Is morality objective or subjective?

[Gary Childress]

I assume the only truly sociopathic person around here is me. I couldn't say or do something truly kind anymore if my life depended on it. I can abstain from activities that are the evil extreme, but I can't even help myself anymore, let alone anyone else. And that's fine. When I go out of this world, I'll go out the same as I arrived, a piece of shit. It's the only life I know.

[Immanuel Can]

What I try to do -- standing as *witness* to the personal conflict...

By firing off another off-point, speculative, ad hominem screed?

Sorry, AJ...nobody's buying you as an objective observer of anything. But it might help if you got back to the actual OP, and stopped trying to deflect to the ad hominem. We've had one Sigmund Freud in history...I don't think anybody's applying to you as candidate for a second. As far as I know, the great Freud himself never so wildly speculated as to attempt to analyze personality or intellectual histories on the basis of posts on a board.

[Walker]

We've had one Sigmund Freud in history...

If I was to cast a dog as Freud in a Disney flick, he would be a St. Bernard and not a terrier. Don't be surprised to see it happen, considering how and what kids are taught these days.

[Immanuel Can]

We've had one Sigmund Freud in history...

If I was to cast a dog as Freud in a Disney flick, he would be a St. Bernard and not a terrier. Don't be surprised to see it happen, considering how and what kids are taught these days.

If it's a Disney flick, then it would have to feature a non-binary blue cat that trans-identifies as a St. Bernard.

And it would crash at the box office.

[LuckyR]

We've had one Sigmund Freud in history...

If I was to cast a dog as Freud in a Disney flick, he would be a St. Bernard and not a terrier. Don't be surprised to see it happen, considering how and what kids are taught these days.

If it's a Disney flick, then it would have to feature a non-binary blue cat that trans-identifies as a St. Bernard.

And it would crash at the box office.

Actually Freud would be an attractive young woman with a father but no mother in sight.

[Immanuel Can]

If I was to cast a dog as Freud in a Disney flick, he would be a St. Bernard and not a terrier. Don't be surprised to see it happen, considering how and what kids are taught these days.

If it's a Disney flick, then it would have to feature a non-binary blue cat that trans-identifies as a St. Bernard.

And it would crash at the box office.

Actually Freud would be an attractive young woman with a father but no mother in sight.

Ironically, Freud was an older male who hated his father. About his mom, we can only guess...but at least Freud didn't poke out his own eyes.

[Lacewing]

it appears that Lacewing is in acute rebellion against her own Christian formation in some sort of evangelical Christian community.

Clearly, the only thing you demonstrate here is how shallow and lame your verbose story can be as you try to justify or prove your imaginative brilliant observer position and perspective.

I challenge the things that I.C. claims because they are ridiculous and he is dishonest in his discussions. You have said, as much, yourself.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I thought this was all pretty sound.

What I try to do -- standing as *witness* to the personal conflict that in fact expresses a far larger and wider ideological and metaphysical conflict -- is to present a way of seeing the essential struggle in somewhat different terms. For that reason -- and perhaps stupidly (?) -- through a reference to the Platonic Cave. So in this model Lacewing and Immanuel are down there is a *pit* where vision is impaired and where all these personal issues intrude and complicate the conflict. They believe that they are in profound and irreconcilable conflict. And perhaps if we see their struggle applied to the *outside world*, perhaps we have no choice but to entertain the idea of *irreconcilable differences*.

Personally, I have resolved a great deal of the conflict and contradiction in everything we have been discussing as religious and Christian by a sort of intellectual manoeuvre of *ascent* to a level or layer above the fray. I suggest that that gives me a vantage and an advantage that both Lacewing and Immanuel cannot seem to attain. Immanuel because he is locked into a *absolutist* position, and oddly Lacewing because she too, in her strange way, holds to a contrarian absolutism.

Well, as the Man said: “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown."

[Alexis Jacobi]

I challenge the things that I.C. claims because they are ridiculous and he is dishonest in his discussions. You have said, as much, yourself.

I can accept that he may show certain untoward traits, but the larger point -- the most important thing -- does not really have to do with Immanuel.

[iambiguous]

Again, I post this..

Absolutely shameless! AJ at a loss for words!!

You are drawn & quartered and hopelessly confused by your own admission. You’ve been through everything (like Forrest Gump) and nothing is “real” for you. Now, you have a nihilistic position and seem to dedicate yourself to it.

Click.

No, I am not in the least bit drawn and quartered [let alone hopelessly confused] regarding the preponderance of experiences in my life.

The either/or world is as applicable to me as to anyone else here.

On the other hand, for those of your ilk, value judgments themselves are no less a part of the either/or world.

Race, gender, sexual orientation, Jews and morality are all inherent manifestations of "biological imperatives".

Well, up in the philosophical and the ideological clouds, anyway.

Then straight back up into psycho-babble clouds...

Because that is your state, and also the position that you believe is authentically existentially and philosophically the right one (the only proper one) there is no real sense in engaging with you.

Whatever that means? How about we zero in on a particular context involving morality and discuss it...existentially?

But start with one definition. Can you name one action that you feel is noble? If only within conventional usage of the term.

Come on, AJ, even you must grasp that "conventional usage" evolves over time historically, culturally and experientially in regard to our value judgments.

Isn't that why objectivists of your kind will, one way or another, come to embody the "psychology of objectivism": https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

The only thing that really changes -- God or No God -- is the particular "arrogant, autocratic and authoritarian" dogma that is clung to in order to anchor one's precious Self to the most comforting and consoling rendition of "one of us" vs. "one of them".

...and you "snip" out one fragment of it:

Race, gender, sexual orientation, Jews and morality are all inherent manifestations of "biological imperatives".

What is important to you about these things? They seem relevant because you bring them up time and again. Can you explain why?

Is there some specific question you have for me as one you define of an “ilk” different from your own? What?

Well, we can ask folks of color and women and homosexuals and Jews and liberals why the thinking of those like Satyr -- and yourself? -- is important to them.

My own main focus of course is moral and political and religious objectivism itself. The points I note above.

In particular, when the objectivists among us are in a position of power. When they can enforce their own dogmas. All the way up to the Holocaust? With Satyr, however, it just comes down to him "disappearing" those at KT who won't join his clique/claque.

That's why in regard to both of you, I am interested not in what you believe about "one of them" but what actual political policies you would pursue if you were in a position of power in any particular community.

The part you avoid [with me] like the plague because it's simply not abstract enough for you.

...and Mr. Snippet is again reduced down to this:

I wish to dedicate this post to our own Iambiguous and in the hope that Glorious Isis will round up all the pieces of his scattered and fractured Self and mend them all back together.

And I'll bet he thought that was really, really, really clever!

[Gary Childress]

I challenge the things that I.C. claims because they are ridiculous and he is dishonest in his discussions. You have said, as much, yourself.

I can accept that he may show certain untoward traits, but the larger point -- the most important thing -- does not really have to do with Immanuel.

We can type without addressing anyone but we can't type without being read. That is the fundamental problem for you. The fundamental problem for me is how to satisfactorily end my own existence.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, as the Man said: “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown."

So in addition to being a objective witness on a project of psychological inquiry, you're also a misunderstood prophet?

All ad hom. Not really relevant. If you've got a defense for moral subjectivism or moral objectivism, you should offer it. I promise you we'll weigh it on its own merits, and not evade them by drawing attention to your personal quirks.

[Will Bouwman]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that in God's eyes, between child abuse and atheism, the greater crime is atheism.

I wouldn't say that, at all. Of course, I'm not the Judge...

I think the Judge was fairly explicit. Thou shalt have no gods before me is rule number 1.

[Immanuel Can]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that in God's eyes, between child abuse and atheism, the greater crime is atheism.

I wouldn't say that, at all. Of course, I'm not the Judge...

I think the Judge was fairly explicit. Thou shalt have no gods before me is rule number 1.

I suppose that's fair...although Atheists might protest that they have no "gods."

[Gary Childress]

I wouldn't say that, at all. Of course, I'm not the Judge...

I think the Judge was fairly explicit. Thou shalt have no gods before me is rule number 1.

I suppose that's fair...although Atheists might protest that they have no "gods."

Doesn't sound fair to me. Of course, I'm not God, so I can't really condemn people to Hell for not being nice to me, let alone bowing to me. Oh well. Sucks not to be God.