the unproblematic soul

It never ceases to amaze me how, given human history to date and the manner in which the daily newsmedia horrifically reveal the apoplectic world we live in still, the more unproblematic souls continue to speculate [philosophically] as to whether members of our species come into the world “innately good or bad”.

Especially given the fact that so much human suffering is caused precisely by folks hell bent on molding all the bad people into reasonable facsimiles of themselves----the good people.

Or, to put it another way, what is almost always overlooked by those of the rationalist persuasion is the deeply profound and mysterious relationship between, say, the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia in the human brain.

Indeed, the MIT “news office” web site speculates about it as follows:

[b]Our brains have evolved a fast, reliable way to learn rules such as “stop at red” and “go at green.” Dogma has it that the “big boss” lobes of the cerebral cortex, responsible for daily and long-term decision-making, learn the rules first and then transfer the knowledge to the more primitive, large forebrain region known as the basal ganglia, buried under the cortex.

Although both regions are known to be involved in learning rules that become automatic enough for us to follow without much thought, no one had ever determined each one’s specific role.[/b]

And:

…researchers speculate that perhaps the faster learning in the basal ganglia allows us (and our primitive ancestors who lacked a prefrontal cortex) to quickly pick up important information needed for survival. The prefrontal cortex then monitors what the basal ganglia have learned. Its slower, more deliberate learning mechanisms allow it to gather a more judicious ‘big picture’ of what is going on by taking into account more history and thereby exert executive control over behavior…

Ah, but the catch here of course is that historically, culturally and experientially there have always been any number of conflicting and contradictory environmental contexts out of which this astondingly complex interaction might occur.

And that in my view is where rationalization comes in. Virtually any human behavior can be rationalized.

If, for example, the Koran says it is wrong for Islamic jihadists to kill innocent men, women and children, the ones who, say, lob missles into Israel justify what they do by pointing out that every Israeli citizen is required to perform military duty.

So no one is really innocent, right?

Same with the infidels in the World Trade Center. They worked in a building construed by Al Queda types to be the belly of the Crusader beast. And, given the nature of the global economy, that’s not altogether irrational, is it?

But the key point ultimately revolves around survival. The world has to be chopped up so that those who have the power to prosper have a better chance at making sure their progeny are able to follow in their footsteps. And that power takes many forms. But they can’t actually come out and admit that, of course. Especially not to themselves. Instead, they invaribly employ folks like ideologues, imams, priests and neo-conservative political philosophers who sagaciously spin out these lofty narratives in order to make it all seem so axiomatically lofty.

That is where the more problematic souls come in: to expose this.

From Lipstick Taces by Greil Marcus:

The shock of punk is no longer in its thuggery, misogny, racism, homophobia, its yearning for the final solutions to questions it barely asked, in negation’s empowerment of every fraud and swindle. ‘The punk stance,’ Lester Bangs wrote in 1979, ‘is riddled with self-hate, which is always reflexive, and anytime you conclude that life stinks and the human race mostly amounts to a pile of shit, you’ve got the perfect breeding ground for fascism.’

On the other hand:

Today so many years later, the shock of punk is that every good punk record can still sound like the greatest thing you’ve ever heard. ‘A Boring Life,’ ‘One Chord Wonders,’ X-ray Spec’s ‘Oh Bondage, Up yours!,’ the Sex Pistol singles, the Clash’s ‘Complete Control,’----the power in these bits of plastic, the tension between the desire that fuels them and the fatalism waiting to block each beat, the laughter and surprise in the voices, the confidence of the music, all these things are shocking now because, in its two or three minutes, each is absolute. You can’t place one record above the other, not while you’re listening; each one is the end of the world, the creation of the world, complete in itself.

And:

The punks who made records in 1977 didn’t know what chords came next—and they hurled themselves at social facts. The sense that a social fact could be addressed by a broken chord produced music that changed one’s sense of what music could be, and thus changed one’s sense of the social fact: it could be destroyed.

In fact, doesn’t much of our day to day interaction revolve around trying to come up with the existential equivalent of which chords come next? Aren’t we always confronted with that next descision: what ought I to think and feel and do…here and now?

Punk perhaps might be thought of as but one more reaction to what happens when it begins to dawn on someone there really is no way [deontologically] to resolve that. It’s not necessarily the right way or the wrong way to react. It’s simply a particular reaction that makes sense from a particular point of view ensconced in a particular circumstantial swirl.

In other words, as a reaction to life it is really as legitimate as any other; as, for example, yours and mine.

Still, it is always fascinating how music can dissolve the fragmented chaos of human existence and distill it down [“in its two or three minutes”] to an absolute sense of reality. That this is no less true of punk is particularly ironic. Here you have the Johnny Rottens snarling that “life stinks and the human race mostly amounts to a pile of shit” and all the while embracing this no less passionaitely – as an anthem – than others might embrace pop culture or celebrity or consumption or God or socialism or the American dream. Or, admittedly, fascism.

On the other hand, Zbigniew Brezinski, that quintessential purveyor of the American Dream, once snarled himself at those who revel in chaos and negation. He called them, “the death rattle of the historical irrelevants.”

But then Brezinski will soon be historically [ontologically?] irrelevant himself, right? He’ll be dead. In fact, in a few hundred years it will almost be as though he had never been born at all.

And no less so than, say, Johnny Rotten.

Perhaps the two of them might then consider sitting down together to discuss the meaning of that. They can, among other things, connect the dots between Malcolm McLaren and the war in Vietnam. Who knows, they may actually succeed in discovering that which Heidgegger, Kant, Descartes, Plato and so many other philosophers utterly failed to grasp: the nature of Being itself.

The actual unproblematic thing-in-itself Being.

In other words, I’m guessing, something analogous to nihilism.

From The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

Since every step I took in life brought me into horrifying contact with the New, and since every new person I met was a new living fragment of the unknown that I placed on my desk for my frightful daily meditation, I decided to abstain from everything, to go forward to nothing, to reduce action to a minimum, to make it hard for people and events to find me, to prefer the art of abstinence, and to take abdication to unprecedented heights. That’s how badly life terrifies and tortures me.

Sort of reminds one of Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. But then that was, “the story of Wall Street”.

How does one react to this point of view? Can it be construed as a reasonable philosophy of life? Or is it more reflective of a psychologism?..a subjunctive mood? Perhaps a neurosis?

A pathology?

Could you imagine yourself thinking thoughts like this? Does it make sense to think like this? Is it the wrong way to view one’s existence?

Think of it, perhaps, like this: it is less a matter of whether this describes you and more a matter of how, given the right set of circumstances, this is how you may well describe yourself some day. And, if and when you do, reflecting on it will almost certainly be among the last things you would do. What’s the point?

And yet Pessoa has, in fact, chosen not to abstain from reflection…from writing this down.

He still clings to that, right?

Emile Cioran from On the Heights of Despair:

I witness pain, old age and death, and I know that they cannot be overcome; but why should I spoil another’s enjoyment with my knowledge? Suffering and the consciousness of its inescapabilty lead to renunciation; yet nothing would induce me, not even if I were to become a leper, to condemn another’s joy. There is much envy in every act of condemnation.

This is not necessarily a philosophy of life, of course. It is, perhaps, more a mere conjecture, a psychological snapshot, a story that might one day become a philosophy of life given the right [wrong] set of circumstances.

It all depends on just how wide the gap is between what you endure and what you imagine another doesn’t. And, as with most things, you may eventually reach a point where you change your mind.

I ought to know. I have changed my own lots of times.

And doesn’t it invariably come down to what you imagine another is feeling joyful about? If, say, it revolves precisely around what is making you feel miserable the envy can easily transfigure into rage. Then all bets are off.

Yet Cioran seems intent here to focus the beam on what we know. As though he is willing to spare others his nihilisitic bent…a philosophy of life that might desecreate or obviate their joy. Or their illusions. Perhaps however he was not aware that, regarding the overwhelming preponderance of men and women you will ever meet, nothing we can know philosophically could be more irrelevant to either sadness or joy.

Or, instead, was that his point?

In any event, it makes you wonder: are they the lucky ones?

Would or could? Would implies causation. A reasonable person coming in contact with this perspective would accept it. This means to have another perspective is to be unreasonable, or? Could is not a problem for me. Of course confusion, doubt and ambivalance are natural responses to our situation. I no longer think that prioritizing such states is good, nor to I see at root those who do managing to evade absolute committment via acts and interactions to a specific lifestyle.

Would it be indelicate to point out that saying it is an illusion like this is making an ontological claim without qualitification? I’ll leave it to others to decide if I have been unfair.

Of course, I notice you did not say - they are deluded. But then you found a way to say this, or I am missing something?

Does the eye tend to stray towards examples of that reinforce the idea that not having problems is a dead end?

Do you want to end fragmentation or do you see fragmentation as part of the least pernicious solution?

They would not accept it because in their own minds no rational man or woman can accept it.

Where things become problematic however is in devising an argument “out in the world” that would in fact demonstrate how a rational mind must reject it.

This is where we all draw the line – in different places as dasein – between what is true for all and what is not. The “unproblematic souls” simply include many, many more relationships in the either/or category than do the “problematic souls”.

These relationships are then integrated into a whole truth by way of God or by way of Reason.

Yes, you are right. But I have noted this connundrum many times before. And it revolves around the gap between certain words and the world we live in. If I say that “human existence is essentially meaningless” how do I express this in such a way I am not construed as conveying that this is essentially meaningful?

Instead, it is just my opinion [as dasein] that the unproblematic soul’s point of view is an illusion. If you accept my premises regarding what can or cannot be construed in an unproblematic manner then you will agree with me. But I do not mean to convey that my premises are necessarily more rational. In fact, my point is just the opposite: to suggest these things may never be wholly known objectively.

In existential terms, one might say they are living their lives in an “inauthentic” manner. In other words, they are objectifying relationships that can only be understood and expressed as points of view. But in suggesting this I can then be charged with objectification myself, right?

Again, the ambiguity here revolves around Wittgenstein’s intimation that there are things we can and cannot encompass wholly in language. Then we argue about what is and what is not problematic. I just insist these arguments be taken out into the world. And that, when they are, I find human relationships are considerably more problematic with respect to value judgments and identity.

What in the world does this mean though? “Fragmentation” and “least pernicious solutions” regarding what?

Let’s bring it down to earth and discuss it.

OR

The enthusiast may decide that the experience of Life is rewarding enough to overcome the despair. The enthusiast may conclude that objectivity is irrelevant, for when we die, there is nothing to hold us to account. So whilst the enthusiast will be confronted with despair, they will be soothed by their choices and understandings.

Iam, pardon my rather snotty first post in this thread. I was posting quickly, and, well, sometimes, perhaps even often I am snotty. Let’s see if I can make some headway in explaining my reactions to your stance, so at least we have a better place to agree to disagree.

Let me use an extreme example: rape. And to be clear: I am not suggesting that your position is remotely immoral in the ways I think rape is.

How can I demonstrate that I am against rape when I have just raped a woman? or perhaps more clearly, via the act of raping a woman?

Well, you can’t.

So on one level, I react to your position as cake and eat it too. IOW you allow yourself to react to other people’s positions - for example MO’s - in a series of acts, acts that include unqualified statements about ‘the ways things are’ and acts that are designed to point of the wrongness of his ideas. At other points in time, you make disclaimers about the absoluteness of your position - and even these are implicitly presented as part of what makes your position better. So two things in this last bit. The occasional meta-positional disclaimer is part of the position and part of what supposedly makes it better than other positions that do not have this disclaimer. This being problematic since the meta-position is being used in the same kinds of power dynamics it supposedly is seeking to avoid, or perhaps better put concern you elsewhere and which you see as problematic. Then, to me, occasional disclaimers do not change the interpersonal acts they refer to. Hence my cake and eat it too assessment.

Another way to look at this would be to say: if you spoke about your position less and spoke not at all about the positions of others, you could like LIVE your position with consistency. You could be an example of it, perhaps.

But once you enter debate, implicitly and explicitly compare and contrast your position with others, you end up in, I think, hypocrisy. And in precisely the same dynamics you are trying to avoid through the position you have.

Again, using a harsh example, where the behavior is immoral to highlight my point…

You can’t hit women regularly, and then occasionally say that you really didn’t mean to and that hitting women is wrong, and via this disclaimer manage to extricated yourself from the acts of hitting along the way. It is fair, I think, to say that that person has not really worked through their own relationship to hitting woman and their own philosophical position on the issue.

There are no qualified acts. If were think of your position as transcendent, which I think it is an attempt on your part to be, it may give the illusion that your statements of position and belief are not unqualified and not absolute like the communicative acts of others are or intend to be. But the acts are in the world, they are not transcendent.

So to reword: I think the appeal of presenting your position in abstract terms, rather than living it via non-verbal acts and non-philosophical communication, and the appeal of debating the merits of this position and the problems of other positions
needs to be looked at.

This may be frustrating or seem unfair - why can’t I put forward my position? - but I think continuing is hypocritical. Does this matter? Aren’t most positions doomed to hypocrisy given the nature of language, etc? Sure, they are, I think. But, the nugget of truth that I agree with in what you are saying is immediately erased, I think, by fitting your specific position into the old debate discuss compare format of abstract argument and discussion.

Obviously you have the right to present your ideas. I suppose my challenge comes down to ‘why do you have to talk and write about this?’ Why is it a given that you must do this? (as implied by the question you asked above) Doesn’t your particular philosophical position in fact demand a more silent approach? Where speech and writing acts are only in situ, in specific cases, out there in the world, where you explain what is going on, perhaps, or otherwise interject a meta-position in hopefully graceful communicative acts where, I would guess, two other parties are at loggerheads. To me, here, the position could shine, not really as a position, even, but a process, an interactive mediation.

But in a debate discussion, abstract situ, I think it is doomed to inevitable problems.

Yes, in suggesting it. So can you live your position without suggesting it?

I think I was using your term, fragmentation. It seemed like you were saying that fragmentation was an inevitable reaction to things as they are, perhaps even the most rational reaction. What did you mean by the term? Have I reacted to what you meant?

Let’s see if we can get a sense of ‘fragmentation’ and then I can put this in a specific context.

Here, however, is a concrete example of what I am suggesting in general above.

amazon.com/Where-Rivers-Meet … 9839054511

deals with a white man who goes to Alaska as part of Vista to help native communities there. Over time he stops using all the advocacy and pedagogical methods he has been taught and uses instead films of Eskimos and government officials instead.

He offers natives the option of being filmed, where they choose, doing what they choose, discussing whatever problem they want to focus on. Those filmed get to edit the films and then also choose to whom the films are sent - after getting information from the author, if they choose, about various government officials roles, etc. The films are generally also shown to the community and other native communities and after consensus grouped with other films of natives and these are sent to state officials. The state officials view the films and then are given the same exact opportunity to make and edit a film presenting their point of view. These are then shown to the natives. As it turns out decades of loggerhead situations are replaced by very rapid social change.

The writer did not lecture each side on Dasein, cultural assumptions, that there is no meaning, etc. These ideas are all bracketed off. Perhaps there are objective truths, objective morals, but no decision or statement of position need be made, in fact such a position taking would add a third culture to the mix.

I think the insights of your position work as heuristics guiding actions, but do not work as a philosophical position stated and contrasted with others, for the reasons the author of the above work, moved further and further away from advocacy work, cultural interpreter work, or any work where he stated a position. He makes clear the experiences that shifted him away from such positions and explains this not in terms of truth value, but in practical terms.

They do not work.

He doesn’t really have to take a philosophical stand on the truth value of his own position and he certainly doesn’t have to say it. He can just say: they did this, I did this and that stuff did not work. I did this new thing and it worked.

Someone with a less problematic soul, in the sense of this thread, here at the forums, could perhaps put forward their ‘truths’ and get away with it. Doing this, debating the merits, implicitly and explicitly arguing that other positions are wrong or worse, is NOT hypocritical for them. But for you, there is a problem, I think.

Can you not say that “Human existence is objectively meaningless”. Then add, “This is subjectively meaningful for me”. The reason the objective meaningless of human existence is relevant to anyone is because we are all human, and we have a vested interest in what is to be human since we have to endure it.

In the here and in the now each of us as an individual thinks about rape in a particular way. And he or she may or may not act on it. But there is always the possibility that he or she will change their mind and think about it differently. This is the nature of dasein.

But is there a way that we must think about it in order to be deemed rational and moral human beings? Is there a completely unproblematic argument? An argument that obviates “conflicting goods” and “selfish bastards” in a Godless world?

Well, to those who believe that there is I say, “okay, let’s hear it”.

No, I make a distinction about language that is used out in the world.

We often speak of what we believe inflected as though to suggest others ought to believe it too. And we do this in part because there are things we believe to be true that we do believe all other rational folks must believe in turn. For example, “Mary had an abortion”, when, in fact, Mary did have an abortion. Language is limited here only by reality.

But there is no solid-state reality to adhere to with respect to the belief that, “abortion is immoral”. Language here is limited to expressing a point of view.

Now, some will argue that, in making this argument, I want my cake and to eat it too because I seem to be asserting this very point of view as something others must believe too. But I am not.

What am I suppose to do though, insert “in my own opinion” in front of every point I make about conflicting value judgments?

Again, I’m not sure how this is an argument that exposes my “having and eating my cake” or my “hypocrisy”.

Someone might hit a woman for any number of reasons. And, of course, one of those reasons can revolve around him being a selfish bastard who predicates all of his behaviors on self-gratification.

My argument then is the distinction that can be made between “John hit Mary” and “it is immoral to hit a woman”. In the first instance John either did or did not hit Mary". In the second, it is only a point of view.

But in suggesting it is only a point of view that is in turn but a reflection of my own point of view. I readily concede I might be wrong if I come upon an argument that convinces me I am.

And, admittedly, even with regard to the seeming fact that “John hit Mary”, I may have been duped into believing it when in fact it did not happen at all.

That’s the world we live in.

Okay, but “in looking at it” let’s make reference to something unfolding out in the world that we are all familiar with. It is, after all, abstractions that I try to avoid.

Yes, this is my point. Well, to the extent that I understand your own considerably abstract one.

We are doomed from the start if we think we can resolve moral conflicts. We can, instead, only employ negociation and compromise to effectuate a legal, political contraption that is ever subject to contingency, chance and change.

Unless, of course, I’m wrong.

Mo seems to wiggle around this predicament by making a distinction between “objective” and “universal” morality.

But he has not been able to explain [to me] how that has any relevance “for all practical purpose” out in the world of actual human interactions—interactions that will inevitably come into conflict. The objectivity seems to reside in the unproblematic situations that are never, ever seen again.

I think what bothers others [like Mo] is that I suggest it is applicable to them too. They state as true things I believe we can only suggest are true given our own assumptions.

But I can only suggest that something might be true if I have no way of demonstrating that it is.

Then I can only suggest further that empirical facts, the laws of physics, mathematics etc., are not really suggested to be truths at all but are shown to be truths that are replicated over and over and over and over again out in the world.

Dasein is understood in a very, very different way in political economies that largely revolve around pre-industrial subsistence and within a close knit “tribal” bond. If in fact that is the case here.

The bottom line remains the same though: given any particular behavior, there may or may not be differences of opinion regarding what is “the right thing to do” morally. And whether in an Alaskan native community or in New York City these values will revolve around dasein situated out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

My point is only that a democratic consensus is the best of all possible worlds.

Give us some concrete examples of this. What does not work? And what “worked” when moral narratives came into conflict?

They could “get away with it” only until they bumped into a moral value they did not share. Then the problem can go away only if they are willing to negociate a compromise. And then renegociate new ones over and again as new experiences, relationships and points of view unfold over time.

The hypocrisy comes into play when someone embraces moderation, negociation and compromise “in theory” but “in fact” insists that only his or her own actual values prevail.

Iam,
you completely missed me here. For example, I was not raising the rape example as an example of objective morals, I was raising it as a showing what I think you are doing is inconsistent.

To use another example…

If someone believes people should not speak, and they say this to people, there is a problem.

But please reread my previous post, using this one for help.

I am pointing out a contradiction between your position and what you do.

This isn’t relevent. The person in question is claiming to be against rape. It doesn’t matter if rape is objectively wrong. One can still point out the hypocrisy.

I don’t think you understood what I was doing there.

Of course. Absolutely. Though there are other options. You could DO what the man in the book I mentioned does or some other activity that comes out of what you believe, but does not set it up as a philosophical position while also critiquing the positions of others. Or you could avoid arguing that your position is better than others. I am not sure why you raised the is/ought issue here. It has nothing to do with what I was pointing out here.

You missed me here again. If John says it is bad to hit Mary and then hits Mary regularly, we can point out his hypocrisy. If you argue that certainty is not really possible and make statements of certainty, there is a problem. If you say that there can be no demonstrating one philosophical position is objectively better than another and then engage in communicative acts to demonstrate precisely this about your position in relation to others, there is a problem.

i don’t need to demonstrate that it is objectively wrong to do any of this. I need only point out that YOU have said it is wrong and then gone ahead and done it.

Well, it makes no sense to assume that the best solution we can have is in the midpoint between the two positions. If you look at the example I had with the Eskimoes, the result of the films was vastly closer to the Eskimoes wishes than the state officials. If the stance had been, let’s aim for a compromise, the result would have been quite different, and from my perspective, and from that of the natives, really rather poor.

My point was not that suggesting was too mild, but going too far, given your position.

(I don’t think your position, looked at as communicative acts, is less absolute, but that is a separate issue)

You missed the point. Here was someone acting in ways that I think fit with your philosophy, without suggesting what is true, without mentioning cultures, or compromise, or the problems of deontological positions. They did not become a third culture, lecturing the other two cultures about the possible shortcomings of having this or that moral certainty.

What I see as problematic in what you are doing by communicating your position here, he avoided and was extremely effective in dealing with cultures at cross purposes. And he never presumed there had to be some sort of compromise. He never pointed out ‘the problems with their positions’. He never asked to have it demonstrated what the shortcomings of his position might be.

The natives did not want to have their kids sent away to boarding schools. The government officials said they did not have the money to organize it another way. Nothing changed. The government officials, given their modes of communication did not understand how important this issue was to the Eskimoes. Given their ideas about normal culture, they did not understand what the villages lost. Nothing changed when they argued. The government officials lacked the respect and ability to empathize and further the ability to understand that their values might not fit these other people. The films which were not arguments or discussions or assertions of truths - for the most part - but rather expressions of desire and emotion, wants and what was suffered, bypassed the government officials inadequacies. That was on this issue. Here basically what the natives wanted came to pass completely, not a compromise, once a different kind of communicative act took place.

I think presenting your position, here, in a debate forum is very much like the loggerheads situation where you present your culture and Mo or I present ours. Mo’s philosophy with an objective morality that can be demonstrated - this according to him - suffers no hypocrisy. Of course one can present what is right and then demonstrate this rightness. Your position on the other hand, is hypocritical when presented in a debate format as happens here.

i am suggesting it makes sense to act from your position, but to come and argue its merits and the problems with other positions - even if qualified - is problematic.

Between the sides: the revelation of the thinking and emotions of the other side. There were all sorts of effect inside each side, given the participatory community processes involved in the making of the films and as each new film, within the community, inspired and affected future ones.

No, you really are not understanding me. I mean get away with it because it is not hypocritical for a deontologist or objective moralist to try to demonstrate the rightness of their position. This doesn’t mean they are right or will not come to loggerheads. But the act of trying to demonstrate the rightness is not hypocritical.

For you, however, given your position, it is hypocritical.

(as an aside, your position also it bumps into a position it disagrees with)

Further, a deontologist or an objective moralist can also compromise. They can see this as a practical solution. Many do this. In fact most compromises are between people who believe their own moral positions are correct.

This is a one trick pony heuristic. Sometimes in history it has been very good that some people have refused to compromise about certain things. This is also true in smaller struggles all the time.

You completely misplaced all my arguments and saw them as some other arguments. This could have been my failure to communicate clearly, but it really felt like you expect certain kinds of objections and when faced with ones you did not expect, you see the ones you did. Please see if you can see if the post you respond to here might have been saying something rather different, using this post as an aid.

I am inconsistent because we are not able to be wholly consistent in framing arguments that revolve around these relationships out in the world. But we can be wholly consistent in saying, “John raped Mary”, if in fact John raped Mary. And I will probably be consistent until the day I die in contending that “rape is immoral”. I believe this to be true. But I also believe that is not the same thing as demonstrating that, objectively, rape is in fact immoral. After all, all some selfish bastard has to do is insist it is not immoral because nothing can be immoral if it gratifies him. You need God here in my view.

There is a problem because the “eating and having your cake” and the “hypocrisy” is embodied empirically in the fact of speaking itself.

But suppose someone says, “from this day forth it is immoral for you and I to speak to others”. And she does not in fact speak to others. But she does punish me for doing so. How does she go about demonstrating this is just? She can demonstrate that I spoke to others [because I did] but not that I ought not to have. And she can have her own reasons for that.

But, yes, I suspect that, by and large, we are talking past each other here. I think we are after different things. That someone is imposing a double standard or being a hypocrite can often be clearly shown. But so what? What generates the fiercest conflicts of course are those narratives that come into conflict regarding which behaviors we must never be hypocritical about. If John says rape is immoral and then rapes someone, well, duh? But if John says rape is immoral objectively and everyone is required to think like this…what then?

Is there a way that we must think about it in order to be deemed rational and moral human beings? Is there a completely unproblematic argument to support this? An argument that obviates “conflicting goods” and “selfish bastards” in a Godless world?

It is always about “is/ought” here to me because I am only interested in philosophy insofar as it is able to tell me, “how ought I to live out in the world with others?” And, in turn, what is this “I” that I bandy about in places like this? Where does it come from? How does it unfold?

But, then, that’s just “me”. Me and my priorities.

It is a problem only if you insist on making it one. If I note that everything I opine about these behaviors out in the world is predicated on the truthfulness of the assumptions I make about them then I am qualifying what I mean by certainty. I am interpolating Wittgenstein’s conjectures regarding what [perhaps] can and cannot be said wholly or fully with language. Including this. Language becomes a quicksand here. The more words we use in trying to explain ourselves the deeper into a misunderstanding we can go.

But my conjectures here revolve around those who insist there is but one objective moral stance to take and those willing to acknowledge there may well be no objective truth here at all.

But is this “different kind of communicative act” in the best interest of the children? What sort of education will they receive if it revolves almost entirely around preserving the “normal culture” of the past?

A better way perhaps is the approach that certain Amish groups take: Rumspringa.

From the ReligiousTolerance.org website:

Teens aged 16 and older are allowed some freedom in behavior. It is a interval of a few years while they remain living at home, yet are somewhat released from the intense supervision of their parents. Since they have not yet been baptized, they have not committed to follow the extremely strict behavioral restrictions and community rules imposed by the religion. Depending upon the behavioral rules of their particular community, they may be allowed to date, go out with their friends, visit the outside world, go to parties, drink alcoholic beverages, wear jeans, etc. The intent of rumspringa is to make certain that youth are giving their informed consent if they decide to be baptized.

What real alternatives are the Alaskan children given? Isn’t everyone else doing the deciding for them?

I don’t agree. In fact, I think it would please folks like Mo if I did frame it in this manner. Why? Because it might be argued that either one side is right and the other wrong or that they are both right from their own side. What I argue instead is that morality is constantly shifting and changing over time. And from the perspectives of daseins ever rooted in contingency chance and change.

I suggest that the potential for hypocrisy is always rooted in dasein – in the prolematic mind – because “I” never knows when value judgments in the here and now will be uprooted in a circumstantial landslide down the road in the there and later.

That’s a good thing. It is important that to the best of our ability we try to to empathize with others. But there are obvious limitations to that.

And those making these choices are no less dasein. And they are no less likely to bump into folks who decide instead that, “no, there is only one entirely objective truth: mine.” Or “ours”.

Then it comes down to who has the power to enforce a particular agenda.

I have absolutely nothing against any deontologist content merely to articulate her arguments and try to persuade others to share them. My concern is in pointing out how historically many, “it is your duty and your obligation as a good citizen to…” kind of folks were not content to stop there.

And the rest as they say really is history.

Deontological thinking is always potentially dangerous because it holds the very real possibility of becoming politically autocratic. The hypocrisy here revolves around not allowing others to argue for conflicting moral obligations. And that is often deadly for democracy.

And who gets to say when it is one of those times? As long as someone is willing to acknowledge this will always be just a point of view rooted in dasein I am willing to concede that, with respect to some behaviors, it may as well be [for all practical purposes] as though there were objective truths here. Given the size of the consensus, for example.

Please read this:

Now:

Morality is an extension of our subjective values. Rationality is just efficiently, effectively and consistently working to the benefit of these subjective values or assumptions.

The unproblematic soul has chosen their subjective values and (often) rationally makes the extension to base their actions and path through life on these assumptions.

Now, to your question…

To obviate ‘conflicting goods’, one must find common ground. It’s fair to assume everyone wants to be alive, otherwise they would have killed themselves. So everything that protects life should rationally be the interest of all people. Therefore, an argument against violence : “If we condone violence, we condone violence upon you. Do you want this?” This can be extended to all common ground attributes.

I would consider ‘Selfish bastards’ to be irrational, based on the argument above. I must define what I see as the ‘Selfish bastard’. A SB is someone who has absolutely no consideration for the well being of others. This is harmful to the common ground, shared by all humanity.

To obviate ‘Selfish Bastards’, one must cure them of their irrationality OR dismiss them as being incurable (which is inaccurate) and therefore ignore their assessment of reality. If we do the latter, then they are not in conflict of the unproblematic soul’s argument for morality and rationality.

And, now the argument itself. The Zeitgeist Movement(.com) is about how to extend about the assumed mutual interests shared by people. If they stray from the principles, they could be considered immoral and irrational.

EDIT: I sense this post will be ignored. That makes me a sad Panda… =(

I give up, I am afraid. You were closer to responding to my points, but in generally missed them. For example. I was NOT suggesting you assert your position like Mo does. That doesn’t make any sense, in fact.

But, really, to the best of my knowledge I presented my points fairly clearly and you missed more than 90%. I haven’t experienced that before here. Even the people who hate my ideas tend to respond much more to the points I am making. This was like I was speaking in a different language.

But perhaps, metaphorically, that’s the case. Who knows. I do have to stop, however.

“Being rational” makes sense to me when your aim is to act out the value judgment you have chosen. For example, if you choose capitalism over socialism there are clearly more rather than less rational [unproblematic] ways to go about owning and operating an investment bank.

But is capitalism more or less rational [unproblematic] than socialism as a moral foundation?

And where do our “subjective value judgments” reside here if not in dasein? Do they reside instead in “the truth”?

But the conflicting goods remain. They are merely subsumed in the compromise. What I am curious about is the extent to which philosophers can make the need for compromise go away.

Instead “out in the world we live in” we find a greater or a lesser consensus revolving around particular behaviors. For example, there is a considerable consensus among the folks in my culture that committing cold blooded murder is immoral. But then some anti-abortionists insist that abortion itself is no less than cold blooded murder. Or should be thought of as such.

“Common ground” applications are no less rooted out in particular worlds viewed in particular ways.

My argument is that philosophically we can’t make this go away. We can devise arguments like the “Golden Rule” but we can’t show why arguments that reject it are necessarily irrational.

Instead, we rationalize what we believe. If, for example, someone argues we should not execute prisoners because we would not want to be executed ourselves, an advocate of the death penality might insist, “yes, but we did did rape and then murder an innocent mother of 4”.

Okay, the selfish bastard notes your objection and continues to act in accordance with his own selfish desires. His only concern is in not getting caught; he knows others do not share his point of view.

Again, watch the film Goodfellas [or the HBO series The Sopranos] and imagine their reaction to your argument.

Yes, that happens over and over and over again in these posts. We can’t even convince others to grasp the issues the way we do let alone to agree with our point of view.

But that makes sense to me. There are always multiply ways in which to understand the meaning of the words we use. And once we entangle the words in all of the differing ways in which we can understand ourselves out in the world…

But that is considerably less the case with things that are able to be understood objectively as in fact true.

That is probably because I am not a “real philosopher”. I am concerned only with making distinctions between what real philosophers can demonstrate is true unproblematically for everyone [short of going all the way out to the end of the Cartesian limb] and what can only be a point of view rooted in the world of conflicting human behaviors rooted in conflicting value judgments rooted in conflicting narratives rooted in dasein.

Language can note what is true at times and note what is only opinion at other times.

Sam Harris from The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason:

[b]A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species of belief in action. Your beliefs define your vision of the world; they dictate your behavior; they determine your emotional responses to other human beings. If you doubt this, consider how your experience would suddenly change if you came to believe one of the following propositions:

You have only two weeks to live.
You’ve just won a lottery prize of one hundred million dollars.
Aliens have implanted a receiver in your skull and are manipulating your thoughts.

These are mere words—until you believe them. Once believed, they become part of the very apparatus of your mind, determining your desires, fears, expectations, and subsequent behavior.[/b]

Is this true? And if it is true – if one believes it is true – the question for those who grapple with it philosophically is this: to what extent can we shape our beliefs based on a rational pursuit of knowledge? And to what extent are our beliefs far too complex to be reduced to this?

Is this something we can understand fully? Or, instead, is what we imagine we understand fully merely a manifestation of what we have come to believe is true [as dasein] over the years? How can we untangle and then differentiate the two vantage points [intellectual trajectories] reasonably? And what if we can’t?

Even more intriguing, perhaps, what are the roles that emotional and psychological states [and the unconscious id, the naked ape] play in propelling us to embrace particular beliefs; in order to [among other things] achieve the sort of equillibrium and equanimity generally associated with feeling grounded in that which is perceived as ever true.

Might not these questions [ultimately] be inextricably and inexplicably bewildering, impenetrable; so much so that many feel compelled to obviate them once and for all by subsuming their point of view in one or another transcending confessional? And doesn’t that seem to be far more important than whatever particular point of view it happens to be?

It certainly would explain some of the extreme, fanatical behavior we have seen rationalized by men and women down through the centuries. They do these things – build death camps, fly jet planes into buildings, turn themselves into bombs, embrace one or another enlightenment, worship and adore all manner of hopelessly conflicting Gods, reduce human relationships down to all manner of hopelessly conflicting ideologies, embrace all manner of hopelessly conflicting philosophies of life – because it feels comforting, ameliorative to believe that what they think and do is…necessary.

Keith Ansell Pearson from How to Read Nietzsche:

…from first to last, Nietzsche can be found wrestling with the meaning of his cheerfulness. The German word in The Gay Science is Heiterkeit, used ironically in the sense of ‘that’s going to be fun’, as for example, when out on a walk, you watch a huge black cloud approaching and foresee getting drenched. You go on the walk even though you know that risks are involved. The way in which Nietzsche presents his cheerfulness…clearly contains something of this sense, indicating a spirit of adventure and fearlessness with regard to the pursuit of knowledge.

There are black clouds and then there are the black clouds. Dispel the one inside your head and the ones you see out on the horizon are nearly always much easier to conquer and dispense with. But sooner or later you will happen upon a cloud so tumultuous – so utterly pitch black – that all the cheerfulness in the world won’t put even a dent in it; let all alone lance it.

Nietzsche recognizes the death of God liberates us from any deontological duties or obligations. We are free to plot our own way. Or far freer than those who feel compelled to justify what they do as being in accordance with either God or His secular equivalent.

But as to whether this will instill cheerfulness in us is always predicated on the profoundly problematic nature of the black clouds at hand. We all have our own unique breaking point. Sometimes we shrink the clouds and sometimes the clouds shrink us. Thus cheerfulness is usually a psychological state born out of experience and not a philosphical platform upon which we order experience like someone conducting an orchaestra.

Nietzsche was said to be a yes man. He said yes to life. He said yes to adventure…to the fearless exploration of human existence. Indeed, the ubermensch would be inconceivable if he or she did not embrace life and living to the utmost. But you can only manage to sustain philosophical and psychological cheerfulness [whilst conquering the world] when the world is not in the midst of conquering you instead.

In other words, philosophy, it might be said, revolves around reflecting on where you happen to find yourself situated inside this problematic tug of war. Great philosophy, on the other hand, revolves around the moment you realize it is you who are tugging at both ends of the rope. You are the rope in fact. Or, for some of us [those embedded in the most tumultuous and blackest of clouds], what is left of it.

So: is that a more or a less “knowledgable” assessment of Nietzsche’s “cheerful” human condition?

Nathan Scott in Mirrors of Man in Existentialism:

It is said of a certain self-portrait in the nude by sixteenth-century German painter Albrecht Durer that he sent it to his physician with the message: ‘Right there, the spot colored yellow, where my finger’s pointing—that’s where it hurts.’ And in the period following World War I something of the same sort began to be said, with ever increasing urgency, by poets like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats; by novelists like Franz Kafka and James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner; by dramatists like Eugene O’Neill and Bertolt Brecht. Nor was this pervasive sense of crisis being expressed only in imaginative literature: it is also very much to be felt in the great classic painting and sculpture of the twentieth century. Those strange double-faced creatures, for example, which Picasso was producing…look out at a world as if they are aghast at what they see; or, again, the figures that were produced by a sculpter like Giacometti seem, in their fragile slenderness and delicacy, to express a sense of man as one helpless and naked and utterly vulnerable. And the strange new music…the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern and Edgard Verese…appeared also, in its eerie disonance, to be singing out a similar vision. Indeed, even the new science of the period—the physics, say, of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr—was beginning to represent the world as influenced by factors beyond the reach of reason. And the sense of the human situation as something absurd and insecure was, of course, being expressed most emphatically by the new psychology of Freud.

In turn, it is within this context that one must approach the philosophy of existentialism. It is situated historically, to be sure. But to what extent does the trajectory of all the disciplines above reflect a point of view regarding human interaction that transcends history…culture…political economy?

There was a time, of course, when most thought the “function” of philosophy revolved around the rational pursuit of wisdom. Know thyself. But in this day and age philosophers seem better suited to negociate and to collaborate pragmatically on a journey into and through the irrational instead. And, perhaps, to suggest that, in many crucial respects, there are no exits out. There is only coming up with particular strategies for dealing with it.

In one sense, however, the historical figures within the existential movement seemed unable to extricate their philosophy from the enlightened clutches of Logos. Instead, they spoke of human existence as being authentic or inauthentic. The crisis we faced was thought to revolve around choosing a bona fide freedom. So, what was projected to be a solution to the metaphysical mess started by Plato and Aristotle simply became another problem no one could resolve.

The crisis, in other words, still whirls around living our lives…and not in knowing what that means.

The Philosopher is not merely the one who proposes questions for which there are no reasonable answers, nor the one who proposes answers for which there are no reasonable uses, but the one who proposes useful answers for which there are no reasonable questions.