But in a universe where there are zero, zip and absolutely nada conscious entities around to discuss and debate this, what possible difference could it make whether there are entities that don’t move?
Given a complete understanding of how and why existence does in fact exist at all, there is [presumably] an objective truth. There are bodies that are still or there are not. But with no mortal minds on earth, no extrateresstrial minds or no Gods around to know this, what exactly does that mean?
The squabble over white swans and black swans would have been entirely moot with no minds around to create a narrative in which to discuss and to debate it.
Let’s say all things exist inside the mind. How do we verify that? What difference does it make to anything in the mind that it’s in the mind? What difference does it make to things ruled by God that they’re ruled by God? It’s impossible to tell because there is nothing that is not ruled by God to compare it to. There is nothing that is not in the mind to compare it to. There is nothing that is not moving to compare it to. Objective statements are meaningless.
But if there are no minds around to even ponder the question, it all comes down to the relationship between an existing God and all that encompasses existence.
But: There are no philosophers around to even bring up anything relating to this. The subjective/objective debate exists only because there are minds able to broach it in the first place. No minds no meaning.
Then the part where the meaning that any particualr mind attributes to “I” may well be entirely determined by the laws of nature.
…in a world where some measure of human autonomy does in fact exist, it still comes down to that which can be demonstratred to be true objectively for all of us. We just don’t know the limits of that. We accept that this exchange exists for all with access to the internet. That can be reasonably demonstrated. But how is it demonstrated that my argument or your argument is closer to the objective truth?
There is no objective truth. I’m cold. Are you cold? Is everyone cold? No, it’s subjective to be cold.
But some claims here seem to come considerably closer to that which “for all practical purposes” are construed by those who are “for all practical purposes” deemed to be rational human beings.
Would you be/feel cold buck naked at the North Pole?
This reminds me of the time I had taken some lsd and became scared that I might freeze to death in -10F temps precisely because I could not feel the cold… or it didn’t feel cold to me. I wasn’t numb, but cold didn’t register as painful and I had no way to tell if I was in biological peril or not.
But all of this is unfolding in a particular mind that either will or will nor perish in any particular context. Cold is perceived subjectively but there are certain biological parameters in which the capacity to perceive it is either sustained or not.
As opposed to, say, is it moral or immoral to strip someone buck naked at the North Pole?
It boils down to what is good for you. If you and I were at the north pole and reliant upon each other for survival and you stripped me naked to freeze in the cold, then you’d be hurting yourself.
Not if killing you allowed me to consume you in order to sustain my own existence. In other words, in a context in which a rescue team was on the way and it was only a matter of surviving long enough for it to reach me. Good and bad here are points of view. And these are clearly more subjective than the objective parameters embedded in the either/or world of cold and human biology. And how this then factors into living or dying.
We might all respond subjectively to both inquiries. But who is kidding whom as to that which comes closest to whatever the objective truth might possibly be in a universe in which no one seems able to convey ontologically or teleologically what existence itself means.
It doesn’t mean anything. Whatever happens in this universe cannot be remembered after the universe is gone. It’s all just dust in the wind and we pretend it’s not.
What always boggles my mind here is how folks manage to think themselves into believing things like this are true with no capacity to actually demonstrate empirically that it is true for all rational human beings. Instead, it is true for them “in their heads” based on a set of assumptions they make about the existence of existence itself.
Wherever our decisions come from is the same for all of us because we’re all connected to the same spacetime fabric, but that fundamental thing can never be an object of knowledge because there is no one outside who can take an objective view.
This is more of the same to me. You assert something to be true based only on an intellectual contraption that you have concocted to explain 1] why something exists rather than nothing and 2] why this something and not something else.
I can define things that can’t be taken out of my pocket and displayed.
Okay, define freedom or justice…or time or space.
Freedom is a relative term requiring an object to be free from. We can’t be simultaneously free from law and crime because we’re either free from crime because we’re bound to law or we’re subject to crime upon being freed from law. Being a slave is a good way to be free from worry, but to stand on one’s own and truly be free requires lots of strife and aggravation.
Okay, but when you take this assumption out into the world of actual conflicting goods, how is it determined what the meaning of freedom is when John demands the freedom to own guns and Joe demands the feedom to live in a world without them?
And how is it demonstrated that either point of view is not just a manifestation of a wholly determined universe?
And how do we connect the dots between any particular answers that any particular one of us might give and an ontological definition and meaning of existence itself? And then to demonstrate the extent to which there is also a teleological component here?
Justice is retribution according to some arbitrary moral code.
Any particular moral code is embedded first and foremost in prescribing and proscribing rules of behavior that revolve around sustaining human life itself. Capitalism? Socialism? Fascism? Anarchism? Survival of the fittest? One or another rendition of Plato’s Republic?
Justice would seem to be largely ensconced in specific historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts re any actual community of men and women.
Time is a relation of the movement of one thing compared to another within space.
Space is the condition resulting from a delay in the transmission of information.
Time and space cannot be separated because if there were no time, then all travel would be instant and therefore there would be no space.
Again, as though you actually do have access to an understanding of time and space going all the way back to whatever brought them into existence in the first place.
Instead, you think this:
I think from the point of view inside spacetime (as a function of it), then time had no beginning, but from a point of view outside spacetime (if that were possible), then time would have a beginning (whatever that means outside of time). It’s analogous to someone going into a black hole: from his point of view, he’d go right in, but from the point of view of someone outside, he’d take forever to make it past the event horizon.
But how could thoughts of this sort not be predicated on certain sets of assumptions that may or may not be shared by others? Who is the one able to settle it once and for?
Black holes as they are understood now, and black holes as they will be understood 10,000 years from now. Can we even begin to grasp the intelligence gap here?
Or this:
If God confirms it, then it isn’t objective, but subjective according to the subjective lens of God.
Yes, it is always fascinating to speculate about these things. But to speak of them as though you can actually know what is in fact true here? Well, that is something I no longer imagine as within my own reach. Or within the reach of any mere mortal grappling to understand All There Is as an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence in what may well be a multiverse.
Or this:
Krishnamurti said “We are talking about something entirely different: you are talking about self-improvement while I am talking about elimination of the self.”
Again, with respect to a particular human being interacting with other human beings in a particular context out in a particular world what of earth does that mean?!
How does “I” go about elimating his or her self? At best they can isolate themselves completely from all other conscious beings and commune with nature or with God. But their body will always be demanding food and water and shelter and protection. That part of “I” is either sustained or it perishes by tumbling over into an abyss that may or may not be oblivion.
What does it mean to say that it is true that the Sun exists for all of? As opposed to this: what does it mean to say that we should completely abandon the burning of fossil fuels and rely entirely on solar power?
Bingo: there are subjective points of view, and then there are subjective points of view.
The sun exists to everyone that exists to the sun in a transactional and codependent relationship. The sun isn’t an objective thing. Solar power is free energy and seems the sensible thing to pursue. I’m not sure what you’re trying to show with this.
I’m making a clear distinction between the extent to which human beings can in fact know that the sun is as close as we are ever likely to get to calling something an objective thing, and the seeming inabilty of particular value judgments about solar energy to be construed in turn as anything other than subjective/political opinions.
There is nothing that’s not abstract except the one thing that can’t be beheld because you cannot look at yourself. Everything that you think is a thing is carved out of something bigger (ie an abstraction).
More abstraction. Bring these assumptions down to earth. Note the actual existential implications of them pertaining to actual human interaction in conflict.
I don’t know how.
You want action A
I want action B
Who wins?Metaphors reign where mysteries reside. There is no way to bring it down to earth and even if I could, it would simply create something else that needed to be brought down to earth.
More abstraction. You want action A in a particular context. Someone else wants action B. Therse are objective facts. But how are philosophers able to determine which action reflects that most rational and virtuous action?
And to what extent is what you think you want here predicated more on rational discourse than on the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here?
And someone partial to Romain Rolland “oceanic feeling” or freud’s “primitive ego-feeling” would have to bring this down to earth. What do they mean in regard to particular behaviors that we choose in particular contexts given [in turn] what we think is true “in our head” about all of it in either a God or a No Go world.
And, once determined, how ought rational men and women configure their moral and political narratives in regard to abortion?
According to their own convictions I suppose.
And how are their convictions not embodied in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
That’s what I do here. I offer others a chance to bring their own value judgments out into the world of conflicting goods that we live in today. To describe them such that they do not think of “I” here as being down in a hole.
I’m more than happy to play along, but it takes a good deal of energy to figure out what you’re meaning with these obscure terms like dasein, conflicting goods, here and now. Talking to you is expensive in terms of blood glucose lol
Okay. Choose a context. Choose a set of behaviors in conflict. The whole point of bringing the discussion here down to earth is to make the terms less obscure. To connect them with the thinking of people who choose one thing rather than another. To note those objective facts that all rational men and women can agree are true for all of us.
Matt Dillahunty had a good argument for abortion saying that if one human doesn’t have the right to parasite himself off another human without permission, then why afford that right to humans who haven’t been born? That seems pretty solid.
It’s “solid” only given its initial assumptions. As though others who argue against abortion don’t have their own initial set of assumptions.
Then it comes down to the extent to which someone is willing to admit that: I’m right from my side, your right from your side. Or insists instead that their own assumptions are predicated objectively on one or another God or political ideology or intellectual [deontological] contraption or assessment of “nature”.
The only way to refute his argument would be to explain how you’re different from a fetus such that a fetus has the right to parasite itself off someone else but other humans do not.
Sans God, how could any mere mortal know beyond all doubt what the unborn have a right to? And, despite how different I might be from the fetus, I would not myself be around now if I had been aborted.
It always comes down to those who insist that the unborn have a “natural right” to life and those who insist that pregnant women have a “political right” to choose abortion.
Show me an argument able to demonstrate that it is either one or the other?
Even if reason and evidence were a foundation, we still must have faith in it. There is no distinction between the absolute and the relative because whatever truth you hold will be relative to that yardstick. You either appeal to deontology or popularity or whatever foundation in accordance with how you’re put together and with regard to a particular sequence of experiences.
Yes, only to the extent that one is able to grasp Existence itself, are they able to jettison the part about faith. But some yardsticks – Donald Trump is president of the United States – seem considerally more likely to measure the objective truth than others – building Donald Trump’s wall on the Mexican border is the right thing to do.
You either grasp this distinction as I do here or you don’t.
Is it objectively true that the bishop moves diagonally in chess? What happens if someone changes the rule? Nothing happens because it’s not objective, but relational. Some people don’t consider Trump to be president.
Sure, if you want to go that far out on the “what is reality?” limb, almost anything can be rationalized. But few are going to argue that it is immoral to recreate chess so the that the bishop can move both diagonally and horizontily/vertically.
And others can be just as adament that Trump is not president of the United States as they are that building the wall on the Mexican border is immoral.
“In our head” we can think that anything is true. We can think that Trump is just a character in a Sim world or a creation in some demonic dream. So all it can ever come down to in the end is in closing the gap between what we think is true and what we can demonstrate is in fact true for everyone. With even that problematic given the gap bewtween “I” here and a whole understanding of existence itself.
But really, if there were an objective morality, it would exist independent of humans, which makes no sense because how can morality exist without moral agents? Morality is emergent and not absolute.
What makes no sense to me is making an argument like this as though in making it, it becomes true. And that is basically what you are doing here in my opinion. You have no capacity [that I know of] to substantiate this claim.
And all I ask is that you bring it down to earth and make an attempt to at least try. In particular, as it is relevant to answering the question, “how ought one to live”?
What is objectively true would be true regardless of opinions, so if it were wrong to murder, then it wouldn’t be possible to murder. Since it is possible, then its not objectively wrong. Objectivity exists independent of ANY observer.
Again, as an intellectual contraption, this is true for you because it is in sync with all the assumptions you make about the meaning of “objective truth”, “opinions”, “murder” and “observers”.
But put these elements out in a particular context in which different people construe the meaning of a particular killing in conflicting ways and then what?
A particular killing may or may not be demonstrated to have in fact been a murder given the law in any actual particular human community. But different individuals interpreting the facts of the killing in different ways may or may not agree on whether the killing ought to have been illegal. Some may insist it is justified, while others insist it was not.
In other words, we may well not live in a world where there is an objective truth here that transcends the subjective opinions of the observers. They may all agree that Jim killed Jack. But they may not all agree that the killing was justified.
Unless of course we live in a wholly determined universe where so called “subjective opinions” are an illusion.
I’m starting to think you want to be in the hole and are fending off all attempts to pull you out because that’s where you want to be. That’s fine because I sometimes think I like being in a depressed and gloomy state: as long as things are bad, then I know everything is ok
No, I am looking for others convinced that they are not down in this hole, to bring their own value judgments out into the world as I do here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
They either will or they won’t. And we will either agree that they have or we won’t.
But “for all practical purposes” there must be rules of behavior in any particular human community such that some behaviors are chosen to be rewarded and others chosen to be punished. Why these and not those?
It’s completely arbitrary.
On the contrary, it is embedded first and foremost in subsistence. And then the extent to which particular historical, cultural and experiential memes, shaped and molded by nature, are in turn able to reconfigure nature into any number of actual social, political and economic permutations. People just don’t embody particular thoughts and feelings and behaviors out of the blue.
Again, the exception here being a world in which everything –everything – unfolds only as it ever could have.
But even here we are back to why it is this way and not some other way.
Is it odd that you’re looking for an absolute and then always tell me to bring it down to earth and relate it to something?
I’m not looking for an absolute so much as a frame of mind able to yank me up out of the hole that [intellectually and existentially] I have dug for myself. There seem to be facts about human interactions that we can all agree on. But we react to those facts differently in terms of what we think they tell us about right and wrong behaviors.
And that becomes more and more apparent [to me] when we discuss our specific reactions to specific behaviors out in particular contexts. “I” for me here is constrained by the facts. The facts don’t go away just because you think something else is true.
And then the part where the facts are acknowledged by everyone [John eats meat] but our reaction to the facts vary considerably [John ought to or ought not to eat meat].
Ought only exists in relation to a goal. If you want ________, then you ought to do _____________. If you don’t want anything, then there is no ought.
That is an ought embedded more in the either/or world. John wants to eat meat. Okay, what ought he to do to accomplish this? Well, he can hunt the animals down himself, he can purchase it in the grocery store, he can steal it from someone. He either does in fact accomplish it or he doesn’t. But that is different from the ought embedded in the is/ought world.
Ought he to be a hunter? Ought he to steal? Ought he to eat meat at all?
And human goals…how are they not embedded/emdodied largely in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein?
And then conflicting goods. And then political economy.
With respect to existence itself, gravity is related to electromagnetism is related to the strong and the weak interactions. This part: science.howstuffworks.com/envir … nature.htm
Now, can we call these relationships truly absolute? Or, instead, are they related to forces we are not even privy to yet? Even going back perhaps to the existence of God?
They are related to duality. Where did duality come from? Well, duality come from unity: the coin has heads and tails because it’s one coin.
I have no idea what “on earth” something like this means. Let alone how it relates to the manner in which I construe the subjective/objective distinction relating to conflicting goods in a No God world.
To the extent that gravity and the other forces are true “absolutely”…how is that related “for all practical purposes” to this duality coming from unity. A coin is a man-made thing embedded in, among other things, the manner in which any particular community goes about sustaining the means of productions. Money, in other words. But there are any number of ferocious conflicts that revolve around what is deemed “just” in regard to the use and the distribution of money in any particular community.
To speak of “objectivity” here being either possible or impossible seems presumptive in the extreme to me.
Objectivity cannot exist unless it is observed and if it is observed, then it’s no longer objectivity, but subjectivity because it could only be observed through a subjective lens given by how the subject relates to the object.
Yeah, I sometimes come close to understanding things like this “theoretically”. But when actual flesh and blood human beings observe actual phenomena out in a particular world, there are still going to be those things that reasonable people can agree are true, and those things which are deemed true given an attachment to a particular set of moral and political prejudices. Which I then largely subsume in dasein.