an

And the sacredness tells that we should treat all life as sacred. — Hillary

How would you define the sacred?

The gods breath the fire, the charge, into them. — Hillary

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche presents a famous fable explaining the transition from polytheism to monotheism (or what he elsewhere calls “monoto-theism”): when one of the gods declared himself to be the only god (the monotheistic god), the other gods (the gods of polytheism) laughed and laughed and slapped their knees and rocked in their chairs—until finally they laughed themselves to death! Polytheism died of laughter.”

there's the real possibility that brain function is radically unlike that of computers. We'll have to wait for (neuro)science to tell us how as I have a feeling this matter is still not as cut-and-dried as we would've liked. — Agent Smith

Count me among those who think it’s a mistake to treat the mind as a computational device and neurons as 1’s and 0’s. I hew with enactivist cognitive psychology which rejects computationalism and representationalism when it comes to modelling human perception.
Relating this back to your distinction between memory and pattern recognition, I would argue that the neural activity of the brain is constantly changing in response both to external stimuli and its own activity. This means that memory is not stored patterns that remain unchanged until accessed. Meanwhile, what is perceived comes already pre-interpreted based on prior expectations. So memory , in the form
of expectations , co-determines what counts as data in the first place. All perception is recognition because of this contribution of anticipatory neural activity to perception at even the lowest levels.

Do you mean Smolen or Smolin? — Hillary

Why do you ask? Is there a Smolen as well as a Smolin writing about time and physics? Or are you just saying I made a spelling error?

I believe that we are here to express our opinion, however it is formed. If, for example, I ask you, "What do you think about death?", would you answer "Well, Kierkegaard in his Philosophical Fragments said that ...". I don't care about what Kierkegaard said. I asked what do you think
— Alkis Piskas


Better one even! :grin: — Hillary

You like his basking in his anti-intellectualism? Right, let’s dumb down all discussions by shutting off reference to those who have articulated the issues most throughly.

It is good that you know about these guys and their opinions. I also know about what a lot of guys who have or had an opinion about time If cite them, and then other TPF members cite from their own guys, would that be called a "discussion"?

I believe that we are here to express our opinion, however it is formed. If, for example, I ask you, "What do you think about death?", would you answer "Well, Kierkegaard in his Philosophical Fragments said that ...". I don't care about what Kierkegaard said. I asked what do you think. — Alkis Piskas

It would be called a discussion among continental philosophers, who use close readings of texts to buttress their arguments. Not so much on this site, though.

You asked my opinion. I quoted those people because I agree with their views and they make a good starting point for discussion, given that the quotes I included articulated a physics-based view of time as fundamentally unidirectional. So if you don’t care what Bergson, Prigogine or Smolen think about this issue then you don’t care what I think. I dont march in lock-step with their views but relative to your position I’m much closer to what they offer. Never discourage the use of quotes when they can deepen the substance of a discussion. If you have questions concerning the relation of my position to the quotes just ask me. The whole point of the quotes is that I can begin from them and then elaborate my thinking in relation to what has been quoted.

I would love it if you used quotes to clarify your position. It would give me a resource to gain further information from.

You would wake from the dead, get younger, thoughts go backwards, hear before spoken, return oxygen to the air, etc. You would feel like an unwinding poppet with a key clockwork, being pulled along, instead of being in control. You'll be pulled along to shoot back in the womb. How it feels? Dunno! It all depends on the initial configuration. Why isn't that the end of the universe but going in the opposite direction? Behold the problem of the direction of time. — Hillary

This isn’t authentic time you’re describing, it’s a game being played within the bounds of a pre-given schematics masquerading as time. Authentic time is qualitative transformation , not the frames in a movie moving forward or backward. Time moves
neither forward nor backward but otherwise.

Obvious in the sense of obviously true or obviously problematic?
— Joshs

Former, IMHO. :smile: — jgill

Sometimes it takes philosophical probing to bring out hidden dimensions in what was taken to be obvious and common-sensical.

Exemplars of the obvious. — jgill

Obvious in the sense of obviously true or obviously problematic?

Do you agree to replace, for example, the notion of individual sexual drives with the concept of the impersonal collective machinic desire? — Number2018

Only if it makes my orgies more enjoyable. Seriously though, I think D &G have done a brilliant job of integrating the conscious and the unconscious, the cognitive and the bodily-affective, and these with the social and the empirical-material, without giving preference to any particular of these domains. I do wonder, though if Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach to time might not offer a more intimate understanding of the site of difference.

the question is, the fundamental question, is: why does entropy grow? Why doesn't it get smaller, so time moves in the other direction, i.e., the direction of less total, universal, or global entropy? This could have been the case. — Hillary

Could you describe for me what time moving in the other direction would look like in everyday experience, or would it look just the same as it already looks to us, given that life is a bubble of resistance to entropy?

In deterministic physics, all processes are time-reversible, meaning that they can proceed backward as well as forward through time
— Joshs

This is not true. In deterministic physics, not all processes are time-reversible. There are no reversible processes in nature. All processes are irreversible processes. The question is why they are moving towards higher entropy and not to lower entropy. — Hillary

Would you agree with this?

“Thermodynamics, then, appears to be one of the only physical processes that is NOT time-symmetric, and so fundamental and ubiquitous is it in our universe that it may be single-handedly responsible for our perception of time as having a direction. Indeed, several of the other arrows of time noted below (arguably) ultimately come back to the asymmetry of thermodynamics. Indeed, so clear is this law that the measurement of entropy has been put forward a way of distinguishing the past from the future, and the thermodynamic arrow of time has even been put forward as the reason we can remember the past but not the future, due to the fact that the entropy or disorder was lower in the past than in the future.”

Also, Hawking seems to have believed that Cosmological time is reversible:

“Dr. Hawking described three ''arrows'' of time: the Psychological Arrow, which he defined as ''the direction of time in which we remember the past but not the future''; the Thermodynamic Arrow, related to entropy and the Cosmological Arrow.
Dr. Hawking argued that the Psychological Arrow was controlled by the Thermodynamic Arrow so that both would always point in the same direction. But the direction of the Cosmological Arrow depends on whether the universe is expanding. If it started to contract, the arrow would change direction.”

Not according to Ilya Prigogine or Lee Smolen. For them time is fundamentally unidirectional..
— Joshs
I don't know about these persons. And good for them if they believe that "time is fundamentally unidirectional". (BTW, does "fundamentally" mean that it can also be otherwise?) — Alkis Piskas

Form Wiki:

“Smolin argues for what he calls a revolutionary view that time is real, in contrast to existing scientific orthodoxy which holds that time is merely a "stubbornly persistent illusion" (Einstein's words).[1] Smolin reasons that physicists have improperly rejected the reality of time because they confuse their mathematical models—which are timeless but deal in abstractions that do not exist—with reality.[1] Smolin hypothesizes instead that the very laws of physics are not fixed, but that they actually evolve over time.”

“In his 1996 book, La Fin des certitudes, written in collaboration with Isabelle Stengers and published in English in 1997 as The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature, Ilya Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable scientific belief: "The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism." This is a major departure from the approach of Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, all of whom expressed their theories in terms of deterministic equations. According to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in the face of irreversibility and instability.

Prigogine traces the dispute over determinism back to Darwin, whose attempt to explain individual variability according to evolving populations inspired Ludwig Boltzmann to explain the behavior of gases in terms of populations of particles rather than individual particles.[24] This led to the field of statistical mechanics and the realization that gases undergo irreversible processes. In deterministic physics, all processes are time-reversible, meaning that they can proceed backward as well as forward through time. As Prigogine explains, determinism is fundamentally a denial of the arrow of time. With no arrow of time, there is no longer a privileged moment known as the "present," which follows a determined "past" and precedes an undetermined "future." All of time is simply given, with the future as determined or as undetermined as the past. With irreversibility, the arrow of time is reintroduced to physics. Prigogine notes numerous examples of irreversibility, including diffusion, radioactive decay, solar radiation, weather and the emergence and evolution of life. Like weather systems, organisms are unstable systems existing far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Instability resists standard deterministic explanation. Instead, due to sensitivity to initial conditions, unstable systems can only be explained statistically, that is, in terms of probability.“

What is it that is measured by the clock? If the periodic clock process has completed x periods, then what corresponds this x to? And what if time proceeds in steps, then how does the process know when a static scene has to progress to the next? How does it know it takes a Planck time? — Hillary

Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze and Bergson have shown in different ways that a quantifiable, mathematizable nature presupposes the kind of time which consists of self-presences transitioning from future to present to past in sequential movement (existing ‘in' time). What does it imply to make a time measurement based on clock time, to state that it takes certain amount of time for some process to unfold?

A clock-time calculation counts identical instances of a meaning whose sense is kept fixed during the counting . To count is to count continuously changing instances OF something that holds itself as self-identical through a duration or extension.

The above writers agree that there are no self-identical objects, but rather qualitatively changing events, and clock time results from an idealization in which we posit enduring objects that are either at rest or in motion. The seemingly simple conpet of movement is a complex psychological construction.

I didn't say that we have created time. That would be totally ridiculous. I talked about the concept of time. In fact, in bold letters. I couldn't stress it more ...

The things we are attempting to measure are in themselves incoherent without the prior being of time.
— Joshs
We are not "attempting" to measure. We are measuring them. Time is just a dimension. As is length. They do not actually exst. — Alkis Piskas

Measurement presupposes a concept of measurement, so there is an ‘attempt’ prior to the measurement. Time understood according to certain long-standing assumptions shared by philosophy and science is just a dimension. But to philosophers like Bergson and the phenomenologists it is the structure of reality itself. Dimensions are convenient abstractions that are useful
to us, but original time is not an abstraction, an invention, an idealization. If time as dimension is a human invention, what features of the world can you point to that are not human inventions?

Yes, but the motion was periodic in time too. Virtual particles can be represented, if not coupled to real particles yet, as a closed propagator line in space time, or energy momentum diagram. A vacuum bubble is just a single particle rotating in spacetime (so not a particle-antiparticle pair). — Hillary

Linking somewhere deep within the presuppositions
informing this physics vocabulary is a philosophy of time, but I’m not familiar enough with the physics jargon to get at it.

The unidirectionality of time is an illusion. It is we who have assigned this quality time. After of course having created the concept of time itself. Time itself does not exist. — Alkis Piskas

Not according to Ilya Prigogine or Lee Smolen. For them time is fundamentally unidirectional. We didnt create time, although we create various theories about time. The things we are attempting to measure are in themselves incoherent without the prior being of time.

The pre-inflationary state can be seen as a perfect pendulum. Not going backwards in time, nor forwards, as thermodynamic time still had to emerge. What kind of motion was that? — Hillary

You don’t consider that periodic motion?

for D & G the ethical task is to disclose and identify one’s desiring machines so that “we can fix our aims on a given path.” — Number2018

Would you agree that a desiring machine , with its aim and path , is already internally differentiated, so that this flow is never a matter of the repetition of the identical aim and path?

what I said above doesn't imply that there's no, as you put it, jnside to consciousness; it's just that we can't discuss it among ourselves in a meaningful way (beetle-in-a-box gedanken experiment). — Agent Smith

Your notion of consciousness and self is a bit too Cartesian. There is no inside to consciousness in the sense of some container with a substance, essence or content that sits there waiting to be reflected on. Consciousness is self-changing. That IS its only essence.
It makes no sense to talk about reflection as a mirror or distortion of something that is never simply itself but is always a new differential.

This perspective is from the ‘outside’ that comes before and indeed determines the subject of interests. The difficulty here is that we should access this outside through experimentation or just speculate about the productive unconscious process. For D & G, it is the crucial ethical point, the opportunity to find out "where our chances lie." — Number2018

As an ethics , intensive difference is also irreducibly violent, the basis of blame.

The takeaway seems to be that languages are unable to penetrate the inner sanctum, pain taken as representative, of consciousness. Can a coder/programmer code for private experiences like the ones Wittgenstein talks about in his well-known private language argumen? Perhaps our inner private lives are linguistically inaccessible because the creator of the simulation, if we are in one, wanted to, well, hide something in there from us. You see two heads are better than one, more the merrier, but in this case, no number of heads can solve the riddle of consciousness. — Agent Smith

If we incorporate phenomenology to supplement Wittgenstein’s focus on interpersonal linguistic situations , we find that there is no such thing as ‘inner’ pre-linguistic experience. All sensory perception ( pain, vision, touch, hearing) is irreducible interpretive , a blending of prior expectation and appearance. All perception is constructive and perspectival. There is no ‘inside’ to consciousness, awareness is out in the world , as our interactions. So ‘inner’ perception works much the way that Wittgenstein’s language games function, as a pre-verbal language of sensation From this perspective the idea of a matrix, a simulation by an evil genius, is non-sensicalx, since whatever stimulation is beanies our way, we have to intercept it from our own perspective in ways that are pragmatically useful
for us. So the ‘same’ simulation or matrix will always be experienced in differing ways by different persons.

From a Wittgensteinian standpoint there's no essence to either illusions/simulations or reality that could aid us in telling them apart. — Agent Smith

Wittgenstein explains that in interacting with others, we create the sense of meaning of words out of the context. These senses of meaning are realities constructed out of the fusion of our past histories with words with the novelty of the immediate context. I’m not sure that this idea of the real as socially constructed sense is compatible with your real vs illusion binary, which seems to depend on the context and culture-independence of what is real.

Atheism isn’t a single belief system.
— Joshs

It isn't a system at all. It's singular. — whollyrolling

I think you pulled that one out of your ass. What the heck does ‘singular’ mean? A belief system is singular. It’s a holistic frame that includes many elements. Do I need to spell out for you the complexity of issues and ideas that form the basis of a decision whether to believe or not believe in a god? Ask any individual why they are an atheist and they will give you a series of arguments that link together as a totality. This complexity is implied by the decision and it is a system. The meaning of their atheism for them isn’t a dictionary definition but their own personal story and reasons.

I am not a theist. — whollyrolling

I must have misunderstood. What would you call yourself?

Overstimulated perception is the source of traditional schizophrenia. This is the easiest form to diagnose because it inclines to produce more obvious behaviors such as reacting to things that are not there, confused or delusional thinking, becoming agitated or catatonic for reasons which are not alw — Enrique

I dont know how this impacts on the main aim of your paper, but whether schizophrenia( and there are probably many kinds of schizophrenia of different etiologies) involves over or under-stimulation of groups of neurons, I have found a useful way of understanding behaviors typically associated with schizophrenia as being the result of fragmentation in processing concentrated in language-related areas. Unlike something like LSD, schizophrenia does not produce a direct alteration in simple perception, at least not apart from meaning-connected expereince. The language centers of brian are designed to take lower level perceptual information form the various sense modalities and synthesize unified concepts from these inputs. It also filters these concepts relative to appropriate context. When these synthesizing functions are disrupted, one’s language comes disassociated from context, and such things as word salad result. The first associations to a word that we hear or think don’t lead, as they do in ‘normals’, to further associations that belong to a focused and unified context of current goal-directed behavior but produce a string of simple associations based on sound or rhyme or visual quality that lead to endless dead ends. This fragmenting of the unity of goal-directed meaning is also exemplified in hearing voices. These are not simple auditory hallucinations, as is the case with lsd. One’s own flow of meaningful thought becomes split from itself such that one experiences it as if it were coming from another person, but heard inside one’s own head alongside one’s own thoughts. The disease fragments language and it also fragments the sense of self. Even the boundaries of one’s body in relation to the world become blurred or absent.

As you mentioned , emotional stress can trigger episodes, just as stress can impair the unity of thought in non-schizophrenics. Medications sedate the thinking process in a non-targeted way, which may help by making it harder for the mind to take concpet-formation down blind random tangents. Given the multitude of cause of the disease ( it is actually many loosely related diseases) , I wonder how an analysis at the molecular , much less quantum, level could impact what is essentially a behaviorally-defined syndrome.

there are even now associations of self-proclaimed ‘voice hearers’ who argue that they should not be pathologized but instead respected as merely non-typical.


I suspect that trying to find a single cause or mechanism of schizophrenia is like trying to find a cause of psychological gender.

I don't see atheism as a belief system, so if something involves a belief system I don't consider it to be atheism. Some people label their belief system "Atheism" and then proceed to spend a great deal of time thinking and speaking about God--significantly more time than an average Christian. — whollyrolling

I will put this differently. We all have belief systems, whether we are aware of it or not. Every scientific theory rests on a larger framework of beliefs( you could call this a worldview). Atheism isn’t a single belief system. Rather, it refers most generally to a history of evolving god-based beliefs, ranging from fundamentalist to heretical. Atheism is also an evolving continuum of belief systems and there are myriad overlaps between theism and atheism, especially when we consider liberal forms of religion influenced by writers like Kierkegaard, Levinas and Buber. I find many points of agreement with theistic contributors to this forum like Constance and Wayfarer, because their philosophies of religion not not far removed from my philosophical orientation even though I consider myself an atheist. My belief system is likely farther removed from yours, not because you are a theist and I am an atheist , but becuase your philosophy of religion is a more traditionalistic one than the above contributors. I suggest it is not atheism per se that you oppose your faith to , but modern and postmodern belief, whether god-based or atheistic.

You have apparently found a way to bypass these complexities and ambiguities by reducing faith and atheism to cartoonish categories.

... each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being
— Ethics IIIP6
that, like inertia or current, is harnessed – by modern technocapital(?) – in various productive modalities which, IIRC, D & G call "desiring-machines" ... — 180 Proof

Except that for Deleuze , there is no identity , no in-itself, no essence, even temporarily. Desiring -machines are self-differentiating.

↪180 Proof also Will to Power, eh? — Albero

And eternal recurrence of the same.

And so the whole project of putting a positive spin on things. Deleuze difference ad nauseum the same as Whitehead's creativity ad nauseum? — schopenhauer1

Good question. I’m not familiar enough with Whitehead to answer that, but I don’t see how his theism, as unconventional as it is, is compatible with Deleuze’s immanentism.

Deleuze on the other hand posits that desire is rather “productive” and has no lacking involved-it is instead an interplay between positive forces. How can this be? — Albero

any interest in attaining x is motivated by a prior engagement with whatever structure x belongs to — Albero

I think there is a larger point to be made about the positivity of desire for Deleuze. This goes to the heart of his critique of concepts like opposition, contradiction and negation, which are central to Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. These forms or relation are attempts to cancel difference by equalizing it in the form of a dialectical reconciliation or synthesis. The equal and the unified are assumed to cancel the negativity of the lack. But for Deleuze difference , as the irreducible basis of reality, is not a problem to be solved, a lack to be compensated, but an endlessly repeated fecundity (productivity), an eternal recurrence of the same absolute difference.

When you asked Space Dweller “What would a valid form of atheism look like?”, if he has answered “the one in the dictionary”, would you have considered that a valid form of atheism, or are you making a distinction between atheism as a valid belief system and a valid definition of atheism (which you do not consider to be a valid belief system)?

How so? I haven't felt any strong emotion about religion or philosophy in quite some time, and I don't see anything unreasonable in asking how valid and invalid atheisms manifest in your opinion, since you mentioned them. — whollyrolling

Do you personally believe there is such a thing as a valid form of atheism, or is that an oxymoron?

"It is doubtless true that interests predispose us to a given libidinal investment, but they are not identical with this investment. Moreover, the unconscious libidinal investment is what causes us to look for our interest in one place rather than another, to fix our aims on a given path, convinced that this is where our chances lie." AO345 — Streetlight

I wonder if the distinction between desire and interest is comparable to that between the virtual and the actual , or perhaps between the intensive and the extensive.

What would a valid form of atheism look like? — whollyrolling

You authored an op in which you wrote the following:

“ Many of the inhabitants of this site seem to respond with strong negative emotion, absent any rationality, to any discussion related to the bible or Christianity…”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

The left changes its guiding principles and the movements it promotes as if it's changing underwear. BLM had as its central tenet the destruction of Western culture and its institutions before the group seemed to dissolve due to fraud and abandonment, and "cancel culture" is self-explanatory — whollyrolling

They may change their guiding principles but their underlying philosophical-moral grounding is just as stable as your theistic moral grounding. You just think they have no stable grounding because you don’t understand it. You own philosophical-theological thinking is stuck in the 18th century. Why they think what they do is invisible to you, so you rely on misreadings and misinterpretations. I respect your misreadings, though. You belong to a traditionalistic culture and I support its protection. I want to see small town America thrive as a a quaint alternative to urban metropolitan America. They are two worlds and each needs to go in it’s own separate direction. We should really drop all the crap about whose side is right or moral.


“Cancel culture“ is a derogatory of the right leveled against the left term just as ‘ flying spaghetti monster’ is a derogatory term for God. Both are self-explanatory terms for how one group glimpses the view of another from behind their own blinders.

Please feel free to explain the morality behind a movement which desires the destruction of all institutions and a state of resulting lawlessness. — whollyrolling

There’s a difference between lacking a moral grounding and having a different moral grounding than the one you prefer, and between an aim that sees itself as moral and an outcome that succeeds in achieving that moral aim.


I think you’re arguing that the outcome of anarchism will be one which is not moral, but are you really claiming that their aims are the creation of human suffering, that their motivation is to make life more painful for the average person? The fact that you could engage in an endless debate among adherents of anarchist positions about whether the ‘destruction of all institutions’ results in complete lawlessness, and if so, whether and why this is or is not a more ‘moral’ outcome for society than the alternatives demonstrates only that your view of the connection between their
moral aims and the likely outcomes differs from their own calculus.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here: "Apparently you dont need a God for a culture of blame." — whollyrolling

Morality rests on justice , which depends on emotions of blame, retribution, punishment, condemnation, free will vs determinism. You argued that atheism imposes no accountability.

And yet, as I have argued, identity politics is despised by the right because it has highly structured ways of holding people accountable (such as by ‘cancelling’ them) for what it considers to be moral infractions. Again, you disagree about whether the outcomes are moral, but their reasoning is moralistic, according to agreed upon definitions of moral reasoning, because thier aim is the betterment of society. I understand that you believe their reasoning is flawed without access to a god, that accountability for them cannot ‘really’ be moral without god because human reasoning without access to god cannot be moral.

As Social Constructionist Ken Gergen explains:

“By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish, oppressive, and/or violent).”

. Atheism is not exclusive to the left, it's just an easy default for them because it is amoral and imposes no accountability — whollyrolling

Movements associated with the left such as BLM , and the cancel culture of identity politics in general are highly moralistic. So much for lack of moral accountability. Apparently you dont need a God for a culture of blame.

What is positive side of killing someone for fun? Nothing to do with moral or immoral. Why would any society want people to do it? — Jackson

I thought we were talking about moral relativism.

postmodernists argue that all morality is culture -relative.
— Joshs

Would not agree with that assertion. Does any culture believe stabbing and murdering people is acceptable (outside of war!)? — Jackson

No. Just what I said. Stabbing people for fun. What culture thinks that is good? — Jackson

You just did it again. Saying someone stabs someone else for fun is interpreting their behavior as willfully immoral. We assume the person deliberately caused harm because they enjoyed being cruel. We assume they lacked caring and empathy. But to label them as immoral we have to stop the analysis there, and not inquire how someone could come to feel that way about others. We have various psychiatric labels which help, such as sociopathy and psychosis. But most of us tend to believe in a notion of willful evil.

You're saying Marx is ground zero for everything in philosophy since Hegel?

Probably not. — frank

You treat figures like Marx as though their ideas are hermetically sealed products that are either used or discarded, and bear little connection to a larger history of thought.

There is a rich, interwoven tapestry of philosophical
positions that spread out in the wake of Hegel , just as Hegel himself belonged to a web of ideas going back before him. Marx is just one of dozens of important writers who emerged beginning in the mid 1800’s who contribute to this fabric. There are so many interconnections between authors like Hegel , Marx , Feurbach, Kierkegaard, Freud, Habermas, Adorno, Focault , Derrida, Piaget Sartre, James , Lacan, Bergson, Nietzsche and Heidegger that it is silly to try and wall any of them off from each other as either useful or not , relevant or irrelevant. None of them are ground zero. Instead, they are all nodes in the larger network
of thought and all are still useful.

Does any culture believe stabbing and murdering people is acceptable (outside of war!)? — Jackson

Are you asking if a culture believes doing immoral things is moral? The answer is no. You know why? Because labels like ‘murder’ already presuppose the condemning of the perpetrator as immoral. You need to ask the question differently. Let’s let social constructionist Ken Gergen lay out the issue:

“Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy?“