The definition of “a living being” implies an inherent purpose. To fulfill that purpose, one must not grow or choose contrary to it. To do so is analogous to a government choosing to ignore the purpose for which it was formed and subvert it population (a historically common practice).
Thus purpose is not actually an entirely subjective issue. Purpose is objectively inherited by every living entity (despite often being thwarted via confusion and ignorance). Along with inherit objective purpose comes objective morality even if never known.
If you can choose contrary to your “inherent purpose” this means that there are no inherent purposes in the true sense of the word.
We can discuss better and worse purposes and we can argue that the best purpose consists in affirming one’s nature but we can’t speak of inherent purposes in the true sense of the word.
Whether there are or are not inherent purposes, goals, depend on whether you accept Heidegger’s thought of inherency, where, such as analyzed by Aristoteles onward, place reflection uppermost. It’s an either/or, either one logical system or another.
That modern philosophy obviously appreciates this difference, thereby places the intention, or original thesis toward a goal of objectivation of conscious choice-as an ethical pre-rogative, makes ethics into a regression to a pre cogito ergo sim argument.
It appears, as though the study of ethics, being still caught up in this argument, has lagged behind other , more modern and post modern arguments.
This inherency is obvious on modern questions such as, how can a person be trusted with the nuclear button?
The objectication of metaphor was Nietzche’s most obvious problem, a disaster waiting to happen in misinterpretation.
Folks, don’t worry, I am merely filling in, pertinent gaps in my own understanding of the flow of this forum, excited and very much interested, where it is heading, and what are the goals, which could signal a relevance worth noting.
I would state it more as simply survival (aka “anentropy”), as long as everyone understands the sophisticated philosophies of survival. Growth and reproduction are merely ways to try to survive. A cell grows and/or reproduces more of its own kind so as to surround itself with something compatible. Birds flock for the same reason. People gather and bear children for the same reason. Just about everything every species is know for, is their inherent philosophy and method for surviving.
Of course such “attempts” are not generally conscious attempts. They are literally inherited traits which lend toward survival even though not quite accomplishing it. A fundamental purpose cannot be chosen, but must be given because to chose implies a decision making arbitration that cannot exist without an already established purpose. Surviving requires a very complex strategy, as every individual being, species, and government throughout history has demonstrated.
The truly best method for surviving, whatever that might actually be (still quite unknown to most), is what constitutes the morality (again, as long as everyone understands the nature of the task). The confusion arises because people do not inherently understand the sophistication and are not well taught, more often entirely misled.
As you know, I often refer to Anentropic Harmony and MIJOT (Maximum Integral of Joy Over Time) as the inherent purpose, goal, objective, “direction”, path, way, or Tao. I use those terms rather than merely “survive” so as to point out the more relevant details of what survival requires and to avoid presumptions concerning survival strategies. And from those deeper details comes essential values that form the most rational morality possible.
Survival yes, but where does that leave the problem of goals, within or without the question of whether they are of conscious or unconscious origin, or, even of discarding any conceptual framework upon which development based on the instinct of survival rests?
That is, if temporality enters the equasion. If not, then an imminence can not include it’s opposite in it’s goal, so how would you change the formula as a goal?For truly, it has been merely a cosmic second from Creation’s time up to now?
Therefore decay is a necessary part of creation, in this sense. Teleology is merely an extension the ontology of of intentionality. The Objective has a necessary ingredient, which part-takes in it’s developing difference from the original. The Original
therefore, is necessary and not a contingent part of Creation, and the Object, needs both, simultaneously, it may seem deceptively simple.
I never argued that. Instead, I suggest only that pertaining to conflicting value judgments rooted in dasein, there appear to be limitations beyond which “logical analysis and rational philosophical consideration” cannot go.
Then I challenge those who think otherwise to cite particular instances in which their own value judgments came into conflict with others and through “logical analysis and rational philosophical consideration” an objective morality was “in fact” ascertained.
The fact remains that those who do make it to adulthood are only around to discuss the morality of abortion today because [among all those other things] they were not aborted. There’s no getting around that.
So, each of us who places value on the fact that we are around today, has to recognize that in order for any one of us to see this as a “good thing” then being aborted can only be seen as a “bad thing”. Which in part is why those who oppose abortion bring this up in the first place. The unborn they argue have a “natural right” to life. Either re God or one or another secular rendition of Ayn Rand’s acorn analogy.
But the objectivists are all the same here. They take your side that objective morality does in fact exist; but then they insist that unless you subscribe to their own narrative, you are wrong.
Right?
It is always their Truth, isn’t it? And then they insist that their particular political assumptions are in fact not political prejudices at all. Instead, the point where they tell us the unborn becomes a “person” is “the truth”. And, once a person, to abort it necessarily becomes immoral.
My point then is that psychologically they embrace this frame of mind precisely because psychologically this allows them to anchor “I” to/in/onto one or another moral and political font. And that becomes of far greater concern to them than the fact that others insist that, while the font does exist, it is something else. Their own in other words.
The argument that what is wrong? In what particular historical, cultural and experiential context? Seen from what particular point of view?
I agree that there may well be an analysis, a rational philosophical argument, able to establish this.
I just have not come across it myself. In other words, an argument [relating to an issue like abortion] in which the truth has in fact been demonstrated to exist such that no rational or virtuous woman can doubt what their obligation is when faced with an unwanted pregnancy.
In any given human community [over time and across space] “rules of behavior” must be established. Now, they can be established by those powerful enough to enforce behaviors that further their own perceived interests, by those who claim to grasp the objective moral truth, or by folks democratically in which legal prescriptions/proscriptions are predicated on conflicting political prejudices “resolved” through elections.
And that is the way in which most modern industrial states go about “resolving” these “social issues”.
Yes, but you refuse to acknowledge that your “analysis” regarding “personhood” [and the aborting of this “person”] is but one particular subjective/subjunctive narrative along a political continuum that includes many other conflicting sets of assumptions. Sure, if you insist that only your own premises here are the “right ones”, there’s not much I can say to that. Instead, your argument then is with those who insist that while you are right about the existence of “the objective truth”, your own isn’t it. Theirs is.
And trust me: Good luck with that.
True. That sort of thing is more reflective of the discussions that unfold here. Why? Because the objectivists here are particularly rabid. Ideologically, as it were. The liberals become the “idiots”. Or the conservatives.
Or they are Kids.
But I also suspect this: that in the ethics class I will not come upon an argument that is in fact able to demonstrate when in fact the unborn is a “person” and if in fact, once a “person” it is either right or wrong to abort it.
Instead, I will come upon hopelessly conflicting political prejudices that the owners will insist have “in fact” been demonstrated to be the objective moral truth. In other words, really not all that different from here. Just more “academic” or “scholastic” or “articulate”. More civilized?
More like this: “You have come to embody that particular political prejudice as a result of the experiences, relationships and sources of knowledge/information that you have aggregated over the course of living your life existentially out in a particular world.”
In other word, is it just a coincidence that the children of Donald Trump and the children of Barack Obama no doubt view the world around them in very different ways? Or that the children of Orthodox Jews in Israel view the world differently from the children of the Taliban Muslims in Afghanistan.
Now, where is the philosopher able to establish what all sets of children are obligated to believe as rational and virtuous human beings.
That’s it! You may all be wrong, but…
…but of far greater importance is the fact that the Truth here does exist. Formally as it were.
Now, you claim that is not the case with you at all. All someone like me has to do is to demonstrate to you that objective morality does not exist. Indeed, what does this remind you of?
Yet, as with the existence God, it seems more the obligation of those who claim that something does exist to demonstrate this than it is my obligation to demonstrate it does not.
Indeed, the Vulcans are superb in calulating that which is entirely correct pertaining to the world of either/or.
But it would “fascinating” to have a Vulcan here able to discuss instead the world of is/ought.
Sometimes I am able to nudge you into actually engaging substantively in a discussion of these issues. Other times I reduce you to down to this sort of thing. To “retorting”.
Now, please reflect on the points that I raised above and respond to them more…intelligently.
I get enough of the huffing and the puffing from the Kids here.
The interesting questions are “how do people act?” and “what potentials do people possess?”
Beings are forms of movement. What does “purpose” mean in this context?
Many of our movements have nothing to do with survival. Though, of course, with the help of mental acrobratics you can relate every movement back to survival no matter how indirectly. I suspect this has little to do with reality and a lot to do with logical decoration.
I think it’s pretty apparent. Wind blows. That’s movement. Does it blow in order to survive? No, it just blows. That’s what wind is. Human beings are extremely complex forms of movement. Some of their movements are an attempt to deal with external threats to their life, some are not.
