Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:19 am
iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:29 am
What I mean by [objectivist] is someone who often reacts in an "arrogant, autocratic and authoritarian" manner towards those who don't share their own moral or political or religious value judgments.
No offence intended, but that definition seems to me to be a little more tendentious than necessary. My own definition is a little different: someone whose perceptions and reasoning convinces them that there are moral and/or political and/or religious value judgements that are objectively correct; that is, that are correct independently of anybody's (subjective) opinion.
As always, what I do here is attempt to shift the discussion from definitions to actual sets of circumstances in which the words we define in discussing things like Christianity are fleshed out existentially. Does someone here believe that they can demonstrate the existence of the Christian God [however they define Him] such that in choosing Christianity as the One True Path we acquire objective morality on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side of it? And how much more "arrogant, autocratic and authoritarian" can one get then to insist that if others do not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior they will burn in Hell for all of eternity?
iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:29 am
Why? Because as often as not they are convinced they are in sync with the Real Me in sync further with the Right Thing To Do. About what? Well, to cite just one example: everything under the Sun.
Thus enabling them to divide up the world between "one of us" [the smart, good guys] and "one of them" [the dumb, evil guys].
Both sides here are "woke". It's just each side has their own collection of political prejudices that others are expected to be wide awake regarding. Our rendition of "politically correct" not theirs.
Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:19 amI do acknowledge the problem that underlies all of this: even if there are objective values, it is up to individual subjects to recognise as much, which they might not, instead mistakenly presenting their own subjective - and objectively false - values as truly objective, and mistakenly doing so zealously and fanatically.
At least, that's how I put it in this context.
But, from my frame of mind, that is still largely a "general description intellectual contraption" assessment. What particular "individual subjects" given what particular set of circumstances, given what particular alleged "objective values"?
Christianity and abortion for example. Again, with Heaven or Hell literally riding on the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave.
iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:29 am
And it's not whether we see eye to eye here in terms of what we think or believe about Christianity...it's what we are actually able to demonstrate is in fact true such that all rational people really are obligated to think and to believe the same thing.
Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:19 amYour allusion here to the need for inter-subjective standards by which truth can be reasonably demonstrated is well noted. Perhaps it's a direction for this thread to take - finding agreement at least as to what those standards are or should be, even if we can't agree on anything else.
I'm ever and always for those here demonstrating conclusively that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven. Indeed, once I'm convinced of that I'll certainly recognize Jesus Christ as my own personal savior. If it comes down to immortality and salvation or oblivion, why would I choose utter extinction?
But that's just me. Here and now. A frame of mind no less derived existentially from dasein.
Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:19 amI see. It seems to me that based on all of that, your definition or at least understanding of dasein is encapsulated as: "The full context of a human being's existence, which colours that being's perceptions and, more importantly, values".
No, my point is that whatever "here and now" I construe to be the "full context" of my own existence is still embedded in "the gap" between "I" and "all there is". I am still no less an "infinitesimally insignificant speck of existence in the staggering vastness
of all there is".
How vast?
Here I like to come back to this:
Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles a second. That is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles a year.
The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It is 4.75 light-years away. 28,500,000,000,000 miles.
So, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, it would take us 4.75 years to reach it. The voyager spacecraft [just now exiting our solar system] will take 70,000 years to reach it.
To reach the center of the Milky Way galaxy it would take 100,000 light-years.
Or consider this:
"To get to the closest galaxy to ours, the Canis Major Dwarf, at Voyager's speed, it would take approximately 749,000,000 years to travel the distance of 25,000 light years! If we could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 25,000 years!"
The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light years away.
Or this:
"The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been traveling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide."
For all practical purposes, it is beyond the imagination of mere mortals here on planet Earth to grasp just how staggeringly immense the universe is.
As for situating "I" in all of this...?
It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.
iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:29 am
Then the part where we don't even know for certain if the human brain itself either is or is not in turn just an inherent component of the laws of matter. That this entire exchange is but another domino toppling over in the only possible reality in the only possible world.
Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:19 amAgain, no offence intended, but the whole "dominoes toppling" take on the will seems very implausible to me. That the will is free is a very defensible or at least plausible notion, in much the same respect as the proposition that solipsism is false is very defensible or at least plausible.
Same thing.
What seems plausible to anyone here "in their head" is one thing, demonstrating that all rational men and women are obligated to find it plausible in turn another thing altogether.
Instead, the neuroscientists are attempting to grapple with this...
All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.
Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?
Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.
Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.
Either in the only possible reality in the only possible world or of their own volition.
...more experientially, experimentally.
After all, what is the philosophical equivalent of the "scientific method" in exploring
this particular "domino theory"?