In other words, “in your head” you have managed to concoct a way to think about these things. This way. But, in my view, you have no real capacity to demonstrate that how you think about them is how all rational men and women must in turn think about them.
And that is my point of course: What counts is not what you believe or claim to know is true, but what is “in fact” actually in sync with the way the objective world really is.
Mary did in fact have an abortion. But is in fact Mary’s abortion moral or immoral? That distinction is the one I always come back to.
To wit:
You can “will” it to be that Mary did not have an abortion. But if in fact she did what does this “will” amount to? And how is it different with respect to “willing” that the abortion be thought of, described or reacted to as either moral or immoral?
Oh, they clash alright. But isn’t that precisely where I interject and begin to speculate about the limits of philosophy [logic and rational thought] in making distinctions between “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “bad”, “ideal” and “problematic”?
Yes, but for very different reasons. 2 starts with the premise that might is predicated on what is in fact [deontologically] the right thing to do. In a secular context, Reason becomes the new God. Laws may be enforced by the powers that be but only because they are in sync with the moral obligation of all rational men and women.
In a democracy, however, opposing sides may claim that their own narrative is the most rational, but the very existence of the democracy itself embodies the premise that, philosophically, there does not appear to be a way in which to know for certain which side is wholly right and wrong.
After all, if it could be argued definitively that abortion is either Right or Wrong, why would citizens vote on it? To me that
would be analogous to religious folks [in an ecclesiastic context] voting on whether the word of God was right or wrong.
3 unfolded historically in sync with the rise of capitalism. The marketplace needed a political superstructure that facilitated the transactions rooted in supply and demand. But it is here that Marx inserted the part that revolves around political economy. In other words, he takes the interactions embedded in the free enterprise system beyond idealism. But then [alas] is not communism itself more or less a reflection of an idealistic rendition of the future? If rationalized as “science”.
In my own opinion, what you have given me is largely an “analysis”. An intellectual contraption. An argument regarding values and the “will to power”. What I am looking for instead is the manner in which this might be understood “for all practical purposes” out in a particular world awash in conflicting behaviors understood from particular [and conflicting] points of view.
How would John and Mary contemplate this “rational value of valuation”? What on earth does it mean? That’s the part I am trying to grasp more, well, concretely.
In examining the manner in which my values pertaining to abortion had evolved existentially [organically] “out in the world” my own philosophy came to encompass/embody the way in which I have come to understand these things as organic components of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. But it hardly entails providing folks with my “life story”.
Instead, it situates my values [subjectively as personal opinions, political prejudices] in a particular existential sequence, that, had it not unfolded that way – had the sequence been very different instead – my values may well be significantly different today.
So, what I am asking you to do is to explore the components of your own philosophy such that I might begin to understand more substantively, more concretely how your own values [with respect to abortion or to any other moral/political conflict] came to evolve over the years.
How, in other words, when your values do come into conflict with the values of another, are you able not to become entangled in this:
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.
If all the philosopher is able to do is to demonstrate how “almost everyone” is right from his own side then how, for all practical purposes, can social, political and economy interaction not become a manifestation of either “might makes right” or “democracy”?
Imagine for example that, relating to abortion, you are able to concoct a legal code that defines the “rules of behavior” in a particular human community. What behaviors would be prescribed and what behaviors would be proscribed?
Okay, with respect to abortion [or any other conflict of note] what do you mean by “examples”?
And, given any particular clash of values/ideals, what would be deemed “universal” by you with respect to dasein, conflicting goods and political economy"? How would they be understood by you in the context of your “general principles”?
In a world sans God [an omniscient and omnipotent point of view], how could it be decided by mere mortals that, deontologically, either wearing a wristwatch or not wearing a wristwatch, raping or not raping someone was either necessarily right or necessarily wrong?
In other words, whatever examples are given there is no escaping the need for a transcending font here. Which is why philosophers ranging from Plato and Descartes to Aquinas and Kant clearly recognized the need for God here.
Sans God, a man or a woman can adopt [embrace, embody] the point of view that their own selfish gratification [or the values of their culture and historical era] is the center of the moral universe.
How then, using the tools of philosophy, can this then be demonstrated to be inherently irrational or illogical?