You are still failing to realize that there is no fundamental distinction between what we call “objective truths” and what we call “subjective opinions”. There is a distinction – I am not denying that – but the distinction lies in our degree of confidence. “Truth” is an opinion we’re confident of and “opinion” is an opinion we’re not confident of (or that we’re pretending not to be confident of.)
When you’re consistently confident of something for a very very long time you start believing it to be “true”. That’s all there is to it.
“There is a red apple on the table.”
You call this “objective truth”. In reality, it’s just an opinion you’re very confident of. All your confidence means is that you trust your own judgment. There are no “reasons” as to why you think “there is an apple on the table”. That’s simply what the biology of your body is giving to you. And since such a judgment is consistent with everything else you do in your life, you come to accept it as “objective truth”.
But nothing is perfectly consistent, which is to say, everything is open to falsification. Such is the nature of the universe.
Regarding the morality of the abortion, the following is the “objective truth”.
Unwanted babies should be aborted provided that abortion causes no significant damage to the woman. This is quite simply because it is better to have no child at all than to raise a child you do not want to raise (since that leads to poor parenting and poor parenting leads to weaklings.)
People who disagree with this do not disagree because they have healthier solutions, they disagree because they are not healthy enough for a healthy solution. They have psychological issues that make such “truths” appear utterly inconsistent (i.e. “untruthful”) to their minds.
A person who does not want to cause harm to anyone won’t be able to see such “truths” as “truths” quite simply because they do not help him achieve his goals.
To me, this is the sort of abstract intellectual contraption that for all practical purposes tells us nothing at all about the reality of abortion as it is encountered existentially by actual flesh and blood women struggling with the “agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”. In other words, being pregnant and not wanting to be.
Again, as with James, I imagine you sitting down with these women and articulating didactic speculation of this sort and then noting their dazed reactions.
How in the world have you closed the gap between establishing that they did have an abortion [when, after all, they acknowledge that they did] and establishing that morally their value judgments must reflect your own if they wish to be thought of as having done the “right” thing, the “strong” thing, the thing most worthy of respect?
They are not moral questions, but they are questions.
The same goes for moral questions: either abortion is a better option or it is not.
If there are folks who wish to argue that none of this can actually be established objectively, fine, let them. But if someone insists that abortion is not a better option when in fact it is a better option, I’m liable not to have much respect for, among other things, their capacity to perceive, say, reality.
All you’re saying here is this: I can answer some questions (such as questions regarding the physical appearance of objects) and I can’t answer others (such as moral questions.)
Just because you can’t answer some questions doesn’t mean others can’t answer them either. Just because majority can’t answer them doesn’t mean minority can’t either.
The difference between these two kinds of questions lies in their difficulty. Moral questions are more difficult to answer than question regarding physical appearance. That’s all. That, of course, does not mean that they are unanswarable, or that moral questions are “subjective” or whatever.
Let’s conclude our discussion: you simply lack capacity to see the moral aspect of reality.
[b]But this is not a moral question – let alone a moral quandary. Either the apple is red to my eyes or it is not. Either it is an apple or it is an orange. Either I am eating this apple or this orange now or I am not.
Aren’t those the things that most folks encounter from day to day when they are dealing with apples?
If there are folks who wish to argue that none of this can actually be established objectively, fine, let them. But if someone insists that the orange I am eating is really an apple when in fact it is really an orange, I’m liable not to have much respect for, among other things, their capacity to perceive, say, reality.[/b]
Instead [in my view] you wish to take the actual existential encounters we have with apples and turn them into these grandiose academic/scholastic claims that take us up into the stratosphere of logic and epistemology.
And, fine, if that is what you seek to establish “objectively” first there are folks like James who would truly relish the opportunity to accommodate you.
On the other hand, my own interest lies in bumping into folks who offer intriguing arguments relating to identity, value judgments and political economy. Arguments that I might, say, respect.
And you honestly believe that this is not just one more political argument reflecting the personal assumptions [prejudices] you make regarding these relationships? The dead baby [and those that claim to speak for it] are just plain wrong for not agreeing with you?
You actually believe that:
And you can demonstrate this…how? By simply asserting that it is true? Especially given the fact that there are folks who argue just the opposite of you while embracing the very same “logical” scaffolding that you do regarding how they arrived at their own utterly contradictory assumptions.
Thus in this respect extremists on both the left and right make the very same sort of arguments in order to come to exactly the opposite point of view. It’s just that some will insist that those who disagree with them are “decadent” and others will not.
How do you demonstrate that sun is yellow? By pointing at it with your finger and yelling “COME ON, LOOK, IT’S FUCKING YELLOW!” But looking at the sun hurts your eyes, right? And because it hurts your eyes, the demonstration fails, which, of course, does not mean that the truth hasn’t been demonstrated.
There is nothing to be “demonstrated” here, it’s clear as day. The problem does not lie in demonstration, but in your incapacity to accept what is evident, which is a consequence of some sort of psychological problem or intellectual confusion.
Hidden assumption in your thinking: what I don’t understand hasn’t been demonstrated.
Reality: what is demonstrated has been demonstrated, regardless of whether you understood the demonstration or not.
We are not making the same sort of arguments, what are you talking about for christsake?
The statement “unwanted babies should be aborted” does not mean “EVERYONE should abort their unwanted babies”. People who have psychological issues can’t abort their babies, hence, the only option for them, the healthiest option for them, is not to abort. But what is healthy for the unhealthy is unhealthy for the healthy. My statement answers the question: what is the healthiest option? It doesn’t answer the question: what is the healthiest option for the unhealthiest people? For the healthiest option for the unhealthiest people is one of the unhealthiest options.
Well, yeah, basically. But that is the most crucial distinction of all [from my perspective] when philosophers are asked to delve into a question like, “how ought I to live?”
And that is because [with respect to abortion] there are always two ways in which to approach this:
1] What ought I to do if I am pregnant and I don’t want to be? Well, I can abort the baby [kill it] or I can give birth to it [and someone will adopt it]. The moral question dissolves and it becomes basically a practical question.
2] I can kill it and then have to deal with the reactions of others who might see this instead as an act of cold blooded murder; or as inherently immoral; or as a sin against God.
When we choose to interact with others, they will either allow us to make decisions like this “on our own” – based on what we decide is the practical thing to do – or they will intertwine our behavior in a community that necessarily imposes rules of behavior. And these come in the form of rewards and punishments, prescriptions, proscriptions, customs, folkways, mores, laws etc.].
Once this all becomes social and political you can’t just insist that your behavior embodies reason and strength. Or, rather, you can, and then simply assume that if your behavior is in alignment with your own personal “philosophy” that is as far as it need go.
To me you are simply claiming that your “answers” here settle it once and for all. Just like all the other moral objectivists/authoritarians do. And, despite embracing completely contradictory moral/political agendas, every single one of them are right. Just ask them.
Just to be clear: I am not arguing that there does not exist an argument regarding the morality of abortion that is the optimal argument. That, in other words, is the most rational, the strongest, the most worthy of respect.
And, sure, it might even be yours.
But from my perspective you have not demonstrated how your own argument is not just a subjective opinion emanating from all of the particular existential components that came to encompass your life. And you have not demonstrated how these opinions make the arguments of the other side go away.
Each abortion takes place in a particular context viewed in conflicting ways. Why the way you view it?
If you argue the abortion is moral the baby dies. If you argue the abortion is immoral then the woman is forced to give birth.
But: We do not [cannot] live in a world where both moral agendas are able to prevail.
Colors that we perceive are rooted in biological facts that are rooted in the very evolution of life on earth. It is never a question of whether the color ought to be yellow…or green or blue instead.
It is what it is.
Just as a pregnancy and an abortion are what they are when integrated into the necessary relationships embedded in human sexuality.
Now, I make the distinction between that and the morality of ending a pregnancy by way of an abortion. The woman can choose to have sex. And if she becomes pregnant she can choose to have an abortion. And afterward she can choose to argue that her abortion is moral.
If you choose yourself not to see any crucial distinction here, fine. It’s just that when others argue that, yes, in fact, just as she did choose to have sex and she did chose to have an abortion, we choose to argue that it was immoral to abort it.
Then what? If you agree with the woman she is right? If you disagree with the others they are wrong?
After all, all of the moral objectivists approach it this way. And from all sides of the question!
To me it is analogous to two Kantians, one of whom argues it is the moral obligation of the woman to give birth and the other who argues it is the moral obligation of the others to to let her choose for herself.
The question is not “how ought I to live?” There is no such a thing as “free will”. Our strength is predetermined which means that we do not “choose” our strength. That said, it is our strength, which is predetermined, that determines how we ought to live, and since people are of unequal strength, people ought to live unequal lives.
The question is “how does a healthy/strong life look like?” Or “what do healthy/strong people do?”
That does not mean that healthy solutions are available to unhealthy people.
Do you understand?
Better to kill it.
Better to kill it.
Nobody cares. If you do not resist the pressure you will become sick – the community will enslave you.
Either you have cojones and risk dying in order to remain healthy, or you don’t and you stay alive but at the cost of being sick.
And that’s why people have trouble accepting evident truths: because they are cowards. Cowards love endless questioning.
This is because you lack necessary skill to determine who’s right and who’s wrong, so all of them appear to be equally right to you. (and of course, as a typical slave, you take agreement as an evidence for and disagreement as an evidence against “objective truth”.)
Kind of makes these little beings sound like so much unwanted trash, doesn’t it?
So, tell me, just who are those who SHOULD abort their unwanted babies?
What do you mean by “can’t” within this reference?
By psychological issues, you mean the mentally ill or people who are torn and conflicted about it?
Do you mean what is in their own best interest? Isn’t that usually what it comes down to?
Not for me it didn’t. So, what IS healthiest option from your perspective?
The thing about walking throughy mazes is that you might not find your way out.
…as for the latter, you mean for the unborn?
No, can you help me out of this maze?
IF PEOPLE WERE NOT IN SUCH A DAMN HURRY FOR SEX AND/OR IMPATIENT ABOUT MOVING ON WITH THEIR LIVES, AND NOT WANTING TO ACCEPT THE CONSEQUENCES AND ATONING, THEY MIGHT DECIDE TO HAVE THE CHILD AND GIVE IT UP FOR ADOPTION.
Hmm. So you are now arguing that, with respect to abortion, the psychological health needed by the pregnant woman to make the right choice, the strong choice, the choice most worthy of respect is…inherent? She does not autonomously choose whether or not to abort but is merely embedded [embodied] in the causal chain — the dead baby being just the next domino to fall?
And the same with the exchange we are having? We “choose” the words here that must be chosen given that we are not actually free to choose other words instead?
The same with our emotional reactions here?
And what difference [really] does it make whether “healthy solutions are available to unhealthy people” or not? After all, it’s not like any of this is something that they bring about of their own free will.
Doesn’t seem very “heroic” when it’s all reduced down to mattter interacting in the only way that matter is able to interact: through the immutable laws of physics, chemistry, neurology etc…
Oh, I guess that settles it then. You say that nobody cares. So that even if someone insists that they do care – they must necessarily be “psychologically sick” for caring?
Have you checked out KTS yet? I do believe that you would fit right in there. Firece alpha males…most of whom are utterly convinced that their own value judgments necessarily reflect Reason and Strength. Holding in contempt all of those who don’t share them.
And yet now it seems it was all just, well, inevitable. They really had no autonomous say in how it all unfolded. It was all just meant to be the moment Existence [Causality] exploded onto the scene.
Again, to sum up:
More tautologies: I lack the necessary skills to fathom these relationships because you do not lack the skills and my argument is not the same as yours.
As though being a master or a slave really makes any difference anyway when, as the flesh and blood equivalent of dominoes, it is just our turn to topple. Or [of course] be toppled.
It matters because we can influence people. Beside that, it is possible for a person who can’t use a healthy solution to know what a healthy solution is.
Your resentment is annoying. You should either try to argue against my points OR YOU SHOULD SIMPLY SHUT THE FUCK UP. Everything else is whining and whining is annoying.
More resentment and whining. As if only “alpha males” can be above you.
You should take a look in the mirror and see what you’re really doing here: whining about the fact that I’m confident in my claims. You fucking hate everything that is confident and you’d do anything to take all of their confidence away.
The main thing I take issue with in your initial post, Magnus, is this line:
Allow me to clarify why before making a brief statement on the rest.
It seems to me that what you mean to say is that being rude towards the disrespectful is not wrong, or perhaps is just, or something along those lines. In this sense I think your position is easier to defend, particularly as you qualify it by saying “in my book”.
So, the reason I take issue with the statement is because you say, “Being rude towards the disrespectful is not disrespectful…” The issue here is linguistic.
Humean made the remark
There is a truth to this. If language became later on bent in your favour and could accomodate your sentence, that is another thing, but as it is we must investigate the socially shared meanings if we wish to transmit ideas among one another.
I think that, as far as internet dictionaries goes, the Oxford is the nearest to a standard dictionary. The definition for disrespectful on the Oxford online dictionary is as follows:
To clarify that, I will now add the definition from the same source for the word respect:
To further clarify, here is the definition of rude:
So now to return to the line in your original post under question:
You say that being rude (in your book) is not disrespectful. Let’s just pretend that the definition of disrespectful did not include implote, and the definition of rude didn’t include impolite and go by the other aspects of the definition. Disrespect is thereby defined as “a lack of respect…” and respect “admiration for something or someone elicited by their abilities, qualities, and acheivements”, so you could also say that disrespect is a lack of admiration for something or someone elicited by their abilities, qualities and achievements
So to clarify this, the issue I have with that sentence is that it is contradictory. You are saying that by being rude to someone you do not lack admiration for their abilities, qualities, and achievements. I don’t think this is what you mean, which is why I originally said that it would seem that what you meant to say is that you don’t think being rude to someone disrespectful is wrong, or that you think it is just (that it is justice to be rude to someone disrespectful in your original definition).
Now I will make a brief comment about other contents of your post.
So, taking the definitions from before, you are saying that those who hold a delusional view of the world lack admiration for the world (being the something in the definition, and admiration for its qualities no doubt)…
I can see that there is a Nietzschean influence in this post. I think if you take this original premise, then the rest of your post can be arguably justified… It is not so much that I agree with it, though I wouldn’t necessarily disagree that I possess a delusional view of the world around me either…
I know why you made this statement:
I will not go into detail about all the reasons, but I am sure that the reason you have is because they hold things to be equal which may be argued are not equal, or else hold what might be taken to be misguided or delusional views of reality.
The only thing I might suggest is that you might find a way to overcome your feeling of offense… This is not to say that you need accept this people or have any respect for them (it is not to say that you shouldn’t either), it is only to say that you might find your feeling of power heightened if nothing offends you… Just how one might accomplish that I at least shall not currently address.
Yes, I know what it’s called. But how do you relate it to the points I raised above?
But what does that really mean when that influence is just another link in the causal chain? It’s not like you could have freely chosen not to influence them. Anymore then they can choose freely whether to be or not to be so influenced.
That is precisely my point to you. I suppose we will just have to allow others following this exchange to decide for themselves who is actually making the greater effort here in that regard.
Not that they actually can, right? Well, not of their own free will anyway.
No such thing as free will? What about free choice? Did someone give you permission to come into ilp and post?
We all have a different perspective about free will. Granted, in the long run, it isn’t necessarily free but can you at least say or determine that the choice you made had a certain amount of freedom to it?
We can still be autonomous human beings while at the same time realizing that some of our choices have come about as a result of others within our lives making choices which have influenced our lives. At least to me, that shows will that is still free and undetermined or determined by us. I think that the more self-awareness we have, the more free will we will have because we will not be acting from a semi-conscious or unconscious place.
.
Well, I’m not sure what kind of strength you’re speaking of here. There is physical strength, which we can transcend by lifting weights etc.
There is mental emotional strength which we determine by learning to transcend things and to plow through them which causes us to grow and mature. Ultimately, we do choose our strength.
“Ought to”? Right there, that perspective might be what’s making you see yourself as already determined. Anything can look pre-determined when we’ve looked through the eyes of hindsight. that’s no different than seeing “destiny” or 'fate". It’s judged in hignsight, after the fact. Or it’s a choice you’ve made and determined to follow it til you’ve come to that.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s only me but I thought that was funny. Just a hint here - do not become a motivational speaker.
I don’t think that those questions can be answered carte blanche.
A healthy strong life is self-determined, autonomous and when it can’t be, it hangs in there. it does what it needs to live and survive without destroying others around it. It has a certain amount of faith and hope at least in him/her -self. It has interests. It’s curious about life. It wants to learn. It feels joy pain awe. It allows those things but doesn’t hold onto them forever. It takes care of its physical, emotional and spiritual needs first.
In that case, the mental health profession is on its’ way out - it will fail terribly.
But give me an example of what you’re meaning here.
You’re not making any effort, retard. You’re merely wasting my time here with your resentment.
The idea of the “free will” denies the fundamental rule of the universe and that is that everything is interconnected, that nothing is “free”, isolated or separate.
There are only strong and weak wills.
Strength in general, be it mental or physical.
You cannot “transcend” your physical strength. You can improve it but only within limits.
We do not. Strength is not something you choose, strength is something given to you that you have to spend. You can choose how to spend it, but not even that is true (you are always forced to spend it in a certain way.)
Mental health professionals work by applying external force (the subject receiving) and here I am referring to internal force (the subject giving.)
I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here.
First, I see myself as being connected to everything in the universe, most of the time. But I don’t understand what that has to do with “free will”. We are, at the same time, individuals, aren’t we? It’s not really like some kind of symbiotic relationship. I will admit of course that our connectedness to certain people, our children for instance, is capable of denying us a certain amount of personal freedom but that is still by choice because we love them. Just as it is by choice that those parents who don’t love them will leave.
The Universe is for the most part orderly and follows a pattern. It’s cohesive and harmonious. But that doesn’t mean that it is pre-determined. Even nature teaches us that. It may follow certain laws but becomes destructive, chaotic and unpredictable at times - though we may predict it beforehand.
I suppose it all just comes down to perspective. Either a god created and designed the universe and it will operate as this god deems or has already deemed or it will evolve as it itself determines and at times randomly. Everything is in process. I kind of intuit that the star stuff that I’m made of fashioned its own way and forged its own path to get to where I am. lol
Now I’m a retard. But if it is a waste of your time to exchange arguments with a retard, well, why did you?
But if you should ever change your mind, I would still like to explore the manner in which you do [b][i]not[/b][/i] reflect on the questions I raised above regarding dasein, conflicting goods, free will and respect.
With regard to abortion or any other moral conundrum that has plagued our species over the centuries.
My, how foreceful you are. 