a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

Your question is similar to those of Iam. There would be no use linking you to any given posts, because it’s a philosophy that I have not yet grounded completely. Not long ago I would have just given you a link to an essay that was one of my major influences, but there’s too much in it that I don’t want to associate myself with just yet, if ever.

The naturalistic philosophy doesn’t really lend itself to summarized form but I’ll try.

There’s a line between the natural and the artificial. The natural includes everything that is without the influence of humans, it also includes somethings that are. In other words, all that is artificial is human, not all that is human is artificial.

What may seem a minor difference may actually have major implications, so all things must be discerned with care and without exception. When one personally does this he is living naturally even if in an artificial environment. An environment itself, if built by those who do that, can be actually be said to be a natural environment.

There’s the existence of what I refer to as ‘base’ and what I’ll refer to as ‘noble’ and of course all that is in-between. I also refer to the two sides as that which has low quality and that which has high quality. Complexity itself is one of the major criterions for determining this, but I’ll omit any more detail on that for the sake of brevity.

All those who’re natural are seeking to become of higher quality than they are. It doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily of high quality, but that they don’t disassociates life and the act of becoming of higher quality. They don’t necessarily actively risk death to become more; the distinguishing character here between them and those who’re unnatural is that those who’re unnatural openly oppose becoming higher quality in order to pursue a longer life or empty purposes such as ill-defined ‘pleasure’.

Though those who are already of high quality do actively risk death to achieve even higher quality.

Those of high quality must respect those large number of those of low quality, but they have little or no regard for them

Everyone is born with a certain degree of potential. We can never know what potential one has, or has had, for certain, but through honest consistent discernment we can make a good estimate. I have yet to establish significant criteria for this. Whatever one’s full potential may be, it’s already indicative of some degree of high quality if one aspires to reach it.

With you so far and I think I could say the same thing, though I haven’t thought of it in those words.

Can tyou get concrete? LIke is getting better at an intrument an example? Clearly it is not morally better. Noble is a trigger word for me. I have noticed how when most people use it - those who have spent some time in some nihilist niche - tend to mean some classical (as opposed to romantic) bullshit presentation of a part of the self at the expense of others. Here I was pleased to see it as characterized (merely, I could say) by complexity. That carries none of the bagage of words like ‘refined’ and does not immediately bring up images of upper class greeks or white wigged court members in 17th century France. But what does it mean, concretely, for you?

Can one improve artificially?
(I ask this to clarify)

What did nihilism prevent that this naturalistic philosophy allows?
or what does the latter foster/inpsire that the former did not (as well)?

I like the below question, I’ll address your other questions in more detail later, I just want to give a quick answer to this.

If I were to answer from the perspective of one fully and unapologetically immersed in the naturalistic philosophy then no those artificial people could not. But, obviously one who is very artificial has goal he sets for himself, base goals that usually revolve around a long pleasurable life, whether he would admit to it or not. If he makes it so that he has abilities that make him more able to live such a life, then he would certainly call it improvement and it would be so to him.

From the perspective of one who is natural and of high quality, he would also be able to see improvement in those who are artificial and are not making any progress on becoming natural. But, it would be a very cold impersonal perception of improvement, as in; the natural person may find the artificial person to be of more use to them or of less a nuisance than before.

Of course the purely natural or purely artificial person is just a conceptualization. People can of course be anywhere in-between and developing a criteria for determining this is the challenge. Your other questions relate to this criteria which I’m studying and developing.

I moved this discussion here:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=185039&p=2448554#p2448552

Thanks. I mean the last thing I wanted here was for this thread to evolve [devolve] into an exchange of serious philosophy!

Still, the invitation stands:

[i]Again, give me some examples of this in your interaction with others. In particular, interactions that revolve around a conflict such that you are confronted with “how ought I to act” here.

What behaviors did you choose because they are in alignment with your core self? What behaviors are “naturally” in alignment with it?[/i]

You’re asking me to take knowing myself to a stage that I’m far from ready for. My philosophies over time have always been interwoven with my actions, I’m not a text-book philosopher. Follow my new thread over time and you may find your answer eventually as I develop my ability to express that philosophy.

I’ll make an effort now, but I know you well enough to be certain that it won’t be enough.

I know someone whose very intelligent, but a jackass, in fact I know many such people, in this case I’m not talking about anyone you’d likely be able to predict. I know that naturally I’m extremely ambitious and that I will ‘sub-consciously’ sabotage any base success I may be making progress towards, because my ambition is towards quality works. When it comes to that person, I’d like to say fuck off, but I know that if I don’t deal with those I can use now, I’m going to have to take more risks later on than I normally might have, and deal with even less pleasant people.

What really is “enough” down here? I just prefer that when ideas relating to identity or value judgments or politics are broached that they be grounded [eventually] in actual existential contexts. Or in personal experiences.

It is only a matter then of probing how and why you became this way and then probing further the extent to which the intelligent jackasses you encounter are willing to do the same. But if both of you conclude that how you are around others is somehow reflective [or indicative] of your “core self” then what would be the point of going further? You are who you are and that’s it.

I just don’t think like this about human identity.

I realize that I must choose my essence or core self and that it must always change, and so I try to adjust my behavior accordingly – if that’s your only objection.

No, my objection is that you are not situating the concept of a “core self” in a particular circumstantial context [in an experience you have had] whereby I can more readily understand what you are trying to tell me about it. What does it mean existentially to choose a core self that must then always change. And in particular with respect to an experience in which your behavior came into conflict with another as a result of values that were in conflict.

sorry, wrong thread.

wrong thread

=) No problem here… sorry that happened to you.

This…

philosophynow.org/issues/107/Why_We_Cant_Agree

…is more or less in alignment with the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein [and conflicting goods] out in the world of human interaction.

Not being able to agree about some things is basically a description of the human condition itself.

Came upon this quote from Salman Rushdie:

Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.

Yes, this also captures the manner in which I try to convey the meaning of dasein. All the variables – some of which we are barely cognizant of – coming together over the years to predispose us to one rather than another meaning. A very personal meaning to say the least.

What then are philosophers to make of this? How are they able to pin down the one true objective meaning when that meaning revolves around conflicting values – around the question “how ought one to live?”

What on earth does this actually have to do with the points that I raise? Consider:

I am an individual…a man; yet, in turn, I am but one of 6,500,000,000 additional men and women that constitutes what is commonly called “mankind”. So, in what sense can I, as an individual, grasp my identity as separate and distinct from mankind? How do I make intelligent distinctions between my personal, psychological “self” [the me “I” know intimately from day to day], my persona [the me “I” project – often as a chameleon – in conflicting interactions with others], and my historical and ethnological self as a white male who happened adventitiously to be born and raised to view reality from the perspective of a 20th century United States citizen?

How is this not applicable to everyone? How is this not applicable to you? Depending on when we are born historically, where we are born culturally, and the actual accumulation of personal experiences that we encounter, how will the manner in which any particular individual’s moral and political values not be profoundly implicated in this?

How do your own transcend it?

Instead, the role of philosophy [in my view] is this: After acknowledging these profoundly existential/problematic components of any particular individual’s indoctrination as a child, what, using the tools of philosophy, can we then go on to establish is within the framework of a rational and virtuous behavior?

In other words, what isn’t “bullshit”? And don’t the moral and political objectivists insist that what isn’t bullshit is what they value? what they embrace as the “ideal”?

Again, you choose the value judgment and we can explore our respective assessments regarding the “conflicting goods” in the philosophy forum.

Or, with respect to extreme behaviors in which there is an overwhelming consensus regarding right and wrong, good and evil, you can address my point regarding the extreme narcissist who roots morality [in a world sans God] in that which he or she construes to be in their own self-interest.

“Heidegger and ethics: from Dasein as being-in-the-world to Dasein as ethical”
Eric Robert Panicco
digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/view … ool_theses

Note: I choose this merely because in Googling “Dasein and ethics” this was the first scholastic account I came upon.

[b]

[/b]

Yes, it’s been a long time since I have construced myself as a “serious philosopher”. Instead, of late, my focus has always been on connecting the dots between those who do think of themselves as taking philosophy seriously and the extent to which someone of this sort implicates philosophy in human interactions out in a particular world that come to clash over conflicting goods.

Sure, there are any number of aspects embedded in human interactions in which that is not the focus at all. Instead “I” here goes about the business of connecting dots between those facets of human interaction that appear to be true for all of us. The stuff that revolves around going through the day knowing that if you do this, that will be the result. It will be that result for anyone who does it. That’s the nature of the either/or world. And to the extent that folks like Heidegger can offer us new insights into this re “the human condition”, fine.

I’ve no doubt that there are any number of “technical issues” here to consider. Techincal issues revolving around perception and conception; revolving in turn around that which is deemed to be rational in sync with that which we either can or cannot know.

But for Heidegger to explore the nature of Dasein and “rarely even bring up ethics”…?

I’m sorry but for folks like me, that seems nothing short of preposterous. Unless, of course, he always intended to bring the “technical” facets of his philosophy out into the world that he lived in. In order to examine them in the context of the particular conflicting goods that were swirling about him in Nazi Germany.

What of Dasein and “the final solution”?

After all, when most Daseins become “fundamentally engaged in the world” around them, they quickly become immersed in “rules of behavior” that garner either rewards or punishments. Indeed, any newspaper or newscast reveals just how being fundamentally engaged with others precipitates all manner of turbulent headlines and editorials.

And this is where my own rendition of Dasein comes in. The existential dasein. The existential “I”.

Back to the beginning. I realized a place we may be talking past each other where I can be clearer.

Contraptions

Two otters approach a river.
Otter A looks both ways, just a quick check for predators, then enters the water.
Otter B looks both ways, back up into the bushes, looks both ways again, then spins in a circle before entering the water.

Why the difference?

Otter A has instinctive caution in open spaces, but beyond that nothing.
Otter B has been attacked several times before entering water by predators. Not only does this make Otter B more nervous than Otter A, but Otter B also, early after the second attack he went through, spun in a circle before entering the water. He has not been attacked since that time. He associates spinning around with making himself safe. (to see how this can happen in animials and also then humans see the experiment described here…

io9.gizmodo.com/how-pigeons-get … us-5746904
)

I think it might be useful to call Otter B’s ritual/activity a contraption, as a metaphor.
I think it would not be useful to call Otter A’s behavior a contraption.

This does not mean that Otter A’s process is correct. Perhaps otters like B will survive and those like otter A will be selected out. Or perhaps Otter B type otters are nicer and God loves them more and one day it will be shown that God wants otters to have that ritual.

I black box all value judgments about the two behaviors.

However, I think in one case we have an extra behavior which has been arrived at through the combination of Otter B’s innate tendencies - perhaps towards caution or something else - and dasein.

Of course, Otter A’s behavior is also a result of the same thing, however there is nothing extra. There is no, for example, behavior caused by conceiving and understanding of pragmatism in Otter A’s behavior. He has less contraptions - barring other exceptions - than Otter B.

So when I encounter you in a discussion and I lack an interest in, say, working out whether determinism is the case, this does not mean I have a contraption you do not have. THAT MIGHT BE THE CASE.

But it also could be the case that your temperment + dasein has led you to believe that seeking the answer is necessary. And I think we can agree that seeking the answer to the issue of determinism/free will is an extra activity. It goes beyond the basic activities we need to engage in.

Now, I do not know if you are like Otter B on this issue and I am like Otter A.

But it seems completely off the table that you might have EXTRA CONTRAPTIONS that make it seem obvious that one would try to figure out determinism/free will, and that one must try to find the solution to conflicting goods.

I suspect that latter is based on a contraption coming out of the very moralistic memes that most of us in the West have been exposed to via the Abrahamic religions. That one must know the good. And if one doesn’t then, even if one doubts it exists, still do all one can to find it.

Obviously I could be wrong about this.

I am not making an issue here of trying to prove my point that you have the extra contraption that shapes your focus, a focus I do not have.

I am trying to create a frame where you would see how this is possible AND that this is the basis of my saying ‘No, I lack a contraption on that issue.’

When I say this you respond as if I have said ‘My approach is better and your should have it.’ Or ‘I am free from the influence of dasein and innate temperment.’

Nope.

The extreme example of a schizophrenic who thinks he must get permission from a door before opening it or the OCD suffering who thinks he must wash his hands 20 times after dinner or he will suffer something terrible are examples where most of us would think it

at least possible

that extra contraptions are involved

and that someone not doing these things could say ‘I lack a contraption that says I must ask the door permission before opening it and I lack a contraption that I have to clean my hands more than once after dinner’

is not saying they are free of dasein or innate tempermental tendencies. (or free from determinism for that matter)

You have tended to drop, recently, adding in that my contraption is one that gives me comfort. And I appreciate that. It’s a ridiculous assumption, since perhaps your engaging in these issues is giving you comfort. But more fundamentallly, it is a mere assumption, based on yourself as the norm.

If you have a different focus than I do, you have that because you need some delusion that gives you comfort because I am suffering this issue.

That is making a universal judgment based on your own temperment and psychology, which are in turn based on your genetics AND your dasein, which are very specific.

Just mull that over in the spirit of charitable reading.

I am going to stay away from you for a while, because I think I have done the best I can without me changing quite a bit in approaching you. I wish you had someone in your corporeal life who could read over your shoulder and give their take.

I certainly have extra contraptions. I see those a combination of dasein and my inborn temperment - not that it is easy to separate out which is the cause in many instances. I am married. In any marriage that works when it works I would guess, but certainly in mine, the fact that we have different extra contraptions and then different lacks of contraptions allows us to respond to each other when these contraptions get hold of us, the negative ones that is. Extra contraptions can be great. I mean, I have worked in the theater and had to develop all kinds of contraptions to make me a decent actor. I chose to learn those, to have them. Some make us feel bad. Some make us feel bad but are useful - as far as I can tell. Like, yes, eating a lot of food after an argument can feel sort of good and facing the feelings that came up can feel bad, but the contraption that I might appreciate not comfort eating the food - a response that is itself a contraption based on dasein and temperment. And I have appreciated such contraptions, some of them leading to the dissovling of the pattern that was not helping me and in th e long run made for more pain, and then itself.

In your world there are just contraptions and there is no way to know which is right.
In my world I feel better overall without extras in many areas and I think I can tell the difference which ones for me, I do not want. Not infallibly. LOL. It is a human skill.

I think that when you focus on what everyone should have as contraptions, you close a door on figuring out which ones you want for yourself, which make your life feel better. When you try to figure out what will make the poeple in Huntsville love eachother, you haven’t even started to find out how to feel OK about yourself. I could be wrong, but I smell a lot of guilt in your incredulity that someone would nto focus on finding the perfect argument that all rational people will listen to and end conflicting goods. That seems like a cross to bear and that seems to me to come from Xiantity, however much you are not a theist.

That cross is a contraption.

Unless you are doing something else here, and it is all a front for being a gadfly to fuck with the objectivists. Well, OK.

I used to think that was the case. That really your approach was rage based, sticking it to them.

If that is the case - and I don’t assume it is either/or or that you would know it - then it’s all fine and dandy, because then on some level you are having a grand time.

But if the OCD guy comes to you and says you have a contraption that means you don’t spend half your day cleaning your hands and you have this contraption to comfort you…

you iambiguous may think - sure, I have a contraption.

Me, I find no gain in hallucinating that I have a contraption in that discussion of the OCD guy.

It depends on the manner in which you construe the meaning of “contraption” here.

For example: google.com/search?tbm=bks&h … ontraption

From my frame of mind, “I” is an existential contraption in that it is pieced together from day to day based on the accumulation of hundreds and thousands of unique and personal experiences, relationships and access to ideas that you made contact with. It is contrived – constructed, deconstructed, reconstructed – out of all of these variables in a world awash in contingency, chance and change.

It is also deemed an intellectual contraption by me because many piece together a sense of self out of the meaning that they impart to a particular collection of words they use to descibe themselves.

Now, some will argue that the human brain is one of nature’s own contraptions. It is extremely complicated and put together in a way that we have barely scratched the surface in exploring.

Also, a contraption able to actually invent the word “contraption” and then squabble over what it is said to really mean.

All the while [some insist] having no actual capacity to do so freely. I “chose” to use the word contraption the way I do here because I was never able not to.

On the other hand, the manner in which I do “choose” to use it here…what does that have to do with the behaviors of otters?

What do otters know of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

I’m at a loss to understand your point about them.

You act as though I were trying to reconfigue the word “contraption” into this…thing. As though I can take it out of my pocket and say, “look everyone, a contraption”.

Schizophrenia might be thought of as one of the mental illness “contraptions” the brain is able engender in any particular mind. A classic example of how the brain itself takes charge of “I” and chemically, neurologically compels it to think and feel and say and do any number of things it would never have chosen before the illness took root.

Unless of course even a disease free mind itself is doing only what nature compels it to do.

No, in my world, “I” struggle to understand the extent to which I can ever really be certain of any of this. There are relationships that appear to true objectively for all of us. Relationships that appear to be entirely correlated year in and year out such that most of us speak of them as inhabiting the “either/or” world.

What I then ponder is whether in a determined universe even the is/ought world is just another manifestation of the either/or world.

So, is this or is this not just psycho-babble? Have you “captured” me here? Maybe.

But my concern with the people at Huntsville is the same as my concern with the people here: the extent to which they are themselves able to make that crucial distinction between what they believe is true or think they know “in their head” and what they are able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to believe and know.

There are “the facts” about any particular execution. There is the fact of the execution itself. But what are the facts when the discussion shifts to capital punishment as a value judgment.

That is when I tumble down into my hole. Why? Because given how I have come to understand the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy, it makes sense to.

But: How I have come to understand them is no less an existential contraption. I have no way myself in which to demonstrate that others ought to share my point of view.

As near as I can figure myself out here [re motivation and intention] it somehow revolves around this:

“He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest.” John Fowles

But how would I even begin to go back over the course of my actual lived life and piece together all of the thousands upon thousands of existential variables that predisposed me here and now to note that?

It’s like that scene from sex, lies and videotape…

Ann: I just wanna ask a few questions, like why do you tape women talkin’ about sex? Why do you do that? Can you tell me why?
Graham: I don’t find turning the tables very interesting.
Ann: Well, I do. Tell me why, Graham.
Graham: Why? What? What? What do you want me to tell you? Why? Ann, you don’t even know who I am. You don’t have the slightest idea who I am. Am I supposed to recount all the points in my life leading up to this moment and just hope that it’s coherent, that it makes some sort of sense to you? It doesn’t make any sense to me. You know, I was there. I don’t have the slightest idea why I am who I am, and I’m supposed to be able to explain it to you?

I’m basically Graham here.

And I suspect that any number of folks react to my frame of mind here as they do because they suspect that I seem to be suggesting that they are too.

I hope you have noticed that Faust is now saying similar things to what I have been saying about the way you engage in dialogue: that you shift the context of statements and do not actually (in many cases) respond to points made. And that after shifting the context, you then say that what we said ‘failed’, where this failure has nothing to do with our intentions or the context.

Phyllo has had similar reactions.

If you have the goal to gain some sense of ‘how to live life’ or how to resolve conflicting goods or any other issue via dialogue, you might want to notice that other people you claim to respect have similar reactions to your ability to actually read and listen to the people you are having a dialogue with.

You can tell each of us individually that ‘really’ we are afraid of your probing or we are objectivists or we are using psychobabble or we are serious philosophers or what we are saying are mere contraptions…

but perhaps noticing the pattern with you as the locus, you might want to consider that you are contributing to the reduced liklihood of finding solutions to your questions or learning something else, or being a worthwhile discussion partner.

Perhaps those are not actually your goals. Being a gadfly, trying to irritate people, having a pastime that is a distraction from pain…as a few other possibilities off the top of my head, are also human endeavors. If they or something other than having a real dialogue are your goals, well, steady ahead. Perhaps I am naive for taking your expressed goals as your real goals.

Steve Colbert with his lovely conservative character expresses conservative goals while actually, obviously, doing something else and having other goals.

Note to others:

What on earth does any of this have to do with the points I raised above?!!

Instead, I become the point. He “exposes” me. The pulls back the curtain and reveals what I am really all about here. Over and over and over again.

In other words, revealing far more what he is really all about in reacting to me.

You know, whatever that is.