the psychology of objectivism - one possible narrative

Here, the distinction I make is between language able to denote the objective truth and language rooted more or less in personal opinion.

If a doctor is performing an abortion there may be different words used to describe the operation as a medical procedure. But then it is only a matter of learning the sounds invented in different parts of the world to encompass the words used in order to communicate coherently with the pregnant woman or with other doctors.

But the medical procedure itself transcends gender or race or ethnicity or sexual preference or religious convictions or political values.

It is only when we shift gears and the language used focuses instead on the morality of abortion, that objectivity [eventually] gives why to the subjective/subjunctive parameters of value judgments.

And it is here that we bump into the manner in which I construe dasein and conflicting goods.

I would only suggest that, again, with respect to those relationships that language can in fact denote objectively [the laws of math and science, empirical fact, the logical rules of language etc], there is a right word and a wrong word. But with respect to identity and value judgments, right and wrong can always be rationalized by making certain assumptions about what is true or false.

Thus there are folks who insist that abortion is immoral because it results in the killing of innocent human life. Meanwhile there are other folks who insist that abortion is moral because otherwise women will be forced to give birth against their will. And that is immoral.

Thus conflicting goods. Both sides have arguments that the other side is unable to make go away. But we can’t live in a world where both sides prevail.

The same is true with all other moral conflicts that make the headlines day after day after day.

Even extreme behavior like rape can be rationalized. If one starts from the premise that, morally, personal gratification is the center of the universe [in a world sans God] anything can be justified if one is willing to accept the consequences of living with those who will punish such behavior. And then with God, all bets are off, right? What monstrosity has not been rationalized through religion? Or, for the secularists, through ideology [Reason].

What is crucial though is that behaviors must be fitted into one or another legal and political contraption. And here that can revolve around either God or ideology or democracy. What’s important to me is in recognizing that if there be no deontological agenda open to us, the only recourse is moderation, negotiation and compromise. But that will always be fluid and unstable and problematic.

But at least most folks are able to make their own existential leap to a frame of mind they deem the most rational/moral. Instead, I’m rather hopelessly entangled in this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

My point is that the scholastic/didactic “reasoning” that folks like Satyr and Lyssa employ revolves largely around the definitions that they give to words such that the meaning of the words used in their [largely] abstract arguments is necessarily true because it is predicated on the internal logic derived from the definition/meaning they give to the words.

And, in fact, it is when you take that circular logic down here and plug it into actual moral and political conflicts that you begin to ascertain the limitations of their serial assertions.

Almost all of the objectivists focus the beam on these clouds of abstraction over there.

And, with Satyr and Lyssa and Magnum, I have asked them repeatedly to give us examples of how they actually do walk the talk in their interactions with others. But that necessarily does involve bringing their theoretical jargon down to earth and [so far] they won’t go there.

Moral decisions have real life consequences and it is through these consequences that one determines their value.

Furthermore, one has to learn how to separate the genesis of a decision with its value.

I can decide using a dice throw, or using my “dasein”, and still be correct because the genesis of a decision is separate from its value.

In short, the quality of a decision should be measured against reality, against its real life consequences.

Because we all see from different perspectives. Brain matter does that to us. lol And we would prefer to be stubborn and/or right in our assumptions than to simply come to creating synthesis.

iambiguous

So, what is it that you are asking for here? That people reveal particular things within their own private lives that would point to their relationships with others - how objective they are capable of being or how subjectivity rules their lives. That would be an interesting thing to indulge in and as you say it would bring anything being discussed more down to earth - kind of getting into the nitty gritty.
But it’s safe not doing that. That requires a certain degree of self-trust and discernment.
But in the name of clarification and synthesis, gee how good it would be.

Just more of the same.

You make a series of didactic assertions. I respond to them, probing the extent to which they may or may not be applicable to actual conflicting behaviors derived from conflicting value judgments.

You ignore the probe and just make new assertions.

Now, I’m not saying that what you assert to be true is not true. I am simply asking you to situate the assertions in a moral conflict we are all familiar with and/or or in personal experiences you have had in confronting the odious “liberals” who just don’t get it.

I have gone down this road so many times …

For example, abortion.

Up to a certain point in the gestation period, the fetus cannot live outside of the woman’s womb. Before week 22, there is no chance of survival outside the womb.
Up to a certain point in the gestation period, the fetus does not have a developed brain or body and cannot be considered as a conscious human being.
Scientifically documented.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viab … thresholds
Therefore, it is moral to abort a fetus before week 22. Objective reasoning.

“But how on Earth can you make an argument to convince someone who believes that the fetus is a human being at conception, that it is moral to abort before week 22?”

I just did. Off the skyhooks. No abstract words. No theoretical assertions.

And when he responds that some people will not be convinced, this would be making into a kind of criterion for knowledge ‘no one is unconvinced by the argument’.
No such argument can exist, including scientific ones. Even mathematical proofs and proofs in symbolic logic - iow objectively infallible and/or by definition - will not convince everyone.

Just to avoid a repeated muddle.

Keep begging me.

Maybe it will work.

Wow! I didn’t even know I was begging!!

Yes, some folks are uncomfortable divulging personal information online. Either about themselves or others. And that’s not exactly an irrational point of view, is it?

But there are ways to do this without naming names.

For example, on other threads I have divulged an experience I had with “John” and “Mary”. John impregnated Mary. Mary chose to abort the baby. This led to the disintegration of their impending marriage. Why? Because John was infuriated that Mary would do this without first discussing it with him. And John was opposed to abortion.

John and Mary are not their real names. And the episode did not unfold on a college campus. I respected their privacy but choose to use this particular example as the manner in which I first came to piece together the manner in which I construe dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

It was a truly profound experience for me because up until then I had always viewed moral issues like this from the perspective of either/or. In other words, As a Christian, as an Objectivist, as a Marxist, as a Feminist. As an objectivist.

And it was around this time that I bumped into William Barrett’s The Irrational Man. And from that I bumped into this:

For the choice in…human [moral conflicts] is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the ultimate outcome and even—or most of all—our own motives are unclear to us. The terror of confronting oneself in such a situation is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rules that will apply, if only to save them from the task of choosing themselves.

And it was when I situated Barrett’s argument here in the experience I had with John and Mary, that I began to truly grasp what philosophers like Wittgenstein were suggesting: that there were profound limitations to language and logic pertaining to actual human interactions. Especially when they come into conflict over value judgments.

Besides, I offer didacticists like Magnus, Satyr and Lyssa the option of framing their argument by situating it instead in a moral issue that clearly precipitates conflicting moral and political agendas. I like to use abortion becasue that is the issue that first prompted me to explore these relationships existentially. But they are certainly welcome to choose any other issue.

Huh? Are you telling me that if others propose arguments [as they have] that human life begins as far back as conception itself they are necessarily wrong? And that if they choose an abortion after the 22nd week, they are necessarily immoral?

Do you even think through what you are proposing?

In other words, are you suggesting that those who do not think as you do here are necessarily irrational? You actually believe that?!

Here, read this: princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/wdhbb.html

Oh, and by the way, as I have asked you time and time again, how do you integrate your moral “objectivism” here with your belief in God?

Talk about the psychology of objectivism!!

No, my point is that folks on both sides of the abortion conflagration accumulate criteria that is linked to the assumptions they make as to when a human life begins. In other words, given those assumptions, both sides are able to make convincing arguments. Either using the tools of philosophy or science.

Then what?

It is precisely the “muddle” that the objectivists seek to avoid by insisting that they have arrived at a set of premises/assumptions that makes their own moral agenda necessarily rational. And then if others do not share it, they are necessarily irrational.

Alas, you are becoming more and more like Magnus. You pop into threads where I post, level your criticisms, and then after I respond, you disappear. Only to come back later with yet more assertions about how I’ve got it all wrong.

And yet, ironically, the point I keep trying to make is that my own arguments, in being rooted existentially in dasein, can never be more than my own personal opinions here and now. Opinions that over the years [in a world bursting at the seams with contingency chance and change] have evolved profoundly as I acquired new experiences, new relationships and new sources of information.

Just like you, right?

I test moral decisions against reality, I don’t test them against other people.

Do you understand that, you retard?

You are asking me to discuss John and Mary . . . but that is pointless, you idiot. I don’t want to discuss John and Mary, I want to discuss John and reality, or Mary and reality.

Do you get that, you imbecile?

John wants Mary to abort because he does not want a child . . . he is not ready for a child, he cannot raise a child, he does not want a dysfunctional family.

Mary refuses to do so because Mary is incapable of controlling her emotions.

Her interests are short-term. She only wants to feel okay. This comes at the cost of long-term interests, at the cost of family.

John’s interests are long-term. He does not care about feeling bad in the present if that is going to save him from feeling terrible in the future.

Do you get that!?

They have different priorities. John prioritizes family, Mary prioritizes her feelings.

Mary is the stupid one, selfish one.

She wants the baby, cause she’s too weak to kill it. She will raise a retard thinking she’s raising a genius . . . she will use denial to hide the fact that he is turning out a retard.

Or are you going to tell me that prioritizing feelings is just as okay as prioritizing family?

Think about it, retard.

I was using language as a metaphor for morals. Certainly within a language there is a right and a wrong, just as there is a right and a wrong within one particular set of morals. Calling a potato an apple is incorrect… unless you’re French :wink:
But there are many languages, as there are many sets of morals. You can call a potato potato, you can call it batata, you can call it patata, you can call it papas, you can call it pomme-de-terre, and in all three cases you are correct.
Your choice to use one of these words is not only dependent on your preference, or your ability, or your knowledge. It is also dependent on the context. When you leave your country and you go to a distant place, you can yell “I want a goddamn potato!” all you want, and that will take you nowhere.
Similarly, if I go to one of those extremely islamic countries, I will be expected to cover my hair. I may insist that I will not cover my hair because it is my way and my way is the right thing, and break a law, end up in prison or stoned to death or whatever those ass-backwards people do to cheeky chicks.
So is demanding that women be covered right, or wrong? It’s right and wrong, depending on where you are and depending on who you are.
To me it’s wrong, still I’d cover my hair because I value my life more than I would value making some kind of statement about women’s rights, but there are plenty of stories of people to whom making that sort of statement is more important than their own personal safety.
Just an example.
Anyway, too much typing… basically, when in France, eat your damn ground apples with mayonnaise.

There isn’t with language, a right and a wrong. There are many rights, and many wrongs.
Why can we not live in a world where both sides prevail?

I recognize that as well, and that it being fluid, unstable and problematic is a given.
What I am asking you is why do you think it must not be so. What is your end-game here, peace on earth? Some sort of utopia where nobody fights about anything because everyone thinks the same… everyone is the same?

Don’t you know who you are?

Here is an anecdote.
On that thread that Lyssa linked you, about whether or not one would save a drowning child, when pressed for an answer, she said she would flip a coin. Later on, she seems to have inconspicuously removed that post.
You can read this as a metaphor as well, if you want to.

Your starting premise is that there is no right and wrong in morality. Your conclusions easily follow.
If this was a questions about mathematics, like 0.99999…=1, then you would dismiss some arguments as academic, or one of the participants did not understand the context, or one of the participants is an imbecile.
But when it comes to morality, then you become paralyzed. You can’t reason about morality. Nobody can be wrong.

But you want to have a discussion about it. You want to read arguments presented about real-life situations.

No you don’t.

There is no necessary right and wrong … but when I present an argument, then I am ‘not thinking it through’, I am an idiot and I am wrong.

Do you bother to think any more? Or is your hypocrisy so ingrained that there is no longer any point?

You can’t discuss it sans God. Adding God to the mix would just add useless complications.

Yeah, people thinking about stuff that happens in life and presenting arguments. And then deciding which argument is right and which argument is wrong. Reasoning.

First, answer my questions, please.

Now, my starting premise is that, in the absense of a demonstrable God or a demonstrable deontological moral argument, right and wrong is rooted in dasein; and that individuals can provide reasonable arguments from both sides of any particular issue merely by making certain assumptions about what is true or false. You seem to be arguing that your own rendition of what constitutes prenatal human life is true objectively. And, therefore, anyone who obtains/performs an abortion after the 22nd week, is necessarily behaving immorally. Why? Because you insist that science has established that after the 22nd week, the fetus become a human being.

You know, objectively.

By the way, did you read my link or not? Is that not science?

Yes, I have acknowledged any number of times that, when it comes to morality, I am entangled in this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

What I am interested in from folks like you then are arguments that show this is not a reasonable point of view. And I agree it would not be if it could be established that a particular omniscient/omnipotent God does in fact exist. Or if, philosophically, a deontological argument can be established such that the conflicting goods rooted in abortion dissolve and all rational men and women are able to discern their one true moral obligation when confronted with any particular abortion.

You seem to argue that both are within our grasp. But, in my opinion, you do not demonstrate why others should share your point of view.

When have I resorted to name-calling in discussing these relationships with you? Sure, sometimes I don my polemicist persona and push folks really hard. But I almost never resort to the sort of declamatory rhetoric the KTS crowd is famous for. Well, sans the occasional really shitty mood.

I’m back to this: Huh?

Do you believe in the Christian God or not? And, if you do, how, as a Christian, do you address the question of abortion as it pertains to your argument above and as it pertains to Judgment Day. God either provides the faithful with an obligatory moral agenda re abortion or any particular Christian is able to rationalize it so as to embrace either pro or anti choice political factions. And that would seem to make a mockery of Judgment Day.

I’m saying that, objectively, before week 22 the fetus is not human. I’m not insisting, I’m saying that it is reasonable to think so.

I read it and I do not think that it is science.

Stop bringing God into it.

Honestly, is my opinion not reasonable? Is it not convincing for others?

You are passive-aggressive. You ask people to translate what I have written. What does that mean? You attempt to suggest that what I write is stupid-incomprehensible to an intelligent person. You don’t come right out and say that I’m a moron. You’re indirect.

Please consider me an atheist in these arguments. Thank you in advance.

So the science from the link I found is necessarily wrong. Only your science link reflects the one objective truth. And, as luck would have it, your science is fully in alignment with your own moral convictions!

Okay, suppose a woman that you know has an abortion after the 22nd week. What is your moral obligation in confronting her?

That seems a bit preemptory. How are the arguments I make relating to God and religion and morality not applicable to the psychology of objectivism?

It is reasonable, given the manner in which you attach it to particular assumptions. In other words, that, pertaining to the ontological nature of prenatal life, only your science links are true objectively; and that bringing God into it unnecessarily complicates things.

What the hell does that mean? You either are or are not a Christian. How does one become an atheist in an exchange like this and not an atheist everywhere else? Or are there other places that you are an atheist too?

I think the ‘science’ in that link is not correct. Of course, I can’'t say that. All science babble is equally correct. Right?

Abortion after week 21 is immoral. What more can I say?

My science links are reasonable and objective. If you have a better argument then make it.

It means that I can look at this detached from my personal feelings about God and Christianity. It means that I can look at this with some objectivity. I don’t have to look at this as a Christian or non-Christian. That’s you imposing your POV on me. I’m not so dense that I can only see this from one perspective.

iambiguous,

I think that we all need to be cautious and uncomfortable in a good way when it comes to divulging information on line, especially out in the open forum. There are people who just cannot be trusted and there are those who can be.
It’s quite intelligent and sane and rational NOT to. But I wasn’t so much talking about doing that as much as I was perhaps speaking about someone skirting a particular issue of their lives and showing how that person came to realize that what they thought just wasn’t so - in other words, our so-called objective point of view eventually came to be realized as a subjective point of view, which also at some point we come to realize that the whole tamale, that point of view has changed.

I don’t want to derail the thread here but I kind of see an ethical problem even in doing that. Unless a person reveals something his/her -self, even to reveal something without naming names I don’t think is right.

Is this real or just a scenario?

Hmmm…that’s kind of a slippery slope for me but then i don’t have all the information, i mean, what you did exactly. Again, was that a real situation which led to those negative consequences?

Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying here, when it comes to ethics or any human psychology, there is no just either/or I don’t think. But I suppose that at some point, it has to come down to that after much reflection and sometimes the more we reflect the more chaos enters our mind.

As for this which was asked Phyllo (I think)

I think what needs to be done here is to first put YOUR moral obligation in confronting here. I think that moral is subjective. As for myself, I would feel it necessary to respond to her in some way - try to get her to keep the baby and then if she still didn’t want it, to have the child adopted out. For me, after a certain point I would consider it to be murder but that’s just me. Some people only see human after birth - they don’t see human potential, they don’t see the pain which that unborn child would necessarily experience. They also don’t see that if given time, they might have changed their mind but they need to think these things out long before. But that’s just me. Since you mentioned abortion. I am anti abortion still am but at some point I lessened my constraint on that just a bit. I used to feel that every child no matter what had a right to be born…even those who it was known would have been born with a degree of brain damange. I’ve since changed my mind on that. I’m not speaking of children with Down Syndrome. We’ve come a long way since then and these children sometimes live more productive lives than those who do not have Down Syndrome.I must have been insane to think thought that all children needed to be saved. . One also has to come from the child’s quality of life, the child’s life, not just the convenience of the mother. If there is so little quality of life then what is the actual purpose of bringing that child into the world, but for his/her sake alone.

I’ve experienced through a friend the lack of quality, of mostly anything and everything, in the life of a child who will have very little quality of life. It was that child who changed my view on that. I felt at one time that every child had the right to its own life, no matter what. But I don’t think that way anymore considering the circumstances of what I have seen and experienced in “this” child. I just mention that to show that our perspectives and beliefs change, we come to think differently morally and ethically based on different experiences. We change our midns about things. They interface with the world and we see things as our mind sees them according to how we identify ourselves but one day they interface and we see things with different eyes. Things are not, cannot be so written in stone…unless our brains and our minds are written in stone. I think that we’re sometimes afraid to let ourselves be open to change and to a differen perspective and to the perspectives of others. We immediately close ourselves up. It is only we who are right in our “objectivity” until as some point, if we’re lucky, we come to realize just how subjective our “truth” is and not necessarily truth at all. But who knows. We have to give up the identification of that human being in part who we see ourselves as.

We are rivers and we need to flow like the river does. lol As rivers, we carry things along with us, new and fresh things and we leave other things behind. Sorry for derailing the thread.