It is amazing what you find abstract, AND then go on to post. Both. Both what you find to be abstract - here me discussing specific things said by you in the specific context.
This I can understand. It was complicated, if very concrete and not abstract.
Which for you tends to mean discussion situations you are not in - choosing to have an abortion - that are happening to people who are abstractions.
OK. Here we can have another concrete and not abstract example, me referring to your behavior. In the quote above you refer to my moral philosophy. I have told you many times I do not believe in objective morals. I have said that I have preferences, things I care about and do not care about, etc. and that these things motivate me towards things, and so on. Yet, unbelievably you suggest me illustrating my (and both of your) moral philosophies.
I have done this. But as a pragmatist it is not a moral philosophy. I have said what I do in conflicts with others. It did not lead to anything you wanted, but I did do this, with specific concrete real from my life examples.
I really am trying to be patient with you.
You made it seem like if you think your value judgments are objective you can still also not be entirely in your own head. A scientist may be a die hard republican and think that conservative values are objectively correct and yet not be entirely in his own head. He may also do perfectly carried out scientific research into the destruction of the ozone layer or bats.
You presented it as objectivists are necessarily entirely in their own heads. I disagree. They can be partly in their own heads.
So in other words, no one pointing out errors in logic, contradictions or problematic thinking in your posts can expect you to respond to that, since it is not solving your issue. Fine. Your points are never up for criticism.
But then, don’t respond to criticisms. Because you cannot seem to actually focus on them. I think it’s clear if you state that you have no interest in defending your behavior or any possible logical or reasoning problems in your posts. And you don’t. But the problem is that you go through the motions of defending and trying to support, but don’t do it well, since you make it seem like what is being discussed is your focus.
That’s just a rewording of what I wrote.
It doesnt matter what they are thinking, even less what you think they are thinking. My point stands. You do not know if your behavior here is making things worse in the world. That can be deduced from what you write. You don’t know if there are objective morals and you don’t know what they would be if they exist. Hence you do not know if your behavior is good or evil or neither. You take the risk that it might be negative. WHY NOT JUST TAKE THAT RISK IN GENERAL. You seem to find it odd that I am not fragmented. I think it is because you add a huge obstacle to your self, based on your existential contraptoin.
I just said it. I lack this enormous task you have given yourself: to constantly search for objective values which may or may not exist. I do not have that task. I do not believe it to be a doable task. I do not worry that I should perform that task. I do not think that it would help me. That seems to be a big part of your hole.
Why the fuck, old man (like me), do you carry the cross of solving the abortion issue?
That you think you need to solve that is existential contraption. It is almost like you have a Jesus complex, but with no religious metaphysics.
There are thousands of people in Africa starving or being used as child soldiers. I cannot solve that. Have you managed to help one single fetus, pregant woman with all your fussing around conflicting goods? Who do you think you are and why are you bearing this huge cross?
You ask me to show you how my pragmatism works. I think you need to look at what your existential contraptions,the ones you have added to your pragmatism, cause you to suffer. It is almost a negative megalomania. Something out of Dostoyevsky.
No, I do not take all the leaps you take. I take less leaps. Your leaps, all the crosses and tasks you have given yourself - at universal and abstract levels - are causing you pain and leaving you fragmented. It seems very much like a huge moral cross you have given yourself to bear. But I don’t know and I realize that doesn’t fit well with your stated nihilism. But it at the very least parallels when people take on the cross of the world for religious or moral reasons and feel they must solve things, things that at least to me seem beyond their powers to solves AND EVEN, not solvable.
And perhaps our natures. Of course perhaps my pointing out that you have added leaps and contraptions might change something. I wish I wasn’t so pessimistic.
It really adds nothing, your psychic speculation on how afraid they all are.
Maybe my pragmatism makes you skittish because on some level it seems evil to accept there are not objective morals and live from preferences. Perhaps that seem immoral to you. God it feels like I am dealing with a meta-moralist. But who cares about our guess about each other’s or objectivists reasons for having the positions we each have. It’s just ad hom waste of time.
Well, no, that’s not a good description.
IN practical terms I deal with the same fucked up world and my sense is I am out in it more than you are, interacting with people face to face and otherwise more than you. I simply do not give myself the task of determing certain things which neither of us think there is much chance can be determined. I do not give myself that cross. Life is hard enough without that added burden that will, I think, waste my time. Any indication you have helped yourself or pregnant women with all your mulling?
You seem to wake up and try to solve the abortion issue and feel guilty that you can’t. You not only set out to get others to help you find a rational argument that will solve it, but spend a lot of time in this abstract context, dealing with things from a bird’s eye view. I have a person who is not well in my family. I love this person, I work on making things better for her. I have other specific professional challenges and I problem sovle those or do not or come half way. Sometimes, yes, in discussions, I push against ideas I think are damaging to what I care about. Coming from me, in specfic contexts, interacting with specific people and obstacles and problems using my cares and empathy and preferences to guide me.
You are in the clouds, solving everyone’s problem, not coming at problems as they arise in your personal life, where the little power we have can be apply, sometimes, if we are lucky with a lever. You like Jesus are solving the woes of the world and have very little interest in your own preferences.
You are a nihilist who yearns and struggles, every day, to be an objectivist.
I do not yearn to be an objectivist.
Your yearning or moral compulsion to become once again an objectivist causes you pain. It also pulls you away from your own life and problem solving there, to figuring out how ONE, everyone, should talk to resolve pro-schoice people and anti-abortionists.
Of course you are more fragmented. You have given yourself the task of a messiah. I am not saying you think you are a messiah, but you have given yourself that task.
And it is an abstract life. in the abstract ideas seem awefully interchangeable. That leads to fragmentation.
Me, I am working, feet on the ground, from me and my likes and dislikes. And yes, duh, these are affected by my experiences and inborn nature. I make no claims to their abstract perfection, nor to I give myself that cross to bear.
I would guess that neither you nor I have been directly affected by Trumpworldyet. I certainly find it threatening. But I do not have the slightest faith that your cross - finding the perfect argument to sway all Trump and Bernie supporters to the one true path - is a good cross to bear.
I am not blissful. I just don’t add on your sisyphusian chore and all the abstract third person thinking that you immerse yourself in. You think in the third person, you post in the third person. You will solve things universally. You are not in first person very much. You mention it as if it is a story about someone else, yes, since you don’t think you have a real you. It is all contingent.
I deal with objectivists who have the power to impose their agenda on me and those I love. I start there. You are focused in the abstract on all those Trump can affect. You are trying to solve all that and by trying to find the perfect arguments. Ones you, as a nihilist, think are likely not to exist. That creates fragmentation and a hole and a daily failure to make one single step forward in the task you have set yourself.
An hour ago I offered to go out and get some throat lozanges for my wife who had a sudden sore throat. Tomorrow I will try to get a certain beauracracy to NOT do something to me, by taking specific actions. I am sure you do some of this also, but it seems like your primary problem solving and suffering is caused by a task you need not give yourself and which your own philosophy indicates is likely doomed to failure.
I could, at my age, give myself the task of becoming a professional basketball player, but doing that would make me more fragmented, and pretty much on day one, when I pressed myself to practice, knowing that I would fail. Then add on that the task you have given yourself is abstract, third person. At least with basketball, I know what steps to take in general terms. Practice shots, run sprints, weight train, dribble a lot, join pick up games. I could measure improvements, get professional advice. It would all be down to earth and tailored to my body and skills, however ludicrously unlikely to succeed. You are off thinking as all the rational people in the world, trying solving problems you do not have, that you have no direct connection to. That’s fragmentation.
Does this mean I give up on the world? No. But I think I have a more rational sense of my own power than you do.
I do not think it is a good use of my time to try to find the perfect argument to convince all rational people AND this argument is not only universally effective but also objectively correct. That is doubly fantastic. Even if there are objective morals, the chance that there is an argument that would convince everyone rational seems infinitesmally small to me. And should to any rational nihilist.
So stop looking to see what contraptions I have that make me less fragmented.
Consider that you have added all sorts of contraptions tasks and methodologies that make fragmentation more likely. And further there is an objectivism of some kind in there may also be true.
No scientific consensus exists that what you are doing here is helping your or anyone else. So it’s a contraption or set of contraptions, and these contraptoins compell you to a task that I think you think you will fail at, and beyond that which take you out of your own life into the clouds of everyone’s life.
I can only hope you can try that on, rather than simply dismissing it because 1) it didn’t solve conflicting goods and 2) it might be hard to face how much time you have already wasted.
I’ll take a break here for some significant time.