Well, my own understanding of determinism leaves no room for descriptions or blame to be anything other than an inherent, necessary manifestation of nature unfolding as it must.
And in cutting both ways it merely reflects that fact that nature’s way encompasses all of us. And this exchange would be no exception.
Only I have no way of really knowing for certain if I have no way of really knowing for certain because I am merely “choosing” what I am compelled to, or because I am in fact exercising my autonomy and choosing to think about all of this in a way that is not in sync with your way or his way. And that, in fact, either your way or his way or my way does reflect a more reasonable perspective.
But notice how the context has shifted. To you his post was just gibberish. I pointed out parts that I found potentially accurately descriptive. I list these parts. Your response is ‘but I can’t help but be like that’
No, my response is that I don’t know for certain if I can help to be like that. What I then do [as most do in turn] is to assume that I might possibly be able to freely choose to be something other than what I think I am here and now.
What we do here then is to make arguments that may or may not pull and tug us in different directions. And that has everything to do with how [up to now] I find his post to be but one more example of a “general description” “intellectual contraption” while you find it to be blunt and clear instead.
I would however never argue that my frame of mind in this regard is anything other than an existential contraption. A value judgment rooted in dasein.
…this is a regular pattern I find with you. You shift the context all the time, and this generally includes you choosing to repeat something as if it is relevent, something you have said before, a number of times. Here the impications of determinism.
You point this out to me but you won’t admit that this may well be but one example of your own existential contraptions. Or that we might be construing the exchange based on entirely different assumptions regarding what we think the other is misconstruing.
All you can do here is to note what you deem to be particular instances of this.
Thus…
…let’s assume instead that we really do possess some measure of freedom in choosing [as opposed to “choosing”] our words.
Over and again I note that my interest in philosophy revolves around the question, “how ought one to live”. And in what [I presume] to be a No God world. That’s my “thing” here. And, over the years, I have honed my thinking down to points that I believe best encompass it. If that annoys some, they can move on to other. Or frequent only my quotes, music and film threads.
Of course it is fine to focus on what you want to focus on. But you don’t have to treat us as if we don’t exist and have motives of our own. You can simply say; I am not interested in that. What you do is treat everything as a failed attempt to solve one of your few main problems. And it seems like you simply cannot tell that other people have other goals. And this happens in threads that are threads you started either.
Or the manner in which I react to something you post merely prompts you to assume that I am not interested in where you want to take things.
Again, bring these “you are the problem” observations into a discussion of actual human interactions. Then you can be more specific in noting when, from your point of view, I am “failing” to be interested in your take on something.
It is that you respond as if there are ONLY your issues, so anything anyone says is a poor attempt to solve your issues. Here, as if the issue was whether you could have done something else and are you let off the hook by determinism.
This is simply not sinking in. I don’t really understand what you are telling me here. I don’t know if determinism is a reasonable frame of mind, let alone the most reasonable frame of mind one can have about the choices we make when confronting the question “how ought one to live?” in a world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods construed subjectively from the perspective of “I”.
Evolved? What does that mean? For the objectivists of course others “evolve” only when they come to think more like they do. But I never construe my own frame of mind here as anything other than an existential contraption.
Ad homs? Well, in polemical mode, I can surely come off that way. Ever and always provocative. But to call the search for motive a personal attack is a stretch. On the contrary, it goes to the heart of the matter for me here: “I” as dasein.
I don’t know if I or he called it a personal attack. I called it ad hom, which it is. But then you go beyond this. In one on one interpersonal interactions, if someone seems not as upset as you or has beliefs different from you, you tell them it because your ideas make them uncomfortable. Yes, you sometimes then say, you might be wrong.
As folks like Promeathean75 have pointed out, I’ve been in exchanges with those I construe to be objectivists for many, many, many years. And I can only be honest in my reaction to them. And part of this flows from the fact that for many years in turn I was myself an objectivist. I know first hand what it means to have “I” begin to topple over and then break into pieces. I had reacted then just as I perceive them reacting now.
With you as fellow pragmatist however my reaction revolves more around how you manage to go about the business of confronting those with conflicting value judgments and not tumble down into the hole as I imagine it as the only reasonable manner in which to deal with “I” here as an existential contraption. Someone who recognizes that their own values are constructed largely out of the experiences that they have had in the course of living a particular life, and that there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to concoct anything in the way of a moral obligation.
At a party I walk up to a woman and say ‘You are a slut and a whore’ then I say ‘I might be wrong, of course.’
It’s still a personal attack. Yours are nicer, but they are still personal attacks.
I disagree. The connotations I wrap around objectivists is not the same [to me] as the truly disparaging connotations that revolve around callng a woman a slut at a party.
The consent violations discussion is a huge one.
Okay, let him bring this down to earth. Let hm note a particular context in which human interactions involve actual consents being violated.