the language of postmodernism

What did you say? And what did you mean by it?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Post Reply
Iwannaplato
Posts: 6591
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Iwannaplato »

iambiguous wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 7:09 pm Biology is clearly everywhere here. But then so are all the historical, cultural and experiential memes as well.
I don't know, perhaps you don't understand. If you quote from my post, I get a notice, and it will seem like you are responding to my post. I said nature and nuture and had earlier responded to a quote of yours in Belinda's post where you presented it there as nurture. Great you have mentioned it elsewhere as both. But now you are telling me it is both as if I hadn't already said that a couple of times.
And, in my view, this doesn't really change much whether you think of yourself as a postmodernist or not.
Well, that depends on what you mean here. The facts may not change, but the postmodernists have a strong tendency to see identity/personality as all nurture.
How does dasein not play a role in their own commitments?
Postmodernists? Again, they tend to view it as more nurture than nature.
There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that are in some sense present in human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social forces. Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially determined.
from the online Brittanica.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I am pretty sure I made it clear nurture/experience plays a role.
Then it comes down to a matter of emphasis. How big a role do they play in regard to our own moral and political value judgments?
And given that very, very different nurturing experiences can result in very, very different -- often conflicting -- value judgments what then is the role of philosophy in providing us with access to optimal -- wise -- behaviors?
You mean nature vs. nurture, like a percentage of how much role they play each? I don't know. I was surprised by twin studies, but even there i don't know how to calculate it.
Is a deontological narrative/agenda here even possible?
I am not sure what that sentence means. Deontological agendas seem pretty possible though agenda is an odd word choice. Or, it seems like it. Are you saying that deontological ethics are less possible than consequentialist ones? in what sense? If not why mention just deontological agendas?
Yes, but with God on board, those on either end of the moral and political spectrum then have that crucial "transcending font" to fall back on.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Sure, but that's either bad faith, in the Sartrean sense, or being controlled by a book and its 'expert' interpreters. That's hardly winning.
Yes, Hell is other people because other people tend to objectify us.
Well, that may well be true, but that's a different part of Sartre. I was talking about the pain created in oneself.
But more to the point [mine] most people -- the moral and political and spiritual objectivists -- tend also to objectify themselves. And though some might see this as an example of bad faith, those who are able to take that more sophisticated Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God, are still no less the "winners" here.
I don't know what you are trying to say here. The quotation marks around winners would seem to indicate you are agreeing with me. But the structure of the sentences before seem to indicate you are disagreeing.
After all, what they have faith in is that their God provides them with an objective morality on this side of the grave and then immortality and salvation on the other side of it. How is that not a great source of comfort and consolation?
You're taking them at face value. They say they believe X, so they believe X. I am sure some Christians, for example, are consoled, but I think they are fairly rare - and often quite decent people. Not people who are railing at women who get abortions. I mean, how many of the fingerpointing Christians look like they are doing well. How many seem connected well to their own body language when discussing a range of issues, from personal to political? How many seem to have much mental flexibility, iow to reframe an argument? You can smell the introjection. Which means that undigested ideas are floating around unitegrated in their personalities. They haven't chewed their food and they do not look comfortable. I am sure moments of judgment - like it is for nearly all of us - can offer moment of respite, but I think your....well, it sort of comes off as envy of them is misplaced. The are at best 'winners' as you said above, but hardly winners.
And who is to say that, given the profound mystery of existence itself, it does not come down to a God, the God? Then that more or less blind leap of faith to my God.
Sure....
Then speculation of this sort...
We're both speculating. You notice that don't you.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Whatever they do in front of your face, they are consciously torn up inside. And then perhaps unconsciously also. I mean, that book doesn't love anyone. And it either makes you small or it's just a facade like all the Christian presidents. It's like saying they fall back on hitting themselves in the face with a hammer. This is not a get of jail free pass or even a Tylenol. It's a psychoemotional girdle, chastity belt and hairsirt.
Maybe this more or less accurately describes some on religious paths. But there are many, many more on many, many other paths it does not describe at all. As with others, religious folks can be more or less sophisticated in attempting to explain their spirituality. Not all of them are [in my opinion] fools like Immanuel Can here.
Oh, I don't think theists have to be like my description. But those people flinging certainty and moral judgment in your face, yeah, I think most of them.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Though all this has little to do with identity.
That would depend on the individual. What does being "torn up" mean to them? And, again, philosophically, what would constitute "good faith" or "bad faith" in assessing whether another is, in fact, "torn up".
Maybe I said 'torn up' but I've now forgotten I did. Or maybe I responded when you said it, but I can't remember it. Either way, I don't know what you mean here.
After all, few are as "fractured and fragmented" as "I" am in regard to these things. And the one thing I suspect I do share in common with most postmodernists is the assumption that in a No God world, human existence itself is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that's before the part where "I" tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion for all the rest of eternity.
meaningless to whom? I don't think there is some objective meaninglessness. I think that's a nonsensical idea. As living creatures we have our own meaning, even if it is just the primal seeking of food and shelter for the day. Those with more luck or skill will find other meaning and their existence, the individuals will not be meaningless to them. And yes, your views often seem quite postmodern. IOW given that postmodernists are a pretty motely crew your position, if placed amongst theirs would not stand out as an outlier, far from the main body of postmodernists. I think it would be right in there with the others, despite what you quoted much earlier from one of them. I mean, they have their disagreements and varied opinions. I haven't seen the big ones say they are nihilists os much, but per definition they are, most of them. In the sense that they don't believe there is THE GOOD and THE EVIL. They tend to focus on nurture, which you do, though now i know you acknowledge the effects of nature, still I see dasein mentioned over and over and in your use this seems primarily nurture. So, you'd fit in there. They have a problem with objectivists whether secular or religious. Most I've encountered do not present themselves as depressed in the way you do. But that's not great marketing, generally, and who makes much money as a philosopher? Ya gotta be careful. So, a number may well be, I don't know.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Biology is clearly everywhere here. But then so are all the historical, cultural and experiential memes as well. And, in my view, this doesn't really change much whether you think of yourself as a postmodernist or not.
Iwannaplato wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 1:54 amWell, that depends on what you mean here. The facts may not change, but the postmodernists have a strong tendency to see identity/personality as all nurture.
What we need here of course is a context. One in which the modernist and the postmodernist discuss what through the use of language can be encompassed and communicated objectively and what cannot.

For example, the Supreme Court here in America just overturned Roe v. Wade. A modernist and a postmodernist discussing that. The objective facts involved that every rational man and woman can agree on, and the conflicting, subjective value judgments regarding the morality of abortion itself.

Language and law. Language and ethics.
There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that are in some sense present in human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social forces. Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially determined.
from the online Brittanica.
Again, we'll need an actual set of circumstances in order to note what either can or cannot be communicated objectively. However one intertwines nature and nurture.

For me, it's less nature vs. nurture and more objective truth vs. subjective opinion.

Any postmodernists here willing to choose a context?
Is a deontological narrative/agenda here even possible?
Iwannaplato wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 1:54 amI am not sure what that sentence means. Deontological agendas seem pretty possible though agenda is an odd word choice. Or, it seems like it. Are you saying that deontological ethics are less possible than consequentialist ones? in what sense? If not why mention just deontological agendas?
Moral narrative/political agenda. How the two are acted out in regard to particular situations.

"In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action." wiki

Okay, let's take this "theory" down out of the intellectual clouds and explore it in regard to the morality of abortion. How are the personal opinions rooted existentially in dasein of the postmodernists going to be different from the personal opinions rooted existentially in dasein of the modernists? For both there is what can be communicated through language objectively and what cannot.

For instance, one of the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy is that biologically only women can experience it. So, in terms of a deontological ethics, how is that to be taken into account in establishing whether the act of aborting the unborn is either right or wrong?
Yes, but with God on board, those on either end of the moral and political spectrum then have that crucial "transcending font" to fall back on.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Sure, but that's either bad faith, in the Sartrean sense, or being controlled by a book and its 'expert' interpreters. That's hardly winning.
Yes, Hell is other people because other people tend to objectify us.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Well, that may well be true, but that's a different part of Sartre. I was talking about the pain created in oneself.
Again, note a context in which we can explore this less abstractly.
But more to the point [mine] most people -- the moral and political and spiritual objectivists -- tend also to objectify themselves. And though some might see this as an example of bad faith, those who are able to take that more sophisticated Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God, are still no less the "winners" here.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I don't know what you are trying to say here. The quotation marks around winners would seem to indicate you are agreeing with me. But the structure of the sentences before seem to indicate you are disagreeing.
Well, my use of them revolves more around the fact that winning itself here is just a subjective point of view. If you think that a belief in God provides you with an objective morality "here and now" and immortality and salvation "there and then", then, for you, it's true.

And neither the modernists nor the postmodernists have access to the language needed to establish that in fact a God, the God, your God either does or does not exist.

Right?

So, for me, "winning" or "losing" in the is/ought world of moral and political and spiritual value judgments is a frame of mind derived from the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

Thus...
After all, what they have faith in is that their God provides them with an objective morality on this side of the grave and then immortality and salvation on the other side of it. How is that not a great source of comfort and consolation?
Winning in other words.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm You're taking them at face value. They say they believe X, so they believe X. I am sure some Christians, for example, are consoled, but I think they are fairly rare - and often quite decent people. Not people who are railing at women who get abortions. I mean, how many of the fingerpointing Christians look like they are doing well. How many seem connected well to their own body language when discussing a range of issues, from personal to political? How many seem to have much mental flexibility, iow to reframe an argument? You can smell the introjection. Which means that undigested ideas are floating around unitegrated in their personalities. They haven't chewed their food and they do not look comfortable. I am sure moments of judgment - like it is for nearly all of us - can offer moment of respite, but I think your....well, it sort of comes off as envy of them is misplaced. The are at best 'winners' as you said above, but hardly winners.
Look, each and every individual who does believe in a God, the God my God -- or in a No God spiritual path like Buddhism -- is either more or less comforted and consoled by what they believe.

Right?

Sure, re dasein as "I" understand it, we can go deeper into the life that they lived. We can explore the particular trajectory of experiences, relationships, access to information and knowledge etc., that predisposed them to particular points of view about a zillion different things.

But what remains the same is that "here and now" they do in fact feel comforted and consoled by what they believe. And the modernists and the postmodernist are basically in the same boat when it comes to establishing what ought or ought not to comfort and console us in regard to God and religion.

So...
And who is to say that, given the profound mystery of existence itself, it does not come down to a God, the God? Then that more or less blind leap of faith to my God.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Sure....
Same here: sure.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Though all this has little to do with identity.
That would depend on the individual. What does being "torn up" mean to them? And, again, philosophically, what would constitute "good faith" or "bad faith" in assessing whether another is, in fact, "torn up".
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Maybe I said 'torn up' but I've now forgotten I did. Or maybe I responded when you said it, but I can't remember it. Either way, I don't know what you mean here.
Back to Roe v. Wade.

Some were "torn up" by the Supremes ruling. Others were not. They were ecstatic. Some believe they acted in "good faith" in linking their arguments to the Constitution. Others believe they acted in "bad faith" in that they construe the Constitution itself as an adjunct of their Christian dogmas.

Okay, Mr. Modernist and Mr. Postmodernist, discuss. Where are the limits of language most likely to be demonstrated here if not when the discussion comes to focus on the morality of abortion itself?
After all, few are as "fractured and fragmented" as "I" am in regard to these things. And the one thing I suspect I do share in common with most postmodernists is the assumption that in a No God world, human existence itself is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that's before the part where "I" tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion for all the rest of eternity.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm meaningless to whom? I don't think there is some objective meaninglessness. I think that's a nonsensical idea.
More to the point, meaning in regard to what?

I know! Let's choose a context, describe what is meaningful about it to us and try to communicate that to someone who does not find it meaningful at all. Or who does find it meaningful but not in the same way.

So, how are conflicts here to be resolved? Well, there's God of course. And for others, ideology and political dogmas. Then those who embrace Kant and the rational pursuit of categorical imperatives and moral obligations. Then those who claim it all comes back to Nature. Their own rendition of what is natural or unnatural in regard to things like race and gender and sexual orientation. And the role of government. Those who insist it all revolves around "we", those who insist it all revolves around "me". The sociopaths and their "in the absence of God, all things are permitted" mentality.

Then, of course, me and the arguments I make in the OPs above.

Then you...
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm As living creatures we have our own meaning, even if it is just the primal seeking of food and shelter for the day. Those with more luck or skill will find other meaning and their existence, the individuals will not be meaningless to them. And yes, your views often seem quite postmodern. IOW given that postmodernists are a pretty motely crew your position, if placed amongst theirs would not stand out as an outlier, far from the main body of postmodernists. I think it would be right in there with the others, despite what you quoted much earlier from one of them. I mean, they have their disagreements and varied opinions. I haven't seen the big ones say they are nihilists os much, but per definition they are, most of them. In the sense that they don't believe there is THE GOOD and THE EVIL. They tend to focus on nurture, which you do, though now i know you acknowledge the effects of nature, still I see dasein mentioned over and over and in your use this seems primarily nurture. So, you'd fit in there. They have a problem with objectivists whether secular or religious. Most I've encountered do not present themselves as depressed in the way you do. But that's not great marketing, generally, and who makes much money as a philosopher? Ya gotta be careful. So, a number may well be, I don't know.
Again, this is what I call a "general description intellectual contraption".

What we need then is a context. Preferably one in which the circumstances revolve around "I" in the is/ought world. A "situation" in which conflicting goods erupt. The abortion conflagration always works for me.

One in which someone here who construes him or herself to be a postmodernist chooses language to address it. And the language "I" choose.

See where that takes us...
Iwannaplato
Posts: 6591
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Iwannaplato »

iambiguous wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 6:58 pm What we need here of course is a context. One in which the modernist and the postmodernist discuss what through the use of language can be encompassed and communicated objectively and what cannot.
Modernist? I'm not sure why the modernists need to get brought in.
One could compare with scientific realists. Or realists in general. Or folk philosophy, the mix that's out on the streets. Modernists? But it's your interest, so pursue that, then.
For example, the Supreme Court here in America just overturned Roe v. Wade. A modernist and a postmodernist discussing that. The objective facts involved that every rational man and woman can agree on, and the conflicting, subjective value judgments regarding the morality of abortion itself.
Still not sure why you are choosing modernism, that's a pretty specific period. But anyway, what do you think the modernists would have considered objective and subjective regarding that case?
Language and law. Language and ethics.
There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that are in some sense present in human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social forces. Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially determined.
from the online Brittanica.
Again, we'll need an actual set of circumstances in order to note what either can or cannot be communicated objectively. However one intertwines nature and nurture.
Well, not if our goal was to note generalities, which is part of what we've been doing. 'either' implies you are still seeing the main split between mordernism and postmodernism.
For me, it's less nature vs. nurture and more objective truth vs. subjective opinion.
So, epistemology. For me, related to identity, it is important whether both nature and nurture affect us/are us. That we are not infinitely malleable. That some beliefs will suit each individual better than others, for example. This plays into issues that come out below.
Any postmodernists here willing to choose a context?
Are you addressing a general audience via my post? I can't say I identify as a postmodernist, though I agree with many things they have noticed. I think it's too broad a group to think they will have the same reactions to Roe vs. Wade, I mean even at the meta level of objective facts vs. subjective reactions.
Is a deontological narrative/agenda here even possible?
Iwannaplato wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 1:54 amI am not sure what that sentence means. Deontological agendas seem pretty possible though agenda is an odd word choice. Or, it seems like it. Are you saying that deontological ethics are less possible than consequentialist ones? in what sense? If not why mention just deontological agendas?
Moral narrative/political agenda. How the two are acted out in regard to particular situations.

"In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action." wiki
So, you don't want a consequentialist view of abortion? To varying degrees nearly every person is at least in part consequentialist, with those on the liberal side tending to be more consequentialist, but both use consequentialist arguments in the case of abortion say. From this website we have..
https://philosophynow.org/issues/4/Cons ... d_Abortion
and just so we don't think that consequentialism is only on the prochoice side....
Peter Singer has a utilitarian attack on abortion, though oddly I can only find responses to his positiong online.
and the bulk of antiabortionists also use consequentialists arguments when it suits them. I would also argue they have unexpressed consequentialist concerns about what happens if abortion is legal and not just about the fetus.
Okay, let's take this "theory" down out of the intellectual clouds and explore it in regard to the morality of abortion. How are the personal opinions rooted existentially in dasein of the postmodernists going to be different from the personal opinions rooted existentially in dasein of the modernists? For both there is what can be communicated through language objectively and what cannot.
Well, I can't represent either one. I could take some guesses, but those categories are rather broad.
For instance, one of the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy is that biologically only women can experience it.
Not according to many on the Left nowadays, ie transpersons.
Yes, but with God on board, those on either end of the moral and political spectrum then have that crucial "transcending font" to fall back on.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Sure, but that's either bad faith, in the Sartrean sense, or being controlled by a book and its 'expert' interpreters. That's hardly winning.
Yes, Hell is other people because other people tend to objectify us.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Well, that may well be true, but that's a different part of Sartre. I was talking about the pain created in oneself.
Again, note a context in which we can explore this less abstractly.
Well, I did, if quickly. The relationship with a self-contradictory set of texts, the bible. This demands ignoring cognitive dissonance, which, I think causes a person to be at odds with herself. On some level they must note, but avoid noting.... that Christians in general don't seem to care about living babies. Often they were pro-nuke in the conservative belts of the US, but nuke use would lead to many dead unborn babies (and mothers) and other innocents. IOW there are context where it is ok to kill the unborn. So, what is officially deontology - thou shalt not kill the fetus - is actually utilitarian - unless it's enemy babies and we really do have to blow X up. Awareness of which would cause anxiey, so it's avoided. Along with a mass of other things that need not be noticed. People suffer the beliefs they claim to have. If you can look that shit in the face, it may be hard, but you actually suffer less. Again, the people who are anti-abortion and make noise about it don't look at all at east with themselves. This is not a necessity for a theist, but once you have a set of texts like the Bible as THE TRUTH, you have a problem, becuase of the diverse contradictory nature of those texts and this is exacerbated by how the texts have tended to be used. And the way the texts are organized and used leads to a necessity for the sinner to exist and be confronted. One can only deal with the constant anxiety by have the bad other, so these guys are very anxious, and that's a direct result of their beliefs. And one need not be what you call an objectivist to need the enemy, I should add. And secular people can also have beliefs that necessitate similar patterns. But the basic point is nah, they are not comfortable and the contradictions in the Bible (OT vs NT for example) are a constant source of contradictory positions AND attendant discomfort. No one should by their PR that they are consoled.

Now you give it a go. Explain what you see. You seemed jealous of Christians, as far as their being comforted and consoled. What is it you assume about them and their experience that makes you think they are suffering less than you? You seemed put off by my 'speculating' but I don't see how you could have arrived at your envy/criticism of them without speculating? You have said elsewhere that comfort/consolation is the foundation of their believing certain things and also that their beliefs are effective. How do you know this is their motive, without speculating? How do you know they are more comforted, in general, than non-beleivers? If it is via deduction, wow, that is speculative, because imagine all the effects and side effects of their beliefs. How could one possibly track all that, especially with deduction? Would you really want to be one of them? Could you give a specific example of a Christian who is publically actively anti-abortion whose life you'd want and trade for now? There might be one,but would that individual actually represent the group well. Again these are questions to be mulled since it's really beyond what my interest was in when joining in earlier.

And just to be doubly clear, consider those farewell questions (on this topic) for you to mull, this isn't my interest area. I may hop in with other posters' posts or perhaps you on specific issues, but your main issue is not one I can satisfy, not being a postmodernist, nor is it of much interest to me.
But more to the point [mine] most people -- the moral and political and spiritual objectivists -- tend also to objectify themselves. And though some might see this as an example of bad faith, those who are able to take that more sophisticated Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God, are still no less the "winners" here.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I don't know what you are trying to say here. The quotation marks around winners would seem to indicate you are agreeing with me. But the structure of the sentences before seem to indicate you are disagreeing.
Well, my use of them revolves more around the fact that winning itself here is just a subjective point of view. If you think that a belief in God provides you with an objective morality "here and now" and immortality and salvation "there and then", then, for you, it's true.
Ah, ok, maybe I misread you then. You don't see them as having it easier than you in their comfort, but rather you see them as judging themselves as winners. That I can agree with more. Of course, they need losers and to interact with them. That's how they 'know'. This pattern is of course not restricted to Christiand and is present to varying degrees in many groups, religious and secular.
And neither the modernists nor the postmodernists have access to the language needed to establish that in fact a God, the God, your God either does or does not exist.

Right?
Yeah, I don't know what that means. I sounds like you're saying their some kind of semantics problem. Or an epistemological problem?
So, for me, "winning" or "losing" in the is/ought world of moral and political and spiritual value judgments is a frame of mind derived from the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

Thus...
After all, what they have faith in is that their God provides them with an objective morality on this side of the grave and then immortality and salvation on the other side of it. How is that not a great source of comfort and consolation?
Winning in other words.
Now 'winning' without citation marks. You seem incredulous that they could not be. But deduction with extremely complicated systems like a human being is extremely speculative. How do their beliefs in God actually affect them? There can be one effect in a moment, with all sorts of side effects. And then we can look at the empirical evidence. Do the anti-abortionists, the religious ones seem comfortable, more so than the opponents? Do the religious conservatives seem comfortatin and consoled or angry, irate, troubled, disconcerted, afraid of contamination, slippery sloping all sorts of arguments with all the attendant anxiety, etc. If you have beliefs that are contradictory, run against some of your own nature and the ways in which you got these ideas do not respect the learner as an agent, you have all sorts of side effects, and I think these are clearly visible when one encounters them. My experience does not match your deduction and incredulity. I think your envy is misplaced.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm You're taking them at face value. They say they believe X, so they believe X. I am sure some Christians, for example, are consoled, but I think they are fairly rare - and often quite decent people. Not people who are railing at women who get abortions. I mean, how many of the fingerpointing Christians look like they are doing well. How many seem connected well to their own body language when discussing a range of issues, from personal to political? How many seem to have much mental flexibility, iow to reframe an argument? You can smell the introjection. Which means that undigested ideas are floating around unitegrated in their personalities. They haven't chewed their food and they do not look comfortable. I am sure moments of judgment - like it is for nearly all of us - can offer moment of respite, but I think your....well, it sort of comes off as envy of them is misplaced. The are at best 'winners' as you said above, but hardly winners.
Look, each and every individual who does believe in a God, the God my God -- or in a No God spiritual path like Buddhism -- is either more or less comforted and consoled by what they believe.

Right?
I obviously don't think so. Buddhism is a complicated case, and I don't think it does either. What judgmental, anal retentive communities. But that's a tangent on a tangent for me. I think you're confusing PR and marketing for the people are actually like.

And if it is comfort you are seeking and you think they are comforted, you could always try it out until you reject the process of like some of it or keep with it.
Sure, re dasein as "I" understand it, we can go deeper into the life that they lived. We can explore the particular trajectory of experiences, relationships, access to information and knowledge etc., that predisposed them to particular points of view about a zillion different things.

But what remains the same is that "here and now" they do in fact feel comforted and consoled by what they believe.
That's speculation...
They may say it. And in moments it may be true, but I think the same set of beliefs in other moments causes them all sorts of grief. It's not a coincidence that many of them call themselves god-fearing, though I think there are a lot of other subtler and not so subtle side effects of their beliefs. And it is simply not my experience meeting them. I don't think, oh, now I've found people consoled and comforted. Irate, blaming, fearful, suppressing, holding it all together with a lot of mental suppression and confusion denial. I mean, theyre not, by a long shot, the only ones doing this, but no sorry, it neither fits my experience of them, which is not small, nor does it make sense on a theoretical level. They need the dynamic with the sinners. They are holding it together through trying not to be something, and it takes a lot of work. And there's a lot of anger and fear. And guilt and shame. I mean, there's no room to even feel into what they really want.

I mean would you really choose to be one if you could flip a switch? Their mental states are something to envy? They are actually consoled? Apart from the mindreading you'd then be sharing with me, how much do they seem that way?
Back to Roe v. Wade.

Some were "torn up" by the Supremes ruling. Others were not. They were ecstatic. Some believe they acted in "good faith" in linking their arguments to the Constitution. Others believe they acted in "bad faith" in that they construe the Constitution itself as an adjunct of their Christian dogmas.

Okay, Mr. Modernist and Mr. Postmodernist, discuss. Where are the limits of language most likely to be demonstrated here if not when the discussion comes to focus on the morality of abortion itself?
Yeah, I can't answer for those guys, and I am still not sure who you mean by modernists. I mean, I think immediately of people like James Joyce or Virigina Woolf. Modernism was primarily an aesthetic postion. Post-moderniism is both aesthetic and philosophical, including moral and epistemology.
After all, few are as "fractured and fragmented" as "I" am in regard to these things. And the one thing I suspect I do share in common with most postmodernists is the assumption that in a No God world, human existence itself is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that's before the part where "I" tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion for all the rest of eternity.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm meaningless to whom? I don't think there is some objective meaninglessness. I think that's a nonsensical idea.
More to the point, meaning in regard to what?
Maybe.
I know! Let's choose a context, describe what is meaningful about it to us and try to communicate that to someone who does not find it meaningful at all. Or who does find it meaningful but not in the same way.
I assume 'it' refers to existence. If someone doesn't find it meaningful, I am not going to lecture them. I don't know who your 'us' is above. I wouldn't be trying to convince them what is universally meaningful. I think that's as confused as objectively meaningless is. If they asked me what is meaningful and they didn't seem to be in a place of major depression, I would probably ask them a lot of questions about what they have found meaningful, to them. What they value.
So, how are conflicts here to be resolved? Well, there's God of course. And for others, ideology and political dogmas. Then those who embrace Kant and the rational pursuit of categorical imperatives and moral obligations. Then those who claim it all comes back to Nature. Their own rendition of what is natural or unnatural in regard to things like race and gender and sexual orientation. And the role of government. Those who insist it all revolves around "we", those who insist it all revolves around "me". The sociopaths and their "in the absence of God, all things are permitted" mentality.

Then, of course, me and the arguments I make in the OPs above.

Then you...
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm As living creatures we have our own meaning, even if it is just the primal seeking of food and shelter for the day. Those with more luck or skill will find other meaning and their existence, the individuals will not be meaningless to them. And yes, your views often seem quite postmodern. IOW given that postmodernists are a pretty motely crew your position, if placed amongst theirs would not stand out as an outlier, far from the main body of postmodernists. I think it would be right in there with the others, despite what you quoted much earlier from one of them. I mean, they have their disagreements and varied opinions. I haven't seen the big ones say they are nihilists os much, but per definition they are, most of them. In the sense that they don't believe there is THE GOOD and THE EVIL. They tend to focus on nurture, which you do, though now i know you acknowledge the effects of nature, still I see dasein mentioned over and over and in your use this seems primarily nurture. So, you'd fit in there. They have a problem with objectivists whether secular or religious. Most I've encountered do not present themselves as depressed in the way you do. But that's not great marketing, generally, and who makes much money as a philosopher? Ya gotta be careful. So, a number may well be, I don't know.
Again, this is what I call a "general description intellectual contraption".
Well that criticism, at least it sounds like one, covers much of you posting, and it's ironic that general description intellectual contraption is an example of itself, as is most of your post here.

I could easily list concrete interests I have from social to artistic to intellectual. But you can imagine these as well as anyone. There is no point in my reeling off my person interests and desires, what I find meaning in. They are not universal, so they do not contribute to convincing others that that is where meaning lies. But to say life is meaningless is confused. And it as if you are not a participant. Is your life meaningless? How do you know this? You don't find some activities more meaningful for you than others?
What we need then is a context. Preferably one in which the circumstances revolve around "I" in the is/ought world.
A "situation" in which conflicting goods erupt. The abortion conflagration always works for me.

One in which someone here who construes him or herself to be a postmodernist chooses language to address it. And the language "I" choose.

See where that takes us...
Well, I'm not a postmoderist, though, as said, I think some of their work has been helpful and I agree with many things they've said. Of course, they disagree with each other over a lot of things. But someone else who identifies as postmodernist can perhaps jump in. Postmodernism tends towards ethical relativism. So, does that mean everyone gets to do what they want? which would be pro-choice? But then what about murder? I think the best defence for a PM would be to say there is no objective moral stance, but I don't like X, so I will fight against it, whatever X is. But I don't think there is a postmodernist position on abortion. Or better put, there isn't just one...

I'd be leery of taking Christians and any groups at face value. Further I'd be leery of taking one's own mental state as a philosophical position. The reason they seem to be winning or life seems objectively meaningless may have much more to do with your own possible depression and a depression not caused by philosophical insight but rather by your specific life conditions: social connections or lack of, work that challenges one respectfully and interestingly, and of course ghosts from the past. If you want to point at the horrible conclusions of various deductions to show that it has nothing to do with you in particular, well, that's a large part of depression: seemingly obvious deduction that constantly afflicts an individual.

Anyway, we gone quite a ways from where I entered, so I'll leave it to the postmodernists to give their position, in relation to the abortion issue, since that's what you want. Hopefully they'll be honest enough to say that their take isnot the THE postmoderist take, for obvious reasons. I'll focus on other issues that appear in the thread. Regardless of the root - true conclusions about reality or depression - good luck. I would think some postmodernist will come by, though I can't imagine one helping with either root problem.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm
iambiguous wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 6:58 pm What we need here of course is a context. One in which the modernist and the postmodernist discuss what through the use of language can be encompassed and communicated objectively and what cannot.
Modernist? I'm not sure why the modernists need to get brought in.
One could compare with scientific realists. Or realists in general. Or folk philosophy, the mix that's out on the streets. Modernists? But it's your interest, so pursue that, then.
The modernist/postmodernist frame of mind was taken from the Stephen Hicks article above. The gap between "the process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality" vs. "interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality."

Taking intellectual contraptions of this sort out into the world of actual conflicting human interactions.
For example, the Supreme Court here in America just overturned Roe v. Wade. A modernist and a postmodernist discussing that. The objective facts involved that every rational man and woman can agree on, and the conflicting, subjective value judgments regarding the morality of abortion itself.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pmStill not sure why you are choosing modernism, that's a pretty specific period. But anyway, what do you think the modernists would have considered objective and subjective regarding that case?
Well, technically, the Supremes ruled that access to abortion is not a Constitutional right. But many are convinced that their ruling revolves more around their belief that abortion is immoral. And, in striking down Roe, it leaves it up to the states one by one to end the practice. And of course if the MAGA folks succeed in taking control of both the Congress and the White House extending that ban to all 50 states. The key point being that they are convinced that, re either God or deontologically, abortion is immoral, while the postmodernists argue that in regard to value judgments such as this, there is no objective reality.

Thus...
For me, it's less nature vs. nurture and more objective truth vs. subjective opinion.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm So, epistemology. For me, related to identity, it is important whether both nature and nurture affect us/are us. That we are not infinitely malleable. That some beliefs will suit each individual better than others, for example. This plays into issues that come out below.
Again, let's attempt to bring abstractions such as this down to Earth. Pertaining to abortion or to any other human interactions in which there is what we can know and convey objectively to others and what comes down to a matter of conflicting personal opinions.

With abortion, doctors can discuss it as a medical procedure with a minimum of conflict. Similarly, in any given jurisdiction, attorneys can discuss it as a matter of law. Whereas when ethicists discuss it, conflicts can abound.

What I focus in on is why, "for all practical purposes" that is the case. The part where I zoom in on the arguments I make in the OPs here:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296
Moral narrative/political agenda. How the two are acted out in regard to particular situations.

"In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action." wiki
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pmSo, you don't want a consequentialist view of abortion? To varying degrees nearly every person is at least in part consequentialist, with those on the liberal side tending to be more consequentialist, but both use consequentialist arguments in the case of abortion say. From this website we have...
Again, "I" am "fractured and fragmented" in regard to conflicting value judgments. Both sides in the abortion wars are able to note both good and bad consequences when the emphasis is placed either on the "natural right" of the unborn to live or the "political right" of the woman to choose.

What William Barrett called "rival goods".

From my frame of mind, individuals acquire political prejudices here rooted largely in the actual existential trajectory of the life they lived. Embedded in particular historical and cultural and experiential contexts. More so then being able to "think it all through" and, philosophically or otherwise, coming up with the "wisest" conclusion.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm The relationship with a self-contradictory set of texts, the bible. This demands ignoring cognitive dissonance, which, I think causes a person to be at odds with herself. On some level they must note, but avoid noting.... that Christians in general don't seem to care about living babies. Often they were pro-nuke in the conservative belts of the US, but nuke use would lead to many dead unborn babies (and mothers) and other innocents. IOW there are context where it is ok to kill the unborn. So, what is officially deontology - thou shalt not kill the fetus - is actually utilitarian - unless it's enemy babies and we really do have to blow X up. Awareness of which would cause anxiey, so it's avoided. Along with a mass of other things that need not be noticed. People suffer the beliefs they claim to have. If you can look that shit in the face, it may be hard, but you actually suffer less. Again, the people who are anti-abortion and make noise about it don't look at all at east with themselves. This is not a necessity for a theist, but once you have a set of texts like the Bible as THE TRUTH, you have a problem, becuase of the diverse contradictory nature of those texts and this is exacerbated by how the texts have tended to be used. And the way the texts are organized and used leads to a necessity for the sinner to exist and be confronted. One can only deal with the constant anxiety by have the bad other, so these guys are very anxious, and that's a direct result of their beliefs. And one need not be what you call an objectivist to need the enemy, I should add. And secular people can also have beliefs that necessitate similar patterns. But the basic point is nah, they are not comfortable and the contradictions in the Bible (OT vs NT for example) are a constant source of contradictory positions AND attendant discomfort. No one should by their PR that they are consoled.
This [to me] is still you lumping large numbers of people into these "broad stroke" assumptions you make about those who have one set of beliefs and those who don't. God or No God.

What it still comes down to for me is how an individual thinks about these issues in regard to a particular context involving a particular abortion. What can be communicate objectively and what cannot then and there.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pmNow you give it a go. Explain what you see. You seemed jealous of Christians, as far as their being comforted and consoled. What is it you assume about them and their experience that makes you think they are suffering less than you? You seemed put off by my 'speculating' but I don't see how you could have arrived at your envy/criticism of them without speculating? You have said elsewhere that comfort/consolation is the foundation of their believing certain things and also that their beliefs are effective. How do you know this is their motive, without speculating? How do you know they are more comforted, in general, than non-beleivers? If it is via deduction, wow, that is speculative, because imagine all the effects and side effects of their beliefs. How could one possibly track all that, especially with deduction? Would you really want to be one of them? Could you give a specific example of a Christian who is publically actively anti-abortion whose life you'd want and trade for now? There might be one,but would that individual actually represent the group well. Again these are questions to be mulled since it's really beyond what my interest was in when joining in earlier.
What particular Christian, given what particular set of circumstances pertaining to abortion as a moral issue? The bottom line is that many Christians are able to believe that their views on abortion as a moral issue are Scripted in the Bible. That is the source of their comfort and their consolation. They know that God is judging them on this side of the grave and if they do their very best to sustain God's will in regard to their own pregnancy they will be rewarded with immortality and salvation.

Talk about a consequentialist philosophy. The ultimate consequences. It's just that consequentialism and utilitarianism and deontology are all intertwined "in their head" in the will of God. Their God of course.
But more to the point [mine] most people -- the moral and political and spiritual objectivists -- tend also to objectify themselves. And though some might see this as an example of bad faith, those who are able to take that more sophisticated Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God, are still no less the "winners" here.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I don't know what you are trying to say here. The quotation marks around winners would seem to indicate you are agreeing with me. But the structure of the sentences before seem to indicate you are disagreeing.
Well, my use of them revolves more around the fact that winning itself here is just a subjective point of view. If you think that a belief in God provides you with an objective morality "here and now" and immortality and salvation "there and then", then, for you, it's true.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Ah, ok, maybe I misread you then. You don't see them as having it easier than you in their comfort, but rather you see them as judging themselves as winners. That I can agree with more. Of course, they need losers and to interact with them. That's how they 'know'. This pattern is of course not restricted to Christiand and is present to varying degrees in many groups, religious and secular.
I don't believe in God. I believe instead "here and now" that my life is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that, in regard to my interactions with others from the cradle to the grave, I believe 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."

Finally, I believe that in the near future I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Now, if someone is able to take that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God -- any God -- how can that not make their own life "easier" to endure?
And neither the modernists nor the postmodernists have access to the language needed to establish that in fact a God, the God, your God either does or does not exist.

Right?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Yeah, I don't know what that means. I sounds like you're saying their some kind of semantics problem. Or an epistemological problem?
On the contrary, it all comes down to whether, given the life you lived, you are able to convince yourself that having faith in God -- or for those like IC here, insisting that the Christian God does in fact exist -- is a reasonable thing to do. If you can, you then have access to objective -- righteous -- morality here and now and can look forward to immortality and salvation there and then.

That is certainly "winning" to me, given my own bleak assumptions. It's just that any number of smug, arrogant atheists will insist they are losers. Why? Because they don't have the guts to face life as it really is, without God.

As though those who do believe in God are not able to accumulate more rather than less substantive arguments to back up their own leaps of faith.

Over the years, I have met any number of religious folks I had a great deal of respect for.

Thus...
After all, what they have faith in is that their God provides them with an objective morality on this side of the grave and then immortality and salvation on the other side of it. How is that not a great source of comfort and consolation?
Winning in other words.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Now 'winning' without citation marks.
Yeah, again, that's my point. There are religious folks who are able think through their leap of faith on par with those like Kierkegaard or Pascal. They're not just brainwashed dolts. They've earned their sense of "winning". But to any number of dogmatic atheists they will always be losers. And that's because, unlike them, they lack both the intellectual honesty and integrity to accept that God simply Does Not Exist.

And then, from my frame of mind, leaving each of us as individuals aside, we get "general description intellectual contraptions" like this:
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm You seem incredulous that they could not be. But deduction with extremely complicated systems like a human being is extremely speculative. How do their beliefs in God actually affect them? There can be one effect in a moment, with all sorts of side effects. And then we can look at the empirical evidence. Do the anti-abortionists, the religious ones seem comfortable, more so than the opponents? Do the religious conservatives seem comfortatin and consoled or angry, irate, troubled, disconcerted, afraid of contamination, slippery sloping all sorts of arguments with all the attendant anxiety, etc. If you have beliefs that are contradictory, run against some of your own nature and the ways in which you got these ideas do not respect the learner as an agent, you have all sorts of side effects, and I think these are clearly visible when one encounters them. My experience does not match your deduction and incredulity. I think your envy is misplaced.
Well, I don't agree. I'd very much like to be convinced to take that leap of faith back to God. To scrap the part about an essentially meaningless and purposeless life, hopelessly fractured and fragmented and waiting in line for the Grim Reaper.

So, sure, some slap themselves on the back. So far they've managed to avoid that "weak-minded" fate. After all, for years and years, I once did myself.
Back to Roe v. Wade.

Some were "torn up" by the Supremes ruling. Others were not. They were ecstatic. Some believe they acted in "good faith" in linking their arguments to the Constitution. Others believe they acted in "bad faith" in that they construe the Constitution itself as an adjunct of their Christian dogmas.

Okay, Mr. Modernist and Mr. Postmodernist, discuss. Where are the limits of language most likely to be demonstrated here if not when the discussion comes to focus on the morality of abortion itself?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Yeah, I can't answer for those guys, and I am still not sure who you mean by modernists. I mean, I think immediately of people like James Joyce or Virigina Woolf. Modernism was primarily an aesthetic postion. Post-moderniism is both aesthetic and philosophical, including moral and epistemology.
Well, I explained above where I came upon that distinction: unmasking as cognitive, guided by objective standards in regard to the morality of abortion vs. language connecting only to more language still, not having access to an objective reality. Where did James Joyce and Virginia Woolf come down on the morality of abortion? Which one was closer to the objective truth? Whereas if the discussion revolved around it as a medical procedure, they would have access to that wouldn't they?
After all, few are as "fractured and fragmented" as "I" am in regard to these things. And the one thing I suspect I do share in common with most postmodernists is the assumption that in a No God world, human existence itself is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that's before the part where "I" tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion for all the rest of eternity.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm meaningless to whom? I don't think there is some objective meaninglessness. I think that's a nonsensical idea.
More to the point, meaning in regard to what?
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Maybe.
That's why what would most interest me is an exchange between someone who shares the modernist and postmodernist perspective as encompassed by Hicks above contrasted with the distinction I make between I in the either/or world and "I" in the is/ought world. Between objective language communication and exchanges of but subjective personal opinions.
I know! Let's choose a context, describe what is meaningful about it to us and try to communicate that to someone who does not find it meaningful at all. Or who does find it meaningful but not in the same way.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I assume 'it' refers to existence. If someone doesn't find it meaningful, I am not going to lecture them. I don't know who your 'us' is above. I wouldn't be trying to convince them what is universally meaningful. I think that's as confused as objectively meaningless is. If they asked me what is meaningful and they didn't seem to be in a place of major depression, I would probably ask them a lot of questions about what they have found meaningful, to them. What they value.
So, how are conflicts here to be resolved? Well, there's God of course. And for others, ideology and political dogmas. Then those who embrace Kant and the rational pursuit of categorical imperatives and moral obligations. Then those who claim it all comes back to Nature. Their own rendition of what is natural or unnatural in regard to things like race and gender and sexual orientation. And the role of government. Those who insist it all revolves around "we", those who insist it all revolves around "me". The sociopaths and their "in the absence of God, all things are permitted" mentality.

Then, of course, me and the arguments I make in the OPs above.

Then you...
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm As living creatures we have our own meaning, even if it is just the primal seeking of food and shelter for the day. Those with more luck or skill will find other meaning and their existence, the individuals will not be meaningless to them. And yes, your views often seem quite postmodern. IOW given that postmodernists are a pretty motely crew your position, if placed amongst theirs would not stand out as an outlier, far from the main body of postmodernists. I think it would be right in there with the others, despite what you quoted much earlier from one of them. I mean, they have their disagreements and varied opinions. I haven't seen the big ones say they are nihilists os much, but per definition they are, most of them. In the sense that they don't believe there is THE GOOD and THE EVIL. They tend to focus on nurture, which you do, though now i know you acknowledge the effects of nature, still I see dasein mentioned over and over and in your use this seems primarily nurture. So, you'd fit in there. They have a problem with objectivists whether secular or religious. Most I've encountered do not present themselves as depressed in the way you do. But that's not great marketing, generally, and who makes much money as a philosopher? Ya gotta be careful. So, a number may well be, I don't know.
Again, this is what I call a "general description intellectual contraption".
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Well that criticism, at least it sounds like one, covers much of you posting, and it's ironic that general description intellectual contraption is an example of itself, as is most of your post here.
Again, ever and always I am ready, willing and able to bring our didactic abstractions down to Earth. Re abortion or any other interactions in which the limits of language can be explored.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I could easily list concrete interests I have from social to artistic to intellectual. But you can imagine these as well as anyone. There is no point in my reeling off my person interests and desires, what I find meaning in. They are not universal, so they do not contribute to convincing others that that is where meaning lies. But to say life is meaningless is confused. And it as if you are not a participant. Is your life meaningless? How do you know this? You don't find some activities more meaningful for you than others?
What I do is to contrast those who, in regard to conflicting value judgments, are convinced that the language can be found to resolve them objectively, and those like me who, in a No God world, are "here and now" convinced that there is not.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Postmodernism tends towards ethical relativism. So, does that mean everyone gets to do what they want? which would be pro-choice? But then what about murder?
Well, look at the mentality of many sociopaths. More or less philosophically, they start with the assumption that "in the absence of God all things are permitted". Morality for them revolves around "what's in it for me"?

And if that includes rape and murder and child abuse and genocide, they rationalize it. It's not doing the right thing that matters to them but not getting caught doing what others will insist that no rational or virtuous man and women ought to do.

That's why they are so scary. There's no reasoning with them. You can't engage them in discussions of Plato or Kant or Marx or Smith. It's "me, myself and I" all the way down. Some are just more of less intellectually sophisticated in defending it.
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Modernism evolved from the deontological narrative of Christianity. The scientific enlightenment may have dispelled the supernatural myth but the moral code is basically intact and survives in the law of free countries.
The US is less free than it was at its inception when the individual mattered more than any commercial, military, feudal, or political machine.

Language is the medium by which we make sense of what we find and what we seek to find. So how is a 'language of postmodernism' even possible? As soon as a ' postmodernist' makes a claim about language he is using metalanguage: as soon as Dasein chooses Dasein is either modern or medieval.
Iwannaplato
Posts: 6591
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Iwannaplato »

Belinda wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:36 am Modernism evolved from the deontological narrative of Christianity. The scientific enlightenment may have dispelled the supernatural myth but the moral code is basically intact and survives in the law of free countries.
The US is less free than it was at its inception when the individual mattered more than any commercial, military, feudal, or political machine.
At it's inception there were slaves, indentured servents, women and children had very limited rights.
I am still not sure what people are referring to when they say 'modernism' here.

For example: from The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online
The term modernism denotes an explosion of aesthetic innovation in Europe, Britain, Ireland and America from roughly 1880 to 1950. It embraces a hugely diverse group of works which unevenly manifest some or all of the following characteristics: a sense of a decisive break with tradition; formal experimentation; previously forbidden or marginalized content; a mania for the new; emphasis upon perception and experience over objective reality; exploration of new models of subjectivity; and challenges to existing scientific, technological, philosophical and religious models. A spirit of critique animates many of these characteristics, as artists used aesthetic innovation to demand that Western civilization be either renovated or razed. The variety of works it encompasses means, of course, that no one work exemplifies all these traits, or to the same extent, and that many works do so in contradictory ways. As such, the formal experimentation and spirit of critique that typify modernism in general can manifest in wildly divergent ways in specific works: minimalism or prolixity, masculinism or feminism, fascism or communism, postcolonialism or imperialism, violence or pacifism, art as cultural saviour or disease to be cured. The aesthetics to which these tendencies give rise are likewise various, both within and across the arts, producing effects that range from the soothing soft focus of Impressionism to the harsh dehumanization of Futurism, and from the extreme close-up of stream of consciousness to the impenetrability of abstract expressionism - and almost everything else in between, even including realism (deployed to absurdist effect).
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 10:16 am
Belinda wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:36 am Modernism evolved from the deontological narrative of Christianity. The scientific enlightenment may have dispelled the supernatural myth but the moral code is basically intact and survives in the law of free countries.
The US is less free than it was at its inception when the individual mattered more than any commercial, military, feudal, or political machine.
At it's inception there were slaves, indentured servents, women and children had very limited rights.
I am still not sure what people are referring to when they say 'modernism' here.

For example: from The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online
The term modernism denotes an explosion of aesthetic innovation in Europe, Britain, Ireland and America from roughly 1880 to 1950. It embraces a hugely diverse group of works which unevenly manifest some or all of the following characteristics: a sense of a decisive break with tradition; formal experimentation; previously forbidden or marginalized content; a mania for the new; emphasis upon perception and experience over objective reality; exploration of new models of subjectivity; and challenges to existing scientific, technological, philosophical and religious models. A spirit of critique animates many of these characteristics, as artists used aesthetic innovation to demand that Western civilization be either renovated or razed. The variety of works it encompasses means, of course, that no one work exemplifies all these traits, or to the same extent, and that many works do so in contradictory ways. As such, the formal experimentation and spirit of critique that typify modernism in general can manifest in wildly divergent ways in specific works: minimalism or prolixity, masculinism or feminism, fascism or communism, postcolonialism or imperialism, violence or pacifism, art as cultural saviour or disease to be cured. The aesthetics to which these tendencies give rise are likewise various, both within and across the arts, producing effects that range from the soothing soft focus of Impressionism to the harsh dehumanization of Futurism, and from the extreme close-up of stream of consciousness to the impenetrability of abstract expressionism - and almost everything else in between, even including realism (deployed to absurdist effect).
By modernism I refer to the view of man's past where Europeans experienced the rebirth of post Socratic Greek culture, where the human is the measure of truth, beauty and goodness.
https://www.history.com/topics/renaissa ... 0and%20art.

Renaissance affected politics and religions so there were revolutions and reformations. People were emerging from medievalism. Christians were trying to align their faith with reason, or abandon it for reason, so gradually Renaissance evolved into a period of scientific enlightenment. Modernism is the general view that the world is a place of order, and reason can be relied upon to access that order.

Modernism did not arrive suddenly fully formed, so we have 'early modern Europe'.
Iwannaplato
Posts: 6591
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Iwannaplato »

Belinda wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:07 am By modernism I refer to the view of man's past where Europeans experienced the rebirth of post Socratic Greek culture, where the human is the measure of truth, beauty and goodness.
https://www.history.com/topics/renaissa ... 0and%20art.
I mean, now I know what you mean, but that's the Renaissance. And Renassiance philosophy and art are often contrasted with Modernism. The latter has a lot of qualities the former did not. And they did not relate to reason and authority in the same ways. Of course humnas
Modernism did not arrive suddenly fully formed, so we have 'early modern Europe'.
Yes, we have the adjective 'modern' but modernism is a specific set of trends. Everything builds off what went before it. Postmodernism does have modernist qualities but that doesn't make it modernism. They came much closer together in time (even given the way cultural time is speeding up) than the Renaissance and Modernism.

I mean, I'm being fussy, but Moderism is something fairly specific. It comes after Romanticism, for example, in literature and other arts....

https://www.summitlearning.org/docs/227310

You mention...
Modernism is the general view that the world is a place of order, and reason can be relied upon to access that order.
but I don't think this holds clearly for modernism....
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.

Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, and divisionist painting. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism[a][2][3] and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody.[c][4] Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists also rejected religious belief.[5][d] A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness concerning artistic and social traditions, which often led to experimentation with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating works of art.[7]


That from Wikipedia, this from the New World Encyclopedia....
Modernist art reflected the deracinated experience of life in which tradition, community, collective identity, and faith were eroding. In the twentieth century, the mechanized mass slaughter of the First World War was a watershed event that fueled modernist distrust of reason and further sundered complacent views of the steady moral improvement of human society and belief in progress.


I think a better word might be contemporary or current for what you and Iambiguous are after.

Moderism and Modernists are a pretty specific group and time period and further go right against some of the core ideas of the Renaissance.

And perhaps more importantly, there are so many modernists around now. That period ended. Of course those writers and artists still influence, but the movement stopped in many ways. And it did not all transform into postmodernism. It just faded into a secular mish mosh of contemporary philosophies with their mixtures of science, realism - which the modernists rebelled against in art at least -, postmodernism, folk philosophies, common sense or 'common sense', romanticism, technocratic obsession and so on.
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

It's good to suggest more exact terms but we can't discuss postmodernism without first establishing what modernism is.

Broadly I was saying modernism is a world view that was a departure from the medieval God-centred world view. Beginning with renaissance of Greek humanism and evolving by way of religious reformations and subsequent political revolutions, the human, not God, was the arbiter of truth, good, and beauty.

Romanticism is characterised by its championing of individualism. It's actually easy to see that Romantic individualism began as rationalisation of the industrial revolution and the urbanisation process. Technology was becoming a value in its own right.
Phil8659
Posts: 396
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2022 11:50 am
Contact:

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Phil8659 »

Actually, the title alone is so depressing, one could only be cheered up, by being in bed with a good woman.

I really do not see, how anyone, but a potato could come up with that phrase.

Really? We are born with the ability to learn grammar systems because Language is Universal and Intelligible, while Grammars are Particular and Perceptible. But claiming, language can be got from something perceptible? Really? Bull Shit.
Now, if one even came closer with something like, The Grammar of Postmodernism, one would still have to rush to the bathroom just to hurl in the toilet.
Or one, if literate would simply say, Sketches of Postmodernism, like they used to do when a world of scholars were even a little bit more literate.

But that is what mistaking Sophism with Philosophy has always been at war about, the inability to think no better than a vegetable.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

ME:
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm
iambiguous wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 6:58 pm What we need here of course is a context. One in which the modernist and the postmodernist discuss what through the use of language can be encompassed and communicated objectively and what cannot.
Modernist? I'm not sure why the modernists need to get brought in.
One could compare with scientific realists. Or realists in general. Or folk philosophy, the mix that's out on the streets. Modernists? But it's your interest, so pursue that, then.
The modernist/postmodernist frame of mind was taken from the Stephen Hicks article above. The gap between "the process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality" vs. "interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality."

Taking intellectual contraptions of this sort out into the world of actual conflicting human interactions.
For example, the Supreme Court here in America just overturned Roe v. Wade. A modernist and a postmodernist discussing that. The objective facts involved that every rational man and woman can agree on, and the conflicting, subjective value judgments regarding the morality of abortion itself.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pmStill not sure why you are choosing modernism, that's a pretty specific period. But anyway, what do you think the modernists would have considered objective and subjective regarding that case?
Well, technically, the Supremes ruled that access to abortion is not a Constitutional right. But many are convinced that their ruling revolves more around their belief that abortion is immoral. And, in striking down Roe, it leaves it up to the states one by one to end the practice. And of course if the MAGA folks succeed in taking control of both the Congress and the White House extending that ban to all 50 states. The key point being that they are convinced that, re either God or deontologically, abortion is immoral, while the postmodernists argue that in regard to value judgments such as this, there is no objective reality.

Thus...
For me, it's less nature vs. nurture and more objective truth vs. subjective opinion.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm So, epistemology. For me, related to identity, it is important whether both nature and nurture affect us/are us. That we are not infinitely malleable. That some beliefs will suit each individual better than others, for example. This plays into issues that come out below.
Again, let's attempt to bring abstractions such as this down to Earth. Pertaining to abortion or to any other human interactions in which there is what we can know and convey objectively to others and what comes down to a matter of conflicting personal opinions.

With abortion, doctors can discuss it as a medical procedure with a minimum of conflict. Similarly, in any given jurisdiction, attorneys can discuss it as a matter of law. Whereas when ethicists discuss it, conflicts can abound.

What I focus in on is why, "for all practical purposes" that is the case. The part where I zoom in on the arguments I make in the OPs here:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296
Moral narrative/political agenda. How the two are acted out in regard to particular situations.

"In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action." wiki
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pmSo, you don't want a consequentialist view of abortion? To varying degrees nearly every person is at least in part consequentialist, with those on the liberal side tending to be more consequentialist, but both use consequentialist arguments in the case of abortion say. From this website we have...
Again, "I" am "fractured and fragmented" in regard to conflicting value judgments. Both sides in the abortion wars are able to note both good and bad consequences when the emphasis is placed either on the "natural right" of the unborn to live or the "political right" of the woman to choose.

What William Barrett called "rival goods".

From my frame of mind, individuals acquire political prejudices here rooted largely in the actual existential trajectory of the life they lived. Embedded in particular historical and cultural and experiential contexts. More so then being able to "think it all through" and, philosophically or otherwise, coming up with the "wisest" conclusion.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm The relationship with a self-contradictory set of texts, the bible. This demands ignoring cognitive dissonance, which, I think causes a person to be at odds with herself. On some level they must note, but avoid noting.... that Christians in general don't seem to care about living babies. Often they were pro-nuke in the conservative belts of the US, but nuke use would lead to many dead unborn babies (and mothers) and other innocents. IOW there are context where it is ok to kill the unborn. So, what is officially deontology - thou shalt not kill the fetus - is actually utilitarian - unless it's enemy babies and we really do have to blow X up. Awareness of which would cause anxiey, so it's avoided. Along with a mass of other things that need not be noticed. People suffer the beliefs they claim to have. If you can look that shit in the face, it may be hard, but you actually suffer less. Again, the people who are anti-abortion and make noise about it don't look at all at east with themselves. This is not a necessity for a theist, but once you have a set of texts like the Bible as THE TRUTH, you have a problem, becuase of the diverse contradictory nature of those texts and this is exacerbated by how the texts have tended to be used. And the way the texts are organized and used leads to a necessity for the sinner to exist and be confronted. One can only deal with the constant anxiety by have the bad other, so these guys are very anxious, and that's a direct result of their beliefs. And one need not be what you call an objectivist to need the enemy, I should add. And secular people can also have beliefs that necessitate similar patterns. But the basic point is nah, they are not comfortable and the contradictions in the Bible (OT vs NT for example) are a constant source of contradictory positions AND attendant discomfort. No one should by their PR that they are consoled.
This [to me] is still you lumping large numbers of people into these "broad stroke" assumptions you make about those who have one set of beliefs and those who don't. God or No God.

What it still comes down to for me is how an individual thinks about these issues in regard to a particular context involving a particular abortion. What can be communicate objectively and what cannot then and there.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pmNow you give it a go. Explain what you see. You seemed jealous of Christians, as far as their being comforted and consoled. What is it you assume about them and their experience that makes you think they are suffering less than you? You seemed put off by my 'speculating' but I don't see how you could have arrived at your envy/criticism of them without speculating? You have said elsewhere that comfort/consolation is the foundation of their believing certain things and also that their beliefs are effective. How do you know this is their motive, without speculating? How do you know they are more comforted, in general, than non-beleivers? If it is via deduction, wow, that is speculative, because imagine all the effects and side effects of their beliefs. How could one possibly track all that, especially with deduction? Would you really want to be one of them? Could you give a specific example of a Christian who is publically actively anti-abortion whose life you'd want and trade for now? There might be one,but would that individual actually represent the group well. Again these are questions to be mulled since it's really beyond what my interest was in when joining in earlier.
What particular Christian, given what particular set of circumstances pertaining to abortion as a moral issue? The bottom line is that many Christians are able to believe that their views on abortion as a moral issue are Scripted in the Bible. That is the source of their comfort and their consolation. They know that God is judging them on this side of the grave and if they do their very best to sustain God's will in regard to their own pregnancy they will be rewarded with immortality and salvation.

Talk about a consequentialist philosophy. The ultimate consequences. It's just that consequentialism and utilitarianism and deontology are all intertwined "in their head" in the will of God. Their God of course.
But more to the point [mine] most people -- the moral and political and spiritual objectivists -- tend also to objectify themselves. And though some might see this as an example of bad faith, those who are able to take that more sophisticated Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God, are still no less the "winners" here.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I don't know what you are trying to say here. The quotation marks around winners would seem to indicate you are agreeing with me. But the structure of the sentences before seem to indicate you are disagreeing.
Well, my use of them revolves more around the fact that winning itself here is just a subjective point of view. If you think that a belief in God provides you with an objective morality "here and now" and immortality and salvation "there and then", then, for you, it's true.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Ah, ok, maybe I misread you then. You don't see them as having it easier than you in their comfort, but rather you see them as judging themselves as winners. That I can agree with more. Of course, they need losers and to interact with them. That's how they 'know'. This pattern is of course not restricted to Christiand and is present to varying degrees in many groups, religious and secular.
I don't believe in God. I believe instead "here and now" that my life is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that, in regard to my interactions with others from the cradle to the grave, I believe 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."

Finally, I believe that in the near future I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Now, if someone is able to take that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God -- any God -- how can that not make their own life "easier" to endure?
And neither the modernists nor the postmodernists have access to the language needed to establish that in fact a God, the God, your God either does or does not exist.

Right?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Yeah, I don't know what that means. I sounds like you're saying their some kind of semantics problem. Or an epistemological problem?
On the contrary, it all comes down to whether, given the life you lived, you are able to convince yourself that having faith in God -- or for those like IC here, insisting that the Christian God does in fact exist -- is a reasonable thing to do. If you can, you then have access to objective -- righteous -- morality here and now and can look forward to immortality and salvation there and then.

That is certainly "winning" to me, given my own bleak assumptions. It's just that any number of smug, arrogant atheists will insist they are losers. Why? Because they don't have the guts to face life as it really is, without God.

As though those who do believe in God are not able to accumulate more rather than less substantive arguments to back up their own leaps of faith.

Over the years, I have met any number of religious folks I had a great deal of respect for.

Thus...
After all, what they have faith in is that their God provides them with an objective morality on this side of the grave and then immortality and salvation on the other side of it. How is that not a great source of comfort and consolation?
Winning in other words.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Now 'winning' without citation marks.
Yeah, again, that's my point. There are religious folks who are able think through their leap of faith on par with those like Kierkegaard or Pascal. They're not just brainwashed dolts. They've earned their sense of "winning". But to any number of dogmatic atheists they will always be losers. And that's because, unlike them, they lack both the intellectual honesty and integrity to accept that God simply Does Not Exist.

And then, from my frame of mind, leaving each of us as individuals aside, we get "general description intellectual contraptions" like this:
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm You seem incredulous that they could not be. But deduction with extremely complicated systems like a human being is extremely speculative. How do their beliefs in God actually affect them? There can be one effect in a moment, with all sorts of side effects. And then we can look at the empirical evidence. Do the anti-abortionists, the religious ones seem comfortable, more so than the opponents? Do the religious conservatives seem comfortatin and consoled or angry, irate, troubled, disconcerted, afraid of contamination, slippery sloping all sorts of arguments with all the attendant anxiety, etc. If you have beliefs that are contradictory, run against some of your own nature and the ways in which you got these ideas do not respect the learner as an agent, you have all sorts of side effects, and I think these are clearly visible when one encounters them. My experience does not match your deduction and incredulity. I think your envy is misplaced.
Well, I don't agree. I'd very much like to be convinced to take that leap of faith back to God. To scrap the part about an essentially meaningless and purposeless life, hopelessly fractured and fragmented and waiting in line for the Grim Reaper.

So, sure, some slap themselves on the back. So far they've managed to avoid that "weak-minded" fate. After all, for years and years, I once did myself.
Back to Roe v. Wade.

Some were "torn up" by the Supremes ruling. Others were not. They were ecstatic. Some believe they acted in "good faith" in linking their arguments to the Constitution. Others believe they acted in "bad faith" in that they construe the Constitution itself as an adjunct of their Christian dogmas.

Okay, Mr. Modernist and Mr. Postmodernist, discuss. Where are the limits of language most likely to be demonstrated here if not when the discussion comes to focus on the morality of abortion itself?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Yeah, I can't answer for those guys, and I am still not sure who you mean by modernists. I mean, I think immediately of people like James Joyce or Virigina Woolf. Modernism was primarily an aesthetic postion. Post-moderniism is both aesthetic and philosophical, including moral and epistemology.
Well, I explained above where I came upon that distinction: unmasking as cognitive, guided by objective standards in regard to the morality of abortion vs. language connecting only to more language still, not having access to an objective reality. Where did James Joyce and Virginia Woolf come down on the morality of abortion? Which one was closer to the objective truth? Whereas if the discussion revolved around it as a medical procedure, they would have access to that wouldn't they?
After all, few are as "fractured and fragmented" as "I" am in regard to these things. And the one thing I suspect I do share in common with most postmodernists is the assumption that in a No God world, human existence itself is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that's before the part where "I" tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion for all the rest of eternity.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm meaningless to whom? I don't think there is some objective meaninglessness. I think that's a nonsensical idea.
More to the point, meaning in regard to what?
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Maybe.
That's why what would most interest me is an exchange between someone who shares the modernist and postmodernist perspective as encompassed by Hicks above contrasted with the distinction I make between I in the either/or world and "I" in the is/ought world. Between objective language communication and exchanges of but subjective personal opinions.
I know! Let's choose a context, describe what is meaningful about it to us and try to communicate that to someone who does not find it meaningful at all. Or who does find it meaningful but not in the same way.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I assume 'it' refers to existence. If someone doesn't find it meaningful, I am not going to lecture them. I don't know who your 'us' is above. I wouldn't be trying to convince them what is universally meaningful. I think that's as confused as objectively meaningless is. If they asked me what is meaningful and they didn't seem to be in a place of major depression, I would probably ask them a lot of questions about what they have found meaningful, to them. What they value.
So, how are conflicts here to be resolved? Well, there's God of course. And for others, ideology and political dogmas. Then those who embrace Kant and the rational pursuit of categorical imperatives and moral obligations. Then those who claim it all comes back to Nature. Their own rendition of what is natural or unnatural in regard to things like race and gender and sexual orientation. And the role of government. Those who insist it all revolves around "we", those who insist it all revolves around "me". The sociopaths and their "in the absence of God, all things are permitted" mentality.

Then, of course, me and the arguments I make in the OPs above.

Then you...
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm As living creatures we have our own meaning, even if it is just the primal seeking of food and shelter for the day. Those with more luck or skill will find other meaning and their existence, the individuals will not be meaningless to them. And yes, your views often seem quite postmodern. IOW given that postmodernists are a pretty motely crew your position, if placed amongst theirs would not stand out as an outlier, far from the main body of postmodernists. I think it would be right in there with the others, despite what you quoted much earlier from one of them. I mean, they have their disagreements and varied opinions. I haven't seen the big ones say they are nihilists os much, but per definition they are, most of them. In the sense that they don't believe there is THE GOOD and THE EVIL. They tend to focus on nurture, which you do, though now i know you acknowledge the effects of nature, still I see dasein mentioned over and over and in your use this seems primarily nurture. So, you'd fit in there. They have a problem with objectivists whether secular or religious. Most I've encountered do not present themselves as depressed in the way you do. But that's not great marketing, generally, and who makes much money as a philosopher? Ya gotta be careful. So, a number may well be, I don't know.
Again, this is what I call a "general description intellectual contraption".
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Well that criticism, at least it sounds like one, covers much of you posting, and it's ironic that general description intellectual contraption is an example of itself, as is most of your post here.
Again, ever and always I am ready, willing and able to bring our didactic abstractions down to Earth. Re abortion or any other interactions in which the limits of language can be explored.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I could easily list concrete interests I have from social to artistic to intellectual. But you can imagine these as well as anyone. There is no point in my reeling off my person interests and desires, what I find meaning in. They are not universal, so they do not contribute to convincing others that that is where meaning lies. But to say life is meaningless is confused. And it as if you are not a participant. Is your life meaningless? How do you know this? You don't find some activities more meaningful for you than others?
What I do is to contrast those who, in regard to conflicting value judgments, are convinced that the language can be found to resolve them objectively, and those like me who, in a No God world, are "here and now" convinced that there is not.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Postmodernism tends towards ethical relativism. So, does that mean everyone gets to do what they want? which would be pro-choice? But then what about murder?
Well, look at the mentality of many sociopaths. More or less philosophically, they start with the assumption that "in the absence of God all things are permitted". Morality for them revolves around "what's in it for me"?

And if that includes rape and murder and child abuse and genocide, they rationalize it. It's not doing the right thing that matters to them but not getting caught doing what others will insist that no rational or virtuous man and women ought to do.

That's why they are so scary. There's no reasoning with them. You can't engage them in discussions of Plato or Kant or Marx or Smith. It's "me, myself and I" all the way down. Some are just more of less intellectually sophisticated in defending it.
[/quote]

HIM:

Nothing so far.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Phil8659 wrote: Wed Jul 13, 2022 3:15 am Actually, the title alone is so depressing, one could only be cheered up, by being in bed with a good woman.

I really do not see, how anyone, but a potato could come up with that phrase.

Really? We are born with the ability to learn grammar systems because Language is Universal and Intelligible, while Grammars are Particular and Perceptible. But claiming, language can be got from something perceptible? Really? Bull Shit.
Now, if one even came closer with something like, The Grammar of Postmodernism, one would still have to rush to the bathroom just to hurl in the toilet.
Or one, if literate would simply say, Sketches of Postmodernism, like they used to do when a world of scholars were even a little bit more literate.

But that is what mistaking Sophism with Philosophy has always been at war about, the inability to think no better than a vegetable.
Note to others:

My guess he is one of the pinheads from ILP.

obsrvr524 threatened to follow me here. 8)
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Iwannaplato and Iambiguous discussed:

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑
I could easily list concrete interests I have from social to artistic to intellectual. But you can imagine these as well as anyone. There is no point in my reeling off my person interests and desires, what I find meaning in. They are not universal, so they do not contribute to convincing others that that is where meaning lies. But to say life is meaningless is confused. And it as if you are not a participant. Is your life meaningless? How do you know this? You don't find some activities more meaningful for you than others?
Iambigous wrote:
What I do is to contrast those who, in regard to conflicting value judgments, are convinced that the language can be found to resolve them objectively, and those like me who, in a No God world, are "here and now" convinced that there is not.
I agree with Iambiguous, that there is no totally objective criterion, such as was God, for value judgments. Now that God the old authority is dead I align myself with certain value judgments and to do so I look to telling the truth, fairness, and human kindness. The more reasonable versions of Christianity fit those rather less than totally objective criteria.

Meaning is not a synonym for purpose. Meaning used to be a synonym for purpose when God as ultimate authority was alive.Now that we men are on our own in an uncaring universe we have to be purposive however meaning is constantly being created and re-created. Maybe we are making progress but we will never know. I don't enjoy what I have just typed but am being honest. I do have quite a lot of faith in the human, and there are plenty of men who believe in the transcendental values of good, truth, and beauty.
Iwannaplato
Posts: 6591
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Iwannaplato »

iambiguous wrote: Wed Jul 13, 2022 7:34 pm The modernist/postmodernist frame of mind was taken from the Stephen Hicks article above.
OK, maybe he's using modernists strangely.
Well, technically, the Supremes ruled that access to abortion is not a Constitutional right. But many are convinced that their ruling revolves more around their belief that abortion is immoral. And, in striking down Roe, it leaves it up to the states one by one to end the practice. And of course if the MAGA folks succeed in taking control of both the Congress and the White House extending that ban to all 50 states. The key point being that they are convinced that, re either God or deontologically, abortion is immoral, while the postmodernists argue that in regard to value judgments such as this, there is no objective reality.
I am sure the SCOTUS has reverse engineered rulings from their moral positions since the beginning, with some justices managing to try to stay close to their mandate and aware of their biases and others not or not even trying.

Again, let's attempt to bring abstractions such as this down to Earth. Pertaining to abortion or to any other human interactions in which there is what we can know and convey objectively to others and what comes down to a matter of conflicting personal opinions.

With abortion, doctors can discuss it as a medical procedure with a minimum of conflict. Similarly, in any given jurisdiction, attorneys can discuss it as a matter of law. Whereas when ethicists discuss it, conflicts can abound.

What I focus in on is why, "for all practical purposes" that is the case. The part where I zoom in on the arguments I make in the OPs here:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296
OK, that seemed pretty abstract, but I'll keep reading.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pmSo, you don't want a consequentialist view of abortion? To varying degrees nearly every person is at least in part consequentialist, with those on the liberal side tending to be more consequentialist, but both use consequentialist arguments in the case of abortion say. From this website we have...
Again, "I" am "fractured and fragmented" in regard to conflicting value judgments. Both sides in the abortion wars are able to note both good and bad consequences when the emphasis is placed either on the "natural right" of the unborn to live or the "political right" of the woman to choose.
Sure, as I said every person is at least in part consequentialist.
What William Barrett called "rival goods".

From my frame of mind, individuals acquire political prejudices here rooted largely in the actual existential trajectory of the life they lived. Embedded in particular historical and cultural and experiential contexts. More so then being able to "think it all through" and, philosophically or otherwise, coming up with the "wisest" conclusion.
And nature tendencies, sure.
This [to me] is still you lumping large numbers of people into these "broad stroke" assumptions you make about those who have one set of beliefs and those who don't. God or No God.
You mean like saying they are all comforted by their beliefs, that kind of lumping them all together?
What it still comes down to for me is how an individual thinks about these issues in regard to a particular context involving a particular abortion. What can be communicate objectively and what cannot then and there.
Yeah, people want and value different things.
What particular Christian, given what particular set of circumstances pertaining to abortion as a moral issue? The bottom line is that many Christians are able to believe that their views on abortion as a moral issue are Scripted in the Bible. That is the source of their comfort and their consolation. They know that God is judging them on this side of the grave and if they do their very best to sustain God's will in regard to their own pregnancy they will be rewarded with immortality and salvation.
Well, you went from wanting a particular Christian to generalizing that all get comfort and consolation from the Bible. And then what they all know.


I don't believe in God. I believe instead "here and now" that my life is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that, in regard to my interactions with others from the cradle to the grave, I believe 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."

Finally, I believe that in the near future I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Now, if someone is able to take that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God -- any God -- how can that not make their own life "easier" to endure?
Again 'easier' in quotes. So, I don't know if you think they find it easier or not.

I have explained how I think it can end up not already.
And neither the modernists nor the postmodernists have access to the language needed to establish that in fact a God, the God, your God either does or does not exist.

Right?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Yeah, I don't know what that means. I sounds like you're saying their some kind of semantics problem. Or an epistemological problem?
On the contrary, it all comes down to whether, given the life you lived, you are able to convince yourself that having faith in God -- or for those like IC here, insisting that the Christian God does in fact exist -- is a reasonable thing to do. If you can, you then have access to objective -- righteous -- morality here and now and can look forward to immortality and salvation there and then.

That is certainly "winning" to me, given my own bleak assumptions. It's just that any number of smug, arrogant atheists will insist they are losers. Why? Because they don't have the guts to face life as it really is, without God.
Honestly, I give up.

I do understand that you think they are probably wrong about Heaven and afterlife adn God. But sometimes it seems like you are saying they are winning, now, because they are comforted and you even ask incredulously how they could not be winning or having it easier, etc. But you then put winning or easier in quotes, like they really aren't comforted or finding it easier.

I have tried to get this clarified a few times, but you still jump back and forth.
As though those who do believe in God are not able to accumulate more rather than less substantive arguments to back up their own leaps of faith.

Over the years, I have met any number of religious folks I had a great deal of respect for.

Thus...
After all, what they have faith in is that their God provides them with an objective morality on this side of the grave and then immortality and salvation on the other side of it. How is that not a great source of comfort and consolation?
Winning in other words.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Now 'winning' without citation marks.
Yeah, again, that's my point. There are religious folks who are able think through their leap of faith on par with those like Kierkegaard or Pascal. They're not just brainwashed dolts. They've earned their sense of "winning". But to any number of dogmatic atheists they will always be losers. And that's because, unlike them, they lack both the intellectual honesty and integrity to accept that God simply Does Not Exist.
And then, from my frame of mind, leaving each of us as individuals aside, we get "general description intellectual contraptions" like this:
I'm sorry but for some reason when you generalize it's ok. For ex.,They cannot not be comforted.
When you speak in abstractions - and read everything you wrote in this post, for example - it's ok.
But if I generalize or write in abstractions it's a contraption.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm You seem incredulous that they could not be. But deduction with extremely complicated systems like a human being is extremely speculative. How do their beliefs in God actually affect them? There can be one effect in a moment, with all sorts of side effects. And then we can look at the empirical evidence. Do the anti-abortionists, the religious ones seem comfortable, more so than the opponents? Do the religious conservatives seem comfortatin and consoled or angry, irate, troubled, disconcerted, afraid of contamination, slippery sloping all sorts of arguments with all the attendant anxiety, etc. If you have beliefs that are contradictory, run against some of your own nature and the ways in which you got these ideas do not respect the learner as an agent, you have all sorts of side effects, and I think these are clearly visible when one encounters them. My experience does not match your deduction and incredulity. I think your envy is misplaced.
Well, I don't agree. I'd very much like to be convinced to take that leap of faith back to God. To scrap the part about an essentially meaningless and purposeless life, hopelessly fractured and fragmented and waiting in line for the Grim Reaper.

So, sure, some slap themselves on the back. So far they've managed to avoid that "weak-minded" fate. After all, for years and years, I once did myself.
OK, again it seems like you envy them. But you can't make that leap of faith, nor do you, I presume you don't join congregations and participate and see if that helps make a leap of faith more easy. Pretty much all of them participated in their religions. They may call it a leap of faith, but their life experience, unless I am missing something here, is very different from yours. They are engaged in religions. That would make leaps much more doable. Kierkegaard, whom you've mentioned a few times, was quite critical of the church, but he was a man of practice/prayer. And he considered prayer something that changed him, not as an appeal for God to do things. I don't know the people you have personally known and respected (mentioned earlier) but I doubt they simply made a leap of faith. I would bet they didn't focus their process on getting people to demonstrate that God exists or for people to produce good answers to the problem of evil. They may very well have wrestled with these things, but I would guess there were religious rituals (even the simple private one prayer can be) and contemplation, if not also more formal participatory rituals like attending church, at least on occasion. Perhaps a Mass or two if they were Catholic.

So, if I am right, and you can check with those you know personally and people like Kierkegaard are very well documented on this issue, AND you envy these people AND you are convinced they are comforted and winning at least as far as how they feel, then you might want to consider actually participating, since that's what the people you see as having it easier than you have done.

But that said, I am sure you would like to make that leap of faith. But here's the thing. i was saying that you are assuming things about their inner states that I don't think are true.

I believe you when you say you wish you could make that leap of faith. I wouldn't disagree with you, nor have i said that.

I just think projecting yourself into a state you cannot reach (so far at least) is wild speculation. And it does not fit the people I have met who do believe. Those theists sure of their morality based on scripture. They do not seem at ease to me at all.
Well, I explained above where I came upon that distinction: unmasking as cognitive, guided by objective standards in regard to the morality of abortion vs. language connecting only to more language still, not having access to an objective reality.
Well, talk about intellectual contraptions. I can see the postmodern one in the latter, I find the first hard to understand. Presumably what Hicks was calling the modernist. But I don't identify with either, despite having learned things from the latter, possibly the former whoever Hicks is referring to.
Where did James Joyce and Virginia Woolf come down on the morality of abortion? Which one was closer to the objective truth? Whereas if the discussion revolved around it as a medical procedure, they would have access to that wouldn't they?
There is no unity amongst modernists (my sense of the word) nor is there one amongst postmodernists around abortion. They are not moral stances, though both can have morals. Both can be moral realists or not depending. Postmodernists would be more likely to question science in a broader way than modernists, but I think, generally, both would acknowledge the physical facts of the procedure.
After all, few are as "fractured and fragmented" as "I" am in regard to these things. And the one thing I suspect I do share in common with most postmodernists is the assumption that in a No God world, human existence itself is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that's before the part where "I" tumbles over into the abyss that is oblivion for all the rest of eternity.
I know! Let's choose a context, describe what is meaningful about it to us and try to communicate that to someone who does not find it meaningful at all. Or who does find it meaningful but not in the same way.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm I assume 'it' refers to existence. If someone doesn't find it meaningful, I am not going to lecture them. I don't know who your 'us' is above. I wouldn't be trying to convince them what is universally meaningful. I think that's as confused as objectively meaningless is. If they asked me what is meaningful and they didn't seem to be in a place of major depression, I would probably ask them a lot of questions about what they have found meaningful, to them. What they value.
So, how are conflicts here to be resolved? Well, there's God of course. And for others, ideology and political dogmas. Then those who embrace Kant and the rational pursuit of categorical imperatives and moral obligations. Then those who claim it all comes back to Nature. Their own rendition of what is natural or unnatural in regard to things like race and gender and sexual orientation. And the role of government. Those who insist it all revolves around "we", those who insist it all revolves around "me". The sociopaths and their "in the absence of God, all things are permitted" mentality.

Then, of course, me and the arguments I make in the OPs above.

Then you...
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm As living creatures we have our own meaning, even if it is just the primal seeking of food and shelter for the day. Those with more luck or skill will find other meaning and their existence, the individuals will not be meaningless to them. And yes, your views often seem quite postmodern. IOW given that postmodernists are a pretty motely crew your position, if placed amongst theirs would not stand out as an outlier, far from the main body of postmodernists. I think it would be right in there with the others, despite what you quoted much earlier from one of them. I mean, they have their disagreements and varied opinions. I haven't seen the big ones say they are nihilists os much, but per definition they are, most of them. In the sense that they don't believe there is THE GOOD and THE EVIL. They tend to focus on nurture, which you do, though now i know you acknowledge the effects of nature, still I see dasein mentioned over and over and in your use this seems primarily nurture. So, you'd fit in there. They have a problem with objectivists whether secular or religious. Most I've encountered do not present themselves as depressed in the way you do. But that's not great marketing, generally, and who makes much money as a philosopher? Ya gotta be careful. So, a number may well be, I don't know.
Again, this is what I call a "general description intellectual contraption".
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Well that criticism, at least it sounds like one, covers much of you posting, and it's ironic that general description intellectual contraption is an example of itself, as is most of your post here.
Again, ever and always I am ready, willing and able to bring our didactic abstractions down to Earth.
It seems like you want other people to bring it down to earth.

quote=Iwannaplato post_id=581024 time=1656700448 user_id=3619] I could easily list concrete interests I have from social to artistic to intellectual. But you can imagine these as well as anyone. There is no point in my reeling off my person interests and desires, what I find meaning in. They are not universal, so they do not contribute to convincing others that that is where meaning lies. But to say life is meaningless is confused. And it as if you are not a participant. Is your life meaningless? How do you know this? You don't find some activities more meaningful for you than others?[/quote]
What I do is to contrast those who, in regard to conflicting value judgments, are convinced that the language can be found to resolve them objectively, and those like me who, in a No God world, are "here and now" convinced that there is not.
That's not an answer to my questions. And the answers could have been down to earth answers about what you find meaning in. What seems to have more meaning, to you. But you answers with, yes, an intellectual contraption. To me that need not be a problem, here in a philosophy forum. But it was also completely unrelated to what it is formatted as a response to.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Postmodernism tends towards ethical relativism. So, does that mean everyone gets to do what they want? which would be pro-choice? But then what about murder?
Well, look at the mentality of many sociopaths. More or less philosophically, they start with the assumption that "in the absence of God all things are permitted". Morality for them revolves around "what's in it for me"?
There is some recent reseach (controversial) that has found that atheists are smarter but show more psychopathy. But I don't think sociopaths start with an assumption about there being no God and then what it entails. They have their personality, they lack empathy.
And if that includes rape and murder and child abuse and genocide, they rationalize it.
They wouldn't need to rationalize it, to the extent they are psychopaths, sociopaths. It's people who feel guilty and think of other people as more than mere tools and objects who need to rationalize.
It's not doing the right thing that matters to them but not getting caught doing what others will insist that no rational or virtuous man and women ought to do.
Yes

That's why they are so scary. There's no reasoning with them. You can't engage them in discussions of Plato or Kant or Marx or Smith. It's "me, myself and I" all the way down. Some are just more of less intellectually sophisticated in defending it.

HIM:

Nothing so far.
Didn't understand that.

Just on a fairly short term gut reaction I think it's better I don't respond to you. I may well respond to others on these topics.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm So, you don't want a consequentialist view of abortion? To varying degrees nearly every person is at least in part consequentialist, with those on the liberal side tending to be more consequentialist, but both use consequentialist arguments in the case of abortion say. From this website we have...
Again, "I" am "fractured and fragmented" in regard to conflicting value judgments. Both sides in the abortion wars are able to note both good and bad consequences when the emphasis is placed either on the "natural right" of the unborn to live or the "political right" of the woman to choose.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Sure, as I said every person is at least in part consequentialist.
Yes, but how many of them are "fractured anmd fragmented" as "I" am here? Certainly not the moral and political objectivists among us.
This [to me] is still you lumping large numbers of people into these "broad stroke" assumptions you make about those who have one set of beliefs and those who don't. God or No God.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm You mean like saying they are all comforted by their beliefs, that kind of lumping them all together?
Yes, but the objectivists tend to start from there and sustain their dogmatic, authoritarian moral convictions because they comfort and console them. God or No God. Being able to anchor their Real Me self in the Right Thing To Do -- what they would do -- is the whole point of believing what they do.
What particular Christian, given what particular set of circumstances pertaining to abortion as a moral issue? The bottom line is that many Christians are able to believe that their views on abortion as a moral issue are Scripted in the Bible. That is the source of their comfort and their consolation. They know that God is judging them on this side of the grave and if they do their very best to sustain God's will in regard to their own pregnancy they will be rewarded with immortality and salvation.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Well, you went from wanting a particular Christian to generalizing that all get comfort and consolation from the Bible. And then what they all know.
That's why we need a particulat moral objectivist and a particular postmodernist to discuss a particular set of circumstances involving "rival goods". To explore the limitations of language in either a God or a No God world.
I don't believe in God. I believe instead "here and now" that my life is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that, in regard to my interactions with others from the cradle to the grave, I believe 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."

Finally, I believe that in the near future I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Now, if someone is able to take that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God -- any God -- how can that not make their own life "easier" to endure?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Again 'easier' in quotes. So, I don't know if you think they find it easier or not.
That's the point. Some will find it easier, while others will insist that it's "easier" only in a superficial sense. You delude yourself into embracing one or another objectivist font in order to be comforted and consoled. You don't face up to the consequences of living in a No God, no objective morality postmodern world. On the other hand, if what you believe does comfort and console you then for you the living is easier.

Thus...
...it all comes down to whether, given the life you lived, you are able to convince yourself that having faith in God -- or for those like IC here, insisting that the Christian God does in fact exist -- is a reasonable thing to do. If you can, you then have access to objective -- righteous -- morality here and now and can look forward to immortality and salvation there and then.

That is certainly "winning" to me, given my own bleak assumptions. It's just that any number of smug, arrogant atheists will insist they are losers. Why? Because they don't have the guts to face life as it really is, without God.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Honestly, I give up.

I do understand that you think they are probably wrong about Heaven and afterlife adn God. But sometimes it seems like you are saying they are winning, now, because they are comforted and you even ask incredulously how they could not be winning or having it easier, etc. But you then put winning or easier in quotes, like they really aren't comforted or finding it easier.
The quote marks are used only to convey how different people will construe easier differently. The part that is rooted subjectively in dasein by and large. They "jump back and forth" depending on how convinced they are of their own convictions.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm I'm sorry but for some reason when you generalize it's ok. For ex.,They cannot not be comforted.
When you speak in abstractions - and read everything you wrote in this post, for example - it's ok.
But if I generalize or write in abstractions it's a contraption.
Again, above I made note of how, given a particular context, a modernist and a postmodernist [as Hicks conveys them] explore the limitations of language in the is/ought world. I believe I asked for volunteers. I would encompass the postmordern frame of mind, another the modernist from of mind. Or what I call the objectivist frame of mind.

So, anyone care to go there given a specific set of circumstances?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm You seem incredulous that they could not be. But deduction with extremely complicated systems like a human being is extremely speculative. How do their beliefs in God actually affect them? There can be one effect in a moment, with all sorts of side effects. And then we can look at the empirical evidence. Do the anti-abortionists, the religious ones seem comfortable, more so than the opponents? Do the religious conservatives seem comfortatin and consoled or angry, irate, troubled, disconcerted, afraid of contamination, slippery sloping all sorts of arguments with all the attendant anxiety, etc. If you have beliefs that are contradictory, run against some of your own nature and the ways in which you got these ideas do not respect the learner as an agent, you have all sorts of side effects, and I think these are clearly visible when one encounters them. My experience does not match your deduction and incredulity. I think your envy is misplaced.
Well, I don't agree. I'd very much like to be convinced to take that leap of faith back to God. To scrap the part about an essentially meaningless and purposeless life, hopelessly fractured and fragmented and waiting in line for the Grim Reaper.

So, sure, some slap themselves on the back. So far they've managed to avoid that "weak-minded" fate. After all, for years and years, I once did myself.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm OK, again it seems like you envy them. But you can't make that leap of faith, nor do you, I presume you don't join congregations and participate and see if that helps make a leap of faith more easy. Pretty much all of them participated in their religions. They may call it a leap of faith, but their life experience, unless I am missing something here, is very different from yours. They are engaged in religions. That would make leaps much more doable. Kierkegaard, whom you've mentioned a few times, was quite critical of the church, but he was a man of practice/prayer. And he considered prayer something that changed him, not as an appeal for God to do things. I don't know the people you have personally known and respected (mentioned earlier) but I doubt they simply made a leap of faith. I would bet they didn't focus their process on getting people to demonstrate that God exists or for people to produce good answers to the problem of evil. They may very well have wrestled with these things, but I would guess there were religious rituals (even the simple private one prayer can be) and contemplation, if not also more formal participatory rituals like attending church, at least on occasion. Perhaps a Mass or two if they were Catholic.
Unfortunately, I am no longer able to get out and about and to try, one by one by one, the paths taken by these folks...

https://thebestschools.org/magazine/wor ... -starters/

Let alone all these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

So, I am left with those at forums like this taking their own paths to me here...

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm So, if I am right, and you can check with those you know personally and people like Kierkegaard are very well documented on this issue, AND you envy these people AND you are convinced they are comforted and winning at least as far as how they feel, then you might want to consider actually participating, since that's what the people you see as having it easier than you have done.
If others here believed that their own existence in a No God world was essentially meaningless and purposeless, that it was entirely reasonable to be fractured and fragmented when confronting conflicting goods and that death means oblivion, envying those who felt the opposite is certainly one perfectly understandable option. As always, it depends on the individual out in a particular world experiencing it in a particular way. Sure, if your philosophy of life is brutal and bleak, but the circumstances in which you live are bursting at the seams with all manner of fulfilment and satisfaction, that can certainly be enough to keep you going.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm But that said, I am sure you would like to make that leap of faith. But here's the thing. i was saying that you are assuming things about their inner states that I don't think are true.
Which is why I keep asking others here to expose their "inner states" to me as I expose mine to them...given a specific situation in which language itself can be explored.

Who knows, they may succeed in allowing me to yank myself up out of the hole I have dug myself into. Or I may succeed in yanking them down into one of their own.
Well, I explained above where I came upon that distinction: unmasking as cognitive, guided by objective standards in regard to the morality of abortion vs. language connecting only to more language still, not having access to an objective reality.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm Well, talk about intellectual contraptions. I can see the postmodern one in the latter, I find the first hard to understand. Presumably what Hicks was calling the modernist. But I don't identify with either, despite having learned things from the latter, possibly the former whoever Hicks is referring to.
Sigh...

Yes, it's an intellectual contraption until someone here of a modernist/objectivist bent agrees to explore the limitations of language with me given a particular set of circumstance in which "rival goods" are clearly manifest.
What I do is to contrast those who, in regard to conflicting value judgments, are convinced that the language can be found to resolve them objectively, and those like me who, in a No God world, are "here and now" convinced that there is not.
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm That's not an answer to my questions. And the answers could have been down to earth answers about what you find meaning in. What seems to have more meaning, to you. But you answers with, yes, an intellectual contraption. To me that need not be a problem, here in a philosophy forum. But it was also completely unrelated to what it is formatted as a response to.
Again, choose a set of circumstances revolving around individuals at the existential intersection of identity, value judgments, conflicting goods and [for me] political economy. And we can exchange our "inner states". See what we can agree that language communicates effectively and what it does not appear able to resolve.
Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm Postmodernism tends towards ethical relativism. So, does that mean everyone gets to do what they want? which would be pro-choice? But then what about murder?
Well, look at the mentality of many sociopaths. More or less philosophically, they start with the assumption that "in the absence of God all things are permitted". Morality for them revolves around "what's in it for me"?
Iwannaplato wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:38 pm There is some recent reseach (controversial) that has found that atheists are smarter but show more psychopathy. But I don't think sociopaths start with an assumption about there being no God and then what it entails. They have their personality, they lack empathy.
Genes? They are born sociopaths? And sociopaths are no less the embodiment of dasein. There might be any number of reasons why they became what they are. But it's hard for some to imagine that they do believe in a God that can send them to Hell for all of eternity for being sociopaths and still behave as they do.

As for those who are psychopaths, that seems to suggest the brain itself out of whack chemically and neurological. Or as a result of some brain affliction. In other words, pretty much "beyond their control".
Post Reply