Well, yeah. I said "Nietzsche." You said "perspective." — frank

Continue.

For Nietzsche, morality isn't essentially a set of true or false statements. It's an activity. A society is doing something with its ethical approach. Look to a society's narratives to see the unfolding drama.

For Nietzsche, morality isn't essentially a set of true or false statements. It's an activity. A society is doing something with its ethical approach. Look to a society's narratives to see the unfolding drama. — frank

we are in a limited way, in agreement. What is left after the historical notions of grounding ethics in some kind of logocentric idea are pushed aside is contingency. As Sartre put is, the world that we confront is "radically contingent", it does not "speak", but exceeds in its superfluity the confines language would contain it. Of course, he has beneath his thinking Kierkegaard and Hegel and Nietzsche as well, who all contest the any "rational reduction" as if logic could possess actuality. This is Heraclitus' world, not Parmenides'.

I think this is a profound insight, but with one slip: ethics and value. There may not be some overarching independent grounding for meaning and to understand is to have context for that understanding to be possible, but does this apply to value simpliciter? This is not an historical argument; it is a phenomenological one, so forget about Nietzsche's complaints against Christianity and Platonism. Phenomenology puts the burden of meaning at the level of basic questions to the "things themselves" which is, in my thinking, reduction away from argument and analysis and toward intuitional givens. The pain in the kidney is, I argue, foundational, unassailable, absolute.

OK. But you can't do without argument, analysis, and theory.

There once was a guy who had no theories and life was constantly like salt on a wound. A simple case of a dead raccoon on the side of the road was too much for him. That it had been killed and nobody cared, it overwhelmed him.

He had to grow some theories to act as buffers on what you're calling the "absolute.". That pain remains unassailable. Theories do put distance between us and the absolute. And that's a good thing. It's a necessary thing.

Phenomenology puts the burden of meaning at the level of basic questions to the "things themselves" which is, in my thinking, reduction away from argument and analysis and toward intuitional givens. The pain in the kidney is, I argue, foundational, unassailable, absolute. — Astrophel

On the one side are phenomenologists like Henry, who talk about grounding affectivities as immediate and unchanging:

“Henry calls attention to the way in which we are aware of our feelings and moods. When we are in pain, anxious, embarrassed, stubborn or happy, we do not feel it through the intervention of a (inner) sense organ or an intentional act, but are immediately aware of it. There is no distance or separation between the feeling of pain or happiness and our awareness of it, since it is given in and through itself. According to Henry, something similar holds for all of our conscious experiences. To make use of a terminology taken from analytical philosophy of mind, Henry would claim that all conscious experiences are essentially characterized by having a subjective ‘feel' to them, that is, a certain quality of ‘what it is like'”.

“Self-affection understood as the process of affecting and being affected is not the rigid self-identity of an object, but a subjective movement. A movement which Henry has even described as the self-temporalisation of subjectivity. But as he then adds, we are dealing with a quite unique form of temporalisation, which is absolute immanent, non-horizontal and non-ecstatic. We are dealing with an affective temporality, and even though it seems to involve a perpetual movement and change, nothing is changed. In fact, it would be wrong to characterize absolute subjectivity as a stream of consciousness. There is no streaming and no change, but always one and the same Living Present without distance or difference. It is always the same self affecting itself.”

On the other side are phenomenologists like Husserl:

“…sthere is no Being which has sense outside of this
historicity or escapes its infinite horizon, since the Logos and the Telos are nothing outside the interplay of their reciprocal inspi­ration, this slgmfies then that the Absolute is Passage. Traditionality is what circulates from one to the other, illuminating one by the other in a movement wherein consciousness discovers its path in an indefinite reduction, always already begun, and wherein every adventure is a change of direction [conversion] and every return to the origin an au­dacious move toward the horizon.” (Derrida on Husserl)

“....To know what questions we may reasonably propose...... — Mww

Digging a hole to discover what’s in the dirt is one thing. Digging a hole just to put the dirt in a different place, is quite something else.
— Mww

A reference to deconstruction? — Astrophel

No. It is a rhetorical comment on your series of questions that are unreasonably proposed, thereby drawing attention away from the project at hand. I find myself spending more time figuring out how the questions relate to a philosophy, then I do critiquing it.

I try to argue that ethics has an absolute grounding that is evident in the anatomy of a given ethical case: value simpliciter is not deconstructable. What we say is, but the intuition of pain, say, is not, and this pain is the kind of thing that drives all ethical possibilities. — Astrophel

Interesting. On close reading it appears that what you giveth, you taketh away. But I'm a buyer, believing that ethics is a something, even if not-so-easy to say what. I can even resort to boot-strapping: "it is because it is."

Henry calls attention to the way in which we are aware of our feelings and moods. When we are in pain, anxious, embarrassed, stubborn or happy, we do not feel it through the intervention of a (inner) sense organ or an intentional act, but are immediately aware of it. There is no distance or separation between the feeling of pain or happiness and our awareness of it, since it is given in and through itself. According to Henry, something similar holds for all of our conscious experiences. To make use of a terminology taken from analytical philosophy of mind, Henry would claim that all conscious experiences are essentially characterized by having a subjective ‘feel' to them, that is, a certain quality of ‘what it is like'”.

“Self-affection understood as the process of affecting and being affected is not the rigid self-identity of an object, but a subjective movement. A movement which Henry has even described as the self-temporalisation of subjectivity. But as he then adds, we are dealing with a quite unique form of temporalisation, which is absolute immanent, non-horizontal and non-ecstatic. We are dealing with an affective temporality, and even though it seems to involve a perpetual movement and change, nothing is changed. In fact, it would be wrong to characterize absolute subjectivity as a stream of consciousness. There is no streaming and no change, but always one and the same Living Present without distance or difference. It is always the same self affecting itself.” — Joshs

Still reading Husserl's Internal time consciousness. Trying to construct a response. As to Henry above, it doesn't touch on the original phenomenological datum which I want to bring forward as the intuitive foundation for ethics, what is "concealed in apperception". I am convinced the regression toward the originary intuitive apprehension of things leads to something revelatory, not merely an underpinning of structure presupposed by our affairs that "proceed constructively" upon it. Husserl, and I think this onw way to put the subsequent complaints against him, assumes this intuitive given to be free and present apart from apperception, but this cannot be sustained: there is no freedom from tis, for the "ap" apperception is intrinsic to any and all thought, so any thought of a pure phenomenon is undone, as in his attempt to give a phenomenological exposition ot time, from the position of writing and thinking in time. It's not that his analyses are wrong, it's just that they cannot be what he says they are: "time and duration appearing as such." As such? He means this as a radical departure from "Objective time", and not just a, say, hermeneutical departure. I think this is what you meant by his being much more radical.

But then, at that threshold, when the suspension becomes radically exclusionary, and one's affectivity's attachments are , as well as what Fink The Sixth Meditation) calls the "transcendental aesthetic," that is, the explication of the "phenomenon of the world the explication of the cogitata as cogitata and of their universal structures, the description of acceptances" (the term "aesthetic" here confuses, but he is talking about the primordial belief that attends cognition); then it is not ust the understanding reach to a sublime height of apprehension alone. It is affectivity. And this makes a turn toward religion (in the non trivial sense).

No. It is a rhetorical comment on your series of questions that are unreasonably proposed, thereby drawing attention away from the project at hand. I find myself spending more time figuring out how the questions relate to a philosophy, then I do critiquing it. — Mww

Well, you were responding to my "can go on forever in a childish game of what and why" which was a reference to the way deconstructionists sometimes play a childish game of "what's that?" I have read one or two. the point many don't want engage is that whatever meaning one wants to bring to the table, if the intention is to go to the most basic assumptions and questions, philosophy, then one has to deal with language and logic, and language is self referential, roughly put.
I do completely agree that this puts everything under suspicion, for everything issue that is taken up is done so in language. Empirical science is a construct that is "made of" language. Ethics is the same, so the basic meanings that language makes are the foundation for talk about ethics, and this means ethics is deconstructable, which, as one could put it, means one is really hard pressed to get "out" of language" to "say" the unconditioned thing that ethics IS.
This is where I come in: Ethics has this. It is affectivity and value. All ethics has this not only as a presupposition, but as the very core of ethics itself.

one has to deal with language and logic, and language is self referential, roughly put. — Astrophel

Language viewed as a logical grammar is self-referential. Language viewed through the phenomenology of someone like Merleau-Ponty is embodied, and therefore self-transformating. For Derrida language points beyond itself. Deconstruction , as a post- structuralism, began as a response to the structuralist models of language that think of it as a self-referential totality.

Interesting. On close reading it appears that what you giveth, you taketh away. But I'm a buyer, believing that ethics is a something, even if not-so-easy to say what. I can even resort to boot-strapping: "it is because it is." — tim wood

two things: it is "worse" than I have let on. Once we allow affect and intuited value or phenomenologically pure "data" pf pain, pleasure and the rest, then there are implications. If it is not just some historically constructed ideas, but issues right from t he heart of the "world constitution". Very weird to say this, but ethics is thereby part of this constitution, and the authority possessed in ethical injunctions comes not from mere convention, but the world itself.

Second thing? I'm working on it.

Language viewed as a logical grammar is self-referential. Language viewed through the phenomenology of someone like Merleau-Ponty is embodied, and therefore self-transformating. For Derrida language points beyond itself. Deconstruction , as a post- structuralism, began as a response to the structuralist models of language that think of it as a self-referential totality. — Joshs

The beyond of language?

Husserl: "the intuition of the past itself....is an originary consciousness" (Section 12)
Time therefore does not exist at all, it would seem to follow. After all, what has the past ever been other than a mode of a timeless actuality?

The beyond of language? — Astrophel

Yes, this is at the core of Derrida’s thinking, and Heidegger’s as well.
In 'Logic as the Question concerning the Essence of Language' Heidegger tells us he wants, 'in a confrontation with the tradition', to rethink logic, to "revolutionarily shake up the notion of logic" from the ground up, but that he can only provisionally point to his notion of the primordial ground of language as the basis of this new grounding of logic. Traditionally, language is thought as a tool of thinking, as secondary to thinking, as grounded on grammar, which in turn is grounded on logic. Heidegger says “the first thing we need is a real revolution in our relation to language.”

Yes, this is at the core of Derrida’s thinking, and Heidegger’s as well.
In 'Logic as the Question concerning the Essence of Language' Heidegger tells us he wants, 'in a confrontation with the tradition', to rethink logic, to "revolutionarily shake up the notion of logic" from the ground up, but that he can only provisionally point to his notion of the primordial ground of language as the basis of this new grounding of logic. Traditionally, language is thought as a tool of thinking, as secondary to thinking, as grounded on grammar, which in turn is grounded on logic. Heidegger says “the first thing we need is a real revolution in our relation to language.” — Joshs

Thanks for that! I have it here.
I don't know what this is about. I have always thought it was hermeneutics that sealed the fate of adventuring "beyond" for Heidegger. Taking up being in the world would never step beyond the boundaries of historical possibilities, just as science could never step radically out of the paradigms that make its thinking possible, just as a person's freedom is bound to personal and cultural history, still. Anything beyond must be familiar in its parts, and any revolutionary shake up can only shake what is contained therein, that is, "shake" language as such. If it is within language that the shaking occurs, then this cannot be beyond language.

Taking up being in the world would never step beyond the boundaries of historical possibilities, just as science could never step radically out of the paradigms that make its thinking possible, just as a person's freedom is bound to personal and cultural history, still. Anything beyond must be familiar in its parts, and any revolutionary shake up can only shake what is contained therein, that is, "shake" language as such. If it is within language that the shaking occurs, then this cannot be beyond language. — Astrophel

It is confusing. At one end is ‘Das man’ , a stiflingly normative mode of discursive being-with-others that precludes original thinking. At the other end is authentic Dasein pursuing its ownmost possibilities of being. But I would suggest that for Heidegger even when we are caught within the normative framework, we are not simply introjecting shared ways of speaking and thinking.

Heidegger's(2010) task is to explain how a Dasein which always understands others in relation to its very own pragmatic totality of relevance ends up believing in a cultural world of linguistic practices that appear to be the same for all. “...what purports to be an opening up of the world is in fact its concealment: by appealing to public opinion and tradition, idle talk creates in Dasein the belief that it possesses universally acknowledged and thus genuine truths.”

Heidegger chooses words like average, vague, flattened , confused, uprooted state of suspension, and ambiguous to describe Dasein's being as Das Man, to indicate that the heedfulness of Care is still primordially and implicitly operative even when it is explicitly concealed and suppressed . Average everyday discourse has to be vague, approximate, superficial and ambiguous enough to conceal, disguise, cover over, miss, obscure, suppress the fact that the meaning of what is shared is never interpreted identically for each dasein.

“What is talked about is understood only approximately and superficially. One means the same thing because it is in the same averageness that we have a common understanding of what is said.” “Publicness ” does not get to "the heart of the matter," because it is insensitive to every difference of level and genuineness.”

“Idle talk conceals simply because of its characteristic failure to address things in an originary way [urspriinglichen Ansprechens]. It obscures the true appearance of the world and the events in it by instituting a dominant view [herrschende Ansicht].”“Usually and for the most part the ontic mode of being-in (discoverture) is concealment [Verdeckung]. Interpretedness, which is speech encrusted by idle talk, draws any given Dasein into 'one's' way of being. But existence in the 'one' now entails the concealment and marginalization of the genuine self [eigentlichen Selbst]. Not only has each particular given itself over to 'one', 'one' blocks Dasein's access to the state it finds itself in [Befindlichkeit].”(Heidegger 2011)

Heidegger says that there are genuine modes
of discourse where individual differences do not become flattened in this way.

Gosh Baker, those comments sound bitter. — Tom Storm

You don't say.

Can the GR end world bigotry and fuckwit behavior? Of course not. Neither can any religious code or ethical system. Are you looking for magic spells that will somehow compel ethical behavior?

In that case, the GR is a liability, not an asset. Or in the best case scenario, its only value is in that it can function as an ego boost.

Do that, and you will be perceived as a pansy, and exploited.
— baker

Has that been your experience?

Of course.

Then why bother with the GR?
— baker

Absolutist thinking. If it isn't a 100% done deal it isn't worth doing? Strange.

It was a question inviting you to elaborate, not to read it as a mere rhetorical device to be scoffed at.

That's bizarre. Only the neurotic think before they act. The normal person is always sure they have done no wrong and can do no wrong.
— baker

Where the hell do you live? In my experience the normal person (whatever that means) has insight and often reflects on their behavior. And as people mature and grow they often reflect more and deeper. And, as for only neurotics thinking before they act, that's a fascinating frame and I would say it's wrong.

Thinking before acting is what makes one neurotic; ie. score high on the neuroticism scale, since "neurotic" and "psychotic" aren't official terms anymore.

Indeed. It makes them strive to grow up, grow strong, and make sure nobody can do to them what they can do to others.
— baker

That's a jaundiced view of human nature and, quite frankly, having seen many children grow up, I have yet to encounter this phenomenon unless a child was abused or neglected in some way.

Or maybe you're just blind to how humans work; or pretending to be thusly blind. Don't you repudiate it, such blindness is an important psychological asset.

Bad day?

You silly. Are you really so limited that you cannot envision that someone might have a view of a matter whereby this view is not limited or defined by their personal experience or emotions, but is, instead, a well thought-out view?

The point is not that the GR will fix the world. The point is it can be a useful frame, a teaching aid, or a navigation point.

For what? World peace? Feeling good about oneself no matter what? For what?

You yet need to show that the GR is a better theory of motivation than any other, such as adherence to rules (and threat of punishment for breaking them), or fear of God's punishment, and that it brings about better results than any other theory or more consistently.

I think this is the nub of it. There are no different cultural interpretations I know of where murdering or thieving or lying are considered cool. — Tom Storm

Of course there are, depending on who it is that should be killed, stolen from, or lied to.

Several nations now believe that it would be good to annihilate the Russians and take their land and natural resources. And these people see absolutely nothing "uncool" about it.

No, it’s an approach to ethics that makes the ability to act ‘ethically’ a function of insight, and no internalization of standards will get around that fact, because it’s not a question of ethical intent but of insight. Wanting to do the right thing, and having all manner of rules and guidelines for dong the right thing, are worthless if the attributes within another that are to be valued are invisible to one. — Joshs

It's not clear where you're going with this.

But what you're putting forth so far excuses, for example, the way the Nazis treated the Jews during WWII. "The attributes that are to be valued in the Jews were invisible to the Nazis. The Nazis acted ethically, in accordance with their insight into the Jews."

Just don't want you to be typing stupid stuff on the internet when you should be in the hospital. — frank

That's ironic because on the ground level, whether or not you have a pain that justifies a visit to the ER or to the doctor at all is a matter of perspective.

I witnessed another example of this just a couple of months back, when the pain in my right side became too much and I asked my father to take me to the ER. At 3 AM. In the middle of the pandemic. That's how bad it was. I hate going to the doctor as it is, and this was only the second time in my entire life that I went to the ER.
But the first doctor in the ER who saw me almost threw me out, saying that just because I vomitted and because I have a pain in my right side that's no reason to go to the doctor at all. She did an EEG and she was quite rough.

The next doctor took my blood and ran some tests, and it turned out I had a gastrointestinal infection.

So much for perspective.

But what you're putting forth so far excuses, for example, the way the Nazis treated the Jews during WWII. "The attributes that are to be valued in the Jews were invisible to the Nazis. The Nazis acted ethically, in accordance with their insight into the Jews." — baker

That’s exactly right. Ethical intent was not the issue. Lack of insight was. The Jew for centuries represented the alien interloper in European thought. The intent wasn’t to see them as alien and thus morally suspect. Antisemitism was and still is the product of a failure to transcend the gap between cultures.

You yet need to show that the GR is a better theory of motivation than any other, such as adherence to rules (and threat of punishment for breaking them), or fear of God's punishment, and that it brings about better results than any other theory or more consistently. — baker

I don't need to show anything, Baker the GR is a principle and has been a motivator in many people's lives for centuries. But it won't please everyone. My approach is simply that we can recommend ideas to each other and people will either see the value or utility in them, or not. My view is that the GR can be defended as a useful principle and you seem to want something more compelling. I don't think there is such thing unless one is some kind of fundamentalist - religious or political.

For what? World peace? Feeling good about oneself no matter what? For what? — baker

I can't believe this is a genuine response. I've answered this. My view of morality is that it recommends principles to guide human behaviour towards each other and towards other conscious creatures. We discuss and decide upon which principles assists us best in this task. That's all. If you want some kind of totalising, meta-narrative that compels people, go for it, show us something better.

*sigh*

Presumably our aim in ethics/morality is that people would coexist in relative harmony. But this relative harmony can be brought about in many ways (such as fear of God, obedience of rules, "good boy/good girl" mentality, following the GR), and following the GR is just one of them. Since you are a proponent of the GR, it's on you to show how it is better than those other ways.

But what you're putting forth so far excuses, for example, the way the Nazis treated the Jews during WWII. "The attributes that are to be valued in the Jews were invisible to the Nazis. The Nazis acted ethically, in accordance with their insight into the Jews."
— baker

That’s exactly right. Ethical intent was not the issue. Lack of insight was. The Jew for centuries represented the alien interloper in European thought. The intent wasn’t to see them as alien and thus morally suspect. Antisemitism was and still is the product of a failure to transcend the gap between cultures. — Joshs

At this point, with this all-too-relevant example, we'd have to venture onto some very delicate territory.

But all the other examples in which your reasoning applies also end up being problematic (in that we'd have to dismantle some taboos).

Antisemitism was and still is the product of a failure to transcend the gap between cultures.

To the best of my knowledge, transcending the gap between cultures has never actually been a value. Sure, some people talk about it a lot. But in order for there to be different cultures at all, there must be gaps between them, otherwise, they would all be one.

But in order for there to be different cultures at all, there must be gaps between them, otherwise, they would all be one. — baker

Do you consider yourself and your circle of friends to be “all one” or do you recognize all kinds of wonderful
differences among you? Are your friends all of one gender, ethnicity, religion and country of origin? And yet you have transcended enough gaps in understanding to embrace them as friends.

Are your friends all of one gender, ethnicity, religion and country of origin? — Joshs

Ideally, yes.

And yet you have transcended enough gaps in understanding to embrace them as friends.

No. Over time, those differences drifted us apart.

There is apolitically correct notion that one should be able to be friends with pretty much just anyone. But my experience is that while this may make for politically correct, fashionable relationships, it also makes them shallow and unreliable. With people who are too different from oneself, one may be on "friendly terms", but this is not to be confused for friendship.