The fact that you want to be humiliated is a bit weird as well. Or, if you’re being sarcastic, then the fact that you think you’ve humiliated anyone else is both weird and laughable.
Nah, he just over-does it. His actual position, his philosophical approach (and it is) is legitimate and he does well at articulating it… though with very rigid and defined, repetitious formula. If you are familiar with rorty’s attitude you’d see better the nuance and idiosyncrasy.
Instead of disagreeing with iambiguous I rather find myself thinking some of the points could be better made, in fact. The repetitious formulaic style of his posting makes one thing certain; he certainly isn’t misundertood. Rather nobody seems able to offer a satisfactory answer to his fundamental question [ cue dasein corollaries ]. I’m not even sure what he wants anymore. Like I’ve tried to provide an alternative perspective on the subject of values and goods and how these can be justified even on a relativistic basis. He just doesn’t take, man. He just repeats the same formula, as it were. I don’t know what to do other than seriously commit to discussion with him… and I can’t do that. Oh he’ll no.
Again, here is the argument that I make with regard to probing a particular human identity – a particular “self” – out in a particular world. And how it might be implicated in conflicting human behaviors that revolve around conflicting value judgments or political ideals.
So: How is this not applicable to you? And how would a “serious philosopher” then frame it in a more, say, epistemologically sound manner?
And if someone doesn’t “give a fuck” about what I am saying here then it behooves them to stop reading what I post. No one is required to, right?
And common sense tells us [or tells me] that if someone believes that they are in touch with their “true self” and that their “true self” is in touch deontologically with the moral truth then an argument like mine will be reacted to accordingly. All I ask though is that they note the manner in which their own conflicts with others over moral values and/or political ideals is able to transcend the dilemma that I have posed here rather frequently.
Time and time and time again I make it clear here that my own interest in philosophy revolves around the question, “how ought one to live?” And then the extent to which dasein, conflicting goods and political economy are relevant in answering this question.
So, sure, if you simply don’t give a fuck that some will argue that the buying and the selling of stocks reflects/embodies the immorality embedded in the capitalist political economy, you can go about the business of simply ignoring them.
Just as folks who believe that aborting babies is moral can go about the business of ignoring those who decry the practice as murder. That is until the legislature and the courts pass/uphold laws that make abortion murder.
Then the “philosophical arguments” meet the “real world”.
Huffing and puffing? The sort of “argument” that folks like Satyr make about you? And yet your ostensible insouciance here is then betrayed by this sort of vituperative reaction.
Actually, that sort of thing is something I pursue only with the “meat-mind” objectivists of the KT ilk. The cat and mouse contraption that revolves around entertaining myself while “waiting for godot”.
Now, I don’t consider you to be a “meat-mind” at all. In fact, in some respects I don’t even consider you to be an objectivist. No, you seem [to me] to be considerably more inclined toward moral nihilism. You do what you like because you like what you do and it has afforded you a lifestyle [of consumption] that brings you lots and lots of pleasure. Thus the way that you live your life from day to day is largely “beyond good and evil”.
Right?
In other words, fuck Tyler Durden! 
I can’t really disagree with this. For example, I still follow “the news” and over and over and over and over again it seems to revolve around folks embracing conflicting sets of behaviors construed from conflicting points of view.
I just intertwine this in the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of a particular “self” ever clamoring for a world in which particular political values [his or her own] become the “law of the land”.
And I use the same arguments because they succinctly encompass the point that I am trying to make. Why on earth then would I attempt to reconfigure them?
As for Rorty, I focus the beam here:
1] He has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary he currently uses, because he has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books he has encountered;
2] He realizes that argument phrased in his present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;
3] Insofar as he philosophizes about his situation, he does not think that his vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not himself.
— Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.73
And then I ask myself: What is this applicable to in a world teeming with conflicting goods?
So this debate really got underway!
Tell that to the Turd.
So you really do the exact same shit with everybody you talk to. Huh.
It’s like he was raped repeatedly as a child by a bunch of people calling themselves objectivists and beating him silly with copies of Ayn Rand novels. He’s so mad.
I know: Let’s start a new thread: Uccisore and Biggie discuss dasein.
Or, sure, we can do it here.
I’ll start…
How is the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasien in the OP not applicable to you? And, in particular, pertaining to conflicting value judgments.
Perhaps then we might even be able to move this thread to the philosophy forum.
I know: Let’s start a new thread: mr reasonable and Biggie discuss dasein.
Or, sure, we can do it here.
I’ll start…
How is the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasien in the OP not applicable to you? And, in particular, pertaining to conflicting value judgments.
Perhaps then we might even be able to move this thread to the philosophy forum.
Objectivists: like shooting turds in a barrel.
He said in jest.
Yeah but I’m not an objectivist, and I don’t think that someone thinking that there can be answers to questions makes them an objectivist either.
Okay, so let’s ask two:
1] Does mr reasonable trade in stocks?
Is there an objective answer to be found here?
2] Is trading in stocks immoral?
Is there an objective answer to be found here?
Mr. Reasonable AKA Biggie Smalls theme song in this epic debate showdown.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk4ftn4PArg[/youtube]
From outsider’s daseiny thread:
All I am doing is proposing an argument that aims to explore certain aspects of human identity.
Here is the particular thread in which I presented this argument: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Now, I’m not arguing that this is the most “sophisticated” way in which to think about human identity. And I am certainly not insisting that if you don’t share my point of view you are wrong.
Instead, I ask others to imagine folks using the tools of philosophy reacting to the points that I raise. In what manner are they not reasonable? In what manner are they illogical or epistemologically unsound?
And then I will pose to the moral and political objectivists a challenge: How is my argument [u][b]not[/u][/b] applicable to you when your own value judgments come into conflict with another.
But then any number of objectivists akin to uccisore avoid that altogether and make me the argument. Some will even resort to huffing and puffing, name-calling and personal attacks. Anything to avoid actually exploring the points that I raise in a serious discussion.
Again, I’m not arguing that my point of view here is necessarily more sophisticated than others. I am only noting the manner in which given the way that I think about these relationships “out in the world of human interactions in conflict”, I have become ensnared 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.
So, uccisore, how/why is this not applicable to you?
And how/why is it not applicable to moreno and turd and outsider and trixie and all the rest of the folks here who scoff at the mere mention of the word “dasein”.
What on earth is a “nihilistic epistemology”?!
Instead, as with others, my own argument here is based more on certain existential assumptions. Chief among them, the assumption that God – an omniscient and omnipotent font – does not exist.
And if God does not exist how then do mere mortals – actual flesh and blood men and women rooted in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts – come to accumulate a particular set of moral and political values; and then demonstrate that their own assumptions are the ones that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to pursue.
And then I note the chief components of my own frame of mind here: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
So, where are the arguments from others able to demonstrate that my components here are wrong because their components are right. And that the components of their argument reflect a more reasonable assessment when grounded out in the world of actual conflicting behaviors?
duplicate post
This is a rather transparent sort of Kafka trap with ‘objectivist’ used in place of ‘bigot’. If I answer that 1.) it is applicable to me, then you take it to mean you’re right about everything, and I’m obligated to go on criticizing horrible objectivists. If I try to explain how it’s 2.) not applicable to me, then I’m guilty of being an ‘objectivist’, which to you is a dirty, dirty intellectual bad guy who thinks the rules don’t apply to him.
The reality is, your formulation (and maybe all formulations) of dasien doesn’t apply to anybody because it’s bullshit. When I tried to explain this to you before, you replied to me as if I had given answer 2.) above, and proceeded with your ‘look at the dirty, dirty objectivist’ canned response. This would have been sad in the best of circumstances, but given how utterly disconnected it was from the actual words I was saying to you, it demonstrated a fundamental inability/unwillingness to engage with other people.
That’s why you’re so insistent on boiling every conversation you have down to the other person’s confrontation of the exact same question presented the exact same way- you believe you’ve created an inescapable trap, and enjoy the intellectual validation that occurs (or you imagine will occur) when somebody flounders in it. What I can’t tell yet is if you actually think a Kafka trap is solid reasoning, or if you’re just playing a game.
What on earth does this actually have to do with the points that I raise? Consider:
I am an individual…a man; yet, in turn, I am but one of 6,500,000,000 additional men and women that constitutes what is commonly called “mankind”. So, in what sense can I, as an individual, grasp my identity as separate and distinct from mankind? How do I make intelligent distinctions between my personal, psychological “self” [the me “I” know intimately from day to day], my persona [the me “I” project – often as a chameleon – in conflicting interactions with others], and my historical and ethnological self as a white male who happened adventitiously to be born and raised to view reality from the perspective of a 20th century United States citizen?
How is this not applicable to everyone? How is this not applicable to you? Depending on when we are born historically, where we are born culturally, and the actual accumulation of personal experiences that we encounter, how will the manner in which any particular individual’s moral and political values not be profoundly implicated in this?
How do your own transcend it?
Instead, the role of philosophy [in my view] is this: After acknowledging these profoundly existential/problematic components of any particular individual’s indoctrination as a child, what, using the tools of philosophy, can we then go on to establish is within the framework of a rational and virtuous behavior?
In other words, what isn’t “bullshit”? And don’t the moral and political objectivists insist that what isn’t bullshit is what they value? what they embrace as the “ideal”?
Again, you choose the value judgment and we can explore our respective assessments regarding the “conflicting goods” in the philosophy forum.
Or, with respect to extreme behaviors in which there is an overwhelming consensus regarding right and wrong, good and evil, you can address my point regarding the extreme narcissist who roots morality [in a world sans God] in that which he or she construes to be in their own self-interest.
Case in point. You neatly pivoted away from what I said to re-assert your Kafka trap.
Here we go again. You don’t respond at all to the points I just raised above. Instead, you reduce them down to a “trap”.
Ironically, folks like you ever bitch and moan about the Kids taking over ILP. What you want instead are folks who will actually make the attempt to engage in discussions that at least come within the vicinity of philosophy.
And while I will readily admit that the points that I raise with regard to dasein [and conflicting goods] may contain their fair share of epistemological flaws, they are certainly within the vicinity of an intelligent discussion about human identity as it comes into play when the objectivists from both sides of the political spectrum come to embody the irresistible force and the immovable object.
And yet instead of exploring this in depth you simply reduce my argument here down to this Kafkan trap.
But, okay, with respect to an actual moral and political conflagration of note what exactly do you mean by that?
For example, in regard to abortion I believe that it is the killing of an innocent human being. That the unborn ought to be given the right to life. Yet I also believe that women ought to have the right to kill the unborn.
How do I reconcile this? I don’t. Instead, I note the manner in which I am now 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.
Now, how are you not entangled in it?
And, with respect to abortion [or any other moral conflict] where is your own existential rendition of this:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion [like premarital sex] was a sin. Big time. Both in and out of church.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism
Instead, you want us to believe that the conservative point of view necessarily reflects the rational point of view.
And if not in a Kafkan contraption then certainly in one that might be associated with the likes of, say, Plato or Kant?
Or, perhaps, the Christian God?