Because he doesn’t want to work within the framework that you’re using. It may be because he doesn’t comprehend it, but I think it’s because he just doesn’t buy into it.
If a person could follow the logic he would have done so and wouldn’t have to ask that question. Considering the question has been asked…
As always it seems - the basic question that is the topic of the thread.
You make a really good point. Ants would kill us without a thought, given the opportunity. Yet people in this thread act like they are such inoffensive creatures.
I’ll quote a post I made once in another thread: Insects aren’t exactly helpless, and they are quite brutal toward all living things. They are nature’s little pre-programmed killing machines, and they are hard-wired to the core. Even though they don’t know any better, they are ruthless. Two things most insects strive for: reproducing like crazy (often cannibalizing one another after doing so) and invading each other’s territory for resources. Ants especially are practically genocidal, warring with and killing rival colonies without regard for the individual lives of their own soldiers and sometimes even abducting larvae from the conquered in order to produce a generation of slaves for the colony.
Even on an individual level, ants have no regard for even their own lives. If they sense that they have sufficient numbers to sacrifice, which is all through chemical signals, they will continue trying to gather food from a dangerous location even when some jerk like me is stepping on them. I’d be one to know: I’ve stepped on [u]a lot[/u] of ants. 
There is something I should walk back. When I scuff out an anthill in my driveway, part of the reason I do it is to cause a bit of chaos down there. However, I wouldn’t say it is due to sadism, but rather curiosity. Mostly I just like experimenting with their reactions. 
Questions for you:
How old are you?
What kind of shoes do you wear?
Do your feet smell?
You need classes.
Some sincere questions:
How old are you?
What sort of shoes do you wear when you step on bugs?
Do your feet smell?
Then let him explain what goes through his head when he is confronted with a bug and a reason to either step or not to step on it.
Is he able to decide freely whether the reasons to step on it outweigh the reasons not to? Is the bug’s fate dependent on the extent to which the biological evolution of life on Earth resulted in a species – us – that does possess a self-conscious “I” fitted with volition, autonomy, will etc.?
If he thinks that’s the case, how would he go about demonstrating it? Other than, as with the rest of us, in a “world of words” that he has “thought up” in his head?
Then the part that most fascinates me: the assumption that we do have some measure of free will.
We can choose freely to step on the bug. We are able, of our own volition, to come up with reasons pro and con.
But: how much of this is rooted subjectively in dasein? And how much instead are scientists and philosophers able to conclude reflects that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated objectively to choose when confronted with bugs. Whether universally or going from context to context to context.
In other words, there is only one way in which to grasp the “basic question” here, and that is as you do.
Me, I’m just trying to gauge the extent to which, as with James S. Saint, you subscribe to your own ontological/teleological “intellectual contraption” — a TOE that you believe it is necessary for others to grasp if they want full access to the “human condition” in the context of “all there is”.
So, do you?
Is there a way, epistemologically, to know whether our liking or disliking of those who step on bugs is of our own volition?
And, if so, is there a way to know what a rational and virtuous person’s reaction ought to be to those that do? For whatever reason? Or for no reason at all?
Uhm…
- Between 25-30.
- The hell? I run and play tennis competitively. So if not working, then 95% of the day I’m wearing running shoes/sneakers. I don’t wear them for the reason you’re asking.
- Uh, I guess? I’m a pretty active guy who runs competitively. So yeah, you probably wouldn’t want to stick your nose near my feet. So what? The more they stink, the more manly I feel. Why are you asking this shit?
Is this karpal tunnel…?
I have to ask, you weren’t referring to Rand’s objectivism in this quotation, were you? I’m no fan of her ideas, but it doesn’t sound like you are either. If indeed you are talking about her ideas, it even sounds like you’re prescribing them to some people (like Karpal) only because you think it will help them by giving them the illusion of knowing themselves and the illusion of being confidently understanding of motivations. It even sounds like you think it would be good for Karpal because then he can be more confident in thinking he understands why people do what they do and why he feels the way he does (revulsed) about guys like me, so that he can feel more secure about it.
If so, that is one of the weirdest (but creative) ways I’ve heard someone suggest that objectivism may somehow be useful. Or I may have not understood you at all.
Nope. Ayn Rand concocted an entire philosophy in which everything under the sun always and only came down to either agreeing or not agreeing with her. The bizarre spectacle of a “philosophy of life” dedicated to the individual…but in which each and every individual Objectivist dared not to suggest that she was ever wrong.
Whereas my own understanding of what an objectivist is – here and now – revolves around the assumption that this but my own subjective assessment rooted in dasein.
And that assumption is this: that in regard to moral, political, spiritual, aesthetic etc., value judgments, objectivists will see themselves as in sync with the “real me” able to grasp [philosophically or otherwise] the “right thing to do”.
And, as a consequence of this, they will then proceed to divide up the world into “one of us” [the good guys] and “one of them” [the bad guys].
Which I then suggest reflects what I call the “psychology of objectivism” explored on this thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=185296
Nope. KT is truly a rare bird in my book. In many ways we are on the same page here. In regard to such things as religion and objective morality and the “deep state” rooted in political economy. But whether it is stepping on bugs or any other moral and political context in which there are “conflicting goods”, he has thought himself into believing there is this “visceral/intuitive/deep-down-inside-me” Self that is somehow immune to being “fractured and fragmented” in the manner in which I construe my own “self” out in the is/ought world.
But, alas, he now has me on ignore. Maybe even “foed” me. Take it up with him yourself and see what unfolds.
After he got annoyed and I answered his question more completely, I sent him a message inviting him back to the thread. I even told him that I saw his perspective on why he might have thought my questions seemed disingenuous at first, but that I didn’t see the unifying theme to them which he noticed which was that each binary question I was asking in that one post led to the same outcome. To me it just didn’t stand it out. But, he immediately thought it was disingenuous arguing, without doing any probing see if I even saw the same theme he noticed, which I didn’t. Then he just became totally reactionary.
That’s fine if he doesn’t to drop out of the conversation, but what was very uncool was him calling others bad faith actors after exhibiting what I just described. He probably has me on ignore too, which is too bad because at some points he made for a good conversationalist. I’m going to read your thread now.
What do people do in a philosophy forum?
They talk about their ideas and their reasoning. Right?
If somebody comes in and says he is doing something and has no reason for doing it. That makes for a short discussion. What’s to talk about?
I thought that KT gave you lots of opportunities to talk.
Not surprising that he left.
I think they mostly come in to bolster what they want other people to think (often egotistically around here). They only use some form of partial reasoning to excuse their desire to maintain their own bubble of belief.
Binary thinking is something he comes back to time and again. And that in my view is what the moral and political objectivists fall back on as well. Right or wrong. Good or evil. One of us or one of them.
Only, as I now construe it, he has is own rendition of this. There is what God or, philosophically, the deontologists can tell us about things like the morality of stepping on bugs or pedophilia…and there is what his own “visceral/intuitive/deep-down-inside-me” Self tells him instead. Either/or.
Also the binary thinking he exhibits when others don’t eventually come around to agreeing with him. That “reactionary” persona that really seems to get pissed off at those he decides are fools.
Where would you draw the line between whether it is fine to crush something or not? If a human shrunk to the size of a bug in front of you would you crush it?
Such a discovery would be too rare to just crush. I would pocket him and then put him in a container in my room, where I could study him further.
So is it only the fact a shrunken person is “rare” that would stop you crushing them or would there be any other reasons?
Without any further information, there would be no reason to. If it were a tiny alien, I might try to sell access to them. If it were an actual person who somehow became ant-sized, I could think of all sorts of reasons to keep him (or her) trapped within a container and not tell anyone. I would keep them as a personal slave, forcing them to do the unspeakable.
So how exactly would an ant-sized person be useful to you as a slave if they are only the size of a bug? Would you still treat an ant-sized person with the same level of respect you would a human? Or would you treat them like dirt and torment them for your own entertainment? After all, an ant-sized person would be very insignificant compared to you so they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.