More to the point [mine] is the manner in which I think that others think that they know what is good [morally] is something that I can demonstrate as the embodiment of [or as embodied in] the components of my own moral philosophy: dasein, conflicting goods, political economy.
No, I can’t demonstrarte to others that what I think I know here is what they are obligated to think that they know in turn. You know, if they wish to be thought of as rational human beings.
Over and again I – “I” – include myself in the argument that I make: that value judgments [including my own] are existential contraptions once we move beyond that which can in fact be demonstrated as true objectively for all of us.
Then I propose that we take this “philosophical” discussion out into the world of actual conflicting goods and probe the extent to which we can in fact know what is either true or false when value judgments do come into conflict.
Just focus the beam on a moral and political context in which conflicts are rife. How would we actually go about examining these conflicts as an “epistemological issue”?
Exactly the way you sometimes do. You ask people how they know that their idea of the good is the right one. You ask them to demonstrate this to others and to you. That is a set of epistemological issues. It can be specific: give an example, such as the abortion one. It could be general. I have seen you post in both ways and as parts of many posts. My point was that you add in stuff that will distract from what you claim is the project you have here.
Let’s go to the dictionary:
Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
How then might we relate this to the conflicting goods that revolve around an issue like abortion?
How does a particular philosopher who has a particular “theory of knowledge” take that out into the world and embed it in her own particular moral/political narrative relating to abortion?
Using what particular “methods, validity, and scope” allows her to argue that her own knowledge transcends the manner in which I construe “I” here as embedded existentially in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy"?
How would their frame of mind not become entangled in this:
Where the discomfort and disconsolation pop up is [of course] in our reactions to the behaviors that some choose given their own understanding of the facts regarding things like abortion.
Sure, they do. But you need not discuss those emotions or states of mind. You can focus on the issue of how they know they are right and how they can demonstrate this to others. It can all be very specific, but there is no need to discuss what you think their state of mind is.
How on earth do we discuss what we think we know about the morality of abortion without going this route? I must be misunderstanding your point. From my perspective the state of mind of those who oppose abortion is rooted in dasein in much the same manner as those who oppose denying women the right to choose an abortion.
What I am interested in then are those who address this: What can we know or not know here when the discussion shifts from abortion as a medical procedure to abortion as a moral conflict?
If you also want to speculate on that, you could do it elsewhere. It is certainly a valid and interesting topic. But here it comes off as smug and condescending. And it is basically ad hom. You believe that because it brings you comfort. That is an ad hom.
So you say. Am I then allowed to demur? Because in fact I do. For all of the reasons I raised above. Then it comes down [as it always does here] to a tug of war between points of view.
Objectivists and some pragmatists/realists have managed to attain and then sustain a level of psychological comfort and consolation that is now [more or less] beyond my reach. They have managed to sustain an “I” that, in the is/ought world, seems considerably less fractured and fragmentd than mine.
Could be in some or many cases. Fine. But it is not relevent and not a help in finding out ways to resolve conflicting goods. Repeating it is a good way to put people on the defensive, since it is an ad hom attack in this context.
Yet I maintain over and again that my own arguments here are no less an existential contraption. Sure, others can convince themselves that I really don’t mean this; and that in yanking the discussion in a direction more suited to my own alleged motivations and intentions, I am engaging in an ad hom attack.
And, as I noted above, I can only speculate myself as to what is really behind my efforts here. Introspection here is always a slippery slope. Depending on the extent to which one believes that he or she really is in sync with the “real me”.
Are you? Because “I” am certainly not. Not with respect to these enormously complex and convoluted existential relationships.
And if I bring that up over and again on threads like this one, it is precisely because for me nothing is more relevant with regard to philosophy.
It is not relevant to finding out if there is an answer to conflicting goods. And you don’t like it when people do it to you and you go off topic when they do.
Meaning what, that only the manner in which you have come to conclude an approach is “relevant” in resolving conflicting goods reflects the “correct” agenda of a philosopher? That only you get to say “what matters” here?
Cite an example of me “not liking it” when when others “do it to me”. Do what specifically relating to what particular context?
But: For those who do choose to interact with others socially, politically and economically, there’s no getting around conflicting goods.
See: right there you acted as if to discuss resolving issues of conflicting goods you must talk about the emotional states of other people and compare them with you states. That we need to know about your hole and what you have felt at other times in your life.
Look, there are objectivists of Ayn Rand’s ilk who insist that our emotional and psychological states can in fact be included in philosohical discussions of conflicting goods. Why? Because [they insist] there is not a single emotion or psychological reaction of theirs that they are not able to wholly subsume in their intellectual assumptions.
Me, I suspect it is all considerably more problematic than that. While we all come into world genetically predisposed to experience emotions, the manner in which each of us come to embody them in any particular context is no less an existential contraption to me. After all, the human brain intertwines both in ways that neurologists are just beginning to explore.
Note to others:
Below Karpel Tunnel jumps the shark. If that’s the right expression. Suddenly he starts to get pissed off at me. He has laboriously attempted to enlighten me as to how a truly sophisticated thinker goes about broaching and then discussing/debating these complex relationships. But [as with so many others before him] I refuse to concede.
Now, indeed, in terms of how we discuss this philosophically there are any number of technical conponents that revolve around that which we either can or cannot know for certain.
And, for the epistemologists among us, I ask that they bring these technical points out into the world of conflicting goods.
You know what, fuck you. You are an epistemologist as much as anyone here. You have an epistemological quandry. You like to mention it as a hole. But this hole revolves around you no longer feeling certain or even thinking it is possible to know the good and demonstrate it. That’s epistemology. Here you are again labeling other people.
So, you label me as an “epistemologist”. But we are to understand this accusation only in the manner in which you insist that all rational men and women are obligated to understand it. We must know it as you know it.
And if you insist that I don’t think it is even possible to know the good and to demonstrate it then my attempts to explain that my own arguments here are no less an existential contraption is just me, what, lying to everyone?
It is as though with respect to an understanding of human value judgments in conflict you keep noting that 1 + 1 = 2, while I keep insisting that 1 + 1 = 3.
Instead, any number of them will insist that only when I go up into the technical clouds and demonstrate my understanding of these things as a “serious philosopher”, is it worth their while to bring their far more sophisticated analytical contraptions down to earth.
Fuck you, you asshole. That is not what I am saying. Only the most pigheaded uncharitable read of my posts would come up with that shit.
No, that is what I – “I” – think that “any number of” epistemologists attempt to do with me. But the only truly substantive manner in which I can understand their argments is if they are willing to take their “theories of knowledge” out into the world of conflicting goods that most of us here will be familiar with. Separate out the purely philosophical components of their assessment from the emotional and psychological reactions that they have in order to propose a brand new deontological assessment said to be the obligation of all rational men and women.
Where, in my fucking posts, did I myself go up in the technical clouds or ask for serious philosophy you fucked up little turd. I mentioned Socrates,that’s the closest I can think of. What did he do, he kept asking questions,and not in technical language, in everyday language. Fuck, you’ve had more academic philosophy than I have, according to what you wrote elsewhere. I took a couple of courses at a weird progressive college with minimal reading.
All I can do here is to grapple with the gap that I perceive between me being down in my hole [in the is/ought world] and the extent to which you do not perceive yourself as being down in one. The extent to which you feel less fractured and fragmented here than I do.
And in that regard you come off to me as just one more “intellectual” intent on focusing the discussion in the direction of “general descriptions” of human interactions that come into conflict over value judgments.
My reaction, however, is but one more “existential contraption” rooted in the manner in which “I” have to react to those discussions of this sort as the embodiment of dasein.
The sort of reactions that, surely, are far, far, far less frequent in discussions among folks like geologists or meteorologists or chemists or biologists or mathematicians.
I said drop the personal stuff, the comparing yourself to others, the condescending shit, the mind reading. Pardon my use of all that technical jargon.
You judgmental little moralizing dick.
Wow, you’ve got me here right?!!
But: What prompts this sort of reaction? Again, I have my own suspicions.
At no point do you even respond to what I said.
A common refrain here at ILP. When others do not respond to the points that you make as reasonable folks are expected to then they are clearly not understanding those points.
No doubt it is asserted because they are not even reading them.
What were my suggestions: hm. Ask people how they know this. Ask people how they can demosntrate this for others.
What, by completely stripping the subjunctive components of our reactions to the world around us? Let’s discuss “the right to bear arms” in America as only “serious philosophers” can?
Note to others:
Again, what am I missing here? What point is he making out at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power that a proper “theory of knowledge” would address first.
Pure knowledge? Don’t be saddened or frightened or enraged or confused or ambivlalent when the discussion gets around to your unwanted pregnancy. Figure out what you either can or cannot know about it and then come up with the least dysfunctional moral and political narrative/agenda.
So, we’re stuck.
Now, I’m not saying they don’t make a good point about me. I’m just asking them to demonstrate that point by bringing their technical skills to bear on a particular context in which they are confronting actual flesh and blood folks on opposite sides of one or another moral and political conflagration.
You just keep spitting in faces.
Cite example of me spitting in your face here at ILP.
Note to Phyllo:
In our discussion of Communism, was I basically spitting in your face? Or, instead, was I suggesting that any particular inidvidual’s reaction to it is likely to be embodied in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?
Unless, of course, the epistemologists among us can in fact determine that which all rational men and women are obligated to know about it.
My ‘technical’ skill was not philosophical, it was interpersonal. I saw you react to someone else commenting on your emotional states, the affront. I point this out and then suggest that your project is ill-served by having emotional states and ad hom and reading others and comparing yourself to others present in a discussion.
Yeah, this may well be closer to the “objective truth” than my own assesment of my own motivation and intentions here.
And the fact that it does not resonate at all with me, might be just more proof that the problem here is me. Now, let’s find someone who can demonstrate it one way or the other once and for all.
Again, an issue like abortion. Discuss the “goal of understanding” the “specific values and goals” embedded in this particularly ferocious conflicting good…as an epistemologist might. What would she be telling those folks outside the abortion clinic who are hurling insults and spit – and bullets? – at each other?
YOu fucking cunt.
She would ask people on both sides how they know they are right. Just like you do. The problem is you want the psychoanalyze, you want to parade your hole, you want to compare your personalities…
And, then, presto, just like that, the insults and the spit and the occsional bullets, would all be subsumed in a cool, calm and collected discussion of what these folks can really demonstrate [intellectually] that they know regarding the most rational manner in which to recocile the conflicting goods here?
And yet you can’t even eschew an emotional outburst in discussing it with me here and now.
What an utterly irrelevent question or challenge this was. It was as if I said an academic epistemologist would solve the problem. Lunacy. I have made it clear I don’t think there is objective good. I gave a fairly simple practical suggestion about what is making your threads more muddy and off topic. That’s it.
Either philosophers take what they think they can know about human morality “technically” out into the world of, at time, fierce human interaction, or [from my frame of mind] they become just one or another rendition of Will Durant’s own conjecture regarding the “epistemologists”:
“In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company…he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him…He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist.”
I’ll stop here. The rest is just you tumbling head over heels into a scathing rant about me. Huffing and puffing because I refuse to yank the exchange up into the vicinity of the “general descriptions” you seem [to me] more clearly comfortable with.