I think I may have found it…
What is it about iambiguous – me – that reconfigures Karpel Tunnel into Curly, the Stooge? What about my arguments most rankle him? Over and again, I would note his reaction to me is far, far more in sync with the reaction I often get from the moral and political and religious objectivists. But their reactions always made sense to me. Why? Because to the extent they began to understand what was at stake for them if my frame of mind was more reasonable, it would take me back to my own visceral/philosophical reactions at the time when as an objectivist myself, “I” began to crumple, to crumble. The very last thing the objectivists among us want to feel is “fractured and fragmented” in regard to the fundamentally important comfort and consolation they feel in regard to their own “real me” identity at one with their belief that their own value judgments reflected “the right thing to do”. That sacrosanct “Sense Of Self” here must above all else be sustained.
But: Karpel Tunnel, like me, did not appear to believe in either objective morality or in a God/the God/my God.
So, I wondered, how did he manage not to feel fractured and fragmented himself in regard to conflicting goods rooted in dasein given a particular political economy.
Then, today, I came upon this:
Now, sure, my own reaction to this is no less a subjective/subjunctive interpretation rooted in dasein. I would never insist that I have actually figured out What He Means by it. In fact, I would never insist that I have finally figured out the meaning of my own existential reactions to human interactions out in the is/ought world. All I have are the arguments I raise in my signature threads. Assessments that, as I note time and again, seem reasonable to me only “here and now”. Assessments I recognize that, given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information, knowledge and ideas – in a world bursting with contingency chance and change – might nudge or shove me into accepting a whole new frame of mind.
So, with that in mind, I’ll take a stab at it.
Karpel Tunnel seems [to me] to be arguing above that there is some “visceral/intuitive/deep-down-inside-me” Self that just knows that pedophilia is repulsive. That is the part of him that is somehow immune to being “fractured and fragmented”. And that, whether more or less consciously or sub-consciously, my own arguments here represent a threat to this conviction. What if it really is true that “in the absence of God all things can be rationalized”; and that all it takes [for anyone] is some future context either beyond their total understanding or control that might make them do things that “here and now” they are adamant that they would never, ever do because “here and now” they are revolting to them?
And don’t get me wrong: there is still a part of me that feels the same way. It’s just that in a philosophical venue I can’t come up with a way to think myself into believing [once again] that any human behavior is inherently/necessarily immoral in the absence of God.
So, yes, in regard to all of this, “I” am different from him. But only “here and now”.