Well, I think I should qualify what I said. I said the one point would be followed by the other. But if there is no space-time, and all the construers are different, it’s basically a different universe.
But yes, I realise that’s what I’m saying. In fact, I think you can drop the word “else”.
Generally, I have found that no one ever really understands an “ontology” of this sort [or a “TOE”] until they are willing to embrace it themselves. It could be yours, it could be James’s, it could be Satyr’s…it could be any one of hundreds and hundreds of similar intellectual contraptions that I have bumped into over the years.
In any event, my own interest here revolves largely around the extent to which these largely scholastic contraptions [in my opinion] can be effectively implicated out in the world of actual human interactions that come into conflict over values. And then the extent to which they address the points I raise regarding identity, condlicting goods and political economy.
Of course, that may not be your own interest here at all. And, yeah, I can respect this. These particular relationships just happen to me my own particular proclivity. Philosophy is valuable to me only to the extent it addresses the question, “how ought one to live”?
So, when you note…
…I am then interested [for all practical purposes] in how VO is employed by you when in fact one of your own value judgments comes into conflict with another’s. If there are no moral absolutes then how do you address the gap between your point of view and the manner in which I embrace moral nihilism?
Well, here and now anyway.
You encompass VO in this way:
And I am back again to this: What on earth does that mean with respect to moral and political values?
I have read the posts that he addressed to me. And I fail to see how his own take on VO effectively addresses my argument here. This one: If we cannot live in a world where women have the right to choose and where babies have the rright to ber born, there is going be violence done to either women forced to give birth [or arrested for murder] or to the dead babies.
How does VO effectively change any of that?
All I can do is note that I have no clear understanding [yet] of how this is relevant pertaining to conflicting value judgments. Valuing is an inherent component of human interaction. But over and over and over again we value different things. Which is why rules of behavior [and politics] are also an inherent components of human interactions. But what some value others do devalue. And what happens when we value opposite things yet both sides are able to make reasonable arguments to further their own agenda?
Back to this:
1] might makes right [power politics]
2] democracy and the rule of law [moderation, negotiation, compromise]
3] right nakes might [one or another rendition of objectivism]
It may or may not be an ontological fact. We can only really know this for certain on the day the human race is finally able to grapple with and grasp the very nature of existence/reality itself. If the human brain is even capable of accomplishing this feat at all.
In the interim though, the manner in which I construe my “dilemma” above seems as reasonable a reaction to the “human condition” as any other. And I still don’t really understand the relationship between VO and the nature of this compromise you speak of. For all practical purposes. Can you perhaps cite examples from your own life regarding your own behaviors?
“Free will” is precisely one of those “big questions” that philosophers and scientists have struggled with now for millenia. I explored it considerably myself here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=170060&start=750
But, again, what are the implications of that for this very exchange? If it is unfolding only as it ever could not not have unfolded then VO and my own “dasein dilemma” are merely inherent components of it. Right? You and I are but two more manifestations of the “immutable laws of matter”.
Compatibilism? I’ve never bought in to that. Not, of course, that I ever really had a free choice to buy into it? Or, perhaps, that I “chose” my own point of view as the domino “chooses” to topple over onto the next one in line?
If there are definitive truths with respect to “clashing human behaviors derived from conflicting goods rooted in dasein” then, sure, I seek them.
Just as I seek arguments that might convince me that death is not the equivalent of oblivion.
But I also argue repeatedly that these “truths” only seem to exist for mere mortals “in their head”. In the minds of one or another objectivist.
I’m just trying to make sense of VO by undertstanding how it is applicable to the manner in which I construe dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. And in the context of conflicting value judgments.
Yes, and if, hypothetically, she is pregnant with an unwanted baby, wishes to obtain an abortion, but lives in a community where those with might have decreed abortion to be first degree murder, she can console herself that “might makes right” is not inherently a problem.
And I agree, it’s not. I just prefer democracy and the rule of law in its place. Always [of course] in the context of political economy. So, in that sense, there is never really a way to get around “might makes right”.
Just as, for those who embrace one or another rendition of objective morality, subjective morality [even if embraced “ontologically”] is evil.
Anyway, one thing seems certain: you and I seem far removed in understanding what the other is saying.
But then that is actually typical of what goes on in forums like this. We use the same words but the manner in which we understand their meaning “out in the world” seem ever at odds.
I’m not arguing that. Or, rather, I’m not arguing that so much as suggesting that each of us as individuals will determine [in our heads] which option is seen as better or worse; which option is seen as rational or irrational; which option is seen as moral or immoral.
And then beyond a particular concensus in a particular community, where can the philosophers/ethicists go?
Morality of course never goes away. Why? Because human wants and needs never go away. Morality is derived from the fact that embedded in the “human condition” is something rather obvious: that wants and needs ever come into conflict. Morality then is just a particular set of rules for a particular set of behaviors out in a particular world at a particular historical juncture. The rest is dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. That and opting for either “might makes right” or “moderation, negotiation and compromise”.
And, for folks like me, the dilemma embedded in dasein. Though I didn’t really “opt” for it. In fact, I wish I could figure out a way to “opt out” of it!!
But that’s my point. What is seen as more moral “to me” may not be seen as more moral “to you”. Or “to them”. My argument then revolves how I perceive [and you perceive and they perceive] these conflicting value judgments from the perspective of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
After all, that which the ubermen construe as promoting a “thriving life” will not often be seen by the “sheep” as doing the same. The only difference then between law of the jungle thuggery and the KTS crowd is that Satyr, Lyssa, Magnus et al always feel compelled to dress up the part about “might makes right” by concocting these fantastical intellectual contraptions [an actual “philosophy”] in order to separate them from the…retards? If only in their heads.
Imagine children being raised by the likes of Satyr and Lyssa! Or Magnus!! What’s the expression…“I weep for their future.”
Again, I believe that many objectivists react as they do to my “dasein dilemma” [some all but frantically] because they begin to sense that they are not really able to make it go away. “Oh, shit”, they’re thinking, “what if that is also apllicable to me?”
And, of course, if it is, then their carefully crafted world of words might come crashing down all around them.
I mean, look at the manner in which Satyr, Lyssa, Magnus and their ilk react to it…here and there!! Maybe not hysterically, but not all that far removed either.
Trust me: To think as I do here can be truly, truly demoralizing. “I” becomes merely [or largely] an existential contrapment/construction/fabrication swirling about value judgments that are not necessarily any more rational or moral than any others.
And that’s before you fall over into the abyss and are gone forever and ever.
There are things we can know about ourselves objectively because they encompass facts about ourselves that are not just a matter of opinion.
If Mary had an abortion then she cannot reasonably argue that she did not. But while she can reasonably argue that her abortion was moral others can argue just as reasonably that it was not. They simply start out with different sets of premises.
These: abortion.procon.org/
I’m merely grappling to understand the manner in which VO is or is not applicable “out in the world” where abortions are not just intellectual contraptions.
Mo - Pezer asks that you at least make a video. He sends his regards, anyway.
Why would I want to make a video?
Because I said please?
I made a private video for Pony awhile back. She liked it a lot; I could tell from her response.
I don’t have any answers. Why would Pezer want to come back to ILP?
I’m just the mailman here.
Well then I’ll pass on the video.
The same reasons he posted here before. Not the least of which is that I am here as an interlocutor.
yah lil erik is really into being ignored
I second the motion. If pezer was here maybe we would see more of mo.
VO offers a solution to to given of contradicting notions, or rather, to the imperfect human state of being bothered by the.
it is not logical at all that things should not contradict. Logic itself is quite irrational, if it considers A=A as more than a useful fiction.
That values exist, and that they contradict, and that this contradiction is life itself. It basically explains to you what politics is, and it gives you the clarity that you can not do politics or uphold morality and expect to remain ‘clean’; unless we understand conflict to be the cleanest thing of all. Which is the basic warrior mentality that VO propagates and creates, enables.
Back to being gods. Back to being responsible for own inner conflict. Back to being. Or full ahead into it.
One of the things it would change in this context is your way of phrasing things - it would not suggest that the world should be different than it is. It is rather a way of understanding how the world is, and how that is inevitable, and what you can do within that. it delineates freedom as much as it clarifies necessity.
It will not solve your problems for you. But it will show you which problems you can solve and which ones you have to accept as being itself.
Look at this thread. I a ealing with people who have absolutely no power to recognize my logics and yet, I am able to remain polite and generous, an happy about talking to them. I understand conflicting goods. I accept that you might never try to grasp VO, and ignore what people say about it to get back to your own personal interests (confirming thereby VO), because I accept that to you it is more relevant to not understand that conflict is not a bad thing, and I respect that. I also know that it is not necessary to accept this to have a worthy life.
I now with certainty that the people in the scenario I gave are fucked, because VO is ontology, an describes the nature of being, and has not yet been contradicted - because it is logically impossible to contradict it. To this extent, to the extent that thinking is able to produce truths, VO is absolutely true.
And that is fucking offensive. It is. The truth of it is also ridiculously complex, and people don’t want that.
To be clear, the implication os VO have never been described in public. They are too dangerous to just toss around like breadcrumbs. People have to draw them from the logic itself.
Matter is only a function of possibility. As we now matter is composed of non-local coherences, which I call self-valuings.
(Nothing to do with consciousness - consciousness is a complex form of self-valuing - a consciousness can never think beyond its values, like a plant can never not respond to water, carbon and sunlight)
I could make so many claims about what it could resolve for you (the death issue was resolved or me by it) but I would sound like a priest. Honestly, VO only offers you a solid perspective on the conflict of goods, so that we can see the perfectly coherent and cohesive value of that conflict. It does not offer a way out of the pain of disparate realities. It just makes it much easier to endure the pain and to experience it as pleasure, to stop fighting the part of it that is absolutely necessary to be alive.
Do you ever thin about how much inner conflict a Tree requires to push up the sap to its leaves? Or an atom, to stay intact? Existence is self-conflicting. But that fact is not.
Exactly; because we have different values. You want to see conflict resolve, I want to see that will to see conflict resolve resolve. All your thinking, all the ways in which you choose your paths along my words, are functions of what you desire to get out of this. I will never be able to give you what you are out for - as I consider that to be both irrational to desire, and undesirable. And yet, I respect you in the capacity of desiring this.
And if Mo would make a video we might see more of Pezer.
A “conundrum” as they call it.
a mexican standoff
mo: come out, pezer!
pezer: lemme see your hands, mo!
This reminds me of something Mo said a few years back, that he was still a miserable wretch about nihilism.
::
And I want to see conflict, the will to see conflict resolve, and the will to see that will to see conflict resolve resolve recur.
@iambig
Here’s a post in very simple english, purposely avoiding philosophic jargon.
When we come to conflict within ourselves, the decisions that we end up making tell us things about what we truly and ultimately value, and therefore they test our own knowledge of who we are. In the process of arriving to a decision, one asks to oneself “is this a decision that I can live with?” We want to be right FOR ourselves. We further consolidate our valuing of these values by arriving at a decision that provides peace of mind, and on the other hand we have a troubled mind or a burdened conscience when we make decisions that go against them.
In this way, our valuing molds our beings, it is intrinsic and inseparable from who we are. There is such a thing as a real you, and it is composed of knowledge and experiences which support your valuing.
When conficts arise from a colision of values between people, as in a society, it is inevitable that one of the two will prevail and thus enforce his values, while the other will have someone’s values forced upon him. That is a violence that must occurr of we must live in society.
That is why it is so important for us to defend our values, and how this behavior becomes analogous to an immune system, as in we inoculate/contaminate others with our values as a way to preserve them and prevent other values from being forced upon us. We act as bridges between the past and the future upon which values can travel trhough time.
And thus, values assume the characteristic of a living organism which is fighting for survival.
There will always be conflict, and that is a good thing, because conflict and disagreement and struggle are what allows for the best to prevail, and therefore for a continuation in the selection process of being.
As to law making and government forming, ill have to leave that for another time. It is apparently almost 3:30am.
I will also use very simple English…
(iambidextrous, this is for you…)
Preliminary steps for solving value conflicts…:
Step 1: Think about what you value. List them.
Step 2. Think about why you value each item on the list.
Step 3. Based on step 2, boil your list down to foundational values, or expand it as needed.
Step 4: Based on step 2, remove from your list those values that have no reason for being there. (I.e., if there was no reason why you value it, then there’s no reason why you would keep valuing it).
Step 5. Go about your day.
Should a value conflict arise on your day…
Step 1: Ask the person why they value what they value. Gather their reasons.
Step 2: Critically engage with those reasons. Poke holes in them.
Step 3: If their reasons stand up to critical scrutiny—i.e., you can’t find any fault with them—then allow the other person to go about their day.
Step 4: If their values impinge on your values, then obviously their values did not pass Step 3.
Step 5: Return to Step 2.
Step 6: If their values passed Step 3, then there is no value conflict, after all.
List of Unfortunate Errors to Avoid When Conducting Thinking Business:
Lovely. Hard to miss the despair in your voice when you say ‘whether we like it or not, in every thread’. Actually, I agree that this is tedious. Personally, I am only interested in the topic of value in terms of value-ontology, the rigorous, post-nihilistic, deep-Nietzschean logic that changes the very method of thought-conceiving.
Quite apart from the issue of analytical truth, Nietzsche argues that the most important quality of a philosophy would be that it is life-enhancing, for which it has to touch life directly. The idea to do philosophical videos set in real life, or videos about life with a philosophical overtone, is derived from this.