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.
I don’t find you able to take responsibility for your acts. Your acts in communication.
Please cite an example of how one would take responsibility for the act of posting here. I’m not sure what your point is.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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”?
Not the point.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Existential leaps`??? What leaps?
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.
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.
Why bother?
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.
I have said many times that I am embedded in those contexts. I have given specific examples of how I deal with conflicts.
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.
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?
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.