can discuss the manner in which one might make a distinction between the "real me" and the "unreal me".

And we can note in turn how a distinction might be made between those things that one construes to have a higher priority over other things. With respect to the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or the role of government or social justice or homosexuality or immigration laws or animal rights.

[iambiguous]

I'm not going to bother with your baiting other than to say Iambiguous and I are very different in approach and philosophy.

I will say this though, and I truly believe it.

There are no lords or emperors or kings... female as well, there is only prime logos.

You and iamb are not prime logos beings to the extent I am.

In all honesty, the posts from Ecmandu here are practically gibberish to me. I almost never see any real connection between the points I make and the points he makes.

It's as though he really has concocted this made up "world of words" inside his head; and everything flows from those assumptions.

For example what on earth does it mean to speak of a "prime logos" with respect to ones own conflicting interactions with others?

He'll either go are [and illustrate the text] or he won't. Or, if he already has, I would appreciate being linked to it.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if science could invent a technology that allowed us to grasp what others are thinking and feeling in "real time".

But even here we wouldn't have access to all of the many, many, many experiences and relationships and sources of information/knowledge that, in accumulating over years, predisposed their own particular "I" to see the world around them as they do.

All we can do instead is to make an effort to distinguish between these subjective elements and those things that we [as scientists or philosophers] are able to demonstrate as that which all reasonable men and women are likely to think and feel in turn.

[Ecmandu]

I'm not going to bother with your baiting other than to say Iambiguous and I are very different in approach and philosophy.

I will say this though, and I truly believe it.

There are no lords or emperors or kings... female as well, there is only prime logos.

You and iamb are not prime logos beings to the extent I am.

In all honesty, the posts from Ecmandu here are practically gibberish to me. I almost never see any real connection between the points I make and the points he makes.

It's as though he really has concocted this made up "world of words" inside his head; and everything flows from those assumptions.

For example what on earth does it mean to speak of a "prime logos" with respect to ones own conflicting interactions with others?

He'll either go are [and illustrate the text] or he won't. Or, if he already has, I would appreciate being linked to it.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if science could invent a technology that allowed us to grasp what others are thinking and feeling in "real time".

But even here we wouldn't have access to all of the many, many, many experiences and relationships and sources of information/knowledge that, in accumulating over years, predisposed their own particular "I" to see the world around them as they do.

All we can do instead is to make an effort to distinguish between these subjective elements and those things that we [as scientists or philosophers] are able to demonstrate as that which all reasonable men and women are likely to think and feel in turn.

Iambiguous, you are abysmal at self reference, which is why in this level, your posts look like the posts of a 10 year old

For example: what if you are just another existential contraption ?

I'll be dead serious with you here ...

Humans think they've won!!

"I got the house, I got the wife, I got the job, I got the children"

All zero sum... actually they all lost in the game of life.

Zero sum lives aren't worth living.

Your reaction to this is obvious and not helpful.

You're still in the delusion that life accepts zero sum interactions as anything but pure evil, and so your head spins in associative aggression (your posting history)

[iambiguous]

Iambiguous, you are abysmal at self reference, which is why in this level, your posts look like the posts of a 10 year old

For example: what if you are just another existential contraption ?

I'll be dead serious with you here ...

Humans think they've won!!

"I got the house, I got the wife, I got the job, I got the children"

All zero sum... actually they all lost in the game of life.

Zero sum lives aren't worth living.

Your reaction to this is obvious and not helpful.

You're still in the delusion that life accepts zero sum interactions as anything but pure evil, and so your head spins in associative aggression (your posting history)

No, seriously, how is this not just "babbling on"? Huffing and puffing about me while making no attempt at all to bring his "challenge" to me down to earth?

Objective morality? Okay, maybe. Let him choose the context, the behaviors, the conflict.

Or is that a bit "frightening" to him and his ilk here.

[Karpel Tunnel]

From my perspective, he seems to live entirely inside his head. He has recreated the reality around him to fit snuggly into this "world of words" that allows him to ensconce "I" into a frame of mind that allows him in turn to connect the dots between his own rendition of "the real me" and the "right thing to do".

I thought it was interesting because the summation works rather well for you also....[/quote]

When have I ever denied that my own narrative here is no less an existential contraption?

Reread your post. You said Ecmandu seems to live entirely in his head, etc.
Now I am supposed to believe that really you meant he was just like you. You think of yourself this way. Two guys living entirely in your heads.

And if this is what you meant, in that first part of your description of him - that he is like you and everyone else, having existential contraptions and solipsistically isolated in his head like everyone,
HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY
not realize that readers would take it as a criticism of Ecmandu that did not apply to others.

I do realize that the second part, where he knows the right thing to do, distinguishes him from you, but that first part, the part I mentioned as the same in you (and I sure as shit meant you in particular), can only be read as a specfic criticism of Ecmandu.

I don't find you able to take responsibility for your acts. Your acts in communication.

Side note: you seem, above, to now be saying that since one's narrative is an existential contraption one is living entirely in one's head AS IF the stories we tell are the only way we relate to and are affected by the outside world. You seem to confuse yourself with being ONLY your stories. The words in your mind. Is that all you are?

How many times have I acknolwedged that I have no capacity to demonstrate substantively that others ought to share my own frame of mind?

Yes, you do that. Sure. I didn't realize that you were saying that Ecmandu was like you, as far as you can tell, and everyone else. In fact, I find it impossible to believe you could be so naive about how other people would take your description of him, even in the case that you did not mean something specific about him.

Read again the post I responded to and I think, one hopes, you can see that pretty much any human would think you were categorizing Ecmandu specifically, not saying that he is like you and everyone else. That you were reacting to his way of posting and that this indicated he was entirely in his head. That is was a criticism of him, one that was less likely to be true about you.

I simply note how in my own subjective opinion "here and now" I -- "I" -- construe myself as having tumbled down into a hole in which my own value judgments are seen to be rooted in dasein, out in a world of conflicting goods, predicated in the final analysis on who has the political power to enforce one set of rewards and punishments over another.

Here you are talking about value judgments. To say someone is entirely in their own head is saying something more than saying they are objectivizing their value judgments.

Then I ask those who do not share this frame of mind to bring their own value judgments "down to earth"; so that we can focus in on a particular context anpd exchange moral narratives and/or political agendas.

Let's look at your behavior here in the forum. Respond to it yourself. You cannot know if it is moral, yet you have decided to expose others to this behavior.

Extend that to a range of other situations, and you have just described me.

Neither you nor I can tell if we behave in ways and interact with others in ways that are objectively good or bad, etc.

We both, however, interact with others. Expose them to our behavior and thoughts.

You allow yourself to do this. I allow myself to do this.

Your hole has NOTHING TO DO WITH not knowing if their are objective goods.

You act in the world following your preferences and interests, despite not knowing whehter this makes the world worse or better. You do what you want.

Me too.

I am less fragmented because I allow myself to do this in the wide range of ways I do this. It seems you restrict yourself - for reasons unknown - to this one interpersonal activity.

You give yourself permission to act only in one very limited line.

So the rest of you is cut off from living.

Despite the fact that even the one thing you allow yourself might be making the world worse, for all you know. If you allow yourself that, you might as well allow yourself whatever you are capable of.

Okay, let's zero in on a conflicting good most of us here will be familiar with. We can discuss the manner in which one might make a distinction between the "real me" and the "unreal me".

And we can note in turn how a distinction might be made between those things that one construes to have a higher priority over other things. With respect to the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or the role of government or social justice or homosexuality or immigration laws or animal rights.

[/quote]Why bother?

[iambiguous]

From my perspective, he seems to live entirely inside his head. He has recreated the reality around him to fit snuggly into this "world of words" that allows him to ensconce "I" into a frame of mind that allows him in turn to connect the dots between his own rendition of "the real me" and the "right thing to do".

I thought it was interesting because the summation works rather well for you also....

Indeed, that's how it works for all of us. We must be willing to take what we think we know about objectivie morality "in our heads" out into a particular context that most will be familiar with.

When have I ever denied that my own narrative here is no less an existential contraption?

Reread your post. You said Ecmandu seems to live entirely in his head, etc.
Now I am supposed to believe that really you meant he was just like you. You think of yourself this way. Two guys living entirely in your heads.

Then back again to the partiulcar context in which partiuclar behaviors come into conflict over particular value judgments. If he has taken his arguments there I missed them. Please link me to an instance of this.

Really, what else is there here? ILP is a virtual reality when discussing the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. We can only relate an experience of our own, or one "from the news" of late.

I don't find you able to take responsibility for your acts. Your acts in communication.

Please cite an example of how one would take responsibility for the act of posting here. I'm not sure what your point is.

Side note: you seem, above, to now be saying that since one's narrative is an existential contraption one is living entirely in one's head AS IF the stories we tell are the only way we relate to and are affected by the outside world. You seem to confuse yourself with being ONLY your stories. The words in your mind. Is that all you are?

Again, all abstract. Let's bring our "stories" down to earth. Note a context and then we can discuss the manner in which we react to particular behaviors in conflict. What parts of what we believe are true are things able to be demonstrated as true for all rational men and women.

In this regard, I focus on ecmandu specifically only to the extent that, in my view, he refuses to take the exchange in this direction. On the other hand, I've only read a small portion of his contributions here. If, in fact, he has illustrated his text [relating to objective morality out in the world that we live and interact in], please link me to some examples of this.

I simply note how in my own subjective opinion "here and now" I -- "I" -- construe myself as having tumbled down into a hole in which my own value judgments are seen to be rooted in dasein, out in a world of conflicting goods, predicated in the final analysis on who has the political power to enforce one set of rewards and punishments over another.

Here you are talking about value judgments. To say someone is entirely in their own head is saying something more than saying they are objectivizing their value judgments.

How can a challenge relating to the existence of objective value judgments not be about value judgments? I must be missing your point. Are you referring to solipsism? The argument that the only thing that can really be known [in either the either/or or the in/ought world] is that which is inside your head?

Instead, my point is more that, sans solipsism, the distinction to be made is between what you are able to demonstrate is true objectively for all rational human beings [and not just true in your head] and what is predicated more on the subjective components of my own moral philosophy.

Then I ask those who do not share this frame of mind to bring their own value judgments "down to earth"; so that we can focus in on a particular context anpd exchange moral narratives and/or political agendas.

Let's look at your behavior here in the forum. Respond to it yourself. You cannot know if it is moral, yet you have decided to expose others to this behavior.

Exactly. But: Under the assumption that my own frame of mind is in turn just another existential contration. So: What if others are able to convince me that my frame of mind here is less reasonable than their own? And that their own frame of mind [out in the is/ought world] allows them to feel considerably less fractured and fragmented. Thus enabling them to feel considerably more consoled and conforted by their own moral philosophy; one predicated on the assumption that there is a "real me" able to be in sync with "the right thing to so"?

Neither you nor I can tell if we behave in ways and interact with others in ways that are objectively good or bad, etc.

You act in the world following your preferences and interests, despite not knowing whehter this makes the world worse or better. You do what you want.

True. But I am still largely uncertain as to how your own "pragmatism" actually "works" for you [in particular contexts] such that you are not in turn down in the hole that "I" am in.

Your own existential leaps to particular behaviors seem to allow for a more "integrated" sense of self. Something that "here and now" is beyond me.

You say this:

I am less fragmented because I allow myself to do this in the wide range of ways I do this. It seems you restrict yourself - for reasons unknown - to this one interpersonal activity.

But I can't be inside your head when "for all practical purposes" you do bump into others who challenge your own moral and political values. There was once a time when I was able to think that, "I'm right and you're wrong" when confronting those who challenged me.

Now it's more like, "had I lived your life I might well think as you do; besides, when push comes to shove, both of our arguments are reasonable given a particular set of assumptions; finally, I am hopelessly tugged in many different directions regarding my own value judgments."

We both take our existential leaps but mine are considerably more wobbly than yours.

Okay, let's zero in on a conflicting good most of us here will be familiar with. We can discuss the manner in which one might make a distinction between the "real me" and the "unreal me".

And we can note in turn how a distinction might be made between those things that one construes to have a higher priority over other things. With respect to the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or the role of government or social justice or homosexuality or immigration laws or animal rights.

Why bother?

Well, that depends on whether or not this is actually an option for someone. Someone may well be able to not bother. But most of us are embedded in actual social, political and economic contexts in which we are not only expected to bother but are tugged and pulled by others to bother as they do.

[surreptitious75]

Iambiguous you are abysmal at self reference which is why in this level your posts look like the posts of a 10 year old

For example : what if you are just another existential contraption ?

I will be dead serious with you here ...

Humans think they have won !!

I got the house I got the wife I got the job I got the children

All zero sum ... actually they all lost in the game of life

Zero sum lives arent worth livin

By what criteria are you establishing that it is a zero sum game ? Does not everyone have the right to live their life how they choose as long as they do so within the law and do not harm others ? Now if having a house and wife and job and children is failure in your eyes then what actually constitutes success ? Not having a house and wife and job and children ? Do you have an alternative model that would actually work ? Because if you do I would love to see and it but if not then why are you even writing this ? You make no sense Ecmandu so can you try just for once to write something that actually does

[Silhouette]

Zero sum lives arent worth living

Try not living. I don't condone this outside of thought experiment, but it's probably the hardest thing you'll ever try if you do.

Life doesn't need to be "worth living", every inch of it demands that you continue to do so whether it's worth it or not. Even if you absolutely feel it's not worth it, you have to be seriously mentally or physically ill to actually successfully stop living.

Self-preservation is the only "true" objective morality, in that it has been selected to be an in-built way of behaving in the exceptional cases that it actually comes to the forefront. Those who don't feel it as strongly die off more and reproduce less, so over a long enough period of time the ones left end up having a significant instinct to preserve themselves.

An instinct to cooperate with others, empathise, sympathise, sacrifice for their sake etc. can be deep. It can be really really deep, in some rare cases even overriding the instinct of self-preservation. In some people this doesn't exist, but the self-preservation instinct still will. At best, "morality" is variably "objective" in the sense that it is coded into those who have been naturally selected thus far, and the "(immoral?) morality" of self-preservation is a fixed instruction within us.

And yet, still, this is all merely common to life rather than somehow established within existence itself as unconditionally eternal and ubiquitous. Objective? Even if every single person in the world agreed on a morality, it would merely be subjective consensus universal and only to people...

Given the current physiology of humans, it seems to be practical for most to be "moral" in the commonly understood "pro-social" way, but what if such things would become different at different points in space and/or time in a way that most currently find hard to conceive? Is it physically impossible for an alternative "immoral" custom to develop as more practical?

[Karpel Tunnel]

From my perspective, he seems to live entirely inside his head. He has recreated the reality around him to fit snuggly into this "world of words" that allows him to ensconce "I" into a frame of mind that allows him in turn to connect the dots between his own rendition of "the real me" and the "right thing to do".

I thought it was interesting because the summation works rather well for you also....

Indeed, that's how it works for all of us. We must be willing to take what we think we know about objectivie morality "in our heads" out into a particular context that most will be familiar with.

When have I ever denied that my own narrative here is no less an existential contraption?

Reread your post. You said Ecmandu seems to live entirely in his head, etc.
Now I am supposed to believe that really you meant he was just like you. You think of yourself this way. Two guys living entirely in your heads.

Then back again to the partiulcar context in which partiuclar behaviors come into conflict over particular value judgments. If he has taken his arguments there I missed them. Please link me to an instance of this.

Sigh. Exactly. You were making a specific criticism of Ecmandu based on his posts. When I point out that the first part of that criticism fits for you, you say you have described yourself the same way. When I point out next that the way you wrote it indicates you seem his as different from you and others, now you tell me that his post show he is doing something that you do not think you and others are doing.

Shifting, shifting.

I don't find you able to take responsibility for your acts. Your acts in communication.

Please cite an example of how one would take responsibility for the act of posting here. I'm not sure what your point is.

You could have said: yes, the way I described Ecmandu was a specfic criticism of him regarding behavior I do not think I exhibit. But you responded by implying that you have also said you are the same, many times. When I point out that the way you wrote indicates a difference between you too, now you affirm that you meant his posts indicated a behavior specific to him. You could have taken responsibility for judging him in contrast to others and said: yeah, I think I respond to points made and he does not. I could be wrong, but you are correct I was making a specific judgment of his behavior. And then perhaps showed how I was wrong to indicate you were like him in this way.

Again, all abstract.

I was responding to an abstraction. And clarifying it.

Here you are talking about value judgments. To say someone is entirely in their own head is saying something more than saying they are objectivizing their value judgments.

How can a challenge relating to the existence of objective value judgments not be about value judgments? I must be missing your point. Are you referring to solipsism? The argument that the only thing that can really be known [in either the either/or or the in/ought world] is that which is inside your head?

Please re-read the second sentence. One can objectivize one's value judgments AND not be entirely in one's head. If you think this is not the case, how the hell do scientists who have objective values ALSO come up with objective knowledge?

Then I ask those who do not share this frame of mind to bring their own value judgments "down to earth"; so that we can focus in on a particular context anpd exchange moral narratives and/or political agendas.

Let's look at your behavior here in the forum. Respond to it yourself. You cannot know if it is moral, yet you have decided to expose others to this behavior.

Exactly. But: Under the assumption that my own frame of mind is in turn just another existential contration. So: What if others are able to convince me that my frame of mind here is less reasonable than their own? And that their own frame of mind [out in the is/ought world] allows them to feel considerably less fractured and fragmented. Thus enabling them to feel considerably more consoled and conforted by their own moral philosophy; one predicated on the assumption that there is a "real me" able to be in sync with "the right thing to so"?

Not the point. You act in the world despite not knowing if you are adding to evil or good or neither. I do that, only I, it seems, have a wider range of activities. You don't seem to worry in the least about whether the way you interact with others here might have negative effects. Why worry in general?

Neither you nor I can tell if we behave in ways and interact with others in ways that are objectively good or bad, etc.

You act in the world following your preferences and interests, despite not knowing whehter this makes the world worse or better. You do what you want.

True. But I am still largely uncertain as to how your own "pragmatism" actually "works" for you [in particular contexts] such that you are not in turn down in the hole that "I" am in.

You seem to think my pragmatism has an added something. Something you do not have. I think you have added something. You act here and do not seem overly concerned that you might be having negative effects on others or on the world. Why not judge forget your quest to find objective morals? There must be something that makes you think you must do this thing, that I think you yourself consider extremely unlikely to achieve. Something is compelling you. I have no such compulsion.

Your own existential leaps to particular behaviors seem to allow for a more "integrated" sense of self. Something that "here and now" is beyond me.

Existential leaps`?????? What leaps?

You say this:

I am less fragmented because I allow myself to do this in the wide range of ways I do this. It seems you restrict yourself - for reasons unknown - to this one interpersonal activity.

But I can't be inside your head when "for all practical purposes" you do bump into others who challenge your own moral and political values. There was once a time when I was able to think that, "I'm right and you're wrong" when confronting those who challenged me.

Now it's more like, "had I lived your life I might well think as you do; besides, when push comes to shove, both of our arguments are reasonable given a particular set of assumptions; finally, I am hopelessly tugged in many different directions regarding my own value judgments."

Right you add on something. Perhaps, as just a possible example, you have given yourself a rule. If I am to affect the world, make it more like I want or try to I MUST KNOW THAT THAT WORLD IS OBJECTIVELY BETTER.

So instead of, like me, simply pursuing goals based on what I like and care about, dislike and do not care about, you have this task you have given yourself.

We both take our existential leaps but mine are considerably more wobbly than yours.

I don't find you wobbly in the least in your interactions. That said, I do not think I am taking existential leaps, though perhaps if that is defined I might agree. But, you have given yourself a task that I consider impossible and do not allow yourself, except in how you post here, to interact much with the world. You have an unbelievably rigorous set of criteria to meet before you can act. At least theoretically. In practice you interact here, without knowing if your behavior here meets that set of criteria. You have a large existential contraption where I do not have one. I do not think I must solve the problem of coming up with a way to determine objective goods such that my method or someone else's will convince every rational person. You have that as something you feel compelled to do. I do not. I don't know if you think you have to do this on moral grounds or why you think it NECESSARILY FOLLOWS from being embedded in a society with conflicting goods. But you clearly think this necessarily follows. That is an existential contraption I do not have.

Maybe that contraption is the cause of your hole.

Okay, let's zero in on a conflicting good most of us here will be familiar with. We can discuss the manner in which one might make a distinction between the "real me" and the "unreal me".

And we can note in turn how a distinction might be made between those things that one construes to have a higher priority over other things. With respect to the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or the role of government or social justice or homosexuality or immigration laws or animal rights.

Why bother?

Well, that depends on whether or not this is actually an option for someone. Someone may well be able to not bother. But most of us are embedded in actual social, political and economic contexts in which we are not only expected to bother but are tugged and pulled by others to bother as they do.

I have said many times that I am embedded in those contexts. I have given specific examples of how I deal with conflicts. But that has nothing to do with my why bother question. Why bother trying to solve objective morals. You seem to assume, here, that if one is embedded in those social contexts one MUST try to solve the conundrum of objective morals. This is clearly not the case. So again, why bother?

[iambiguous]

Then back again to the particular context in which particular behaviors come into conflict over particular value judgments. If he has taken his arguments there I missed them. Please link me to an instance of this.

Sigh. Exactly. You were making a specific criticism of Ecmandu based on his posts. When I point out that the first part of that criticism fits for you, you say you have described yourself the same way. When I point out next that the way you wrote it indicates you seem his as different from you and others, now you tell me that his post show he is doing something that you do not think you and others are doing.

What I think is this:

When the discussions here come to revolve around the question "how ought one to live?" the "technical" aspects of philosophy/ethics -- the tools -- will either be embedded in actual existential interactions revolving around actual conflicting goods or they won't.

I am more than willing to note the manner in which the components of my own moral philosophy have left me fractured and fragmented; and "down in a hole". How then are others less fractured and frgamented? How then have others managed to think themselves into embracing a moral narrative and/or poltical agrnda that brings them considerably more comfort and consolation.

That is what it is all about for me here. These are the sort of discussions I aim to "shift" the exchanges toward.

Ecmandu's posts don't seem inclined to go there. Unless, of course, some did and I missed them.

I don't find you able to take responsibility for your acts. Your acts in communication.

Please cite an example of how one would take responsibility for the act of posting here. I'm not sure what your point is.

You could have said: yes, the way I described Ecmandu was a specfic criticism of him regarding behavior I do not think I exhibit. But you responded by implying that you have also said you are the same, many times. When I point out that the way you wrote indicates a difference between you too, now you affirm that you meant his posts indicated a behavior specific to him. You could have taken responsibility for judging him in contrast to others and said: yeah, I think I respond to points made and he does not. I could be wrong, but you are correct I was making a specific judgment of his behavior. And then perhaps showed how I was wrong to indicate you were like him in this way.

This is all still largely abstract to me. I'm simply unable to grasp the point that you are making. Which is why I suggest that we bring these criticisms down to earth.

You and I and Ecmandu can illustrate the components of our respective moral philosophies by focusing in on a particular context in which values are in conflict.

Him as an objectivist, you as a pragmatist, and me as moral nihilists basically "in pieces" with regard to conflicting goods.

Here you are talking about value judgments. To say someone is entirely in their own head is saying something more than saying they are objectivizing their value judgments.

How can a challenge relating to the existence of objective value judgments not be about value judgments? I must be missing your point. Are you referring to solipsism? The argument that the only thing that can really be known [in either the either/or or the in/ought world] is that which is inside your head?

Please re-read the second sentence. One can objectivize one's value judgments AND not be entirely in one's head. If you think this is not the case, how the hell do scientists who have objective values ALSO come up with objective knowledge?

Okay, but what particular value judgments are being objectivized in what particular context? And scientists [most of them] focus in on realtionships that exist in the either/or world. Please cite some examples of what you construe to be objective scientific values in sync with objective scientific knowledge.

They value the "scientific method". But of what use is the scientific method in the is/ought world? What are the limitations imposed on it given the manner in which I contrue human interactions here as the embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Contingency, chance and change in the either/or world is one thing, in the is/ought world something else entirely.

Let's look at your behavior here in the forum. Respond to it yourself. You cannot know if it is moral, yet you have decided to expose others to this behavior.

Exactly. But: Under the assumption that my own frame of mind is in turn just another existential contration. So: What if others are able to convince me that my frame of mind here is less reasonable than their own? And that their own frame of mind [out in the is/ought world] allows them to feel considerably less fractured and fragmented. Thus enabling them to feel considerably more consoled and conforted by their own moral philosophy; one predicated on the assumption that there is a "real me" able to be in sync with "the right thing to so"?

Not the point.

Not your "the point", no. But it is the point that I come back to time and again.

I simply want to take that point out into world of actual conflicting goods.

You act in the world despite not knowing if you are adding to evil or good or neither. I do that, only I, it seems, have a wider range of activities. You don't seem to worry in the least about whether the way you interact with others here might have negative effects. Why worry in general?

No, I act in the world by assuming that good and evil are largely existential contraptions. And in not knowing whether what I think I know here and now is in fact the most reasonable manner in which to think about these things.

And the "negative effect" that most objectivists are concerned with here is that perhaps I might actually succeed in tugging/yanking them down into the hole with me. No more "real me" in sync with the "right thing to do".

Of course, they might succeed in tugging/yanking me up out of it instead.

You act in the world following your preferences and interests, despite not knowing whehter this makes the world worse or better. You do what you want.

True. But I am still largely uncertain as to how your own "pragmatism" actually "works" for you [in particular contexts] such that you are not in turn down in the hole that "I" am in.

You seem to think my pragmatism has an added something. Something you do not have. I think you have added something. You act here and do not seem overly concerned that you might be having negative effects on others or on the world. Why not judge forget your quest to find objective morals? There must be something that makes you think you must do this thing, that I think you yourself consider extremely unlikely to achieve. Something is compelling you. I have no such compulsion.

I'm only interested in grasping how your pragmatism manages to make your "I" [out in the is/ought world] feel less fractured and fragmented.

When dealing with issues like abortion in a world where Roe v. Wade might soon be history here in America, I am now hopelessly ambivialent; and precisely because I am no longer able to embed "I" in an objectivist frame of mind. I am drawn and quartered both intellectually and emotionally.

Real consequences will result for real flesh and blood women if abortion is made illegal. Just as real consequences result for real flesh and blood unborn babies as long as some abortions are legal.

You take your own leap here and your "I" seems less torn apart about it than my "I".

But here I assume that this is largely embedded in dasein. In the multiple ways in which your "lived life" was/is different from mine.

And, from my frame of mind here and now, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to tackle this distinction and arrive at an optimal frame of mind.

And then "I" will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

For me [here] it's "existential contraptions" all the way down. All the way down to an "I" that is broken in a way that most objectivsts are particaully skittish regarding.

And I don't blame them. It's hard to explain what being "broken" like this actually feels like.

Your own existential leaps to particular behaviors seem to allow for a more "integrated" sense of self. Something that "here and now" is beyond me.

Existential leaps`?????? What leaps?

It's just a figure of speech. You go about the business of defending a particular set of moral and political values. Now, without an objectivist font to fall back on [God, ideology, deontolgy, nature] you "leap" to one particular political prejudice rather than another. And you manage to convince yourself that you did the best you could in "thinking it all through" and choosing this behavior rather than another.

Thus the parts about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy don't trouble you as much as they do me.

Does that bring you closer to a "better" frame of mind, or is that simply what you were predisposed to think given the accumulation of one set of experiences, relationships and sources of information rather than another.

Okay, let's zero in on a conflicting good most of us here will be familiar with. We can discuss the manner in which one might make a distinction between the "real me" and the "unreal me".

And we can note in turn how a distinction might be made between those things that one construes to have a higher priority over other things. With respect to the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or the role of government or social justice or homosexuality or immigration laws or animal rights.

Why bother?

Well, that depends on whether or not this is actually an option for someone. Someone may well be able to not bother. But most of us are embedded in actual social, political and economic contexts in which we are not only expected to bother but are tugged and pulled by others to bother as they do.

I have said many times that I am embedded in those contexts. I have given specific examples of how I deal with conflicts.

Yeah, as a "pragmatist". But that doesn't clear up the confusion for me revolving around how you manage to feel less fractured and fragmented. In other words, in a No God world in which morality is construed to be an existential contraption rooted subjectively/subjunctively in a particular set of experiences out in a particular world in which as a child you were indoctrinated to embody this "reality" rather than that.

And then later as a philosopher sought to be more "objective" regarding what epistemologically can or cannot be known about human interactions confronting conflicting goods out in a particular historical and cultural context. And then the part about dasein. The nature of identity in the is/ought world.

But that has nothing to do with my why bother question. Why bother trying to solve objective morals. You seem to assume, here, that if one is embedded in those social contexts one MUST try to solve the conundrum of objective morals. This is clearly not the case. So again, why bother?

I bother because my "I" here is considerably more fractured and fragmented than your "I". You don't experience being drawn and quartered here as I do in the face of, say, Trumpworld.

Or when confronting sociopaths able to rationalize any and all behaviors deemed by them to further their own self-interest. Or when confronting the objectivists [secular or sacred] with political power able to impose their own agenda on others.

My "I" has simply gone down a different road. So I have no illusions regarding how close we might actually come to bridging the gaps here.

[Karpel Tunnel]

This is all still largely abstract to me.

It is amazing what you find abstract, AND then go on to post. Both. Both what you find to be abstract - here me discussing specific things said by you in the specific context.

I'm simply unable to grasp the point that you are making.

This I can understand. It was complicated, if very concrete and not abstract.

Which is why I suggest that we bring these criticisms down to earth.

Which for you tends to mean discussion situations you are not in - choosing to have an abortion - that are happening to people who are abstractions.

You and I and Ecmandu can illustrate the components of our respective moral philosophies by focusing in on a particular context in which values are in conflict.

OK. Here we can have another concrete and not abstract example, me referring to your behavior. In the quote above you refer to my moral philosophy. I have told you many times I do not believe in objective morals. I have said that I have preferences, things I care about and do not care about, etc. and that these things motivate me towards things, and so on. Yet, unbelievably you suggest me illustrating my (and both of your) moral philosophies.

Him as an objectivist, you as a pragmatist, and me as moral nihilists basically "in pieces" with regard to conflicting goods.

I have done this. But as a pragmatist it is not a moral philosophy. I have said what I do in conflicts with others. It did not lead to anything you wanted, but I did do this, with specific concrete real from my life examples.

Here you are talking about value judgments. To say someone is entirely in their own head is saying something more than saying they are objectivizing their value judgments.

How can a challenge relating to the existence of objective value judgments not be about value judgments? I must be missing your point. Are you referring to solipsism? The argument that the only thing that can really be known [in either the either/or or the in/ought world] is that which is inside your head?

Please re-read the second sentence. One can objectivize one's value judgments AND not be entirely in one's head. If you think this is not the case, how the hell do scientists who have objective values ALSO come up with objective knowledge?

Okay, but what particular value judgments are being objectivized in what particular context? And scientists [most of them] focus in on realtionships that exist in the either/or world. Please cite some examples of what you construe to be objective scientific values in sync with objective scientific knowledge.

I really am trying to be patient with you.

You made it seem like if you think your value judgments are objective you can still also not be entirely in your own head. A scientist may be a die hard republican and think that conservative values are objectively correct and yet not be entirely in his own head. He may also do perfectly carried out scientific research into the destruction of the ozone layer or bats.

You presented it as objectivists are necessarily entirely in their own heads. I disagree. They can be partly in their own heads.

Let's look at your behavior here in the forum. Respond to it yourself. You cannot know if it is moral, yet you have decided to expose others to this behavior.

Exactly. But: Under the assumption that my own frame of mind is in turn just another existential contration. So: What if others are able to convince me that my frame of mind here is less reasonable than their own? And that their own frame of mind [out in the is/ought world] allows them to feel considerably less fractured and fragmented. Thus enabling them to feel considerably more consoled and conforted by their own moral philosophy; one predicated on the assumption that there is a "real me" able to be in sync with "the right thing to so"?

Not the point.

Not your "the point", no. But it is the point that I come back to time and again.

So in other words, no one pointing out errors in logic, contradictions or problematic thinking in your posts can expect you to respond to that, since it is not solving your issue. Fine. Your points are never up for criticism.

But then, don't respond to criticisms. Because you cannot seem to actually focus on them. I think it's clear if you state that you have no interest in defending your behavior or any possible logical or reasoning problems in your posts. And you don't. But the problem is that you go through the motions of defending and trying to support, but don't do it well, since you make it seem like what is being discussed is your focus.

You act in the world despite not knowing if you are adding to evil or good or neither. I do that, only I, it seems, have a wider range of activities. You don't seem to worry in the least about whether the way you interact with others here might have negative effects. Why worry in general?

No, I act in the world by assuming that good and evil are largely existential contraptions. And in not knowing whether what I think I know here and now is in fact the most reasonable manner in which to think about these things.

That's just a rewording of what I wrote.

And the "negative effect" that most objectivists are concerned with here is that perhaps I might actually succeed in tugging/yanking them down into the hole with me.

It doesnt matter what they are thinking, even less what you think they are thinking. My point stands. You do not know if your behavior here is making things worse in the world. That can be deduced from what you write. You don't know if there are objective morals and you don't know what they would be if they exist. Hence you do not know if your behavior is good or evil or neither. You take the risk that it might be negative. WHY NOT JUST TAKE THAT RISK IN GENERAL. You seem to find it odd that I am not fragmented. I think it is because you add a huge obstacle to your self, based on your existential contraptoin.

You seem to think my pragmatism has an added something. Something you do not have. I think you have added something. You act here and do not seem overly concerned that you might be having negative effects on others or on the world. Why not judge forget your quest to find objective morals? There must be something that makes you think you must do this thing, that I think you yourself consider extremely unlikely to achieve. Something is compelling you. I have no such compulsion.

I'm only interested in grasping how your pragmatism manages to make your "I" [out in the is/ought world] feel less fractured and fragmented.

I just said it. I lack this enormous task you have given yourself: to constantly search for objective values which may or may not exist. I do not have that task. I do not believe it to be a doable task. I do not worry that I should perform that task. I do not think that it would help me. That seems to be a big part of your hole.

When dealing with issues like abortion in a world where Roe v. Wade might soon be history here in America, I am now hopelessly ambivialent; and precisely because I am no longer able to embed "I" in an objectivist frame of mind. I am drawn and quartered both intellectually and emotionally.

Why the fuck, old man (like me), do you carry the cross of solving the abortion issue?

That you think you need to solve that is existential contraption. It is almost like you have a Jesus complex, but with no religious metaphysics.

Real consequences will result for real flesh and blood women if abortion is made illegal. Just as real consequences result for real flesh and blood unborn babies as long as some abortions are legal.

There are thousands of people in Africa starving or being used as child soldiers. I cannot solve that. Have you managed to help one single fetus, pregant woman with all your fussing around conflicting goods? Who do you think you are and why are you bearing this huge cross?

You ask me to show you how my pragmatism works. I think you need to look at what your existential contraptions,the ones you have added to your pragmatism, cause you to suffer. It is almost a negative megalomania. Something out of Dostoyevsky.

You take your own leap here and your "I" seems less torn apart about it than my "I".

No, I do not take all the leaps you take. I take less leaps. Your leaps, all the crosses and tasks you have given yourself - at universal and abstract levels - are causing you pain and leaving you fragmented. It seems very much like a huge moral cross you have given yourself to bear. But I don't know and I realize that doesn't fit well with your stated nihilism. But it at the very least parallels when people take on the cross of the world for religious or moral reasons and feel they must solve things, things that at least to me seem beyond their powers to solves AND EVEN, not solvable.

But here I assume that this is largely embedded in dasein. In the multiple ways in which your "lived life" was/is different from mine.

And perhaps our natures. Of course perhaps my pointing out that you have added leaps and contraptions might change something. I wish I wasn't so pessimistic.

For me [here] it's "existential contraptions" all the way down. All the way down to an "I" that is broken in a way that most objectivsts are particaully skittish regarding.

It really adds nothing, your psychic speculation on how afraid they all are.

Maybe my pragmatism makes you skittish because on some level it seems evil to accept there are not objective morals and live from preferences. Perhaps that seem immoral to you. God it feels like I am dealing with a meta-moralist. But who cares about our guess about each other's or objectivists reasons for having the positions we each have. It's just ad hom waste of time.

It's just a figure of speech. You go about the business of defending a particular set of moral and political values. Now, without an objectivist font to fall back on [God, ideology, deontolgy, nature] you "leap" to one particular political prejudice rather than another. And you manage to convince yourself that you did the best you could in "thinking it all through" and choosing this behavior rather than another.

Well, no, that's not a good description.

Thus the parts about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy don't trouble you as much as they do me.

IN practical terms I deal with the same fucked up world and my sense is I am out in it more than you are, interacting with people face to face and otherwise more than you. I simply do not give myself the task of determing certain things which neither of us think there is much chance can be determined. I do not give myself that cross. Life is hard enough without that added burden that will, I think, waste my time. Any indication you have helped yourself or pregnant women with all your mulling?

Okay, let's zero in on a conflicting good most of us here will be familiar with. We can discuss the manner in which one might make a distinction between the "real me" and the "unreal me".

And we can note in turn how a distinction might be made between those things that one construes to have a higher priority over other things. With respect to the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or the role of government or social justice or homosexuality or immigration laws or animal rights.

Why bother?

Well, that depends on whether or not this is actually an option for someone. Someone may well be able to not bother. But most of us are embedded in actual social, political and economic contexts in which we are not only expected to bother but are tugged and pulled by others to bother as they do.

I have said many times that I am embedded in those contexts. I have given specific examples of how I deal with conflicts.

Yeah, as a "pragmatist". But that doesn't clear up the confusion for me revolving around how you manage to feel less fractured and fragmented.

You seem to wake up and try to solve the abortion issue and feel guilty that you can't. You not only set out to get others to help you find a rational argument that will solve it, but spend a lot of time in this abstract context, dealing with things from a bird's eye view. I have a person who is not well in my family. I love this person, I work on making things better for her. I have other specific professional challenges and I problem sovle those or do not or come half way. Sometimes, yes, in discussions, I push against ideas I think are damaging to what I care about. Coming from me, in specfic contexts, interacting with specific people and obstacles and problems using my cares and empathy and preferences to guide me.

You are in the clouds, solving everyone's problem, not coming at problems as they arise in your personal life, where the little power we have can be apply, sometimes, if we are lucky with a lever. You like Jesus are solving the woes of the world and have very little interest in your own preferences.

You are a nihilist who yearns and struggles, every day, to be an objectivist.

I do not yearn to be an objectivist.

Your yearning or moral compulsion to become once again an objectivist causes you pain. It also pulls you away from your own life and problem solving there, to figuring out how ONE, everyone, should talk to resolve pro-schoice people and anti-abortionists.

Of course you are more fragmented. You have given yourself the task of a messiah. I am not saying you think you are a messiah, but you have given yourself that task.

And it is an abstract life. in the abstract ideas seem awefully interchangeable. That leads to fragmentation.

Me, I am working, feet on the ground, from me and my likes and dislikes. And yes, duh, these are affected by my experiences and inborn nature. I make no claims to their abstract perfection, nor to I give myself that cross to bear.

I bother because my "I" here is considerably more fractured and fragmented than your "I". You don't experience being drawn and quartered here as I do in the face of, say, Trumpworld.

I would guess that neither you nor I have been directly affected by Trumpworldyet. I certainly find it threatening. But I do not have the slightest faith that your cross - finding the perfect argument to sway all Trump and Bernie supporters to the one true path - is a good cross to bear.

I am not blissful. I just don't add on your sisyphusian chore and all the abstract third person thinking that you immerse yourself in. You think in the third person, you post in the third person. You will solve things universally. You are not in first person very much. You mention it as if it is a story about someone else, yes, since you don't think you have a real you. It is all contingent.

Or when confronting sociopaths able to rationalize any and all behaviors deemed by them to further their own self-interest. Or when confronting the objectivists [secular or sacred] with political power able to impose their own agenda on others.

I deal with objectivists who have the power to impose their agenda on me and those I love. I start there. You are focused in the abstract on all those Trump can affect. You are trying to solve all that and by trying to find the perfect arguments. Ones you, as a nihilist, think are likely not to exist. That creates fragmentation and a hole and a daily failure to make one single step forward in the task you have set yourself.

An hour ago I offered to go out and get some throat lozanges for my wife who had a sudden sore throat. Tomorrow I will try to get a certain beauracracy to NOT do something to me, by taking specific actions. I am sure you do some of this also, but it seems like your primary problem solving and suffering is caused by a task you need not give yourself and which your own philosophy indicates is likely doomed to failure.

I could, at my age, give myself the task of becoming a professional basketball player, but doing that would make me more fragmented, and pretty much on day one, when I pressed myself to practice, knowing that I would fail. Then add on that the task you have given yourself is abstract, third person. At least with basketball, I know what steps to take in general terms. Practice shots, run sprints, weight train, dribble a lot, join pick up games. I could measure improvements, get professional advice. It would all be down to earth and tailored to my body and skills, however ludicrously unlikely to succeed. You are off thinking as all the rational people in the world, trying solving problems you do not have, that you have no direct connection to. That's fragmentation.

Does this mean I give up on the world? No. But I think I have a more rational sense of my own power than you do.

I do not think it is a good use of my time to try to find the perfect argument to convince all rational people AND this argument is not only universally effective but also objectively correct. That is doubly fantastic. Even if there are objective morals, the chance that there is an argument that would convince everyone rational seems infinitesmally small to me. And should to any rational nihilist.

So stop looking to see what contraptions I have that make me less fragmented.
Consider that you have added all sorts of contraptions tasks and methodologies that make fragmentation more likely. And further there is an objectivism of some kind in there may also be true.

No scientific consensus exists that what you are doing here is helping your or anyone else. So it's a contraption or set of contraptions, and these contraptoins compell you to a task that I think you think you will fail at, and beyond that which take you out of your own life into the clouds of everyone's life.

I can only hope you can try that on, rather than simply dismissing it because 1) it didn't solve conflicting goods and 2) it might be hard to face how much time you have already wasted.

I'll take a break here for some significant time.

[Ecmandu]

Wow you two use lots of words... maybe I'll be a bit wordy here too.

Three Mormon women walked up to someone I know and gave him a Book of Mormon with 5 questions in it. He was allowed to make a future appointment and only ask one. The one he chose was, "why does God allow so much suffering in life?"

They answered like I've seen people on ILP answer, that you need the negative to understand the positive. The ugly to understand to beautiful. Suffering to understand the value of joy.

I pondered this for a moment and realized that even if that were true, a 100% consensual reality can accommodate that just as well as non consensual reality. I found the answer empty and stupid.

My true philosophy is simple: non zero sum.
Everything else is bad, immoral, evil.

When someone says "I got the woman, I got the job, i got the house, I got the husband, I got the children!"

I call this "bloodlust"

If a person hates zero sum. They are of the good.

It's easy to feel empty without others, but who has the heart and honesty to feel empty when they win?

Not many. These are self centered people.

The only thing in life worth winning is non zero sum for all beings.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Wow you two use lots of words... maybe I'll be a bit wordy here too.

Three Mormon women walked up to someone I know and gave him a Book of Mormon with 5 questions in it. He was allowed to make a future appointment and only ask one. The one he chose was, "why does God allow so much suffering in life?"

They answered like I've seen people on ILP answer, that you need the negative to understand the positive. The ugly to understand to beautiful. Suffering to understand the value of joy.

I pondered this for a moment and realized that even if that were true, a 100% consensual reality can accommodate that just as well as non consensual reality. I found the answer empty and stupid.

My true philosophy is simple: non zero sum.
Everything else is bad, immoral, evil.

When someone says "I got the woman, I got the job, i got the house, I got the husband, I got the children!"

I call this "bloodlust"

If a person hates zero sum. They are of the good.

It's easy to feel empty without others, but who has the heart and honesty to feel empty when they win?

Not many. These are self centered people.

The only thing in life worth winning is non zero sum for all beings.

I actually agree with this. You learn a lot about people through their answer to the problem of evil and amazingly many atheists and theists come donw to the same conclusion regarding evil, though obviously one group includes God in some way.

a more subtle version of the viewpoints you are arguing against is that it actually need not be a zero sum game but either 1) we - our souls - decided to allow for confusion and the struggle to get back out in to the non-zero sum game option or 2) we are not aware of the guilt and self-hate we have that draws the zero sum game effects to us. IOW we think we want good things and we think we think we deserve what we want but actually at a deeper level, we call for punishment. There are even more nuanced versions of this. But before we get all gnarly into those, I do think that the excuses for the problem of evil and the problem of suffering

parallel the excuses battered women make for the behavior of their spouses
or how people exused the behavior of Kings
or how people justify caste systems and what passes for interpretations of Karma,
etc.

[Ecmandu]

Wow you two use lots of words... maybe I'll be a bit wordy here too.

Three Mormon women walked up to someone I know and gave him a Book of Mormon with 5 questions in it. He was allowed to make a future appointment and only ask one. The one he chose was, "why does God allow so much suffering in life?"

They answered like I've seen people on ILP answer, that you need the negative to understand the positive. The ugly to understand to beautiful. Suffering to understand the value of joy.

I pondered this for a moment and realized that even if that were true, a 100% consensual reality can accommodate that just as well as non consensual reality. I found the answer empty and stupid.

My true philosophy is simple: non zero sum.
Everything else is bad, immoral, evil.

When someone says "I got the woman, I got the job, i got the house, I got the husband, I got the children!"

I call this "bloodlust"

If a person hates zero sum. They are of the good.

It's easy to feel empty without others, but who has the heart and honesty to feel empty when they win?

Not many. These are self centered people.

The only thing in life worth winning is non zero sum for all beings.

I actually agree with this. You learn a lot about people through their answer to the problem of evil and amazingly many atheists and theists come donw to the same conclusion regarding evil, though obviously one group includes God in some way.

a more subtle version of the viewpoints you are arguing against is that it actually need not be a zero sum game but either 1) we - our souls - decided to allow for confusion and the struggle to get back out in to the non-zero sum game option or 2) we are not aware of the guilt and self-hate we have that draws the zero sum game effects to us. IOW we think we want good things and we think we think we deserve what we want but actually at a deeper level, we call for punishment. There are even more nuanced versions of this. But before we get all gnarly into those, I do think that the excuses for the problem of evil and the problem of suffering

parallel the excuses battered women make for the behavior of their spouses
or how people exused the behavior of Kings
or how people justify caste systems and what passes for interpretations of Karma,
etc.

Oh sure, the psycho-reactivity when this isn't conscious is massive in our population.


I think I did well to make my point though .

It is objectively true for all beings that 100% consensual realities are moral and anything but is immoral. When I go on about the damage done by human sexuality, this is objectively bad even in a zero sum world.

Iambiguous more or less makes the argument that because some people can only fall asleep well in 50 degree weather or below, and others can't fall asleep well in anything below 75 degrees, that conflicting goods can never reconcile. While there are expensive solutions to this particular conflicting good (space heaters / air conditioners) it doesn't resolve the equilibrium issue in general.

So you'd have someone like iambiguous arguing from this that there is no good or bad, or at a minimum it is at least subjective.

But there are other meta fingers to point with stating, actually evil is zero sum, so anything (like my hyperdimensional mirrors - per my op) or just less stratification in general, serves the good.

So there is good and evil. Concrete. It's not a myth.

[iambiguous]

You and I and Ecmandu can illustrate the components of our respective moral philosophies by focusing in on a particular context in which values are in conflict.

OK. Here we can have another concrete and not abstract example, me referring to your behavior. In the quote above you refer to my moral philosophy. I have told you many times I do not believe in objective morals. I have said that I have preferences, things I care about and do not care about, etc. and that these things motivate me towards things, and so on. Yet, unbelievably you suggest me illustrating my (and both of your) moral philosophies.

You have preferences. What then are your preferences relating to a moral conflict that most of us here are likely be familiar with? And how are you able to embrace a particular set of political prejudices and feel less fractured and fragmented than I do?

That's what I am trying to discern here. I had preferences myself back in the day when, as a Marxist/feminist objectivist, I was convinced that being pro-choice was in sync with the "real me" in sync with the "right thing to do". Then Mary and John and William Barrett persuaded me otherwise.

I am simply unable to grasp how someone who does not believe in objective morality is not fractured and fragmented in the manner in which I am. Given that "I" here is an existential contraption [rooted in dasein] ever and always open to change given new experiences, relationships and sources of information/knowledge.

To me moral values [in the absense of God or a solid argument defending deontology in a No God world] are [by and large] fabricated from our past experiences. There does not appear to me to be a font able to resolve value judgments in conflict.

Or, rather, none that seem reasonable to me here and now.

On the other hand, you insist that...

I have said what I do in conflicts with others. It did not lead to anything you wanted, but I did do this, with specific concrete real from my life examples.

Then we are simply out of sync here. Your metholdology works for you but it does not work for me. Instead, I speculate that your pragmatism is more a frame of mind enabling you [psychologically] to feel less fractured and fragmented; and thus more comforted and consoled that the choices you make somehow reflect all that you can do in coming down one way rather than another given the nature of conflicting goods.

How about this...

Is it then fair to say that while you hold to certain values here and now, you do recognize that given new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas, you may well come to conclude just the opposite? That, in absence of an objective moral font, there really is no way in which to be certain about the behaviors that you choose?

Please re-read the second sentence. One can objectivize one's value judgments AND not be entirely in one's head. If you think this is not the case, how the hell do scientists who have objective values ALSO come up with objective knowledge?

You made it seem like if you think your value judgments are objective you can still also not be entirely in your own head. A scientist may be a die hard republican and think that conservative values are objectively correct and yet not be entirely in his own head. He may also do perfectly carried out scientific research into the destruction of the ozone layer or bats.

You presented it as objectivists are necessarily entirely in their own heads. I disagree. They can be partly in their own heads.

As I try to make clear over and again, all that is of interest to me here is the extent to which someone is able to demonstrate that what they do believe is true [or think they know] "in their head" is that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to embrace in turn.

In other words, I'll let others delve into all of the "technical" issues relating to the subjective/objective conundrum that some philosophers pursue here. Instead, let them bring their conclusions out into the world of conflicting goods. At the intersection of identity and political power.

Actually, this part...

...no one pointing out errors in logic, contradictions or problematic thinking in your posts can expect you to respond to that, since it is not solving your issue. Fine. Your points are never up for criticism.

...is not at all unfair. They can point it out but I am far, far more interested/intrigued with how they integrate their own rational understanding of these technical relationships out in the world of conflicting goods.

There's pragmatism as you understand it here and there's being "down in a hole" as I understand it. That's the gap that most fascinates me. How "out in the world with others" can one reject objective morality and not become entangled -- as "I" -- in the components of my own moral philosophy: nihilism.

You act in the world despite not knowing if you are adding to evil or good or neither. I do that, only I, it seems, have a wider range of activities. You don't seem to worry in the least about whether the way you interact with others here might have negative effects. Why worry in general?

No, I act in the world by assuming that good and evil are largely existential contraptions. And in not knowing whether what I think I know here and now is in fact the most reasonable manner in which to think about these things.

That's just a rewording of what I wrote.

Not from my point of view. You seem to place the emphasis on the number of experiences that one has. Whereas from my frame of mind having one experience or thousands of experiences does not make the components of my philosophy go away.

And it's not that I "worry" about it "in general". It simply reflects my preoccupation over years with the existential relationship between philosophy and the question, "how ought one to live?"

Philosophers either eventually get around to that or they become one of Will Durant's "epistemologists".

Another existential contraption.

As for this:

My point stands. You do not know if your behavior here is making things worse in the world. That can be deduced from what you write. You don't know if there are objective morals and you don't know what they would be if they exist. Hence you do not know if your behavior is good or evil or neither. You take the risk that it might be negative. WHY NOT JUST TAKE THAT RISK IN GENERAL. You seem to find it odd that I am not fragmented. I think it is because you add a huge obstacle to your self, based on your existential contraptoin.

In thinking like this my "I" is understood to be fractured and fragmented. I am deprived of the comfort and the consolation the objectivists are able to embody. You then basically say "so what?". And all this indicates to me is that you have been able to configure pragmatism "in your head" into a frame of mind considerably less deconstructed than mine.

How this actually "works" for you when your own values come into conflict with others is what interest me. And here I assume that you do not construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy as I do "out in the world" of actual human interactions in conflict. It's like you just shrug them off and are then able to be "reasonably satisfied" with the behaviors you choose.

And "I" am not able to this.

Thus...

I'm only interested in grasping how your pragmatism manages to make your "I" [out in the is/ought world] feel less fractured and fragmented.

I just said it. I lack this enormous task you have given yourself: to constantly search for objective values which may or may not exist. I do not have that task. I do not believe it to be a doable task. I do not worry that I should perform that task. I do not think that it would help me. That seems to be a big part of your hole.

So basically if you find yourself in a situation in which your value judgments and behaviors are roundly challenged by another, you take your leap [or however you describe it] to a particular set of political prejudices; and that becomes good enough. "Yeah, sure", you admit, "had my past experiences been very different I might be arguing on your side"; and, "yeah, sure", you admit, "the arguments that they give are as reasonable as mine -- if only coming from a different set of initial assumptions about the human condition".

About abortion or human sexuality or the role of government or animal rights.

That's how it works for me. It's just that the consequences of that in my interactions with others perturbs me more than it perturbs you.

But it is certainly not about carrying a cross; it's about my actual reaction to human pain and suffering that comes from being unable to take sides as the objectivists do: convinced that win or lose at least they know they are on the right side.

And that's not nothing in a world where a staggering amount of human pain and suffering is derived precisely from the consequences of conflicting goods.

But again this particular reaction of mine was/is no less an existential contraption embedded in dasein. In all of the things that were/are beyond my control or beyond my understanding of.

Which is to say that each of us are likely to have points of view here that are in turn beyond our control and/or our understanding of.

I'm just more preoccupied with the existential parameters of that than others. But I would certainly not argue that one frame of mind here is more reasonable than another. Let alone that others ought to share mine.

You take your own leap here and your "I" seems less torn apart about it than my "I".

No, I do not take all the leaps you take. I take less leaps. Your leaps, all the crosses and tasks you have given yourself - at universal and abstract levels - are causing you pain and leaving you fragmented.

My fragmentation is derived from the manner in which philosophically I construe the existential parameters of human morality in a No God world. And you may not call them "leaps" but one way or another you come to a decision to think this way about issues like abortion instead of that way. And in the manner in which you do so, it precipitates less turbulence, ambiguity, uncertainy and the like "in your head".

As for the relationship between all of this and nihilism, I can only assume that this is no less an existential contraption. It seems reasonable to me here and now whereas there and then it did not. But what about tomorrow or next week or next year?

Or what if someone does manage to convince me that [God or No God] an objective morality does in fact exist?

But here I assume that this is largely embedded in dasein. In the multiple ways in which your "lived life" was/is different from mine.

And perhaps our natures.

Things only get all the more problematic here. Once nature is introduced into the mix, we are forced to consider "biological imperatives" that may well drive our behaviors. Or even the possibility that all that we choose is always ever only what we could have choosen in a determined universe.

Yeah, as a "pragmatist". But that doesn't clear up the confusion for me revolving around how you manage to feel less fractured and fragmented.

You seem to wake up and try to solve the abortion issue and feel guilty that you can't.

No that isn't how it works at all. I simply become aware of situations in which particular sets of conflicting goods generate contexts that generate conflicting behaviors that generate consequences that generate human pain and suffering.

And whereas I was once able to choose sides confident that it was the right thing to do, that is no longer the case. I find myself taking a position but I recognize how others who are not in sync with me are doing much the same. And whereas some are able to convince themselves that their reasons are more righteous than the reasons of those who oppose them, that, in turn, is now out of reach.

And I find that in pointing this out to others, my own frame of mind is even more disturbing to them. After all, it is one thing to take on another who believes in right and wrong but insists that he's right and you're wrong. And another thing altogether to take on the argument of someone who suggests that right and wrong themselves are largely "social constructs" rooted in history and culture and experience.

You are in the clouds, solving everyone's problem, not coming at problems as they arise in your personal life, where the little power we have can be apply, sometimes, if we are lucky with a lever. You like Jesus are solving the woes of the world and have very little interest in your own preferences.

I disagree. If there are problems embedded in conflicting goods, I am always encouraging others to take the discussions down to earth. And this thread is certainly no exception. Though, again, my chief interest revolves around those that I construe to be objectivists here.

With you it revolves more around understanding how you can argue against objective morality and not be as fractured and fragmented as I am.

That just doesn't make sense to me as other than a psychological reaction.

I see your pragmatic frame of mind here as a psychological defense mechanism. A way of feeling the least dysfunctional in your conflicted interactions with others.

And it's not that I yearn to be an objectivist. It's that I recognize no question more important to philosophers than "how ought one to live?"

Is this something that can be known?

The fact is it has always fascinated me given that I spent over two decades as a political activist.

As for this...

Your yearning or moral compulsion to become once again an objectivist causes you pain. It also pulls you away from your own life and problem solving there, to figuring out how ONE, everyone, should talk to resolve pro-schoice people and anti-abortionists.

Of course you are more fragmented. You have given yourself the task of a messiah. I am not saying you think you are a messiah, but you have given yourself that task.

And it is an abstract life. in the abstract ideas seem awefully interchangeable. That leads to fragmentation.

...it's all just psycho-babble to me.

Instead, you have your own particular "likes and dislikes"; and you are comfortable enough with them that you won't/don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about how these "likes and dislikes" may well be rooted existentially in a particular sequence of experiences out in a world awash in arguments able to defend any point of view along the political spectrum.

You just don't call this a "leap".

[iambiguous]

Iambiguous more or less makes the argument that because some people can only fall asleep well in 50 degree weather or below, and others can't fall asleep well in anything below 75 degrees, that conflicting goods can never reconcile. While there are expensive solutions to this particular conflicting good (space heaters / air conditioners) it doesn't resolve the equilibrium issue in general.

Seriously, am I to accept a challenge from someone who reduces my arguments down to this?!!

Note to KT: Please make sense of this for me. After all, you seem able to take him seriously.

[Ecmandu]

Iambiguous more or less makes the argument that because some people can only fall asleep well in 50 degree weather or below, and others can't fall asleep well in anything below 75 degrees, that conflicting goods can never reconcile. While there are expensive solutions to this particular conflicting good (space heaters / air conditioners) it doesn't resolve the equilibrium issue in general.

Seriously, am I to accept a challenge from someone who reduces my arguments down to this?!!

Note to KT: Please make sense of this for me. After all, you seem able to take him seriously.

Anti abortion is catholic. Like the air conditioners and space heaters, they developed a purgatory where all aborted children are raised as they should have been.

The biggest issue I see with you iambiguous, is that you lack imagination.

[iambiguous]

Anti abortion is catholic. Like the air conditioners and space heaters, they developed a purgatory where all aborted children are raised as they should have been.

The biggest issue I see with you iambiguous, is that you lack imagination.

I knew that sooner or later air conditioners and space heaters would be involved. I just lacked the imagination to think of that first.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Iambiguous more or less makes the argument that because some people can only fall asleep well in 50 degree weather or below, and others can't fall asleep well in anything below 75 degrees, that conflicting goods can never reconcile. While there are expensive solutions to this particular conflicting good (space heaters / air conditioners) it doesn't resolve the equilibrium issue in general.

I think there is a misunderstanding of Iambiguous, one that I have had, and perhaps he even has. Yes, he bemoans the inability to reconcile conflicting goods. He challenges objectivists, and uses the term as pejorative, to demonstrate some reasonable argument to resolve a particular issue, such as abortion. At face value what we have here is a nihilist who says that as far as he can tell there are no objective values and if there are he cannot see how one can know them 'sans God' as he says.

But what is he doing? What do we experience when we interact with him?

What he is doing is, as claimed, trying to find a way out of the hole he is in by looking for OBJECTIVE VALUES. This is his current life's work, his only focus. It would be, he thinks, the only way out of his hole, if he could find out how ONE ought to live. He also thinks that since we cannot know what is good, we SHOULD stop pretending we do and value moderation, compromise and negotiation. I understand the logic, but on the other hand a nihilist cannot provide an argument, even with disclaimers, for what is GOOD.

He also, and often, points to the BAD consequences of values presented to him.

That's right a nihilist points out BAD consequences and argues for a the GOOD methodology AND has made it is life task to find objective values. There are also moral overtones in this seeking. IOW it is as if one SHOULD look for how one should live even if this project seems doomed from the start.

I think what we are dealing with is a complex phenomenon, but that while yes, in a certain sense he is a nihilist, when he reacts to specific objectivists or even nihilists, he is also a meta-objectivist. IOW given that we do not know morals, the good thing to do is compromise. Given that we do not know, it is BAD to be an objectivist. Given that the only solution is to find objective morals, which may not exist, then we SHOULD try to find them.

This combination of nihilist and meta-objectivist, I think, is what leads to the problems in interacting with him. Because he will judge others morally, implicitly or explicitly, but then in the same or later post denounce moral judgments. He will say that objectivists have this comforting advantage since they think they know how to live, but at the same time present how one ought to live given that we cannot know how to live - compromise, moderation, etc.

It creates a cloud out from which come moral judgments and metaobjectivist claims and then nihilist positioning.

He has a BIG NARRATIVE of his life. He is a nihilist in a hole, suffering not knowing how one ought to live, and not being sure of anything.
That is the story he tells us and himself.

But that is not the life he lives. It is not how he interacts with others.

And since I am not in the hole he is in, I must be making leaps. He cannot see all the leaps in both his BIG NARRATIVE, leaps I do not make. He cannot see that his mode of living, his decision about what the only rational reactions to the hole are, are leaps, leaps I do not make. If I decided that I MUST know a solution to resolve conflicting goods, that I MUST determine ratinonally how ONE ought to live and then live like that, then I would be depressed. I would suddenly be in a hole. There is no reason that I must take on his BIG NARRATIVE. Just as I need not take on the Christian one, for example. He cannot see that added leaps are causing his hole, not the lack of leaps. I have plenty to worry about and plenty of problems and troubles, but I have not added on his Quixotic impersonal quest. And this is one reason I am not in his hole and also why I am less fragmented. I am vastly less impersonal than he is.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Iamb,
Let me try to keep this simple.
I think everyone is a pragmatist. Then people add on other stuff.
You really seem to want to see my not having a hole has to do with contraptions I have that you do not.
I see your hole as caused in part by contraptions you have that I do not.
Dogs do not pause before acting and try to figure out what all dogs should do and feel they cannot do things unless they can convince all other dogs it is the right thing to do. Dogs do not worry that perhaps they will not want to tree a cat in a couple of years or that it is not the real dog that wants this. My point is not that I am a dog, but that if we added contraptions like these to dogs, they would become depressed/neurotic if they had these extra contraptions. Contraptions can cause confusion, depression, anxiety as well as comfort.
It seems to me that your contraptions - that you must figure out how ONE must live, for example - cause you pain.
You, Iamb, are a pragmatist, at least also. You somehow feed yourself. Let’s assume you shop. Sure, you may feel torn between healthy food and desired food, but you do not make your order based on what every rational person can be convinced they should eat for lunch that day. Like me you make decisions based on desires, on what you want to experience.
If I met a woman and I wanted to spend time with her, I would not try to figure out if she was the right person for all rational heterosexual men. I would not try to figure out if all men should be in couples or having sex. I would not try to kiss her, should it seem welcomed, in the way that all men should kiss any particular woman. I would not worry that one day I might want to be celibate or realize I am gay or no longer like creative types.

When it comes to larger issues, political ones, I push for what I prefer, guided in part by my own preferences for my life and then also by compassion and my best guesses about what will increase the well being of what I care about. You add a contraption here also: you must know that your position can be proven to all rational human beings and that you have that argument ready to hand. You also must know that you will never change. Those two contraptions are tied together, but they are not quite the same and are likely triggered at different times. IOW they contribute to the hole in different ways even if they are also deeply connected.
Yes, my ideas might change over time. This has happened. I do not have the contraption you have that it is immoral to act in the world if you cannot prove to all rational people you are right AND you know you will never change your view.

And I couch this in moral terms because I think I can demonstrate, by process of elimination, that you have a moral contraption.
In real life MUST ONE in the IS world have a proof that the food you buy, the vote you cast, the woman you approached, you position on a moral issue is 1) a perfect expression of the real and permanent you and will thus never change and 2) you can prove to everyone rational on earth that they ought to make the same decision?

N0.

It is obvious that in the IS world one does not have to pass these criteria to act and make those choices.

People do this all the time. Some of them think that those who disagree MUST be irrational, but not all. And no one damns them, stops them from expressing their views, casting their votes, sending out flyers
because they do not have the magic bullet argument that convinces everyone. The IS world allows one to do this, as it allowed you in the past.

However ---
In the OUGHT WORLD one certainly could have a rule, a contraption, that one OUGHT to have that perfect argument and KNOW for sure one will never change or one SHOULD not act in the world.
I think you are driven by a morality that you seem not to question and it is in the form of two contraptions numbered above.
I do not have those.
You've never said to me 'How dare you push for your preferences when you cannot prove they are the right ones and you will never change.' But I can feel it in there AND you are certainly saying it to yourself.
It would be a sin.
My having less fragmentation is not due to extra contraptions you do not have. At least in part it is because of extra contraptions you have. Whatever shit you've gone through likely plays a role and then how this all interacted with inborn traits.

And those contraptions also fragment because you do not come from yourself or 'yourself'. You have a bird’s eye view of every person and have an incredible distrust of yourself and incredibly bureaucracies are in place in place to hinder your organism from participation in the world until you have met criteria you think it is likely you cannot meet.
Your most go to issue is abortion, an issue that I do not think is relevent to you now in any direct way. But more than that, the general pattern of coming at life as ALL RATIONAL PEOPLE, rather than this particular one, who lives here.
It is as if in a world sans God, you must have the knowledge of God, or it is immoral to act and one should flagellate oneself and any one else who dares to act, to choose.

Instead of just denying this. Spend a few days and really see…
Is It possible that Karpel Tunnel has less contraptions and that some of what seems obvious to me, Iamb, is actual a set of contraptions that cause me pain?

And not in your usual disclaimer way: oh, sure, I always acknowledge that’s possible, and then you go on clearly absolutely unaffected.

I am sure you can find a bunch of ways to focus on specific things I said and let this lead you to repeat things you say all the time and which I have read and understood. Instead of doing that, actually sit with what I said for a while. REally try it on. Let yourself be affected. Because you seem utterly unaffected by what people say.

What if a lot of what drives this project of yours

is guilt in the form of two contraptions?

[iambiguous]

Iamb,
Let me try to keep this simple.
I think everyone is a pragmatist. Then people add on other stuff.

In other words, the deontologists, the political ideologues, the religious fundamentalists, the folks like Satyr at KT, the new age gurus etc. etc., are in turn just "pragmatists" -- adding on the assumption that they and only they know how to correctly distinguish between rational and irrational thinking, moral and immoral behavior, good and evil.

Right, in a parallel universe maybe.

And your own rendition of pragmatism isn't an intellectual contraption embedded in the leaps that you made existentially to particular political prejudices; no, it's something more in sync with the manner in which a serious philosopher would grapple with the antimomies embedded in identity and conflicting goods.

Dogs do not pause before acting and try to figure out what all dogs should do and feel they cannot do things unless they can convince all other dogs it is the right thing to do. Dogs do not worry that perhaps they will not want to tree a cat in a couple of years or that it is not the real dog that wants this. My point is not that I am a dog, but that if we added contraptions like these to dogs, they would become depressed/neurotic if they had these extra contraptions. Contraptions can cause confusion, depression, anxiety as well as comfort.

No, you are not a dog. And, no, a dog is not a human being. Why not just leave it at that?

The fact that mere mortals in a No God world concoct all manner of philosophical and moral and political contraptions and dogs don't? This tell us...what exactly?

It seems to me that your contraptions - that you must figure out how ONE must live, for example - cause you pain.

But my focus is always on the extent to which so much human pain is embedded [historically] in those sacred and secular contraptions that revolve precisely around objective morality. That and the pain and the suffering embedded in the "show me the money" mentality embodied by the moral nihilists that own and operate our state capitalist global economy.

All I can do here is to try to nudge as many folks as I can in the general direction of "moderation, negotiation and conpromise." Knowing full well that even then the hole that I am in is still around. And that means a fractured and fragmented sense of self in a world teeming with both contingency, chance and change and the at times brutal consequences of conflicting goods.

You, Iamb, are a pragmatist, at least also. You somehow feed yourself. Let’s assume you shop. Sure, you may feel torn between healthy food and desired food, but you do not make your order based on what every rational person can be convinced they should eat for lunch that day. Like me you make decisions based on desires, on what you want to experience.

I'm a pragmatist in the sense that one way or another I need to sustain my existence -- subsist -- from day to day. And, as I note over and again, for most of us lucky enough to live relatively stable lives, the overwhelming preponderence of our interactions with others are not going to result in conflicting goods precipitating conflicting behaviors.

But there they are anyway. To put or not to put Brett Kavenaugh on the Supreme Court. To build or not to build Trump's Wall. To attack or not to attack North Korea. To accept or not to accept homosexuality. To eat or not to eat animals. To own or not to own guns. To choose or not to choose genocide.

The objectivists are snug and/or smug in their convictions here by and large. And pragmistists of your ilk manage to think themselves into embodying the least amount of mental and emotional anguish and ambivalence. You "push for what you prefer" and don't give as much thought as I do to the manner in which that is just one more existential contraption rooted in dasein rooted in a particular sequence of experiences rooted in a particular time and place.

Yeah, sure, that's all "out there" or "down here" somewhere intertwined in the life that you've lived; but why dwell on it. Just let it go, embrace your own particular political prejudice and move on to the next conflict.

If that works for you then that works for you. If that doesn't work for me though it's only because I haven't learned how to equate approaching moral conflicts with going shopping.

In real life MUST ONE in the IS world have a proof that the food you buy, the vote you cast, the woman you approached, you position on a moral issue is 1) a perfect expression of the real and permanent you and will thus never change and 2) you can prove to everyone rational on earth that they ought to make the same decision?

The bottom line is that the objectivists do make these claims by and large. And that is where my focus almost always is here.

Like me, however, you don't. But the manner in which you think about these relationships has enabled you to feel less fractured and fragmented. But that's not the same as saying that you will never feel considerably more fractured and fragmented. To the extent that I am able to persuade you that the components of my own moral philosophy are more reasonable than the components of your philosophy is the extent to which your point of view about these things changes. And of course the other way around.

But what I sense most from you is this smugness that how you think at the existential intersection of identity, value judgments and political power is somehow more reasonable than the way that I do. Whereas I surmise that you have managed to come to the conclusions that you have precisely because psychologically they afford you more comfort and consolation regarding the choices you make.

Something that "I" do not "here and now" have access to.

What you claim to "have" or "not have" in regard to the manner in which you construe my own moral philosophy is no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein to me.

We just think about that differently.

But the bottom line [mine] is that the entirety of your argument here is embedded in a "general description" of human interactions.

To wit:

In the OUGHT WORLD one certainly could have a rule, a contraption, that one OUGHT to have that perfect argument and KNOW for sure one will never change or one SHOULD not act in the world.
I think you are driven by a morality that you seem not to question and it is in the form of two contraptions numbered above.
I do not have those.
You've never said to me 'How dare you push for your preferences when you cannot prove they are the right ones and you will never change.' But I can feel it in there AND you are certainly saying it to yourself.
It would be a sin.
My having less fragmentation is not due to extra contraptions you do not have. At least in part it is because of extra contraptions you have. Whatever shit you've gone through likely plays a role and then how this all interacted with inborn traits.

And those contraptions also fragment because you do not come from yourself or 'yourself'. You have a bird’s eye view of every person and have an incredible distrust of yourself and incredibly bureaucracies are in place in place to hinder your organism from participation in the world until you have met criteria you think it is likely you cannot meet.

And then when you do focus in on a particular conflicting good...

Your most go to issue is abortion, an issue that I do not think is relevent to you now in any direct way. But more than that, the general pattern of coming at life as ALL RATIONAL PEOPLE, rather than this particular one, who lives here.
It is as if in a world sans God, you must have the knowledge of God, or it is immoral to act and one should flagellate oneself and any one else who dares to act, to choose.

...you offer nothing in the way in which I embed my own moral trajectory in this:

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my "tour of duty" in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman's right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary's choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett's Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding "rival goods".
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

Go ahead, give it a shot.

[surreptitious75]

There is no definitive moral code for dealing with the human condition. Rather it is trial and error with no absolute answers. The root of morality lies in evolutionary psychology which given that it is evolutionary will be adaptive and flexible rather than rigid and prescriptive. The answer inasmuch as there is one lies in pragmatism that actually works rather than in the Utopian ideal of so called objective morality. Problems will always exist for such is the nature of human existence so pragmatic solutions have to be found that can best accommodate them. And as it is an eternal work in progress the answers cannot ever be objectively true only subjectively so

[surreptitious75]

Let me take abortion as it is the go to example here

Morality A says that human life is sacred and cannot be violated

Morality B says that female bodily autonomy is sacred and cannot be violated

Morality A and Morality B are in conflict with each other and are therefore incompatible

There is no OBJECTIVE means of determining which one of them should supersede the other

SUBJECTIVE solutions [ Morality A over Morality B or Morality B over Morality A ] are not absolute

Some claim OBJECTIVE MORALITY but the existence of free will means that it can be SUBJECTIVELY INTERPRETED

Also OBJECTIVE MORALITY does not account for the evolutionary origin of morality which means it cannot be objective by definition

This lack of OBJECTIVE MORALITY is why I personally am neither pro abortion or anti abortion as I cannot resolve the two conflicting moralities

And this can be extended from the specific to the general with regard to ALL major moral issues which is why there will always be conflict surrounding them