We all come into the world hard-wired genetically to experience what we call mental, emotional and psychological states. So, if Joe is about to be executed, different people will react to that in different ways.
But they all have the capacity to react in different ways. They have a particular intention in and a particular motivation for reacting as they do. And this will be embedded in a complex intertwining of genes and memes out in a particular world. In what “I” call dasein.
There are facts about those reactions we are or are not able to establish.
My point however [over and over again] is to explore this philosophically when the discussion shifts to the moral components of these reactions. When the reactions come into conflict, is there a way in which to determine how one ought to react to Joe’s execution? What is in fact true here?
Now, how on earth do you equate the facts embedded in our psychological reactions with attempts to resolve conflicting goods?
Re Joe’s execution.
What you think about these relationships is not the same as being able to demonstrate that all rational men and women ought to think about them in the same way. I readily acknowledge my own inability to accomplish this.
Given the gap between what I think I know and all that can be known about existence itself.
Basically you just shrug that gap off and talk yourself into believing that what you think you know need be as far as it goes. Why? Because what you think you know comforts and consoles you psychologically.
That’s the important difference between us.
What does mean if I can’t demonstrate it to all rational people?
It doesn’t mean that I don’t have knowledge, although it could mean that. I might just not be convincing. I might not appear trustworthy. I might not have sufficient teaching skill. I might not be able to present it in a clear manner. I might not sufficient resources to back up what I say. I might be less willing to lie and manipulate than a competing snake oil salesman. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I completely agree. All of these factors [and others besides] may well be applicable here. I have never argued that objective morality does not exist. I have never argued that rooting this in God or in ideology or in nature is necessarily irrational.
I have merely noted that here and now “I” do not believe in God and/or objective morality. I am down in my hole anticipating oblivion. I have no existential access to the sort of comfort and consolation that any number of religious objectivist have.
All I can do [on this thread] is ask those folks who do believe in God and in objective morality to take their religious and moral and political narratives/agendas out into the world and situate them in a particular context.
As we did with Communism.
The bottom line then being that you either convince me that your frame of mind is more reasonable than mine or you don’t. But even if you do convince me that doesn’t establish it as necessarily true. Not until the dots can be connected between what we now concur regarding Communism and all that would need to be known about the existence of existence itself.
I can accept my limitations and the limitations of humans in general. I can move on. Can you?
Call it moving on if you like, but that doesn’t make all of the “unknown unknowns” embedded in the relationship between “in my head” and “out in the world” go away. Instead I’m back to this:
Basically you just shrug that gap off and talk yourself into believing that what you think you know need be as far as it goes. Why? Because what you think you know comforts and consoles you psychologically.
Call it comfort and consolation if you want.
What I want pales in importance to what you want. You either are comforted and consoled by your moral and religious beliefs or you’re not.
I’m definitely not.