Philosophy Now Forum

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 6:40 pm
And not to be too cynical, but everyone can have their own Stooges.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 6:44 pmGood, we agree. If for very different reasons. Though, by all means, if down the road your intuitive, spiritual Self ever bumps into a particularly dire set of circumstances and meets its match, I'm your man.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 7:11 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 6:44 pmGood, we agree. If for very different reasons. Though, by all means, if down the road your intuitive, spiritual Self ever bumps into a particularly dire set of circumstances and meets its match, I'm your man.

Conversely, according to the formula you present, you could technically encounter circumstances, events or people that would out-match your cynicism or moral nihilism.

And there have been any number of situations in my past where my thinking and my emotions were shifting dramatically. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism, then deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became a moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fractured and fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 7:29 pm When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fractured and fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 7:29 pm
Indeed, and over and again I have noted this myself. After all...

And there have been any number of situations in my past where my thinking and my emotions were shifting dramatically. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism, then deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became a moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fractured and fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

So, sure, given a new experience, relationship or access to information and knowledge, I might change my mind again. It's just that when I note this is applicable to the moral and political objectivists among us that many become...uncomfortable? What, them "fractured and fragmented"?!

And Maia has herself acknowledged that had her own life been different she might be in here defending cynicism and rejecting Paganism.

But not really?

In other words, the part where she does possess a "deep down inside her" intuitive, spiritual, intrinsic Self that seems immune to the manner in which I construe dasein here.

Just as given the "psychology of objectivism" those of your ilk are in turn.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 10:46 pm What force determines crumbling? And if crumbling is going on, does crumbling continue? Fracturing, crumbling, fragmenting: eventually there must be complete dissolution, no?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 10:46 pmOr, in a dynamic kosmos, is a counter-movement programmed into things?

AJ: Or, in a dynamic kosmos, is a counter-movement programmed into things?

Iambiguous: What on Earth is that supposed to mean? How specifically is it applicable to your own value judgments?

And there have been any number of situations in my past where my thinking and my emotions were shifting dramatically. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism, then deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became a moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fractured and fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

How specifically is it applicable to your own value judgments?

What on Earth is that supposed to mean?

Alan Sokal wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 2:19 pm

AS: Or, in a dynamic kosmos, is a counter-movement programmed into things?

Iambiguous: What on Earth is that supposed to mean? How specifically is it applicable to your own value judgments?

An interesting observation about your question is that it is less a question ("What do you mean by that?") and far more a declarative statement ("On Earth your statement is ridiculous and makes no sense!")

Also curious is that the present thread topic in which Cynicism is discussed is not as amenable to chemically-pure philosophical analysis as one might hope. In fact different personalities with different inner orientations present their *existential strategies* to deal with the living of life through the way thay handle or wield their own personality.

When I mention a *dynamic kosmos* I am making reference to a view that depends on certain predicates. Dynamic means powerful of force-filled; and kosmos is a word with a particular inflection that encompasses *order* (Greek kosmos: order, world, universe). If I were to advocate for an *ordered universe* and additionally make statements about our own psyche -- which refers to soul or essential being -- naturally I would immediately run into opposition from those who don't, or cannot, recognize these terms as having validity.

And it should be obvious, though it surprises me at times that it is not obvious to you, that your *moral nihilism* is a complexly construed knot or nexus of assertions about *life*, about the person and, naturally, an outlook that does not recognize kosmos in the original sense but feels and believes that existence is random, senseless, and essentially meaningless. Therefore, what undergirds your existential outlook is a dynamo of another sort: a powerful motor that drives other sets of predicates to which you are, say, willfully committed.

You describe the evolution of your existential position here:

And there have been any number of situations in my past where my thinking and my emotions were shifting dramatically. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism, then deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became a moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fractured and fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

And I focused -- I think fairly -- on something predicated within your pronouncement: that you are in a process of *crumbling* which in your presentations is synonymous with fracturing and fragmentation.

I am definitely of the understanding that, in physical and biological life, what crumbles, fractures and fragments breaks down into its elements. And if I take those terms you use to describe your processes as indicative of something happening within you, I am inclined to wonder if what you are describing is in fact the dissolution of Self, the unraveling of "cohesive structure". What if I take your declarations of fracturing and fragmentation on a psychological level? Should I? Or should I not?

Curiously, if you are in a state of fragmentation, it is one that has a strongly dynamic element. But in our physical and biological world what fragments and dissolves does so because motivated by those processes in nature that break things apart. A living structure dies and then, through being consumed by another organism or through putrefaction, is recycled into natural processes. Right?

What you seem to me to be describing is the processes through which you are dying. Is it fair to say this? To notice it? You tell me.

Therefore, what I allude to is a) the process of dissolution as a natural one, but b) I ask if the process that determines dissolution is or will be countermanded at some point by a countervailing *dynamic* process that is fracturing, fragmentation and crumbling's complementary opposite?

How specifically is it applicable to your own value judgments?

That is a good question. It should be obvious that when you present your really dreary but dynamically powered existential philosophy that involves what seems to involve an ideological marriage to a death-process (if crumbling, fracturing, and fragmenting are taken in a *natural* sense) as good, normal or inevitable, that you are in fact operating from an odd metaphysics. Or how should I look at it? And how should it be looked at?

From where I sit I see a man with a stunningly committed will who *takes on all comers* among those who see the world differently, or see their own power and potential as operating as-against dissolving/death-like processes, and one by one and one after another you defeat them with an extraordinary powerful and consistent Walls Of Words and the most accomplished and settled Upper Cloud Reasoning in which you yourself haul yourself around on fantastic Skyhooks of Determined Reasoning in relation to which you can see no alternative!

Essentially, my position (the one from which I argue against your ultra-determined position) is one that a) recognizes our psyche as a unique power and as part of a kosmos, and b) that recognizes that we have extraordinary determining power because we have *dynamic souls*. Obviously, I could not with the predicates that I have and hold to ever accept to simply dissolve and to die as you are dissolving and dying!

And I believe that what you run into when you confront other people who think and see differently from you with your amazing array of Determined and Determining Armaments, is that you call forth a reaction to what is there, essentially, in your declared position of Moral Nihilism. But I also say that your position needs to be examined far more closely because, as it seems to me, it is more intricate than the mere declaration that there is no morality in the natural world.

You present me with a problem therefore that I must address. But not because I do not share some relationship with that problem but rather because I do, and that we all do.

What on Earth is that supposed to mean?

Circle back around to the top. What I mean is what I say.

Let the neurotic machine-works crank themselves into motion! May the Skyhooks of countervailing power whir into position in slow but determined arcs! Their movement is ... strangely beautiful!

Circle back around to the top. What I mean is what I say.

"Let the neurotic machine-works crank themselves into motion! May the Skyhooks of countervailing power whir into position in slow but determined arcs! Their movement is ... strangely beautiful!"

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 6:35 pm So, what’s the question then?

Circle back around to the top. What I mean is what I say.

Are you asking for interpretation of this?

"Let the neurotic machine-works crank themselves into motion! May the Skyhooks of countervailing power whir into position in slow but determined arcs! Their movement is ... strangely beautiful!"

Your discourse seems based in a neurotic loop. You are stuck in it. When challenged to see differently, your own skyhooks (a preferred metaphor of yours) whirr into movement. The machinery revs up. And countervails against any idea or assertion that contradicts your willed (self-willed) position.

It is intellectually gruesome to watch … but oddly beautiful, like the art of an obsessed man.

The commentary I put together is less about one peculiar man but much more an attempt to describe larger trends that operate in people but also in any one of us. We are not isolated atoms with disconnected opinions but rather spokesmen for the times.

Or is this simply a tactic to skirt the accusation of the ad hominem fallacy?