Laws are basically reflections of behaviors deemed to be “good” and “bad”. But “good” and “bad” are, in my view, rooted largely in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
How then would an advocate of value ontology, get much beyond that? From my frame of mind, “ontology” should be kept as far removed from “value judgments” as possible.
On the contrary, violence [manifested in many different ways] is always going to be an option in the abortions wars. Why? Because we cannot live in a world where both women have the right to choose and the babies have a right to be born. Either women are forced to give birth [which many see as a violation of their political rights] or the babies are shredded into oblivion.
Values here, rather than being ontological, are clearly existential contraptions. Or so it seems to me. Of course, I may well be misunderstanding your point.
How can there not be laws pertaining to abortion? Realistically, if we take governemnt out of the equation and let folks just “figure it out”, how would everything not then devolve down to “might makes right”?
There is simply too much at stake here for me to imagine a community of any size able to get around legal prescriptions/proscriptions.
Unless, of course, someone actually is able to make an argument here that all rational men and women could embrace. But what is that argument? What would such an argument sound like that goes beyond the conflicting goods embedded here: abortion.procon.org/
Both sides are able to make points that the other side can respond to only more or less effectively. But no side provides an argument that makes the points the other side raises just go away.
I’m not sure I understand you here. Are you suggesting that who I became was “destined”? That I could not not have become who I am today? Determinism?
For instance, I have noted that so much in my life [of my life] revolves around the year I spent in Vietnam. There is a “before” and “after” there that could not possibly have been more dramatic.
So, are you suggesting there is a “fate” out there that made it a certainty that my birthday would correspond with a low draft number; and that all that unfolded as a result of this is only as it ever could be?
Is this exchange that we are having only as it ever could be?
to add, there is no problem with might makes right. that actually works pretty well if conditions are right. the problem is when the might is a shit head.
Yes, when it comes to noting that some folks think cows are sacred, I am an objectivist. Why? Because, objectively, this is true. It can be demonstrated to be true such that the fact of it can be shown to be more than just my own subjective opinion that some folks believe cows are sacred.
But how then do those who do think this demonstrate that all other rational, moral, virtuous, conscientious, spiritual, enlightened etc. folks ought to [or must] think this to?
How, instead, is such a belief not rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein?
Again, I’m not arguing that abortion either is or is not moral. And I am not arguing that scientists/philosophers/theologians etc. will never be able to determine/demonstrate it one way or another. I am only pointing out that I have not come upon an argument/demonstration that convinces me that such a thing can in fact be determined objectively.
Or, rather, as near to objectivity as the human mind is even able to go in the context of all that can be known [or must be known] about “existence”, “reality”, “human reality”.
Science or not, there is still no getting around Hume’s conjectures regarding the relationship between correlation and cause and effect.
Right?
We’re still “stuck” there.
Especially given this particular context:
All the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen today make up just 4 percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is made of stuff astronomers can’t see, detect or even comprehend. These mysterious substances are called dark energy and dark matter.
Let’s separate two things: your own questioning about abortion and morality and value ontology. The latter you have not understood, and I do not mean to enforce it on you at all. Let’s let it lie, if you do not care that much. I don’t care if you care. I can quickly say that since VO is an ontology, it must prescribe everything that is, be it oral or moral in your eyes. It can only offer clarity on what is, not on what Pete or Hank or Sarah thinks should be. I happen to be formidably uninterested in the idea of existential moral notions, like I a uninterested in the search for rectangular chicken eggs.
Moral absolutes’ do not belong to the category of existing things. The notion of such absolutes directly contradict being.
Have you read Sauwelios’ posts about VO to you and Zoot in this thread? I can not be sure what I need to reiterate.
The ontology refers in fact to valuing, not to values. Valuing is ontological. We can not exist without valuing, nor can any thing exist without doing what we, as humans, do in the form of valuing. I refer back to the summary thread I linked above.
It’s really a gift, like all philosophy - you do have to unwrap it, and take hold of it, and get to know it. It’s not a thing that was already there, it needs to be learned. An entirely new for of logic is not easily integrated into the old logic. You ask me to go back to the state of primitive logic before VO, but I can’t.
So ineed, the only solution that seems possible to me is a compromise. If it is a legislative one, then it must reflect the ability of the people to compromise.
And if the people are not capable of any compromise, then, hear this clearly: they are fucked.That is an ontological fact.
Are you suggesting the opposite? If so, how could you possibly justify that?
What you are, actually, really, seems the only sensible departure point for any serious thought.
I’m merely saying that all that ever could be is the combination of that which has been, that which is, an that which will be. Outside of these categories of actual reality, there is only the void, which is attractive as a refuge, a haven away from reality.
I too have experienced a climactic death situation around that age. It’s an age at which men are formed, often through radical experiences that are beyond their control. This is certainly ‘fated’, i.e. natural.
So are conflicting goods.
The difference between us is perhaps that you seek definitive and stable human truths, whereas I prefer the intensity and contrast of human perspectives to keep producing contradictions. To me, that perpetual kaleidoscopic change is truth itself, and mans attempts to absolutize this or that temporary phenomenon is just another temporary phenomenon.
Phoneutria’s take here is similar to mine; there is no inherent problem with might is right.
It is only when man starts to think he must fight this principle, if must in nations far away, that things like the Vietnam War occur - his might will seek to make rights that weren’t his to deem wrong in the first place.
To put it in a paradox: objective morality is evil.
Yes, it goes all the way beyond solipsism even, to what I’ve called solosomniism–“all there is is a dream”: even the “self” of solipsism is part of the dream. But it does not stay there. Thus Jakob once expressed himself affirmatively when I suggested that value ontology was a kind of poly-solipsism (with the emphasis on “kind of”, though), with each being living in its own world, its own construal of “reality”, i.e., of the other construers and their interrelations. A bit like Leibnitz’s monadology, perhaps, but then certainly active, not passive. In any case, yes, I do value the notion of an objective world, and will not usually entertain a solipsistic outlook of any kind, however often I may refer to one. But even this objective world is not one that is simply there; it exists solely by virtue of the combined efforts of all its constituents–
Actually, at this point there are several options–though at the same time really only one… If beings are simply there, reality is deterministic. This, however, is entirely irrational. I cannot emphasise this enough. (One may want to compare Jung’s categorisation of his Sensing and Intuiting functions as “irrational” functions: their contents are “just there”, they do not do something with their contents like the Thinking and Feeling functions do.) And, as even Nietzsche insists, free will is “the dominant feeling from which we cannot get loose, even if the scientific hypothesis [no will, just “force”] were proved true.” (WP 667.) Thus it may make more sense, at least in certain contexts, to conceive of these “forces” as free wills instead of as “unfree wills” (in fact, we cannot really conceive of them as “forces” or “unfree wills”, as we cannot really relate to that). Free will: that means not just doing what one wills, but willing what one wills–the will as a self-cause. This is, of course, circular reasoning, but thereby no more irrational than the notion of things just “being there”. And, as I said, in certain contexts at least, it probably is more sensible.
Consider that we have no notion of Being apart from consciousness. We may want to become more conscious, to focus. But we are already–subconsciously, so to say, or on a lower level of consciousness–aware of this desire. We become more “being”, more conscious of Being, by willing to be more conscious. Thus Jakob, years before he ever coined the phrase “self-valuing”–I think it was in 2003–, suggested, as an improvement of the concept “will to power”, the concept “lust for truth”. “Truth” here stands for consciousness/Being, whereas “lust” is a more erotic way of saying “will”–a more explicitly earthy term (the etymology of “will” actually does not lack this connotation of pleasure; but in Wille zur Macht, this indulgence is more palpable in Macht). I hope this clarifies my position a bit.
I made a video for this thread, but upon further consideration, based on ilp’s reaction the last time I posted a picture, that sounds like a bad idea. Oh well.
They don’t. Supposing that “sacred” means “worthy of religious veneration”, and “worthy” as “having sufficient worth or importance” as Merriam-Webster defines them, then they would have to demonstrate that cows have such worth or importance. How does one demonstrate worth or importance? The question that logically comes up is: “Worth to whom? Importance for what?” They would have to demonstrate that cows are the end, or part of the end, to which man exists, or indispensable means to that end.
How indeed! It could only be if it were established what is man’s natural end.
Yes. I think the rational value of valuing reflects something “irrational”, namely the fact that self-valuing is at bottom not the valuing of a “self” but the valuing of valuing. In fact, in VO, the self is understood as a valuing. The self is an Apollinian concept, but how could we conceive of the Apollinian forms par excellence, the Olympian gods, if not as great valuers, great bestowers or creators of value? Perhaps the notion of a value that is not itself a valuing is the principal symptom of decadence. After all, is not all healthy life, all naturality, a creating of new creators? How abstract does “being” sound, though it’s entirely analogous to phusis!
A video track is just a moving picture, yes; but surely your video also has an audio track. And there’s more to ILP than just the guys who reacted to your picture.
A theory like this would have to logically lead back to a Berkeleyish god though. If you and I are talking, and you suddenly disappear into thin air, what you perceived as the world while you were there still exists to me… it doesn’t disappear along with you. So in that sense it exists objectively and independently of your perception of it.
Now suppose a moment later I disappear into thin air. Would the world disappear also… if the above theory is true it would have to unless there was a third perceiver.
We can get around the issue of you disappearing… this fact would not change the objective nature of the world; what I perceive as an apple is still an apple after you disappear. But if all consciousnesses disappeared, and there cannot be an objective world that doesn’t exist solely by virtue of the combined efforts of all the constituents, you need a third perceiver.
I recommend approaching this problem like a cold bath; quickly in and quickly out again… and just assume there is the ‘presence’ of something in the universe that always exists fundamentally in the same state… a kind meaningless, irreducible, undifferentiated content.
Please review your Parmenides, Saully, and remember Socrates gave him props in the Theaetetus.
They say plato was an athelete who had broad shoulders. I’m inclined to think that platonism evolved out of what N called (and what Sauwelios and Jakob are now calling) an erotic drive to knowledge… a lust for truth… really a sublimation of power. Plato’s thinking could not have been surreptitiously motivated by fear or anxiety in the Kierkegaardian sense. Plato over-affirms life, which is often mistaken as resignation to it.
Now it would be a mistake to call christianity a platonism for the masses, because the gnostic and neo-platonic interpretations which suffered a break from the polytheistic olympian religion of the greeks did not evolve as an erotic drive, a healthy drive, that physiological strength of character and vigorous lust for life that plato the athlete and over-active thinker had. His realism was not that otherworldy and overwordy nonsense that N called christianity… what became platonism was the work of an artistic and creative thinker, not a thinker in the existential desperation of a Descartes or a Pascal.
The clue is here (and I’ve said it before); Plato was an aristocrat who designed democracies, not participated in them in principle. He was an elitist who first distinguished himself from the ordinary man and then set out to design a political philosophy, from above, for the ordinary man.
Christianity and neo-platonism on the other hand is an egalitarian system of thinking that uses plato’s realism as a metaphysics to support an idea of man as being in an imperfect state because of his pride, because of his feeling exceptional (as plato did). It is a leveling and ideological democratization of a system of thought that evolved out of a fascination and erotic love of life.
Compare the gnostic storyline… the world is the creation of a lesser god or the result of some chick named sophia being tricked or some such thing. At this point the world is being conceived of as a bad place… a place of deception, a kind of wrong turn.
Now the presocratics didn’t think of the world like this. Sure, there was a perfect realm of ideas under which the material world of things existed, but this was not because of some deception on the part of a god.
From Plotinus forward platonism and aristocratic philosophy gets watered down in proportion to the size of the population which it must suit, you could say. What was once esoteric philosophy for the exceptional and elite becomes exoteric for the average and ordinary.
Plato was no pessimist, and socrates his mouthpiece was no decadent. The suspicion against these gentlemen is unwarranted; verily, they were not democratic souls.
Facts are everywhere: Math, science, logic. The natural world. And you can “like” or “dislike” them. But you can’t make them go away.
My point instead revolves around the possible limitations imposed on those who employ the tools of mathematics, science and philosophy. In other words, employ them pertaining to the relationship between identity [dasein] and value judgments [conflicting goods] out in a world of human interactions that come to clash precisely because of the manner in which “I” perceive “the good” is not the way “you” perceive it.
Is there a way for both of us to perceive it only as a reasonable man and woman can perceive it?
What then can be demonstrated to be true objectively for all of us and what seems to revolve more instead [subjectively/subjunctively] around a personal opinion or a political prejudice?
This is always the distinction I make: Between what you believe is true “in your head” and the extent to which you are able in turn to convince others that all rational men and women are obligated to believe it too. And then [of course] the extent to which what you believe [or claim to know] is true is able to be shown as true using, for example, the scientific method or the rules of language.
It’s not a “critique” that I am after here. What I am looking for is an argument from you that is able to demonstrate how the material fact of playing the stock market [which can be demonstrated objectively] is seemingly no different from demonstrating that such behavior can be thought of as either a good thing or as a bad thing.
[if I understand you]
One is a matter of fact and the other is a matter of opinion. Choosing this behavior as a manner in which you value yourself is [to me] very different from choosing to justify doing it or to justify not doing it.
Yes, but these “notions” of what is good get translated into actual behaviors that then precipitate actual consequences that then precipitate actual reactions. Individual reactions [rooted in dasein] that are then all over the map mentally, emotionally and psychologically. Or even physically. Out in the real world there are legal and political agendas that either prescribe or proscribe particular behaviors that we either applaud or are repelled by. That we either “like” or “dislike”.
Again, you seem to conflate accummulating evidence to demonstrate the fact of an abortion with accummulating evidence to demonstrate the fact of it’s moral worth/value. But while evidence can be readily accumulated to confirm the fact of it there are facts/reasons/arguments on both sides of the political spectrum to “demonstrate” that it is either a moral behavior or an immoral behavior.
As I noted above:
Empowers who? In what context? From what point of view? Embracing what particular moral/political agenda?
Whereas the fact of an abortion is applicable to all of us in any particular context in which one occurs. And depending on the particular moral/political agenda embraced by any particular community the women will either be comforted or condemned. Perhaps even arrested and charged with first degree murder. And, again, sure, some will “like” this, while others will “dislike” it. But what is the rational/ethical man or women obligated to like or dislike?
I still fail to see what this “analysis” has to do confronting an actual flesh and blood human being about to be executed. There’s a protest outside the prison. Some construe the execution as just, other as unjust. They ask your opinion and you tell them…that? It is as though [to me] you see yourself as somehow above all of that “existential stuff”. As though, in other words, your argument here has no practical relevance at all. Sure, maybe it does. But I don’t see it.
If it did “unite them all against you”, it would be precisely because the actual execution itself seems almost beside the point to an advocate of VO.
Or so it seems to me. I just don’t see the connection between the theory and the manner in which it might be practiced “out in the world”.
Suppose Jane is pregnant. She doesn’t want to be. She was raped. But she lives in a community where abortion is illegal. Even as a result of rape. A community that will charge her [and the abortionist] with first degree murder.*
think of America if, in 2016, the Republicans win the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Which [in time] means the courts too.
So, what “is happening” here? How would you “be there” for her? Would you help her to obtain an illegal abortion? Or, if she already had the abortion, would you turn her in to the authorities?
What constitutes a “wise decision” here?
Me?
Well, given the manner in which I construe a moral choice, my behaviors are rooted in my own subjective political prejudices. So, here and now I would take that Kierkegaardian leap and help her to obtain the illegal abortion.
Well, if I knew and loved her.
But I would have no illusions that this is essentially/objectively the “right thing to do”. My own “dilemma” above would not go away. Instead, my choice would still be but the embodiment of dasein. The embodiment of the particular “I” that I became given the life that I actually lived.
So, how would you react here? What is the practical relevance of VO in a context such as this?
And, more crucially still [for me], what are its limitations?
Well, depending on the particular context, they may well not have to reconcile or to resolve their differences at all. For instance, they can both agree to disagree: “you’re right from your side and I’m right from mine”. And then go their separate ways.
Instead, the need to reconcile/resolve conflicts becomes relevant when their/our reactions to the conflicting behaviors is entangled in a particular legal/political context.
As with, for example, the context I noted for Jacob above:
Suppose Jane is pregnant. She doesn’t want to be. She was raped. But she lives in a community where abortion is illegal. Even as a result of rape. A community that will charge her [and the abortionist] with first degree murder.
Each of us will have a particular political/philosophical/moral narrative to fall back on in order to choose what we deem to be the “right thing to do”.
In other words, if Jane comes to us for advice or assistance.
So, what would you do? And how close to or far away from “the most rational thing to do” would you imagine that to be. Is there a way, using the tools of philosophy, to discern behaviors here that might be deemed obligatory for all rational/ethical men and women?
Maybe, but not a God. It would suffice if there were always multiple “perceivers” (construers). And in fact, there logically have to be: for in the absence of any construers, there is no time, space, or anything like that. So even if all existing construers would at some point disappear into thin air, this would be immediately followed by the point at which some construers appear out of the blue again.
P.S. I basically agree with what you say about Plato et al.
Those are some pretty serious claims, Sauwelios. You do realize you are saying there is always some kind of consciousness that exists whenever anything else exists in the universe, right? I can let that ride because I like panpsychism and I think Chalmer’s had a lotta nerve to keep his hair long after he became academically famous.
Okay, let’s call it a fact that, say, the earth is round, not flat. People who believe the earth is really flat are then wrong, but they may still believe it–even in spite of all the evidence.
Now suppose there are people who believe there is a celestial body orbiting the sun between the earth and Mars. Some of them think it’s a planet and some of them think it’s not (compare the debate there has been about Pluto; also Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta). What’s the difference between those people and the people who believe that, say, abortion by the pregnant woman’s choice has an objective moral value (some of them thinking that value is positive and some of them thinking it’s negative)? You could even change “planet” and “asteroid” to “yeti” and “unicorn”–things that science hasn’t observed anywhere else, either. Need I go on?
I’m not sure we’re on the same page here. Sure, it may be impossible, at least with current technology, to demonstrate what people really think. Is that part of what you’re saying here? To me, that’s beside the point. Sure, the fact that such people as we’re talking about are so vocal about their positions on such issues is no proof that they think what they seem to think, but it’s definitely evidence thereof.
To me, this is not about whether certain pro-life people really think abortion is absolutely/objectively wrong, it’s about whether or not it is. And, contrary to the “material fact” of playing the stock market, that has never been demonstrated. The stock market is being played when it’s open and not being played when it’s closed; but there is no evidence of the goodness or badness of playing the stock market. You see what I’m saying? No objective value has ever been found! Not in the stars, not in the human heart, not on the bottom of the ocean. Just as no cheese has been found on the moon.
Why is it a matter of fact that there is no cheese on the moon? Only because no evidence of the presence of any cheese on it has been found? But then the fact that no evidence of the absolute wrongness or rightness of any abortion has been found means it’s a matter of fact that there is no such thing, either. It does not matter that cheese has been found elsewhere whereas absolute wrongness or rightness has not.
Now what value philosophy does is, on the basis of the lack of justification for the fact/value distinction, assert that any belief springs from the self-valuing of the believer. This ranges from the belief that an uncaged hungry tiger represents a mortal danger for human beings to the belief that abortion is in itself evil. The difference between these two examples is simply that it’s significantly easier to understand how the former springs from the believer’s self-valuing than the latter.
No scientific facts/reasons/arguments.
I’ve already provided a couple of rational values. Other than those, however, nothing, as far as I know.
By making the fact/value distinction, you exempt anyone who claims the existence of absolute values from having to provide scientific evidence.
It is beside the point, in the sense that it’s not necessarily on point. It’s only on point for those who give a damn one way or the other. There is no reason to think that any rational person should or must give a damn. My argument has practical relevance in that it argues that trying to convince people rationally is pointless, as neither side is right. Insofar as those protesters don’t (secretly) already know that, I suspect they just couldn’t bear it. As Nietzsche puts it, “integrity on this point would work [their] instant downfall.” (Antichrist 54, Mencken trans.)
