Rorty's Liberal Ironist

[Hereandnow]

Atla wrote
Surely there must be something more underneath Western phenomenology than false, misleading psychotic impressions about the nature of the world?

If I may interrupt your conversation with yourself, do elaborate.

[Hereandnow]

GE Morton wrote

Er, no. It is not hidden and there is no need to look for it. It exists whenever someone takes a liking to something and slaps that label on it, which in most cases is readily evident.

But this simply pre analytic. And labels are only as interesting as that which they denote. One has to look plainly at a thing, suspending interpretations that are possessed by the ordinary language you use, order see a thing's parts. Take the familiar concept of logic. You could make the same kind of statement: logic exists only whenever someone thinks about something, which is true. But then, to conceive of logic analytically is to, well, analyze what is going on "whenever someone thinks about something". Again, it is certainly NOT some new object to observe. It is strictly descriptive.

No "analysis" "reveals" anything. If you love your cat then it has value to you. Saying that you value your cat is saying nothing more than you love the cat and therefore would act to protect it. That value is not a property of the cat; it is just a term to denote your desire for its well-being. There is nothing to "analyze."

If you simply substitute "desire" for "value" you beg the question: why do you desire your cat? Saying you love the cat is more to the point. Say you are in a state of love. Of course, many experience this, so the cat can be dismissed in an inquiry into the nature of love. What is it to love at all? Love simpliciter. This is what lies beneath the explicit experience that is indefeasible. This has been looked at already: it is not a contingent part of experience, for it remains what it is undiminished in any conceivable recontextualizing.

No, there is not. If you desire to be rid of a pain then you will assign a negative value to it. If you desire bliss, a positive value. There is no "value" to either sensation or condition beyond your subjective judgment of it. The term just denotes that judgment of yours; nothing more.

Ah, subjective judgment. But this is not about those subjective conditions at all. I adore raw oysters, you despise them. This has no analytic feature to it at all. Look more closely at the enjoyment: This is not a fact only. There is a residual X that remains after the suspension of what is factual, merely. This is what you have to deal with. Look, someone nails a person to a cross: You have no philosophical curiosity at all about this event beyond value being a "term that denotes a judgment of yours"???? You know this is wrong. It's patently absurd. It is the most salient feature of all of existence.

[Atla]

Atla wrote
Surely there must be something more underneath Western phenomenology than false, misleading psychotic impressions about the nature of the world?

If I may interrupt your conversation with yourself, do elaborate.

Nah it's fine, I won't try to ask the same questions for the 10th time, and then get no answer from phenomenologists. I think I can conclude for myself at this point that Western phenomenologists are just bad at phenomenology, they see in it what they want to see, chasing the occasional psychotic impressions and other self-strengthening misleading impressions about being, about presence. Which was of course what appeared to be the case from the start, I just wanted to confirm it rather than spend months reading phenomenology. And then they say that this is the real philosophy.

[Belindi]

There is no essential "any given thing".

Well, if by "essential" you mean "must necessarily exist," then I agree. The universe itself, and nothing in it, is "essential" in that sense. The term "essential" is only meaningful in a relative sense, such as when we say "oxygen is essential for animal life," or "CO2 is essential for plant life," or "saws and hammers are essential tools for carpenters." There are no timeless, eternal, "transcendental" "essences" in Plato's sense.

This is because "any given thing" is totally defined by its environment of other "any given thing(s)" which in turn are all totally defined by their environments.

Oh, no. Things are defined by their properties. A rock, a horse, a fir tree, a penny, remains a rock, horse, tree, or penny regardless of the environment in which it finds itself, as long as it retains its defining properties.

Value enters the above scenario via knowledge of how things are connected.

Well, I might not value something I would otherwise value if it is inextricably connected to something I disvalue more. E.g., a trap-wise mouse might not value a chunk of cheese he would otherwise value if he sees it is attached to a mouse trap. Is that what you mean? But most of the other things to which the cheese might be connected will not affect the value the mouse attaches to it.

To seek truth is to seek relations between 'given things'. Scientific knowledge is all about qualitative and quantitative comparisons , i.e. relations.

I agree.
[/quote]

Putative essence of a thing is a defining property or attribute without
which it would not be that thing.

"A rock, a horse, a fir tree, a penny, " are defined by that which they are not, i.e. their environments. "A rock, a horse, a fir tree, a penny, " are not defined by any essential property or attribute of " A rock, a horse, a fir tree, a penny, " these are defined by what they are not i.e. their environments.

Some things are arbitrarily defined by an essential attribute or property but only as I say abitrarily, and by common consent ,e.g. covid is defined by presence of a sort of coronavirus.

[Hereandnow]

Atla wrote
Nah it's fine, I won't try to ask the same questions for the 10th time, and then get no answer from phenomenologists. I think I can conclude for myself at this point that Western phenomenologists are just bad at phenomenology, they see in it what they want to see, chasing the occasional psychotic impressions and other self-strengthening misleading impressions about being, about presence. Which was of course what appeared to be the case from the start, I just wanted to confirm it rather than spend months reading phenomenology. And then they say that this is the real philosophy.

Psychotic impressions? Real philosophy??? Why Atla, whatever do you mean?? (Or are you just throwing stones?)

[GE Morton]

GE Morton wrote

Er, no. It is not hidden and there is no need to look for it. It exists whenever someone takes a liking to something and slaps that label on it, which in most cases is readily evident.

But this simply pre analytic. And labels are only as interesting as that which they denote. One has to look plainly at a thing, suspending interpretations that are possessed by the ordinary language you use, order see a thing's parts.

Er, H&N, value has no "parts." Hence no "analysis" is needed to reveal these "parts." Nor can you "suspend the interpretations possessed by ordinary language in order to see a thing's parts." Ordinary language is the only means we have for discussing value (or anything else). You're mystifying a simple term and concept, used and understood by nearly everyone on a daily basis, infusing it with a load of vacuous metaphysical gibberish. Any "parts" you think your "analysis" reveals are spurious artifacts of your own imagination, and have nothing to do with the concept of "value" or with the meaning and utility of that word.

If you simply substitute "desire" for "value" you beg the question: why do you desire your cat?

Aaaargh. You can't substitute "desire" for "value." Those two words mean different things. Desire is part of the explicans of "value"; it is not a synonym for it. "Value" is a quantificational word; it allows quantificational comparisons of the strengths of one's desires for various things: "A bird in the hand is worth (has a value of) two in the bush"; "The value of that Picasso has doubled in the last year;" "He places a higher value on his truck than on his kids"; etc. Also, saying that "Alfie values his cat" does NOT beg any question about why he desires his cat. The "why" of a desire is irrelevant to the fact that he values it. Why Alfie desires the cat may be an interesting question in its own right --- one neurophysiology may some day be able to answer --- but that answer has no bearing on the truth or falsity of "Alfie desires his cat, and places value V on it."

Saying you love the cat is more to the point. Say you are in a state of love. Of course, many experience this, so the cat can be dismissed in an inquiry into the nature of love. What is it to love at all? Love simpliciter. This is what lies beneath the explicit experience that is indefeasible.

That is incoherent. If love is "simpliciter," then nothing "lies beneath it." Or are you asking for a neurophysiological explanation for it? I suspect not; you're probably presuming there is some mystical, "transcendental," metaphysical entity or "truth" or "reality" "lying beneath it." Which presumption is spurious and vacuous, and contributes nothing to our understanding of value.

I adore raw oysters, you despise them. This has no analytic feature to it at all. Look more closely at the enjoyment: This is not a fact only. There is a residual X that remains after the suspension of what is factual, merely.

A "residual X that remains after . . . " what? The fact that you love oysters, and also the fact that I don't? The same X for both facts? This "residual fact" of yours is contrived and imaginary, and utterly unnecessary for explaining the different values different people may place on oysters.

This is what you have to deal with. Look, someone nails a person to a cross: You have no philosophical curiosity at all about this event beyond value being a "term that denotes a judgment of yours"???? You know this is wrong.

I would (in most cases) certainly judge it to be wrong, but not because life has some "transcendental value," or pain some transcendental disvalue. There are no such things. I would judge it wrong because it violates a sound (rationally defensible) moral principle.

[Hereandnow]

GE Morton wrote
H&N, value has no "parts." Hence no "analysis" is needed to reveal these "parts." Nor can you "suspend the interpretations possessed by ordinary language in order to see a thing's parts." Ordinary language is the only means we have for discussing value (or anything else). You're mystifying a simple term and concept, used and understood by nearly everyone on a daily basis, infusing it with a load of vacuous metaphysical gibberish. Any "parts" you think your "analysis" reveals are spurious artifacts of your own imagination, and have nothing to do with the concept of "value" or with the meaning and utility of that word.

YES! Value has no parts! That is what I am defending. Value here is an abstract concept designating the "good" or the "bad" of experiences that is not reducible; it is abstracted from experience, that is, experience itself is inherently valuative, making us ethical agents (NOT reason). The parts of ethics, these are what I am talking about. Take an ethical situation, and analyze it. There is in this exposition of each and every ethical possibility, something I am calling lifted from Wittgenstein, who said, "there is no value; and if there is, it has no value." Remember, he was speaking of the possibilities of language and logic) value. It is the good and bad possessed in experience itself that make ethics an existential phenomenon. Value is, alas, invisible, and this makes it a truly fascinating philosophical enigma.

Aaaargh. You can't substitute "desire" for "value." Those two words mean different things. Desire is part of the explicans of "value"; it is not a synonym for it. "Value" is a quantificational word; it allows quantificational comparisons of the strengths of one's desires for various things: "A bird in the hand is worth (has a value of) two in the bush"; "The value of that Picasso has doubled in the last year;" "He places a higher value on his truck than on his kids"; etc. Also, saying that "Alfie values his cat" does NOT beg any question about why he desires his cat. The "why" of a desire is irrelevant to the fact that he values it. Why Alfie desires the cat may be an interesting question in its own right --- one neurophysiology may some day be able to answer --- but that answer has no bearing on the truth or falsity of "Alfie desires his cat, and places value V on it."

I believe it was you who substituted value with desire. I say ethical affairs have a value in their essence, you tell me no, these are just desires, wants, and then I say you are begging the question with making this foundational for describing ethics because in, I desire X, there is a presuppositional query: what good is X (for you)? You could then talk about this and that, but, like in all good deconstructions, you finally end up where, as Hilary Putnam put it, the words run out, and for desires, it runs out with a final vocabulary: pleasure, delight, bliss, happiness, joy, and so on. Now you have arrived at the foundational analysis of a desire. These CANNOT be reduced.

I think the trouble here is that you don't care that such things are irreducible; that you think these value experiences (all experience, that is) are just local events, and have no importance in any way vis a vis some grand theory about what existence is all about. But you should see that a person IS existence, and all s/he experiences IS what existence "does". Of course, it is awkward to talk like this. Existence does not "do" anything, one has to say (existence? Another abstract concept for something entirely unseen. No one "sees" the absolute substratum of all that is). But if you were to hold this, then it would be upon you to explain how existence can be OTHER than the doing that is witnessed in our affairs. This is a tough intuitive obstacle to work through.

(Very interesting to look at Derrida on this. For him, all utterances are contextual; there is no singularity of a tree that is intimated to the observer by the tree. "Tree" is a meaning that issues from the "difference" of regional ideas (signifiers). He is absolutely right about this; but value, this world where's on its sleeve: value "tells" us Do not do this; and Do this. Value reveals itself in its injunctions, all of which are defeasible, of course, because all affairs are entangled in facts.)

That is incoherent. If love is "simpliciter," then nothing "lies beneath it." Or are you asking for a neurophysiological explanation for it? I suspect not; you're probably presuming there is some mystical, "transcendental," metaphysical entity or "truth" or "reality" "lying beneath it." Which presumption is spurious and vacuous, and contributes nothing to our understanding of value.

Again, it is you who are mystifying. I am being simply phenomenological. There you are in love. Examine this condition. I am not saying love occurs out of a context. I am say, do what Kant did with reason ( I remember saying this explicitly). The only way we discover reason is IN circumstances. In actual circumstances things are complicated, so we dismiss what we are not looking for. Incidentals. This is how Kant arrived at pure reason, from an extrapolation of existing conditions. What HAS to be the case, given what we observe. There is no "pure reason" nor is there value siimpliciter. Value simpliciter is an abstract concept that must be the case. Why? because of the existential indefeasibility of its presence.

A "residual X that remains after . . . " what? The fact that you love oysters, and also the fact that I don't? The same X for both facts? This "residual fact" of yours is contrived and imaginary, and utterly unnecessary for explaining the different values different people may place on oysters.

This residuum I talk about: take two examples, a plain fact (complex, locked in contextual meanings) and a clear case of an ethical (Should I bludgeon the old lady for her cookies?). Compare. Dismiss all factual content. Ask (I mean genuinely ask, not just to win an argument), is there a difference? Don't think of it an an exercise in ontology...yet. Just observe. Then follow the line of thinking I put out there.

[Gertie]

HAN

You could say value is and is not an abstraction: It is an abstraction in that it is analytically abstracted from the existence of the self. This is, frankly, a critical matter, goes right to the core of the meaning of our being human. To acknowledge that the self has in its innermost center a meaning foundation that underwrites all of our affairs (for ethics is a name given to relations with others. Value is always already there FOR ethics to even arise) is to say that Existence itself, existence qua existence, is valuative (and hence, ethical, for value is the foundation of ethical possibility). It is valuative here, in this locality I call me, but I am an expression of what existence is...


But, this would make all that is IN human existence absolute, after all, even the most insane fantasy "exists". This is where the contingency/absolute distinction plays its part: In existence, it is certainly true that one can produce imagined realities, and these realities must exist in the imagining, for imagining itself is ontologically inseparable from existence, and this is obvious...


Contingencies like fantasies and ordinary facts bound up in language's contexts cannot sring forth true propositions about the world as such; they cannot "say" what existence is doing for existence doesn't really have a context at all. It simply IS. If you want to find out what existence is "saying" (don't take this litterally) you would have discover IN existence something that is absolute, and since all that can be said is contingent (Wittgenstein's principle theme in the Tractatus) there is no possible proposition that can suffice....

Enter value. Wittgenstein, I have mentioned, takes value to be a nonsense term for exactly the reason stated above. But he by no means thought value itself was nonsense; indeed, he called it divinity (see his Culture and Value), the Good, that is, is divinity.

OK. Here's my version -

Ontology/Epistemology -

All I can know to exist for certain is the content of my own conscious experience. (I have my own notions of I/Me/Self, which I don't want to go into here, so I'm using these terms as we commonly think of them).

I assume the content of my experience represents interaction with something real existing beyond it which I can know things about in a limited and flawed way - a world of trees, rocks, physics, logic, evolution, my body, located in space and time, etc.

Including other conscious beings who I share this world with, and together we build a model of the world we share, by comparing notes on the content of our private individual conscious experience.

That model suggests we are indeed limited and flawed in how we experience the world which exists independently of us. If we are limited and flawed perceivers and thinkers, we should be open to tools which help us correct intuitions and misconceptions - phenomenology has an epistemological and ontological issue here, and talking in ''absolutes'' doesn't help, without clarifying in what sense phenomenological analysis discovers 'absolutes'.

Language -

Language uses symbols (and structure) to represent the content of our experience, an additional layer of abstracted representation, of the representation of our interaction of the world which is itself conscious experience. This additional layer adds more scope to for errors and limitations in describing what the actual nature of the world is, and building shared models of the world. It would be daft to expect otherwise. That doesn't mean that if you struggle to talk about some things more than others they are ''divine'', or absolute'' in their nature, that has to be considered on appropriate criteria not linguistic compatibility.

Logic and reason -

We assume logic and reason hold based on how we experience the world and how it works. The way the world works 'tells us' what is logical. If and when logic fails in coherently (to us) describing the world, we have to adapt our notions of what logic and reason is. Again, recognising our limitations allows us to correct and create better models. (For example we're currently working through what the weirdness of QM means for our logic at different levels of resolution).

Value and Morality -

Conscious experience (not existence qua existence) has a qualiative nature, including pleasant/unpleasant aspects. This is the Is we should appropriately derive Oughts from.

[And more generally, if you used the term conscious experience when that's what you're actually talking about, instead of vaguer and ambiguous terms like 'existence' and 'being', it would make it a lot easier to to exchange our ideas, and might help you focus on better too on the specifics of what you're claiming, and if it makes sense].


To me, all of that seems fairly easy to grasp. It also makes room for adjusting for error, rather than talking in absolutes. While in no way negating the wondrousness of conscious experience bringing meaning, purpose, value, mattering, interests, agency and the subsequent appropriateness of Oughts into a universe of dead rocks interacting according to physics.

It also gives us a framing to talk about absolutes and contingency, fundamental and emergent, real and not real. And understand why conscious experience of something (pain in my finger, seeing a tree) is only reliably known as the conscious experience itself. And there are ways of checking and improving the model of the world conscious experience represents. Of correcting inconsistencies , errors and bias phenomenology alone is inherently prone to.

[GE Morton]

YES! Value has no parts! That is what I am defending.

Egads. In your previous post you said the opposite.

Value here is an abstract concept designating the "good" or the "bad" of experiences that is not reducible; it is abstracted from experience, that is, experience itself is inherently valuative, making us ethical agents (NOT reason).

Yes, "value" denotes the comparative "goodness" or "badness" of a particular thing, in the judgment of a particular valuer. The "goodness" or "badness" of any particular thing varies from valuer to valuer. And, no; being valuers doesn't make us ethical agents. Ethics is concerned with what we do, in a social setting, in pursuit of our values, not with the mere fact that we value things. Crusoe, alone on his island, will value and disvalue many things, but no ethical issues will arise for him. He is not an "ethical agent" and has no need to be.

It is the good and bad possessed in experience itself that make ethics an existential phenomenon. Value is, alas, invisible, and this makes it a truly fascinating philosophical enigma.

If by "experience" you mean an external event, rather than our perception or awareness of that event, then it does not "possess" any goodness or badness. It only acquires goodness or badness after we decide whether we like it or not, and slap that label on it. So labeling it has nothing to do with ethics. And, no, ethics is not an "existential phenomenon" (whatever you may think that means). It is simply a set of rules governing interactions between moral agents in a social setting, pragmatically developed. There is nothing "existential," "metaphysical," or mystical about it.

I believe it was you who substituted value with desire.

Nope. I said that value arises from a desire; it is a word for quantifying and comparing the strengths of different desires.

I say ethical affairs have a value in their essence, you tell me no, these are just desires, wants, and then I say you are begging the question with making this foundational for describing ethics . . .

Wrong again. I said that ethics presumes desires, and thus values. But that it is indifferent to the substance, the content, of those desires and values. I.e., it is concerned with the fact that Alfie values X, but not with the nature of X.

. . . because in, I desire X, there is a presuppositional query: what good is X (for you)? You could then talk about this and that, but, like in all good deconstructions, you finally end up where, as Hilary Putnam put it, the words run out, and for desires, it runs out with a final vocabulary: pleasure, delight, bliss, happiness, joy, and so on. Now you have arrived at the foundational analysis of a desire. These CANNOT be reduced.

That's all quite true. There is no explaining desires. We desire things because (as I said) they deliver, or we expect them to deliver, some sort of satisfaction. They are idiosyncratic, volatile, even ephemeral. That is as far as analysis of desire can go. And it has nothing to do with ethics.

I think the trouble here is that you don't care that such things are irreducible; that you think these value experiences (all experience, that is) are just local events, and have no importance in any way vis a vis some grand theory about what existence is all about.

Correct. Any "grand theory about what existence is all about" will be nonsense.

No one "sees" the absolute substratum of all that is.

Correct again. Hence postulating such an "absolute substratum" is vacuous and idle. More nonsense.

But if you were to hold this, then it would be upon you to explain how existence can be OTHER than the doing that is witnessed in our affairs.

Existence is NOT anything other than the phenomena of experience, plus whatever we can rationally infer from that experience. Or, at least, we have no rational grounds for assuming otherwise.

Again, it is you who are mystifying. I am being simply phenomenological. There you are in love. Examine this condition.

Examine it as long as you wish. After doing so you'll have nothing more than what you started with. i.e., an inexplicable feeling.

This residuum I talk about: take two examples, a plain fact (complex, locked in contextual meanings) and a clear case of an ethical (Should I bludgeon the old lady for her cookies?). Compare.

Er, H&N, you can't ask someone to "compare" two scenarios, one of which is unspecified ("plain fact") and the other of which is specified. And, no, if all of those factual details are omitted, then neither an evaluative nor an ethical judgment is possible.

[Atla]

Psychotic impressions? Real philosophy??? Why Atla, whatever do you mean?? (Or are you just throwing stones?)

Falling for psychotic and other false self-strengthening impressions about the world, is not what I consider to be the real-deal philosophy. That's just a common illusion of phenomenology unless you can show otherwise. For example the Hindus look at the world and say the Brahman is everything, and while the Brahman doesn't actually do anything, it also somehow does everything. So they start to see the Brahman in everything and everyone, and now the Brahman is "something".

They made something out of nothing. This is especially easy when someone is psychotic, because in that case existence does in fact seem to have an inherent nature, we can just "feel" that nature when we pay attention. And outside psychosis it's still easy to fall into self-strengthening false impressions, where we think the world has some inherent nature, and the more we focus on it, the more clearly we start to see said nature. Except we made the whole thing up and our thinking/feeling is stuck in a self-strengthening loop.

Brahman is just a name for the world, for existence, for all-there-is including us, unless Hindus can show otherwise. Your phenomenology seems to have a similar problem, you seem to think that existence has some inherent "value" nature. If this is true, then of course it makes perfect sense to just analyze stuff to uncover what is already there. But why don't phenomenologists try to show first that the world has such a nature to begin with? Until then an instance of pain is just an instance of pain for the rest of us, and there's nothing more to it, it's the right kind of qualia for the organism at the right place and the right time, just like yellow is, it's just how our happens to be put together, and why it is put together like this may have nothing to do with value.

[Hereandnow]

GE Morton wrote
. In your previous post you said the opposite.

Find it. It would be like It would be like Nietzsche saying he is a Christian.

Yes, "value" denotes the comparative "goodness" or "badness" of a particular thing, in the judgment of a particular valuer. The "goodness" or "badness" of any particular thing varies from valuer to valuer. And, no; being valuers doesn't make us ethical agents. Ethics is concerned with what we do, in a social setting, in pursuit of our values, not with the mere fact that we value things. Crusoe, alone on his island, will value and disvalue many things, but no ethical issues will arise for him. He is not an "ethical agent" and has no need to be.

Well, yes, the goodness or badness vary. Look, you have to make an effort. You argue past what is given, and this is a disingenuous way to go. E.g., I have said repeatedly that ethics is what we do, is found in social settings, and so forth. When you read what is there, you should try to put things together. I already KNOW what you believe on this, and it is rather standard. You are being presented with a counterargument that has specific ideas, very specific. E.g., when you say" being valuers doesn't make us ethical agents" get it right: to be an ethical agency at all, one must be able to experience that world in a value relationship. So to be ethical at all, one must have in place, always already in place, a structural predisposition. In order to be a victim at all of someone's actions, you have to be someone who is capable of being hurt. Then move to the next question: What is it to be hurt? This has an analytical possibility. So bringing up the sociality of ethics is, mindbogglingly absent of any argument presented here.

No ethical situation can arise without human relations. Crusoe? If alone, obviously (unless, as I have said, one thinks of the self as a temporal composite. One can then be responsible to one's future self. This sounds absurd, perhaps, but then, are we not the victims or beneficiaries of our previous selves?), and I went through this.

If by "experience" you mean an external event, rather than our perception or awareness of that event, then it does not "possess" any goodness or badness. It only acquires goodness or badness after we decide whether we like it or not, and slap that label on it. So labeling it has nothing to do with ethics. And, no, ethics is not an "existential phenomenon" (whatever you may think that means). It is simply a set of rules governing interactions between moral agents in a social setting, pragmatically developed. There is nothing "existential," "metaphysical," or mystical about it.

What I think the term existential means is simply that it is a matter that deals with existence, and this is a sticky matter to discuss since existence is has a long history in philosophical speculation and issues. I am calling value BOTH existential AND abstract, but you have to follow along: Abstract because it is a term that issues from an analysis; analyses take things apart, if they have parts, and all things do (but this concept of value, I am saying, is an existential foundational term in that it is indicative of something that turns up in analysis that defies analysis. If you would just understand this simple point, and leave out all the extraneous objections that have nothing to with this then you might find yourself say, Oh! Just that?), even at the level of the most basic analysis, the language that is in play HAS PARTS.

When I say parts I mean just what I have been talking about. Take an ethical example of any kind at all. In order for it to BE ethical at all, it must have this qualificative existential valuation PART, much in the same way that in order for a judgment to be a judgment AT ALL, it must have a logical structure. If Kant says the latter, and you say something absurd like, well, when we judge things we don't talk about logic at all, do we? Therefore all your talk about logical structure is just wrong, then you just are not getting it.

You objections are entirely pre analytic. I cannot see at all why you don't see this.

[GE Morton]

GE Morton wrote
. In your previous post you said the opposite.

Find it. It would be like It would be like Nietzsche saying he is a Christian.

Easily done:

GE Morton wrote

"Er, no. It is not hidden and there is no need to look for it. It exists whenever someone takes a liking to something and slaps that label on it, which in most cases is readily evident."

But this simply pre analytic. And labels are only as interesting as that which they denote. One has to look plainly at a thing, suspending interpretations that are possessed by the ordinary language you use, order see a thing's parts.

Well, yes, the goodness or badness vary. Look, you have to make an effort. You argue past what is given . . .

"Past what is given . . ." To what? To something you've imagined, which contributes nothing to understanding value or to the utility of that term? You're trying to "analyze" something that requires no analysis, which is simple, self-evident, and self-explanatory, in order to place it within some contrived "transcendental" realm of meaning or significance. That whole enterprise is fatuous and useless.

E.g., I have said repeatedly that ethics is what we do, is found in social settings, and so forth. When you read what is there, you should try to put things together. I already KNOW what you believe on this, and it is rather standard. You are being presented with a counterargument that has specific ideas, very specific. E.g., when you say" being valuers doesn't make us ethical agents" get it right: to be an ethical agency at all, one must be able to experience that world in a value relationship.

That's quite true. Having and understanding values is a necessary condition for moral agency. It is not, however, a sufficient condition. Desiring (and thus valuing) things does not make one a moral agent, and even a moral agent has no need for ethics --- a set of rules governing interactions between moral agents --- unless he is in a social setting.

So to be ethical at all, one must have in place, always already in place, a structural predisposition. In order to be a victim at all of someone's actions, you have to be someone who is capable of being hurt.

That's also quite true. But being able to be hurt does not make one a moral agent.

Then move to the next question: What is it to be hurt?

What counts as a "hurt" varies, like values, from agent to agent. A "hurt" is some reduction of welfare, which has a negative value to an agent. But for doing ethics we don't need to know why X hurts Alfie, or "what it is to be hurt" (whatever you imagine that might be). For ethical purposes we only need to know that X DOES hurt Alfie, and therefore that we ought not inflict X upon him.

You're having a hard time separating deontology (ethics) from axiology (value), and then approaching the latter as something mystical.

[Hereandnow]

Gertie wrote
Ontology/Epistemology -

All I can know to exist for certain is the content of my own conscious experience. (I have my own notions of I/Me/Self, which I don't want to go into here, so I'm using these terms as we commonly think of them).

I assume the content of my experience represents interaction with something real existing beyond it which I can know things about in a limited and flawed way - a world of trees, rocks, physics, logic, evolution, my body, located in space and time, etc.

Including other conscious beings who I share this world with, and together we build a model of the world we share, by comparing notes on the content of our private individual conscious experience.

That model suggests we are indeed limited and flawed in how we experience the world which exists independently of us. If we are limited and flawed perceivers and thinkers, we should be open to tools which help us correct intuitions and misconceptions - phenomenology has an epistemological and ontological issue here, and talking in ''absolutes'' doesn't help, without clarifying in what sense phenomenological analysis discovers 'absolutes'.

But of course you know that when you see a rock of a tree, that these are not intimating their existence to you as if something out there actually traverses space and time and arrives in your conscious thoughts. Just to be clear, when you approach an object, and you know what it is "always already" the object before you is predelineated, that is, you recall it from previous historical encounters. You never actually see the "purely" the thing there, but see "through" the interpretative language and culture that makes an object and object. Without this, you would be just staring blankly. So, the stone as a stone is not an independent thing at all. It is infused with conceptual properties. Kant said: (sensory) intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without intuitions are empty.

The point comes to this: an object is not an object apart from experience. It is unspeakable. It doesn't exist. The moment you say it does exist, you find that existence, after all, is first, prior to any ontology, a term that is contextually bound. Not that there is nothing "out there" but that all you can ever talk about is something invested with the talk to begin with. (It gets much worse with Derrida.)

You can perhaps see how this effects the matter here: Contexts make an object an object, so the stone, when observed has built in contextual possibilities. You may see it as a physicist might, or a child at play, or a thing of beauty; or perhaps like me, you are trying to discuss it in the broadest possible context, philosophy.

Perhaps you've read Thomas Kuhn's famous Structures of Scientific Revolutions. He made the term paradigm popular. Just to see in the most mundane sense is always already a paradigmatic event, historical in both the personal sense and the grand cultural progression of ideas.

Phenomenology doesn't talk about absolutes. I do. Husserl did. Kierkegaard did, in his own way. Heidegger did not, nor did Derrida, nor Sartre. Levinas, carrying the torch for Husserl, did, Michel Henry works in the post Heideggarian/post Derridaian world and he does. I mean, everybody is different. Phenomenology wants to think about the world at the level where there are begged questions, no hidden presuppositions; the level where all other levels presuppose this level.

Language -

Language uses symbols (and structure) to represent the content of our experience, an additional layer of abstracted representation, of the representation of our interaction of the world which is itself conscious experience. This additional layer adds more scope to for errors and limitations in describing what the actual nature of the world is, and building shared models of the world. It would be daft to expect otherwise. That doesn't mean that if you struggle to talk about some things more than others they are ''divine'', or absolute'' in their nature, that has to be considered on appropriate criteria not linguistic compatibility.

As to talk about what is divine, you have to first take divinity up as an issue. What is one asking when one asks about divinity? Is there anything in the world at all that gave rise to this ancient concept? Or is it just primitive thinking grounded in fear and ignorance? If the latter, then what do you think people were afraid and ignorant about? Obviously, the miseries of the world. What is misery? Misery is one classificatory term we have for experiences that we call bad. What does bad mean? Well, it's the opposite of good. There are two kinds of good and bad: contingent and absolute......and this is where I came in. See previous arguments.

what you say about representation I can't understand. But I have no problem with shared models in the attempt to describe the actual world. I would only ask, what models do you have in mind? Science? Nothing wrong with scientific models. But they are not philosophy. Science has nothing to say about the the matter here, about meta value, meta ethics, meta aesthetics. Not what Neil De Grasse Tyson gives a fig about.

Logic and reason -

We assume logic and reason hold based on how we experience the world and how it works. The way the world works 'tells us' what is logical. If and when logic fails in coherently (to us) describing the world, we have to adapt our notions of what logic and reason is. Again, recognising our limitations allows us to correct and create better models. (For example we're currently working through what the weirdness of QM means for our logic at different levels of resolution).

Well, you really have to read Kant and Wittgenstein (Tractatus). Why not read Kant? Where is the harm in doing this? You know, QM reaches out to Kant and makes claims Kant talked about 200 years ago. Talk about objects and their properties as if they were independent of the perceptual act is just very wrong. The perceptual system encountering an object modifies that object, and so you cannot speak of an object as if it were the world of out thereness. No, the world is neither out there nor in here, for these two poles are conceived in a unity in the engagement. The old Cartesian model was undone by Kant long ago. Existentialism (aka, phenomenology) takes this to its limit. Derrida will explode your mind. The best philosophy takes one to places never imagined.

Value and Morality -

Conscious experience (not existence qua existence) has a qualiative nature, including pleasant/unpleasant aspects. This is the Is we should appropriately derive Oughts from.

[And more generally, if you used the term conscious experience when that's what you're actually talking about, instead of vaguer and ambiguous terms like 'existence' and 'being', it would make it a lot easier to to exchange our ideas, and might help you focus on better too on the specifics of what you're claiming, and if it makes sense].


To me, all of that seems fairly easy to grasp. It also makes room for adjusting for error, rather than talking in absolutes. While in no way negating the wondrousness of conscious experience bringing meaning, purpose, value, mattering, interests, agency and the subsequent appropriateness of Oughts into a universe of dead rocks interacting according to physics.

It also gives us a framing to talk about absolutes and contingency, fundamental and emergent, real and not real. And understand why conscious experience of something (pain in my finger, seeing a tree) is only reliably known as the conscious experience itself. And there are ways of checking and improving the model of the world conscious experience represents. Of correcting inconsistencies , errors and bias phenomenology alone is inherently prone to.

Calling it conscious experience changes nothing, though. Dewey talked like this in his Art as Experience and Experience and Nature, and he was a pragmatist. Pragmatism is a very plausible way to look at the world, but at the basic level, it is where I am (not that Dewey defended what I am defending) It would take too long to talk about this, but let's take conscious experience. I am conscious of an ethical case. Let's analyze this case. Nothing in the analysis changes. Experience exists.

As to absolutes. Don't think about it as something beyond the reach of experience and reason. It is right there IN experience (though, if we are to talk about experience, let's not set it against some objective world that is not experience. See the QM reference above, and prior to that. Objects are not "out there" Cartesian res extensa contra our res cogitans. This is out the window. There is no "in and out" of brain events and stones and clouds. The brain itself is encountered IN this unity, this fusion of all that is there in the presence of things).

Easy to grasp? Frankly, I don't see why you would even want something like this.

[Hereandnow]

GE Morton wrote
"Past what is given . . ." To what? To something you've imagined, which contributes nothing to understanding value or to the utility of that term? You're trying to "analyze" something that requires no analysis, which is simple, self-evident, and self-explanatory, in order to place it within some contrived "transcendental" realm of meaning or significance. That whole enterprise is fatuous and useless.

Useless to those who don't understand it. True. You have to read, not just post.

[Belindi]

GEMorton wrote:

"value" denotes the comparative "goodness" or "badness" of a particular thing, in the judgment of a particular valuer. The "goodness" or "badness" of any particular thing varies from valuer to valuer. And, no; being valuers doesn't make us ethical agents. Ethics is concerned with what we do, in a social setting, in pursuit of our values, not with the mere fact that we value things. Crusoe, alone on his island, will value and disvalue many things, but no ethical issues will arise for him. He is not an "ethical agent" and has no need to be.

Morals value experiences , and ethics are codify values.

In the film Castaway the hero, Chuck Noland , had a moral stance towards Wilson the castaway ball, and Wilson was himself a moral agent who had opinions and loyalty. When Wilson was lost off the raft, Chuck was heartbroken as he had lost what was to him a person to whom he related. it's 'only a film' but the theme of moral agency is what makes it relevant to life.

There is a defect in people who can't relate morally to what is other than themself. Robinson Crusoe was bereft until Man Friday appeared. My point is that evaluating features of environment is so necessary to us that it may be counted as an instinct. Environment is so important that men have invented gods who preside over inanimate features of environment such as some benign personal god of place who presides over a holy well, grove, or mountain. There are other gods of place who are dangerous persons, e.g. the old Jahweh, and men need to placate them. When people need moral agents other than themselves they will invent them if need be.