Clear to me [re the OP] is the extent to which the objectivists are able to translate their didactic intellectual contraptions into an argument that integrates their words and the world that we live in. At least as it relates to conflicting behaviors derived from conflicting value judgments.
I think that is a strange implicit critique. People agreeing, in my experience, is not controlled by the validity, soundness, truth values, rhetorical ability, truth value (as far as I judge this). In fact an argument that eliminated argument might be incorrect - an idea I tried to get across by raising issues of power in my previous post.
Again: What in the world does this have to do with the point I just made?
There are things that we can all agree on with respect to conflciting value judgments because they revolve around actual empirical facts, or logical truths, or demonstratable propositions.
It’s when we shift gears from either/or to is/ought that the arguments become more problematic.
Now, Phyllo can either react to this conflict with an intelligent argument that makes it go away or he can’t. Same with you.
Makes it go away. I think that is a very odd formulation. I have no idea if this is the case, but it sounds like your political hopes are being brought into a philosophical discussion. There is some kind of conflation: political or interpersonal effectiveness is being conflated with truth value.
Bring it down to earth and [in my view] it becomes considerably less confusing.
Some argue that abortion is immoral. The reason? We should not kill the unborn.
Some argue that abortion is moral. The reason? Women should not be forced to give birth.
But we can’t live in a world where both points of view prevail.
So, Mr. Philosopher, what is to be done?
How does one side here make the point that the other side raises go away?
The same with all other moral conflagrations. Each side has points that are still out there even though legally/politically the other side prevails.
The debate around abortion will go on and on precisely because each side insists that their set of premises must prevail. And they must prevail they further insist because they encompass/embody the most reasonable and just and ethical set of assumptions. Go ahead, ask them
Now, my dilemma revolves around the assumption that this is true. In other words, that I derived my own point of view about abortion based on a particular accumulation of existential variables in my own particular life in my own particular world that predisposed me to go in one direction rather than another. And, in turn, based on the assumption that whatever side any particular individual lands on does not render the premises of the other side moot. Not necessarily. Not as a result of an argument that resolves the conflict objectively.
Sure, maybe somewhere in my argument, I have made one of those dreaded “category mistakes” that epistemologists [serious philosophers] love to thump you with. But what on earth does any of that have to do with my point about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy as they pertain to the morality of abortion?
Poor phrasing?!!
The guys over at KTS know full well that their arguments are not going eliminate all disagreement. In fact they seem more dead certain than most people on the issue and I agree with them. I would see this idea that one’s argument will eliminate all other positions is more a liberal position, a faith in the potency of rationality and argument.
Yes, but you forgot to mention that if you don’t come to share their own didactic/scholastic point of view about all of this you are [axiomatically?] one of the sheep, a retard, an imbecile, a cunt. Or, in my case, a tyrannical turkey and/or a moronic chimpanzee.
I think you are adding a problem. There is the problem of coming to an objective or right answer. Then there is the goal of having this answer be compelling to eveyone. Hence you participate in discussions and frame them at an abstracted, distant from yourself level. Your feet are not on the ground.
Here is my problem:
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.
Now, is this a problem for you too? If not, let’s choose a moral/political issue of note and we can exchange points of view regarding how, in fact, we incorporate the arguments that we make here such that others can more clearly see how they impact on our actual behaviors around others. After all, it is through our behaivors that consequences unfold. Right?
It comes off like you think the only possible use of a discussion is universal (secular) salvation.
Discussions are useful [in a world sans God] because mere mortals have no choice but to pursue them. At least if they choose in to interact socially, politically and economically around others.
My point revolves instead around the extent to which, using the tools of philosophy, we can bring the discussions to an end by demonstrating why all men and women who wish to be thought of as rational and moral and just, must subscribe to one particular argument as reflective of the whole objective truth.
Now, these arguments may well in fact exist. But, sans God, with respect to an issue like abortion, let’s hear one.