What all men ought to do

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.

No, the point on my table is twofold:

1] to the extent such reactions are embedded subjectively in the existential contraption that is dasein, communication here is going to be problematic. Why? Because…

2] given the extent to which your own sequence of experiences, relationships and access to information/knowledge relating to homosexuality is different from mine, there is only so far that either of us can go in communicating what we think and feel about Pedro and Jack above.

This is in fact the fundamental assumption that I make in encompassing my own understanding of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

And yet [of course] even in communicating this frame of mind [set of assumptions] I bump into the same existential gaps in our narratives.

And that, in my view, is precisely why others will insist that there is a way around this. Objectively as it were. In other words, re God and religion, a rational assessment of moral obligation, political dogma and/or a take on “human nature”.

Again, I noted above the manner in which the subjunctive “I” is seen by me to be no less an existential contraption. After all, why, for all practical purposes, do different people either have or not have empathy for some things and not for others?

Is there a way in which to know this epistemologically? Is there a way in which to grasp empathy rationally such that any particular individual’s level of empathy for any particular thing can be reasonably calculated and evaluated?

What I don’t do is to consider it in the manner in which you do. Here and now. What I can’t predict in turn is how I will feel about it a year from now. What I do surmise though is that “I” here is ever and always refabricated [as an existential contraption] in a world of contingency, chance and change. A world in which most of us never really know with any degree of certainty exaclty what new exoeriences, relationships and ideas await us down the road.

I think about that and feel considerably more “fractured and fragmented” than you do. Than most others here.

That part in fact is definitely “on the table”.

As for this:

As I noted previously with you, I accept that you reject [as I do here and now] the idea of an objective morality. So morality would seem to be an “existential contraption” for mere mortals in a No God world.

But, in reacting to the world around me, “I” think about this – mentally, emotionally and psychologically – in a way that is different than you do. But I would never argue that one of is closer to the truth than the other. If for no other reason I am not convinced that such a truth even exists.

From my point of view, his point of view was bursting at the seams with a particular set of political prejudices. And yet it is precisely such beliefs that allow most objectivists to avoid the hole I’m in altogether.

He is able to sustain what is no longer within reach for me: a foundation upon which to anchor “I” when the discussions or the behaviors revolve around homosexuality. So, sure, part of my reaction reflects that. Just as another part reflects this:

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

But how on earth could I ever possibly get to the bottom of what makes me “tick” here in terms of my intentions and motivation? We simply think about this is very different ways.

Or so it seems to me. I would need to go back to the day that I was born. I would need to note the sequence of literally thousands upon thousand upon thousand of existential variables and then put them all together into a definitive assessment of “I” and homosexuality.

I explained this to you before. This thread has garnered over 3,100 views in less than a month. It’s not like it’s only you and me here. Others our reading the stuff I post. And maybe, just maybe, one of them, by “mulling over” the points I make, will come closer to understanding my take on these relationships better than you do.

Again, let’s bring this accusation down to earth. Choose a set of conflicting behaviors revolving around conflicting value judgments. And a context. We can exchange moral narratives. And then you can point out specifically actual examples of what you mean by this.

You seem to embody pragmatism in a way that I am not able to grasp. So all we can really do [in my view] is to keep the exchange focused on actual behaviors in conflict. Actual contexts that most here will be familiar with. Seek to describe to each other what unfolds inside our heads as we react to the behaviors of others that are not in sync with our own. Given the manner in which we have come to understand why and how we do choose one set of behaviors rather than another.

You can point out to me with is “absent” in my own reactions.

And then we can take things like this…

…out for a spin in discussing particular behaviors in particular contexts.

[i]I’m more than willing to concede that you are telling me something important here. But I need the text illustrated.[/i]

And then what is of particular interest to me:

Consider:

If Trump gets Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court here in America, there’s a very real possibility that the abortion issue could be sent back to the States. What else is there here but for those on both sides of this wrenching moral and political divide to exchange arguments and behaviors that will come into conflict. What does it mean for you to be a “pragmatist” here such that you avoid the hole that “I” am in given the manner in which I construe identity and conflicting goods in a No God world?

You explain it thusly:

So, when you confront others who don’t share your own values on things like abortion, you figure, what, “well, I’ve thought it through to the best of my ability and here and now this is what I think. It just doesn’t concern me all that much that had my life been very different I might be arguing for the other side. And even though both sides have rational arguments pro and con here, I’ve taken a leap to one side over the other and I’ll settle for that”.

Something like that? Well, that’s not an option for me. Years ago I would have been morally outraged at the possibility of overturning Roe V. Wade. As an objectivist [Marxist/feminist] I was convinced that “the right thing to do” was to allow women the right to choose. Then that all began to fall apart with John and Mary and William Barrett. Now I recognize my value judgments as more in sync with a particular existential assessment/contraption/trajectory embedded in “I” “here and now”.

I am “fractured and fragmented” in a way now that I never was before. So, in a No God world where morality is “situational” and “relative”, why aren’t you?

You say:

A struggle. Just as with me. But in not as nearly a fractured and fragmented way as “I” am. Only for me this is just another manifestation of dasein as an “existential contraption”. You took your “pragmatism” in one direction, I took my “moral nihilism” in another.

And we may or may not be able to bridge this gap. But, again, given the extent to which our lives – our experiences – were/are no doubt very, very different, why on earth would I expect us to?

The rest is just circumstances. And options. You are able to continue the “struggle”, I am not. My health confines me to this particular platform “here and now”. I am only able to go in search of narratives that are in sync with a No God/no objective morality world, but are not in sync with the manner in which I construe my “self” here as embedded 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.

It’s just that I recognize how this too is no less an existential fabrication/contraption that “here and now” makes sense to me.

There is empathy as I understand it, empathy as you understand it, empathy as others understand it. The empathy that is felt and that which one feels empathetic about. Embedded subjectively/subjunctively in “I”.

The options: a Kierkegaardian leap or a Pascalian wager. But it still comes down to how “fractured and fragmented” “I” feels to you “here and now”. We can exchange points of view, and, in particular contexts, judge each others behaviors. But only more or less down in the hole that I am in.

From my perspective, the “heart” here is no less a subjective contraption. Those on both sides of the abortion wars throw their “heart and soul” into the political struggle. But how many of them think that “had my life been different, I might well be on the other side” or “the arguments of the other side are predicated on reasonable assumptions as well. Nothing I say makes them go away.”

So, basically, you become entangled in the belief that “they’re right from their side, we’re right from ours”.

For the objectivists, however, how often is that an option?

That’s my point. If it turns out that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist, that’s a whole other frame of mind. And, in turn, if it turns out that He is omniscient and omnipotent, He knows about these things. As close to objectively as we’re likely ever to get. And if it turns out that He can condemn to Hell for all of eternity those who don’t share His own value judgments…?

Either/or. From a “transcending” point of view homosexuality is either this or it’s that. And we now have access to a frame of mind that really, really knows. You either obey God’s will and opt for Salvation or you challenge it and opt for the fire and brimstone.

But at least you know.

And, as I see it, the whole point of one or another rendition of a secular objectivism revolves around one or another psychological rendition of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

But, of course, for the objectivists, the problem is solved. “In their head” anyway. Either a chosen behavior is deemed the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. And the people that I respond to best are those that “here and now” experience a sense of fragmentation when confronting conflicting goods; in understanding the extent to which “I” here is just an existential contraption ever subject to reconfiguration in a world of contingency, chance and change.

There may well be a “foundation” out there they can sink “I” down into. But I am certainly not able to embody it myself here and now. And it appears that the manner in which you have managed to think about all of this “here and now” affords more [perhaps a lot more] “comfort and consolation” than “I” am able to garner.

Typical. You offer no actual arguments regarding your own reaction to such things as abortion or homosexuality. Let alone inform us as to how “value ontology” is embodied by you when confronted with those who do not share your own moral and political narrative.

Instead, it is an assessment of me. What you think that others should think about the manner in which I think about the components of my own moral philosophy out in a particular context in which conflicting goods are clearly present.

And look at you, reacting to my reaction as though your reaction is clearly the more appropriate one.

Well, given whatever it is that you are actually trying to convey here. Buying milk? Russian dolls? How on earth does that factor into an assesment of empathy relating to all of the many conflicting assessments of homosexuality as either moral or immoral behavior?

Again, imagine taking this sort of “argument” to a demonstration in which some champion homosexuality while others condemn it. From my frame of mind, it’s less a question of what someone’s “position” is on same-sex relationships, and more the extent to which their value judgments are largely existential contraptions rather that reasoned asssessments.

No, my frame of mind revolves more around grappling with the context. Why did I push the lady to the ground? What were my reasons? How was I able to rationalize/justify doing it?

Sure, I could simply argue that in an essentially meaningless No God world anything I choose to do can be rationalized. Why? Because I wanted to do it. For whatever reason.

But the crowd gathering around me will assess my behavior from within the framework of dasein. Unless of course a philosopher among them is able to insist that my behavior universally wrong. Or, given an objective account of the context, wrong in this instance.

Okay, so how would this philosopher then go about demonstrating this such that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to share this frame of mind. Especially, given that we live in a world where even things like genocide can be rationalized.

Yeah, but how does the fact that others convincing me of this become any less than an exchange of existential contraption? Either it was wrong for me to push her or it was not. Others hear the reason that I did so and judge. But not as God is able to judge, only as mere mortals are. Then it comes down to the extent to which you are convinced this is something for philosophers/ethicists to decide; or instead that each of us as indivuals in a No God world are going to react subjectively/subjunctively as mere mortals. Then it comes down to noting those behaviors in which an increasingly larger percentage of the population share the same assessment. Raping and killing children for example. That’s wrong.

But: In a No God world, is it necessarily wrong? And here our emotional reactions can just muddy up the water all that more. We become incensed in reacting to particular things but, again, are others obligated to feel that same sense of outrage.

About, for example, aborting babies, or owning guns or eating meat, or hating Trump?

Then an attempt on your part to “probe” my motivation and intention, while knowing almost nothing about the experiences, relationships and ideas that predisposed me to embody them:

How close is this to the “truth”? Let’s bring a team of the world’s most renowned psychologists and see if they can figure it out.

See if they agree with you that I am only “rehashing” dasein irrelevantly here. And ever and always my arguments here are aimed more at those who embrace an objectivist moral and political agenda. Using whatever particular font that appeals to them.

Instead, we get this:

And that settles it, right? Even though I articulated the ambiguities embedded in the manner in which I thought I was reacting to Pedro and Jack about homosexuality, your own assessment here is a better one. Or certainly a less “callous” one.

Besides, in a No God world what could possibly be more important than finding an argument that allows all of us to feel just the right amount of empathy about things like homosexually and abortion.

But, most of all, your reaction is simply better than mine. Let’s at least agree on that?

That and the fact that while you truly do read and understand my points, I clearly do not read and understand yours. Then back to lecturing people in a burning building about Dasein and/or dasein.

Here again we need to take this abstract assessment out into the world of actual conflicting goods. We can discuss my reaction to a particular set of behaiors and you can note precisely why I am guilty as charged here.

No, I broach particular contexts in which individual wants and goals have come into conflict. I then explore the extent to which these conflicts are embodied or not embodied in the components of my own moral philosophy “here and now”.

And, in particular, given that this is a philosophy forum, the extent to which the tools that philosophers have at their disposal either are or are not adequately up to the task of resolving these conflicts.

This takes us to what I construe to be the most wrenching component of human interactions in the world today: sociopathic and narcissistic personalities.

These, for example, include the “show me the money” moral nihilists that own and operate the global economy. It is ever and always their own wealth and power that sustains their own particular motivations and intentions.

The Trumps and the Putins for instance. Imagine discussing the components of our respective moral philosophies with them. And not “off in the clouds” either.

And then back once again to a reckoned to be astute psychological assessment of me:

Note to others:

Should I just throw in the towel here? Is this as rational assessment of me as there is ever likely to be?

Despite the fact that all we really know about each other is embedded in our reaction to a bunch of posts here.

Iambiguous,

"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,

Perhaps there is a more positive word to use than powerless. Anyway, we are only really powerless unless we see things that way and feel no hope. But then again, psychologically speaking, maybe that experience of powerlessness is a gift and what lights the fire under us and gives us the momentum to make the choice to transcend it or plow through it ~ that is, if we want to experience personal freedom.

We can reasonably say that we had no other choice in the matter in view of what we saw and how we saw the future if we did not take steps to become pro-active and change something ~ in other words, to be self-determined creatures and re-create our reality. Is that being powerless?

Was Martin Luther King powerless?
Was Frederick Douglas powerless?
Was Helen Keller powerless?
Was William James powerless?

Those are just the few who popped into my mind. History is full of reminders of how we do not have to be powerless.

Admittedly, I am never really quite sure how to react to this sort of thing.

Consider:

Once the parts of an automobile engine are put together correctly the car can be driven. No one will question the parts themselves. As mindless matter, they do what they do because that is what needs to be done with them in order for the car to be driven.

But what about the minds of the men and the women who invented the engine? the men and the women who assemble the invented parts into the engine? the men and the women who choose to drive the car to point A rather than point B?

How is this matter different from the matter in the parts of the engine? Given that it is said that all of the matter that make up all of the elements in the universe came from exploding stars billions of years ago.

But: How it came to evolve into living matter, into mindful matter, is still the big mystery. The whole conundrum embedded in “dualism”.

Thus to ask what we all ought to do [on this thread] is still entangled in turn in the extent to which what we choose to do either is or is not only that which we ever could have chosen to do.

But what does that really mean when discussing matter able to become mindful of itself as matter able to discuss something like this?

If we are “powerless to do anything other than what we actually do” than how are we not just the “parts” that nature managed to assemble into brains much the same way in which our brains assemble the parts of the enigine?

Here I always come back to dreams. In my dreams – “in the moment” – I am convinced that I am choosing to do what I do. But instead it is my subconscious and unconscious mind – the chemical and neurological interactions in my brain – that is/are calling the shots. But only as they ever could have; as, in other words, just a more extraordinary manifestation of matter.

We simply do not know what is [b][u]really[/b][/u] going on here. Or, rather, I don’t. Others might. God might. But until I am apprised of how it really works, I don’t.

Perhaps. But that still leaves me unable to determine definitively if what you write here and what I read here is only ever as it was all going to unfold anyway. Whether we feel powerful or powerless is the same thing: an inherent manifestation of the immutable [mechanical] laws of matter doing the immutable [mechanical] laws of matter’s thing.

In a wholly determined universe however everything that everyone thinks, feels and does is only as it ever could have been. Going all the way back to why there is something instead of nothing; and why it is this something and not another something altogether.

Or so it seems to me.

But: Whatever that means.

Re-watching sex lies and videotapes

So what?

Well, there is an exchange between two of the characters in the film that captures the frame of mind I was trying to convey above with regard to “I” as an existential contraption…

…out in the “what all men ought to do world” that we actually interact in.

In other words, the manner in which your sense of self here is basically an accummulation of all the variables in your life strung together into a ceaselessly fabricated and rebrabicated narrative out of which you make sense of the world in a moral and political predisposition.

Ann: I just wanna ask a few questions, like why do you tape women talkin’ about sex? Why do you do that? Can you tell me why?
Graham: I don’t find turning the tables very interesting.
Ann: Well, I do. Tell me why, Graham.
Graham: Why? What? What? What do you want me to tell you? Why? Ann, you don’t even know who I am. You don’t have the slightest idea who I am. Am I supposed to recount all the points in my life leading up to this moment and just hope that it’s coherent, that it makes some sort of sense to you? It doesn’t make any sense to me. You know, I was there. I don’t have the slightest idea why I am who I am, and I’m supposed to be able to explain it to you?

Of course in the film it all reconfigures into a happy ending. The young and beautiful Ann and the young and beautiful Graham are together. The shitty sex, lies and videotapes are a thing of the past.

Well, for however long that will last.

Our own lives however may or may not come even close to this particular trajectory. There are, after all, countless actual historical, cultural and experiential contexts that any particular individuals might find themselves in.

Thank goodness there are Gods and political ideologies and Kantian intellectual contraptions and asssessments of nature able to steer some down the one and the only path that all virtuous men and women are obligated to take.

Okay, so now we know (as if we didn’t already know).

So what do you want?

What do you expect?

Iambiguous,

This reminds me so much of the God question: Is there or is there not? Some of us choose to believe what we have been taught, some of us go to the other extreme and become atheists, some of us choose to believe in a designing God but not necessarily a personal one based on their own experience, and still others make the decision that it is OK not to know either way since to them it is an unknowable thing. For the most part, they have no problem living in ambiguity.

What is the worst thing that could happen to you, Iambiguous, if you were to spend the rest of your life trying to resolve the above?

Thus to ask what we all ought to do [on this thread] is still entangled in turn in the extent to which what we choose to do either is or is not only that which we ever could have chosen to do.

What is more important to you? Resolving the above which I do not really see an answer for except by taking a leap into the darkness and choosing one or the other based on how we choose to see ourselves and the world around us ~~ since we cannot ever really be certain ~~ it is just like the God thingy. We can also decide to take the way of the agnostic and realize that perhaps in the final analysis it does not matter.

We either see ourselves as making our own choices, being self-determined, being free or striving for freedom (even though perhaps our sub-conscious is there at work which is also a part of us and working with us). We know this.
We can also see ourselves as being shackled. Which do we want to see? We can continue to allow that ghost to haunt us. Sometimes it is a good idea to face the ghost and ask why It is still there in the first place. That may be a deeper question than the one being asked.

The world is full of ambiguity. What does matter is answering the question for one’s self": How ought I or how do I live? Are we supposed to ask that question of others regarding ourselves?

Do you ever find or sense that struggling with this question may be keeping you from asking yourself fresh new questions which can lead you to knowing, individually-speaking, “how ought I to live” or “where am I going”?

I wasn’t able to figure out from this thread what the discussion is about.

“What all men ought to do” is a pretty heavy presupposition that any one man can decide this for all men. But I think not all men ought to ever be following one dudes orders.

Only what I have been pointing out over and over and over again now for years: In reacting to someone who videotapes women talking about sex, how do we distinguish between our own personal reactions [rooted in dasein and conflicted narratives regarding human sexuality] and the reactions of others?

Is there a reaction that comes closest to how reasonable and virtuous men and women ought to react? Or are our reactions instead largely embedded in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts?

Is there a “real me” here able to encompass the “right thing to do”?

And this discussion is important because one way or another any particular community is going to enact laws that prescribe or proscribe particular behaviors here.

And our behaviors will then be judged by others and rewards and punishments will follow.

And then for some it goes beyond that. For them religion comes into played. Graham’s behavior will also be judged by God.

Now, we obviously react to the interaction of these variables in different ways. My “I” here is more fractured and fragmented than yours. “I” am less able to ground myself in a frame of mind that offers at least some measure of comfort and consolation.

But, again, given the gap [no doubt] between my existential trajectory and yours, how successful will we ever be in closing it? All I can do here is note my own trajectory [as I do re my reaction to abortion] and then react to the manner in which others relate their own to me.

But: Communication here is always going to be far more problematic than communication exchanged regarding relationships in the either/or world.

Of course God just adds another layer of complexity here. If God is said to be omniscient then He knows everything. So that must include knowing what each of us as individuals think we know about Him. So how could we not know only what He already knows that we will know?

As my ex-wife once pointed out, to the extent that you spend your life pondering seemingly unanswerable questions like this, is the extent that you are not out in the world actually living your life. But here [once again] dasein kicks in. For any number of personal reasons each of us become more or less drawn to philosophy. And then for others their options become more and more depleted. They are less able to “actually live their life” out in the world with others. They sink down into themselves where questions of this sort are more likely to percolate.

Here “I” – my “I” – quickly becomes embedded in the thick fog that surrounds any attempts to really understand your own motivations and intentions. You can only remember so much about the past, and there are so many variables either beyond your understanding or control in the present, it’s like aiming a dart at the bullseyes and being lucky if you are even able to hit the board.

It’s a wild ass guess in other words. Even the most introspective among us are sure to leave many, many of the most important parts out. Or, as they say, we are so entangled in our own point of point that we lack the objectivity that others are able bring to bear.

But how we see ourselves in a wholly determined universe is only as we were ever going to see oursleves. If human consciousness [on or below the surface] is just more matter, then it will do only what matter does if in fact there are “immutable laws” of matter.

Back to dreams…

Last night I dreamed I went to the mailbox in a house I once lived in many years ago. I pulled out the mail and there was a letter from my wife. I was reading the letter. It was about our daughter.

Then when I woke up the whole “incident” just blew my fucking mind! How could my brain manufacture this letter “in my head” such that “in the moment” the “I” in the dream was reading it?!!

In other words, as though it had not been a dream at all. “In the moment” in the dream I was the man reading the letter. How is that even possible?

The world is filled with no ambiguity at all if what we think of as ambiguity [in this exchange] is only ever as it was ever going to be thought of.

But how do we wrap our heads around that when intuitively we seem so certain that a real me is calling the shots?

Sure, but how am I ever going to come to grips with why I do the things that I do. Besides, these questions have always fascinated me going back to my uncle introducing me to science fiction. And I sure as shit wouldn’t pursue them if they did not [still] fascinate me to no end.

If someone answers these questions, then the answers are existential contraptions. Correct?

Then what is the purpose in asking the questions?

You know the answers. Right?

Then that community will enact laws which are rooted in dasein.

What’s wrong with that? What’s right with that? So what?

Should I be uncomfortable? Why?

What men ought to do is chill the hell out. =; :-$ :-"

:laughing: That is what all of humanity needs to fish for in an ocean of oughts.
Perhaps one way in which to do this is to drop the ought from one’s vocabulary.

Yes, in relation to the reactions of others. In a No God world.

After all, in a God world there exists a transcending truth that mere mortals can turn to in Scripture.

On the other hand, suppose [in a No God world] someone was actually able to construct an argument about Graham making videotapes of women talking about sex. An argument such that she could demonstrate that in fact all rational men and women were obligated to share it.

In regard to human sexuality, different individuals may have had many different experiences precipitating many different moral narratives; but now there is an argument that is not just a subjective/subjunctive point of view. Now we can know for sure if what we think about Graham is in sync with what one ought to think if they wish to be thought of as a rational human being.

I suspect that my answers “here and now” are rooted in dasein confronting conflicting goods out in a particular world such that political power will determine which set of behaviors will actually be enflorced in any given community.

But that answer is no less an existential contraption. I would never argue that it is the answer. Unless of course someone is able to persuade me that in fact their answer is the answer.

But even then we would have to come up with a methodology enabling us to demonstrate that this is so for all others.

So what?! For the life of me I am unable to grasp how on earth you [or anyone] can ask that.

Communities will reward or punish particular behaviors. And in communities that revolve around one or another objectivist font [religion: Christianity/Islam etc.; ideology: Communism/fascism etc.] the behaviors that you choose carry consequences.

Why one set of behaviors rather than another? And if it is seen as reasonable that morality is largely an existential contraption rooted in dasein then it might seem more reasonable [to some of us] that “moderation, negotiation and compromise” reflects the best of all posible governing agendas.

My point here [more or less] is this: To the extent to which you are able to tug me in the direction of your frame of mind, I will be more comfortable. And to the extent to which I am able to tug you in the direction of mine, you will feel less comfortable.

Then it’s just a matter of how this all actually plays out “for all practical purposes” into the future.

You have constructed your philosophy in a way which makes such an argument impossible. You have left no opening to let it in.

Same problem here. Your philosophy rejects all methodologies.

That sounds like moderation is objectively good, negotiation is objectively good, and compromise is objectively good.

But you can’t mean that because it contradicts your moral nihilism.

No compromise … no negotiation … extreme/violent opposition to fascism, communism, Christianity or Islam are just as reasonable for a moral nihilist. And reasonable in a world based on dasein.

So why aren’t you saying that??

My philosophy is based on the assumption that in a No God world, Graham was predisposed to behave as he did based largely on an accumulation of a particular set of experiences, relationships and access to information/knowledge.

Others however are embedded existentially in an entirely different set of variables. So they react to Graham taping women talking about sex in entirely different ways.

Now, sure, its possible that the problem here is entirely me. Arguments made by the Platonists, the Kantians and all the other philosohers who have grappled with how mere mortals ought to behave in the world, may have succeeded in pinning this all down “deontologically”, “essentially”, “objectively”. With or without God.

But I won’t admit it. Or I am unable to admit it because I am unable to grasp it.

Yeah, you’ve got me there. I’ll always admit to the possibility of that.

But let’s hear these arguments. All of us can then judge for ourselves the extent to which Graham either ought or ought not to have made those tapes.

Their methodology will either succeed in demonstrating this or it won’t. In much the same manner it can be demonstrated that in fact Graham either did or did not make the videos themselves.

In other words, in the either/or world, we are often able to demonstrate that this happened rather than that. So, why, after thousands of years, are philosophers still no where near to being able to pin down any number of human behaviors as either moral or immoral?

I’ve got my reasons. But they are no less conjectures based on a particular set of assumptions.

They are construed by me to be good only because I have not come upon an argument of late that persuades me that an essential/objective good does in fact exist. It always revolves around what I think I know about human morality in a No God world. Here and now.

However: Convince me that what I think I know should instead be what you think you know; and I’m sure I’ll feel less fractured and fragmented than I am now.

All you are basically arguing here [from my frame of mind] is that this is bullshit. I am determined to reject all arguments from others that do not align themselves with my own set of assumptions. And even though my own frame of mind here does leave me fractured and fragmented [with little or no comfort and consolation and oblivion right around the corner] it’s all about me and my own psychological bent here.

It’s all about me and my willful obstinance. My need to defend moral nihilism even if it does make me feel broken, beaten and battered.

All I can do is to come back to this:

1] Here and now someone thinks they know that some particular behavior is rational/virtuous “inside their head”
2] Here and now someone thinks they know that this is not just based on the components of my own argument above
3] Here and now someone feels confident instead they can demonstrate why all rational/virtuous men and women ought to think the same

About Communism or abortion or any other set of conflicting goods.

Then around and around and around we’ll go.

But: this is something that I would expect to be the case in a No God world. In other words, given the manner in which I construe the actual existential interaction of the components of my own moral philosophy: nihilism.

Out in a particular context, out in a particular world.