And you should know by now that even though you express your own frame of mind regarding the existential relationship between thinking and feeling and wanting and doing, I think you are not grasping the nature of dasein in the most reasonable manner. Or, rather, given my own existential assessment of what a more reasonable manner encompasses.
As for the word “should” here the distinction I make is between those in the scientific and medical communities who have both the background and the education to assess the covid pandemic most rationally and those in one or another political community who seem less concerned with the virus itself and more concerned with linking it to their hatred of government. There may be those in the medical and scientific communities who have a political axe to grind but I suspect there are far fewer of them there than in the moral and political objectivist communities.
In fact, any number of those in the scientific community are now predicting that Covid is on the brink of becoming endemic.
How many times can I note that in not being you or them, what can I possibly know in depth about how you or they construe a sense of identity. All I can note is that in regard to “I” in the world of conflicting value judgments, your frame of mind strikes me as similar to theirs. Maia like you will agree with me regarding some aspects of dasein…but falls back on this sense of what she “just knows” is true about things like abortion or vaccinations. And then when I press her she backs away. And that’s because like you [in my opinion] she knows what is at stake if she loses that sense of “feeling” that some things are worth wanting more than others. It’s the “fractured and fragmented” “I” that repels her.
Then this part…
Okay, but in acknowledging that they are just subjective prejudices rooted existentially in dasein, how zealous can one be? Viscerally I want the truckers to win, but if my life had led me politically in the other direction then, perhaps, just as viscerally, I’d want them to lose. As though the “feeling” part of “I” here has a mind all its own. It just doesn’t compute for me.
All I can do here is to imagine you explaining this to the truckers…or to those here like Urwrong and observr.
When you have become as “fractured and fragmented” as “I” am in regard to value judgments, you don’t denounce much at all. Instead, uncertainty and ambiguity and ambivalence come to prevail time and again. Instead of subsuming what I see and hear and come to know through the news media as I once did in being an objectivist [in God or in ideology or in deotology], I am pulled and tugged in conflicting directions. Both sides [many sides] make rational arguments merely by embracing different sets of assumptions about the “human condition”. The ones I’ve noted a number of times above.
Back to not being them myself. I have not lived their lives, had their experiences, sustained their relationships, read what they read, heard what they heard etc.
All I can do is to expose them to the points I raise in my signature threads and, given circumstances involving things like government, covid, abortion, guns etc., try to grasp how they arrive at their own conclusions regarding behaviors deemed either right or wrong. If they are not fractured and fragmented as “I” am, how then do they explain – to themselves – what enables them to feel whole…to feel committed to one political agenda rather than another.
On the other hand, assessments such as this…
…are [to me] mainly abstract. Again, take it to the truckers or the objectivists here. Imagine their own reactions. The “either/or facts” can be shared with some but not others. But the bottom line will be what either can or cannot be encompassed factually regarding the righteousness of any particular political protest. Here “I” think and feel as a “broken” man. While on some level I still cannot grasp why you don’t.
For Maia and MagsJ, what is “intrinsic” is that which viscerally, intuitively, instinctually they have over time come to just know in their gut is true about something. Though, sure, you’d have to run that by them. On the other hand, if you do make sure they bring their grasp of it down to earth. Pertaining to something like the trucker protest.
Even when you do focus on more specific things like this…
…I’m unable to grasp how this works for you given the extent to which you share my own understanding of dasein. Yes, you either want theses things to happen or feel these things about others or you don’t. But, for me, once I grasp that had my life been very different I would not want or feel these things at all – or even want and feel the opposite – an intact self seems out of reach. Both philosophically and in terms of my actual life experiences.
This is largely unintelligible to me. It makes no sense given my own understanding [here and now] of the existential relationship between identity, morality, conflicting goods and political economy.
Thus…
That will often depend on how deeply immersed you are in political activism. When I was an activist moral and political convictions were always very, very important to me. And in part because what I thought about right and wrong was often very much in sync with what I felt was right or wrong was very much in sync with what I wanted to see happen “in the news”.
You’re asking me something here that only you can answer. You have to go out there and become embedded in political struggles. Note the reactions of others to your own level of commitment. All I can do is imagine myself back then noting what I think you are arguing here to my “comrades” and political allies. I think they’d think my points were…irrelevant. More for the classroom than the streets.
I still recall the truculent reaction of many to my own post William Barrett perspective. Marxism/socialism and “moral nihilism”? Eventually, it took me out of political activism altogether.
No, what is more important is what you convey to the truckers regarding the existential relationship between your point and their protest.
Yeah. Based on my own many years as a political activist, how emotions work for most who protest government policies is this:
1] they think the policies stink
2] they feel the policies stink and
3] they want the policies to be changed
Right. And someone on the other end of the political spectrum is making the same sort of point to those who are politically and emotionally committed to backing the government’s policy. In fact, some will argue the polices don’t go far enough.
Then what?
That those on both sides of the protest put their political activism on the shelf until it can be determined precisely what the nature of the emotions they are feeling are?
Then imagine them reacting to me. Imagine them reacting to my own sense of being “fractured and fragmented”…of suggesting that at best they can grapple with attempts to forge government policies that revolve around “moderation, negotiation and compromise”.
Not really. I suspect that what you believe here about emotions allows you to keep your distance from a “fractured and fragmented” sense of self. But from my frame of mind that’s because you don’t construe emotions themselves in regard to moral and political value judgments as “I” do.
Okay, but my aim is to take “philosophical” discussions like this down out of the clouds and introduce them to the protesters of the world.
Maybe to you, but certainly not for others. And how emotions work for the objectivists here is simple: you feel what I do about the protest and the government or you’re a “libtard”. Maybe even a “Commie”.
Go ahead, ask them.
Again, if you equate your opinions about justice and the trucker protest with your opinions about digestion and blood circulation, I’d say we are truly far removed here.
Human biology isn’t such that anytime soon digestion and blood circulation is likely to be construed any differently.
Again, thinking and feeling with respect to the either/or world is such that if someone attempts to kill you, you will almost certainly have an emotional reaction. Deserving to die or not here can be irrelevant. Where the ambivalence can arise is when the discussion focuses in on whether you did deserve to die. Some people might feel strongly that you did, while others might feel strongly that you didn’t. But even here ambivalence can follow. You might feel there are reasons you did deserve to die, but also reasons that you didn’t. Or, with those like me, it can reach the point where you are simply unable to decide. Or, again, for the sociopaths deserving to has nothing to do with it. They want you dead. End of story.
No, that’s what you think I think you are trying to argue. Instead, I think that thinking like this is what the objectivists will try to argue. What I don’t understand about you is why you don’t argue as I do if you grasp the existential relationship between dasien and value judgments in the general vicinity of my own conclusions.
Please note where I noted above that I would not be afraid if someone was out to murder me. I don’t want to die. On the other hand, someday the pain in my life might so outweigh the pleasure I kill myself.
And [to me] your “assessment” of me here is so preposterous, I might just as well be having this discussion with a pinhead.
How about if we chalk it up it up to a bad day. You’re just not, uh, thinking clearly here and now.
To wit:
Unless, of course, Urwrong.
Again, my thinking and my feeling here are pretty much in alignment. In fact, where the distinction is made here [by me] is between the “circumstances” of my life [pretty good] and my philosophy of life [still grim]. In other words, I enjoy my day to day experiences by and large, but it’s only a matter of time before The Big One sends me hurtling toward the abyss. And in what I construe to be an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence.
Fear of them? Please note where you think I expressed that above. As for an objective morality, sure, why not. It might exist. All any of us who don’t believe that it does can do is to listen in on the discussions of those who think that it does. What have we got to lose?
Then I don’t think you think enough about the staggering gap that must exist between “an infinitesimally tiny speck of existence” like you here on planet Earth and all that can possibly be known about the existence of existence itself. Just in terms of the “unknown unknowns…the things we don’t even know that we don’t know.”
That’s always tricky. You do what you do. So, where do the genes stop and the memes begin. And that’s just one aspect of why things are “that complex”.
All I can do is make the distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world here.
As I noted above, sure, when my thinking changed over the years my emotions were only more or less able to keep up. There is no definitive dividing line whereby I tell myself, “now I think this instead so I must feel that instead too”. But over time if I felt comfortable with being a Marxist but abandoned it for Democratic Socialism and then for Social Democracy and then for existentialism and then for deconstruction and then for moral nihilism, my emotions eventually did catch up. Only for someone like me what does that really mean given the extent to which intellectually and emotionally “I” am “fractured and fragmented” in the is/ought world.
Then there’s your own rendition of this:
On the other hand, I spent over two decades embodying one or another religious or political font [as an objectivist] before I even became acquainted with dasein as construed by William Barrett existentially regarding “rival goods”.
And “out of sync” as I noted above.
As you say, however, you are an anomaly. What would happen if, given new personal experiences, your political prejudices did change such that you thought that all citizens should be forced to get vaccinated. Then, what, your feelings would be more in sync with your thoughts?
That they are out of sync now is just something that encompasses the “self” you have come to experience. Why? How on earth would I know?
Again, you should know the answer to these question. You were the one who brought up our hard-wiring. In regards to what were you saying we are hard-wired?
Yes, you would be a hypocrite if you did that. But that’s not the only way to be a hypocrite. I’m pointing out another. Accusing others of doing the same without leveling those same accusations at yourself is another.
Note to others:
Notice how he uses this irrelevant minutiae to dodge the point I was making. He still refuses to apply the question to himself. As much as he claims to apply his own philosophy to himself, he will never ask himself–why your philosophy and not someone else’s?–because then the answer can be applied to me (or whoever he’s debating with) and I become no longer a fanatical fulminating objectivist pinhead.
And why do you have a problem with morality predicated on subjectivity and acquired existentially?
Ok, well… you own that.
Beats me. Let me know when you find it.
Huh? Where have you been living the past 20 years? On an Amish commune? Have you seriously never noticed how each side presents facts (or “facts”) that contradict the facts of the other side? Or wait… unless you’re saying that because I don’t know whose facts to believe, that means I think the pro-trucker arguments are right.
Let’s just leave it at that before you change your mind.
So then, back to what I said:
Where’s the moral element in this? [size=50](hint: my point is that there isn’t one)[/size]
Philosophy wasn’t “invented”. Humans have been doing philosophy ever since they could think. We do philosophy because we like thinking. We like to figure things out in our head, and some of us go so far as to take it several degrees into abstraction and come out with new insights to suit our purposes. Sometimes that turns out to be moral philosophy or simply justifications for our cause, but it certainly isn’t the raison d’etre of philosophy.
Because things can be odd to say without being illogical. I once tried to strike up a conversation with a girl I liked once so I said “you’re tall.” It was definitely an odd thing to say–awkward and embarrassing–but certainly not illogical–she was tall.
This is the part of your philosophy I understand all too well.
Sure, they might be confused by that, but I don’t need them to understand in order for me to want them to win.
You’re brain’s glitching again. I asked if I interpreted you correctly and you answered a different question (who knows what).
That’s your job.
And neither do I, at least not which gene/meme combination is the correct one to have in order to get it right. But that doesn’t make my pro-trucker feelings go away. I might as well be an animal like a wolf.
Right, and that’s where they become intellectual contraptions again. Those are the thoughts that, for me, become moot once dasein enters the picture because there is no way to decide. Obviously the facts aren’t moot. Facts, once exposed, are crystal clear. But I thought we were talking about the is/ought world.
This tired old point you keep bringing up–that had my life been different, I would have felt different–means nothing to me. It’s an obvious and trivial truism. Of course I would feel differently if I were, say, raised to think like a leftist. For you to say this should (what?) “cancel out” how I feel about the truckers in actuality sounds to me like saying that the cuttlefish couldn’t really be a cuttlefish because if it had evolved differently it would have become a different species. Now your point might make sense if I were saying that my feelings justify coming to the conclusion that the truckers are morally right, but I’m not saying that, am I? And I suppose I could say it a thousand times and it still wouldn’t sink in, would it? To you, everything must come down to moral statements.
But I’m not speculating about what the protesters feel or think is wrong.
Just to be clear, I don’t think I’m an anomaly. I just figure I must seem like one from your point of view.
Well Biggy, I think I’m going to throw in the towel. I’ve reached the point of exhaustion and I’m no longer getting anything out of this discussion except a headache.
I definitely think we’re talking passed each other and there’s no way to fix that. We’re speaking different languages. Yours sounds like English to me but it isn’t the English I was raised on. And I can’t maneuver around your bizarre cognitive algorithms. It’s not so much what your saying that I can’t grasp but how you think, the way your brain processes information–it’s so different from anything I’ve ever encountered that “cognitive disorder” is the most descriptive label I can come up with. What seems to have significant logical implications to you, I see as total nonsense or irrelevance. What seems to allow you to draw particular conclusions, I see as non-sequiturs. For example, you seem to take the fact that had one’s life been different one would be arguing and feeling different things as a reason to doubt or reject the arguments and feelings one currently has, but to me this sounds like saying had I been born in a country that spoke a different language, I wouldn’t speak English, therefore English is invalid. Or your request that I take my arguments to the truckers/protestors… you seem to think that if I imagine what their reactions would be that this would change what I think/feel. To me, at most, it just means that some people might disagree with me. And last but not least, the fact that you seem to think everything I say is leading up to an argument in defense of a definite moral position… even things like “I don’t take a moral position on the trucker protest,” seem to be somehow construed as in support of the truckers’ moral position.
^ Bizarre cognitive algorithms indeed. And the best I can surmise is that it’s psychodynamic in nature, that you are a master in leveraging your own psychoanalytic defense mechanisms to control not only what you believe and feel, but how you interpret others. I can’t get by that. All my attempts have resulted in frustration and despair. And at this point, that’s all I find myself doing. It’s soul-crushingly tedious! So I have to do what’s best for my psychological health and detach myself from this conversation while I can. I won’t be reading part 2.
So long, Biggy. It was a pleasure (up to a point).
My initial analysis of this thread was that you let him get away with too much without defining “reasonable people,” a fundamental, pivotal point of his position.
Deeper analysis, though, because you did this like a gentleman and many of us were following in awe, leads me to a more subtle conclusion:
In the end, what scares him the most, what terrifies communists the most was a key point that you kept getting stuck on: that you don’t think there is an objective morality that supports your position on the truckers. In other words, what terrifies a communist is somebody not being ideological.
When something is very difficult to find it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Especially because the area you have to search is too large and because of everything around it"
"
Well. Here’s how you know you’ve found “the one”. The best idea is all three of these on the inside, and you can tell by their fruit:
good/real, beautiful/whole, true/actual
If you are that sort of “tree of life”, and bump into someone also like that, you become one tree of life all twisted up together, and if you’re not too old you bear a lot of fruit & baby trees, and so do they. Or you just visit each other’s grandkids. And that’s the truth. Then birds of the same feather all poop in your tree.
That’s the whole point. Terror prevents a communist from even believing somebody can be not ideological. They have to tell themselves that they are just pretending.
I didn’t think “reasonable people” was all that ambiguous. I took the term for granted. But now that you bring it up, let’s ask him. Biggy, how are you defining “reasonable people”?
Well, it certain sends some people for a loop. Not everyone realizes what ideologies are, or what it is to suspend them and experience life “raw” so to speak.
That sounds Kantian. Is it? What’s the difference between “real” and “actual”?
And doesn’t this depend on the person?
Absolutely! People who share common values and beliefs work well together.
You do realize that’s an analogy, right? What’s does burning the haystack and using the magnet represent?
And I wonder what Bigs thinks of me? Does he think I’m pretending or does he suffer a cognitive disorder? He certainly didn’t ask the right questions to open that box. It would have been nice if he did.
That would have constituted an honest question borne out of honest curiosity.
A communist doesn’t have honest questions. He has propaganda objectives.
If it isn’t ambiguous, then the question is, of any given person, such as iambiguous here, are they reasonable?
Maybe you have made several points that all reasonable people would be compelled to agree to. But if, for example, imabiguous isn’t reasonable, then it wouldn’t apply to him. So you wouldn’t be failing the “iambiguous challenge,” would you? You wouldn’t expect somebody that is not reasonable to also agree.
I do think this has political implications. If one of the parties is ideologically motivated, and by extention unreasonable, what gain is there in reasoning with them? You either abandon reason yourself, or you aim only for the reasonable.
Life isn’t easy, and most problems don’t have simple solutions such that all reasonable people can be compelled to agree.
But if you are additionally bending yourself out of shape to convince the unreasonable of something, the fanatics, those who delegate their thinking, their capacity to arrive at opinions and decisions, to the hierarchy of a cause, you are unlikely ever to get anywhere.
So, I propose that what defines a reasonable person is the ability for compromise.
acting as if you’ve sold your mind to a cause/ideology (“I do believe; help my unbelief.” or “The truth is out there. I want to believe.” - go through whatever motions on your own steam?)
actually selling your mind to a cause/ideology (theism, I presume?) (based on good reasons/evidence?) (if reject higher purpose… fill the hole with good works on your own steam?)
suspending the selling of one’s mind to ideology/cause & living life “raw” … as a settled position, or tentatively? if the latter… agnostic (more like apistic)
Any other options?
Can one suspend & stay raw at the cost of refusing to examine evidence of a worthy ideology/cause? Apatheism? Fill the hole with “scientism”?
