A billiard ball has no control, but when hit by another changes course. A human can have its course changed by information. You got that information. You keep it all hypothetical. No description of what happened when that information hit you. What happened? You really do not understand determinism.
But yet you are a determinist. Oddly you believe you are not an objectivist despite the role that determinism plays in your epistemology, from which you judge what you call objectivists.
Sure label it abstractly and generally what you did not understand. Not ‘OK, here at the beginning I did not understand X.’ Not classify, dismiss and don’t put in any effort to understand.
It is relevant since I was pointing out that objectivism is inevitable and present in you. Not simply as occasional regressions, but as a rule. This is relevant because if you can notice that your current position is objectivist, if I do my job well enough, than you are not a lone non-objectivist in world of mad objectivists, but rather one amongst many. Which might lead to your understanding the enemy better. Since you think you have extricated yourself, in the main, from objectivism, you do not understand them, yourself and what it is to navigate in the world as an embodied person. The same holds for many skeptics and atheists who many or may not identify as ironists or nihilists.
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You say in the OP that you are not looking for simple answers. To show you that you are not a non-objectivist or to show a skeptic or atheist that IN FACT they do not have the epistemology they claim to have and in fact draw conclusions about the world (and values) intuitively, in ways parallel to and or exactly the same way theists and other types of believers do, is not easy. It requires a type of introspection you may not be capable of. Notice your repeated demand: that someone demonstrate to you and everyone else objective truth regarding say abortion. What if reducing the problem to conflicting goods requires people to do something more personal, such as noticing how they are like other people?
You keep touting compromise, negotiation and moderation as the only possible good - let’s set that irony aside - and just notice how you behave. No compromise - [i]there is only one way to tackle this issue, and if you do not do what I want in the way I want in a way I can immediately understand, I will label you as an objectivist - which is pejorative - or Will Durant’s epistemologist - or label what you have written in a dismissive way, since if I did not understand it, it is gibberish. No moderation in that either and no negotiating a way to communicate. I didn’t get my fucking answer the way I demanded it come. I will not try to find your God through your practices, I want you to prove it over the internet in words. I will not approach the issue in the style of discussion you work with, and I will sweep it aside and repeat my demands.
I will repeatedly make value judgments while blaming objectivists, that is other people than me, for thinking they can make value judgments.
You do not go out like the Inquisition did and use violence. But the process is the same conceptually.[/i]
What you dismissed above and intellectual gibberish was my attempt to bridge a very complicated conceptual and experiential gap. You claim not to want easy answers. That would be good but it is not true. I do understand that it likely was very hard when you became skeptical about your own abilities to come up with objective values. I understand that for some who have not done this, in this way you have been brave.
But I see a person who demands to have an answer in just one way, just one form, who seems unable to notice, i.e. introspect, patterns that several people have put intelligent effort into pointing out about you. The idea that you might be missing something important and relevant to the issue and that understanding that might come in a form you are not comfortable with nor understand at first is NOT ON THE TABLE at all in your mind.
That is relevant to this discussion as a discussion. It is also relevant to the specific topic for reasons mentioned above.
You judge others over and over for not living up to what you consider the only rational approach to living with others: moderation, negotiation, compromise. It should be a hint to you, oh billiard ball, that you do not live up to your values when you, label others, do not compromise, dismiss approaches that are not the one you have ordered others to follow and cannot negotiate a discussion process.
Until you are human enough to live up to your own ideals, people will continue to think you are being an ass on good grounds and you will keep interpreting this as
I almost yanked them into my hole, pats himself on the back, but their fears kept them from where my bravery led me.
I know the nihilist hole. There are much harder things to face. Get off your low horse. You seem very comfy to me.
Note to others: what might his motives be for not living up to his own rational processes of negotiation, compromise and moderation?