Dasein/dasein

[henry quirk]

That's not the point.

Not yours, yeah. It is, however, mine.

The point is that provided we accept the new information, we might change our mind.

With my proviso in place, sure.

That we can't know for sure that down the road this won't happen.

Sure.

Whereas the objectivists among us who are absolutely adamant regarding their own moral and political dogmas [God or No God] never acknowledge that.

I have, with the priviso.

You told me on another thread that you had changed your mind regarding important things in your life. And, as I recall, you cited some vague example. But nothing really specific.

It was across several threads and I was fairly specific. I, of course, didn't splay myself like some do and offer up a self-deprecating biography.

And you don't in my view because I suspect that in regard to an issue like abortion or guns or transgender rights, you either never really have changed your mind in the past or you did but don't want to fess up to it because that just reinforces my contention that you are now forced to admit that you might be wrong about something important you believe in now.

No, I didn't splay myself and offer a self-deprecating biography becuz it's not necessary. If I tell you I moved from atheism to deism becuz of the failures of materialism to explain how mind is a product of brain, that is sufficient to have a conversation. There's no need for me to debase myself, like some folks. This isn't a therapy site and no one here is a counsellor. Those who are troubled ought remember that.

I certainly deem that to be what you are doing.

You can deem whatever you like. Just spare me the rhetorical tricks. They aren't workin' the way you'd like (unless your intent is to end the conversation).

I don't expect to convince you, henry.

Sure you do. Overall, your intent is clear: to break folks. To fracture them as you claim you were fractured.

"my way or the highway" libertarian mentality.

How is recognizing an individual, any individual, every individual, as having a right to his, and no other's, life, liberty, and property a my way or the highway proposition? Only way a body could conclude such a thing is if they don't believe an individual, any individual, every individual has a right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property. Do you believe you have a right to your, and no one else's, life, liberty, and property? Do you believe I have a right to my, and no one else's, life, liberty, and property? If you don't believe either then do you believe others have a right to your life, liberty, and property? Do you believe you have a right to my life, liberty, and property?

You have posted nothing so far that would lead me to conclude that the "psychology of objectivism" is not what motivates you by and large.

And you've posted nuthin', currently, to convince me you're anything than a garden-variety trickster.

All I can do is to come back to this:

Again, just a wordy way of sayin' an individual is just the product of his experiences...change his experiential components and you change the person.

To say that all I am arguing above is "an individual is nuthin' but a product of experience" isn't even worthy of a response from me.

That's what you're sayin' and that's what you keep tryin' to convince me (or yourself?) of. Seems like it's worthy enough for you to keep on goin' on about it.

It's about how you and I construe the existential parameters of human identity in the is/ought world from very different perspectives.

Nah. It's about two real people -- you and me -- in the real world debating on how to live and on how we live. Me, as a free will, whole. You, as a broken meat machine. All the fancy talk doesn't change that.

You as a run-of-the-mill objectivist to me.

And you as faux-nihilist to me.

No, I am pointing out the fact that in regard to hundreds and hundreds of variables in my life I am not in the least fractured and fragmented.

Of course you're not fractured about the dry facts of you. I live at 666 XYZ Lane: there's nuthin' to get flummoxed about.

Then I note the parts rooted existentially in the is/ought world of value judgments where "I" am. And then in my signature threads and in my posts I explain why I think that way.

Yes, I've read your scripts. They say I am a product of experience; given other experiences I, as product, might be different.

Then in regard to value judgments of your own I ask you to note why you are not that way.

I've explained and you've snipped that away and chose to not substantively address it. I'll answer again in the manner I might address DAM (there's a chick with a condition): I am the experiencer, not the sum of experience. I exist before and after any experience. I learn from, but am not transmuted by, experience. I am not fractured becuz I cannot be, by definition, fractured. Too esoteric? Not esoteric enough? Tell me your level of comprehension and I'll lower the bar even more.

Then, in my view, you wiggle out of going there and post responses that describe me in a way that is ludicrous to me.

I'm givin' you the only accurate summary of your view I can, based solely on what you've posted. If I'm missin' sumthin', you're free to point it out. In the absence of you doin' so, I can't see much point in you objectin' to my summary, over and over. You aren't movin' me.

I suspect that revolves around you not really wanting to grasp that because, as with so many like you over the years, it begins to sink in: "what if that becomes applicable to me!!"

Another rhetorical trick. Who are these many you refer to? Name these souls you've shaken to core with your dasein. I see none of those folks here. Mebbe they're all over there, at that other place. I would like to meet them, these converts of yours.

"Here and now" it makes the most sense to me given that human brains are matter.

Yeah, like I said you default to determinism. Just commit and say I'm a determinist (we all understand, of course, given new information and experiences you might come to believe different...lord, but you've told us so enough times) and be done with it. Time to stop fence-sittin', Iam (but then, you're not really fence sittin', are you).

Only those like you have a God, the God to fall back on.

Nope. You might wanna read that conversation I had with Harbal again, the one I posted, the one you snipped out and didn't respond substantively to.

If we have free will it's because God intended us to. Your God simply split the scene.

First thing you got right in a coon's age...

When confronted 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.

What's to confront? it's a wordy way of sayin' some folks are determinists, some folks are free willists and currently there's no way to establish conclusively the truth.

Big whoop. You already lean toward determinism, so just commit and move on.

...you bring it back to a God that, once again, to the best of my knowledge, you have no capacity whatsoever to demonstrate the actual existence of.

I've offered up what works for me, acknowledging every time it might not work for you. It never does; nuthin' anyone posts does. Do, I've come to understand there's nuthin' I can tell you that'll serve as evidence. Thing is: if my notions about God are right, it doesn't matter cuz He doesn't care if you believe in Him or not. But, yeah, I know, deism is no comfort for a guy obsessed about the possibility of a horrific afterlife (or who claims to be worried about such things). Me, I don't get what the hoopla is. And now you'll give me another canned response meant to belittle me for lackin' the will to accept nihilism and join you on the junk heap of broken things.

And, in advance of you goin' on about look what I've reduced you to let me say I have no clue how else to respond to you. My sincere responses don't cut the (your) mustard and are rejected, ignored, dismissed, or used as jumpin' off points for you to post script. My snark is waved about as proof of victory. Some times I take you as you present yourself, existentially fractured and in-stasis; other times I see you as trickster, a conniver. Increasingly I see you as mentally ill or autistic like age.

I just don't know what to do with you, Iam. We never get out of the starting gate...and I'm gettin' awfully tired just runnin' in place, Alice.

And [of course] "natural rights" in regard to abortion and guns and property and the like are what you say they are.

Not really. The crux of the abortion debate is when does human life begin or what constitutes human life or personhood. Lots of noise is made about a woman's right to choose but that's always in the context of what I want to abort is not a human being and not I wanna kill my unborn child. Even the most hard core pro abortionists do not advocate killing children. The crux of the gun debate is should a person own a killing machine. To that end, anti-gunners attempt to reclassify a gun as sumthin' other than property. Its purpose, to them, trumps its status as property. And always such folks shy away from answering the simple question if I've done no harm with my gun, why am I to be penalized? On those rare occasions they tackle that question the answer is always, when you strip it down to its essence you're guilty till proven innocent. Property: I know what I mean when I talk about it. My definition is conventional. What's yours? What's your justifier for depriving folks of property (in general or from some specific class of property)?

What I expect from you here is a withdrawal to I don't care what people think so much as how they came to believe it.

In that case: tell me how you arrived at the notion democracy is the way to go. You said if weapons were forbidden by law you'd turn in your revolver. How did you arrive at the conclusion doing so would be the right thing?

You "just know" viscerally, deep down in your gut that what you believe about these things is true.

I believe every single person who's ever lived, who lives today, and who will live tomorrow knows in his bones his life, liberty, and property are his and no other's, yeah.

And if those like Harbel, myself and others believe intuitively in something else, then...then what, henry?

If you or Harbal or anyone actually believes your life, liberty, and property are not yours, that others can justly lay claim to you, well, I feel very sorry for you.

No, henry, in my view, that is simply preposterous.

This is supposed to pass as a substantive response to my conversation with Harbal?

Even those like gib and magsj and maia who posit their own rendition of this deep down inside intrinsic/spiritual/emotional Self will no doubt differ from you regarding any number of issues. And certainly Deists themselves are all over the board morally and politically.

I might disagree with those on when human life begins, but I'm guessin' we'd all agree that children ought not be killed.

I might disagree with those about the status or necessity of guns but I'm guessin' we'd all agree that a person's property is his.

I might disagree with those on when a person ought be jailed for an offense or what comprises an offense but I'm guessin' we'd all agree if there is no offense a person ought be left alone.

So, yeah we's dicker on details but not fundamentals.

There are literally millions upon millions of men and women around the globe who intertwine "I" profoundly in one or another "we". Many far more willing to identity with the family or the community than with the so-called "rugged individual" mentality.

I reckon I'm as committed to my family as anyone, and mebbe more than many. Does this mean they, as individuals or as a group, own me? Does this mean I have a claim to any of their lives, liberties, or properties?

And that's before we get to the amoral global capitalists and narcissistic sociopaths who see others only as a means to their own selfish ends.

As I say: even the slaver, as he affixes prices to men, knows his life, liberty, and property are his and no other's. Failing to recognize or willfully ignoring the natural rights of others violates others, it doesn't negate natural rights. I mean, a person can choose to ignore that fire burns but that doesn't change the fact fire burns, yeah?

What then is the evidence in these pieces?

Did you read them? Did you even go over to the thread? Should I post the relevant pieces here? If I do, will you read them?

Note this given a particular context and then we'll talk.

The context is what it's always been: two real people -- you and me -- in the real world debating on how to live and on how we live. Me, as a free will, whole. You, as a broken meat machine.

I sometimes wonder if from time to time you are a few sandwiches short of a picnic

And, as I say: I haven't figured out if you're broken, a trickster, or just mentally ill.

[Iwannaplato]

I think the basic dynamic comes down to this...

You have posted nothing so far that would lead me to conclude that the "psychology of objectivism" is not what motivates you by and large.

The criterion: 'unless you can convince me, my psychoanalyzing you is correct
The default: 'I'm right about your psychology'
The onus: 'on you.'

The irony is the dynamic is purely objectivist.

Unless you can prove to me you are not X, you are.

Key assumptions:
1) his hypothesis should be the default
2) people unlike him are in denial
3) people make him the issue is the problem; when he makes everyone, and then specific individuals the issue, this is not a problem.
4) his biases are negligible, the criterion is similar to objectivity, nothing invested in his evaulations.

So, it's ok to have a continuous ad hom, aimed at people in general he disagrees with and at any individual who engages in dialogue with him.

He gets to psychoanlyze them and the onus is on them to prove he is wrong.

And if anyone has any problem with this, at root it has to do with their denial.

A cult leader or religious controller is someone who lives out this kind of pattern in a communal face to face setting.

[Agent Smith]

A quick glance at the world suggests, if not proves, dasein is still a long way off for 9 out of 10 humans, but of course we mustn't forget ... 9/10 of the iceberg is underwater ... invisible.

Yeah, AJ and Satyr, what about whatever that means?!!

Believe me, you don't wanna know what that means, but the truth is everybody knows, but they don't wanna admit it. Why?

[iambiguous]

Yo, AJ!

I've really got him going now. Only he's on a leash of late at ILP. The Satyr I'm used to making a complete fool of [or simply allowing him to make a complete fool of himself] has been warned not to go too far in huffing and puffing and in hurling ad homs and in reducing his posts down to one long declamatory personal attack.

Still, he does manage to go bumbling right to the edge, of course.

ME

Oh....my.....gld....


Karen is defending incest.
#-o
and paedophilia, I am sure.
Necrophilia....bestiality.....

Actually, a long time ago, I had a sexual relationship with my sister and my cousin. I loved them both dearly and never felt in the least that embodying this love physically was unnatural. Quite the contrary. And because we were never foolish enough to engage in actual intercourse it always left me feeling rather wonderful.

As for pedophilia, necrophilia and bestiality, nope, never. Here, however, we are talking about children who are simply not mature enough to engage in sexuality. Or the matter of consent.

Still, there are those who, in a No God world, are able to rationalize it. And not just the sociopaths.

My point being that our individual beliefs and behaviors here are rooted existentially in dasein. That philosophers and ethicists are not able to provide us with a deontological assessment of human sexuality. And that those like Satyr simply fall back on their own rooted existentially in dasein assessment of nature. It's always what they say is natural or rational or moral.

Why? Because what is crucial for these objectivists is not what they believe but that what they believe sustains for them the comfort and the consolation of believing in turn that what they believe is what all others who wish to think of themselves as rational and virtuous human beings must believe too. The "one of us" vs. "one of them" mentality.

And, over at KT, or else.

Just take this frame of mind as far as, existentially, it suits you. All the way up to Hitler and the Jews, for example.

Do you se now with what we are dealing?
Degeneracy.

Presto! Don't share his own value judgments? You're a degenerate.

She understood nothing...if the mother/son, father/daughter sexual relationship produces no children....then it is fine.

So, is he basically agreeing that incest that stops short of copulation and pregnancies is biologically, genetically reasonable and moral?

And what of those who disagree? Who insist that any sexual acts at all between family members and close relatives are naturally irrational and immoral?

Did she read the part where morality imposes limits to individual behaviour to inhibit behaviours that decrease a group's survival potentials?
There is the definition, Karen was looking for....but she does not like it.

Sure, if the incest that is sanctioned in a community includes intercourse and pregnancies and an explosion of babies born with birth defects, it would make sense to prohibit it. But even then there will be those who do it anyway. Fuck the community, fuck society. I'll do what it damn well pleases me to do.

Okay, Mr. Philosopher, provide us with a deontological rebuttal to that in a No God world.

And what defintion am I looking for?

Then this part:

Imagine a group where all these sexual fetishes were practiced....how long would the group survive?
How long would it be able to remain competitive when all tis members were screwing one another, aborting foetuses, indulging in hedonism....how long before another group destroyed them?

Exactly. You have to imagine it because when "in reality" is that ever likely to happen? What community on Earth has that ever happened in? Yes, within a community a tiny percentage of the population may engage in these behaviors. But where are the groups of people around the globe large enough to threaten the community/nation as a whole?

HIM:

So, basically Karen doesn't care about the impact on the group her choices have....choices that will break it apart or decrease its competitiveness relative to other societies...other groups.
She only thinks of herself, in the here and now.

See, these degenerate brainless ones is why the group enforces rules - moral standards. If you allow these types to do as they please, because ti feels good...the system collapses.
She proves my point.
If degenerates, like her, are permitted to do whatever they please, guided by their degeneracy and hedonism, the group, i.e., society, decays......unable to compete with other societies it dies, leaving the desperate and degenerate Karen's out cold.

What's the problem, Karen asks? Other than her obvious mental deficiencies.
The problem is not my opinion, it is that the group will be unable to compete with other groups....and this will eventually kill all members, and their offspring, or they will be absorbed into groups that will not be so kind and tolerant of their hedonistic demands.

Traditional families are the foundation of civilization. Not because I say so.....but because this is historically propven.
Family's replenish a fundamental resource...human resources.

Mary can fuck her daddy, if she wishes...she may even fuck her dog, her dead son......whatever and whoever....but this will impact the society she belongs to.
She is not an island....living in her private universe.
What she does - not thinks, but does, affects others, directly or indirectly.

Now, I challenge anyone here to explain to us how Satyr actually responds to the points I make above.

Oh, and in between he goes up into the intellectual contraption clouds in order to embrace his own rendition of the Serious Philosopher pontificating ponderously on morality. Go over to ILP and check it out.

It's the part in bold.

This is typical of the sort of thing we get from him all the time at KT. And the sort of thing that, in my view, we often get from you here, AJ.

Now, let's get back to how much of this is rooted in dasein...

[Alexis Jacobi]

This could be examined and the many-layered implications thought about ….

[iambiguous]

This could be examined and the many-layered implications thought about ….

Indeed. Start 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

[Iwannaplato]

This could be examined and the many-layered implications thought about ….

That's a great little video. Very familiar experience from a variety of contexts. What were you connecting it to here?

[Agent Smith]

From the pizza in the hands of person with a yellow apron and striped blue-white half-sleeved shirt, I conclude there's an animal (cast a wide net I must) that's got Heidegger's markings. What are Heidegger's markings? Dasein?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Indeed. Start here:

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yo, AJ!

I've really got him going now. Only he's on a leash of late at ILP. The Satyr I'm used to making a complete fool of [or simply allowing him to make a complete fool of himself] has been warned not to go too far in huffing and puffing and in hurling ad homs and in reducing his posts down to one long declamatory personal attack.

Excellent! Be sure to keep me apprised as things evolve. It is wonderful when our personal exposées seem to reflect a cosmic unfolding of *what is true* and coincides with the larger revelation of truth in our world(s). Bravo!

Now, let's get back to how much of this is rooted in dasein...

Oh yeah! Heck yeah!

[Alexis Jacobi]

[Agent Smith]

I'm interested in how Heidegger links up with the rest of the Socratic project, affectionately, passionately, foolishly, named Philo-Sophia by Pythagoras, the Greek Jain!

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm interested in how Heidegger links up with the rest of the Socratic project, affectionately, passionately, foolishly, named Philo-Sophia by Pythagoras, the Greek Jain!

Wait, I thought Heidegger ‘refuted’ or contradicted Plato …

This is a blurb from a book Heidegger & Plato (Northwestern University Press). (Note I have not read it as I am still working my sticky way through White Slaves of Lesbo Island).

For Martin Heidegger the "fall" of philosophy into metaphysics begins with Plato. Thus, the relationship between the two philosophers is crucial to an understanding of Heidegger--and, perhaps, even to the whole plausibility of postmodern critiques of metaphysics. It is also, as the essays in this volume attest, highly complex, and possibly founded on a questionable understanding of Plato.

As editors Catalin Partenie and Tom Rockmore remark, a simple way to describe Heidegger's reading of Plato might be to say that what began as an attempt to appropriate Plato (and through him a large portion of Western philosophy) finally ended in an estrangement from both Plato and Western philosophy. The authors of this volume consider Heidegger's thought in relation to Plato before and after the "Kehre" or turn. In doing so, they take up various central issues in Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) and thereafter, and the questions of hermeneutics, truth, and language. The result is a subtle and multifaceted reinterpretation of Heidegger's position in the tradition of philosophy, and of Plato's role in determining that position.

Now, what Satyr has to say about any of this is the real mystery confronting each of us here.

Note to the others: Do all of you possess hammers?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Great Things are portended! Starting…tomorrow!

May 09 — Sun in Taurus conjunct Uranus in Taurus

After a few tense weeks, we’re ready to start thinking logically again this week. Now is the time to trust our thinking and know that we can creatively solve any problem that comes our way.

[iambiguous]

The point is that provided we accept the new information, we might change our mind.

With my proviso in place, sure.

You mentioned this "proviso" on the nihilhism thread as well. And I didn't know what in the hell you were talking about there either.

If you agree that you can/could acquire new information and knowledge that does in fact change your mind about "life, liberty and property" in regard to things like buying and selling bazookas, what's that "proviso" again? A condition? A loophole? A Catch 22?

Whereas the objectivists among us who are absolutely adamant regarding their own moral and political dogmas [God or No God] never acknowledge that.

I have, with the priviso.

How about abortion then. You believe what you do about it here and now. But there and then, down the road, you read something or hear something or see something or experience something and it prompts you to reject what you now believe. A proviso encompassed here.

You told me on another thread that you had changed your mind regarding important things in your life. And, as I recall, you cited some vague example. But nothing really specific.

was across several threads and I was fairly specific. I, of course, didn't splay myself like some do and offer up a self-deprecating biography.

Okay be fairly specific again, please. "Something important" in your life like buying and selling guns that you changed your mind regarding after acquiring new information and knowledge; or because someone changed your mind about it as a result of all of the many, many exchanges you have had over the years here.

And you don't in my view because I suspect that in regard to an issue like abortion or guns or transgender rights, you either never really have changed your mind in the past or you did but don't want to fess up to it because that just reinforces my contention that you are now forced to admit that you might be wrong about something important you believe in now.

No, I didn't splay myself and offer a self-deprecating biography becuz it's not necessary. If I tell you I moved from atheism to deism becuz of the failures of materialism to explain how mind is a product of brain, that is sufficient to have a conversation. There's no need for me to debase myself, like some folks. This isn't a therapy site and no one here is a counsellor. Those who are troubled ought remember that.

I'm not asking you to splay yourself or to turn anything here into therapy. I'm simply asking you instead to note important issues in your life that you changed your mind about. And thus acknowledging that given these changes in the past, important issues that you embrace morally and politically now are subject to change in the future. The part that the particularly fanatic objectivists among us [God or No God] have never done given my own experiences with them over the years.

And God and religion are only really relevant here [to me] to the extent one goes beyond a more or less blind leap of faith and insists [like IC] that God does in fact exist and he has the Bible and the videos to prove it.

I certainly deem that to be what you are doing.

You can deem whatever you like. Just spare me the rhetorical tricks. They aren't workin' the way you'd like (unless your intent is to end the conversation).

Oh, right. Iwanna's qualms about rhetoric. Well, you be sure to point out specific examples of my own transgressions here. Though I suspect they mostly revolve around me pointing out things like you wiggling out of actually responding to the points I make.

Did Satyr teach you that?

I don't expect to convince you, henry.

Sure you do. Overall, your intent is clear: to break folks. To fracture them as you claim you were fractured.

No, I really don't. You strike me in particular as the embodiment of the "psychology of objectivism". In my view [wholly subjective of course] you have too much invested in your own need to have an anchor into which you embed your Self. And, sure, the extent to which I can bring someone around to my own frame of mind is the extent to which we can empathize with each other. But there is also the possibility of someone convincing me that there is a route up out of the hole I have dug myself down into.

"my way or the highway" libertarian mentality.

How is recognizing an individual, any individual, every individual, as having a right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property a my way or the highway proposition? Only way a body could conclude such a thing is if they don't believe an individual, any individual, every individual has a right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property.

In my view, you refuse to recognize that in regard to things like the buying and selling of bazookas, only your own understanding of "life, liberty, and property" is legitimate. Even though I note the arguments of those who wrap those words around a world where private citizens are not permitted to buy and sell them [and all the other military grade weapons noted above] that is simply not acceptable to you. So, there is no real possibility of "moderation, negotiation and compromise" with them. It is your way or the highway. Hell, you flat out acknowledge that you are willing to take your God-given convictions about guns all the way to Ruby Ridge if necessary.

Do you believe you have a right to your, and no one else's, life, liberty, and property? Do you believe I have a right to my, and no one else's, life, liberty, and property? If you don't believe either then do you believe others have a right to your life, liberty, and property? Do you believe you have a right to my life, liberty, and property?

Again, given what particular context? With abortion "life, liberty and property" can commence with the unborn baby or with the pregnant woman. No, no, some insist, it must start with the natural rights of unborn babies about to be murdered in the womb. No way, others declaim, it must start with the political rights of pregnant women about to be forced to give birth.

So, are you willing to negotiate and compromise here in regard to the meaning of the words life, liberty and property or is it "my way or the highway" with you?

Your point, in context, is your dasein is sumthin' other than an individual is nuthin' but a product of experience. To that end, you offer passages and selections from the other place and here. Those passages and selections, though, don't, to me, seem to say anything other than an individual is nuthin' but a product of experience.

All I can do is to come back to this:

No, it means that given all of the different worlds that any particular individual might fortuitously be born and raised in historically, culturally and experientially, their experiences [as children and as adults] can be vastly different from others. Such that what they come to believe about things like abortion and guns and transgender folks can be widely divergent in turn. But then those who follow their own "dictates of Reason and Nature" ...

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

...convince themselves that only their own path is the One True Path.

In fact, in my view, that's what the God world folks and the deontological philosophers do...swap out the "rooted existentially in dasein" man for the man said to be "one of us". The good guys, the smart guys.

Again, just a wordy way of sayin' an individual is just the product of his experiences...change his experiential components and you change the person.

Once again, from my frame of mind, you flat out "wiggle, wiggle, wiggle" away from actually addressing the points I make. How are your own moral convictions not the embodiment of my assessment above? Given an issue like guns and abortion and transgender politics.

Question: what exactly do you believe this conversation , between you and me, is about?

It's about how you and I construe the existential parameters of human identity in the is/ought world from very different perspectives.

Nah. It's about two real people -- you and me -- in the real world debating on how to live and on how we live. Me, as a free will, whole. You, as a broken meat machine. All the fancy talk doesn't change that.

On the contrary, in my view, you fit the profoundly problematic complexities of a real world rooted existentially in dasein, in the Benjamin Button Syndrome, into your "my way or the highway" political dogmas derived "intuitively" from a God who creates this world...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

...and then abandons us. Just leaves us here to deal with the ghastly consequences.

You describe what you are as a body, situated; as reservoir of experiences; as a mechanism. You aren't describing you as a person. The closest you get to that is describing yourself as fractured and whatnot. Obviously, though, I'm having a conversation with a person, not a collection of facts, and no matter how broken you reckon yourself to be, you are coherent and consistent with obvious leanings.

No, I am pointing out the fact that in regard to hundreds and hundreds of variables in my life I am not in the least fractured and fragmented.

Of course you're not fractured about the dry facts of you. I live at 666 XYZ Lane: there's nuthin' to get flummoxed about.

Yeah, that and hundreds and hundreds of other facts about myself and my life I am not drawn and quartered regarding.

Then I note the parts rooted existentially in the is/ought world of value judgments where "I" am. And then in my signature threads and in my posts I explain why I think that way.

Yes, I've read your scripts. They say I am a product of experience; given other experiences I, as product, might be different.

Scripts are what the objectivists use. Bibles and commandments and manifestos and Mein Kampfs. And that you continue to reduce the arguments I make in my signature threads down to what I construe to be banal "assessments" like that speaks volume about just how insubstantial you have become in our exchange.

Then in regard to value judgments of your own I ask you to note why you are not that way.

I've explained and you've snipped that away and chose to not substantively address it. I'll answer again in the manner I might address DAM (there's a chick with a condition): I am the experiencer, not the sum of experience. I exist before and after any experience. I learn from, but am not transmuted by, experience. I am not fractured becuz I cannot be, by definition, fractured. Too esoteric? Not esoteric enough? Tell me your level of comprehension and I'll lower the bar even more.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. You have never even come close to encompassing your own value judgments as I did existentially in the OP here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Then, in my view, you wiggle out of going there and post responses that describe me in a way that is ludicrous to me.

I'm givin' you the only accurate summary of your view I can, based solely on what you've posted. If I'm missin' sumthin', you're free to point it out. In the absence of you doin' so, I can't see much point in you objectin' to my summary, over and over. You aren't movin' me.

No, what I'm asking you for is your own existential rendition of my own existential trajectory regarding abortion in that same op here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

I suspect that revolves around you not really wanting to grasp that because, as with so many like you over the years, it begins to sink in: "what if that becomes applicable to me!!"

Another rhetorical trick.

On the other hand, what if, instead of actually responding substantively to my speculation above, this...

Who are these many you refer to? Name these souls you've shaken to core with your dasein. I see none of those folks here. Mebbe they're all over there, at that other place. I would like to meet them, these converts of yours.

...is just a rhetorical trick of your own?

Perhaps even unbeknownst to you yourself?

Look, over the years going all the way back to MSN and Yahoo "groups", I've encountered those who reacted to me as the objectivists still do. But I didn't keep a list of names. Some came over to "my side" in a PM or an email. I am still in contact with two of them. One from the Ponderer's Guild, another from the Philosophy Forum. Had a few more but for one reason or another they "disappeared". And one going all the way back to Friends of Brainstorm, died a couple of years ago.

And even my assumptions regarding determinism are no less fractured and fragmented.

And yet you still default to it. It seems you are less fractured about determinism than you are about free will. Why?

Because of all the arguments I make here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=34247

"Here and now" it makes the most sense to me given that human brains are matter.

Yeah, like I said you default to determinism. Just commit and say I'm a determinist (we all understand, of course, given new information and experiences you might come to believe different...lord, but you've told us so enough times) and be done with it. Time to stop fence-sittin', Iam (but then, you're not really fence sittin', are you).

No, henry, my default is always 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.

Like you and others, I'm grappling to "somehow" grasp the profound mystery that is human consciousness itself. The arguments that "here and now" are most persuasive to me revolve around determinism as some understand it in regard to the human brain being but more matter. You are the one who connects the dots here back to God.

And, in my view, only a fool would actually imagine that because they choose/"choose"/"choose" to stop sitting on the fence here that's, what, good enough?

And here [with a straight face no doubt] is how you respond to these utterly profound mysteries:

What's to confront? it's a wordy way of sayin' some folks are determinists, some folks are free willists and currently there's no way to establish conclusively the truth.

Big whoop. You already lean toward determinism, so just commit and move on.

It's all easily explained: God. You have made your own more or less blind "leap of faith" to Him and just "moved on". You're got your Final Solution to the quandary that has baffled philosophers and scientists for centuries. You are able to be comforted and consoled that there is a Final Solution -- God -- and then moved on to the further flagrant assumption that God provided you with the capacity to Reason as you do about everything under the Sun. I construe your frame of mind as "my way or the highway" but "somehow" you don't.

Only those like you have a God, the God to fall back on.

Nope. You might wanna read that conversation I had with Harbal again, the one I posted, the one you snipped out and didn't respond substantively to.

On the contrary, I responded to two of the points you made to him. But, really, henry your God either exits or does not. And, if He does, He created the material/phenomenological parameters/conditions that led to our brains being what they are...either autonomous or not. How can the "human condition" not ultimately go back to the Creator of it Himself?

Now, in my view, existentially, given the life you've lived, you have come to embrace your own spiritual prejudice regarding God.

Google "what did the Deist God create?" and the first thing that pops up is...

"For Deists God was a benevolent, if distant, creator whose revelation was nature and human reason. Applying reason to nature taught most deists that God organized the world to promote human happiness and our greatest religious duty was to further that end by the practice of morality."
National Humanities Center

Okay, given what context?

Thus...

If we have free will it's because God intended us to. Your God simply split the scene.

First thing you got right in a coon's age...

Edit:

"Coon is a shortened form of raccoon. Although a wild raccoon survives only 2 or 3 years on average, the phrase coon's age arose from the mistaken belief that these animals can live a long time. We still use the similar expression donkey's years, but coon's age has declined in use because coon is also a highly insulting term used to refer to a Black person." dictionary.com

I'll assume it's a reference to racoon's, okay?

I rest my case then. We have free will because of God. A leap of faith to your God, however, and not one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

Consequently, I believe [in a free will world] that it is reasonable for me to note...

...you bring it back to a God that, once again, to the best of my knowledge, you have no capacity whatsoever to demonstrate the actual existence of.

I've come to understand there's nuthin' I can tell you that'll serve as evidence.

No, henry, what I am interested in [as with IC and his Christian God] is the hard evidence that you are able to provide to yourself that your God does in fact exist.

Instead, you have "notions":

Thing is: if my notions about God are right, it doesn't matter cuz He doesn't care if you believe in Him or not. But, yeah, I know, deism is no comfort for a guy obsessed about the possibility of a horrific afterlife (or who claims to be worried about such things). Me, I don't get what the hoopla is. And now you'll give me another canned response meant to belittle me for lackin' the will to accept nihilism and join you on the junk heap of broken things.

The hoopla? How about a source for rational thought leading to objective morality on this side of the grave and, given the existence of a God, the God at least the possibility of immortality on the other side of it.

And, sure, I'll leave it to others to decide which of our own reactions to God and religion is "canned". Processed through minds that truly do want there to be a God on both sides of the grave.

And, in advance of you goin' on about look what I've reduced you to let me say I have no clue how else to respond to you. My sincere responses don't cut the (your) mustard and are rejected, ignored, dismissed, or used as jumpin' off points for you to post script. My snark is waved about as proof of victory. Some times I take you as you present yourself, existentially fractured and in-stasis; other times I see you as trickster, a conniver. Increasingly I see you as mentally ill or autistic like age.

On the contrary, I am the one who managed to reduce myself down to believing "in my head" that human existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless, that there is no foundation on which to create an objective morality and that death = oblivion.

And all I am doing here is noting what, existentially, rooted in dasein, "I" have come to think about all of this. I don't think of myself as a trickster, a conniver, as mentally ill or autistic.

Though I am often convinced that my arguments so perturb the objectivists among us -- "what if that ever becomes true of me as well?! -- they need to think of me in that way. Stooges I call them. Making me the argument.

And [of course] "natural rights" in regard to abortion and guns and property and the like are what you say they are.

Not really. The crux of the abortion debate is when does human life begin or what constitutes human life or personhood. Lots of noise is made about a woman's right to choose but that's always in the context of what I want to abort is not a human being and not I wanna kill my unborn child. Even the most hard core pro abortionists do not advocate killing children.

I basically agree. Only I also agree with the arguments made by those incensed at the thought of women being forced by the state to give birth. Or risk being charged with first degree murder for either performing an abortion or having one. Your arguments are the "noise" to them.

Again, my own "fractured and fragmented" frame of mind is encompassed in the OP here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=175121

Okay, how are my points here not applicable to you?

The crux of the gun debate is should a person own a killing machine. To that end, anti-gunners attempt to reclassify a gun as sumthin' other than property. Its purpose, to them, trumps its status as property. And always such folks shy away from answering the simple question if I've done no harm with my gun, why am I to be penalized? On those rare occasions they tackle that question the answer is always, when you strip it down to its essence you're guilty till proven innocent. Property: I know what I mean when I talk about it. My definition is conventional. What's yours? What's your justifier for depriving folks of property (in general or from some specific class of property)?

Sure, henry, there will no doubt be those in possession of grenades or bazookas or artillery pieces or RPGs or IEDs or chemical and biological weapons that have caused no harm to others. And those folks who want to live in a community where private citizens are prohibited from buying and selling them [or for some any guns at all] may just be whimsical or irresponsible.

But the bottom line is always the same with those like you: "my way or the highway". Or meet me up on Ruby Ridge. Or in Waco.

What I expect from you here is a withdrawal to I don't care what people think so much as how they came to believe it.

Again, given what context? And given what rooted existentially in dasein political prejudices regarding it?

After all, if there is an objective morality applicable to things like abortions and gun ownership, wouldn't it basically revolve around "it doesn't matter what life you lived historically, culturally, experientially or personally, here is how all rational and virtuous men and women are philosophically/deontologically obligated to live."

Right?

In that case: tell me how you arrived at the notion democracy is the way to go. You said if weapons were forbidden by law you'd turn in your revolver. How did you arrive at the conclusion doing so would be the right thing?

Again: I lived the life I did. And as a result of my uniquely personal upbringing, experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge this is what and how "here and now" I believe "in my head" about abortion, guns, transgender sexuality.

Just like you, henry. Just like AJ and Satyr. Only given the arguments I make above it still seems reasonable to "me" to be fractured and fragmented in regard to moral and political and spiritual value judgments. Tomorrow? Next week? Next year?

Ask me then.