the psychology of objectivism - one possible narrative

Someone questioned the distinction between superior and inferior earlier.

How naive.

Superior/inferior refers to what promotes life and what promotes death.

You can abstract it further by relating it to a goal, but I take it for granted that we all agree that life is superior to death.

Superior/inferior not in relation to other people, but in relation to one’s past self.

We change, we either become superior or we become inferior.

We decide, to either become superior or to become inferior.

Lift some weights, see what I’m talking about.

Make some good decisions, see what becoming superior means.

Make some bad decisions, see what becoming inferior means.

No need to compare to other people, so don’t confuse it with hyper-masculine vanity.

Other people’s inferiority, such as that of iambigot, becomes a problem when it becomes a problem for those of us who are pro-life.

Why is iambigot a problem? Because his suicidal way of thinking corrupts people’s minds . . .

He is a deadly virus spreading across memetic lines.

Not all inferior creatures are problematic. Pugs are inferior but I find pugs to be cute little monsters.

As usual, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.

I am not saying you are stupid, phoneutria, I believe you are a very smart girl, beside being extremely sexy, of course, just that, I, me, Magnus, do not understand what you’re talking about . . . as usual.

Must be your charm.

No, I am merely pointing out the obvious. That with respect to the biology of human sexuality leading to a pregnancy leading to an abortion, there there objective truths that transcend dasein.

Facts, in other words, that are not predicated on a subjective interpretation. A man and a woman either engage in sexual copulation or they do not. The woman either becomes pregnant as a result of this or she does not. And if she does become pregnant and chooses an abortion, it is either successful or it is not.

But where is the same either/or denouement with respect to the precise moment when, after conception, a zygote, embryo or fetus becomes a “human being”. Some will even go further and make a distinction between a “human being” and a “human person”. That way they are even able to rationalize infanticide.

What you said above is this:

Scientifically documented.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viab … thresholds
Therefore, it is moral to abort a fetus before week 22. Objective reasoning.

Therefore, I surmised that you surmised it is objectively moral to a abort the fetus because the science in the link had objectively established it. Then I provided you with a link that suggested this is not the case at all.

Then I acknowledged here that science does not seem able to establish beyond all doubt when in fact the unborn becomes a human being. Objectively.

I’m not trying to argue here that my point of view is right or that your point of view is wrong. I am only suggesting that it is a point of view that is predicated on certain conflicting assumptions that are made regarding when the unborn become human beings.

And even if that can be decided objectively, we are still stuck living in a world where if all unborn babies are required to be brought to term, then any number of women will be forced to give birth.

In other words, the part about conflicting goods doesn’t just go away.

You should take that up with God. Aren’t these God’s own abortions? And why should the women be held culpable when in most cases they do everything they possible can to secure the birth of their child. In fact, most are devastated when the baby dies.

But then God does work in mysterious ways, right?

But the thrust of the OP revolves precisely around the manner in which certain folks do embrace a particular religious or political narrative/agenda and then claim that moral certitude is derived from the assumption that their God or their Reason is there to back them up.

Now, in that respect, yours either is or is not. And you will either discuss that pertaining to an issue like abortion or you will not.

Come on, Phyllo, we know what the objectivists mean when they assert something like that. They mean that they have already assertained what the “bare minimums” are here and that this almost always revolves around agreeing with them that this is in fact what the bare minimums must be.

Really? You read those two sentences, and you don’t understand them, in the context of your post previous to it?

Does that make you feel smart.

No, just slightly perplexed.

Whatever, you are boring.

Yo mamma doesn’t think so.
Zing!

This exchange is really rather amazing. Especially in the context of…

In the first quote we have two processes for reaching a conclusion - at least it is assumed that there are two different processes. Process A is rational, process B is emotional, therefore process A is right. As if one cannot rationally reach incorrect conclusions (or emotionally come up with correct ones). I’ll leave aside the issue of whether one can assess something like ‘readiness to have a child’ (at least in most of the West) without emotional and intuitive processes being involved.

The second quote is putting pressure on the binary thinking present in quote one. That this is not clear strikes me as very odd.

Then that this all happens not far from the last quote, where Superior promotes life and Inferior promotes death just adds even more strangeness. Are we to suppose that rationality in this instance is inferior because it is promoting death. Or are we to assume that the rational man could somehow weigh, rationally, the total sum of ‘life’ including things like, say, added stress since the man must work more overtime to pay for Huggies. And this is a reduction of life, his, and one can create a mathematical inventory and decide that there is less life with the added child if the pregnancy is allowed to come to term.

And just a jump to the side: wouldn’t it be strange if emotional decisions were inferior and wrong, per se, given that the most powerful and dominant animals on earth, including of course, us, are social mammals with powerful emotions. You would think we would be more like robots if emotionless decision making was the best.

(no offense intended towards Araneae, though I must say that in general they seem to make decisions based on preferences rather than emotions)

How far can a thing resembling a brain go in order to deny rank is something we can infer from the post above.

Dude what the fuck are you talking about.

Putting pressure on what, you mean on my patience. Do you really think I will bother responding to phoneutria’s low level of intelligence and high level of pretense?

Mary is retarded because her goal is a short-term one, not a long-term one.

She cares not about the family, she cares only about her feelings.

She is inferior because she is prone to self-deception.

Now ask yourself what’s the point of your stupid post.

Now please, go ahead, let us see you argue that blindness is equal to vision.

With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”

“For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways?”

― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Kid chill out. There is no Mary. She is a hypothetical woman who has in this thread both aborted and not aborted a child.
Can’t you tell you are reacting emotionally, yourself?

You do not understand what’s meant by emotional, you married middle-aged “coquette”.

I chose to be emotional, you retard, I wasn’t forced into being emotional, you curly haired vagina.

But Mary has no choice, you imbecile, she is forced into denial, and this is what is inferior about her.

CAN YOU PLEASE STOP BEING A WHORE FOR A MOMENT AND TURN ON YOUR BRAIN JUST FOR A SECOND.

How stupid modern people are they think that every emotion is necessarily exaggerated emotion . . .

They see no difference between genuine emotion and exaggerated emotion.

Whenever there is some intensity involved, it is automatically assumed to be exaggerated.

I get this shit all the time.

Profound in that it exposed to me how the gap [enormous at times] between the words we use to sustain our value judgments [and the way in which they seem clear to us “in our heads”] is not able to be translated as seamlessly out in the world. Prior to this experience I was more or less able to ground my value judgments in one or another religious or political “truth”. Afterwards, that became increasingly more problematic. Now I am all but hopelessly entangled in the way in which I construe a moral dilemma in dasein.

Again, 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.

And I have found that, as a rule, many objectivists are particularly unnerved by this frame of mind. Why? Because they are able to glimpse the manner in which it might also be applicable to them.

But, again, that is only how it seems to me.

And many, like you perhaps, construe this dilemma not as an immoral frame of mind but as an amoral threat to a world that they see as one in which we must be able to clearly distinguish right from wrong behavior.

But, absent God, how is this possible? Even folks like Plato and Descartes and Kant recognized the need for a transcending font here.

This sort of argument always seems reasonable to me – on paper. But when you take it down into the nitty gritty complexities of human interactions awash in conflicting goods awash in contingency chance and change, sides must be chosen and rationalizations advanced. It’s just that my own leaps [here and now] are considerably more wobbly than others.

Forever that.

Try changing the color at least.

Ask a didactic objectivist to bring his intellectual contraptions down to earth and this is what you get! =D>

Seriously though, how is this not the embodiment of your own personal experiences pertaining to abortion? And how do the personal experiences of others inclining them to disagree with you make them necessarily wrong?

Because you say so, right?

You are merely making your own existential leap to a particular political agenda. You have offered no argument that makes the conflicting goods go away.

In other words:

If abortion is deemed objectively moral [and made legal] then many unborn babies will die.
If abortion is deemed objectively immoral [and made illegal] then many pregnant women will be forced to give birth.

What is the objective philosophical argument that makes this go away?

How, using the tools of philosophy, are we able to know for certain which point of view the rational, virtuous and noble uberman is obligated to embrace? You know, so as not to be seen as one of the sheep.