the psychology of objectivism - one possible narrative

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.

Double posting because it would be great to get a reply.

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.

All those different words refer to an objective ‘potato’. The question is : Does morality refer to an objective ‘moral potato’ or does it not refer to anything that exists? If there is a ‘moral potato’ within , then there are objective reasonable ways of dealing with it. That does not mean that everyone wants a baked potato, but it does mean that there are effective ways of baking a potato and ineffective ways. There are objectively correct ways to bake a potato.

My metaphor is not about food. It is about language.

There is a physical object, which is extracted from a living plant, which you can swallow and obtain nutrients from. That is real. It’s a fact.
Whatever sounds you use to refer to this physical edible object are a human construct entirely. There are many right and many wrong ways to refer to this object, because there are many languages to choose from. In English, calling it potato is correct, and calling it apple is incorrect. If I am in France and call it potato, I am still correct, but within the setting of being in France, I am incorrect.

Similarly, you have a physical body with which you can cause effects upon other physical objects. That is real as well.
Whatever reasoning or motivations you use to choose your actions are a human construct entirely. There are many right and many wrong ways to act, because there are many moral sets to choose from. In the West, showing my hair is appropriate, and restricting a woman’s freedom to show her hair is inappropriate. If I am in certain places of the East and I show my hair, I am still acting appropriately, but within the setting of being in the East, I am acting inappropriately.

No revelations here. This is all pretty straightforward.

The reason I posed this metaphor is to ask iambiguous if he thinks we should do away with all differences in the world, so we can all speak the same language, think the same, act the same, and live happily ever after in a world where everyone is basically you.

Since I presume that the answer is no, the next question is, if when faced with a decision you act in a specific way because of who you are, why does that make you think you could just as well have acted in the other way. Wouldn’t that make you not… be you?

Is it not inevitable for me to think that my way is the right way? If I am hit with the realization that I am wrong, don’t I fix it, and then become right again?
If you don’t think that you should enforce your own way of living in your own land, what happens when some other people come over? Do you just let them?

Everyone could theoretically agree on a common language. (Which would solve a lot of problems.)
If a new common word refers to a real object, then it would be be simple to come to agreement. Here is a potato and this is our new word for it.
However, if the new common word refers to an abstract noun, then it is not so simple. If a Frenchman does not believe that a word in Esperanto adequately captures the concept of the French word, then how would agreement be possible. How can you argue successfully with him?
This is the essence of Iambig’s posts … “morality is an abstraction and we have no way to convince each other of the correctness of our definitions/meanings”.

What makes you realize that you are wrong? What is the argument? How is it demonstrated?

That’s what he is posting about.

Moral decisions have real life consequences and it is these consequences that determine their rank.

Not people. People merely try to simulate reality using their imagination and experience (which is to say, using information that is available to them.)

The middle-aged retard that goes by the name “iambiguous” has yet to learn about this distinction.

He thinks that moral decisions are about one’s personal preferences, about one’s tastes, one’s “dasein”.

He is too stupid to understand that how one judges is separate from the reality of what is being judged.

His way of thinking: people either enjoy aborting, so they abort, or they enjoy not aborting, and so they don’t abort.

This is how stupid he is.

How stupid he is is also proven by the fact that he thinks that the reason I consider him stupid is simply because he does not agree with me.

Not because his way of thinking is suicidal, but because he simply disagrees with me.

That’s how stupid he is.

Stupid as stupid can be.

He’ll then look at the word “stupid” in my post, count how many times I’ve used it, and then use this to dismiss everything I am saying.

His way of thinking: someone is rude means someone is wrong.

He will never address anything I’m saying. He has never addressed anything I’ve said, and the amount of things I’ve said is plenty.

His ability to adapt is zero.

He will cover his inability to adapt using all sorts of fictions.

It is not him who is unable to adapt, which he proves consistently by repeating himself like an insane person all the while expecting different results, but me.

He does not want to adapt, he wants the world to adapt to him.

I am unable to adapt because I am not giving him the things he wants me to give to him.

And what he wants me to give him is agreement.

He wants me to agree with him.

All the while, of course, projecting this desire on me.

Fair enough.
And I agree with that sentence that I highlighted. You can make someone understand the reasoning behind your actions, but you can’t convince them that that’s the right action, because one’s sense of right and wrong is irreparable linked to who they are. One can only convince oneself.

So there is probably a good chance that you and I would agree on most things concerning rights and wrongs if you’re my cousin, or if we grew up next door to one another, and our moms went to the same tupperware parties.
Whether someone on the other side of town agrees with me on rights or wrongs I don’t know and don’t care, personally. Unless they come here and disagree with me on my front porch. Then I get to poke him with a knife or something… I’m latin.

Just as I will not be convinced that the English word “longing” is a good translation for “saudade” :slight_smile:

And so my answer to "How can you argue successfully with him? " is you don’t.

Anyway…
That goes back to my question… why would you say that, having gone one way, you could have gone either way?
It must be either because you don’t know which right among many rights to pick, or because you have no reverence toward your own notion of right… Which to me says that either you don’t know who you are, or you don’t care about who you are. Going for the toss a coin method, I suppose*.

Which in turn is complemented by your question, what makes you realize you are wrong?

When I speak of “who you are”, I refer to a combination of everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve experienced, and your physical body.
Realizing you are wrong can only come after the fact. It happens through experience. You can be told that fire burns, and that a burn is an unpleasant, irradiating sensation that lingers, but you won’t really know what it is until you apply more heat to your skin than it can take.


*I went on kts to read the other part of this conversation, and I saw that Lyssa linked to the post I thought she had deleted. It was the same conversation at the same time in two separate threads. Honest mistake.

Sorry Lyssa baby.
At least we know you’re not a flip flopper… just a tosser :wink:

Discussing ideas about what is reality is not reality.

Reality is applying moral decisions to your life and then facing the consequences.

You either live and reproduce, or you die and go extinct.

It is from this perspective that we can determine the rank of moral decisions.

People are not reality, they are mirrors of reality.

Whether they agree or disagree is irrelevant.

The middle-aged dude is not interested in real life consequences.

All he cares about is whether people agree or disagree, because that’s what makes him upset.

He is so stupid he thinks that if people disagree that means there is no rank in decisions.

Yet he will continue holding onto his own opinion.

I disagree with Iambig and you. I don’t think that the guy from across town is so different from me that we don’t share a morality or that we can’t understand each others differences on morality. We share a common humanness. And that’s where objective morality comes from … we have many similar experiences - food, sex, disease, death, pain, pleasure, etc. He is not an arachnid from another planet.

Why did Socrates talk with people? He might as well have been talking to himself if he could not convince anyone.
“What is the good life?” - There is no point to discussing such a question if each person is so unique that each one has his own answer. Philosophy is based on commonality.

No, the medical science used by a doctor to perform an abortion is either correct or it is not. In other words, the abortion is performed successfully of it it not.

But how does science [or philosophy] establish the one objective truth regarding when, at or after conception, the unborn becomes a human being? What criteria can be said to encompass the indisputable truth?

But how is this demonstrated beyond all doubt other than by way of you insisting that you believe this to be the case “in your head”?

All this is [again] is you insisting that your science link is right and my science link is wrong. The fact that actual scientists differ about this is moot therefore because only the science that corresponds to your own moral convictions is correct. That part I do get.

Okay, is your God being detached when particular women choose to abort their babies? Is your God being objective?

There either is or there is not a Judgment Day pertaining to your God. And you either are or not in accordance with the will of God here when you maintain that women who abort their babies before the 22nd week, are acting in a completely moral manner.

Does or does not this opinion of yours matter to God?

You’re the one who keeps writing that science and mathematics are objective - that they are different from morality. Therefore, there is a way to objectively decide the scientific truth. One can decide when an unborn is a human being based on science. Or are you changing your mind and saying that even science is not objective?

This is already being done when comatose patients are unplugged. Why not the unborn?

You have the objective scientific fact and you apply it. Are you saying that the science cannot be demonstrated beyond all doubt? Beyond reasonable doubt?

There would be an objective way to decide whether my link is correct or yours is correct. I might be wrong. But there would be a reasonable way to approach the problem. And that way wouldn’t be negotiation or political economy , would it?

There you go again. You are unable to break up the problem and look at the smaller parts. You keep sticking Judgement Day in there . :confusion-shrug:

That will always be a judgment call, I suppose. It was an episode from the past [real, not hypothetical] that had a truly profound impact on my thinking about these things. There is just no way I was not going to incorporate it [as I did] into discussions of this sort because the experience was so clearly relevant.

Yes, but that is my point. It is “you” in the sense that all of the historical, cultural and experiential variables came together in the course of living your own particular life in your own particular way in your own particular world, such that you were predisposed to think and feel and behave as you do with regard to abortion. Had all of those variables been very different you might easily have been predisposed to think, feel and behave in a very different way.

Thus a philosopher [an ethicist] needs to ask herself this: Given all of that is there still a way logically, epistemologically, ontologically, etc. to determine what the moral obligation of all rational men and women is?

And there may well be. But I have yet to come accross it. Not of late.

We all have our own unique lives that put us into contact our own unique constellation of existential factors.

What moral objectivists do to obviate “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” is to subsume it in one or another theory of everything. For some this goes back to God, while for others it goes back to Reason.

Always their own.

Just because you are inferior does not mean you are obliged to become superior.

You feel obliged because you are so inferior you cannot tolerate your own inferiority.

But becoming superior is not a choice.

Psychologists call it “overcompensation”.

If you weren’t so inferior, you’d be spending your time figuring out how to learn to accept your inferiority.

But you really are a complete evolutionary failure.

There is no one-size-fits-all morality.

Different strokes for different folks, remember?

Different predispositions, different moralities.

Superior moralities cannot be adopted by inferior creatures.

So stupid you are.

In order for the brain to consider the possibility of an act, it must already be predisposed towards it. Otherwise, the brain disintegrates.

The modern retard has no self-respect.

He thinks and acts in ways which completely ruin his brain.

This is what happens when a brain is not strong enough to endure pain that comes from without: it starts inflicting pain on itself in order to avoid external pain.

This then grows into a habit and people start thinking they can become anything.

So what if moral obligation is to eat shit three times a day for the rest of your life?

No problem, dude.

And what if moral obligation is to strip your skin to the bone?

No problem, dude, we’ll do it, anything that is objectively true, we will do it.

iambiguous,

…and not an easy judgment call at that since we have no idea of the consequences or how someone/thing will be affected.
Profound impact in which way? Just in your thinking or also in your way of future responding to an event since we can have no idea of an outcome for the most part.

True, but that’s a given - which many of us do not understand. We judge that all perspectives have to come from “our” perspective, the way in which “we” see things. I don’t think that it’s such an easy thing to judge what is morally/ethically right because of our own unique psychology. I feel hardput to look at this in an amoral way (not immoral - amoral) since I value human life (which has quality) greatly - so for me abortion is not only cruel it is also such a waste of human potential. It’s a thief sneaking into the night and robbing and destroying something precious or which could be precious. And let’s face it, oftentimes abortion has only to do with an inconvenience, an unexpected accident which was not wanted.
But despite this, the real question is: Do we human beings, considering our own life which has been afforded to us - do we have the inalienable right to decide which human beings will be allowed life - or not? When we consider that at one time abortion was unlawful and that now for the most part it is lawful, it seems that the question will always be an open one, also in part because there will always be the conflict of reason vs. heart. Harmony is not that easy to achieve. Where do we go from there?

I’m not sure how to answer that except for what I wrote above.
The only thing that comes to me is what Jung said - that truth needs the concert of many voices but even there we can get into trouble since there it would depend on who those many voices belong to.
I still think that it is not so much a moral issue as it is one which does the greatest good (that may sound like a moral issue but I don’t mean it to) after all is considered, including the consequences. Every human being has the right to life as long as it can be a life worth living as seen logically, rationally and with heart. That just goes up against human beings who also feel that they have the right to their own kind of life - but they’re already alive and living it. I don’t think there will ever be an end to it.

I agree. It’s like the capital punishment debate. I’ve also come to change my perspective on that but we’ll forget about that.

…and that IS the crux of it but in a way, isn’t that wonderful. It’s a double-edged sword.

I still think that there has to be a harmony of reason with heart. God does not have to enter into it. Even there, people will lie to their selves.

People think that making the right decision about things is an easy one which might be partly because for them their decision is the only right one, the way in whch they see things.

To you it’s wrong, to others it’s right. And that’s because historically, culturally and experientially, any particular individual will have access to a set of experiences, a set of relationships and a set of ideas/ideals that will predispose him or her to think one way rather than another.

But is there a way [philosophically] to determine if women ought to cover their hair? No, not in my view. Instead, any particular individual will think what he or she does as it pertains to the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Unless, of course, someone can persuade me that this is not the case at all.

How can we live in a world where the unborn are always brought to term and a world in which women are not forced to give birth?

There would appear to be three options:

1] a world where might makes right prevails
2] a world where moderation, negotiation and compromise prevail
3] a world where philosopher-kings are able to ascertain the one true objective moral obligation applicable to all rational men and women.

As was once suggested, “in the absense of God all things are permitted”. And they are permitted because virtually any human behavior imaginable can be rationalized. You simply have to be willing to accept the consequences of living in a world where others may not share your own point of view. They may punish you instead for doing what they construe to be immoral.

As for an “end-game”, that too will be rooted in dasein. My own is now more or less embedded in distractions. I am living as comfortably and rewardingly as possible waiting for the inevitable abyss. Some call it “waiting for godot”. That works for me. But what can this possibly mean to others who have no possible clue regarding the life that I’ve lived…or who live their own life in a set of circumstances far, far removed from mine?

And yet I still spend a lot of time in places like this looking for arguments that might allow me to extricate myself from my own “dasein dilemma”.

That you would even ask this question speaks volumes regarding the gap between my understanding of human identity and yours.

Of course I know who I am with respect to all the material, phonomenal, demographic etc., factors that everyone uses to situate themselves out in a particular world.

But I recognize the manner in which I come to have particular moral and political values as being largely existential constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions. I don’t believe there is a “real me”. I don’t believe that a “real me” has access to a deontological moral or political agenda. And, again, that is what the OP above focuses in on: the psychology of moral and political objectivism.

Lyssa aside, sure, you can flip a coin or you can try to invent/discover a philosophical argument that enables you to know for certain what your moral obligation is.

Now, in almost all cases most of us will save the drowning child. But is that the same thing as saying that we are morally obligated to save the child? I don’t think so. But I also don’t think that I can know so. Not objectively.

It always depends on the particular context and how any particular individual views it. One obvious example is a situation in which saving the drowning child puts your own life at risk.

Magnus Anderson,

You might change that word “obliged” to self-aware and a person may at that point want to become self-actualized or evolve.

This kind of reminds me of when an alcoholic or drug addict reaches rock bottom and recognizes his own inferiority OR better stated, his own inability to cope and to change his life. So he does at some point wake up even more and feel an obligation toward himself to do something about that…not to become superior but to become “real” and “sane” again. Superior may simply be one more perspective based on the desire to over-inflate one’s self to the one who thinks in terms of being superior. That could be construed as over compensating.

Someone who is/was self-aware would not speak in terms of superiority, would they? Would they compare their self to others or would they simply work at becoming what they could in an ongoing way?
But wanting to become “real” at first needs to be seen then I rather think it does become a choice, a willingness to become.
Overcompensation is a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees, of acting from unconscious need, like trying to fill a cup which has a hole in it.

Why would anyone want to accept their self as such when they could move forward? And if someone were so inferior, could they be blamed for that? But it would take others to help them along

One can’t know that til the end. But evolution also does move forward from error. We’re all a bunch of mutants who have adapted some more than others.

I don’t think that that is his point. I had the impression that his point was just the opposite of what you said above. We are not the herd or the Borg.

But that’s just the beginning of the discussion. That’s looking at the shell but that shell has to be cracked open to see what’s inside.

But didn’t you just say different strokes for different folks, different predisposiitons, different moralities.
When you say “moralities” are you speaking in terms of self responding to “real” though subjective human values which might include “to do no harm as much as possible” or simply that one’s OWN way of being moral is naturally higher than that of others? In other words “How could it possibly be any other way”?! That’s just narcissism I feel.

Can you define stupid as you mean it here? Can it simply mean a different perspective, looking at things from a different lens perhaps, remaining open without feeling a need to have answers to all the questions?

Medical science enables us to grasp objectively why women become pregnant. And it enables doctors to perform abortions based on an objective knowledge of human biology as it pertains to terminating a pregnancy.

But when it comes to pinning down precisely when, after conception, the unborn becomes a “human being”, science seems unable to determine beyond all doubt when this is. And they certainly seem unable to determine if abortion either is or is not moral.

Of course there are folks like Sam Harris who insist that science is able to determine this. But I don’t share his point of view. As I have noted on other threads.

No, what we have is you insisting that the “scientific facts” from your link, in being in alignment with your own moral convictions, have been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. What we don’t have is you demonstrating that the “scientific facts” from my link are necessarily wrong.

There you go again, avoiding the need to actually answer my questions by insisting that only you get to say if I am entitled to even raise them.

From my point of view, once one has committed himself to a particular denominational God, it is absurd to imagine that He can be excised from a discussion that revolves around the extent to which our moral agendas are said to be either true objectively or merely rooted subjectively in dasein.

Across town was an exaggeration. As I wrote in a previous post, the more distance you walk, then more differences you find.
I also would probably never stab someone on my front porch, im case you’re wondering :slight_smile:
There is no objective morality. Not even one that you can anchor on organic causes… I want to believe that every mother loves her children, but alas.

I do think that you can attempt an appeal to a common sense toward any human being based on the fact that he is a human being. Our physical bodies are, after all made of all the same stuff. I can’t call that objectivity, though, as darling anfang pointed out once. That’s an inter-subjectivity. This is what we work with in order to make laws.

One can only convince oneself is what I said.
The whole point of the socratic method is to cause one to be convinced by one’s own reasoning.