It simply revolves around recognizing that my own moral and political values are not derived deontologically/philosophically from the most rational and virtuous manner in which one is able to assess and to ascertain how to behave in any particular context. But, instead, have come to embody the manner in which my “lived life” had unfolded existentially predisposing me to go in one rather than another political direction.
How is this not the case for you when your own values come into conflict with others? Are you suggesting that your own value judgments have come to reflect the optimal – most rational – point of view? — that they have come to reflect the “real you”? — that no new experiences, relationships, sources of information and ideas etc., will/can prompt you to change your mind?
Also, that those on the other side of the moral/political divide are able to provide reasonable arguments for behaving in opposite ways. In other words, arguments that those on either side are not able to make go away.
Then ask yourself: How is this not applicable to me?
Yeah, that’s basically what I mean by it. And then the moral and political objectivists come along and insist that, on the contrary, re either God or Reason, it is possible to discern one or another deontological agenda that allows all rational men and women to transcend conflicting goods such that they can then know – “ideally” – the difference between right and wrong, good and evil behavior.
No, I note that both sides are able to make reasonable arguments for behaving in conflicting ways. That, in other words, any decision made is little more than an existential “leap of faith” rooted subjectively in the manner in which [as noted above] one is predisposed to go in one rather than another direction.
I believe that any decision made is but an embodiment of that “existential leap” above.
And I don’t argue that there are no objective values, only that I have not come across an argument [of late] able to convince me that there are.
And if there were choices that could be shown to be “philosophically correct”, we might still choose to do the wrong thing; but this could then be established objectively.
Indeed, assumptions abound here. What I am looking for then is an argument in which the assumptions are such that it can be established that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace them. And not just the assumptions that any one particular individual embraces because he or she believes them to be in sync with objective reality “in their head”.
Now, just out of curiosity, when you close each post with “with love”, how do you distinguish between that as either a subjective or an objective…sentiment?
How we understand things can affect how we interact with the world, both collectively and as individuals. For instance, If we believe that “everything is relative” (in the way that term is often used) then it’s easier to argue that no one has the right to make judgments. It’s easier to justify being an anarchist, for instance. Or being a criminal. Or saying that it’s okay for men to go into a woman’s bathroom if they feel like a woman on that day… etc. On the other hand, if we reject that sort of relativism in some way, then it becomes harder to justify these sorts of opinions, which try to accommodate alternate ways of thinking.
Thus, I would argue that both science AND philosophy can have very large and practical implications for how we choose to think about (and deal with) the world. When we think that something is true, or that things work a certain way, it limits what we are willing to consider. For instance, a certain interpretation of physics says that COLD FUSSION is impossible. When that notion is widely accepted, funding for COLD FUSSION dries up and scientists tend to avoid exploring that possibility.
Which invariably brings me around to this: What “on earth” does this mean? How are these “theoretical insights” applicable to the world that we live and interact in from day to day to day?
First off, it may help if I forewarn that I do not disagree, at least not to the extent of asserting anything like “There are objective values derived deontologically/philosophically from the most rational and virtuous manner”. So I am not the good target, I cannot oppose.
I am just puzzled about your questions…
You say that your own values depend on dasein, which is not your dasein, but it should be understood as a succession of “existential contraptions” where you happened to be in. Moreover they can’t be your values either. These values are a byproduct of historical context, including the culture you’ve been bred in, and ultimately of the specific “existential contraption” that made and are going to make your “lived” existence. I guess that in your view this is a general condition, that it does not apply only to yourself (if there’s such a thing) – and it seems to me that your dasein post allows me to infer that.
Following this hypothesis, it’s mere chance if you happen to agree with yourself (in your words that would be two existential contraptions that yeld equal value judgements). So why do you expect two distinct individuals to genuinely agree with each other, if they can’t even agree with themselves? The normal course of thing would be that only sometimes, accidentally, people happen to agree with each other, but that’s unlikely anyway.
Yet you ask for some philosophical deus ex machina, some calculemus! or I don’t know what, that would deny your hypothesis. But it’s your philosophy that rises you to the consciousness of the dasein, which makes yourself some unstable and ever-changing compound out of various influences. In that condition “Gods and Reason and Truth” are inventions. You ask philosophy to produce something that your philosophical position denies it can be done. As truth is an invention, a fortiori there can’t be trues premises, so how could one ever argue against a differing position (on ‘values’, just like on anything else)?
When you say “my own moral and political values are not derived deontologically/philosophically” there is one ‘philosophically’ that should not be there, because it is philosophically that you maintain that they can’t be derived, not in a permanent way at least. Maybe you have never come across a valid argument about anything because you have preemptively denied that it could be even remotely possible.
Actually, back to a remark laid above, why do you say “my own values” (which I take it to mean “my own moral tenets”, and I take the political stance to be largely a consequence of them)? How come those should be “your own”, while nothing else, not even your “self”, is exactly yours? What could make embracing those value any true, when there’s no truth, when any “lived existence” is ultimately just a narrative as long as your consciousness can go? Why moral questions are of any concern to you while holding a philosophical view where nothing could underpin them?
Not at all. Quite the contrary.
In your own judgement, anything rational is illusory. And values are transient. So why not factoring that in when making judgements, decision and so on?
Yet, somehow, you really require something that would fix these judgment for good, for anyone, for ever… and I guess that you imply also something that entails responsibility for the one who chooses, decides, set what is right and what is not. Your judgement can be judged too…
Well, I somehow dropped all those requirements – philosophically, I mean. And I guess you did that too.
By the way, of course anyone is subject to influences, experiences that can make one change one’s mind. Nevertheless being influenced is not necessarily being overwhelmed, and changing your mind is not a necessity either.
Good, i am seeing some cracks again in your so called skin.
And, allow me repeat you for me (to you) from this very thread -
Iamb, does your above mentioned quote not apply precisely on you now!
It is an objective choice for me. And, i will tell you about its methodology when we discuss subjectivity it the other thread. You have to wait till then.
Rejecting moral relativism “in your head” is one thing, demonstrating that all rational men and women are obligated to reject it in turn, another thing altogether.
So, to the moral objectivists, I pose this: Choose a moral conflict that we are all familiar with and note what “in your head” you believe all rational men and women are obligated to think and to feel. And how they are obligated to behave in turn.
Such that, in other words, it is not just the embodiment of one more particular political prejudice.
I’m not arguing otherwise. I’m merely suggesting there are limitations regarding how far this can be taken “out in the world” of actual conflicting behaviors. The OP revolves precisely around this [at times] flagrant gap between theory and practice.
Right, but here we are discussing relationships that revolve around either/or. Cold Fusion either is or is not possible. But how do we establish what the government either is or is not obligated to fund when the discussion revolves instead around is/ought? For example, the government is spending X amount of dollars on defense issues. Some insist that it ought to be spending it instead on social issues. Which argument then is more reasonable? Which argument embodies virtue?
Yep, that’s my point too. The relationship between “theoretical insights” relating to identity, value judgments and political power and the manner in which these “worlds of words” are applicable relating to actual social, political and economic interactions “out in the world” that we live in from day to day to day.
The morality there seems to be very clear and objective. No particular political prejudice involved.
All rational men and women think and feel that what Dahmer did was immoral. The narcissist/psychopath argues that it was moral based on his need for self-gratification. Right? Iambiguous can’t make that argument ‘go away’.
I suspected as much. And, true, my arguments are aimed more [far more] at those that I construe to be objectivists:
1] those convinced the “I” embodied in their moral and political values reflects some core or essential self and…
2] those convinced that their own value judgments reflect the most rational manner in which to think and to feel and to behave
Generally one or another rendition of this:
1] I am rational
2] I am rational because I have access to the ideal
3] I have access to the ideal because I grasp the one true nature of the objective world
4] I grasp the one true nature of the objective world because I am rational
So, they might be Liberals or Conservatives or Fascists or Communists or Anarchists or Libertarians or Socialists or Capitalists or whateverists.
The point though is to embrace [psychologically] a frame of mind that becomes embedded [in turn] in one or another rendition of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
Again, I encompass my own rendition of dasein in this:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion [like premarital sex] was a sin. Big time. Both in and out of church.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
But, as I recently noted to gib on another thread:
…short of someone being able to crawl inside my head and think about this as I do, I may never be able to communicate my frame of mind here to most folks.
You either will or will not come closer to understanding my point here. Just as I either will or will not come closer to understanding your point. After all, in thread after thread here at ILP, isn’t this often the case as posters go back forth utterly perplexed [and exasperated] as to why everyone doesn’t see things as clearly as they do.
I never expect that myself though. At least not anymore.
It’s never entirely by chance. Why? Because once you become aware of the extent to which your moral and political values are rooted existentially in dasein, you can then pull back from it and ask yourself, “to what extent, using the tools of science and philosophy, can reasonable men and women come to encompass the most rational, least dysfunctional social interactions?”
And here [in my view] the “best of all possible worlds” is democracy and the rule of law. Always recognizing of course the contributions that Marx and Engels [among others] have made to the debate.
And whether an agreement is reached or not does not obviate my point regarding conflicting goods. Neither side in my view is able to encompass the most rational moral or political agenda.
All I ask for is an argument able to convince me that, using the tools of philosophy, mere mortals [sans God] might actually be capable of deducing/defining an objective morality into existence. To do so such that in any particular context the rational man and woman would know how to think, feel and behave. They may choose not to of course but they could not argue [as I do] that [sans God] there is no deontological agenda afforded mere mortals.
Unless of course there is. But, if so, I ask them to then convince me of it. Beyond that which they believe or claim to know is true “academically” “scholastically” “theoretically” in their head.
And, more to the point, that we take “analysis” such as this down out of the clouds and plug the ideas into an actual context reflecting actual conflicted value judgments.
How would your points be applicable in the abortion wars? I do note the manner in which the components of my own argument here are.
Far too abstract. How is this point applicable to an actual political conflict that we are all familiar with? How is it applicable whenever your own value judgments come into conflict with others?
Again, I don’t argue that there is no philosophical view that might underpin an objective morality. I argue only that I have not come upon an argument [of late] that convinces me that there is. After all, in the past I very much believed that there was such a frame of mind. Derived either from God or from Reason. I just don’t believe it anymore. But that’s not the same as my having demonstrated this beyond what I believe “in my head”. I never exclude myself from my own point of view.
But over and over again I make it quite clear that I respect “rational, objective reality” as it pertains to mathematics, the laws of natures, the empirical world around us, the logical rules of language etc. It is only pertaining to identity and value judgments that some of what we aver to be true [or claim to know] is more reflected subjectively in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
But: The overwhelming preponderance of our interactions with others from day to day can be described rationally and objectively.
There is something there, and that is the crux of Te trouble wth nihilism, what is that something which is nothingness, a reversion to the most basic ideas of ontology and epistemology, their orthogenetiv identity and divergence, the idea of things , the substantiality of ideas.
The point is epistemology harbors a wish, a backward glance, a regressive hope of finding method out of the madness of the fear of pure nothingness.
The fear of vacuosity , of immolization is at the bottom of it.
Right, and those in the pro-life movement insist that “all rational men and women think and feel that aborting human babies by the tens of thousands year in and year out is immoral.”
Basically, your argument regarding Dahmer revolves around the presumption that in a world sans God mere mortals can just “know” these things. You tap folks like him on the shoulder and quote Plato and Descartes and Kant. As though their arguments somehow prove Dahmer’s behavior is necessarily irrational. As though these philosophers themselves did not recognize the need for a transcending font pertaining to any particular Kingdom of Ends.
You want to equate the fact of Dahmer’s behavior [true objectively for all of us] with the subjective/subjunctive reactions of particular individuals to that behavior. Most will argue that it is immoral. But [to me] that is not the same thing as making it necessarily so.
What is your argument that it is necessarily “evil”?
Here for example is an argument made from the perspective of religion:
[b]If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one’s destiny is ultimately unrelated to one’s behavior, you may as well just live as you please. As Dostoyevsky put it: “If there is no immortality then all things are permitted.” On this basis, a writer like Ayn Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable! Indeed, it would be foolish to do anything else, for life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid. Kai Nielsen, an atheist philosopher who attempts to defend the viability of ethics without God, in the end admits,
We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.
But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there can be no objective standards of right and wrong. All we are confronted with is, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s words, the bare, valueless fact of existence. Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning. In a world without God, who is to say which values are right and which are wrong? Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? The concept of morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. As one contemporary atheistic ethicist points out, “to say that something is wrong because . . . it is forbidden by God, is . . . perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong . . . even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable. . . .” “The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone.” In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.
[/b]
The post is not about abortion, so let’s try to focus on one thing at a time.
Maybe it can be phrased that way. Humans have a certain ‘bias’ based on their biology and needs. Thus, they know what correct morality involves. Just as other social animals just ‘know’.
In fact, your idea of relying on democracy and rule of law, is based on the concept that people will just ‘know’ how to vote such that they (and you) are not overrun by psychopaths.
Subjective reactions?
Rather those are the objective reactions of people who do not want to have their throats cut.
Morality exists so that people can live together in a community. People need a set of predictable, standardized interactions in order to prosper. A psychopath who randomly kills people is acting against the basic needs of people of the community. Therefore, his actions are evil and he is evil.
I wish people who have not read Ayn Rand, or have not understood Ayn Rand, would not write about her.
If you read the books, you will find that there is a strong message of dealing fairly with others, not abusing them or exploiting them. She does not promote the concept of unlimited selfishness.
In a world without God, you can still make objective statements about the world … for example, that the world is spherical. How can you do that without God telling you that you are either right or wrong?
Simple … you refer to a world out there … outside of your own head.
And you do the same thing when making objective moral statements … you refer to a world out there … you refer to consequences outside of your own head.
First of all, my aim here is to note that, whenever the objectivists bring up extreme behaviors in order to “demonstrate” that all of us must see them as inherently irrational and/or evil, I merely note how a behavior which they might not see as inherently irrational and/or evil is seen by others in that light. It could be abortion or capital punishment or homosexuality or consuming animal flesh or…
The difference is this: that there is a much larger consensus regarding Dahmer than regarding slaughtered babies. But then an abortion might occur in a context that actually involves them. So they rationalize it.
Secondly, as I have noted a number of times, I tend to focus on abortion because this was the issue [re John and Mary] that prompted me to reexamine my own objectivist frame of mind.
It is also an issue almost everyone is familiar with and has an opinion about. After all, it literally revolves around life and death.
“Bias”? Okay, how close is that to, say, determinism? I don’t deny that biologically we are hard-wired toward and away from certain behaviors. But nurture then kicks in and for all intents and purposes anything goes. Practically everything has been, is now or will be rationalized.
And note any other creature in the animal kingdom that even comes close to this. Do you suppose that chimps and gorillas and monkeys contemplate abortion as our own species does? And cannibalism occurs throughout the animal kingdom. Consider: discovermagazine.com/galleries/z … al_animals
But what other creature thinks about it in terms of…morality? philosophy? logic?
Although, sure, objectivists of Satyr’s ilk never tire of reminding us that morality is all about being “natural”. In other words, the part about survival of the fittest in this dog-eat-dog “law of the jungle” world. That’s how they rationalize [among other things] racism and sexism and their own fascist rendition of the masters and the slaves. The “will to power” uberman mentality.
Cite where I have ever argued that. What I do point out though is that more often than not particular sides regarding particular issues do embrace an objectivist frame of mind. The thing about democracy though is that the “rule of law” makes it less likely that the strong can just shove their own agenda down the throats of the weak. Particularly in regard to “social issues” or “value-voter issues”.
But, regarding meat and potato economic issues and foreign policy, I’m still more inclined towards Marx’s narrative.
Just considerably less dogmatically these days.
I don’t deny that, objectively, people react to him as they do. The part about the subjective and the subjunctive however revolves around those who insist that their own reaction reflects the most rational [or the only rational] reaction; that all others are obligated to react as they do.
Or those who insist that Dahmer’s own moral agenda [self-gratification] is necessarily irrational. With God, Dahmer may choose to Sin*, but there is no question that Sin is wrong. Why? Because it is transgresses the will of God. And God is said to be omnipresent and omnipotent, so there is never a question of not being caught or punished.
Again, where is the “mere mortal” equivalent of that?
*provided that one is able to explain how human autonomy can be reconciled with an omniscient God
It isn’t even necessarily true that our species must survive. Tomorrow the Big One might strike earth and literally wipe out all of human existence. Just one more manifestation of an essentially absurd and meaningless world. The brute facticity built right into a Godless universe.
Many, however, are either unable or unwilling to own up to that. So they invent Gods and Reasons for doing this rather than that so as to obviate these brute facticities. They can then anchor “I” to necessity; and then manage to convince themselves further that there is some teleological “essence” of which they are a part. It comforts and consoles them.
In other words, folks like you want/need to accumulate “facts” about morality that are said to be the equivalent of facts about the planet that we occupy itself: for example, that, in fact, it is necessarily spherical.
Just as it is necessarily immoral to ______________________.
Just fill in the blank. And then believe that it is true “in your head”.
After all, that’s all it takes to make it true for you.
The reason why “extreme” behaviors are brought up is to see how your concept of morality would work in a simple situation.
If you can’t accept an argument for right and wrong behavior in the case of Dahmer, then you obviously will not accept one in the case of abortion or capital punishment.
Therefore, discussing abortion is a waste of time.
Your position on morality is clear.
Millions of years of biological evolution are overturned by a few years of nurturing/brainwashing? And nurturing can make literally anything acceptable for anyone?
I find that hard to believe. In fact, I would call it bullshit.
I don’t know what animals contemplate. I don’t know what animals think. I only know about observed animal behavior.
BTW, I did write about social animals … not cannibalistic spiders.
Is this some kind of moral high ground that you are taking??
You can’t even condemn Jeffrey Dahmer. You don’t have a working morality.
If the majority of the population of a democracy were psychopathic cannibals, then you would not be promoting democracy and rule of law. Instead you would be promoting a ‘safer’ option. The reason the you feel good about democracy and rule of law is that the majority of the people are decent. They are biologically inclined to vote for a stable safe cooperative society. IOW, the thing that you can find no philosophical argument for, is demonstrated daily by ordinary people.
Does anything else need to be said?
You don’t need to bring in God. No need to muddy the water yet again.
Even if everyone dies tomorrow, there is still a right and wrong today. The decisions of today have consequences today.
A “concept” of morality will always work for the objectivists because it revolves [“in their heads”] around the definition and the meaning that they give to the words that comprise it.
My own concept of morality however does not work [for all practical purposes] because in accepting it as a reasonable point of view I become tangled in my dilemma above.
Instead, what I argue is that the objectivists embrace one or another rendition of objective morality because psychologically this allows them the illusion that the Real Me can make The Right Choice.
If of course it is an illusion.
Come on, what you basically do here is to reject the argument that the sociopath makes regarding morality revolving around self-gratification in a world sans God. It is wrong simply because you say so. That assertion then becomes your “demonstration”. Meanwhile the sociopath smirks at your “concept of morality” and puts a bullet through your brain.
And then he might point out to others that when push comes to shove killing you and killing the unborn baby is really not all that far removed. A human being is dead who did not choose to be. He felt gratification taking your life [for whatever personal reasons] and the woman felt gratification for not having to become a mother.
This is just another rendition of the Satyr/Lyssa narrative. There is a “natural morality” embodied in the lions and the zebras and there is a “natural morality” embodied in us. And, lo and behold, this morality revolves precisely around what folks like you say it is.
Thus, if you want to know if abortion is moral or immoral, ask yourself this: What is the “natural” thing to do here.
You know, before all that historical and cultural and political stuff [like feminism] muddled our thinking.
Something like that, Mr. Naturalist?
But [existentially] I do condemn Dahmer. I just don’t have any illusion that this then reflects an objective moral truth. And I don’t delude myself further that the argument of the sociopaths is therefore rendered null and void in a Godless universe.
And you’re right: I don’t have a working morality. Not if that is understood to be a moral narrative that allows one to differentiate Right from Wrong behaviors such that the rational man and woman is able to know their moral obligation in any particular context.
And I suspect that your reaction to my own argument here reflects the extent to which you are beginning to suspect that it may well be applicable to you.
Then what, Mr. Objectivist? Back to God?
After all, what else is there?
If the majority choose to be cannibals then that is the chance you take with democracy. But that still doesn’t tell us if cannibalism itself is necessarily immoral. And in a democracy the question then becomes this: am I permitted to promote alternatives to cannibalism? Or is cannibalism imposed on me by the might of those in power, or because it has been claimed that objectively cannibalism is the Right Thing To Do.
Okay, with respect to abortion and capital punishment and homosexuality and gender roles and animal rights and social justice and the role of government and hunting and gun control and stem cell research and busing and affirmative action and just wars and conscription and separation of church and state and on and on and on and on and on and on and on who are the “decent” people?
What is the “natural” thing to do pertaining to these and many, many, many more conflicts?
Why do you always react to any mention of God like this? What is it with you and God? Why don’t/won’t you discuss Him pertaining to your own behaviors that come into conflict with others regarding value judgments?
If God does in fact exist, and if God is in fact both omniscient and omnipotent, how would that not clear everything up immediately?
One of your fantasy stereotypes. As if objectivists never examine consequences in the real world.
That’s because you start out with a bunch of assumptions which produces your dilemma. Instead of realizing that the assumptions are wrong and dropping some or all of them, you wallow in your dilemma.
It’s wrong because it doesn’t produce a workable morality. It can’t be the basis of morality.
So what?
He’ll put a bullet in your head while you preach that his actions are not necessarily immoral.
Why do we have morality? To discourage destructive behavior. It’s not going to work 100% of the time, but it will work at least some of the time. It will prevent a few bullets in the head.
You are so detached from physical reality that morality is just an argument. You’re the one who has it purely in your head, not the objectivists.
As though, the physical body has nothing to do with why we adopt certain rules about right and wrong.
You condemn it because you don’t like what he does… you only have subjective reasons for why he should not do it. And if you had been nurtured by psychopaths, then you might “just as well” have become a psychopathic killer.
That’s what you have been saying over and over.
That sounds like democracy is good in spite of a context where it produces cannibals. It sounds like democracy is objectively good for all rational men and women.
Surely you jest.
So, you don’t have an argument as to why the members of your democratic society should not be considered decent.
You can’t figure out morality without God. Why would we move on to another situation with God? And it must be noted : a God which you do not believe exists.
Why would that make sense? How would it solve your dilemma? How would it lead to making progress on your dilemma?
Clearly a first requirement for “clearing up everything immediately” would be certainty about God’s existence. Since you claim that the existence of God is not demonstrated, then how would this potentially not-existent God produce a working morality.
