Actually, from my point of view, the thread should be more about this:
Pedro I Rengel wrote: The context is: Dawkins wrote the book where the gene meme paradigm is postulated.
iambiguous wrote: No, that's your context. All I'm trying to do here is...to encompass individual reactions to particular contexts as the subjective, existential embodiment of dasein. Both genes and memes are intertwined in that. Instead, it comes down to emphasis. Folks like Satyr are really, really big on genes. Others, like the "blank slate" crowd, are really, really big on memes.
Pedro I Rengel wrote: You refer to them as though objective truth.
iambiguous wrote: "Them" in what context? What can be differentiated in that context as the objective truth from a subjective opinion?
Pedro I Rengel wrote: And so I asked "do you all nazis read anything other than Dawkins."
iambiguous wrote: What particular Nazis in what particular context? How might Dawkins take on genes and memes be examined there? In regard to, say, the Final Solution. The extent to which Nazis can ground it in the objective truth rather than the ideological bent of Hitler. And, then: how were Hitler's views of the Jews rooted subjectively in dasein, given the existential trajectory of his own life experiences?
Pedro I Rengel wrote: So. Where did you get the genes/memes idea?
iambiguous wrote: Truth be told, I don't remember the exact moment when it first came to my attention. But that's true for all of us. We pick up on things over the course of years over the course of countless experiences. We think things today that we have only the vaguest understanding of how we first came to think it.
Now on to his OP:
Pedro I Rengel wrote: OK, so this thread is basically about this:
iambiguous wrote:
Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes
3] an unimaginably complex and convoluted labyrinth of both.
Pedro I Rengel wrote: Here, iambiguous presents a clearly objectivist worldview, where everything is determined by his three options.
Huh? When we choose particular behaviors [assuming human autonomy] "I" first comes into the world given particular biological imperatives: race, gender, ethnicity, certain character traits, temperament etc.. And then all of the arguments that revolve around other possible congenital propensities like sexual orientation. Then the memes -- "an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation" -- that are grounded historically, anthropologically, ethnologically, socially, politically, economically, etc., in any number of vast varied human communities. All of which evolve over time in a world bursting with contingency, chance and change.
Three options? How about hundreds and hundreds of them given the manner in which I construe human identity on this thread:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529Pedro I Rengel wrote: When challenged on this, he answered with:
iambiguous wrote:
Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes
3] an unimaginably complex and convoluted labyrinth of both
Pedro I Rengel wrote: I, of course, pointed out that this is a typical objectivist reaction. Namely, that the source of the objectivist ideas cannot be named because that would mean they are subjective ideas, and not objective truths.
Over and over and over again, I make it clear that my own understanding of an objectivist is someone who, in regard to moral or political or esthetic value judgments, is convinced that they are in sync with the Real Me, a Core Self, a Soul. And that this Real Me is, in turn, in sync with the "right thing to do". Either through God or political ideology or deontology or one or another rendition of Nature.
Then I suggest that intellectual contraptions of this sort...
"Namely, that the source of the objectivist ideas cannot be named because that would mean they are subjective ideas, and not objective truths."
...be relocated to an actual circumstantial context where behaviors come into conflict existentially over particular conflicting goods.
Pedro I Rengel wrote: This went on, you get the gist.
And here I simply would like iam to bring his objectivist ideas down from the skyhooks of evolutionary theory academia, and down here on Earth where we can examine how they are not simply another instance of "I am right and whatever you say is wrong," and how they can help us resolve a situation of conflicting goods.
Pick a context, iam, and let's explore how your ideas about genes/memes are not simply rooted subjectively in dasein but can aply objectively to everybody, here and now.
Which is precisely what I have done on this thread:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382I explored my political prejudices today revolving around abortion. I did this by noting the experiences I had over the course of my actual lived life intertwined with my experiences in exploring philosophy.
As for genes here, it is obvious that the biological evolution of life on earth has culminated so far in us. A species able to choose either to abort or not to abort. But: is there an understanding of human biology that would enable us to decide whether abortion is inherently moral or immoral? Or is that far more likely to be embodied in the manner in which I construe the "self" here as a subjective/subjunctive existential contraption rooted in dasein?
