Okay, but “One’s mind” is first of all filled with all that revolves around the particular historical and cultural and experiential contexts into which it is “thrown” adventitiously at birth. It is indoctrinated as a child by others to understand the world around them as they do. It has its own profoundly problematic set of uniquely personal experiences and relationship and access to information and knowledge.
All the stuff that gib and I at length, substantively have been exploring on this thread.
On the other hand, the irony here from my frame of mind, is that in some respects, your intrinsic self and gib’s emotions and my dasein all serve to anchor “I” to a point of departure in our exchanges with others. We all fall back on our assessment of them as the starting point in discussions of “I” in the is/ought world.
Only [in my opinion] you two use your own “by default” assumptions to bring the world around to your own objectivist moral and political assessment of things like government health care policy pertaining to the covid pandemic. Whereas dasein is construed by me as an assumption that precipitates my own far more “fractured and fragmented” moral and political perspectives.
Maia, you seemed to suggest that listening to your intuition means you’re not a philosopher. But if one only listens to one’s logical thinking, you can justify anything and it doesn’t even have to be real. It’s like the formula for photosynthesis without any plants or suns.
We need both. Science & philosophy never shoulda got divorced.
Obviously, we are both speculating on why others choose to leave ILP. Or do you have actual information from those who did leave indicating that they did indeed leave because of me.
And those that may have left because of me? Well, as I once speculated in an exchange with zoot allures/prom75, there might be three main reasons for that:
Mainly, I speculate that those like Only_Humean and Faust, who were often focused technically on logic and epistemology, might of had enough of me insisting that in regard to “I” in the is/ought world, their definitions and technical knowledge be brought down out of the didactic clouds and made applicable to that which is of most interest to me:
“How [morally and politically] ought one to behave in a world awash in both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change?”
Then this crucial aspect of the “human condition”
Connecting the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then.
Or those like uccisore who “blew up” at me because I kept shifting the discussions from his own self-righteous liberals vs. self-righteous conservatives battling it out, to an exploration into how we acquire our value judgments themselves: existentially through dasein.
Again, fair enough. As I pointed out time and again, what can I really know about your life and how it came together to predispose you to think what you do. All I can do is to extrapolate from my many, many, many experiences with those who embodied one or another God or No God moral or political or philosophical or spiritual font. And, of course, remembering my own turbulent experiences in embodying them.
You would not likely use the word “predispose” however. You have other words. But that revolves around how we understand the meaning of dasein.
As with gib, you seemed willing to agree that had your life been very different, you might be here mocking Paganism. But, instead, you have this, what, viseral, intuitive “real me” core self – soul? – that you can fall back on to feel “whole”?
Well, that’s the whole point of coming into venues like this. To explore the philosophies of those who do not feel “fractured and fragmented” when confronting things like the trucker protest or issues like abortion or gun control.
Or, if they are not successful in nudging me up out of the hole I have [philosophically and otherwise] dug for myself, they might be willing to come down into it with me.
I win either way.
Now, admittedly, being down in the hole encompass a belief that your own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless; and that “I” tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion. No getting around how glum that can be, right? On the other hand, if you are an objectivist on this side of the grave, all your options revolve around one or another equivalent of “what would Jesus do?”
There’s right and wrong, good and bad. Depending on what particular “ism” you subscribe to. Always obligated to do the right thing. And how stifling that can be. Whereas with moral nihilism your options veritable explode. You won’t find many moral nihilists willing to abstain from sex for years and years in deference to a Goddess. A Goddess that is mostly just a “construct” in your mind.
Now, just out of curiosity, what brought you to this thread? You had noted that you had left ILP and Know Thyself. And I just don’t see you following a thread like this one.
So, I wonder if, instead, someone brought all of this to your attention…MagsJ? urwrong? turd?
To be fair to Biggy, he’s not calling himself reasonable but asking what would count as an objectively demonstrable proof of some moral position X to reasonable people. And come to think of it, “reasonable” doesn’t really have to be defined here, so long as what counts as reasonable in the proof also characterizes the minds of the people who recognize it as reasonable. If “reasonable” meant “really stupid” then a really stupid proof ought to convince really stupid people; a highly intelligent proof ought to convince highly intelligent people. But you’re right that when Biggy rejects one’s attempt at delivering such a proof, he is implicitly stating that he is one of the “reasonable people”.
I agree with that, and that’s exactly what I do. Which is something I was trying to get across to Biggy but in vein. I tried to explain how I can slip into the mindset of the “fulminating fanatical pinheads” (abandoning reason) and give voice to my prejudices; but this voice could never stand up to the iambiguous challenge of being an objectively demonstrable proof that all reasonable men and women are obliged to agree with.
That’s definitely part of it–or in other words, cooperation; being reasonable is more than just using logic. Logic can be used to be difficult and uncooperative and even arrive at absurd conclusions (think of Descartes reasoning his way into doubting almost everything). It takes a willingness to see things from the other person’s point of view and to help them string together the logical connections between their points. ← That is a choice. One could choose just the opposite–to find the holes in the other person’s points–and you can always find holes–thereby exposing the flaws in their arguments; but you can also fill those holes with your own contributions in order to help the other person make his/her point. ← That’s cooperation, that’s being reasonable.
Biggy has admit to being a former leftist, and there seem to be remnants of leftism within him, one of which most probably is one of the basic pillars of Marxism: that history is the story of class struggles, a perpetual dialectic of oppressed and oppressor. The oppressed will always rally to a cause, the aim of which is to overthrow the oppressors, and therefore will bring with them all the moral arguments in their arsenal. This is so basic to Marxism that Biggy, even after having disavowed leftism, probably still harbors this assumption without being fully conscious of it. He therefore cannot imagine someone not having a moral argument to back up whatever cause their prejudices push them to fight for or participate in.
Don’t know if this is exactly what your point is but it seems similar enough.
I pride myself on being fluid–one day a pinhead, the next a gentleman and a scholar–better to be skilled at both than only one.
And it’s psychologically healthy too. You know that we all have our prejudices, even you–and those prejudices need a voice sometimes, need to be let out of their box–you should try it, it might do you some good.
I don’t have a definition prepared and if I slapped one together it would be all too contrived. But I do have an intuitive feel for what is meant when someone talks about “reasonable people”. I’ve always thought that it would have to at least encompass two things: 1) the ability to be rational/use logic, and 2) a willingness to cooperate, to agree to abide by certain rules of discourse, to work something out together with the other.
I don’t think you’re a communist. I think you tend to lean left despite your attempts to remain centered or unaligned (like me, except that I lean right).
Who me? I cannot be the judge of that. “Pinhead” is your term. You must judge whether my grasp of dasein disqualifies me or not from being a pinhead.
I think he was saying Satyr referred to zoot allures as Brian. Am I right, Biggy?
I don’t think we got exactly what you think being a philosopher entails, only that you weren’t one.
Similar question from me… or rather, which quote?
This one here:
Or this one here:
Either way, same question.
Did you ask her to put it in the context of the trucker protest?
I’d second that but I’m much too brutish to be that solicitous.
^ Are we still talking about possible reasons why some left ILP?
Knowing Faust, he would never have allowed a single individual to drive him away from a discussion forum. I think, like you, he saw ILP as a cesspool of pinheads and one day asked himself, “Why the hell am I hanging around with these depraved vermin?”
Of course, that’s my point, isn’t it? I react to my own situation and, given the life I’ve lived, I conclude what I do about it. You react having no real understanding at all of the life I’ve lived. Of what my current situation is. And, yes, absolutely: the other way around regarding me reacting to you.
That’s the whole point of philosophy venues. To do the best we can in attempting to close that gap.
I give my thought through arguments as to why I have come to believe that human existence is essentially meaningless and absurd in a No God world. An existence that then topples over into the abyss that is oblivion. And then I note those like you who win here because you have been able think yourself into believing in one or another objectivist font. Anchoring your Self to one or another comforting and consoling One True Path.
And I flat out acknowledge that there is no getting around the fact that “I” lose here. I can only fall back on the fact that, philosophically and otherwise, I have explored all of this deeply and honestly and introspectively. I was able to jettison the “psychology of objectivism” and at least take advantage of the fact that my own life does not revolve around whatever you and other objectivists here construe to be the equivalent of “what would Jesus do”?
What would the Goddess do?
And, so, yeah, I lost the possibility that you and I might become “virtual friends”. But, as with everything else, from my frame of mind, we each have our own rendition of what that means.
Blunt always works for me. Just don’t confuse being blunt with being right. All the time in other words. In discussions of identity and value judgments what does it mean to be blunt when you acknowledge that had your life been very different you might be here rejecting Paganism. Rejecting the Goddess.
Bluntly.
But, as with gib and MagsJ, you have this deep down inside you Real Me that “somehow” transcends dasein, that “just knows” what is really, really true about things like this.
Okay, fair enough.
But, in my view, there are lots of ways to be blind. And “I” try to examine as many of them as I can.
…but I weren’t indoctrinated -when a child, by others- to understand the world around me as they did.
Do you resent that style of upbringing, that you had?
iambiguous said: “It has its own profoundly problematic set of uniquely personal experiences and relationship and access to information and knowledge.”
PTSD is holding you back and stopping you progressing, as that ^^^ problem, should be profoundly in the past.
Over-thinking everything? or so it seems like you are, to me… surely every situation can’t always be that dire, to warrant you to go through those ‘thinking’ motions, every single time? or perhaps it is us, that are being too blasé here…
Please. How difficult is it to grasp the point I am making here:
I think I win either way because of how I construe all of this from my own vantage point. Maia, knowing nothing in depth of my own life, my own situation, reacts to it instead based on her own life, her own situation. Of which I have no in depth understanding.
Only, like you, when she bumps into another who doesn’t share her own moral and political convictions, she has this part of herself that, intuitively, viscerally, intrinsically, “spiritually” etc., “just knows” that what she believes about things like the government and the covid pandemic and abortion, etc., reflects something analogous to the One True Path.
The part that she can nestle down into psychologically and feel a hell of a lot more comforted and consoled than someone like me. I merely point out that in accepting this soothing “foundation” she sacrifices all of the many more options that are available to those who don’t have to ask themselves, “what would the Goddess do?”
For you of course, taking into account the point I made to Maia above, it’s “forget about what I think about the truckers…all that really matters is how I feel about them.” As though the two have almost nothing to do with each other. As though our emotional reactions to the world around us are not in turn profoundly rooted in dasein.
Right, when you were born you were immediately on your own. Or those that raised you waited until you were able to understand the language and then made it clear to you that you were completely capable of understanding and differentiating right from wrong and good from bad behavior yourself. Morality? politics? religion? cultural norms? They were firm: Whatever as a child you came independently to think was reasonable and virtuous was okay with them.
Anyone else here raised that way?
That “style” of upbringing? How is it not basically the norm around the globe? The only difference being, that, given the vast and varied historical and cultural and experiential contexts that any particular individual might be “thrown” into at birth, what gets crammed into our brains as children can vary vastly as well.
Then, of course, the part where you discovered your “intrinsic self”. Then anyone who does not share your own moral and political convictions is stopped dead in their tracks. After all, if your “intrinsic self” is in command what can others do but to acknowledge that they’re not you. And that it will be futile to try to broach their own political prejudices. To discuss and debate them with you.
Again, that’s basically what the objectivists can throw back at me: dasein, dasein, dasein.
Only my own “by default” assumptions fracture and fragment “me”. While yours anchor you to the Real Me in sync with the Right Thing To Do.
And you know this…how? And progressing to what…a facsimile of your own “intrinsic self”?
Given what context?
Who argues that every situation is dire? Instead, gib and I are discussing situations like the trucker protest where the truckers themselves certainly deemed it to be dire enough to do what they did.
So, how does “over-thinking” work here? If someone doesn’t share your own or gib’s own “intuitive” or “emotional” reaction to the protest they are over-thinking it? And for gib, thinking itself is, as for me, rooted in dasein such that you really can’t trust what you think about it anyway.
It’s not the sort of debate that has a winner.
One side says that a woman’s body is her sovereign domain.
The other side insists that as soon as a man implants seed in that body she loses that sovereignty to the state.
These are opinions.
You can be on either side of the opinion but there is no objective truth here.
Everyone is going to have an opinion on societal matters, but not to the extent that you do, in becoming fractured and fragmented… what’s in it for you in becoming so? how does it benefit you?
We arrive at what we arrive at, by the means that we have at our disposal… all’s being by way of differing means, ergo… qualia.
I don’t take issue with your discussional stance, you seem to be taking issue with mine, in that it is too blasé to be of substance… like I don’t take into consideration the consequence of chance and change, but I do.
And I guess I’m the one to bear the burden of responding, but what do you want me to say about that? You mocked Biggy by comparing him to Ace Ventura, good for you. Keep up the good work =D>
No, I am noting that in regard to proofs aimed at establishing whether the truckers are behaving rationally, his thinking, your thinking and my thinking is derived largely from the subjective assumptions I make in regard to value judgments derived largely from dasein in my signature threads. The irony here is that you and I would both seem to agree that such thinking is problematic…and not to be trusted. Something seems reasonable to you but not to others because the life you and they lived nudged or propelled you and them to embrace particular sets of political prejudices. Instead, your own objectivist trajectory here revolves around how you “feel” about the trucker’s protest. You “just know” emotionally, intuitively that you want what they want.
How about Pedro? Is he willing to agree that had his own life been different he might be here thinking – professing – that the truckers were acting unreasonably?
Once again the assumption being that reasonable and unreasonable are actually able to be calculated [philosophically or otherwise] in regard to conflicting goods. But: I do concede that, sure, maybe there is an ideological or deontological truth regarding the truckers. Maybe what they did was objectively reasonable. All I can do, once again, is to raise my own objections to that given the assumption that we mere mortals live in a No God world. And that there are dozens and dozens of hopelessly conflicting secular Humanisms “out there” all insisting that their own arguments are proof enough regarding how all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to think about the truckers.
I can’t help it if some of them are pinheads like Pedro.
That’s my point, of course. Only I wrap my own reactions to conflicting goods around dasein, culminating in this “general description intellectual contraption”:
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.
Then I come to discussions like this and ask how and why others don’t come to the same conclusion about their own value judgments.
GIVEN A PARTICULAR CONTEXT.
Of their own choosing I might add.
Huh?
Life can be deemed tragic philosophically if one believes that his or her own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless; and destined for oblivion. Think, say, Antoine Roquentin. Someone, however, may believe that but the life they live is embedded in sets of circumstances that are bursting at the seams with fantastic, wonderful experiences. Or one can believe that life is the best of all possible worlds philosophically but comes to be embedded in sets of circumstances awash in “the agony of defeat”, in numbing suffering and pain.
Each of us individually embodies our own existential combination of that, right? And then of course the God option.
Note to the fulminating fanatic objectivists and pinheads here:
Is that true? Are both sides of the trucker protest and the abortion wars and the gun control conflagration right? They’re right from their side, you’re right from yours?
Is that how you view these things? Uh, like I do? Though for reasons not rooted in dasein?
Then [of course] straight back up into the didactic clouds:
And it’s always his own pinhead rendition of the “communists” doing this.
Yeah, that’s basically how my understanding of dasein works. When you spend over twenty years immersed existentially in leftist political activism, it becomes deeply embedded in “I”. But at least I was able to recognize it as a political prejudice. Do the fulminating fanatic objectivists and pinheads here acknowledge the same regarding their own continuing arrogant, authoritarian dogmas?
Let’s ask them.
Besides, it doesn’t make the points that Marxist raise about such things as political economy go away. It doesn’t make their arguments instantly unreasonable just because the pinheads here don’t share them.
Sure, that works great here. But take that “fluidity” to the next trucker protest. See how they react to it.
Actually, what is deemed far more psychologically healthy for the fulminating fanatic objectivists and the pinheads here is them scowling at the scumbag, libtard, commies who dared to protest against the trucker protest itself.
Note to the fulminating fanatic objectivists and pinheads:
Explain that to him.
Exactly! What I construe to be this deep down inside me core self, real me – the intrinsic I – that those like MagsJ and Maia and others might construe “spiritually” as their Soul.
But, from my frame of mind that is all no less the embodiment of dasein out in the is/ought world.
On the other hand…
…these intuitive feelings must still be rational and logical. Even though you seem to agree with me that this part of our professed convictions revolve more around the increasingly problematic [and often precarious] instability rooted existentially in dasein.
As for cooperating and abiding by shared rules, isn’t that the whole point of embracing democracy and the rule of law: moderation, negotiation and compromise. Precisely what the fulminating fanatic objectivists and [especially] the pinheads detest.
Okay, then straight back to the conjecture that had our lives been different I would be leaning right and you would be leaning left. Then the part where there does not appear to be the definitive argument establishing that all rational men and women are obligated to lean one way or the other.
Based on our discussion to date, you are clearly not a pinhead as “I” understand the meaning of the word – subjectively, existentially – in my head. Here and now. But how about a discussion there between you and him regarding your own understanding of dasein in regard to the trucker protest. Or better still that discussion right here…out of The Corner. Which from my frame of mind is the very heart and soul of the New “social media” ILP.
Exactly! Further proof that you are not a pinhead!! Like her.
I think Maia is “gone” again. And “I” think that revolves around her gifted intelligence. There is a part of her able to recognize that if she does sustain whatever each of us thinks a “philosopher” is here, she risks me deconstructing her own “intrinsic self”. Her Goddess. Her spiritual font.
She insists that is not the case, however. And I’m the first to admit that may well be true. That, in fact, it is me who is unable to grasp her own more reasonable argument.
Thus, we can only respectfully agree to disagree about it. Or certainly respectfully from my end.
That’s the one I presumed she meant. But I have never read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. So, I don’t know the context in which he brought that observation up.
Nope. Believe it or not, the trucker protest never came up. But that might have been because at the time of our truly amazing exchange – ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=196919 – Freedom Convoy hadn’t even begun yet.
And here is what I posted above in regard to her observation. One of my own:
From my frame of mind, “soul-crushing” is synonymous with being “fractured and fragmented” in the is/ought world. She [like you] is not. But I still suspect there is a part of her that understood that she risked losing all the comfort and consolation that her own existential identity provides her. What if she does start to slip down into the hole “I” am in. What if you do?
Again: based on all of my many, many, many interactions with objectivists online going back 20 years now. Like you, she already recognizes that her thinking about things like Paganism and the trucker protest is basically just an existential contraption. What if her “intrinsic self” is too?
As for the points I raised with Zoot/Prom75 [who, by the way, still posts regularly here: forum.philosophynow.org/ ] let’s go there.
On the other hand, unlike most who abandon philosophy, you’re still here in [what’s left of] a philosophy forum.
Compelled to as it were?
You brought up the points I raised with Zoot/Prom75, right? I was just pointing them out to MagsJ when she suggested some left ILP because of me.
Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting that you know me better than I know myself.
Yeah, assuming that we live in a free will corner of the universe. Only they have to be willing to sustain the discussion regarding these things with me. Maia is not.
But, again, that might revolve more around her assessment of “us” than mine. After all, she may well be thinking that it is me who is not “sophisticated” enough to grasp her point of view. And, no doubt about it, she might be right. But now we are “over”. Her Soul is still intact.
Oh, and just out of curiosity, do you have one of those?
Yeah, but only from my own existentially problematic and precarious point of view…and with the abyss [oblivion] getting closer and closer.
And how is all of this not embedded deeply in dasein? You know, for example, how we think about it?
Unbearable suffering?
Trust me: I don’t care who you are, if the suffering gets unbearable enough you might well beg to die. And that doesn’t exclude Peterson and his ilk, does it? What’s that really got to do with nihilism?
Let’s face it, the only cure for that is a leap of faith to or a wager made with one or another God. Or however it all works with spiritual paths like Buddhism and Paganism.
If I am recalling it correctly, Maia is not herself convinced that through Paganism and the Goddess, there is an afterlife for her. I forget how she addressed that. But one thing for sure it seems [to me]…
On this side of the grave, Paganism and the Goddess do provide her with just enough comfort and consolation to make the shithole that human existence can become bearable enough to sustain her.
Actually, I don’t need to know myself but, sure, I’m curious. It’s been months and months since she brought us Turd’s objectivist missives. And urwrong? I can only hope that she has absolutely nothing to do with that sexual predator. He truly is a pinhead!!
So, I’m guessing MagsJ.
Note to MagsJ:
Fess up.
Note to Maia’s friend if it’s none of the above:
Please let her know that she is truly missed here at what’s left of ILP. We want her back on a regular basis.
lol