phoneutria wrote: iambiguous wrote:phoneutria wrote:
Where satyr situates his morals is where a bit of an incoherence lies. You will see him say that there is no objective morality, no absolutely correct representation of reality, but at other times you will see him say "I speak of reality as it is".
He really should be saying I speak of reality as I see it... shouldn't he?
As with most objectivists of his ilk, the crucial point I am trying to raise has little to do with whatever particular behaviors Satyr deems to be moral or immoral, noble or ignoble. Rather it is the manner in which he insists that only the manner in which he insists on differentiating the ubermen from the sheep, reflects the manner in which you are either one of Us or one of Them.
Really, how different is Satyr's spiel from Ayn Rands? You are either at one with her [him] or you are at one with the collectivists [the retards].
From my perspective [and that's all it is], moral and political objectivism is more likely to be a psychological agenda than a philosophical one.
Well, think of it as if it was language. Language develops in a region of the world and is deeply tied to the culture and the people's way of being. The farther you move from a point, the more difference in accents and vocabulary you will see until it's not the same language anymore. However, if a foreigner moves into my land, I expect them to learn my language so that they can communicate with me, not the other way around. Also, languages are alive, they evolve and adapt. I can learn some interesting sounds and phrases from the foreigner if I have a use for them, and if some new phenomena appears, I'll have to create new expressions to refer to it.
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.
phoneutria wrote: There is no such thing as a right language and a wrong language. But it is my language. In my land, I enforce it.
It is the preservation of a cultural value in it's own land. The foreigner can call that an agenda and choose to fight it. He will be met with resistance.
How does that sound?
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].
phoneutria wrote:Why must all rational men behave the same? Is there ever only one solution to a problem?
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.They can either take what they want and rationalize it in terms of a world where the strong prevail over the weak, or they can try to justify what they do by constructing an intellectual contraption like Satyr's. In other words, he feels compelled to justify his behaviors as more than just the brute facticity of might makes right. Instead, what he rationalizes must be seen as the noble and virtuous thing to do. Only he hardly ever brings this down to earth such that the discussion revolves around actual conflicting human behaviors that we are all familiar with. Instead, it's always ascribed in the lofty [and didactic] rhetoric of The Intellectual.
Or, being less kind, The Pedant.
phoneutria wrote: I see what you mean, but why do you think think that there is anything particularly wrong with justifying one's behaviors through reasoning, even if ultimately you are doing something simply because you want to?
With Satyr, I find that the problem is that at times what he says doesn't match his behaviors, but I won't speak in detail about that. That would be very indelicate.
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.
