Raises the question : How would non-objectivists be different?
Then why would I come closer to your frame of mind?
The answer can’t be “because it’s the real truth”.
You believe that it’s the only way. But you’re and fragmented so how can you trust that belief?
Let’s just say that I don’t think it’s the way to proceed.
I was thinking that one way to potentially ease this F & F stuff is to focus on issues where he is not F & F. For example the sexual trafficking of children. Now of course he can pull the whole ‘prove to all rational people that children should not be sexually traficked’ etc. but I truly doubt he himself is F & F on the issue. He may have some philosophical asterisk, but I doubt he would truly find himself split if he, for example, put in time fighting the sexual trafficking of children. Perhaps htere are even ways volunteers can, online, participate in investigations or reporting or man a hotline, online, for children who want out or whatever.
IOW the state of F & F must depend on his focus and the time he puts in thinking about an issue. He could prioritize moral issues where he is not F & F.
And yes, again, I get that even on issues that seem clear to many of us, this does not mean one can PROVE that sexual traficking of children is bad.
However we are dealing with a state of mind and this is not digital and not binary. If he focuses on issues that he himself is not so split over, he will experience less F & F.
And while this does not solve the problem of the afterlife, the two problems are not hinged to each other.
The issue I chose, I chose because I assume he is not split and torn and can see both sides in the way he can with abortion. It is however a charged issue and potentially depressing. However there would have to be less charged issues tht he is not F & F over that he could focus on. Helping the poor around literacy. Bringing food to the elderly. Whatever.
IOW reduce the stress around the F & F by shifting his focus from extremely complicated moral issues like abortion to issues where there is vastly less controversy. Of course, he can check in now and then to see if anyone can prove that abortion is OK; but on a pure self-care level, make his main focus issues where he is not F & F.
And, of course, being engaged with life might reduce feelings of F & F even if the entire issue is not resolved.
I already had those discussions with him. I focused on serial killers. He used the “blank slate” argument - “If my life had been different, if I had been raised in some other environment, then I could have been a serial killer”.
So his F&F problem is there no matter what.
That’s not really the same issue. Or to put it another way - if he couldn’t find it in himself to help protect people from serial killers because he is so torn on the issue, then that’s not a good activity for him.
NOTE: I am not saying that sexual trafficking of children in some way refutes conflicting goods problems.
I am talking about what he does with his time. I can see how abortion creates F & F for some people. They want to support the mothers who want abortions. They are not sure if the fetuses are already alive. They find both sides have potentially important points. With the traficking of children for sexual reasons, I really doubt he feels torn. NOTE again: this does nto mean that one can prove sexually trafficking children is bad. My point is that I doubt HE, Iamb, will feel torn on the issue.
Part of what he is doing is complaining about being F & F. His attempt to solve this is to get someone to prove one side of the abortion issue. That is how he spends his time here.
If he chose an issue to focus on - and even better act on in the world - where he, personally, does not feel very split, this is a step up. It is a reduction of F & F. Of course conflicting goods is not resolved, but he could decrease his own suffering.
This has nothing to do with whether he might have been a serial killer or even a trafficker of children. As long as he does not feel torn, trying to help children who have been trafficked, his possibly having turned out in an alternate universe into a child trafficker is a moot issue. He is not proclaiming his actions correct, just hoping to reduce suffering and spending his time on an issue that does fracture him.
If that is the wrong issue, then he could choose others.
Sort of like in CBT where you aim at reducing anxiety. The goal is nto to completely remove it.
And of course he could choose an issue on the side to occasionally focus on, here say, to deal with conflicting goods in general.
But if he has a goal to feel better, this is one way to approach it. Reduction not elimination (in the short term, he can keep his long term goals, but minimize his current F & F. )
And minimizing his current F&F might make it easier to notice/find/create solutions to more of his issues.
Thsi is all taking his F&F and presented goals at face value.
No, I think it is the issue.
Even if he is 100% against trafficking children, he still imagines an alternative ‘trajectory’ where he is in favor of it.
That’s what produces the F&F on literally every moral choice.
Well, if they were moral nihilists like me and had attained control of, say, the global economy…?
Yes, just as moral objectivists come in different flavors so to do moral nihilists.
Look, just as you can only react to my posts here by extrapolating from the experiences you have had with other moral nihilists in the past, I can only react to your posts by extrapolating from the experiences I have had with other moral objectivists in the past.
And, in that regard, you are more or less par for the course.
And you don’t react to my point of view based on how it would make you feel about yourself so much as the extent to which my frame of mind makes sense given the arguments I raise in my signature threads.
And, over and again, I can only point out that my own arguments in regard to “I” in the is/ought world are no less existential contraptions rooted in dasein.
So, is that the real truth? How would “I” know? I’m not even able to convince myself that “I” am in possession of free will, let alone that what “I” argue here is even remotely close to how it all fits into an understanding of existence itself.
Instead, it is when I suggest my frame of mind here may be applicable to you as well that, in my opinion, I get you in “retort” mode.
Like you, I am only able to make a distinction between what I believe is true in my head here and now about my value judgments and what I am able to demonstrate to others that, if they wish to be construed as rational human beings, they are obligated to believe the same.
But I can’t demonstrate my own vantage point about morality because it is that vantage point itself that fractured and fragmented “me”. I can only come into places like this and peruse the vantage points of others.
And if you believe that…
…the only way it makes sense to explore this is by focusing in on my own value judgments as an existential construct derived from the experiences in my life coupled with my attempt to understand those experiences through, among others things, the study of philosophy.
…is not “the way to proceed”, come up with another way. But I can’t imagine an effective way that does not include these two components.
In fact I had just addressed this issue on my morality thread:
But you just know in your heart of hears that none of this is applicable to you.
Right?
In fact, this sort of discussion takes me back some years to a class I attended at Essex Community College. Right after being discharged from the Army. The class was called “Abnormal Psychology”, taught by Ms. Vanetta Burkhardt.
She had just asked the class if they could kill someone. And, of course, the overwhelming majority of them [who were just out of high school], in touch with their “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do” insisted that course they could not, would not.
Then it was my turn. I had not just come out of high school. I had just come out of the Army, a Vietnam vet. And I told the class that, in many remarkable ways, the gap between the man I was before being drafted and the man I had become with his DD214, was such that I didn’t think the two of them could ever reconcile each other’s frame of mind after hours of discussion. Maybe not, in some respects, even recognize them.
What I would do/could do before the Army and what I would do/could do after it…?
All I do is to suggest in turn that had my experiences been very, very different from the cradle to the man I was before the Army, who could really say how wide that gap might be?
I just speculate further on why the objectivists here won’t go down that path with me by subjecting their own value judgments to the arguments I make.
Out in a particular world, given a particular set of circumstances, given a particular point of view derived existentially from the manner in which I construe the juncture of identity, conflicting goods and political economy.
That doesn’t not explain why non-objectivism ought to be considered less dangerous than objectivism. (In fact, it hints that non-objectivism could be more dangerous.)
You’re selling a worldview and I’m a potential buyer.
You’re not telling me why I ought to be buying it. Your presentation makes it look unattractive from the start. There’s nothing there than makes me say “I need this”, “I want this” or “I have to have this”.
If you were an objectivist, then you would be selling me THE TRUTH. And I would feel some compulsion to buy THE TRUTH.
I think that most of the time, you don’t get why people “retort”. It’s almost never about the contents of your philosophy,
What kind of results have gotten from these explorations? Anything useful?
Whatever I am is what I am now.
I’m not something else just because I can imagine an alternative past or a possible future.
Therefore, I do not feel fractured or fragmented.
Though he has no qualms about participating online, attacking objectivists, telling people why they believe what they believe and hijacking threads.
Why does this never cause F&F?
And see how he manages to shift any discussion to the psychology, dasein and mental state of other people. They must justify why he is not suffering, even though their life/genetics/experiences have no causal relation with his. It is as if others are responsible for this state of being.
IOW some actions seem to give him less F&F. It’s not that everything gives him F&F, at least not to the same degree. Whatever he says when an individual example comes up. It’s not a coincidence that the abortion issue comes up the most. 1) he had some past incident related to the issue and 2) it is more charged. I mean, we almost have a situation where every rational adult believes that sexually trafficking children is wrong. Of course there are a few exceptions, but it is not a coincidence that he uses abortion which has many strong advocates for both main positions, but also has important arguments on both sides. There are very few arguments out there for the sexual trafficking of children. There is no philosopher like a Sam Harris advocating for this.
If he simply lay on his bed, well, Ok all actions are the same to him. But he doesn’t. He acts in the world and he focuses on a few issues and as far as morals, his go to is abortion.
This obviously causes him more F&F. If we are to take his complaining about F&F seriously, then focusing on it is not good for him.
He tends to keep at a safe distance in these discussions. He doesn’t actually reveal much in his personal accounts and nothing that makes him appear in a bad light.
As for picking abortion as the subject for discussion, I suppose it gets more bites than trafficking. (And again, it’s not something that makes him “look bad”. )
That certainly might be a motivation, but he’s not succeeding. I think he refused to answer the question in this thread because he knows that what he puts forward as his goals and reactions doesn’t really hold. I am not saying he had that thought, but to actually make clear what it means when he is F & F and how this arises - sandwiched between what thoughts? for how long? and so on - is likely something he can feel will sound even fishier that it does at this abstract unexplained level.
Trafficking could potentially look solvable according to his criteria. Yes, an occasional person will come along to defend it, but one can come a lot closer to ‘all rational people agreeing’ on trafficking children for sex. Abortion on the other hand is much more intractable.
But he doesn’t want to solve it.
Every time that one seems to be making progress in some direction, he introduces more details, more complications. Or he ignores it and restates his original position. I think that is intentional.
Yes, I tend to assume that. I think that is part of the reason he will not look at himelf closely. Other people need to make concrete their abstractions. Other people should go into what is happening now in their lives. Other people should unpack stuff. But not him. If he did, he might notice an/or reveal to us more clearly that his purported motivations are not what they are claimed to be.
Here I just wanted to see if he would unpack his own abstract contraption about his state of mind. And I think it was wise of him, given his goals, to avoid doing what he asks of others. Cause the BS is not far under the surface of the F&F stuff.
How could someone who is F&F present himself, his ideas, his motivations, his goals, his assessment of his own behavior here, in such a consistant way for a decade. Utterly consistant. Utterly incredulous that anyone could notice anything about him that he didn’t realize.
Now how could an F&F person NOT miss things about himself? Not reveal stuff he is not aware of? Not find some value in what other people say here about him? Not once in ten years has he ever said: that’s a good point. I am doing that. Or even, hm, that might be a good idea for me to try.
An F&F person might then change his or her mind, but never once??? never once none of these fragmented parts has found any suggestion about what he is doing or might do potentially interesting? Never.
That’s not an F&F person. That’s a very unified person. Or someone who simply cannot concede anything.
Where have I ever argued that? Instead, I note the inherent dangers embedded in both “world views”. After all, It’s not like philosophers or ethicists can concoct an epistemological algorithm that decides which approach is more dangerous once and for all.
And, over and again, I note the considerable human pain and suffering the moral nihilists who own and operate the global economy inject into the “human condition” year in and year out. And you can bet that with the coronavirus this is only going to get all that much worse.
Again [as usual] huh?!
Buying and selling?
I’m making the arguments that I do in my signature threads. And these arguments [to me] are not about how they make me feel [grim] but the extent to which they still seem to be reasonable arguments to make given the manner in which I have attempted to think through [philosophically and otherwise] the actual experiences I have had in my life.
And in regard to the morality of abortion or any other conflicting goods, I’m curious as to how you comingle both yourself in explaining your own point of view. To yourself for example. Which to me seems considerably less fractured and fragmented than mine. Precipitating considerably more comfort and consolation. With or without God. Which I have never been able to figure out with you.
You don’t/won’t go there. Fine. But that doesn’t change my own reaction to that choice.
So you keep telling me. And so the actual reason still eludes me. Again, I can only react to those retorts based on all of the similar retorts I have received from objectivists down through the years. And, in fact, the part where they seem to cringe at the prospect of thinking like me, is the one thing that always seems to stand out.
After all, I remember cringing myself back in the day when my own objectivism was under assault. Just not in places like this. They didn’t exist. Instead it was more from the arguments I was encountering in philosophy books! And from authors like Beckett, Ionescu, Vonnegut, Cioran, Pessoa. Or filmmakers like Bergman and Bunuel and Kurosawa.
Results? I made an honest attempt to probe my life introspectively, and now I have managed to think myself into the conclusions I have reached in my signature threads here. The results were what they were. And whatever the results, they don’t stop me from living my life in a manner such that I still have any number of “distractions” that bring me considerable satisfaction and fulfillment. The parts where being fractured and fragmented hardly ever enter into my disposition at all.
Right.
On the other hand, there are now billions of us around the globe who can make that claim. As though everything should just revolve around what has become reality now without taking into account the components of my own frame of mind.
When those on either side of any particular conflicting good confront each other they should just insist “well, this is who I am!”
That’ll settle it!
Especially in a might makes right world?
But my point is not about imagining yourself in an alternative past, but in actually having lived a very, very different past in which an entirely conflicting set of experiences, relationships and access to information, knowledge and ideas configured your “I” into, say, something like mine?
That’s why over and again, we can only try to imagine the extent to which philosophers and ethicists, taking that into account, attempt to come up with the most rational and virtuous way in which to behave in any particular context.
In other words, if you are able to think yourself into examining and assessing your own identity as you do above, you don’t feel fractured and fragmented.
And, trust me, given what is at stake on both sides of the grave, you win.
You’re pushing one world view in preference to the other. You’re railing against objectivists and not against non-objectivists/nihilists.
I’m representing it as “buying and selling” in order to get you to think about the motivations of people in an interaction.
When I say something, you don’t listen. You just keep talking about yourself.
What kind of results have you had from almost 10 years of posting on ILP?
You seems to be at exactly the same place that you were then. Except that most people here won’t even talk to you.
There you go.
You discounted everything that I posted.
Note to others:
What, in your opinion, is the most egregious thing that I discounted?
And, just out of curiosity, was there perhaps anything of mine that he discounted?