Is an Existentialist Ethics Possible?
Does Sartre’s philosophy give us any clues about how we should live? Yes, says Jonathan Crowe – he showed us that we can’t avoid choosing.
First of course the inevitable assumption that human beings are in fact free to choose behaviors they know are going to be judged by others. And here I suggest that we make these judgments based not on what can be known about moral obligations here but on what we think we know about any particular set of circumstances in which the question of moral obligations might be raised.
Thus, to assert that “you are free, so choose”, in not taking that into account, is basically giving the student carte blanche. In other words, it would seem to matter less what he does and more that the choice is derived merely from the fact that he is fee to make it.
In other words, in accepting that no “theory of morality” is around to advise him it then comes down to how extreme one wants to be in regard to what does advise him.
As extreme as my own assessment? This extreme:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
Subjectivism is one thing, a fractured and fragmented subjectivism another thing altogether.
Is an Existentialist Ethics Possible?
Does Sartre’s philosophy give us any clues about how we should live? Yes, says Jonathan Crowe – he showed us that we can’t avoid choosing.
Or, as someone once noted [probably me], “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”. So, by all means, create one or another deontological scaffolding, worship one or another God, pledge allegiance to one or another ideological calling, render unto nature the final word, and subsume all that agony in the one true path.
As for different types of moral values, that’s what different types of rationalizations are for. No need for one size to fit all if you need a little wiggle room in some new situation.
Which brings us back to the assumption – and that is apparently all it can be as of now – that Sartre and the rest of us possess at least some capacity to choose freely. After that, it would seem to come down to the complex interacting of genes and memes intertwined in all of us out in any particular world at any particular time. Then the components of my own frame of mind in the world of conflicting goods derived from dasein and embedded historically in political economy.
Thus the part about “genuine ethical reflection” is no less problematic than the behaviors we choose as a result of what that comes to mean to us at any particular time and place.
So, when someone [like me] insists that we must be “practical” about this, we are immediately bombarded with all of social, political and economic variables that went into, go into and will go into our understanding of the world around us. I merely point out that any number of them may well be beyond both our understanding and our control.
Then what? Well, for me it’s a fractured and fragmented personality more or less impaled on “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”.
Though not for you? Okay, given a set of circumstances in which others might contend with your behaviors, how is it for you?
Is an Existentialist Ethics Possible?
Does Sartre’s philosophy give us any clues about how we should live? Yes, says Jonathan Crowe – he showed us that we can’t avoid choosing.
Conclusion
In other words, imagine that you are a castaway on an island in which you are the only inhabitant. What of ethics then? Unless you believe in God, right and wrong comes to revolve solely around you and nature. If you survive another day then you have done the right things. If you don’t then, well, obviously.
It is only if another castaway arrives on the island, that ethics becomes “for all practical purposes” a part of your life. Suddenly your behaviors in your own little universe might be challenged by this newcomer. You do this, he thinks you should do something else instead. Then you become acquainted with the means employed to resolve such “conflicting goods”: might makes right, right makes might, moderation, negotiation and compromise.
The modern world of human interactions is just this basic reality writ large. It is merely reconfigured above into what for some will be construed as an obtuse intellectual contraption that certain philosophers like to employ. To sound like philosophers perhaps?
The idea of freedom. Theoretically as it were. You say this about it, others say that. Then you both go after the meaning that is imparted to the words given the definitions that you may or may not be able to agree on.
And, sure, sometimes the intellectual contraptions come to revolve around the interpretation of freedom as construed by moral nihilists or sociopaths: Do what you want when you want and where you want to do it. Period. What’s in it for me?
But my point is that there does not appear to be either a theoretical or practical argument from ethicists able to rebut this. Given the assumption [mine] that we live in a No God world. No God and all is permitted.
Then back up into the clouds:
Well, there was once a time in his life when this “conception of human self-realization” revolved around resisting the Nazis in Vichy France. So, given your own moral and political prejudices was he doing the right thing or the wrong thing?
It is to avoid a disintegrating “self” here that, in my view, sustains most objectivists. If only on a subconscious level. On the other hand, what psychological factors might be sustaining my own narrative here? If only on a subconscious level.
Darwin On Moral Intelligence
Vincent di Norcia applies his mental powers to Darwin’s moral theory.
This is the part that takes us to the moral philosophy that some embed in naturalism:
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe. Adherents of naturalism assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws.
Now, in regard to the individual in the is/ought world, this can be derived from determinism such that morality is, like everything else, merely the consequence of natural laws unfolding only as they must. Thus producing only the psychological illusion in mere mortals of “resolving” conflicting goods when in fact even this is unfolding only as it every could have.
And then there are those like Satyr over at KT who assume the existence of free will and then, of their own alleged volition, argue that human ethics is far more in sync with biological imperatives than in MacIntyre’s “insight into morality’s connections with social life”.
The ghastly “memes” to Satyr.
Thus if you wish to understand rational human behaviors in terms of such things as race or gender or sexual orientation, you’ll agree to accept whatever Satyr and his ilk insist is “natural”. And it is from grasping nature as it really is that one reconfigures what is deemed rational into what is deemed moral.
And then around and around they go:
1] I am rational
2] I am rational because I have access to the objective truth
3] I have access to the objective truth because I grasp the one true nature of the objective world
4] I grasp the one true nature of the objective world because I am rational
In other words, ever and always the part where biological imperatives meet the minds of the only species on earth able to reconfigure their behaviors in any number of conflicting moral and political directions given an endless evolution of historical and cultural and circumstantial contexts. Yes, the genes play a fundamental role in providing a scaffold that is applicable to all of us. But over and over and over again nature becomes entangled in those nurturing memes that have resulted in any number of diverse “rules of behaviors” in any number of communities.
Ah, but the author has already spilled the beans. Philosophers here are to “rethink morality along naturalistic lines”. But, apparently, only in order to enrich the concept of moral intelligence.
Just for the sake argument, this being posted by Satyr 15 minutes ago at KT, let’s suppose he read my post above and this reflects his reaction to it.
My point of course is that when it comes to human interactions, we evaluate our selves through a profoundly complex and problematic entanglement of genes and memes. And only a fool, in my view, would argue that he and he alone knows how to untangle them definitively such that, given a set of circumstances in which behaviors come into conflict over value judgments, he is able to explain precisely where the genes end and the memes begins.
Of course this almost never becomes a factor for him. Why? Because he almost never brings his own intellectual contraptions down to earth. The messy entanglements embedded in individual daseins confronting conflicting goods in one or another rendition of political economy is simply avoided altogether by sustaining arguments contained wholly in a “world of words”. Like the one above.
The closest he’ll come to actual existential interactions is when he goes here:
“But a canine has no self-coisnciuosnes to suffer from the prospect - it is why it defecates and fornicates shamelessly - a fact the nihilist secretly - often openly - emulates.”
Okay, so what does this tell him about human beings shitting and fucking? The fact that, unlike dogs, we are considerably more self-conscious when we do shit and fuck. The dog’s behavior is entirely natural.
And what we “moderns” demand of people when they are shitting and fucking? How much of that is out of sync with nature?
For example, is it nature’s way that men dominate women? Is, say, rape merely a manifestation of nature? Are feminists who protest it vehemently bucking the natural world by attempting to foist their own memetic narratives on men. To make them soft and “effeminate”?
Perhaps he is reading this. And “over there” he will address the points I raise.
How are the nihilists different from others when it comes to shitting and fucking? And what constitutes a “natural morality” for him when he shits and fucks?
Again, assuming Satyr is reading my posts here [and the chimp video certainly seems to confirm it] here is what I noted for him above:
And here is his latest exercise in pedantry:
Okay, let him connect the dots between this intellectual contraption, nihilism, gender relationships, and rape.
And, in particular, how he himself connects the dots existentially here between nature, rationality and value judgments. The part where genes necessarily trump memes.
Again, in regard to fucking, his point below is as close as he is willing and/or able to go in making a distinction between natural chimp behaviors and a far more complex intertwining of genes and memes embedded in human behaviors. Both over time historically and across the globe culturally. Not to mention all of the vast and varied experiences that any one particular individual might come to accumulate over the years in regard to his or her own sexual mores.
Now, note the sheer enormity of all the conflicting assessments of human sexuality that exist precisely as a result of the fact that the evolution of life on earth has produced a species fully capable of thinking up and then acting on all of the countless memetic permutations that have been passed down through the ages. And not just in regard to heterosexual relationships but homosexual relationships as well.
It is because the human species, unlike chimps, can and do invent conflicting Gods and religious denominations and conflicting philosophical moral contraptions and conflicting political ideologies and conflicting assessments of nature, that the relationship is far more complex within our own species than other here on planet Earth.
Right on cue, I post here and over at KT Satyr “responds”. In fact, I suspect that he responds more because he is hoping that I will copy and paste one of his intellectual contraptions here. That way his pedantic “message” actually goes beyond the confines of what is left of KT itself: him and only him.
So, in regard to my points here…
…we get this:
Culminating in this…
On the other hand, maybe there is an actual gene that compels some to ever remain up in the abstract clouds when discussing human interactions involving moral and political value judgments in conflict.
He has it, I don’t.
Or, if he is really lucky, both ends of this exchange are wholly compelled by nature.
[b]'In a floor speech in July, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, issued an ultimatum on future Supreme Court fights.
'“I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided,” Hawley said. He would require on-the-record evidence that the next Republican nominee “understands Roe to be the travesty that it is.” Absent that, he said, “I will not support the nomination.”
‘The day after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Hawley reiterated this commitment, and called on his fellow Republican senators to do the same.’[/b]
This is conservative/rightist objectivism. The unborn are human babies. So, aborting them must be deemed murdering them.
Liberal/leftist objectivism: the political right of women to choose abortion transcends the alleged “natural right” of the unborn to come to term. To be born.
Many/most on both sides adamant that morality is on their side. Sometimes through God sometimes not.
And, many, on the left, rationalize abortion by insisting that up to a point the unborn is just a “clump of cells”. And that, even after that point, the physical and psychological health of the pregnant women must take precedence.
The crucial thing here being that not even medical science can demonstrate beyond all doubt when the unborn [starting at conception] does in fact become a “human being”.
Today, of course, having rejected moral objectivism as beyond the reach of scientists and philosophers and ethicists, I find myself “fractured and fragmented” such that both sides make compelling arguments given one set of assumptions rather than another.
And it is this very disintegrated “I” that the objectivists fear most of all. Not to know for sure that their “real self” is in fact in sync with the right thing – the only thing – to do when someone is confronted with an unwanted pregnancy.
So, here I am on this thread hoping either to be convinced that my thinking is wrong, or, if right, I am able to find others who share my own frame of mind.
Two more posts from him in which his own moral and political values are entirely obscured in clouds of abstractions.
But not to worry: If he ever does make an actual attempt to address the points I raise above [b]given a particular context[/b] you can trust me to bring it to your attention. At least on the Nil thread.
Note to others:
For those who read other posts in other threads by him at KT, please note any instances where he does bring his own groots down out of the clouds. As they pertain to conflicting goods.
Darwin On Moral Intelligence
Vincent di Norcia applies his mental powers to Darwin’s moral theory.
Okay, but then folks like Marx came along and thought up “political economy”. This was a historical account embedded in the evolution of social communities down through the ages. The bottom line being that social interaction in more “primitive” communities – nomadic, slash and burn, hunters and gatherers, early agricultural societies – were in some crucial respects very different from social interactions in the modern post-industrial world. Even “village” communities today around the globe put far more emphasis on the community rather than the individual.
But: Once capitalism prevailed and the individual with his or her access to freedom become of greater and greater importance, it was easy enough for many to insist that this reflected not just a historical account but in terms of “political science”, the most rational or ideal manner in which the species can interact.
As though a thousand years from now we will still be interacting as we do today because it is not possible to interact more rationally. And, thus, any criticisms leveled at the “free enterprise system” will be subsumed in the assumption that it is the most reasonable of all the political economies to date… or at any rate that it reflects the “best of all possible worlds”.
After all, what might have changed or stayed the same with Darwin, if he were still around today?
On the other hand, this does not fully account for the historical configuration of “we” to “me” as encompassed in Marx’s exploration of the actual organic relationship between how the means of production is sustained in any given community and how that becomes translated into social and political interactions/institutions. After all, the advent of socialism was supposed to reconfigure “me” back to “we”.
Only that has not exactly happened. Indeed, if anything in nations like Russia and China, “me, myself and I” are increasingly more likely to be the frame of mind most preferred. So, does that confirm capitalism as the most rational rendition of the “human condition”. Or, maybe, as the “best of all possible worlds”?
Only how exactly would that be pinned down objectively given that we don’t have access to the future a hundred or a thousand years from now?
Again, the inherent difficulty in pinning down with any real precision, where genes give way to memes here. And the foolishness of supposing that it has got to be either more one or the other. There are simply too many variables in play here…and in a world that never stops being in thrall to contingency, chance and change.
And yet my own preference for solitude “here and now” demonstrates to me that, given my own particular life, my own particular sequence of experiences, “I” seem to have become an outlier if, as some insist, social instincts are on par with biological instincts.
And while there may well be powerful genetic predispositions for our species to interact as we do in terms of things like race, gender, sexual preference etc., the history of the species itself clearly confronts us with the role that, historically, culturally and circumstantially, social and political memes can have an equally powerful impact on how any one of us as individuals thinks and feels about the behaviors we choose.
iamb, do you believe that values are real things?
Are thoughts real things?
They are obviously not objects,
but it seems to me that they really do have an existence.
A lot can happen when values meet with the world.
Sometimes they grow, sometimes they die, sometimes they change or mutate.
From my frame of mind, these are questions that would come from someone who has read almost nothing of what I have posted here over the years. Or if they have read much of what I do post [in the philosophy forum], they are so far removed from understanding the answers I would give to these questions that it is almost certainly futile for me to attempt to answer them again now.
If you are in the former category let me know and I will make the attempt to answer them as best I can.
Darwin On Moral Intelligence
Vincent di Norcia applies his mental powers to Darwin’s moral theory.
Social instincts. Now there’s an oxymoron for some. If human instincts revolve far more around sustaining the least dysfunctional social interactions, then the reality of memes would seem to be of considerable more importance than the emphasis that some place on the “selfish genes”. Of course, they will insist, nature revolves around the survival of the fittest individual. Capitalists, for example. Memes are only along for the ride.
Come on, how smart do you have be to be to note that going back to the caves, human social, political and economic interactions are both profoundly and problematically intertwined in both genes and memes. To say where nature stops and nurture begins given any particular context is, from my frame of mind, a clear signal that someone is far more concerned with first embodying and then sustaining the “psychology of objectivism”. Rather than displaying a willingness to acknowledge how ineffably and inextricably “I” and “we” and “them” are compounded in a world in which a mixture of both is nothing short of seething at times given all the variables involved.
Okay, so how is this then squared with the way it basically works between all other animal special on the planet: survival of the fittest, make makes right, the law of the jungle. Well, first by noting that within any particular species itself that is often very strong social bonding. Thus while some animal groups include a fierce hierarchy and even cannibalism, others far more oriented toward the other end of the spectrum. But the bottom line is that no other species of animals comes even remotely close to that which we call memetic interactions. Even among the most intelligent creatures – ilovephilosophy.com/search. … 921c6f66e4 – you don’t find scientists and philosophers and psychologists and sociologists. You don’t find anthropologists examining the culture of the species or historians examining the species down through the ages.
And, sure, since no philosophers have come close to reconfiguring deontological intellectual contraptions into actual day to day human interactions in a community of any real size, why not accept that “for all practical purposes” a utilitarian approach to conflicting value judgments may well be the “best of all possible worlds”. Not counting those who, for whatever reason, philosophical or otherwise, prefer “might makes right”.
And, in my view, the most “significant mental power” in regard to morality is to recognize its limitations.
Nope again. Two weeks later and he is still posting numbingly abstract/abstruse “assessments” like this:
Still, if anyone here would care to take a stab at it, note how, in regard to a conflicting good most will be familiar with, this plays out regarding the behaviors that you choose.
Darwin On Moral Intelligence
Vincent di Norcia applies his mental powers to Darwin’s moral theory.
On the other hand, where in the “core principle of natural selection” is the information and knowledge able to provide us with a definitive account of where nature ends and nurture begin. Let alone the part where it can be shown when and where and how and why social, political and economic memes are actually able to trump genes.
Then the the part where childhood indoctrination begins to break down and adult autonomy begins to take over. The part where children become part of a peer group. Those able to provide them with new realities at odds with what they have been for all intents and purposes brainwashed to believe as “just kids.”
In other words, the part where “the repeated performance of moral actions would, Darwin wrote, make them indistinguishable from an instinct” would be clearly more applicable to “primitive” human communities than the postmodern world we live in now.
How to intertwine an understanding of biological imperatives, social instinct and, say, “pop cultural, mass consumption and the worship of celebrity” which is such a big part of the world that most of us live in “here and now”.
So, that would seem to eliminate the dog eat dog, law of the jungle, survival of the fittest mentality that many associate with Darwin’s theory of evolution. And, to the extent that “morality makes society possible…by minimizing criminal behavior and social conflict” this would seem to be more favorably inclined toward socialism. After all, capitalism basically revolves around dog eat dog competition rooted in the market. And thus, to a large extent, so does morality. Show me the money. The Gordon Gekko mentality writ large.
“Social virtues” vs. “self-regarding virtues”? Which frame of mind most clearly reflects, say, Trumpworld? Also, we don’t live in “tribes” anymore.
Here we are both on the same page. I basically share this assessment. In a No God world, “anything can be rationalized”. And, in fact, historically, what human behaviors haven’t already been?
But the objectivists of Satyr’s ilk don’t stop there. Given what I call the “psychology of objectivism” they need to think themselves into believing that there is in fact a way to judge human behavior. A way that allows them to make that crucial distinction between “one of us” [the masters] and “one of them” [the slaves].
For him it’s the nature/nurture divide. Genes trump memes. So it’s only a matter of grasping the biological imperatives that nature has provided the human species in the evolution of life on Earth. Some behaviors are natural and some are social.
Thus:
Therefore, as well, homosexual behavior is necessarily unnatural. That human beings engage in sexual relationships for reasons other than reproduction is moot. It’s either that or nothing.
Then he takes “nature” to other indisputable conclusions as well. In regard to gender and race and ethnicity. In regard to moral and political prejudices.
But, again, above all else, nature becomes the font into which he can anchor a sense of identity able to divide up the world between the shepherds and the sheep.
This from the only other member of Know Thyself who still posts in the Agora. The new Lyssa? He’s responding to something that Satyr just posted on the Morality thread.
You tell me what it has to do with the manner in which you yourself have come to understand morality given your day to day interactions with others in a world awash in conflicting goods.
I would like to personally invite him to post here if he has not been permanently banned. To explain what he means above “given a particular context”.
And, if he does, he can then attempt to translate Satyr’s own intellectual contraptions into descriptions of the world that we actually live in.
