It’s abstract only because here at ILP all we have are words – “abortion”, “book”, “ban”, – to exchange. But these things and these actions do in fact exist “out in the world that we live in”.
On the other hand, why and how do they exist given the fact that to the best of my knowledge no mere mortal has access to a comprehensive understanding of why and how anything exist at all.
And surely how the one is related to the other is relevant to philosophers.
Though, indeed, for all practical purposes, we can live out our lives from the cradle to the grave and not really give that a second thought.
But lots of philosophers that I have known think about things like this a hell of a lot more than twice.
We common folk don’t have the privilege to sit down and study these matters in such an abstract academic way. My interest is in proving that accepting fate allows Joe to act on Mary’s abortion, let’s forget the book for now, if he is rational.
Again, I’m missing something here.
It would seem [to me] that in a wholly determined universe both the common and the uncommon people are privileged only to participate in the immutable unfolding of material interactions going back to whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself.
In other words, instead of not existing they exist. But they exist as but more matter wholly in sync with the steadfast laws of matter.
All we can prove is that which we were only ever going to prove. To speak of rationality here would be like insisting that volcanoes behave rationally when they erupt. Only volcanoes don’t have minds. They don’t think through what they have to do step-by-step in order to erupt.
So the question here would seem to be this: how are the minds of men and women [as matter] different?
They do think through what they are going to do. Well, more or less. But to what extent is this done “freely”? And to what extent can a distinction be made between choice here in the either/or world and in the is/ought world?
My own “thing” here.