Challenge to iambiguous and surreptitious both

Sure, that’ll do it. You can pack your things and live alone on an island somewhere. Or you can eschew all human contact and live by your own wits deep in the forest. A survivalist.

This way the behaviors that you choose come down to a relationship with nature alone.

Or, for some, with a God of their choosing.

The point being that you behave only in accordance with your own sense of right and wrong. There is simply no one else around who might beg to differ.

For the overwhelming preponderance of us however that is not an option that they choose. They do interact with others who might beg to differ. And regarding any number of things.

Then what?

Then any number of folks will make any number of videos to explain how if only others will choose what they choose then moral harmony can still be the order of the day.

The reality you are currently experiencing comprises over 7 billion people

Reducing that to just I will not automatically solve every moral equation

I thought it was interesting because the summation works rather well for you also, except for the two things cited at the end

“the unreal me” and the "seeming impossibility of finding the right thing to do coupled with the need to prioritize finding it anyway over all other things’

would be my replacements.

And yes, this leads to Ecmandu and Iamb having different metaphysics but it ends up creating similar discussion partners.

I’m not going to bother with your baiting other than to say Iambiguous and I are very different in approach and philosophy.

I will say this though, and I truly believe it.

There are no lords or emperors or kings… female as well, there is only prime logos.

You and iamb are not prime logos beings to the extent I am.

May very well be true. I am not an abstraction, even one that governs the universe. I am a complicated being.

When have I ever denied that my own narrative here is no less an existential contraption? How many times have I acknolwedged that I have no capacity to demonstrate substantively that others ought to share my own frame of mind?

I simply note how in my own subjective opinion “here and now” I – “I” – construe myself as having tumbled down into a hole in which my own value judgments are seen to be rooted in dasein, out in a world of conflicting goods, predicated in the final analysis on who has the political power to enforce one set of rewards and punishments over another.

Then I ask those who do not share this frame of mind to bring their own value judgments “down to earth”; so that we can focus in on a particular context and exchange moral narratives and/or political agendas.

In the manner in which, say, Phyllo and I have done with regards to Communism.

Okay, let’s zero in on a conflicting good most of us here will be familiar with. We can discuss the manner in which one might make a distinction between the “real me” and the “unreal me”.

And we can note in turn how a distinction might be made between those things that one construes to have a higher priority over other things. With respect to the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or the role of government or social justice or homosexuality or immigration laws or animal rights.

In all honesty, the posts from Ecmandu here are practically gibberish to me. I almost never see any real connection between the points I make and the points he makes.

It’s as though he really has concocted this made up “world of words” inside his head; and everything flows from those assumptions.

For example what on earth does it mean to speak of a “prime logos” with respect to ones own conflicting interactions with others?

He’ll either go are [and illustrate the text] or he won’t. Or, if he already has, I would appreciate being linked to it.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if science could invent a technology that allowed us to grasp what others are thinking and feeling in “real time”.

But even here we wouldn’t have access to all of the many, many, many experiences and relationships and sources of information/knowledge that, in accumulating over years, predisposed their own particular “I” to see the world around them as they do.

All we can do instead is to make an effort to distinguish between these subjective elements and those things that we [as scientists or philosophers] are able to demonstrate as that which all reasonable men and women are likely to think and feel in turn.

Iambiguous, you are abysmal at self reference, which is why in this level, your posts look like the posts of a 10 year old

For example: what if you are just another existential contraption ?

I’ll be dead serious with you here …

Humans think they’ve won!!

“I got the house, I got the wife, I got the job, I got the children”

All zero sum… actually they all lost in the game of life.

Zero sum lives aren’t worth living.

Your reaction to this is obvious and not helpful.

You’re still in the delusion that life accepts zero sum interactions as anything but pure evil, and so your head spins in associative aggression (your posting history)

No, seriously, how is this not just “babbling on”? Huffing and puffing about me while making no attempt at all to bring his “challenge” to me down to earth?

Objective morality? Okay, maybe. Let him choose the context, the behaviors, the conflict.

Or is that a bit “frightening” to him and his ilk here. :wink:

I thought it was interesting because the summation works rather well for you also…
[/quote]

Reread your post. You said Ecmandu seems to live entirely in his head, etc.
Now I am supposed to believe that really you meant he was just like you. You think of yourself this way. Two guys living entirely in your heads.

And if this is what you meant, in that first part of your description of him - that he is like you and everyone else, having existential contraptions and solipsistically isolated in his head like everyone,
HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY
not realize that readers would take it as a criticism of Ecmandu that did not apply to others.

I do realize that the second part, where he knows the right thing to do, distinguishes him from you, but that first part, the part I mentioned as the same in you (and I sure as shit meant you in particular), can only be read as a specfic criticism of Ecmandu.

I don’t find you able to take responsibility for your acts. Your acts in communication.

Side note: you seem, above, to now be saying that since one’s narrative is an existential contraption one is living entirely in one’s head AS IF the stories we tell are the only way we relate to and are affected by the outside world. You seem to confuse yourself with being ONLY your stories. The words in your mind. Is that all you are?

Yes, you do that. Sure. I didn’t realize that you were saying that Ecmandu was like you, as far as you can tell, and everyone else. In fact, I find it impossible to believe you could be so naive about how other people would take your description of him, even in the case that you did not mean something specific about him.

Read again the post I responded to and I think, one hopes, you can see that pretty much any human would think you were categorizing Ecmandu specifically, not saying that he is like you and everyone else. That you were reacting to his way of posting and that this indicated he was entirely in his head. That is was a criticism of him, one that was less likely to be true about you.

Here you are talking about value judgments. To say someone is entirely in their own head is saying something more than saying they are objectivizing their value judgments.

Let’s look at your behavior here in the forum. Respond to it yourself. You cannot know if it is moral, yet you have decided to expose others to this behavior.

Extend that to a range of other situations, and you have just described me.

Neither you nor I can tell if we behave in ways and interact with others in ways that are objectively good or bad, etc.

We both, however, interact with others. Expose them to our behavior and thoughts.

You allow yourself to do this. I allow myself to do this.

Your hole has NOTHING TO DO WITH not knowing if their are objective goods.

You act in the world following your preferences and interests, despite not knowing whehter this makes the world worse or better. You do what you want.

Me too.

I am less fragmented because I allow myself to do this in the wide range of ways I do this. It seems you restrict yourself - for reasons unknown - to this one interpersonal activity.

You give yourself permission to act only in one very limited line.

So the rest of you is cut off from living.

Despite the fact that even the one thing you allow yourself might be making the world worse, for all you know. If you allow yourself that, you might as well allow yourself whatever you are capable of.

[/quote]
Why bother?

Indeed, that’s how it works for all of us. We must be willing to take what we think we know about objectivie morality “in our heads” out into a particular context that most will be familiar with.

Then back again to the partiulcar context in which partiuclar behaviors come into conflict over particular value judgments. If he has taken his arguments there I missed them. Please link me to an instance of this.

Really, what else is there here? ILP is a virtual reality when discussing the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. We can only relate an experience of our own, or one “from the news” of late.

Please cite an example of how one would take responsibility for the act of posting here. I’m not sure what your point is.

Again, all abstract. Let’s bring our “stories” down to earth. Note a context and then we can discuss the manner in which we react to particular behaviors in conflict. What parts of what we believe are true are things able to be demonstrated as true for all rational men and women.

In this regard, I focus on ecmandu specifically only to the extent that, in my view, he refuses to take the exchange in this direction. On the other hand, I’ve only read a small portion of his contributions here. If, in fact, he has illustrated his text [relating to objective morality out in the world that we live and interact in], please link me to some examples of this.

How can a challenge relating to the existence of objective value judgments not be about value judgments? I must be missing your point. Are you referring to solipsism? The argument that the only thing that can really be known [in either the either/or or the in/ought world] is that which is inside your head?

Instead, my point is more that, sans solipsism, the distinction to be made is between what you are able to demonstrate is true objectively for all rational human beings [and not just true in your head] and what is predicated more on the subjective components of my own moral philosophy.

Exactly. But: Under the assumption that my own frame of mind is in turn just another existential contration. So: What if others are able to convince me that my frame of mind here is less reasonable than their own? And that their own frame of mind [out in the is/ought world] allows them to feel considerably less fractured and fragmented. Thus enabling them to feel considerably more consoled and conforted by their own moral philosophy; one predicated on the assumption that there is a “real me” able to be in sync with “the right thing to so”?

True. But I am still largely uncertain as to how your own “pragmatism” actually “works” for you [in particular contexts] such that you are not in turn down in the hole that “I” am in.

Your own existential leaps to particular behaviors seem to allow for a more “integrated” sense of self. Something that “here and now” is beyond me.

You say this:

But I can’t be inside your head when “for all practical purposes” you do bump into others who challenge your own moral and political values. There was once a time when I was able to think that, “I’m right and you’re wrong” when confronting those who challenged me.

Now it’s more like, “had I lived your life I might well think as you do; besides, when push comes to shove, both of our arguments are reasonable given a particular set of assumptions; finally, I am hopelessly tugged in many different directions regarding my own value judgments.”

We both take our existential leaps but mine are considerably more wobbly than yours.

Well, that depends on whether or not this is actually an option for someone. Someone may well be able to not bother. But most of us are embedded in actual social, political and economic contexts in which we are not only expected to bother but are tugged and pulled by others to bother as they do.

By what criteria are you establishing that it is a zero sum game ? Does not everyone have the right to live their life how they choose as long as they do so within the law and do not harm others ? Now if having a house and wife and job and children is failure in your eyes then what actually constitutes success ? Not having a house and wife and job and children ? Do you have an alternative model that would actually work ? Because if you do I would love to see and it but if not then why are you even writing this ? You make no sense Ecmandu so can you try just for once to write something that actually does

Try not living. I don’t condone this outside of thought experiment, but it’s probably the hardest thing you’ll ever try if you do.

Life doesn’t need to be “worth living”, every inch of it demands that you continue to do so whether it’s worth it or not. Even if you absolutely feel it’s not worth it, you have to be seriously mentally or physically ill to actually successfully stop living.

Self-preservation is the only “true” objective morality, in that it has been selected to be an in-built way of behaving in the exceptional cases that it actually comes to the forefront. Those who don’t feel it as strongly die off more and reproduce less, so over a long enough period of time the ones left end up having a significant instinct to preserve themselves.

An instinct to cooperate with others, empathise, sympathise, sacrifice for their sake etc. can be deep. It can be really really deep, in some rare cases even overriding the instinct of self-preservation. In some people this doesn’t exist, but the self-preservation instinct still will. At best, “morality” is variably “objective” in the sense that it is coded into those who have been naturally selected thus far, and the “(immoral?) morality” of self-preservation is a fixed instruction within us.

And yet, still, this is all merely common to life rather than somehow established within existence itself as unconditionally eternal and ubiquitous. Objective? Even if every single person in the world agreed on a morality, it would merely be subjective consensus universal and only to people…

Given the current physiology of humans, it seems to be practical for most to be “moral” in the commonly understood “pro-social” way, but what if such things would become different at different points in space and/or time in a way that most currently find hard to conceive? Is it physically impossible for an alternative “immoral” custom to develop as more practical?

Indeed, that’s how it works for all of us. We must be willing to take what we think we know about objectivie morality “in our heads” out into a particular context that most will be familiar with.

Sigh. Exactly. You were making a specific criticism of Ecmandu based on his posts. When I point out that the first part of that criticism fits for you, you say you have described yourself the same way. When I point out next that the way you wrote it indicates you seem his as different from you and others, now you tell me that his post show he is doing something that you do not think you and others are doing.

Shifting, shifting.

You could have said: yes, the way I described Ecmandu was a specfic criticism of him regarding behavior I do not think I exhibit. But you responded by implying that you have also said you are the same, many times. When I point out that the way you wrote indicates a difference between you too, now you affirm that you meant his posts indicated a behavior specific to him. You could have taken responsibility for judging him in contrast to others and said: yeah, I think I respond to points made and he does not. I could be wrong, but you are correct I was making a specific judgment of his behavior. And then perhaps showed how I was wrong to indicate you were like him in this way.

I was responding to an abstraction. And clarifying it.

Please re-read the second sentence. One can objectivize one’s value judgments AND not be entirely in one’s head. If you think this is not the case, how the hell do scientists who have objective values ALSO come up with objective knowledge?

Not the point. You act in the world despite not knowing if you are adding to evil or good or neither. I do that, only I, it seems, have a wider range of activities. You don’t seem to worry in the least about whether the way you interact with others here might have negative effects. Why worry in general?

You seem to think my pragmatism has an added something. Something you do not have. I think you have added something. You act here and do not seem overly concerned that you might be having negative effects on others or on the world. Why not judge forget your quest to find objective morals? There must be something that makes you think you must do this thing, that I think you yourself consider extremely unlikely to achieve. Something is compelling you. I have no such compulsion.

Existential leaps`??? What leaps?

You say this:

Right you add on something. Perhaps, as just a possible example, you have given yourself a rule. If I am to affect the world, make it more like I want or try to I MUST KNOW THAT THAT WORLD IS OBJECTIVELY BETTER.

So instead of, like me, simply pursuing goals based on what I like and care about, dislike and do not care about, you have this task you have given yourself.

I don’t find you wobbly in the least in your interactions. That said, I do not think I am taking existential leaps, though perhaps if that is defined I might agree. But, you have given yourself a task that I consider impossible and do not allow yourself, except in how you post here, to interact much with the world. You have an unbelievably rigorous set of criteria to meet before you can act. At least theoretically. In practice you interact here, without knowing if your behavior here meets that set of criteria. You have a large existential contraption where I do not have one. I do not think I must solve the problem of coming up with a way to determine objective goods such that my method or someone else’s will convince every rational person. You have that as something you feel compelled to do. I do not. I don’t know if you think you have to do this on moral grounds or why you think it NECESSARILY FOLLOWS from being embedded in a society with conflicting goods. But you clearly think this necessarily follows. That is an existential contraption I do not have.

Maybe that contraption is the cause of your hole.

I have said many times that I am embedded in those contexts. I have given specific examples of how I deal with conflicts. But that has nothing to do with my why bother question. Why bother trying to solve objective morals. You seem to assume, here, that if one is embedded in those social contexts one MUST try to solve the conundrum of objective morals. This is clearly not the case. So again, why bother?

What I think is this:

When the discussions here come to revolve around the question “how ought one to live?” the “technical” aspects of philosophy/ethics – the tools – will either be embedded in actual existential interactions revolving around actual conflicting goods or they won’t.

I am more than willing to note the manner in which the components of my own moral philosophy have left me fractured and fragmented; and “down in a hole”. How then are others less fractured and frgamented? How then have others managed to think themselves into embracing a moral narrative and/or poltical agrnda that brings them considerably more comfort and consolation.

That is what it is all about for me here. These are the sort of discussions I aim to “shift” the exchanges toward.

Ecmandu’s posts don’t seem inclined to go there. Unless, of course, some did and I missed them.

This is all still largely abstract to me. I’m simply unable to grasp the point that you are making. Which is why I suggest that we bring these criticisms down to earth.

You and I and Ecmandu can illustrate the components of our respective moral philosophies by focusing in on a particular context in which values are in conflict.

Him as an objectivist, you as a pragmatist, and me as moral nihilists basically “in pieces” with regard to conflicting goods.

Okay, but what particular value judgments are being objectivized in what particular context? And scientists [most of them] focus in on realtionships that exist in the either/or world. Please cite some examples of what you construe to be objective scientific values in sync with objective scientific knowledge.

They value the “scientific method”. But of what use is the scientific method in the is/ought world? What are the limitations imposed on it given the manner in which I contrue human interactions here as the embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Contingency, chance and change in the either/or world is one thing, in the is/ought world something else entirely.

Not your “the point”, no. But it is the point that I come back to time and again.

I simply want to take that point out into world of actual conflicting goods.

No, I act in the world by assuming that good and evil are largely existential contraptions. And in not knowing whether what I think I know here and now is in fact the most reasonable manner in which to think about these things.

And the “negative effect” that most objectivists are concerned with here is that perhaps I might actually succeed in tugging/yanking them down into the hole with me. No more “real me” in sync with the “right thing to do”.

Of course, they might succeed in tugging/yanking me up out of it instead.

I’m only interested in grasping how your pragmatism manages to make your “I” [out in the is/ought world] feel less fractured and fragmented.

When dealing with issues like abortion in a world where Roe v. Wade might soon be history here in America, I am now hopelessly ambivialent; and precisely because I am no longer able to embed “I” in an objectivist frame of mind. I am drawn and quartered both intellectually and emotionally.

Real consequences will result for real flesh and blood women if abortion is made illegal. Just as real consequences result for real flesh and blood unborn babies as long as some abortions are legal.

You take your own leap here and your “I” seems less torn apart about it than my “I”.

But here I assume that this is largely embedded in dasein. In the multiple ways in which your “lived life” was/is different from mine.

And, from my frame of mind here and now, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to tackle this distinction and arrive at an optimal frame of mind.

And then “I” will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

For me [here] it’s “existential contraptions” all the way down. All the way down to an “I” that is broken in a way that most objectivsts are particaully skittish regarding.

And I don’t blame them. It’s hard to explain what being “broken” like this actually feels like.

It’s just a figure of speech. You go about the business of defending a particular set of moral and political values. Now, without an objectivist font to fall back on [God, ideology, deontolgy, nature] you “leap” to one particular political prejudice rather than another. And you manage to convince yourself that you did the best you could in “thinking it all through” and choosing this behavior rather than another.

Thus the parts about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy don’t trouble you as much as they do me.

Does that bring you closer to a “better” frame of mind, or is that simply what you were predisposed to think given the accumulation of one set of experiences, relationships and sources of information rather than another.

Yeah, as a “pragmatist”. But that doesn’t clear up the confusion for me revolving around how you manage to feel less fractured and fragmented. In other words, in a No God world in which morality is construed to be an existential contraption rooted subjectively/subjunctively in a particular set of experiences out in a particular world in which as a child you were indoctrinated to embody this “reality” rather than that.

And then later as a philosopher sought to be more “objective” regarding what epistemologically can or cannot be known about human interactions confronting conflicting goods out in a particular historical and cultural context. And then the part about dasein. The nature of identity in the is/ought world.

I bother because my “I” here is considerably more fractured and fragmented than your “I”. You don’t experience being drawn and quartered here as I do in the face of, say, Trumpworld.

Or when confronting sociopaths able to rationalize any and all behaviors deemed by them to further their own self-interest. Or when confronting the objectivists [secular or sacred] with political power able to impose their own agenda on others.

My “I” has simply gone down a different road. So I have no illusions regarding how close we might actually come to bridging the gaps here.

It is amazing what you find abstract, AND then go on to post. Both. Both what you find to be abstract - here me discussing specific things said by you in the specific context.

This I can understand. It was complicated, if very concrete and not abstract.

Which for you tends to mean discussion situations you are not in - choosing to have an abortion - that are happening to people who are abstractions.

OK. Here we can have another concrete and not abstract example, me referring to your behavior. In the quote above you refer to my moral philosophy. I have told you many times I do not believe in objective morals. I have said that I have preferences, things I care about and do not care about, etc. and that these things motivate me towards things, and so on. Yet, unbelievably you suggest me illustrating my (and both of your) moral philosophies.

I have done this. But as a pragmatist it is not a moral philosophy. I have said what I do in conflicts with others. It did not lead to anything you wanted, but I did do this, with specific concrete real from my life examples.

I really am trying to be patient with you.

You made it seem like if you think your value judgments are objective you can still also not be entirely in your own head. A scientist may be a die hard republican and think that conservative values are objectively correct and yet not be entirely in his own head. He may also do perfectly carried out scientific research into the destruction of the ozone layer or bats.

You presented it as objectivists are necessarily entirely in their own heads. I disagree. They can be partly in their own heads.

So in other words, no one pointing out errors in logic, contradictions or problematic thinking in your posts can expect you to respond to that, since it is not solving your issue. Fine. Your points are never up for criticism.

But then, don’t respond to criticisms. Because you cannot seem to actually focus on them. I think it’s clear if you state that you have no interest in defending your behavior or any possible logical or reasoning problems in your posts. And you don’t. But the problem is that you go through the motions of defending and trying to support, but don’t do it well, since you make it seem like what is being discussed is your focus.

That’s just a rewording of what I wrote.

It doesnt matter what they are thinking, even less what you think they are thinking. My point stands. You do not know if your behavior here is making things worse in the world. That can be deduced from what you write. You don’t know if there are objective morals and you don’t know what they would be if they exist. Hence you do not know if your behavior is good or evil or neither. You take the risk that it might be negative. WHY NOT JUST TAKE THAT RISK IN GENERAL. You seem to find it odd that I am not fragmented. I think it is because you add a huge obstacle to your self, based on your existential contraptoin.

I just said it. I lack this enormous task you have given yourself: to constantly search for objective values which may or may not exist. I do not have that task. I do not believe it to be a doable task. I do not worry that I should perform that task. I do not think that it would help me. That seems to be a big part of your hole.

Why the fuck, old man (like me), do you carry the cross of solving the abortion issue?

That you think you need to solve that is existential contraption. It is almost like you have a Jesus complex, but with no religious metaphysics.

There are thousands of people in Africa starving or being used as child soldiers. I cannot solve that. Have you managed to help one single fetus, pregant woman with all your fussing around conflicting goods? Who do you think you are and why are you bearing this huge cross?

You ask me to show you how my pragmatism works. I think you need to look at what your existential contraptions,the ones you have added to your pragmatism, cause you to suffer. It is almost a negative megalomania. Something out of Dostoyevsky.

No, I do not take all the leaps you take. I take less leaps. Your leaps, all the crosses and tasks you have given yourself - at universal and abstract levels - are causing you pain and leaving you fragmented. It seems very much like a huge moral cross you have given yourself to bear. But I don’t know and I realize that doesn’t fit well with your stated nihilism. But it at the very least parallels when people take on the cross of the world for religious or moral reasons and feel they must solve things, things that at least to me seem beyond their powers to solves AND EVEN, not solvable.

And perhaps our natures. Of course perhaps my pointing out that you have added leaps and contraptions might change something. I wish I wasn’t so pessimistic.

It really adds nothing, your psychic speculation on how afraid they all are.

Maybe my pragmatism makes you skittish because on some level it seems evil to accept there are not objective morals and live from preferences. Perhaps that seem immoral to you. God it feels like I am dealing with a meta-moralist. But who cares about our guess about each other’s or objectivists reasons for having the positions we each have. It’s just ad hom waste of time.

Well, no, that’s not a good description.

IN practical terms I deal with the same fucked up world and my sense is I am out in it more than you are, interacting with people face to face and otherwise more than you. I simply do not give myself the task of determing certain things which neither of us think there is much chance can be determined. I do not give myself that cross. Life is hard enough without that added burden that will, I think, waste my time. Any indication you have helped yourself or pregnant women with all your mulling?

You seem to wake up and try to solve the abortion issue and feel guilty that you can’t. You not only set out to get others to help you find a rational argument that will solve it, but spend a lot of time in this abstract context, dealing with things from a bird’s eye view. I have a person who is not well in my family. I love this person, I work on making things better for her. I have other specific professional challenges and I problem sovle those or do not or come half way. Sometimes, yes, in discussions, I push against ideas I think are damaging to what I care about. Coming from me, in specfic contexts, interacting with specific people and obstacles and problems using my cares and empathy and preferences to guide me.

You are in the clouds, solving everyone’s problem, not coming at problems as they arise in your personal life, where the little power we have can be apply, sometimes, if we are lucky with a lever. You like Jesus are solving the woes of the world and have very little interest in your own preferences.

You are a nihilist who yearns and struggles, every day, to be an objectivist.

I do not yearn to be an objectivist.

Your yearning or moral compulsion to become once again an objectivist causes you pain. It also pulls you away from your own life and problem solving there, to figuring out how ONE, everyone, should talk to resolve pro-schoice people and anti-abortionists.

Of course you are more fragmented. You have given yourself the task of a messiah. I am not saying you think you are a messiah, but you have given yourself that task.

And it is an abstract life. in the abstract ideas seem awefully interchangeable. That leads to fragmentation.

Me, I am working, feet on the ground, from me and my likes and dislikes. And yes, duh, these are affected by my experiences and inborn nature. I make no claims to their abstract perfection, nor to I give myself that cross to bear.

I would guess that neither you nor I have been directly affected by Trumpworldyet. I certainly find it threatening. But I do not have the slightest faith that your cross - finding the perfect argument to sway all Trump and Bernie supporters to the one true path - is a good cross to bear.

I am not blissful. I just don’t add on your sisyphusian chore and all the abstract third person thinking that you immerse yourself in. You think in the third person, you post in the third person. You will solve things universally. You are not in first person very much. You mention it as if it is a story about someone else, yes, since you don’t think you have a real you. It is all contingent.

I deal with objectivists who have the power to impose their agenda on me and those I love. I start there. You are focused in the abstract on all those Trump can affect. You are trying to solve all that and by trying to find the perfect arguments. Ones you, as a nihilist, think are likely not to exist. That creates fragmentation and a hole and a daily failure to make one single step forward in the task you have set yourself.

An hour ago I offered to go out and get some throat lozanges for my wife who had a sudden sore throat. Tomorrow I will try to get a certain beauracracy to NOT do something to me, by taking specific actions. I am sure you do some of this also, but it seems like your primary problem solving and suffering is caused by a task you need not give yourself and which your own philosophy indicates is likely doomed to failure.

I could, at my age, give myself the task of becoming a professional basketball player, but doing that would make me more fragmented, and pretty much on day one, when I pressed myself to practice, knowing that I would fail. Then add on that the task you have given yourself is abstract, third person. At least with basketball, I know what steps to take in general terms. Practice shots, run sprints, weight train, dribble a lot, join pick up games. I could measure improvements, get professional advice. It would all be down to earth and tailored to my body and skills, however ludicrously unlikely to succeed. You are off thinking as all the rational people in the world, trying solving problems you do not have, that you have no direct connection to. That’s fragmentation.

Does this mean I give up on the world? No. But I think I have a more rational sense of my own power than you do.

I do not think it is a good use of my time to try to find the perfect argument to convince all rational people AND this argument is not only universally effective but also objectively correct. That is doubly fantastic. Even if there are objective morals, the chance that there is an argument that would convince everyone rational seems infinitesmally small to me. And should to any rational nihilist.

So stop looking to see what contraptions I have that make me less fragmented.
Consider that you have added all sorts of contraptions tasks and methodologies that make fragmentation more likely. And further there is an objectivism of some kind in there may also be true.

No scientific consensus exists that what you are doing here is helping your or anyone else. So it’s a contraption or set of contraptions, and these contraptoins compell you to a task that I think you think you will fail at, and beyond that which take you out of your own life into the clouds of everyone’s life.

I can only hope you can try that on, rather than simply dismissing it because 1) it didn’t solve conflicting goods and 2) it might be hard to face how much time you have already wasted.

I’ll take a break here for some significant time.

Wow you two use lots of words… maybe I’ll be a bit wordy here too.

Three Mormon women walked up to someone I know and gave him a Book of Mormon with 5 questions in it. He was allowed to make a future appointment and only ask one. The one he chose was, “why does God allow so much suffering in life?”

They answered like I’ve seen people on ILP answer, that you need the negative to understand the positive. The ugly to understand to beautiful. Suffering to understand the value of joy.

I pondered this for a moment and realized that even if that were true, a 100% consensual reality can accommodate that just as well as non consensual reality. I found the answer empty and stupid.

My true philosophy is simple: non zero sum.
Everything else is bad, immoral, evil.

When someone says “I got the woman, I got the job, i got the house, I got the husband, I got the children!”

I call this “bloodlust”

If a person hates zero sum. They are of the good.

It’s easy to feel empty without others, but who has the heart and honesty to feel empty when they win?

Not many. These are self centered people.

The only thing in life worth winning is non zero sum for all beings.

I actually agree with this. You learn a lot about people through their answer to the problem of evil and amazingly many atheists and theists come donw to the same conclusion regarding evil, though obviously one group includes God in some way.

a more subtle version of the viewpoints you are arguing against is that it actually need not be a zero sum game but either 1) we - our souls - decided to allow for confusion and the struggle to get back out in to the non-zero sum game option or 2) we are not aware of the guilt and self-hate we have that draws the zero sum game effects to us. IOW we think we want good things and we think we think we deserve what we want but actually at a deeper level, we call for punishment. There are even more nuanced versions of this. But before we get all gnarly into those, I do think that the excuses for the problem of evil and the problem of suffering

parallel the excuses battered women make for the behavior of their spouses
or how people exused the behavior of Kings
or how people justify caste systems and what passes for interpretations of Karma,
etc.

Oh sure, the psycho-reactivity when this isn’t conscious is massive in our population.

I think I did well to make my point though .

It is objectively true for all beings that 100% consensual realities are moral and anything but is immoral. When I go on about the damage done by human sexuality, this is objectively bad even in a zero sum world.

Iambiguous more or less makes the argument that because some people can only fall asleep well in 50 degree weather or below, and others can’t fall asleep well in anything below 75 degrees, that conflicting goods can never reconcile. While there are expensive solutions to this particular conflicting good (space heaters / air conditioners) it doesn’t resolve the equilibrium issue in general.

So you’d have someone like iambiguous arguing from this that there is no good or bad, or at a minimum it is at least subjective.

But there are other meta fingers to point with stating, actually evil is zero sum, so anything (like my hyperdimensional mirrors - per my op) or just less stratification in general, serves the good.

So there is good and evil. Concrete. It’s not a myth.

You have preferences. What then are your preferences relating to a moral conflict that most of us here are likely be familiar with? And how are you able to embrace a particular set of political prejudices and feel less fractured and fragmented than I do?

That’s what I am trying to discern here. I had preferences myself back in the day when, as a Marxist/feminist objectivist, I was convinced that being pro-choice was in sync with the “real me” in sync with the “right thing to do”. Then Mary and John and William Barrett persuaded me otherwise.

I am simply unable to grasp how someone who does not believe in objective morality is not fractured and fragmented in the manner in which I am. Given that “I” here is an existential contraption [rooted in dasein] ever and always open to change given new experiences, relationships and sources of information/knowledge.

To me moral values [in the absense of God or a solid argument defending deontology in a No God world] are [by and large] fabricated from our past experiences. There does not appear to me to be a font able to resolve value judgments in conflict.

Or, rather, none that seem reasonable to me here and now.

On the other hand, you insist that…

Then we are simply out of sync here. Your metholdology works for you but it does not work for me. Instead, I speculate that your pragmatism is more a frame of mind enabling you [psychologically] to feel less fractured and fragmented; and thus more comforted and consoled that the choices you make somehow reflect all that you can do in coming down one way rather than another given the nature of conflicting goods.

How about this…

Is it then fair to say that while you hold to certain values here and now, you do recognize that given new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas, you may well come to conclude just the opposite? That, in absence of an objective moral font, there really is no way in which to be certain about the behaviors that you choose?

As I try to make clear over and again, all that is of interest to me here is the extent to which someone is able to demonstrate that what they do believe is true [or think they know] “in their head” is that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to embrace in turn.

In other words, I’ll let others delve into all of the “technical” issues relating to the subjective/objective conundrum that some philosophers pursue here. Instead, let them bring their conclusions out into the world of conflicting goods. At the intersection of identity and political power.

Actually, this part…

…is not at all unfair. They can point it out but I am far, far more interested/intrigued with how they integrate their own rational understanding of these technical relationships out in the world of conflicting goods.

There’s pragmatism as you understand it here and there’s being “down in a hole” as I understand it. That’s the gap that most fascinates me. How “out in the world with others” can one reject objective morality and not become entangled – as “I” – in the components of my own moral philosophy: nihilism.

Not from my point of view. You seem to place the emphasis on the number of experiences that one has. Whereas from my frame of mind having one experience or thousands of experiences does not make the components of my philosophy go away.

And it’s not that I “worry” about it “in general”. It simply reflects my preoccupation over years with the existential relationship between philosophy and the question, “how ought one to live?”

Philosophers either eventually get around to that or they become one of Will Durant’s “epistemologists”.

Another existential contraption.

As for this:

In thinking like this my “I” is understood to be fractured and fragmented. I am deprived of the comfort and the consolation the objectivists are able to embody. You then basically say “so what?”. And all this indicates to me is that you have been able to configure pragmatism “in your head” into a frame of mind considerably less deconstructed than mine.

How this actually “works” for you when your own values come into conflict with others is what interest me. And here I assume that you do not construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy as I do “out in the world” of actual human interactions in conflict. It’s like you just shrug them off and are then able to be “reasonably satisfied” with the behaviors you choose.

And “I” am not able to this.

Thus…

So basically if you find yourself in a situation in which your value judgments and behaviors are roundly challenged by another, you take your leap [or however you describe it] to a particular set of political prejudices; and that becomes good enough. “Yeah, sure”, you admit, “had my past experiences been very different I might be arguing on your side”; and, “yeah, sure”, you admit, “the arguments that they give are as reasonable as mine – if only coming from a different set of initial assumptions about the human condition”.

About abortion or human sexuality or the role of government or animal rights.

That’s how it works for me. It’s just that the consequences of that in my interactions with others perturbs me more than it perturbs you.

But it is certainly not about carrying a cross; it’s about my actual reaction to human pain and suffering that comes from being unable to take sides as the objectivists do: convinced that win or lose at least they know they are on the right side.

And that’s not nothing in a world where a staggering amount of human pain and suffering is derived precisely from the consequences of conflicting goods.

But again this particular reaction of mine was/is no less an existential contraption embedded in dasein. In all of the things that were/are beyond my control or beyond my understanding of.

Which is to say that each of us are likely to have points of view here that are in turn beyond our control and/or our understanding of.

I’m just more preoccupied with the existential parameters of that than others. But I would certainly not argue that one frame of mind here is more reasonable than another. Let alone that others ought to share mine.

My fragmentation is derived from the manner in which philosophically I construe the existential parameters of human morality in a No God world. And you may not call them “leaps” but one way or another you come to a decision to think this way about issues like abortion instead of that way. And in the manner in which you do so, it precipitates less turbulence, ambiguity, uncertainy and the like “in your head”.

As for the relationship between all of this and nihilism, I can only assume that this is no less an existential contraption. It seems reasonable to me here and now whereas there and then it did not. But what about tomorrow or next week or next year?

Or what if someone does manage to convince me that [God or No God] an objective morality does in fact exist?

Things only get all the more problematic here. Once nature is introduced into the mix, we are forced to consider “biological imperatives” that may well drive our behaviors. Or even the possibility that all that we choose is always ever only what we could have choosen in a determined universe.

No that isn’t how it works at all. I simply become aware of situations in which particular sets of conflicting goods generate contexts that generate conflicting behaviors that generate consequences that generate human pain and suffering.

And whereas I was once able to choose sides confident that it was the right thing to do, that is no longer the case. I find myself taking a position but I recognize how others who are not in sync with me are doing much the same. And whereas some are able to convince themselves that their reasons are more righteous than the reasons of those who oppose them, that, in turn, is now out of reach.

And I find that in pointing this out to others, my own frame of mind is even more disturbing to them. After all, it is one thing to take on another who believes in right and wrong but insists that he’s right and you’re wrong. And another thing altogether to take on the argument of someone who suggests that right and wrong themselves are largely “social constructs” rooted in history and culture and experience.

I disagree. If there are problems embedded in conflicting goods, I am always encouraging others to take the discussions down to earth. And this thread is certainly no exception. Though, again, my chief interest revolves around those that I construe to be objectivists here.

With you it revolves more around understanding how you can argue against objective morality and not be as fractured and fragmented as I am.

That just doesn’t make sense to me as other than a psychological reaction.

I see your pragmatic frame of mind here as a psychological defense mechanism. A way of feeling the least dysfunctional in your conflicted interactions with others.

And it’s not that I yearn to be an objectivist. It’s that I recognize no question more important to philosophers than “how ought one to live?”

Is this something that can be known?

The fact is it has always fascinated me given that I spent over two decades as a political activist.

As for this…

…it’s all just psycho-babble to me.

Instead, you have your own particular “likes and dislikes”; and you are comfortable enough with them that you won’t/don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about how these “likes and dislikes” may well be rooted existentially in a particular sequence of experiences out in a world awash in arguments able to defend any point of view along the political spectrum.

You just don’t call this a “leap”.