What all men ought to do

[Pedro I Rengel]

This is a stab at iambiguous, the only vaguely interesting thinker here.

First of all, fuck you. As that is what good morning is for you. So, hello.

Ok so check this shit out.


The ultimate ontological dasein moral everyday conundrum that fits with the inmutable laws of matter answer law is fate.

Fate is inmutable laws of matter. And it also is the everyday choices and banning books and abortions of people and other people's reaction to it.

So yee aks, what is the rule all the time that RATIONAL men and presumably we think women ought to apply every time?

To accept fate. Everything was going to happen. What you do about it or in general about anything or about whatever was going to happen. This all falls within fate. And if you fully wholy accept that it is so, you can and ought to do whatever you feel is going to be most impactful and comprehensive of all that you know.

So, if you pose me a hipothetical about Joe's girlfriend who banned a book is getting an abortion, you ask, what do I think about it and what can I do? Whatever it is is irreversible and was always to be. All men ought to act according to fate because all men do act according to fate anyway, so it is rational to act in that frame.

[iambiguous]

How's this for fate:

You were never not going to post this thread as you did because you could never not have done so.
I was never not going to respond to this thread as I did because I could never not have done so.

Now all we have to do is to connect these dots to whatever or whoever brought into existence the existence of Existence itself.

And then demonstrate to others why and how all rational men and women are obligated to think the same.

Autonomously, for example.

[Pedro I Rengel]

"
Now all we have to do is to connect these dots to whatever or whoever brought into existence the existence of Existence itself."

This sounds like ivory tower bullshit, academics in their robes. Where does it lave Mary and Joe, dealing with banned books and abortions?

Anyway, that they are rational already means they do think the same, which is: make the most efficient use of what you have before you.

So here we are, I wrote, you answered, I replied, and a rational man that reads it will be obligated to weigh it fairly and act upon fate as fate.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Or something like that, as it were.

If rational men are rational, and if they weren't they wouldn't be rational men, then it's not a matter of explaining but of showing the stakes.

[Pedro I Rengel]

To put it in a neat formula for you:

Being rational towards fate is ultimate responsibility and also ultimate freedom. If you think about it.

[Pedro I Rengel]

So. Real world shit. Interwhatever conflicting goods down here.

Why don't you read some Leibniz and leave that poor nazi fuck alone?

[Pedro I Rengel]

Anyway, just dropping by. I get bored sometimes. But I gotta go now. They be torturing false confessions out of senators in my hometown.

[iambiguous]

Now all we have to do is to connect these dots to whatever or whoever brought into existence the existence of Existence itself.

This sounds like ivory tower bullshit, academics in their robes. Where does it lave Mary and Joe, dealing with banned books and abortions?

On the contrary, for all practical purposes, it sounds like common sense to me. Mary and Joe and abortions and banned books exist only because something exists rather than nothing at all. And this particular existence exists as it does for a reason. Or for no reason at all. And we [the human species] either have minds able to access this one way or the other or we don't.

Though, sure, we can go about the task of living our lives from day to day and not give these really, really hard "Big Questions" a second thought.

On the other hand, how many philosophers [serious or otherwise] do you know that actually will?

Most folks here are drawn to questions that...mind-boggling? Still, are we "fated" to? Is this whole exchange that we are having just one more set of dominoes toppling over onto each other going all the way back to the very beginning of space and time itself? A space and time that may well not have had a very beginning at all?

Anyway, that they are rational already means they do think the same, which is: make the most efficient use of what you have before you.

So here we are, I wrote, you answered, I replied, and a rational man that reads it will be obligated to weigh it fairly and act upon fate as fate.

Note to others:

So, what do you think, does that settle it?

[Pedro I Rengel]

"
On the contrary, for all practical purposes, it sounds like common sense to me. Mary and Joe and abortions and banned books exist only because something exists rather than nothing at all. And this particular existence exists as it does for a reason. Or for no reason at all. And we [the human species] either have minds able to access this one way or the other or we don't."

But let's bring this, as it were, down here from all that abstract speculation up there. We common folk don't have the privilege to sit down and study these matters in such an abstract academic way. My interest is in proving that accepting fate allows Joe to act on Mary's abortion, let's forget the book for now, if he is rational.

Really hard "Big Questions" sounds ivory towerish in the context of conflicting goods down here.

[Ecmandu]

This is a stab at iambiguous, the only vaguely interesting thinker here

This is a stab at Pedro I rengel... that means that you are not vaguely interesting yourself, to which I agree. So why bother posting this if you defined yourself as uninteresting and you hate uninteresting people posting ?

[Pedro I Rengel]

Well iambiguous is not as discriminating as I.

I don't hate you! I just don't find you interesting.

[iambiguous]

On the contrary, for all practical purposes, it sounds like common sense to me. Mary and Joe and abortions and banned books exist only because something exists rather than nothing at all. And this particular existence exists as it does for a reason. Or for no reason at all. And we [the human species] either have minds able to access this one way or the other or we don't.

But let's bring this, as it were, down here from all that abstract speculation up there.

It's abstract only because here at ILP all we have are words -- "abortion", "book", "ban", -- to exchange. But these things and these actions do in fact exist "out in the world that we live in".

On the other hand, why and how do they exist given the fact that to the best of my knowledge no mere mortal has access to a comprehensive understanding of why and how anything exist at all.

And surely how the one is related to the other is relevant to philosophers.

Though, indeed, for all practical purposes, we can live out our lives from the cradle to the grave and not really give that a second thought.

But lots of philosophers that I have known think about things like this a hell of a lot more than twice.

We common folk don't have the privilege to sit down and study these matters in such an abstract academic way. My interest is in proving that accepting fate allows Joe to act on Mary's abortion, let's forget the book for now, if he is rational.

Again, I'm missing something here.

It would seem [to me] that in a wholly determined universe both the common and the uncommon people are privileged only to participate in the immutable unfolding of material interactions going back to whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself.

In other words, instead of not existing they exist. But they exist as but more matter wholly in sync with the steadfast laws of matter.

All we can prove is that which we were only ever going to prove. To speak of rationality here would be like insisting that volcanoes behave rationally when they erupt. Only volcanoes don't have minds. They don't think through what they have to do step-by-step in order to erupt.

So the question here would seem to be this: how are the minds of men and women [as matter] different?

They do think through what they are going to do. Well, more or less. But to what extent is this done "freely"? And to what extent can a distinction be made between choice here in the either/or world and in the is/ought world?

My own "thing" here.

[Fixed Cross]

So yee aks, what is the rule all the time that RATIONAL men and presumably we think women ought to apply every time?

To accept fate. Everything was going to happen. What you do about it or in general about anything or about whatever was going to happen. This all falls within fate. And if you fully wholy accept that it is so, you can and ought to do whatever you feel is going to be most impactful and comprehensive of all that you know.

So, if you pose me a hipothetical about Joe's girlfriend who banned a book is getting an abortion, you ask, what do I think about it and what can I do? Whatever it is is irreversible and was always to be. All men ought to act according to fate because all men do act according to fate anyway, so it is rational to act in that frame.

Excellent.


You may have to explain why this isn't fatalism -
but I can do that too.
Fatalism is the belief that everything else is fated, the inverse focus of what you are prescribing.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Great discussion!

Iambiguous:

You will have to explain to me where "instead of nothing" comes in. I really never understood it. Why pose the stead?

The existence of existence itself. With love, this is pure ivory tower academia. Means nothing. Or if it does mean something, can you bring it down to Earth in a way that is intelligible to Joe, assuming Joe is rational but still and all just common old unphilosophical Joe.


Fixed Cross

This is the nook of the cranny for me. The question for me is this: if everything was already fated anyway, does that make your actions and choices unimportant or infinetly more important? A rational man, who cares about stuff and people in his life, must pick the latter.

[iambiguous]

Fatalism...

Defined in the dictionary as, "the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable."

And introduced in the SEP as...

"Though the word 'fatalism' is commonly used to refer to an attitude of resignation in the face of some future event or events which are thought to be inevitable, philosophers usually use the word to refer to the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do."

So, let's presume that this definition and this description are in fact true.

What then are we to make of this exchange itself?

Whether our own points here are intellectually sophisticated or intellectually shallow, it's not like any of us were actually capable [autonomously] of choosing to contribute anything other than we did.

Or, instead, am I missing something important here by way of, say, a "compatibilist" assessment?

Now, of course, those who would like to think of their own contributions here as intellectually sophisticated would surely like to believe in their own "free will". While those who suspect that their own contributions are intellectually shallow can take comfort in the fact that perhaps it really all is "beyond my control".

Or, again, is there another way to think about all this that continues to elude me?

[Pedro I Rengel]

"
Whether our own points here are intellectually sophisticated or intellectually shallow, it's not like any of us were actually capable [autonomously] of choosing to contribute anything other than we did.

Or, instead, am I missing something important here by way of, say, a "compatibilist" assessment?"

No, you're not missing anything.

Control and choice exist, and they are also fated.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Does Joe bother to wonder about free will? I think free will itself is an academic non issue.

Joe wonders what he's gonna do about Mary's abortion given that she holds a conflicting good. You ask what ought he to do that he can understand, that isn't a barren intellectual contraption in other words?

He ought to accept fate and understand that whatever he does will be the final thing that happens, and also everything that happens around what he does, as a reaction or in any way interacting. He has a body of knowledge of his own that he then must make full and honest use of. If he is rational.

[Fixed Cross]

If a man walks with his fate into his fate, the universe can pull everything it has on him, as fate can assimilate everything in a weight that accumulates like the intricate ornaments on a hereditary sword, that is to say significantly and magically but not crudely like pounds of flesh.

Only those with hereditary weight on their belt will recognize another and negotiate terms. But between fate and floating there is the pathos of distance. Holywood and the Bible are like magical smokescreen fireworks whirling above this abyss to pretend its al fun and games to try and cross it.

[Fixed Cross]

This sword is the preserver of chaos; in the hereditary engravings on this soul/weapon the matter is kept irreducible to any standing or pretending order, keeping free will and thus the cosmos anchored. This prerogative of preserving the anchors of being through fate/free will rather than obedience and deduction, is what causes the moral dilemma for the passive man, the fact that the gangster will always appeal way beyond any mere adolescent power fetish; rather the gangster proves to the law abiding man that he abides by the law of his own volition an self valuing. And so stories separate the chaff from the wheat long before an adult is born. We know the risks early on, and a humans game of coming into adulthood is a mosaic of secrets arranged so as to seem a white dress.

[Fixed Cross]

Just an excuse to get dirty.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Fair enough. But we're discussing rational men rather than princes of the universe or gangsters. Gangsters aren't rational because they don't need to communicate or worry about ought, they just do. Not to mention free will is a useless concept to princes of the universe. They fight for survival.

Rational men are members of a society. They need a rational that they can agree on so that the society is valued over the individual and thus allow the society to even exist. But they still have feelings. They care about whether Mary aborts.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Call it a destiny that is not manifest, because it englobes all of everything, how could all of everything be manifest? It would be like the story of the emperor making a map the size and detail of the actual realm.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Fate. Fate puts things in perspective for princes as much as car mechanics whose book was banned an wife wants to abort.

[Fixed Cross]

Phaer. Its just I feel about social contract theory like you feel about Heidegger.

[Fixed Cross]

If someone wants my opinion it that abortions are absolutely immoral in the west because of decline in birth rate and the west is the best, on top of the fact that a child is the only thing that can tame a woman, on top of the fact that it is a horrendous procedure that might (or might) not be murder but is absolutely life-negating in its structural essence. But my opinion is not my wisdom. My wisdom tells me not to interfere with womans life giving and taking powers unless she has committed to me.Too messy to ever come to objective grips with, like trying to make the sun give off heat without being so hard to look into.