Absolutely a danger in a certain sense, yes, but socialization is inevitable (for reproduction at least) and should be encouraged (I would encourage it, anyway). If the ‘goal’ of mankind or men/women in general is to improve itself, it must continue reproducing. Duh. So, the material that is to be reproduced is of utmost importance… the people who reproduce toward this end will either be naturally or artificially selected, and should be, through group dynamics. Therefore, there must be conflict between groups or else there is no improvement… and there must be commitment of individuals to a group for this to happen. Ergo, individuals must discriminate, must say yes! to this ideal and live it, no! to that ideal and leave it, and must be willing to understand the need for this conflict and accept it as a natural part of growth.
But no man is an island unless he is a piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water (being in a bathtub doesn’t count).
[u]A[/u] truth. [u]The[/u] truth. About [u]what[/u] though? If Mary had an abortion and this can in fact be established [u]as[/u] true it’s not just probably true or most likely to be true.
But how is the objective truth established regarding the morality of her abortion? Sure, it might be possible to establish one. All I can do however is to look for an argument that convinces me. That’s all any of us can do, right? But I presume that if someone does come up with an argument that allows “humankind” to resolve conflicting goods objectively [beyond all reasonable doubt] it will be all that everyone is talking about. At least in philosophy venues. Instead, what we continue to note are all of the hopelessly conflicting and contradictory objectivists who frequent venues such as this, all insisting that if one thinks like they do, one will have access to the Ideal, the Superior Judgments, the moral, political, philosophical narrative/agenda most in sync rationally with the way the world [u]really[/u] is.
There are aspects of self-valuation that can in fact be calculated with a fair degree of certitude. In fact, that was the point I always strove to make to mr reasonable regarding that crucial distinction I made between being good [valuing oneself] at playing the stock market and being good [valuing oneself] in arguing that capitalism reflects the most rational/virtuous political economy. You either make a lot of money playing the stock market and value yourself highly as a result of it or you don’t. But what of those who argue that capitalism as a “system” is a brutally inequitable, exploitative, dog-eat-dog moral monstrosity that the rational and ethical man or woman ought to be in revolt against? How does one calculate their value, their self-worth in that regard?
In other words, how does one transcend dasein, conflicting goods and political economy when the discussion shifts from either/or to is/ought?
Metaphysical morality. Attached to one or another God? Or to one or another political ideology? Or to one or another rendition of James S. Saint’s RM TOE? Or to Value Ontology?
Perhaps. But all I can do “for all practical purposes” is to ask the various advocates to bring their own ideas/ideals down to earth. To take my challenge above pertaining to a value judgment that is in fact near and dear to them.
Yes, but notice how you avoided altogether the example I gave with respect to capital punishment. How do you confront these particular conflicting goods such that your reaction trascends a political prejudice or a personal opinion? How is your rejoinder such that all rational and moral men and women will share it, lest they be deemed irrational or immoral? And how would your own prescription not be embedded existentially in the manner in which I construe dasein above?
Well, in regard to an issue like abortion or capital punishment, I missed it. What, in my view, you need to do is to state your argument more explicitly.
And there is also the argument I make that revolves around the narcissist. He or she is a person who, in rejecting the existence of God, makes the assumption that morality then revolves solely around that which fulfils or satisfies him or her. That way there are no conflicting goods. There is only getting away with it or getting caught.
That’s the part that revolves around the notion that, in the absence of God, all things are permitted. Why? Because in the absence of God all human behaviors can be rationalized. Hitler, for example.
This of course is the scariest nihilist. Why? Because the center of the universe always revolves around “I”. There is no “being reasonable” here because, again, reason for the narcissist revolves solely around self-gratification.
It’s just that some of them are able to rationalize even the act of rationalization itself. In order to go beyond the grubby “selfish” mentality, they come to conflate “I” with one or another rendition of this contraption: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
Such as between the fetus an the womb, its direct environment. I contend only that I find it likely that such a relationship comes to arise with the activation of a certain chemical system within, which corresponds to advanced relationship with that which it is not. Perhaps it is true though that it only emerges significantly at birth, when the separation is been made real and the word helplessly replaces the umbilical chord.
All this to say it’s complex, to which I agree. But it has to start somewhere. I’not at all sure that I’m right at my point of departure with the pineal gland, but let’s just say that if I was to make a decision I would take that into consideration. In any case I have no stake in it nor any specialized knowledge, the two things required for a truthful moral basis.
The technical side is taken care of. First of all we’re going to use a lot of phones, but for the rest it’ll be a reason for me to practice my profession, which I haven’t professed since I started working in television. Now I’ve been abstaining from that for two years an I am gradually recovering. I developed forum addiction as a form of resistance against my job, it allowed me to exist, to respond to my actual values.
That’s fantastic.
Can you project the costs of such a project? Im especially interested in the vehicles, which I would want to hold on to and use in sequels.
Sometimes, the intention is only the fighting and the thinking gets lost in the shuffle.
Are you saying that, for you, there can’t ever be some kind of a resolution met or general consensus which could lead to a better understanding of a moral or ethical dilemma?
Our minds are not simply meant for honing. They’re tools for specific purposes…whatever they may be.
To hone the mind by using it and observing its consequences. I have proven to myself to be capable of moral solutions, but this is not something I can analyze, let alone prescribe to others, it’s only a consequence of my experience, and yet it also seems a cause to it. But you may understand it as dharma, the pool of humanly gifted being from which karma derives. I think of all beings as self-valuings and let the logic work itself out in the moment. When a person is confronted as a self-valuing, he will naturally dictate the area of his values.
If there is such a thing as “Humanity”, its task can only be to overcome its chaotic inner world an become an organic whole. This means that it will have many organs, which exist independently, according to their own experience, oblivious to the logics of the other organs, but understanding the whole through their dedication to their task and (thus) themselves, which implies their ‘love’ of the products made by the other organs, which is all the love a producing being requires; that its efforts are put to good use.
The ideal whole is one where neither the whole nor the individual takes precedence, where ones sense of duty is equal to ones sense of freedom. All young males seek this in some for of military or religious discipline. The degree to which society values this impulse determines its capacity for nobility, which is built on the will to sacrifice for the greater good - i.e. ones honor. Modern war is near absolute altruism, it’s specific others one is sacrificing yet others and oneself for, but altruism nonetheless, giving oneself for a cause. Egoism is more prudent.
What do you mean by philosophical? Some simply thing it’s wisdom.
I’m a pro lifer but I don’t think in terms of soul and I also realize that, for me, there is a point where a bridge is crossed and that which has the potential to become human actually becomes “human” - a living human being. Doesn’t matter where its natural habitat is in the moment. It doesn’t matter how “minute” this little human being is or what has not quite become a part of its body or development at the moment. Some of us devalue this little being because it isn’t as of yet living outside in the world but let’s face it, many of these little beings have far more potential - and will exercise that potential far more than many of us who are out in the world NOW will.
I think in terms of a living being, a human one, who has been created and who has the right to exist and to flourish and to come to as much potential as he/she can. Just as you and I have been given the right to.
But why is that detail of the argument somewhat humorous to you? You can also think of that in another way - it might be kind of a philosophical question. Don’t we ask just that kind of a question often in here though not necessarily that question?
Unless I’m misunderstanding your meaning, Zoot, humans are often in conflict over moral and ethical questions. Why wouldn’t pro-lifers be? At least the rational ones who really care about Life and life. Some of the others are just fanatics following the herd, in need of something which they would call a cause but which is only their own cause to serve self and their egos.
I dunno man, Chalmers and Searle have got me f**ked up bruh. I can’t get out of this matter of which or what was the critical component which was added to the thing to make it conscious, and at what moment. I can no longer think of it as a binary issue… for other reasons too… like the matter of the causal interaction between a purely epiphenomenal phenomena (consciousness) and the brain. No matter how you treat this problem you end up at other new problems. I just throw my hands up and check the anomalous monism box.
If anything it would happen like this: somehow a certain arrangement/organization/sequence of physio-chemical events superimposes into reality a second attribute or mode of being; awareness could be simply called a ‘knowing that’ something is the case… that pre-reflective cogito that ‘knows that it is knowing’ is all that is here… it is contentless, formless, and unconditionally the same at every moment. In causal terms it is epiphenomenal and has no ‘affect’ on physical things or processes, but rather ‘rides along’ deterministically, in tandem, parallel to it and through the same arrow of time.
Supposing this nonsense is true, what would we mean by the reflexive pronoun “I” then? Well, you wouldn’t be a mind or a body, but an added mode to a very specific kind of physical arrangement/organization/sequence. A mode which in its most fundamental sense consists of that superimposing of the quality of consciousness that, because of its intentionality (in Brentano and Husserl’s sense), causes a collision in being between the purely deterministic system working (N’s waterfall) to produce the physical world and that peculiar illusory state we are in when we feel as if we are acting freely.
When Sartre said existence precedes essence he had something like this in mind; not that determinism is false, but that experience cannot happen without being grounded in absolute indeterminacy first. Consider the cognitive act: not only the perception of an object and a placing of value or meaning upon it that puts it into context, but also the knowledge that one is deciding to place these things, making the act of infusing things with meaning an experienced, free act that is always being revised by what we do next.
The only way to make phenomenological sense out of the Sartrean and Heideggerean dichotomy of being-in-itself and being-for-itself without backing into a Cartesian corner is to integrate it into a monistic, modal system like Spinoza’s which explains the relationship between two causally independent attributes of being- mind and body or whatever- as simultaneously possible without creating a disruption in the fabric of experience.
Everything seems to move along smoothly, doesn’t it. You decide to get up, then you get up. How did that happen? There is no freewill, and you certainly can’t wave a magic Cartesian wand and make rock move or a ball roll, can you? How then is there agent causation… what’s the difference. How can you move an arm any sooner than a rock?
And me, as a resistence to stupid people. I have found that often the dumbest person at a forum is still smarter (if only by a smidgen) than the smartest person on the street.
Yes, I like the skater vid you did… what was it… “not today” or something like that. The editing was good… good shots, good music and arranged well.
Roughly, but what kind of convoy and the number of people is uncertain. I wouldn’t want to do it in my current van… gas mileage is too bad for a trip like that. I’d try to trade for and/or buy something like a westfalia again… a later, six cylinder model. That would be ideal. But there are a lot of variables. How many people and how many vehicles. The more people, the less gas money per person but the heavier the load per vehicle. Things to consider.
And we will want to get a motorcycle for Sauwelios. I want to put him on a Ducati sport-tourer.
If we could get a fleet of vans and motorcycles, that would be nice. The setup is beginning to look like California Love, which used the means badly. Imagine the shots we could make. I approach the problem of a consciousness determining what a consciousness is as a bit of a self enclosed epiphenomenon, which demands total surrender, and from which I have emerged with one theory that satisfies me. I take valuing to equal being, literally in the sentient sense and with a modified understanding of ‘valuing’ on the whole - response-patterns, hermeneutic hubs, master-signifiers, conatusings, logics of Hegelian up-holding. All responses are understood clearly if they are axiomorphized, after we have axiomorphized man, which is what Nietzsche set out to do.
“Up, abysmal thought out of my depth! I am thy cock and morning dawn, thou overslept reptile: Up! Up! My voice shall soon crow thee awake! Unbind the fetters of thine ears: listen! For I wish to hear thee! Up! Up! There is thunder enough to make the very graves listen!”
Agreed. However, that’s a big “if”, if what you mean is (as you go on to suggest) objective truth:
Yes, and the same goes for whether or not she actually had an abortion–unless you mean “argument” as distinct from “evidence”. Then again, “it looks like she had an abortion, therefore she probably had an abortion” is also an argument. What I mean to say by this is: we should start by looking for evidence.
You put it nicely: “all of the hopelessly conflicting and contradictory objectivists who frequent venues such as this”. Indeed, venues such as this are only philosophy venues insofar as they are frequented by philosophers.
I don’t think that’s a very useful dichotomy. Something either is thus and thus or it is not, and it either ought to be thus and thus or it ought not.
Also, by “self-valuing” I here did not mean the–rational–valuing of valuing, but the–pre-rational–valuing of a self. Compare Nietzsche:
“Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim ‘know thyself,’ but as if there hovered before them the commandment: will a self and thou shalt become a self.” (Assorted Opinions and Maxims, aphorism 366.)
Well, why limit yourself to a value judgment? Why not a factual judgment? For instance, suppose that one of your loved ones has a terminal illness. In that case, the factual judgment that that person does not have that illness is probably dearer to you than the factual judgment that he or she has it. However, it would be a faulty judgment. And contrariwise, if there is no evidence that he or she has a terminal illness, the factual judgment that he or she has a terminal illness would be irrational. Well, likewise, if there is no evidence that abortion is immoral, the factual judgment that abortion is immoral is irrational.
Now you might argue that the judgment that abortion is immoral is a value judgment, not a factual judgment. But what about the judgment regarding that distinction? Is it a factual judgment that the judgment that abortion is immoral is a value judgment, or is it a value judgment? If we judge that it is a factual judgment, is this in turn a factual judgment or a value judgment? Value Ontology basically judges that all judgments are value judgments, that the notion of a “fact” is itself a value.
Well, how would any description I make not be equally embedded in that manner? But insofar as it would be less so, I can repeat pretty much what I’ve just said above, that there is no evidence of the prisoner’s self being more valuable than the victim’s family’s self or vice versa–or their being valuable at all, for that matter. Yet then again, if valuation is a rational value, the more valuing self may logically be more valuable than the less valuing self (this is one of those steps I’ve been talking about). In any case, an example is just that, an example. As I went on to say, I already implied an answer to your quandary at the end of my post:
It was only implicit with regard to capital punishment:
You see, that’s abortion right there.
I think you’re turning things around here. “Permitted” simply means “not forbidden”. If there is no God, then nothing is forbidden by a God. Of course I can still forbid you to post here, which would mean you’re not permitted by me to post here, but why should you care? I’m no mod, let alone a God–i.e., I cannot “catch” you, you will always “get away”.
Now of course most religious people did not see it like that; they supposed that God was sub specie boni, under the Idea of the Good. Now that God is dead, does that Idea still exist? No, because it’s precisely that Idea that has died–the God of the philosophers (and not the Jehovah of the Bible, who is, as Blake puts it, none other than he who dwells in flaming fire… As Nietzsche says, it is only the moral God that has been overcome). To be sure, Humanists suppose that, without God, men can see the Idea of the Good directly, in (human) nature and history, and that they do not even need a divine intermediary for that (the human intermediary, the priest, had already been abolished with Protestantism, which basically made every former “layman” his own priest). That humanism is just another objectivism, however, and is naturally succeeded by cultural relativism.
Value Ontology, as an elaboration of Nietzsche’s philosophy of will to power, is basically the absolutisation of relativism, but not without the admission, nay the insistence, that it, too, is at bottom a value and not necessarily a fact.
Mr James, despite your insipid, egregious attempts to undermine the foundation’s upon which stands the groundwork for value ontology, the axiology therein is in fact quite logically sound and in no way conflicts with affectance ontology (see clause in subsection b of affectance ontology compatibilities) which I shall demonstrate later when I am not on a phone.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as its disvaluation would disvalue itself, too.
If we find that it is rational to disvalue this axiom, then we are demonstrating that it is valuable to be rational, even if that means a disvaluation of the rationale itself. Therefore, value is first, what is rational or not is secondary. There is always a valuing when a judgement is made, in other words, and analytical judgements are a result of a long evolutionary investment… N says something about the prehistory of logic that is interesting:
The selection of this error demonstrates that it was valuable to the survival of the human being. The deductive and inductive reasoning, the reasoning in analytical judgements, is an ability that developed because the logical errors which led to the capacity to do so increased the fitness of the human being. From an evolutionary perspective then, the life of this fundamental logical error in epistemology (that things are equal) is hardwired into the genome and menome (don’t use my new word without my permission), and proved to be a valuable characteristic of human beings.
So, in the value axiology we get value precedes rationale (because the negation of this truth itself would be valuable to the negater), and we get a demonstration of the value of our errors in reasoning from an evolutionary point of view (this mistake is calling equal what is not).
Value Logic: Logic’s self-identical “A” is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Because it is possible to create a language game in which arguments could be made against the absolute rule of Aristotle’s law of identity, and because our shared agreement on what the word ‘fact’ means, any epistemological certainty regarding the truth of this axiom is not available to us. On the other hand, we still use and value the rule in our reasoning, so whether or not it is true is beside the point. There is always a preceding pragmatic principle in praxis and a principled precedence of praxis pragmatically. Therefore, the very foundations of logic need not be true in order to be useful. We have fixed up a world of planes, lines, etc., etc.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.
Because absolute moral relativism is not only a glorious oxymoron but also a conclusion we are led to by a rigorous criticism of objectivist reasoning, we are left with only an amoral affirmation of the whole. We must replace the absence of morality and loss of god with our own legislative artifices; we no longer sit idly on the problem of moral relativism and assert our value system on the world as if it were objective. We cannot not do this, though, because we cannot not value what we value.
(how’d I do, Jakob and Saully? You like that shit I dropped on the first axiom, doncha)
James smelled the good meat. It’s nice of you to give him a piece. I’ve learned my lesson though.
Your logic adds up. I like this value philosophy. To be clear, it is what Sauwelios created after he had understood value ontology. It’s his way of valuing vo in his own terms. These terms are very rich, I am lucky that this happened. For the record, there are 4 people beside myself who use the logic now. You are quite capable of walking its ground, which is honesty - but the conception can only be constructed, per its own defining of beings as self-valuings, in the terms that the one who builds it handles best. There is the catch to it all, the 2500 years of looking for origins and the relation between being and essence. This is one of the reasons for a campfire, the part of philosophy that made Socrates choose to not write but talk. Imagine the thousands of dialogues he’s had that weren’t represented by Plato. Imagine the of disputes he lost, and the ones that had to be omitted because their truths were too pertinent and vivid; “kill your darlings”.
Good stuff, Zoot! It certainly seems like a genuine attempt to understand my signature. In complete accordance with VO, this must always mean reconstruing it from one’s own point of view.
Great choice of quote–very relevant–, and a worthy purport to it in my view. Still, I will explain what I meant by my axiom first and foremost.
If we disvalue valuation (a.k.a. valuing), i.e., if we consider it of little or no positive value or of negative value, then we logically must also consider this disvaluation of ours of little or no positive value or of negative value, as it is itself a valuation–namely, a relatively or absolutely low positive valuation or a negative valuation.
Now this need not mean, however, that valuation is an absolute value, a.k.a. a noumenal value. All it means is that it’s a rational value. “Rational” here refers to reason, or at least to human reason, or at least to the reason of most or some humans, or at least to my reason… Truth values, including those of the axioms of logic, are pre-logical–as I basically say in my signature’s next axiom:
Exactly. And it is indeed very apt what you say about language games, as that is exactly what we (or at least I; I will not keep saying this, but I mean it) lapse into as soon as we start arguing against, or trying to break, that law or its complements (the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle). In fact, my axiom may itself be an example of that, which may be why a serious objectivist like James would object to it like that. He won’t admit he’s just playing the “my business is serious” game.
::
Exactly. Even though logically all things are just, including considering things unjust, in practice we must stil consider some things unjust. This axiom is my best attempt at a reconciliation of these facts. It posits an order of rank ranging from those who consider all things just to those who consider all things unjust; and, supposing that things are considered unjust as often as they are considered just, it places oneself modestly in the middle.
::
Lastly I wish to point out that not just the last three axioms of my signature are my own. The second, though the exact formulation is mine, is Jakob’s; the first, however, is mine. First off, let me say something about the names. Value Ontology is what the person known here on ILP as MechanicalMonster first called Jakob’s elaboration of willings to power as self-valuings. I think it has a really strong and catchy ring to it, even though it’s not entirely accurate. I call it Value Metaphysics instead, because “metaphysics” is more comprehensive than “ontology”, often even including epistemology–and VO, like the doctrine of the will to power, explodes the difference between ontology and epistemology. Now “philosophy” is even more comprehensive than “metaphysics”; and while metaphysics has traditionally been considered First Philosophy, I think even that is preceded by the positing of a metaphysics. Still, the two cannot be absolutely distinguished, as even the view that metaphysics are posited, as values, is itself a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Note, by the way, that I came upon the ideas expressed in “my own” four axioms quite independently from Jakob’s coming upon the ideas expressed in “his”.
Most recently, I’ve come to think of a way in which my five axioms may get to form a circle. For I now think that political or moral philosophy, far even from being a specialisation or specification of natural philosophy (cosmology, metaphysics), as I previously thought, is really philosophy proper. For natural philosophy is necessarily anthropomorphosis–or rather, “automorphosis”: for even the concept “man” is already an “automorphism”. A man’s idea or ideal of man, a valuing’s idea or ideal of self, determines even his most “abstract”, “theoretical”, “purely contemplative”, “objective” notions.
“The philosopher does not seek the truth, but the metamorphosis of the world into man: he strives to understand the world with self-consciousness. He strives for an assimilation: he is satisfied when he has construed something anthropomorphically. As the astrologer regards the world in the service of single individuals, so the philosopher regards it as a man.” (Nietzsche, Nachlass Herbst 1872-Winter 1872-73.)
There is no need to explain anything. I was the one trying to get Jakob to simply keep his concepts defined and logical from years ago. There has been no “insipid” undermining of anything but Jakob himself, by those surrounding him … not me. He got conned into becoming paranoid (due to the jealousy of others).
Jakob and Sauw merely get sloppy because their deeper desire is merely to worship Nietzsche and become all powerful kings. VO isn’t the issue … never was. I supported it years ago before many around here had ever heard of it. But a little gang of drugged up Nietzschean Godwannabes being puppeted around is another story.
Zoot, you can give them a little spirit. And that will help for a short while. But in the long run … they simply have no idea of how to cause sufficient trust to do anything significant (a common failing of Nietzschean worshipers). Thus far, he is merely saying to you the same kinds of things he had said to me years ago.
…and this isn’t “good meat” … rather low cal snake oil.