In honor of Mo

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Seeing as how Mo has, after months and probably hundreds of posts of debating for objectivism, has decided to stop: here is a salutory post from an admiring subjectivist.

What terrors have been wrought upon this world by non-objective relativity! That monster that hides as subjectivity but in reality is a kind of bastard objectivity.

What stance has Mo been fearlessly dragging up to the faces of these equalizers? The concept that Plato taught so well: Some things that are can be differentiated from eachother using consistently applicable guidelines.

Many of his opponents have been debating that any guideline that does this has the same philosophical value as no guideline at all, or some absurd guideline, or a guideline that doesn’t apply consistently. He insists that objectivity=subjectivity, and that the idea that there is a difference is some sort of delusion.

This is indeed equalizing, the refusal to acknowledge an external reality that is independent of one’s own subjective existence and whose very effects on this subjective experience form patterns that are predictable.

So, what has Mo been out there defending? The existance of an independent external world. What against? The belief that any assertion based on the percieved patterns from our senses and memories menas the same as another, has the same value to the subjective experience.

It’s the cold-hard realist against the solpisists, and even though the realist withdrew in the end, the solpisists where shown to be just that.

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Pezer,

I’ve always liked you. Your honorary post about me is a bit like a hymn or eulogy of someone who is just going to the bathroom, though. Nevertheless, thank you.

Thousands of years ago a great man, like ourselves, asked and set about to answer a basic question which set him apart from the rest of thinkers. What was Socrates’ basic question? It was basically, How should I live? Or, What is the good life for man?

This set him apart. And frankly, it’s a more direct and important question than the question about what the world is made of, whether air, or fire, or wind, or whatever dumb abstraction involving the ‘Will’ that people want to make up these days. As I see it, it’s from our ideas about ethics that you gather what you think about metaphysics, and not the other way around. And if that’s true, then so much for metaphysical perspectivists.

In any case, it’s a bit silly to say that I’ve spent my time arguing for the existence of an external world. Why would I need to, really? It’s there, and it will pimp-slap you in the face if you ever think it’s not and happen to cross it. You are not the sole author of reality—and that’s not something I’ve ever felt the need to argue for, nor should anyone. Although, when it comes to values and valuing, you’re right… most people seem to think that in this arena, all of a sudden, one idea is as accurate as the next. It’s as if they think other people weren’t also flesh and blood—the same as them—such that for creatures such as us, there’s really no bond between what’s good for one and what’s good for the next.

That’s unfortunate. And it’d be easy to overcome if the whole history of our people wasn’t so thoroughly entangled in fantasy and illusion. I’m about to talk about your dad, and the dark ages.

It seems like every generation and every individual within it has to grow up and mature for themselves. In real life, this idea is simple and well-understood: You simply can’t rely on your father to give you instructions after a certain age. You grow up. This isn’t hard. However, often it is the case with subjectivists that they have trouble outgrowing their father’s father figure. A God of some kind or another. Why is that?

Anyways. And then they lose it. Gone. Inevitable. And they’re all of a sudden without instructions. Laws. Tablets. Whatever. These half-developed people then can’t rely on someone else to tell them what they ought to do. And without the daddy figure, I mean, when the daddy-figure is gone, they all of a sudden think that value has gone with it. What a shame.

What a shame because life is pretty amazing, and that’s not an opinion, it’s a fact that you ought to recognize staring you in the face, whenever you see something such as a sunrise, beautiful lake, big tits, a blowjob, or something such-like.

In any case, I’ve decided just to wash my hands of my usual interlocutors. Just felt is was a waste of time, that’s all…

I am a river.

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Moved to MB; no thesis/discussion.

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Move this thread back to the Philosophy section, Only_Humean. Pezer was doing a piece of interpretation like is done for any other philosopher. That, or be fucking consistent in applying Rule 1.1—you are not currently.

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Mo,

Hell, if I had a dollar for everytime you abandoned me I’d be able to buy ILP and give you creative control.

If I do will you delete all your posts? :wink:

Seriously, it seems to me you need to be the center of attention. For whatever reason. And maybe it is because you really do believe that how you view the world is how everyone else should view it too. Even objectively.

But you don’t like being the center of attention when the ideas you espouse are being…clobbered?

And you know where they are being clobbered, don’t you?

I think I do.

Anyway, a true polemicist would never abandon the fray.

Anymore then would a true ironist!