Felix: there are many sadly funny things in his response to you but here’s a habit of his. Here he accuses you of being abstract and then writes…abstractly, as per usual.
He doesn’t seem to notice his own nearly complete abstract approach to communication.
Lovely. Succinct. Spot on. It’s a bit like a virus. It is trying to get our [brain] cells to replicate it. But in the end one can’t be angry at a virus. That’s like angrily beating one’s head against a wall. And a wall it is.
The intellectual contraption as thought experiment?
The bottom line of course is that a “fully functioning person” is no less constructed existentially given a particular historical, cultural and experiential [interpersonal] context.
The part you steer clear of.
What they both share in common however is the distance between the purpose I had in mind in creating this thread and whatever point you are trying to make above.
This “hellhole” that I am in is derived from what I construe to be reasonable arguments embedded in the points I raise in my signature threads. All I can do is to ask others to note how, given that the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave are effected by that which they construe their fate to be on the other side of the grave, their own sense of self is construed in a less fragmented and fractured manner.
Basically what you are arguing is that how I look at human interactions at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power is a really, really grim and depressing way to see things. Therefore, however reasonable my points may be, who wants to live in a world like that!
The same reaction religious folks had to Nietzsche back then. So, if God does not exist at least mere mortals can still be in sync with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.
Now, with respect to the intent behind this thread, you will either go there with me or you won’t.
I ask those who do believe in God, to choose particular behaviors in a particular context. A context in which different people will often have very conflicted value judgments. A context in which people connect the dots between those behaviors here and now and what they anticipate their fate to be on the other side of the grave.
How about you? Note a set of behaviors that you would choose given your own moral and political and religious narratives.
Me? I am now the embodiment of 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.
So, from my perspective, it is reasonable in a No God world to reject objective morality, an essential meaning of life and immortality/salvation.
Once again Saint Karpel sets out to expose the dragon…and then to slay him?
You decide.
The Meaning of Life
Daniel Hill argues that without God, life would be meaningless.
From my frame of mind this is true only to the extent that by meaningful one is denoting an essential, ontological, teleological meaning that transcends what any particular one of us thinks is meaningful about any particular thing.
And the only manner in which that has ever been demonstrated to the best of my knowledge is this way…
Either way nothing at all is actually demonstrated. God is merely thought or defined or conjured into existence out of language itself. The rest is then embedded in the miracle of human psychology. In other words, nothing has to be demonstrated. After all, if, in deducing God into existence, you believe what you think is true is in fact true than in fact for you God does exist. And, in so believing this, it can actually reconfigure your values into behaviors that, around others, can generate consequences that have profound implications in human interaction. I quote human history for example.
As long as your religious beliefs only have to be sustained in your head, you can then scoff at any and all who demand actual proof that what you believe is true. And this part, of course, depresses some more than others. Clearly, if what you believe about God does not have to be demonstrated, then any discussion and debate you have with someone like me is always going to end with you being the victor.
The same regarding speculation like this:
Sure, there any number of ways in which you can imagine this thought up God that you have come to believe in your head. Since there is nothing you need to do in order to test one supposition rather than another, you can just settle for the one that makes you feel better about yourself in the world.
Here, of course, you can even abandon all of the traditional or historical depictions of God and make up an entirely new one. One that is particularly in sync with whatever you need to believe in order to, among other things, make that crucial transition from here and now to there and then.
Again, anyone here can voice an opinion about this. But how would they go about demonstrating that what they believe is true was in fact true?
Instead, in the absence of proof that 1] Jesus the man did in fact exist and 2] that, one way or another, he was connected to a God, the God, Christians and Jews, like all the rest of us, must concern themselves with the actual moral, political and legal prescriptions/proscriptions that mere mortals seek to impose on each other.
And most know my assessment of that.
The myth of original sin seems to be a reaction of the religiously enculturated symbolic ideal ego against one’s own inexorable human primate instinctual drives.
Perhaps. If it is a myth. If, in fact, it can ever be demonstrated that the Christian God does not exist. But, in reality, it doesn’t work that way. If you believe the Christian God does exist then you have your own frame of mind regarding original sin. And it works for you in whatever way sustains the most comforting view of the life that you live.
In other words, the part I suggest is the embodiment of dasein.
And, however one construes the meaning of “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein, there’s the part where we are all interacting with others in a world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods.
With or without God.
Then, for me, it’s all about the manner in which I have thought myself into believing that “I” am fractured and fragmented in what I presume to be is an essentially meaningless No God world that ends in oblivion for all of eternity.
So, what have I got to lose by considering any and all alternatives? Including yours.
As for the part that revolves around the “naked ape”, that just muddies the water all the more. Here we are talking about a definitive understanding of lifeless matter somehow evolving into living matter on planet Earth and, over the course of millions of years, becoming us.
How on earth would one configure original sin into that?!
What is particularly peculiar to some is how repulsed many Christians would be if we punished children today for something that their parents did. I had just recently reread E. L. Doctorow’s novel The Book Of Daniel. Imagine the reaction of most Christians back then if the authorities had thrown Michael and Robert and Ivy in prison as well. For the choices their parents were said to have made.
Yet with God it’s all okay. What Adam and Eve choose to do in the Garden of Evil is visited upon all the rest of humanity!
And yet that doesn’t seem to repulse so many of the faithful. 
Moral nihilism undercuts the whole theological problem of evil. To the moral nihilist torturing babies for fun is not a problem.
Yes, that is one way in which a particular moral nihilist might react to the torture of a child.
Everythng is beyond good and evil once God is kaput. As they say, “in the absense of God, all things are permitted.”
The historical irony here being that all manner of grotesque human atrocitices [up to and including the “final solution”] were committed in the name of “the good”. After all, the Holocaust to some was seen to be anything but grotesque. And the nazis are still very much around today. Some think they are poised for a comeback across Europe and the United States.
A few of them are even here perhaps.
Look at the behaviors that narcissistic sociopaths are capable of rationalizing when, from their point of view, it’s not what they do, but not getting caught and punished for it that propels their own moral agenda.
Not only that but had your own life been very, very different [for whatever reason] you might well have become that person who inflicted the pain.
This is why it is so crucial for many to convince themselves that my frame of mind must not be tolerated. The irony here being that I myself want to be convinced it is in fact inherently, necessarily irrational to think this way.
But, sans God, how is it not reasonable for the moral nihilists to come to the conclusions that they do?
Well, historically, cue the moral objectivists: The Platos, the Rene Descartes, the Immanuel Kants….the Ayn Rands.
You may call “atrocities up to and including the final solution” “grotesque” on aesthetic grounds, but the moral nihilist has no grounds for calling acts up to and including the final solution “atrocities” in the first place. That’s a moral judgment. Hence it’s meaningless to the moral nihilist. The behavior of Nazis and narcissistic sociopaths is no better or worse than any other in a morally meaningless world.
Moral Nihilism = Nothing is morally wrong. Therefore, to the moral nihilist whether or not I inflict pain can be of no moral consequence. The fact that you admit that you want to be convinced that your moral nihilism is wrong shows your cognitive dissonance with your own morally nihilistic viewpoint. The number of alternative moral positions you could take may rise to Infinity. What motivates you to occupy a moral position with which you yourself are uncomfortable?
I think this is true, however…
The moral nihilist would not say it is wrong, but could still consider it a problem. You can hate, like, root for, root against, strive for, desire, which for a world where X does or does not happen. One can have preferences of all kinds, but one cannot say that something is wrong in some objective sense. I don’t believe in objective morals, but I would find it a problem if society started encouraging people to torture babies. I would struggle against that. Why? Because I don’t like it.
Moral Nihilism = Nothing is morally wrong. The Problem of Evil asks, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?”
If nothing is morally wrong, then the words “evil” and “malevolent" in the argument are meaningless. Sure you might not like people torturing babies emotionally or based on aesthetics or whatever, but “right” and “wrong” are baseless words. “From whence comes evil?" From nowhere. It doesn’t exist.
On aesthetic grounds?
Moral nihilists of my ilk make the assumption that, sans God, there does not appear to be a philosophical or scientific argument able to establish that the Holocaust is inherently/necessarily immoral. Ah, but even moral nihilists live actual lives that existentially predispose them to embody particular subjective/subjunctive reactions to things like the Holocaust.
My own reaction today is to be appalled. But I also recognize that I have no capacity to convince those who defend it [still today] that they are in turn rationally and morally obligated to feel appalled.
What does that argument sound like?
At the same time, I recognize that had my own life been very different, I might not have come [existentially] to even feel appalled myself. After all, as a child, I was raised in neighborhoods where blacks, Jews, homosexuals and others were hated. I was a committed right wingnut. It was only after bumping into fellow draftees in Vietnam that “I” was radically reconfigured into the left wing objectivist that I then became.
But moral nihilists themselves do not all necessarily share these assumptions in the same way. For me, morality is always situated out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view. A world of human interfactions in which some things can be demonstrated to in fact be true for all rational human beings while other things cannot be.
Ever and always this is predicated on the way in which genes and memes play themselves out in the mind of any particular individual living out in a particular world interacting with others in a particular set of circumstances.
No, what I suggest is that the manner in which I think about all of this here and now is no less an existential contraption. Anything I “admit to” is always subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge. Just like you. Only we react to this differently.
And, ironically enough, I am uncomfortable because my thinking about all of this in my signature threads still seems quite reasonable. And, if you think like I do, you come to believe that human interactions are essentially meaningless, that distinguishing right from wrong behaviors is not within reach deontologically and that it all ends in the obliteration of “I”.
So, others and/or new experiences will either convince me that this is not the case, or I go on believing that it is.
You live in a moral flat world. Your emotional reaction to the Holocaust conflicts with your amoral position. In spite of your denial, it still appears to me that you’re in a state of cognitive dissonance. Your assumption that whatever moral ethical position you take cannot be grounded alienates you from your own moral intuitions. Admit that you don’t know that moral nihilism is the case. That would open you to the possibility of ultimate moral grounds even if you don’t know what they are with certainty. That seems to be the possibility you are avoiding.
My emotional reaction to the Holocaust is no less an existential contraption. Just as yours is. Unless you are able to provide us with an argument and a demonstration of that argument which conclusively establishes how all rational people are obligated to feel about it?
As a kid I was around people who thought of Jews not all that far removed from some of the rabid views expressed right here. Or over at Know Thyself. Then my experiences in Vietnam reconfigured “I” into quite the opposite frame of mind. And, sure, a part of me is now convinced that “I” am not likely to go back to the other end of the political spectrum.
But how on earth can I possibly know for certain that new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge won’t change my mind.
How can you know that about your own value judgments?
Only those objectivists among us who have in fact managed to think themselves into believing they are in sync with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do” in sync with “one of us” are able to pull that off.
And that’s before we get to those conflicting goods like abortion, gun control, animal rights, the role of government, social and economic justice, sexual preferences etc. Here there are in fact a great many advocates on both sides of the issue.
And then those who will rationalize any and all behaviors as long as they construe them to further their own self-interests.
Right, like somehow your own moral “intuition” isn’t just another subjective/subjunctive manifestation of what I construe to be the “psychology of objectivism” here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
No, you might point out, your own moral intuitions obviate any possibility of feeling “fractured and fragmented” yourself. But: How do you demonstrate that your intutions ought to be the intuitions of all other rational and virtuous men and women? Well, you don’t. You just know it. You just believe it is true “in your head”.
Or, rather, so it seems to me. Given my own assessment of intuition as a complex intertwining of the genetic “I” and the memetic “I” out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view.
Over and over and over again, I point out that my own moral philosophy is in itself an existential contraption. Predicated entirely on the assumption [and that’s all it is] that we live in a No God world. In my view, however, what you are most interested in here is assuring both yourself and others that your own moral philosophy is not.
But that does not contradict what I said. You can have problems with things you do not think are morally wrong. I certainly do. This includes things like people being cruel to children and a lot of mosquitoes in my bathroom. Just because does not believe there are objective morals, one can still have preferences and dislikes. Just as animals do.
Evil certainly is ruled out. ‘Malevolent’ is ruled out if it means the person wants to do evil, it if means wants to do harm not
But again, one is not ruled out from disliking, hating, preferring, wanting to change, wanting to eliminate certain behaviors.
Sure.
Here’s the part of what you said that I disagree with…
This is simply not the case. I mean, there may be moral nihilist who do not have a problem with that. But I wake up to all sorts of problems I have to solve, some personal, some broader. These problems can have to do with myself and my family, or work related problem or friendships. It can also have to do with things I don’t like in the world. If my municipality was trying to pass a law that encouraged the torturing of babies, I would consider that a problem I would struggle to solve.
empathy, for example, is not dependent on morals.
In fact I think morals often undremine empathy. And I do not just mean by painting some people as evil, but the mere couching things in moral terms leads to people thinking X is how I am supposed to feel. Which is not empathy, but the trying to be good. In fact often the problem then is not the torturing of children, but their own moral worth. I would say people who believe in moral rules often do not really have a problem with what they fight against, they have a problem with not being seen as (by themselves) as good people.
According to etymonline.com contraption is a “slighting word for “a device, a contrivance,” 1825, western England dialect, origin obscure, perhaps from con(trive) + trap, or deception.” As a “slighting word”, contraption has a negative moral denotation. In a nihilistic flatland where nothing is morally wrong, the word ‘contraption’ is meaningless. So, a basic proposition of your position is self-contradictory.
Now you have issued a challenge stating”…unless you are able to provide us with an argument and a demonstration that argument which conclusively establishes how all rational people are obligated to feel about it". I don’t see why that’s necessary. Your position hasn’t been conclusively established or demonstrated. It is but one of many possible positions. So you are asking for something you haven’t proved for your own position. Besides, in dialogue with other posters you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are not a fair broker of their ideas by being summarily dismissive. Of course, the concept of fairness is meaningless in a nihilistic Flatland.
I don’t know for certain that new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge won’t change my mind. I don’t hold moral opinions in absolute certainty. It doesn’t follow from that fact that morality is baseless. It’s just that I have ample evidence of my own fallibility. It seems to me that as a human being you are in the same situation. It follows from that fact moral nihilism is entertainable as one of many possible moral positions. Nevertheless, because holding moral nihilism in a thoroughgoing way results in so many absurd contradictions it isn’t the most probable position.
I wonder what mistakes or negative experiences would lead one to dogmatically forsake their own conscience and or moral intuitions. I recognize that such is a possibility and indeed a reality for some people. indeed I have contemplated the possibility of a monistic nihilism myself. But I have found insufficient evidence to conclusively deny one’s own innate moral character fallible as it may be. Even the apparent self loathing which leads one to embrace nihilism and view one’s self as nothing more than a contraption points to the judgment of that person’s innate morality.
In the sentence in which I used the term “problem” I thought it was clear that I was referring to a moral problem. But the way you are using the term it seems as if your feelings about torturing babies are baseless. So I can imagine a discussion in which someone is advocating torturing babies and you’re saying that you don’t like the idea, but, in that social context whether to torture babies or not becomes a mere matter of personal preference. Someone could say “Let’s put it on a referendum and vote on it. After all, we live in a democracy.” If the majority wants to torture babies who are we to deny them that right on the basis of our mere feelings?
Nowhere above did I advocate morality on the basis of mere rules. On the contrary moral rules are best founded when they are based on the specific nature of human embodied experience that we all share. For example the so-called Golden Rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is based on empathy which is the capacity to take up the perspective of another person and to see things as that person sees them and to feel what that person feels. The Golden Rule is based upon and doesn’t work without the human capacity for empathy.
Oh, and by the way in a nihilist Flatland, there are no “good people.”
It seemed like a separate conclusion based on the person being a moral nihilist, but now I understand what you meant.
I don’t know what this means. They would be based on social mammalian empathy.
I don’t think of feelings as mere. I do think of hallucinated objective morals as mere. I don’t know what the word ‘right’ actually refers to. Is it made of matter? Whether one’s position is based on ideas about what is moral or on emotional reactions one can always struggle against the majority. The people who believe in things like ‘rights’ and ‘morals’ might have to back down if they believe that ‘rights’ trump their ‘morals’, or they might not. I have no need to stop struggling towards making a world that i prefer, just because many people prefer or have been manipulated into thinking they prefer a different one. Another way to put this is your use of the term ‘mere’ implies that there are other more solid bases for such things. I see people using their morals to justify their personal preferences all the time, as if it is not their personal preferences. I see moral as mere, mere ideas plucked from the ether. Mere thoughts. I mean, I would not base an argument, in this implicit way, by refering to them as mere thoughts. But if we are going to start referring to feelings/preferences/emotions as mere, well, thoughts can be view as mere also. And however much more base you think you have with ‘rights’ and ‘morals’ it seems to me 1) the base varies wildly person to person and no one who disagrees on moral axioms or how to prioritize seems to be able to convince others and 2) these things seem pretty darn ephemeral to me.
It may be quite similar to empathy, but once it is a rule I think it actually can interfere with empathy, since it is ‘heady’. it is also rather abstract. Individual situatoins with parasitic or rapacious individuals may not be dealt with in the best way for the individual as they try to treat this person with an abstract codified empathy rather than noticing on an emotional level that this person means to do harm and certain kinds of empathetic treatment are confused.
If only. I see lot so of people not feeling much at all, or confusing guilt with empathy and love, but behaving ‘properly’.
But there are still people who I consider hating life or parasitic or to be avoided or not to be left near children or who foster life, add enjoyment or interest or can collaborate or who I like to be around, or who work towards a world or workplace or social place that I prefer. I lose nothing not have ‘good’ and ‘evil or bad’. I can still parse the world.
And those with morals, of course, are all the time struggling with people with other morals, often in the majority. The world without morals is not flat and it does not have hallucinated justifications for its preferences. Look at all those people telling other people that they are wrong for their preferences due to some book or deduction. It’s a power tool.
And look how much people confuse guilt with affection, love, empathy, not being bad and so on.
And how much people with power use ideas like ‘mere emotions’ to belittle, marginalize others and maintain their parasitic power.