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. 
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?
Sauwelios wrote:
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the issue here. The way I look at it, "problematizing value means to take another look at the way we see something or some things, ie., our values. That can and often does become a problem for us, because we’re seeing that the way we perceived things, understood things, cannot be “real” for us anymore. We’re seeing more clearly now. It isn’t necessarily that we were lying to ourselves but just that we were not, back then, who we are, now.
Our values are capable of changing as we change - I know that mine have.
Values aren’t really “facts”, are they? Aren’t they simply akin to man-made structures based on our own subjective thinking and human experiences? Obviously, that can be different for everyone.
Do you mean to say in the sense that we clearly understand what that/those value[s], in essence, mean?
My only interest here is in trying to fathom what this might possibly mean – what it might possibly mean if you were outside that Planned Parenthood clinic confronting those on either side of the abortion wars. I would attempt to convey the manner in which I saw their countervailing values as rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Either regarding reason or emotion.
But what exactly would you be telling them? And how would Fixed Cross enlighten them by way of putting their conflict in the context of his Grand Scheme?
From my perspective, both sides are able to make reasonable arguments — abortion.procon.org/
They simply start out with a different set of assumptions. And while both sides have objections to raise regarding the others side’s perspective, they are not able to make the points raised just go away.
Thus we can’t live in a world where both unborn babies have the right to life and pregnant women have the right to kill them.
Yet where are the arguments from either side that allow us to derive the most rational frame of mind?
On the contrary, “common sense” is no less rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. And how is it not clearly rooted historically, culturally and experientially?
Instead, what the moral objectivists [some of them] seem to argue is that “common sense” is little more than the prejudices of the yokels, the sheep. That only the truly rational philosophers can sift through conflicting renditions of it and arrive that the truly optimal – natural – frame of mind.
But that’s where I come in, isn’t it? I ask them to bring their intellectual, scholastic contraptions down to earth, to integrate their world of words in actual flesh and blood social, political and economic interactions.
Yes, common sense might revolve around the assumption that aborting a human zygote is more reasonable than aborting a 9 month old fetus.
But others make the assumption that human life begins at the point of conception. And even if everyone in a particular community agrees consensually that aborting a one day old zygote is reasonable, that [in my view] is not the same as establishing [philosophically, scientifically] that it is the obligation of all rational human beings to believe this.
Thank him for pointing that out. Now, ask him to demonstrate why, just because he adheres to his own “value ontology” here, all other rational human beings are than obligated to share it.
Otherwise, he is basically arguing that his own “ontology” is just one of many. That others might not share his ethical conclusion regarding this particular context. Then it just becomes a matter of whether they too insist that their own value judgments here fall within the boundaries of an “ontology”.
And then, finally, who has the actual political power to enforce one frame of mind or the other.
Also, ask him if a woman that he loved chose to abort a two month old baby, what he might be obligated to do. Would he brand her a murderer? Would he turn her in to the authorities if the abortion were illegal in that particular context?
And what if she had been raped? Would she still be a murderer? Would he still advise her that she is morally obligated to give birth. Or, here, is she permitted a different “value ontology”?
Now, for me, an objectivist is someone who believes that anyone who does not share this frame of mind [expressed as it is] is wrong.
And for some [like the Ayn Randroids] that is practically the same as being evil.
But not you?
Rand [as I recall] used to make a distinction here between an acorn and an oak tree. As though others cannot then argue there was never a single solitary oak tree alive [including her] that did not first have to survive beyond the acorn stage.
Some insist we become “human beings” at the point of conception — or when we have a heartbeat or a brain, or when we can survive outside the womb. Others however insist that infanticide is moral for various reasons. Still others [like Hitler and his historical ilk] will argue that even particular human adults do not deserve to live.
In Texas for example they still regularly execute people.
My point however is this: How do the objectivists go about establishing that thier own assumptions/premises are the necessary default here in determining when “in fact” we become [or are] a human being?
Sans God, in other words.
As for efforts like this – when you turn into a fucking poet – what on earth does it really have to do with the points I raise?
No, seriously.