What all men ought to do

Nope.

On the other hand, if I can know only what I was ever going to know, perhaps the laws of matter will reconfigure and then one day I will know.

Unless of course I die first.

Which doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding this whole castle in the sky:

"It comes down to whether or not it can be demonstrated that human thought itself either is or is not wholly in sync with the immutable laws of matter.

After all, what has prompted philosophical discussions down through the ages regarding “dualism”?

And out of this flows discussions regarding the human “soul” in sync with one or another “will of God”.

Or is “mind” just more matter? “Stuff” from the Big Bang that somehow managed to evolve into matter able to become conscious of itself as matter able to speculate as to whether or not that speculation itself is within its own control autonomously.

I don’t pretend to have figured it all out.

How about you?"

That’s the same fucking boat we’re all in.

What differentiates most of us here though is that we are motivated do come into places like ILP. Why? Because questions of this sort became important to us. For whatever reason. It’s all rooted existentially in dasein.

We wonder what the answers might possibly be. Or if the answers are even accessible to or assessable by the human mind.

I just focus on distinguishing between the either/or world and the is/ought world. Between what might be made demonstrably true for all rational men and women, and what may never be more than an existential contraption rooted subjectively in dasein.

As all of this may or may not be intertwined in what may or may not be a wholly determined universe going all the way back to figuring out why there is something and not nothing at all.

And why this something and not another.

Really, what is relevance of this particular exchange in a context that mind-boggling?

I just think that if you applied the same rigor to your question that you apply to your contenders, you wouldn’t be in a hole.

Again: What on earth does this mean?

My question revolves first and foremost around this: How ought one to live?

In other words, morally and politically in a particular context out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view.

You choose the conflicting behaviors and the context.

Note the rigor to which you both describe and assess the conflict given the philosophical parameters of your own moral narrative.

Then we’re back to an exchange of this sort:

You know Iamb,
Peter I Rengel wrote what seems to be a very concrete, on the ground, description of a situation from his life. He was really very open, not being a ‘serious’ philosopher. It was open and human.

And you responded with a bunch of abstract emotionless garbage.

Whether he answered your question or not, you acted like you have no empathy at all.

How can one take your assertion that your goal is finding out how one ought to live seriously?

I don’t believe in objective morals, but if by some chance they included being without empathy, I would ignore them.

Okay, that’s your reaction to my reaction to Pedro’s reaction to Jack’s reaction to being a homosexual.

But my point revolves around the assumption that emotional and psychological reactions are no less existential contraptions emdedded and embodied in dasein.

We all come into world hard wired [biologically/genetically] to react to such things as we do. That’s a manifestation of the evolution of life on earth.

Then the part about nurture – historical, cultural and experiential [interpersonal] contexts.

So basically what you accusing me of is not reacting to him as you would. Your reaction is, what, more reasonable? more virutous? more decent? more civilized?

On the other hand, there are those who despise homosexuality. Those folks who might react to both Peter and Jack with…revulsion? So at least my reaction is, what, more reasonable, more virtuous than theirs?

Besides, this is the philosophy forum. Here what would seem to matter most of all is the extent to which we either are or are not able to close the gap between what we think we know is true about things like homosexuality and what we either are or are not able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to think in turn.

Pedro’s example did not succeed in nudging me up out of the hole that I am in.

So [perhaps] my reaction to him was out of frustration. Or the polemicist in me went a bit too far.

But I will be the first to admit that my reaction to my own reactions here is embedded in the enormously problematic complexity of any particular individual’s intentions and motivations.

That’s what it comes down to when “I” is unable to be in sync with the “real me” in sync with the right thing to do.

And I’m still basically out of sync with understanding how as a “pragmatist” you are not in turn down in that hole with me.

Somehow you have managed to put together a frame of mind that seems to make your own “I” less fractured and fragmented than mine.

Affording you [it would seem] a more comforting and consoling way in which to negotiate conflicting goods at the intersection of dasein and political economy.

What is “I” and the “real me” in this particular context? What are the differences? What are the similarities?

What does it mean to be “in sync with the right thing to do” in this context?

The context here would seem to be Karpel’s reaction to my reaction to Pedro’s reaction to Jack’s reaction to being a homosexual. And now your reaction.

You tell me: Are there or are there not those convinced that how they think about homosexuality is in sync with who they think they really are in sync with what they think a rational/virtuous understanding of the right thing to do is? This may revolve around God or around a political ideology or around a deonotolgical philosophical contraption or around the insistence that only the correct understanding of nature allows for some to become ubermen while the rest become sheep.

Their arguments will intertwine a set of assumptions [political prejudices] that reflect any number of similarities or differences.

Ask them. They’ll tell you. Then you either become “one of us” or “one of them”.

Or, again, your point isn’t about that. It’s about something more important [to you] that I keep missing.

You wrote a statement and put it in both bold and italics for emphasis, so it must be something important to you.

Yet when asked about it, you are unable to explain. Instead you write about other people.

Other people didn’t write that statement … you did. There is nothing for them to explain.

Sorry, but I have no idea what it is that you are trying to communicate to me here about your reaction to my reaction to Karpel’s reaction to my reaction to Pedro’s reaction to Jack’s reaction to being a homosexual.

The context [of late] in other words.

I see these reactions as embedded existentially [subjectively/subjunctively] at the intersection of dasein, value judgments and political economy. How then do folks react to that?

Note to others:

What explanation from me do you imagine that he is looking for? Try to reconfigure his point into something that I might be more likely to actually understand.

Holy Shit.

I ask him to explain one fucking line from one of his posts and it’s too much for him to handle. #-o

I attempted to explain my take on a particular series of reactions above. And I have been grappling with the existential implications of that line now for years.

And all you are doing here is insisting that the manner in which I handled it above is not to your liking.

And [I suspect] it will never be to your liking until I handle it in the only manner in which you construe it to have been handled.

In other words, in sync with the manner in which you “handle” things like Communism.

Beyond that it’s just one more “failure to communicate” in a forum where that is not at all uncommon. At least at the intersection of dasein, conflicting goods and political power.

:laughing:
You ignored what I actually asked.

You handled something completely different.

Don’t blame that on dasein, conflicting goods and political power.

Back then to this:

[b]Note to others:

What explanation from me do you imagine that he is looking for? Try to reconfigure his point [about “handling”] into something that I might be more likely to actually understand.[/b]

I ought a save this historical thread for a rainy day.

Obviously.

Sure, so what?

Sure. I’ve had to remind you of this on occasion.

I don’t think I’ve have given you the slightest indication I don’t understand this.

I drew attention to your reaction, not just your attention. But even you might notice my reaction and reevaluate how you responded. That is a possbility.

But for you it seems no on the table. It is not on the table that my reaction might affect you, nor, it seems, are you concerned about how your responses might affect other people.

I think that is worth pointing out in the case of someone whose drive is to find out how one ought to live. Why such a drive? It is not clear to me, given your solipsism, that this drive to find out how one ought to live comes from empathy or even includes empathy. It seems more like finding out what the rules are. Which for some might be a poor base for a morality, perhaps even you mght find it odd realizing that. Perhaps when faced with this you will change. I doubt it, but clearly you do not even consider this an issue.

That my reactions to you might make you reevaluate your reactions.

That is not even on the table.

You frame my response as

KT thinks he knows the right way to live. He is angry at me for not living the right, objectively moral, or civilized way, but this is all a contraption.

THE FACT THAT IT IS AN INTERACTION BETWEEN TWO HUMANS WHO MIGHT AFFECT ONE ANOTHER.

is not on the table.

It is only about proof of how one ought to live or lack thereof.

And while it is true that his post has not given you the answer to your hole, you could still notice how you responded and decide, yes, I don’t really like how I responded. I cannot know if it was bad or not, but I would prefer, until I know the right way to live when it is demonstrated, to act differently.

Now this is not me saying you SHOULD have changed your mind, even slightly. It is me pointing out how you interact with people AND what you do not even consider possible.

And above, in this post to me, repeating things AS IF I need to hear, them again. IOW your communication is detached from your readers. It is as if you do not understand that you are interacting with specific people.

You ask above if I am trying to say X is the way you should have reacted. It is more like I am holding up a mirror and showing you how you interact. Perhaps, as a social mammal, there are parts of you, despite your lack of objective proof, might nevertheless dislike what you saw.

That you will actually mull over this, I doubt in the extreme. But others may read the interactoin and perhaps understand what is so offputting about you in a new way.

LOL. You are someone with a completely instrumental view of other human beings.

It was not what was present that bothered me, it was what was absent.

But you do not react to individuals. You repeat your ideas, regardless of whether they have shown understanding. You do not for a moment consider that they have their own independent agendas. You psychoanalyze them en masse, knowing their motivations.

You do not seem to have grasped your own ideas, nor do you seem to care much for others, except to the degree they lead you to your goal.

Sigh.

You do not negotiate conflicting goods. You write about the issue online. I probably suffer conflicting goods more than you do and deal actively with people opposed values than you do. That you are sick is certainly part of this, since you are, it seems, not out in active social interactions with others.

There are a number of reasons I am not in your particular hole: but here’s the obvious one.

I am not looking for an objective answer to: How ought I live? I am pragmatic. You have an extra issue. You want to have this demonstrated to you. I don’t think it can.

I still face all the practical issues of dealing with people with different preferences to mine. And conflicting goods with each other. And given that I am out there more than you, this is a real, daily struggle.

But I don’t add on this task.

Basically you might as well be, in terms of life role, an objectivist. There is an answer and I must find it. Though for you it is There probably isn’t an answer, but I will make it my everyday task to find it anyway.

What the fuck are you going to do if you find it?

Will you have the empathy or interest to apply it in ways that matter?

Or if it turns out that empathy is objectively a problem, what difference would it make? Is this a pascal’s wager type thing? A just in case?

Do you really think you can be good if your heart’s not in it? I can’t see how it could be.

Let’s say you find out God hates homosexuals. Will you be a good man and hate them?

Will you morality be alike a kind of court life, presenting yourself for God or Science as the good man?

If it turns out that morality fits more or less with your temperment, the objective morality, well, then you might as well have just done what you wanted.

it is very hard to believe you understand your own motivations for this quest given how you interact with other people.

But sure, I don’t know, maybe you do understand them.

And yes, for a homosexual, the lack of homophobia in your response might very well seem better. But even homophobes can and in fact do have empathy, it’s just they put homosexuals outside of this, often, or at least in many contexts. And their response is a human one with feeling.

Encountering you is like encountering an AI intent on solving a problem, but also one lacking the ability to respond to individuals.

I suppose it’s good training for us, because that future is one of the likely ones.

KP, I enjoyed your post, but Iamb will be here honing the same distractions ten years from now.

What is going on is, going by my twelve years of experience with him, that the possibility of decision-making is attacked by forcefully negating all human agency: everything that comes down to a human decision (all morality and ethics) is reduced to “an interesting question” which must at all cost remain a matter of detached reflection and never become a decisive reality.

I think this stone cold refusal of human activity is also what impresses some, who have been tempted to grow to distrust human agency by, as I see it, having other people’s mistakes thrown their own conscience.

I suspect the hole Iamb is in is of a similar making.

Before addressing the rest of your points, I would like to focus in particular on this one.

So what?!

So what if the emotions that you feel in reacting to the world around you are not in sync with that which you construe to be who you really are? Someone for whom “I” is not fractured and fragmented?

And reactions that are in turn thought [by most] to reflect how a reasonable man or woman ought to react to particular human behaviors in a particular set of circumstances out in the world around them?

So what…?

Let’s just say that “for all practical purposes” we think about the implications of this distinction in two very different ways.

If, out in the world of conflicting goods, someone becomes convinced that “I” here is largely the product of one particular sequence of experiences, relationships and access to ideas [rather than another] then he or she is acknowledging that a new set of experiences, relationships and access to ideas, might reconfigure “I” into embracing a whole new set of moral and political prejudices.

Unless of course they manage to convince themselves that is not going to happen? Why? Because they already believe that “I” here is the real deal in touch with “the right thing to do”. Or as in sync with it as they need to be.

Then it comes down to the extent to which those using the tools of philosophy are able to address this issue in the most reasoable manner.

Like me, you don’t believe in “objective morality”. But, again, unlike me you don’t see “I” here as I do: fractured and fragmented. Or not as much as I do.

And my aim has always been to grasp how “for all practical purposes” you are not down in the sort of existential crevice/hole that “I” am in.

Look at you, repeating it yet again. You are so confused that you think repeating your position is a response that fits ANY POSSIBLE REACTION TO YOU or any thread or anything anyone says. It’s like if someone says you forgot to buy milk and you think that talking for the millionth time about nested Russian dolls is a response to that.

  1. I know your positions on all this 2) thus it is superfluous to my reaction to your reaction.3) and it is a category errror, yet again here. I responded to what you did, not your philosophy. I responded to an action. Repeating your philosophy is confused. Apart from my already knowing it, it is not a response to the type of post I posted. I did not post something that argued that X is the correct way to act, giving my arguments, then your response might have fit.

Let’s up the ante with a harsher example. I am walking down the street and see you push an old lady to the ground. I run up and hear you explaining to her that her outrage is [fill in the blank with Iamb’s contraptions, dasein, etc.and that for you it is important to find out how one ought to live] I realize you are some kind of nihilist and one seeking to find objective morality. I express my feelings about seeing you push some old lady to the ground for not getting out of your way fast enough. I have heard this person, you, say that you are trying to find out how you ought to live. So I hold a mirror up and say what I just saw happen.

Does this mean that I think you were objectively immoral? No.

What it means is I think there is a chance, given your stated goal, that you yourself might realize that you also dislike your behavior. I disliked it. We are both social mammals or were born that way anyway. It is possible you might re-evaluate (and also that others might get something from the response, and then it was expressive)

It is not a foregone conclusion, but a possibility that reacting to what you did in a simple emotional way, summing it up, might cut through a fog, and you might re-evaluate it. Might decide you don’t really want to act like that.

I also consider it possible you are so depressed or afraid of death or whatever that you do not realize how you are behaving and in fact on some level you would prefer not to.

When I say this to you, you rehash the lecture on dasein, contraptions, etc.

So what? This is irrelevant. I did not come to you saying that I know the objective good and here it is.

I responded to someone who lacked empathy in a certain situation.

A response on your part that would make sense:

I don’t care about him as a person. I just want my answer.

or

I have only one purpose here and people are at their own risk when they deal with me. If they find this unpleasant or rude, it is heir own fault.

IOW owning what I see as your callousness.

Or you could say ‘HM, I don’t know if it is actually bad, lacking empathy, but when I look at how I responded, I guess I don’t like it. I might not act like that in the future.’

There are many more possible responses that would be responses to what I wrote. And note that I said ‘make sense’. I am not saying those (contradictory) responses are the right ones. I am saying they indicate that you read my post and understood it. If I tell someone they should leave a burning building and they lecture me on Dasein as a response to my warning, they are making a category error. No, I’ll stay, I want to burn. Or, I think the firemen have got it under control. It’s steam from the showers, there’s no fire. Thank you, let’s get out of here. Those responses are responses to what I said. They show an understanding of the message.

But your behavior and its effects are so not on the table that you cannot see anything as not part of your issue. It is inconceivable that you would be affected by someone pointing something out, so in fact I was trying to prove how one should live. You only see nails, as a hammer.

And you deal with all human intereraction AS getting or not getting information that you want, their wants or goals do not exist.

It seems to me this does not matter to you and holding up the mirror will not have an effect. But I do not write instrumentally (just). I also write to express my reactions. And then perhaps someone else will notice the pattern I am pointing out and find that useful.

People seeing others in just intrumental terms is increasing in society, and seeing themselves that way - re:social media. It is a good pattern to notice. Some people may not like it. For those who do not like being treated AS ONLY A MEANS TO AN END might benefit from having examples laid out. I would prefer a society that is less solipsistic, includes more empathy and does not have a purely instrumental view of self and others. So here I reacted to one example of that kind of stuff.

While you are off in the clouds trying to figure out how one ought to live, I am here on the ground trying to affect things. It is vastly less cluttered.

You are searching for how one ought to live. If you find that out, get your rules, you will still need to navigate responses other people have to your actions. No set of rules will cover all situations. And it would seem at least possible that empathy will be one of the guides. But since I do not believe there is objective morality, or perhaps I should say, despite the fact that I don’t, I find it odd that someone is seeking how one ought to live but cannot even grasp that the way they interact with other people might be important, rather than just the solving of the question or not. Call me mad but it seems, even, ironic. I mean, I assume you can be kind and would help someone who fell down, call the police if you saw a rape outside your window. We are not talking about sociopathic behavior, but there seems to me to be a fundamental not much interest in the goals, wants, expression of people here. And yet this powerful drive to find out how you ought to live.

NOTE TO OTHERS; I am sure PIR is fine. It is not that I saw him as a victim. I just watched someone respond to what seemed like an emotional openness in an extremely callous and confused fashion and called it out.