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Which would be a practical problem for certain people, not a philosophical problem. It’s also an argument based on morality: what if he starts doing immoral things because he doesn’t know the way to objectively determine the good. Implicitly understood: Iambiguous right now is avoiding doing immoral things, unlike others. IOW he unlike Faust is trying to do good, help the world, rather than just play language games. Which is an odd, hence primarily implicit, claim for an existentialist. Odder still, he does, in fact, precisely what he seems to be almost threatening to do…he interacts here - in what I think is his only community - in the manner of someone choosing behaviors based on what he perceives to be his own best interests. How otherwise can he get out of his hole, he repeatedly asks rhetorically. His impetous is to get out of the hole. And yet, at the same time, he takes the higher moral ground. There were so many ironies in his previous post it boggles the mind.

Yes, his surrender was inevitable.
:smiley:

We all choose particular behaviors. These behaviors involve biological interactions, chemical interasctions, neurological interactions. And then others – anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists etc. – weigh in on them.

So, how is it then determined when and where philosophers should weigh in on them in turn?

Now, in the field of philosophy, there are “branches”. The main ones being…

“Metaphysics, which deals with the fundamental questions of reality.
Epistemology, which deals with our concept of knowledge, how we learn and what we can know.
Logic, which studies the rules of valid reasoning and argumentation
Ethics, or moral philosophy, which is concerned with human values and how individuals should act.
Aesthetics or esthetics, which deals with the notion of beauty and the philosophy of art.”

My “thing” here at ILP is to explore the manner in which those who are technically proficient in one or in some or in all of these branches, are able to approach the question “how ought one to live?” by taking their technical knowledge out into the world that we live in and situating their intellectual conclusions in a context in which folks actually have conflicting assessments regarding how one ought to live. In order to be thought of as a rational human being.

How on earth does one “sneak” morality into a discussion that explores the philosophical parameters of human interaction? Given that ethics is one of the main branches of philosophy?

Right. Like in discussing President Trump’s immigration policy there are clearly distinct lines to be drawn between political theory and political practice.

Culminating in actual [and hopelessly conflicting] moral narratives embodied by folks up and down the political spectrum.

How then is it determined when serious philosophers have a role to play in, say, discussing immigration policy re the upcoming presidential election in the US?

Imagine, for example, a professional philosopher coming upon this site: immigration.procon.org/

Where would she draw the line between, “relevant to philosophy, irrelevant to philosophy?”

Immoral things? And, with respect to immigration policy, what might they be? How is it determined [using the tools of philosophy] what the “good” is here?

How does the pragmatist determine that other than by taking a particular subjective leap to a particular set of political prejudices that are rooted in the life that he has lived?

And what does he do when he recognizes that the arguments of those opposed to his own “here and now” point of view don’t go away as a result of the arguments that he makes?

This is simply preposterous. My whole argument rests on the assumption that in a No God world, I am unable to determine what it means to choose good or bad behaviors…in any particular context understood by any one particular point of view. The part where I have thought myself into being drawn and quartered…into a hole [in the is/ought world] I am not able to extricate myself from.

Only I acknolwedge in turn that my own thinking here is no less problematic. There may well be a way in which to determine this.

And then of course “resolving” these conflicting narratives by making me issue:

Again, choose a context, a set of behaviors.

I’ll note the manner in which I approach them given my far more problematic understanding of pragmatism, and you can note how your own pragmatism of choice has allowed for a considerably less turbulent reaction to conflicting goods.

iam, what you don’t seem to be getting is that you have posted tens, hundreds of thousands of words, mostly about yourself and no one else. And anything more general than that, you consider “on the skyhooks.” You are the only person on the planet that knows what an existential contraption really is. Where have you ever really defined this?

An advantage of a Rawlsian approach is that he takes out the metaphysics, the epistemology and really only focuses on matters of interest to political scientists, economists, government types. Deep staters. Stuff like that. He does not include your fractured “I” because that’s not a concern of any of those people. That’s for a psychologist to examine.

Except for that shattered ego, Rawls is right up your alley. He’s also a brilliant writer. I am a fan of his method, if not all of his conclusions.

You quote authors who have a readership in the dozens (if they have large families) so I know you must read a lot. Try Rawls, instead of asking me oblique questions that reading Rawls could answer for you. Or David Gauthier. Or even some David Hume, who actually had more influence on Rawls than Kant did.

“So, how is it then determined when and where philosophers should weigh in on them in turn?”

That’s actually a very good question. I vote for that that’s where you should start.

"My “thing” here at ILP is to explore the manner in which those who are technically proficient in one or in some or in all of these branches, are able to approach the question “how ought one to live?” by taking their technical knowledge out into the world that we live in and situating their intellectual conclusions in a context in which folks actually have conflicting assessments regarding how one ought to live. In order to be thought of as a rational human being. "

As you know, I do realize this is so, which is why I’m your greatest fan.

Rock on iambiguous.

Forgive me if I find you too smart not to take a crack at it myself now and then. You are doing God’s work.

God bless.

Necromancy. :smiley:

Ah, taking KT’s approach: making me the issue. Unfortunately, I recognize myself even less here than in his own psych jabs.

Since we presume that we exist, not much about us isn’t embedded in all of the contraptions that nature has included in the evolution of life on earth. And then the ever evolving, shifting, changing memetic contraptions derived from history and culture and our own personal experiences.

But: What here are we able to establish as in fact true for all of us? Those existential variables that appear to cling tenaciously to the either/or world century after century after century?

And then, on the other hand, what do we seem able to establish only as in fact something that we believe is true in our head? Something that others do not believe is true at all.

What role does philosophy play here? For some that is considerably more limited than for others. So all we can do here is to exchange narratives embedded in particular contexts.

Yet another general description of Rawls’s general description of human interactions. And to the extent that you see my fractured “I” as basically irrelevant to the concerns of philosophy is the extent to which we construe its purview in very different ways.

Until and unless those who champion Rawls’s take on “fairness” bring that out into the world of conflicting goods embraced by individuals who have come to very, very different conclusions about “fair behavior”, all the definitions in the world won’t make those newspaper headlines go away.

One way or another, ones “methods” and ones “conclusions” [as philosophers, scientists, politicians, sociologists, psychologists etc.] have to get around to the nitty gritty that revolves around either prescribing or proscribing particular sets of behaviors.

Ah, the clever retort. I do get that a lot here. :wink:

I’ll tell you what. You bring Rawls’s methods regarding fairness down to earth by situating his philosophically relevant points in a particular context in which what some construe to be fair behaviors others construe to be anything but.

If I’m impressed I’ll check him out.

Moral thinking is useless, and probably impossible, without a world of conflicting goods. This is exactly the condition that moral theory addresses. If anyone does this, it’s Rawls. You clearly don’t want to learn anything.

When you ask, “What role does [moral] philosophy play here?” you are asking what is among themost general questions you can possibly ask about morality. It’s a meta-ethical question. You cannot get more general, more abstract than that. To expect the answer to be the solution to the problem of Joey and Suzy arguing about the rightness of abortion is unrealistic to say it kindly.

That they simply disagree is not a question for moral theory. Moral theory applies when we know why they disagree. That they have had different life experiences is not enough. That is a given. We need information that is not self-evident. Specific information. Your examples are vapid (because they are so general that they convey no information that we don’t already have).

Why do Joey and Suzy disagree? Again, moral theory assumes that there is disagreement. All moral theory does that. We need to get your example off of the skyhooks.

You assert this as though asserting it itself demonstrates that it is true.

And what I would be interested in in regards to Rawls’s “methods” is the extent to which they might be effective in yanking me up out of this…

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Consequently, those who champion his methods are either willing to explore them in regards to a particular set of conflicting goods in a particular context, or they aren’t.

Perhaps. But you clearly don’t want to teach me how “for all practical purposes” Rawls’s “moral theory” has both a use value and an exchange value out in the world of actual human interactions that in fact do revolve around conflicting goods.

Right, like out in the real world here in America, the United States Supreme Court may not soon be sending women to the back alleys again for abortions. And if that comes to pass, folks like Rawls and his “moral theory” are either relevant here or they’re not.

Imagine for example a philosophy professor who champions Rawls “methods” becoming pregnant. Say she was raped. How does she actually apply the arguments that Rawls makes when she is on trial for the premeditated murder of her unborn baby?

Again, either these “intellectual constructs” make contact with “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” out in the real world or they are passed back and forth didactically in places like this.

Why they disagree? Well the state in our post-Roe America argues that abortion is murder. The unborn fetus is human life and abortion shreds it. The Lawyer for the philosophy professor who aborted her fetus argues that the fetus is not yet an actual human being; and that women have the political right to abortion. Otherwise gender equality is long gone in a world where men cannot become pregnant.

Cue John Rawls here.

Let’s use this example as the one taken off the skyhooks.

It is self-evident. If everyone played by the same set of rules, there would be no purpose to moral prescriptions. How can this be controversial? If there is no deviation from the rules, the rules are superfluous. This is just common sense.

So read him. That’s also common sense.

Rawls does not propose objective values.

I’ll address this in the context of your next response.

You can find out for yourself if they are relevant.

Firstly, that’s factually incorrect. Secondly, You are not giving her reasons - you are giving general, societal reasons. Get this off the skyhooks. I asked for his reasons and her reasons for their respective positions.

But my point is precisely that the moral objectivists insist that conflicting goods revolve solely around the assumption that their own moral/political agenda is necessarily the default in any discussion.

The “goods” are seen as “conflicted” only by those who don’t grasp that all truly rational and virtuous men and women are categorically and imperatively obligated to become “one of us”.

Yeah, but that’s what folks will say about Plato or Aristotle or Descartes or Hume or Kant or Hegel or any other philosopher of note who has delved into moral and political philosophy.

I simply want to be apprised as to how their theoretical assumptions might be relevant in yanking me up out of my hole. With respect to an actual context in which values comes into conflict.

In this regard, why should I read him?

Okay, but his methods are such that he either felt more or less “fractured and fragmented” with regard to his own particular “I” when confronting those who did not share his own value judgments.

This is always what I wish to explore with folks like KT. He, like me, rejects objective morality and has chosen to become a pragmatist. But my own pragmatism is a far more profoundly problematic existential contraption than his appears to be. It is rickety as hell. My “I” allows me to construe my values as rooted precariously in dasein and conflicting goods and political economy. As, in other words, always and ever subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new knowledge, information and ideas.

I am never able [psychologically] to feel any comfort and consolation when confronting the question “how ought I to live?” And that’s before the part about oblivion.

How would you know this? he does not propose value judgments. He proposes a method for resolving conflicts, from the perspective of distributive justice.

Your discomfort is your own. I know of no good philosopher that has a cure for that. Because they don’t try to have a cure for that. Your criticism is like criticizing an auto mechanic for not being able to cure a cold.

Here I can only extrapolate from my own experience. Whether you approach value judgments in regard to either means or ends, you are going to be more or less comforted and consoled with your own. You are going to be more or less convinced that your own moral narrative/political agenda is in sync with some facsimile of the “real me” in sync with some facsimile of “the right thing to do”.

It is only a question of how fractured and fragmented you actually do feel in, say, embracing or rejecting President Trump’s policies.

From my perspective, I’m curious to explore Rawls’s method for resolving particularly ferocious conflicting goods like abortion. I’m curious to explore how someone like him might react to the manner in which I construe the role that dasein, conflicting goods and political economy play in conflicts like this.

But the only way that I can illustrate this is in discussing an issue like abortion with someone who does employ Rawls’s methods in an attempt to resolve it.

So, give it a go, okay? What on earth does “distributive justice” – plato.stanford.edu/entries/just … tributive/ – mean when applied to the killing of the unborn? or with respect to the role of government? or capital punishment? or tax policy? or poverty around the globe?

All I can do here is to note the manner in which I react to conflicting goods given the extent to which I construe value judgments as existential concoctions rooted in partiuclar historical, cultural and interpersonal interactions that thrive on contingency, chance and change.

And while the objectivists, the deontologists and the idealists among us have a cure for practically everything when conflicts erupt around values, I’m always more intrigued by those who don’t.

They eschew God and political ideology and moral obligations rooted categorically and imperatively in reason, but are somehow able to feel considerably less problematic and precarious than “I” do regarding the values [and the political prejudices] that they finally do take their leap to.

And they will either bring their own thinking – their own “methodology” – into a discussion revolving around both a particular context and set of behaviors or they won’t.

If they feel less “fractured and fragmented” than “I” do here, all the better for them. And it’s not like I spend my whole life agonizing over it myself. I’ve got plenty of distractions to fall back on to make living my life both rewarding and fulfilling.

It’s just something that philosophically has always intrigued me: How ought one to live in a No God world?

Rawls would disallow metaphysical/religious arguments, as the courts generally do. He champions the importance of public institutions, such as the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights. Remember that Row v. Wade was fundamentally about the power of government.

So, claiming that there is a soul present at conception is not going to go very far with Rawls. Keep in mind that there are SCOTUS decisions that would have been inconceivable a hundred years ago that are commonplace now.

In all, even religious people accept, overall, a secular society governed by a system of rights. Natural Rights, which are the basic rights, are problematic for me, because I conceive of them as metaphysical in nature. However, there is a way to defend natural rights, in general, without calling them natural rights and without conceiving them as metaphysical. Same rights, different justification.

Rawls would allow abortion, but in the end, it’s because of traditional arrangements, our particular form of government and the balance of power between the government and the voting public. This is, to be sure, might makes right - it’s a political and not primarily philosophical question for Rawls. The philosophy comes in at the beginning. It’s a long argument that i cannot recount here - it’s a surefire tl;dr.

That may well be how the lawyers see it, but for many, many others, Roe is all about the conflicting goods embedded in the act of killing the unborn.

And here in my view “distributive justice” is either more or less an intellectual contraption. From my frame of mind, the law is merely a reflection of human interactions at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. And this I see as existential down to the bone.

But folks like Rawls still have to interact with those who insist that the soul is a very real manifestation of one or another God. And those who construe abortion as revolving first and foremost around gender equality. That doesn’t go away just because the Supremes come down one way or another. The law in my view is hopelessly entangled in all of the many conflicting and contradictory ways in which actual flesh and blood human beings answer the question, “how ought one to live”?

I offer my own narrative here. Revolving around the manner in which I construe the is/ought world as the existential embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. How then might Rawls have reacted to that given a particular context?

Another “general description”. How are “natural rights” actually defended in the case of abortion? Existentially rather than metaphysically.

It would be interesting to explore the extent to which Rawls’s conclusions here overlap with the life that he actually lived – insofar as it came into contact with the issue of abortion.

And, for the objectivists among us, might makes right only because in embracing their own set of moral and political assumptions, right makes might.