obsrvr524 and iambiguous contend

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

Note to others:

Again, notice how he completely avoids responding to the example that I gave him in regard to the question that he asked about “conflicting goods”.

He notes:

So, he expects me to discuss my “obsession” with conflicting goods without note an example of what I mean by it? What, does he want this exchange to remain up in the intellectual contraption clouds like the “serious philosophers” here prefer?

In regard to conflicting goods that have rent the species now for thousands of years and have brought about everything from barroom brawls to world wars?!

In my view, a good and proper discussion in regard to value judgments that are at odds precipitating behaviors that come into conflict precipitating actual consequences in regard to interpretations of things like the the 2nd Amendment are the stuff of newspaper headlines and broadcast segments.

I explained the manner in which my own point of view is “fractured and fragmented” as a result of the arguments I make in my signature threads. I simply want to explore the extent to which he sees his own perspective as otherwise.

And that’s where this part of my argument comes in:

I’m not arguing that there isn’t any right or wrong answer here, only that here and now “I” recognize that both sides are able to make rational arguments based, in part, on whether they focus more on “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” or on “A well regulated Militia”.

Again, if the amendment had read, “Given that citizens have an inherent right to bear arms they feel are necessary to defend themselves, the government shall have no power to infringe upon this right or to regulate it”, one could be rather more insistent as an objectivist…at least in regard to the law.

Clearly, the more fanatical objectivists on both sides “figure they are right”. But, again, that doesn’t make the arguments of the other side go away.

Where have I ever argued that either the first, the second or the ninety-ninth person is “wrong” in regard to the 2nd Amendment as a moral and political value judgments? Or in regard to any conflicting goods.

The irony being that my point “here and now” is actually just the opposite.

22

So like Sil, you are just going to divert and never answer my actual question or even give an example of what you think is the proper way to discuss issues.

I’m not surprised.

23

No, I’m not surprised.

Over the years, I have reduced any number minds like yours down to “retorts” such as this.

Oh, and just out of curiosity, I’m curious if you might be willing to go where urwrongx1000 refuses to go.

Here:

“In regard to a really important political issue, have you ever been wrong about something?
Note some important issues where you had to admit that you were wrong and then changed your mind.”

24

This issue has reminded me of a woman I knew who for the year I saw her regularly always talked about only two things –

  • An issue she had with a long past boyfriend (suggesting that all men are that way)
  • Why can’t things just move on! Her suggestion was that others prevent her from moving on.

It seemed to me that there was a casual relation between those two obsessions she had. My suspicion was that her life couldn’t “move on” because she had a traumatic incident in her past that she wouldn’t move on from. I understand that traumas do that.

And being a traumatic affair, her subconscious was actually just trying to express to herself to move on while never allowing herself to see the trauma by blame-shifting to others their unwillingness to move on. A type of fight to bring conscious attention to her problem without triggering the traumatic personal experience.

She also seemed to literally run and hide from any kind of conflict between people. Any kind of argument and she literally had to leave the room and even her home sometimes for a day or so.

Now I’m thinking that you seem to be very similar.

You seem to also have two basic obsessions –

  • People insisting their opinions and calculations are the rational best.
  • Why can’t people just accept personally subjective conclusions without rational calculation.

And you also seem to “run out of the room” as you invariably want to shift/derail the discussion elsewhere.

Is it possible that you had some traumatic event in your past that keeps you from moving on by accepting and constructively participating in rational debate? Are conflicts and rational argumentation a trigger reminder of some long past traumatic event?

That would explain your obsession with “conflicting goods” while at the same time shifting the blame to others.

The analogy between you and her seems perfect.

25

Not quite.

We live in a world where in regard to any number of human interactions, conflicts can occur as a result of moral and political value judgments that are at odds. Often enough here, at ILP, in the Society, Government, and Economics forum, between those embraced by liberals and those embraced by conservatives.

Now, do or do not the objectivists among us – those I note as convinced they are in sync with a core self in sync with one or another rendition of objective morality – insist that their own moral and political convictions allow them to divide the world up between those who are “one of us” [the good guys] and “one of them” [the bad guys]. It’s just that for some particularly rabid objectivists among us, those who are “one of them” become, among other things, “scumbags”.

And my argument is not that people should reject rational calculations and rely solely on “personally subjective conclusions”. Instead, my argument is that both sides – in, say, the debate over the 2nd Amendment – are able to make rational arguments. But that the reasons and the conclusions they come to are derived in large part from the manner in which I construe human identity in the is/ought world as derived from the arguments I make in the OP of my signature threads:

ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=176529
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=185296
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=194382

All I can then do in regard to a particular context, is to explore with others why they reject those reasons and conclusions…what reasons and conclusions they abide by instead.

Again, I explored all of that on this thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=194382

Which, again, brings me back to this:

“In regard to a really important political issue, have you ever been wrong about something?
Note some important issues where you had to admit that you were wrong and then changed your mind.”

You see, I was embedded in any number of “traumatic events” that prompted me to admit I was wrong about important political issues. I call this the Song Be Syndrome:

“I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam, I happened upon politically radical folks [at the Song Be MACV] who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.”

Eventually, I had to admit I was “wrong” about Christianity, Unitarianism, Objectivism, Marxism, Communism, socialism, democratic socialism, social democracy, liberalism.

“Wrong” because now as a moral nihilist my “fractured and fragmented” “I” is convinced that there are no essential right or wrong answers in regard to conflicting goods; only subjective existential contraptions rooted in dasein rooted out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially.

“I” no longer have access to the comforting and consoling fonts – God, ideology, deontology etc. – that the objectivists anchor their own precious Self to.

Like you, right?

26

Actually, what would interest me more here is how he connects the dots between this “metaphysical” speculation about an omnipotent being and his political narrative in regard to the 2nd Amendment above.

In fact, this is something I could never pin James S. Saint down on either. He had this complex “theory of everything” regarding the laws of nature and the either/or world…and then this political agenda derived from the Real God and how he construed human interactions in the is/ought world.

But damned if he would really make any effort at all to connect these dots.

Now, with him, I argued that he did not because he could not. That, I suspected, his moral and political value judgments were no less rooted in my own arguments here as well.

Same with obsrvr524. He connects the dots here “in his head”, but won’t explore this with me given a particular set of circumstances.

27

I would like to see where he did that. I don’t think he did (not the way you mean it) but would be interesting to find out.

What I saw was that he worked out how things work in the universe and declared that to be what he called “The REAL God”. He did not say, “The REAL God told me that this is how it all works!” I saw him often asked “how do you know this stuff” for about 12 years. I never saw him answer with - “God told me so”.

How could someone who cannot “connect the dots” know whether someone else actually did connect the dots?

And that reminded me of PK’s recent declaration that it is absolutely certain that nothing - nothing all can be absolutely certain.

When a dog can’t see colors why argue with him about colors?

28

No way I’m going back through all of those exchanges. But, more to the point, how do you connect the dots between your speculations regarding an omnipotent being and your own political prejudices regarding the 2nd Amendment? You know, the whole point of my posting what I did.

Instead, as with James, it’s straight back up into the stratosphere of intellectual gibberish.

Okay, but: however he construed the Real God, how did he connect the dots between this and his moral and political narrative.

Here, I challenge anyone to link me to his explanation such that it is relevant to the arguments I make regarding “morality here and now” and “immortality there and then”.

Yeah, I read that. But what always boggles my mind about the relationship between objectivists and certainty is how they seem to insist that revolves as well around the is/ought world! If only “in their head”.

The part that you, like James, avoid like the plague. At least in a discussion with me.

Come on, how idiotic is this? As though a dog could argue about colors. Let alone about the 2nd Amendment.

29

I am confident that I can do that. I am NOT confident that YOU could connect the dots as I lay them out nor that you would accept any connections I showed to you - it doesn’t matter how often you try to show a dog that one color is different than another.

But to that issue of James’ REAL God connecting to morality-
Did you read his posts on MIJOT (I don’t know why he didn’t make a thread for that - or many other important topics)? MIJOT is that connection.

MIJOT requires some explanation as to why it is a fact rather than merely a proposal. I am sure you couldn’t get through that part. But having that “dot” connected to fact, the next dot is about the purpose (or usefulness) of morality for an individuall - “morality” meaning rules that “should be followed” as an act of wisdom for your own sake (not necessarily to serve a church or God - but to serve yourself).

Can we even agree that an individual can have a morality that at least serves his own deep down intentions in living? - a wise code to live by?

30

Note to others:

Notice [again] what he completely avoids:

Again, my own interest in an omnipotent being/God, deep-down intentions, a wise code and the 2nd Amendment revolves around connecting the dots between the behaviors one chooses on this side of the grave in regard to owning and using guns and how that impacts on the fate of “I” on the other side of the grave. The most important relationship of all it seems to me.

Which Saint, much like obsrvr, subsumed in a world of words defining and defending other words.

31

So you don’t want to discuss it.
That’s ok.

32

Again, absolutely shameless!!! :laughing:

33

It appears that due to some trauma you had earlier in life you cannot let yourself see what other people are saying. You end up (in almost every case - for years apparently) that whatever they say is “just an intellectual contraption” “in their heads”.

So ok, let’s say you are right (and I certainly don’t actually give any real credit to your accusation). What you are claiming is that they cannot see the color of reality that you see.

Now after years you should know that they simply cannot see what you see. So why are YOU arguing color with dogs?

34

Yep, we’ve got another “condition” here. :laughing:

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle out of any actual substantive discussion. Even James [to the best of my recollection] never allowed himself to stoop down to the level of this drivel.

35

And, yet, over and over and over again, when I challenge him to take thinking of this sort and apply it to such things as gun ownership, he balks.

As though his own views on it were in fact the moral and political equivalent of 1 + 1 = 2. As though anyone who does not share his own “logical conclusions” regarding it, is and must always remain necessarily wrong.

He would appear to be the very embodiment of the “psychology of objectivism”: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=185296

Go ahead, ask him.

36

The ‘essence’ of logic precedes the ‘facts’ of existence: and this whole ‘principle’ revolves around universal considerations of what is, and/or what should be!

No doubt about it.

37

We’ll need a context of course. Or are those things moot when you can encompass logic so succinctly in points like yours?

38

Analogy.

Aesthetics: art for it’s own sake because art precedes the intent of the evolution of perceptive objectivity.(coming to the con-text)

(The 'kids) have natural ability( -priori) to see aesthetic ‘reality’ without an intrinsic capability to organize the difference.(structural capacit)

We are kids . or at least some of us , are or, have been kids.

Context can be analogous to aesthetic background with a dominating text as foreground.

Fore means ahead, back behind, for evolution is forging ahead and not backwards, reacting to seemingly unforeseeable blocks.

So contextuality is analogous , or relatively to a backward reach for a test of reality, where textuality defines that reality.

There for; it is essentially imperative, (categorically)-KANT- that at least a synthesis be found. That is as down to earth as possible to rely on the logical mode.(for evolution to proceed)

That logical middle anthromorphicality predates the evolutionary idea over a revolutionary idea, because the two sided brain requires some third channels of communication, both intrinsically and extrinsically ; (for It’s self and and in it’s self)

Where is an application ?

Say in the two seemingly contradictory ideas/facts as the ‘Sanctity of Life’ and abortion.

Both stances are arguable, ( in themselves but non arguable for Themselves)

Therefore it becomes a nihilistic stalemate to assert one over the other, wherefore, both has to be instituded here, down to earth, to satisfy either one stance or the other.

How to achieve satisfaction of both parties then?

This method was implicit in Trump’s quasi neo- Kantian interpretation of political reality, however misunderstood he was, except to one party. What does this say to those belonging to the contrary party field? That the assumed need to compromise, is the only method required to make sense to both parties.

The Catholic Church upends the morality issue by allowing natural forms of contraception, and allow abortion, [ both 'abortion and compromise ] have wider connotations , of the political sort, so the [ constuality] can apply to both real problems. This narrows down the ethically indefinite ( undifined) examples, of down to earth ethical examples to a narrowing unto the morally defined formula .

That reduction, has not occured because a willful poweplay, but of the reactive forces’effect on senation, or apprehension.

The aesthetic becomes viable because of that natural effect of reducing the existential unto the essential.

The universal polarity is reversed, and (what should be) edges out the (what is); and now people must see why Nietzche really spoke merely, (as is) with the hike that he will be interpreted as showing a reversal only in terms of desiring the essential status quo.

That lead to a gross misinterpretation, which ultimately will be cleared up.

In concluding, that is why the stalwart confusion about this matter, and how to clarify it. Finally, the Catholic Dogma is changing as well, by going beyond the structural contexts that dominated her textual categories up to the 2’nd Vatican Council.

39

Nope, not this kind of context.

Instead, take all of that and, in a discussion with obsrvr, we can explore logic [and its possible limitations] in regard to gun ownership in general and the 2nd Amendment in particular.

Or is that too scary – real? – for you?

Really, just help me to pin down what on earth you are doing here?

40

Instead, take all of that and, in a discussion with obsrvr, we can explore logic [and its possible limitations] in regard to gun ownership in general and the 2nd Amendment in particular.

"Or is that too scary – real? – for you?

Really, just help me to pin down what on earth you are doing here?"

This kind of moral/ethical distinction may be similarly handled.

The significance of gun ownership can be analogous , or set into a comparative frame of reference, by substituting an absolute authority (the God inspired Constitution,) ( note the significance of Con+Institution) , or the watered down referentiality of the representational body.[ course the ‘no taxation without representation’ is implicitly precedent, in a judicial theater that matters] The thing here with gun control, is, that we have lost the appeal to God, simply because god does no longer appeal to us. It appears that if there was a ‘REAL Supreme Court’, where even the absolute authority like GOD could appeal a judgment .It then it would conceivably possible to do away with him and compromise.

However God is a sticky wicket, and it is not so easy to get rid of him, so here is the beginnings of a constitutional problem that is becoming increasingly substantial.

Could we as representatives ( of the body of Christ) rely mostly on Hobbs measure of human social contract, it on the more sunny one representing man in more glowing terms?

The constitution lost the image of the SUN-KING( Louis XVI), so Hobbs became the pejorative winner in that contest upon the ascension of Brit wordily power over the French.

So it makes more sense a around to reaffirm the 2’nd amendment on that basis alone.

Is a neo-Kantian compromise then become necessary?

The answer becomes yes, if the politic would become contextually relevant to the described social processes the longstanding principles surrounding states’rights upheld.

States’ Rights, alongside trickle down economic decontrol regulations , don’t jive with free-market dynamics, hence the compromise that should rely with & on some judicial authority is at a cross road.

The Supreme Court itself , sans God, having lost it’s supremacy , is becoming entangled in the political process, therefore becoming it’s self compromised oddity.

The resolution in sight in the redefinition of the vested authority as it conflates into the context within it finds It’s self, has increasingly assume it less neutral objective role.

Reduced to it’s essential role, it can not but seek a more moral then a precedent more ethical principle to rely on. And this state is becoming increasing. & fractured, here the anamoly between the singular and social realms seemingly more with odds against each other, upset rather than uphold the capacity to balance power.

But as in Nietzche, appearances can be deceiving.