Philosophy Now Forum

Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:33 pm Not necessarily arbitrary - they can be, and are personal, cultural, historical.
That is one reason why IC is wrong (again), Nietzsche was attacking a specific type of value, with HIS OWN set of values.
Nietzsche has values, else he could not attack other values.

I don't know a lot about Nietzshe, but I imagine that his values were no less arbitrary than anyone else's. What I mean by arbitrary is, whatever your values happen to be, they could always have been otherwise.

uwot wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 11:43 am

Age wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:49 am

uwot wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:13 am...we know there is a tendency to choose the data that supports what we are already convinced of.

VERY, VERY True.

Shit! Shit! Shit! Age agrees with something I wrote.

Age wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:49 amJust LOOK AT how many people CHOOSE to take the 'redshift data' to, LOL, MEAN that the Universe IS EXPANDING, and BEGAN.

Phew! Panic over.

I fuggin lost it at this post

uwot wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:13 am

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:42 amI think that some hard version of doxastic voluntarism is false: I don't think we consciously choose our values any more than we could consciously choose what we're convinced by.

Schopenhauer nailed it when in reference to free will he claimed that we can do as we please; we just can't choose what pleases us. Skipping forward a century, in some ways the most influential book of our time was Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Like most great works, it wasn't created in a vacuum; Kuhn cited Ludwik Fleck and Michael Polanyi for example. Pivotal in the shift from modernism to post-modernism, it was pretty much the nail in the coffin for any belief that theories, scientific or otherwise, are objective. This has emboldened nutjobs who take it to mean that all theories are equally valid; the irony being that they more often than not also want to insist that their pet fruitloopery is the (frequently capitalised) Truth. The data is what it is (are what they are, for purists) there isn't any ought about interpretation. If there is an imperative, it is that one ought at least to look at the data, and not take any conclusion too seriously, but we know there is a tendency to choose the data that supports what we are already convinced of.

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:42 amWell why ought I have those values? I think that I just do: some combination of evolutionary history (nature) and my upbringing and circumstances (nurture).

You just have to look at a map to know that's true.

I’m keeping this Schopenhauer quote for the next time I have to talk about doxastic voluntarism.

As for the rest, I quite agree.

'Survival of the fittest' is too glib. What is the case is natural selection partly depends on individuals who are fit enough to survive until they reproduce their genes.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:11 pm 'Survival of the fittest' is too glib. What is the case is natural selection partly depends on individuals who are fit enough to survive until they reproduce their genes.

It's also an empty tautology. They are fit to survive so they survive because they are fitted to survive.

It's all the amazing complexity and flexibility between the gene and the response to the environment.

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:42 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:33 pm Not necessarily arbitrary - they can be, and are personal, cultural, historical.
That is one reason why IC is wrong (again), Nietzsche was attacking a specific type of value, with HIS OWN set of values.
Nietzsche has values, else he could not attack other values.

I don't know a lot about Nietzshe, but I imagine that his values were no less arbitrary than anyone else's. What I mean by arbitrary is, whatever your values happen to be, they could always have been otherwise.

I agree with Sculptor . I take issue with the definition of arbitrary that conflates unrestricted and random. The definition is okay for chitchat but too vague for philosophy.

Even insensible wee stones, which don't actually choose anything at all, are restricted in what happens to them by previous events so they can't be otherwise than they are. We, and all other animals that can learn from experience, are restricted in our choices by what we experience and by our genetic inheritances so that we cannot be otherwise than we are.
Nobody is entirely free but some are more free than others. A so called 'liberal education' aims to help people to be as free as they can be. But there are undoubted social and physiological limits to how free a human or any other animal can be.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:31 pm I agree with Sculptor . I take issue with the definition of arbitrary that conflates unrestricted and random. The definition is okay for chitchat but too vague for philosophy.

Could I get away with subjective, then?

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:38 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:31 pm I agree with Sculptor . I take issue with the definition of arbitrary that conflates unrestricted and random. The definition is okay for chitchat but too vague for philosophy.

Could I get away with subjective, then?

Yes you can. I said I agree with Sculptor in this. I don't know if Sculptor has read Georg Gadamer a philosopher who champions subjectivity but anyway it's impossible for any idea of even the most avant garde philosopher or anyone else to have an idea de novo. Everyone has to be subject to experience before they can disagree with someone else or create a new paradigm.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:48 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:38 pm
Could I get away with subjective, then?

Yes you can.

Thank you. That will teach me to be chitchatty whilst in the company of philosophers.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:48 pm it's impossible for any idea of even the most avant garde philosopher or anyone else to have an idea de novo. Everyone has to be subject to experience before they can disagree with someone else or create a new paradigm.

Yes, I can see that, in as much as I understand it.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:33 pm Nietzsche was attacking a specific type of value, with HIS OWN set of values.
Nietzsche has values, else he could not attack other values.

Well, you're right: Nietzsche was inconsistent in that. He claimed we could, and should, get "beyond good and evil," and yet he smuggled in his own moralizing as if it ought to be everbody's.

He was a hypocrite in doing so, of course. But then, Nietzsche is much more often a polemicist than a logician. He didn't seem to hold himself to much of a standard of consistency.

And he never "attacked his own values." Rather, he attacked conventional morality and what he conceived of (often wrongly) as "Judeo-Christian" values, as he put it.

As for his own values, he assumed them, imposed them on his readers, and marched on.

But you're quite right that if he were not smuggling back in his own unlegitimized values, he would be utterly unable to critique anybody else's.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 2:09 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:33 pm Nietzsche was attacking a specific type of value, with HIS OWN set of values.
Nietzsche has values, else he could not attack other values.

Well, you're right: Nietzsche was inconsistent in that. He claimed we could, and should, get "beyond good and evil," and yet he smuggled in his own moralizing as if it ought to be everbody's.

He was a hypocrite in doing so, of course. But then, Nietzsche is much more often a polemicist than a logician. He didn't seem to hold himself to much of a standard of consistency.

And he never "attacked his own values." Rather, he attacked conventional morality and what he conceived of (often wrongly) as "Judeo-Christian" values, as he put it.

As for his own values, he assumed them, imposed them on his readers, and marched on.

But you're quite right that if he were not smuggling back in his own unlegitimized values, he would be utterly unable to critique anybody else's.

Nietzsche did not attack "conventional morality" because it's conventional. He stated a fact; that people had entered an age of personal responsibility wherein Authority is dead.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 2:16 pm He stated a fact; that people had entered an age of personal responsibility wherein Authority is dead.

No, there's no "personal responsibility" in a universe "beyond good and evil" completely. There are no standards by which any "person" can identify any "responsibility" he or she could have.

Nietzsche doesn't care he's being a hypocrite, because he assumes "hypocrite" doesn't even mean anything. It lacks any objective standard or code about which one owes the world to be consistent or logical. For him, its all nothing but "will to power" expressed through dramatics and polemics. Why should he not be as hypocritical, illogical and polemical as he wants?

And Nietzsche is a magnificent example of a man who simply assumed his conclusion, without evidence, and went rolling right along. He said "God is dead," assumed its truth, and then kept on speaking about what would follow since that was, on the basis of his assertion and no more, "true."

But, of course, it was not. And he gave us no actual reason why we should think it is true. He just wanted it to be true.

And to that extent, he's a toothless tiger...lots of growl, but no bite.

What he is very useful for, though, is showing some of the worst directions human nature can take when it is allowed to deceive itself as to the non-existence of morality.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 2:09 pm Nietzsche was inconsistent in that. He claimed we could, and should, get "beyond good and evil," and yet he smuggled in his own moralizing as if it ought to be everbody's.

I always feel suspicious of Nietzsche. He could be up to anything behind that moustache.

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 2:29 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 2:09 pm Nietzsche was inconsistent in that. He claimed we could, and should, get "beyond good and evil," and yet he smuggled in his own moralizing as if it ought to be everbody's.

I always feel suspicious of Nietzsche. He could be up to anything behind that moustache.

It is rather spectacular, isn't it?

I don't suppose he could have eaten much soup.

He would have found it too much of a strain.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 2:09 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:33 pm Nietzsche was attacking a specific type of value, with HIS OWN set of values.
Nietzsche has values, else he could not attack other values.

Well, you're right: Nietzsche was inconsistent in that. He claimed we could, and should, get "beyond good and evil," and yet he smuggled in his own moralizing as if it ought to be everbody's.

He was a hypocrite in doing so, of course. But then, Nietzsche is much more often a polemicist than a logician. He didn't seem to hold himself to much of a standard of consistency.

And he never "attacked his own values." Rather, he attacked conventional morality and what he conceived of (often wrongly) as "Judeo-Christian" values, as he put it.

As for his own values, he assumed them, imposed them on his readers, and marched on.

But you're quite right that if he were not smuggling back in his own unlegitimized values, he would be utterly unable to critique anybody else's.

One can feel a sense of rejection by starting to read Nietzsche.
But if you then feel his great passion for the Truth, then you can get close to him.

Because he's sincere, and that's what really matters.

Following him can lead us along the path of nihilism.
Which is a must for those looking for the Truth.

Nietzsche was a great soul.
Who did not want to deceive himself. At any cost.

God's return is possible, but only down the road of nihilism.

Denying any absolute, precisely because in search of the Absolute!

Probably Nietzsche has finally caught something. But he couldn't tell anyway.
His faith in the Truth did not allow it.