Heidegger

Re: PRAGMATIST MORALITY.

Gary:
So, let us take on the question again. *So, what does it mean linguistically
*for him who seeks an ethical philosophy?* * If one is seeking igneous
rock, does that make igneous rock good? James specifically takes on that problem
in section II. *First of all, it appears that such words have no application
or relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists.* Jud and Richard,
you should both have the essay at hand because James really drills this point
in with all of its logical implications ruthlessly. I shall try to simply hit
the highlights. As to matter, *would there be any sense in saying of that
world that one of its states is better than another? . . . We are asking
whether goods and evils and obligations exist in physical facts per se. Surely
there is no status for good and evil to exist in a purely insentient world. How
can one physical fact, considered as a physical fact, be better than another?
Betterness is not a physical relation.* This, I think, is perfectly
compatible with Juds * I do not accept that ‘moral relations’ exist*

Jud:
You/James are ringing bells on the question of: *words have no application
or relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists.* for this is my
main point of entry into the eliminativist ontology of what exists and what
doesn’t. The *ontological filter* that I use is to imagine a world without human
beings, and then to intuit assess what would actually exist in their
absence? Obviously most of the natural objects with which we are familiar would
still exist, although the way that many of them existed would be different [no
man-made forests, fields, vineyards, lakes and reservoirs, roads, paddies,
quarries and plants of trees planted in straight lines would not exist etc. Yes,
the oceans wouldn’t be polluted and the atmosphere choked with carbon too,
but this is not really what I am getting at, which is that ETHICS AND MORALS
AND WORDS wouldn’t exist or rather, in such a situation it would be obvious
even to the most dull-brained idealist that these things don’t exist.

For the eliminativist of course, even in such a super-sentient human world
in which we live, these human reifications are ALREADY known or realised not
to exist, and that it is only the human ethicists, moralists and wordifiers
that actually exist.

In such a humanless world the conceptualised, transcendentalist, entiatic
discriminative Greekish reificational *bolt-ons* of *essence* [isness] and
*property,* and the dualistic model of an objective substrate [the *stuff* or
ousia of which objects are composed] being the *owner’s* or * proprietors* of
their own *blueness* or *smoothness* or *pungency* being the would be absent.

In the absence of human conceptualisation and the need to descriptively
categorise, the adjectival system would collapse and objects would revert to
*just being the objects they actually are.* Ding an Sich, exempted from the
human attribution of the *properties* of breadth and length, size, colour,
smell, shape and sound and taste and feel and all the rest of the human-inspired
indentificatory (Lat. idem, the same), attribution based upon the relational
aspects of objects figured in terms of the human sensorium.

If humankind were wiped out, the goods and evils and obligations - the loves
and hates and worries of the human imagination would be caught up in the
whistling wind of a gigantic trannie-fart of finality and be swept away to the
skies just like the swirling playing-cards in the court scene in Alice in
Wonderland.

For me of course ALL objects, including humans are ALREADY Ding am Sich -
and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN just like any other object in the cosmos - they just
happen to be *thinking Ding am Sich* rather than *fly-eating Ding am Sich* or
*moisture-bearing clouds of water droplets Ding am Sich.*

As soon as the umbilical cord is cut we attain to and remain *things in
ourselves* for the rest of our lives - and we die as one.

Richard:
I wonder if the statement * How can one physical fact, considered as a
physical fact, be better than another? can be answered as follows: If there is a
reasonable premise that destruction or annihilation is *bad* then the physical
fact that some bit of matter is destroyed might be considered as being a
*bad* event. Of course one may challenge the premise, but then they must then
go on to challenge a similar premise that states that the death of any living
creature is *bad,* — the creature being any sentient thing, human or
otherwise, for after all, we are all simply matter.

Jud:
I completely agree. In my mind’s eye, I always insert a qualitative: *From
a human viewpoint,* or, *from the viewpoint of some humans* before any
proposition or statement of opinion [moral or ethical claim.]

For many humans the premise that: *the destruction of Saddam Hussain is
desireable* was a reasonable example that the destruction or annihilation of a
certain object in certain circumstances was good - whilst for many others it
was bad. Yet others would say that the legal destruction of any human object
[execution] was bad, not just because it was good or bad to destroy Saddam
Hussain, but it was bad to judicially destroy any member of the human race. Like
any other spectrum of opinion [which is all that ethics or morals is,
stripped of the hi falutin verbiage that surrounds it and puts food on the table for
many authors] there is a whole compass of compromise.
There is a lot of: *ifs* and *buts* and *maybees* between *good* and *bad.*

*Shoot him - or I shoot you!*

and

*I am against the death penalty in principle - but that bastard killed my
daughter!* etc.

GCM:
This is true. Simply observe the ordinary process of remembrance of a person
after their death. When their actions totally cease to effect the actions
and thoughts of others directly they are soon forgotten. What acts they did do
in the past become separate *entities* in the present to be dealt with as
necessary. What is regarded as a *person* in a human being erodes immediately
until the press of current necessities erases them altogether.

Jud:
No, Gary it is a European thing too. First the photograph of the deceased
loved one goes in a prominent position on the mantelpiece.
Sometime later, a little yellower, it is moved to a side table. Eventually:
*I think there’s a photograph of Jack in the attic somewhere?
I’ll check it out next time I go to service the water-tank.* Finally the
house gets demollished and the bric a bra end up in a skip.
The Mona Lisa and the Complete works of Shakespeare will EVENTUALLY end up
in the sky-skip called: *The Great Maw of Time.*

Gary:
This may be mainly an American phenomena, I do not know, but history stays
*alive* primarily as long as historical participants maintain its importance
[like W.W.II]. Though certain events can be demonstrated to have still present
causative pressures in the present [like the Civil War or W.W.I], since no
one any longer *livingly* asserts these events as events that involved living
participants, their importance, and especially their philosophical, economic,
and political lessons and still present causative factors, are ignored and
forgotten altogether so that no one seriously takes into consideration in
present political action what happened even in the recent past. And this is not a
specific this and that reference but covers the whole broad range of every
kind of history, personal and private as well as world-wide. It is not a
deliberate turning of blind eyes to possible consequences, but simply an
overwhelming concern for what is needed right now only for the most immediate future,
even for issues that are suppose to be long term seem to be temporally
turned inside out for the purpose of immediate application [the environment, the
world bank, or any specific problem that has gained present attention with no
consideration of the collateral consequences of any action on that specific
problem].

So I am saying that essentially the materialism of history has already taken
strong hold on dissolving the importance of human death from the highest
political nabob to the lowest homeless person.

Jud:
Genau mein guter Freund! As the great son of the tentmaker said:

Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,
And Jamshyd’s Sev’n-ring’d Cup where no one knows;
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows,

VI
And David’s lips are lockt; but in divine
High-piping Pehlevi, with “Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!”–the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That sallow cheek of hers t’ incarnadine.

VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time bas but a little way
To flutter–and the Bird is on the Wing.

XVI
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes–or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two–is gone.

XVII
Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
Omar Khayaam.

Gary:
That it can be *bad* has merely become a matter of quantity, either of mere
numbers or present celebrity however frivolous by rational standards that may
be. The death of the lowly - and we are the lowly - has always been a matter
of indifference in actual practice whose *badness* could only become notable
for political purposes. But now even the deaths of the politically important
- for a surviving politician they are simply someone *in the way*, and now
problem solved, or *needs to be immediately replaced* - create much of a stir.
Even if monuments are built, they are *faceless* of personality, purely
utilitarian - for the use of others with little or no remembrance of the person
who died. Evil only exists for each living person - if even that applies -
simply for their own purposes and reasons. And in such a specific, limited
context, does not the very meaning of evil cease to exist?

Jud:
So true!

XVIII
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter–the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.

Richard:
Is the cutting down of a tree *bad?* Certainly for the continued living
existence of the tree it is. Of course this begs the question as to the meaning
of *bad,* [and *good.*] .

GCM:
Very much so. It is a personifying of material objects. Now, we are material
objects. Is it even legitimate to say good and evil are even meaningful
terms for us? William James presents - in his unobtrusive manner that sometimes
seems sympathetic to a viewpoint that really does not share but is merely
being *polite* and letting it have its proper say - the evolution of ethics in
brief as, first, the dictates of a tyrant, thinking themselves God, who lays
down what is right and wrong. This is a person uniquely by themselves in a
material universe utterly unaffected by their judgement of their *wheels spinning
but not touching the ground* speculations. Then comes another person who
also thinks they are God and each engages in a strife to convert the other to
believe that he is the true God. And this is how ethics is actually practiced,
stripped of obfuscation. If you claim there can be much more sophisticated
viewpoints of ethics, James would have you go right back to the beginning point
and see if such a sophisticated ethics actually performs in any different
way. By itself, what can it effect? Nothing but your self. If another comes,
what happens? A contest of wills as to whose *right* view will dominate the
other. What seems perfectly clear when it is a matter of the many versus the
many, becomes perfectly ludicrous when it materialistically, without referring
to anyone else, becomes purely one on one.

Jud:
Exactly, ethics is no more than agenda-driven opinion.

RICHARD:
Bentham believed that pain was the only evil and pleasure the only good “

Jud:
Tell that to a Masochist! [joke]

Richard:
Otherwise the terms have no meaning. But there is much lacking in Bentham’s
utilitarian approach to ethics. Being a moral relativist [since I cannot find
any other position reasonable] I see *bad* as having meaning only in terms
of a social consensus. In Suadi Arabia, it is just fine to stone a woman to
death if she has been raped i. e. not *bad.* I must admit that in the greater
scheme of the cosmos [whatever that scheme might be] I find concerns about
what is *bad* and *good* to be nonsensical concerns. Of course we have these
moral issues, and must live our lives according to this and that calculus of
*betterment, * *pleasure,* *pain,* *reward,* and all the other emotional
factors that come into play.

GCM:
But are *emotional factors* legitimately *moral issues*?

RICHARD:
But in this rarefied atmosphere of philosophical entertainment, should we
not call a spade a spade and realize that such concepts as moral abstractions
are completely without meaning? To the earthworm being eaten by the robin is
BAD. To the robin, being without sustenance for its self and its young is BAD.
Catching the worm is GOOD.

GCM:
This is simply personification again. Does the robin or worm have a *person*
to personify? Actually I think that is a very interesting question since Jud
already knows I presume to have found in Aristotle a natural process of
rational judgment in animals.

Jud:
Yes, Gary - I read your comments on the matter with great interest years
ago. Heidegger picked up on this question too didn’t he?
Perhaps he was trying to butter-up to his fuhrer and please him, by
suggesting that Hitler’s dog Blondi was an intellectual?

BTW it just clicked - *blondi* was obviously chosen because of the
predominant blondness of the super-race.

Gary:
It is true such judgment or *kinein* is based on purely material,
physiological processes, but at some point - I used the lion - pure focus of senses,
memory of acceptable hunting requirements and procedures, contextualization of
the situation, leadership and ordering of the other members of the Pride,
estimation of distance and speed, obviously must create some kind of *self* or
*person* wherein one can also find all the fundamental elements of the human
mind, even to a limited extent language.

Jud:
That makes a lot of sense to me Gary.

Gary:
Would the lion think in terms of *bad* or even *success* or *failure*?

Jud:
I imagine that would be more a qualia-type feeling of: a *warm flush
accompanied by increased salivation,* or *recognition of situation accompanied by
relaxation of muscles etc.* In other words I imagine a lion *feels* rather than
*thinks,* or *deals with incoming data* in response to bodily needs, rather
than plans? AND YET the hunting mode suggest a high degree of organisation?
But if it is instinctual it would be rather like *acting out a modalic
script* rather than *writing a script.*
But it is certainly a fascinating subject.

Gary:

Is that what *good* and *evil* really boil down to, success or failure so
that ethics is merely the forecasting of a plan for living? Either way, ethics
as such is not necessary and emotions, though undeniably possessed in all
animals - as reaction if nothing else, is a very dubious survival trait since
they necessarily interfere with clear judgment, even though they may get the
sluggardly to act when they need to. That is not much of a plaudit. However, I
must admit *success* and *failure* would have little force in themselves
without emotion, and it is for those rewards all plans are made, however coldly
rational is the inception. Even a Stoic has to have some kind of passion for
Stoicism. But then the Stoic’s passion is mainly concerned with maintaining a
distance from other passions and desires. So what can justify a Stoic’s
passion? If passions are inherently harmful, if not evil, in themselves, then the
same judgment must apply to the Stoic’s passion. Such terms as come to my
mind, absolute independence, total self-sufficiency, require a self to be prized
emotionally which is not acceptable. The *self* becomes an *external* to
reason and therefore inherently indifferent until judged and assented to. It is
the *guiding factor*, the *hegemonikon*, and is maybe a logical contradiction
within Stoicism to be emotionally prized.

RICHARD:
I agree to some degree with Bentham but not entirely. We are just animals;
but we have managed to invent these names for things that have inspired a
million dissertations, books, bulls, etc. and are no better off for it all. As
long as we chase the meanings of words we will inevitably end up chasing our
tails and catching nothing. We are just these complex arrangements of matter
that, due to some extraordinarily improbable event, evolved on this little
rock of a planet and believe that we can actually KNOW something. We KNOW
nothing. Its all a lark of language and dreams.

Jud:
For me it is a question of how we spend what time we have available to us.
What one enjoys. In what one finds satisfaction. My own attitude,
particularly in this my later life, has been to find out just how much I have been
conned by other *so-called philosophers* and *so-called religionists* before I
finally *pop my clogs.* [to put one’s wooden shoes in a pawnbrokers shop for
the final time - a Lancashire expression for die.] It could be said: *Why
bother even with that? You are still going to die and what will it matter if
you go to your grave knowing that you have been the victim of a huge
ontological con trick or happily unaware like a pig dying in transcendentalist turdery.

Richard:
I realize that such opinions will run contrary to the academics and all
those who actually believe that there is valuable currency in the meanings of
words [i. e. concepts] but I challenge them to find any concrete
I realize that such opinions will run contrary to the academics and all
those who actually believe that there is valuable currency in the meanings of
words [i.e. concepts] but I challenge them to find any concrete

GCM: *contrary evidence*
omit *no*? I am confused as to which viewpoint you are asserting. Is a human
being wholly an animal - and no more - or not?

Richard:
… evidence that we are no more than any other kind of animal who seeks to
sustain its existence by whatever means are at hand. Some use words; others
use bullets; others use the ideas of fear; still others use ideas of gods or
a god. But when we strip away all that is merely and only the trappings of
words that are wrapped around feelings that are expressed in words, we see that
we are nothing more than matter that is animated in this curious fashion the
fashion of most often accepting a conceptual, not a real, world. The real
world is sensed, felt, bathed in, reacted to and from that we move on to the
next moment of our life. And that is all there is to it.
*** Any philosopher who tells you that he/she KNOWS something is
automatically suspect. As him or her to define *knowing* and he will have to then define
a plethora of other abstractions that, in the end, are like cotton candy
tasty, but vacuous, and unfulfilling.

Jud:
Again, For me it is a question of how we spend what time we have available
to us. I think that having gone [developed] intellectually thus, far it is
almost impossible to spend leisure time gorping/gawping [Lancashire dialect:
*gazing mindlessly* ] at TV trash etc. One rapidly becomes bored with
*standard* conversation. We need the stimulation of thinking about the world and our
place in it measured against the ideas of others of our ilk [or even not of
our ilk.]
Some find pleasure in tending their rose garden, others by visiting old
castles, or contemplating antique snuffboxes. Still others keep breeding
canaries, or buy a metal-detector and search for old coins, or spend endlessly
enjoyable hours lovingly contemplating their stamp collection with the myriad of
historical and social connections to be found on stamp designs etc.

Like Boethius [although my mind is not so concentrated as his was on a more
proximate death] I find my consolation in the information, the joys, laughs
and tribulations supplied within that arena of opinion known as *philosophy.*
Information and joy in the sub-domain of eliminative materialism, and
laughs in the demesne of transcendentalism and Heideggerian burlesque.

But I realise for others it is entirely the other way around - so be it - or
*so mote it be.*

Sincerely,

Jud Evans.

Personal Website. http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

Posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
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