From the Value thread.
And, as often as not, it is this sort of context which seems to preoccupy the “serious philosophers” there. I value eating butterscotch ice cream because my goal is to eat things I like. A quandary only occurs when I value good health as a goal as well and eating ice cream might preclude that.
And even when he brings value down closer to things like freedom vs. security – things that concern me out in the is/ought world – we get more general description intellectual contraptions:
Again, in what set of circumstances? In regard to, say, freedom vs. security with respect to gun control legislation?
Why are some people embedded at the extremes of the political spectrum here? And others in the middle? How is that related or not related to the manner in which I embed the self here 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.
As I noted above, the closest I can get to understanding his own moral philosophy here is that, in regard to his views on gun control, there is this “deep down inside” him true self that can be configured into something like this:
“But if you come and say God says gun control is good, or you have a logical proof (somehow) a secular one that proves gun control is good, it will not overcome my own ‘deep down inside me’ self if I don’t agree with either God or the philosopher-kings. Because how I think and feel about it, at least now, means more to me than a bunch of words on a page that seem, even to me, logical.”
Whereas for me, “I” here is an existential contraption rooted in dasein confronting those on both sides of the issue who are able to come up with reasonable arguments that the other side can’t make go away. And that what ultimately counts is who has the actual political power [often derived from economic power] to pass and then enforce legislation that rewards or punishes particular behaviors in any particular community in any particular historical, cultural and circumstantial context.