The Grand Scheme

Not so fast. You immediately fly from the meta-problem I confront you with, “down to earth”, like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. (I know ostriches don’t actually do that; but you do.)

You speak of “the distinction that I make between assessing whether Mary did or did not have an abortion and if in fact she did assessing whether this abortion is moral or immoral.” I ask: on what basis do you make that distinction?

You speak of “[v]arious combinations of reason and emotion.” I ask: is this distinction between reason and emotion itself a rational or an emotional distinction?

You ask: “what exactly are you telling these people about the fact of the abortion and, having established the fact of it, their reactions to the rightness or the wrongness of it?” I pose the counterquestion: how does one establish a fact if one is not God? In the absence of God, is a “fact” not merely a consensus that may well be wrong? (Think of Descartes’s “evil demon” here. By the way: if there is a God, then what’s right is simply what He deems right–even as what exists is simply what He deems right to exist, what He wants to exist…)

Reading back a bit, I think this is crucial to what I’ve been getting at:

Surely “all of us” here means “all accountable (responsible, ‘sane’) human beings” or something like that. Surely it’s not necessarily true for a young child, or a mentally challenged person, or a wallaby. Just as those for whom “the laws of nature” seem true is a certain group of living beings, then, so there are apparently subgroups within that subgroup: some to whom it seems true that abortion is always wrong, others to whom it seems true that forcing a woman to bear a child is always wrong, etc. “Homo sapiens” is simply a subgroup of living beings that shares certain value judgments (e.g., the judgment that logic’s self-identical “A” is invaluable–of which we don’t know by how many other living beings it’s shared).

To “problematize” “value” means to “problematize” “fact”. It means not taking any values for granted. “God is dead” means there is no transcendent Giver of value. The “problem” with this is that it’s an enormity to posit value. But however problematic it may be, “value” must be “problematized” because of a need for a demand for value-positing. Formerly, those to whom values were facts took the positers of those “facts” for granted, nay as dispensable. At best they were seen only as media, as mouthpieces of God. But in order that these positers not be dispensable to themselves, they will now assert their own value. They will assert themselves as those few who embrace the fact that there are no given values–no facts…

I can agree with that.

Let’s just say that it seems reasonable to me pertaining to [in particular] those folks who come into communities like this one in order to discuss/debate the meaning of social, political and economic interactions among flesh and blood human beings out in a particular world rooted historically, culturally, experientially.

Yes, I think this is reasonable.

Here though I’m not sure what you mean. Homo-sapiens are [as far as we know] the culmination of that which [so far] is the evolution of life on planet Earth. We are the creatures [the only creatures] able to make observations like this. At least on this planet. Observations which others are then able to either agree or disagree with. Also, observations that revolve either around the world of either/or or around the world of is/ought. Above, I try to make a distinction between those things that we claim to know are true “in our head” and those things which we are in turn able to demonstrate [empirically, materially, phenomenally, mathematically, scientifically, logically etc.] as true for all reasonable human beings.

Again: From my perspective you are only making an argument here. You offer what I construe to be a “didactic analysis” in which one agrees or disagrees with your points based almost entirely on the extent to which they share with you the definition and the meaning that you give to the words used in the argument.

And that is precisely why I aim to shift the discussion instead from that to this:

[b][i]You leave the clinic and out in the parking lot are protesters insisting that Mary’s abortion is immoral. They are asked to demonstrate this. And, having been informed that Mary had been 2 months pregnant, they show you this:
youtu.be/rl3NMXObqNs

So, have they in fact shown you that Mary’s abortion is immoral because in fact Mary killed a human baby and that in fact all unborn babies have a “natural right” to life?

That is the distinction I keep coming back to. I’m still not at all certain what distinction you are making.[/i][/b]

And…

[b][i]Again, imagine we are outside that Planned Parenthood clinic debating the various conflicting “judgments” that are been hurled back and forth. Various combinations of reason and emotion.

If what you are arguing about what I am arguing about above is true, what exactly are you telling these people about the fact of the abortion and, having established the fact of it, their reactions to the rightness or the wrongness of it?

What are we able to establish as “judgments” here that all reasonable men and women are obligated to share?[/i][/b]

How would you analysis here be pertinent there?

What I think is immoral is Mary not having cultivated herself enough to be a child bearing mother. But that is a hard fucking way to judge people, and I am not particularly a moralist. Life is hard, and I respect women who are put up against choices like that and take ownership, one way or the other. Hard fates, but then again, it is the beginning of life.

Sorry, I missed this one.

But my whole intent here is to fathom how the manner in which you see this as a “meta-problem” is relevant to the manner in which I am entangled in my dilemma above relating to moral and political value judgments in conflict. And how that might be intertwined into The Grand Scheme.

On the fact that a pregnant woman will either choose to abort her baby or to give birth to it. And on the fact that some people will want to comfort and support her while other people will want her to be charged with murder, tried and if convicted punished accordingly.

How then are these reactions not rooted more or less in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

Well, all we can do here is to make these distinctions pertaining to particular contexts. What do we establish is rational [true for all of us] and what do we argue instead is only an emotional reaction not able to be established as objectively true for all of us.

Many different folks might react in many different ways emotionally to the fact that Mary had an abortion. But what doesn’t change is the fact of the abortion itself. But when folks start screaming and shouting, “abortion is evil!”, “abortion is just!”, “abortion is a sin against God!”, “abortion on demand!”…what here can be established as true for all of us?

That’s my point: How does one establish that what they claim to know or claim as true “in their head” is in fact in sync with the objective world.

Sure, we can always go back to Hume’s radical skepticism: that correlation is not necessarily the equivalent of cause and effect. Or, yeah, we can go back to Descartes: his speculations about malicious demons and/or our existence being but part and parcel of a dream some cosmic entity is having.

“How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?”
Rene Descartes

Indeed:

What can mere mortals establish beyond all doubt given that…

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

…is applicable to all of us?

It is a fact that you have posted this on ILP.
It is a fact that I have read it.
Unless of course someone is able to demonstrate that these are not existing facts at all.

But how would either one of us demonstrate that what you argue here is in fact that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to either share or to reject?

Should we respect women who choose abortion more or less than we respect those who want to take that choice away?

And, again, the choice itself…is it embodied existentially in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy, or are philosophers able to construct the optimal assessment for deciding it morally?

Back to scheming now men.
Where is Ptolemy?
Anyway.
Join me.
Where is that Karpathian wine, Orbie? Yes, thanks.
Oh fine, you left some,
Raise glasses!

Hail The Anger of Zeus and the Plague Sending Apollon; because this is the good, as the ancients understood it, as they let it erode them, into this doric order, which takes on more splendor as forces smash and grind their souls into it.

Thank Demeter, for everything I suppose. Now, those herbs -

iambi, it’s clear that you consider the fact-value distinction a factual rather than a value distinction and the distinction between reason and emotion a rational rather than an emotional distinction. But why then circumvene that clarity the way you do? Why use the vaguer term “reasonable” rather than the clearer term “rational”, or even circumvene such terms altogether? I think it’s because what you really appeal to is not rationality but common sense–the prephilosophic equivalent of rationality. But common sense is much less clear-cut than rationality, where something either is or is not rational. Common sense has grey areas. So whereas, for example, common sense will quite easily agree on whether an abortion has taken place–if it looks like a pig and snorts like a pig, it’s probably a pig–, much the same goes for whether the abortion was wrong the closer it was to either of the two extremes: aborting a newborn baby (or a foetus one day before its due date–or two days, etc.) and aborting an infertilized egg cell (or an egg cell that has just been fertilized–e.g., with a morning after pill–, etc.). The closer one gets to the former extreme, the fewer pro-choicers will have a problem with forcing the pregnant woman to give birth, and the closer one gets to the latter extreme, the fewer pro-lifers will have a problem with the abortion (they will have to appeal to inane notions, like that God infuses the egg cell with His spiritual seed at the same time the male infuses it with his sperm).

By the way, Fixed Cross requested that I inform you of the following. The last post in which you linked to that echo of a two-months-old foetus contained enough info for him to determine that, according to his ontology, which concretely expresses itself in values, aborting at this stage would be an ethically negative, “ugly” act. The concrete info you gave him has convinced him that this is an objective matter: it’s wrong to abort a two-months-old human growth. There can be a reason to do so, but this will definitely be a murderous reason. He’s not saying there’s a definite point of no return, but he is saying that, at this point, the boundary has certainly been crossed.

…but seriously this from the man who just went off the deep end.

Here at least.

Now I’m off to the movies. Norway this time. :wink:

Sorry to give Iamb an escape route Sauwelios… I always underestimate his sheer weightlessness. Good work tying him down to his premises though, he seemed vaguely human for a moment there, realizing he is actually among humans and not alone in the depth of memory.

Iambig - Ive always pressed you for details, now youve given them, and Ive already answered you two years ago; after the pineal gland is activated and the hormonal life is activated, it is per value ontology a violation of the universal principle to abort. I gave a term of about 6 to 8 weeks.

Back then, you avoided the matter. Now, you present it as if it is your own. If it is, welcome to the club. And condolences on your philosophy… though it was long past its time.

In the world you belonged to, to love is to ‘go over the deep end’ - in my world, love is simply deep.

Go enjoy that reality of the movie, so much deeper and truer than that old world of yours… as so many still do with you.
I bear no grudge… but its time for the ‘neutral’ to be neutralized.

Fixed, reversing the last quote in your sig., “The strong do what they must, the weak accept what they can accept.”

Necessity is on the side of strength, not weakness. That is how I see it anyway.

The strong suffer what they must just so the weak can do.

Sometimes yes, but not all of the time. Perhaps not even most of the time.

What do those two sentences mean exactly? The cape and mask are worn when convenient?

The proper meritocratic ideal.

Government of muses.

Wyld Ive always felt it works best in the original order, as the strong must do what only they can do; and for this they require freedom, or in Nietzsches terms, privilege.
The privilege to actually serve. Not just be fruit, but also tree.

Yes it does collapse together like that, since freedom and necessity are ultimately the same thing.

Indeed - but only in the case where it is understood. Th highest human attainment seems to be this intellectual privilege.

I think it’s just a bit more complex than that, but on general principle I can agree.

It is more complex at root - ‘x’ is never ‘y’, it isn’t even truly ‘x’ (rather “A”><“A”) - but the synthesis in this case signifies what I regard as the highest privilege. Everything worthy then flows from this privilege.

Jakob,

Yes, it’s true - that wasn’t an aphorism, it was a maxim. I never mind a little constructive criticism - depending on the spirit in which it is given.

I’m still not convinced but as you say - it isn’t about aphorisms…

So are you saying that you have been re-thinking your value ontology? Is this what the thread is about?