I see ancient, original texts as openings for new disclosure, and therein lies their greatness. There are no definitive texts, only movement toward greater intimacy with truth at the level of basic questions. What is so important about Hinduism and Buddhism is that they presented an extraordinary efficient method for disclosing revelatory, intuitive understanding at this level. They presented a new intuitive horizon! And I believe it to be philosophy's sole remaining mission to talk about this, learn what it is. — Constance

Oh dear, that's ambitious for philosophy!

If i were putting forward something to replace Buddhism, this would be right. I just want to understand what it has to say. At the center is not a doctrine for me. It is an existential engagement.

That's just it: You want to understand and engage with Buddhism on your terms. You're ignoring or downplaying the importance of the living tradition, the living community of Buddhism, ie. the people who are actually working to preserve the teachings and make them accessible (from librarians to translators to those who pay for the upkeep of Buddhist websites to the monks who teach meditation and everyone needed for the system to function).

I just want to understand what it has to say.

And you think you can do that apart from committing yourself to an actual Buddhist community?

This is a vital point. Really think about it.

That about Kierkegaard and his inherited wealth seems like just an intentional ad hominem.

Not all ad hominems are fallacious:

/.../
Walton has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue,[30] as when it directly involves hypocrisy, or actions contradicting the subject's words.

The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that ad hominem reasoning (discussing facts about the speaker or author relative to the value of his statements) is essential to understanding certain moral issues due to the connection between individual persons and morality (or moral claims), and contrasts this sort of reasoning with the apodictic reasoning (involving facts beyond dispute or clearly established) of philosophical naturalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#Criticism_as_a_fallacy

Kierkegaard applied this to himself when he broke off his engagement because he thought he wasn't good enough to marry.
And I think that his lifestyle and his not integrating himself with an actual religious community disqualifies his opinion in religious matters. He was an armchair Christian.

He was not aspiritual at all, quite the opposite

I was talking about being areligious, not aspiritual.

But then, this here is certainly NOT about the errors of the Pali canon at all! I mean, it is an interpretative expansion, but exploring meaning not unlike what it is to explore Jesus' words, only here, we have the "event" that is center stage, much more available for objective study. To me, meditation is a practical metaphysics!

Sure. I'm saying it might have nothing more in common with Buddhism than the name.


From what you've said so far about Buddhism, you're like someone who says that the best way to learn a foreign language is to study the textbooks and to do the exercises in the textbooks. But never actually try to function in that language as a member of a community that are native speakers of that language.

Says Rilke:
Solang du Selbstgeworfnes fängst, ist alles
Geschicklichkeit und läßlicher Gewinn

This is what engaging with a religion on one's own terms is like: easy and with success that isn't worth much. It's like catching a ball that one has thrown.
It's only in interaction with others who are also pursuing that religion that one has to make an effort, new kinds of efforts and cultivate qualities that one could not on one's own.

I think one has to take a good long look at this idea and ask, how is it that anything out there gets in here? Out thereness itself MUST be in here, point to my head. — Constance

If you follow that logic it leads to the conclusion that only you exist: solipsism.

If you follow that logic it leads to the conclusion that only you exist: solipsism. — Janus

Yes, that is true, though it does overstate the case, doesn't it? Wittgenstein and Kant famously refused to give sense at all to such things as the "out thereness" beyond logic, intuition and language, using forms of the term "transcendental" to refer to them, if such referring were to be allowed at all (there is the transcendental deduction, but this is open ended merely, not something metaphysical. And Wittgenstein says explicitly he only brings up the matter to say we should pass over it in silence).

But I always have had a different take on this, after all, if Kant was so sure noumena was not an intelligible idea, then why bring it up at all? That is, what is the ground in the world that makes bringing it up not pure nonsense? An excellent question, I think. My thought is that there is another dimension to being a self altogether, and this is discovered, no, intimated, in meditation, philosophies on apophatic theology, post Heideggerian thinking like Marion, Henry, and then there is Fink and Husserl earlier on, and then Levinas' Totality and Infinity, and others. I'm reading Caputo's Weakness of God. He takes Derrida as a threshold philosopher who takes thought to its "end" and here, we face, and I think this is his point, the wimpiness of metaphysical love, and are told, THIS is where our philosophical journey ends, keeping in mind that the totality of language has never possessed this.

if Kant was so sure noumena was not an intelligible idea, then why bring it up at all? — Constance

If it wasn’t intelligible, he couldn’t have brought it up. He did, so it is. And he said so. He actually said, under certain conditions, the conception of noumena are necessary. That which is unintelligible cannot at the same time be necessary. In Kant, an idea is a concept of reason formed of notions by the understanding itself (A320/B377), and noumena are concepts thought by the understanding (B306). It follows that the question is necessarily predicated on a misunderstanding.

That is, what is the ground in the world that makes bringing it up not pure nonsense? — Constance

The ground for bringing it up is not in the world; if it were it would be incomprehensible anyway, which is the same as nonsense.

An excellent question, I think. — Constance

No, it isn’t, given these two basic transcendental premises:

“...But I can think what I please, provided only I do not contradict myself...” (Bxxvii fn)
“...understanding may be represented (...) according to what has been said above, as a faculty of thought...” (B94)

It is clear, that if understanding is that which thinks, then understanding can think whatever it wants for it is I to whom understanding belongs. Therefore, it is at least non-contradictory and at most entirely admissible, for understanding to think noumena if it wants. And it does want to, in metaphysical parlance, in assuming the possibility of non-sensuous determinable schema subsumed under the categories, which Kant terms objects-in-themselves.

Now it can be surmised why he had to bring it up: he’d already proven the categories only apply upon being presented with sensuous objects as phenomena, that is to say, under entirely empirical conditions and by that the means to cognize them, so it would have been catastrophic to allow a category to present objects to itself that can never be phenomena, after having allowed such objects to be legitimately thought, albeit under entirely pure a priori conditions yet maintaining validity in the cognition of them nonetheless.

At bottom, with no further reduction necessary, this is exactly how I do not contradict myself.

Easy-peasy.

So the matter turns away from what to do and how make principles of good behavior in entangled conditions, and it turns to metaethics: the GOOD. This is the beginning of the argument, pending your response thus far — Constance

All in favor and on your side so far.

I will make an observation: in order to be in any sense of being free in any way, one needs security. I find knowledge and understanding of the Good to be a nexus of energy that supports and self-supports being in a secure way that facilitates that being. So I agree that while the temporal movement is from doing to being, as we grow in understanding of what doing both needs and entails, the logical movement is from security and being secure first, and then to doing. And what it is, exactly, about what we call "the Good" that makes it so in terms of itself and its efficacy, is no small question.

If it wasn’t intelligible, he couldn’t have brought it up. He did, so it is. And he said so. He actually said, under certain conditions, the conception of noumena are necessary. That which is unintelligible cannot at the same time be necessary. In Kant, an idea is a concept of reason formed of notions by the understanding itself (A320/B377), and noumena are concepts thought by the understanding (B306). It follows that the question is necessarily predicated on a misunderstanding. — Mww

the question is, why isn't noumena dismissible as dialectic overreach, as delusion, with "the mere
dream of an extension of the pure understanding"? It really is not intended to bring attention to Kant or Wittgenstein, but rather, both of their denials that any sense can be made of the very thing, by calling attention to it, that carries an implicit affirmation there is something in the presence of the world that cannot be dismissed, but does not belong to sensory intuition or the understanding, or, to the "facts" of the world. The Tractatus and the Critique are explicit in the line they draw on this.

The ground for bringing it up is not in the world; if it were it would be incomprehensible anyway, which is the same as nonsense. — Mww

Therein lies the rub: It is the elephant in the room, the "it" so readily referred to, yet denied so immediately. The term 'transcendence', should we not file this away, along with "the present kind of France is bald"? No. The issue goes to, why not?

It is clear, that if understanding is that which thinks, then understanding can think whatever it wants for it is I to whom understanding belongs. Therefore, it is at least non-contradictory and at most entirely admissible, for understanding to think noumena if it wants. And it does want to, in metaphysical parlance, in assuming the possibility of non-sensuous determinable schema subsumed under the categories, which Kant terms objects-in-themselves.

Now it can be surmised why he had to bring it up: he’d already proven the categories only apply upon being presented with sensuous objects as phenomena, that is to say, under entirely empirical conditions and by that the means to cognize them, so it would have been catastrophic to allow a category to present objects to itself that can never be phenomena, after having allowed such objects to be legitimately thought, albeit under entirely pure a priori conditions yet maintaining validity in the cognition of them nonetheless. — Mww

It is clear why Kant thought like this. The matter here outs a question to the line drawn. It IS catastrophic to allow such a thing, and yet, there he is, committing this very catastrophe. One way to say this is to yield to delimitation of the understanding, but in doing so admit there is an incompleteness, in metaethics, and in a full disclosure of world ontology: If it were true that nothing at all imposed itself from "outside" (Levinas' Other) on a reasoned construction describing the world exhaustively, then discussions about noumena would entirely without meaning beyond the empty spinning of dialectical wheels.

At bottom, with no further reduction necessary, this is exactly how I do not contradict myself.

Easy-peasy. — Mww

Would that it were.

It follows that the question is necessarily predicated on a misunderstanding.
— Mww

the question is, why isn't noumena dismissible as dialectic overreach, as delusion, with "the mere
dream of an extension of the pure understanding"? — Constance

This, for all intents and purposes, is a different question altogether. To this, I would say noumena can be dismissed as dialectical overreach, for those not academically disposed. I wouldn't grant dialectical overreach between, say, Kant and Schopenhauer. Those two guys would hash this stuff out forever, and I bet neither would give an inch even with similar metaphysical predication.

the "it" so readily referred to — Constance

Actually, how often are noumena readily referred to? I know Kant confuses the issue somewhat by referring to them here and there, and it does take some concerted effort to recognize the conceptual or speculative consistency in doing so. But all in all, with respect to the overall knowledge treatise, they can be ignored.
————-

One way to say this is to yield to delimitation of the understanding, but in doing so admit there is an incompleteness, in metaethics, and in a full disclosure of world ontology — Constance

One possibility or the other: either we claim to know everything given from full disclosure, or we claim that not everything is knowable given from the limitations imposed by our cognitive system. Nothing wrong with admitting incompleteness or loss of full disclosure. Ful disclosure just might be too much for us to handle.

As an aside, it should be remembered that Kant isn’t restricting the understanding with noumena, in fact, he’s letting it run wild.....letting it think what it wants. He’s limiting sensibility, by making it inoperative except for objects to which space and time can be intuited. This now, may indeed prevent a full disclosure of world ontology. But then, transcendental philosophy wouldn’t work, and you’d need a different explanatory methodology.

I will make an observation: in order to be in any sense of being free in any way, one needs security. I find knowledge and understanding of the Good to be a nexus of energy that supports and self-supports being in a secure way that facilitates that being. So I agree that while the temporal movement is from doing to being, as we grow in understanding of what doing both needs and entails, the logical movement is from security and being secure first, and then to doing. And what it is, exactly, about what we call "the Good" that makes it so in terms of itself and its efficacy, is no small question. — tim wood

What then is security? And I don't mean this in the everyday sense of the term. I defend a rather impossible thesis: within the self there is the oddest thing imaginable, which is value. I claim that value, like the pain a spear in my kidney causes, is absolute, and the self is therefore absolute. Pain as such, pain simplciter, not pain contextualized in an all things considered sense, but simply the phenomenon of pain itself, is not a contingent "bad" but an absolute.

Not a popular thesis. No matter, I am right, my detractors wrong. I can argue this very well, and it is the genuine foundation for moral realism and the reality of the self.

Not a popular thesis. No matter, I am right, my detractors wrong. I can argue this very well, and it is the genuine foundation for moral realism and the reality of the self. — Constance

Actually, it's one of the most popular theses in the self-help genre. So ordinary, actually.

Google "self quotes" and look at the image results.

And an endless number of posts like this: https://www.thehappycandle.ie/my-declaration-of-self-esteem-i-am-me-by-virginia-satir/

I defend a rather impossible thesis: within the self there is the oddest thing imaginable, which is value. I claim that value, like the pain a spear in my kidney causes, is absolute, and the self is therefore absolute. — Constance

You're right that this is an impossible thesis. Value is by definition relative, as the worthiness of something is always dependent on a purpose, or something other than itself which it is judged in comparison to. How do you conceive value as something absolute?

Oh dear, that's ambitious for philosophy! — baker

Philosophy has been all along a search not for truth, but for value. I think it is close to its end in postmodern deconstruction. Heidegger thought Buddhism was on to something, a new language, primordial, lost through the ages of bad metaphysics. He didn't elaborate, but he was right, and he set stage for a phenomenological philosophy that puts meaning first.

That's just it: You want to understand and engage with Buddhism on your terms. You're ignoring or downplaying the importance of the living tradition, the living community of Buddhism, ie. the people who are actually working to preserve the teachings and make them accessible (from librarians to translators to those who pay for the upkeep of Buddhist websites to the monks who teach meditation and everyone needed for the system to function). — baker

You're part right. Look, if you're going to talk about the history of Buddhism, or, the various schools with their differences in place, then fine, and if you have a cultural/historical respect in place, then also fine. But an inquiry into the meaning of Buddhism at the basic level is a very different matter.

And you think you can do that apart from committing yourself to an actual Buddhist community?

This is a vital point. Really think about it. — baker

Well, see the above.

Walton has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue,[30] as when it directly involves hypocrisy, or actions contradicting the subject's words.

The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that ad hominem reasoning (discussing facts about the speaker or author relative to the value of his statements) is essential to understanding certain moral issues due to the connection between individual persons and morality (or moral claims), and contrasts this sort of reasoning with the apodictic reasoning (involving facts beyond dispute or clearly established) of philosophical naturalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#Criticism_as_a_fallacy

Kierkegaard applied this to himself when he broke off his engagement because he thought he wasn't good enough to marry.
And I think that his lifestyle and his not integrating himself with an actual religious community disqualifies his opinion in religious matters. He was an armchair Christian. — baker

You've never read anything by Kierkegaard, have you? I mean, quite seriously, you haven't read a thing of the man who affirmed God over reason. Armchair? And you have the story about Regina all wrong. And you spend so many words on justifying ad hominem arguments?

Off the deep end, I'd say.

You're right that this is an impossible thesis. Value is by definition relative, as the worthiness of something is always dependent on a purpose, or something other than itself which it is judged in comparison to. How do you conceive value as something absolute? — Metaphysician Undercover

Here is the beginning from Metaethics and Moral Realism posted 14 days ago:

Consider: the ethical anti objectivist John Mackie's thesis (Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong) that there are no objective ethics, and he runs through R M Hare's objections, the notion that "value statements cannot be true or false" and Kant, Plato, Sedgwick, Aristotle, but I am not going through all this. His Argument from Queerness I find central, which is quite simple: ethics is just too weird to consider as objective, and here he cites G E Moore's non natural property. Mackie denies this both on epistemological grounds and well as ontological, the former focused on intuitionism, etc., the latter essentially: what in blazes would objective ethics even BE? Inconceivable.

Mackie is wrong: To deny moral objectivism on the grounds that it is too weird implies a non weird standard already in place, and this would be, of course, empirical science. But how is it that empirical science is allowed to be the foundational basis for determining the nature of ethics? Ethics is about value, in its essence: If you want to really get the center of ethics, you have to give it its due analysis, after all, an ethical case is a thing of parts. On the one hand, there is its entanglement with the "facts" of the world. On the other, there is the metaethical, the "bad" and "good" of moral affairs. It is here, in the metaethical, that the essence of ethics has its objectivity and its reality.

The question is, what makes the ethical shoulds and shouldn'ts what they are? Ethical goodness and badness, and we will simply call this ethical value and, are not like contingent value and judgment. A good knife is good, say, because it is sharp and cuts well, but this virtue entirely rests with the cutting, the goodness, if you will, defers to the cutting context. But change the conditions of the context and the good can easily become the opposite of good, if, e.g., the knife is to be used for a Macbeth production. Here, sharpness is the very opposite of good, for someone could get hurt. This is how contingency works, this deferring to other contextual features for goodness or badness to be determined.

Ethical value, on the other hand, is very different, for once the context is taken away, and no contextual deference possible, there is the metavalue "presence" remaining. How so? Now we are in Moore's territory. Consider: You have a choice between the torture of one child for a hour, or the torture of a million children for, let's say an eternity (forget the foolishness of the idea). Utility clearly states the former over the latter, and even the most die hard Kantian deontologist would have to yield to the straight forward utility of this (Did Kant ever make any sense at all in ethics??). But here is the rub in this: the child torture for the one hour is in no way mitigated due to the "contextual" justification. You may have done the right thing, but the value in play is not at all effected by the conditions vis a vis the other children. In fact, there is no set of contingent conditions imaginable that undo or even mitigate the ethical value, the "badness" of the one child's torture. It is impossible to conceive of such a mitigation.

What IS ethical badness as such? Try this thought on an empirical object, looking for the "empirical as such" and you get what I call mundane qualia, and, just ask Dennett, qualia is without meaning, or, very close to nonsense, and I think he's right on this. But, if you want to use this language, value-qualia is certainly not nonsense, for apply a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds, review the experience, and remove all contingencies, all talk that could contextualize it entirely out of the analysis, and there is the remaining "presence" of the non natural quality of value/ethical badness and goodness. It cannot be observed, but that burning finger is more than Wittgensteinian "fact" (and Wittgenstein knew this) like the fact that my shoe is untired of that the sun is a ball of fusion. Such facts are all contingent. The metaethical dimension of ethics is not. It is absolute, though, not absolute in the way it is taken up in a conceptual analysis (where analytical philosophy often goes so wrong), but in the injunction not to do something. This is critical to my position: I cannot tell you what an absolute is, for this would be beyond what language can do, not to put too fine a point on it. It only "shows" itself, in the same manner logic shows itself, but cannot reveal itself in the showing. It only reveals itself in the inherent injunction not to do (my example is negative. Doesn't have to be) something.

Value is by definition relative, — Metaphysician Undercover

If we think about it enough, we realize that the relativity of relativity is relative. Which is just a snarky way of saying that, for example, while a dollar is worth a dollar, and that relative and subject to all kinds of adjustments, never-the-less there is something absolute about the idea of that value, and even its quantity.

And the way that seems to work is to acknowledge a framework or set of rules within which the value is absolute. Outside of the framework, maybe not. The question then evolves from the valuation of things to the frameworks in which they're valued. And at some point, the framework/rules being of sufficient scope and largeness, the point in question is by every practical and reasonable measure absolute.

Morality, rightly understood (imo), has in it the potential to be that framework/rules/understandings that can be held and applied in all of them. As precept, the golden rule seems a value that comes close; it's hard to imagine that even a Klingon would argue against that.

Pain as such, pain simplciter (...) is not a contingent "bad" but an absolute. — Constance

Agreed. It is a feeling, alongside its complement, pleasure, these both absolute, or, irreducible, in themselves. The other basic part of the overall human condition.

I defend a rather impossible thesis: within the self there is the oddest thing imaginable, which is value. — Constance

Sure, we’re all imbued with a sense of value to be assigned. But value assigned is itself contingent on the object to which it is assigned.

I think I’d have gone with virtue over value, but....ehh....it’s your thesis, not mine, so, have at it.

Out thereness itself MUST be in here, point to my head. I know you want to affirm an scientist's world of the assumed understanding of an exteriority in the standard sense, but what good is this if it depends entirely on an assumption that cannot be explained at all, that in fact, on analysis, reveals exactly the opposite, for one can never conceive how a brain can "know" what is not a brain and phenomenology is the only recourse. — Constance

I think you use the words "thereness", "exteriority" with too much "continental philosophy" connotations. I would say here that the "wittgensteinien" linguistic turn could help analyzing and say whether their connotations are maybe just linguistic "fallacies". Continental philosophers didn't have the concept of "information" (and many others) that we have nowadays so they couldn't understand it but today it is possible. I do conceive how a brain can "know" because I understand knowing as informational correlates and at present you have a good example: artificial intelligence. The convolutional networks show you how integrated information in certain ways generate knowledge. If you put this together with theories like Tononi's Integrated Information Theory that measure the level of consciousness I think we have a good way to grisp new understanding of what "knowing" and "being "conscious" means.

if you are going to work with the common assumptions of empirical science — Constance

Well, the work of the "empirical science" as you call it is to transform the assumptions into something much more powerful, actual knowledge. Science is the only method demonstrated giving universal principles culture or religion agnostic. Science is not perfect as we re not, but is the best way to establish and honest dialogue with nature, with the world, with us.

t is not at all that there is "nothing out there" but rather what that IS cannot be said, realized, at all. This makes objects of the world very mysterious, transcendental, impossible! at the level of basic questions. — Constance

You raise many questions here. In this posts I would like to keep the focus on the "self".

it is not a conscious event, but is autonomic. — Constance

It is not "autonomic" it is "unconscious". Unconscious activity of the brain generates consciousness, and the self phenomena rises within a consciousness, not the other way around. We have to be clear on this. There're many evidences this is the way it works (one reference: Deahene works). The conscious state feedsback back into unconscious activity but the real power comes from the unconscious activity.
I emphasize this fact because unconscious activity is not necessarily "automatic", there is randomness and emergence of properties as any "physically complex system". Are you familiar with Conway's game of life and the spontaneous emergence of forms, shapes, movement and dynamics with complex systems? There is a lot of this in our brain, actually in nature, but let's focus on the brain and the self.

One has to read Husserl, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Levinas, back to Kant, — Constance

Why is our human "self" not the result of evolution as all the other features of our life? I don't think the self is different. You project metaphysical properties to the self, as most of the continental philosophy does. I do not agree. I've read, studied and forgot and studied again the authors you mention but they didn't have the linguistic tools and the technologies we have nowadays to experience and experiment the self. Heterophenomenology studies that "inner"world that you consider metaphysical and it is not. It is erratic and a creation of unconscious activities. Better to read Dennett, Dehaene, Damaio... more contemporary to better understand what is the "I". I can only say honestly that I have been were you are today, my studies were in continental philosophy but analytical philosophy, Witgenstaein, Quine... helped me jump into a new understanding that dissolves all your questions. Like when people were wondering where the Earth started and ended because they assumed it to be flat but Copernicus showed it is round so the questions automatically dissolve. We have a copernican revolution going on around the understanding of what we're but our langues is still full of connotations coming from false intuitions, too self-centric, too anthropocentric still.

not to be found in the theoretical paradigms — Constance

Why not? I think you're limiting yourself with a wrong assumption. Give new science (Dehaene, Nothoff, Tononi) an opportunity to revolutionize your understanding of how the brain works. Look at how we can manipulate your brain to change your self, your personality without you realizing it. We can induce and manipulate brains to make people more religious, and increase certain types of intelligence. This scientific progress delivers a successful explanation and not only that they do what you would expect when better knowing your brain and yourself: they deliver better cures to mental illness that now we better understand.

what givenness IS — Constance

The verb "TO BE" is a verb, nothing metaphysical, certainly an important one as it relates the subject and predicate in a unique way but I think understanding comes far before the verb "TO BE". Animals understand many things and do not have a language to explain it but they do understand because they manipulate their mental objects in a successful way, correlated with how nature works.

the most powerful argument for the self lies not in ontology, but in metaethics — Constance

I'm quite skeptical about anything with a "meta-something" as I consider it as a linguistic specious trap. For me there's nothing like metaethics, like there is no metaphysics (even Aristotle ever mentioned this word). Ethical sentences are neither emotive nor descriptive as they don’t
describe any indefinable property. They are evaluative they regulate our
individual and social values. In this sense some ethical principles function as regulative principles of our moral life which is purely practical. With the amount of relativism with ethics and moral values how could ever be any kind of superior abstract level for explaining the ontology of our moral values?

Ethics is about value, in its essence: If you want to really get the center of ethics, you have to give it its due analysis, after all, an ethical case is a thing of parts. — Constance

Are you familiar with Plato's Euthyphro dilemma? We could ask a very similar question here, concerning the relationship between value and ethics. Is value based in ethics, or is ethics based in value. The answer would determine which of the two is more likely to be absolute. We have to consider the conditions carefully before we answer this question. We cannot just refer to examples like pain and pleasure, and conclude that value is primary, because Plato has already demonstrated that there is no necessary relationship between pleasure or pain, and value. So for example, an athlete will subject oneself to pain in training, for the sake of a goal which is valued. So pleasure and pain might be things which are given a positive or negative value, but this doesn't say much about value itself.

The question is, what makes the ethical shoulds and shouldn'ts what they are? Ethical goodness and badness, and we will simply call this ethical value and, are not like contingent value and judgment. A good knife is good, say, because it is sharp and cuts well, but this virtue entirely rests with the cutting, the goodness, if you will, defers to the cutting context. But change the conditions of the context and the good can easily become the opposite of good, if, e.g., the knife is to be used for a Macbeth production. Here, sharpness is the very opposite of good, for someone could get hurt. This is how contingency works, this deferring to other contextual features for goodness or badness to be determined. — Constance

OK, I agree with the principle here, the knife is the means to an end, cutting. The sharpness is judged as good in relation to that end. So goodness and badness are relative, judged in relation to an end.

Ethical value, on the other hand, is very different, for once the context is taken away, and no contextual deference possible, there is the metavalue "presence" remaining. — Constance

So you are proposing a "metavalue" which you call "presence". I assume that this would be the end to all ends, like Aristotle suggested happiness as. Is "presence" like existence? The problem with this type of proposal is that we already have presence, and we might already have happiness. So this type of end cannot incline us to act morally, because actions as means, are carried out for the purpose of bringing about the desired end. If we already have what is needed, presence, or happiness, then there is no need to act morally. So as much as you might insist that there ought to be a metavalue, or ultimate end, the absolute within which value is based, I think that this is just a pie in the sky ideal, imaginary, and without any bearing on real people living their real lives.

And I don't see how your example of torturing children is relevant.

But, if you want to use this language, value-qualia is certainly not nonsense, for apply a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds, review the experience, and remove all contingencies, all talk that could contextualize it entirely out of the analysis, and there is the remaining "presence" of the non natural quality of value/ethical badness and goodness. It cannot be observed, but that burning finger is more than Wittgensteinian "fact" (and Wittgenstein knew this) like the fact that my shoe is untired of that the sun is a ball of fusion. — Constance

As I said above, it's been a well known fact, since the time of Plato, that value is not grounded in pleasure or pain. It is something distinct from these, as we will forego pleasure for something of value, and we will also subject ourselves to pain, for something of value. Therefore your example, which says something about the "presence" of pain, would only be misconstrued if it were taken to be demonstrating something about the nature of value.

If we think about it enough, we realize that the relativity of relativity is relative. Which is just a snarky way of saying that, for example, while a dollar is worth a dollar, and that relative and subject to all kinds of adjustments, never-the-less there is something absolute about the idea of that value, and even its quantity. — tim wood

I don't see anything absolute about the value of a dollar. And I don't see how you can make such an assertion.

And the way that seems to work is to acknowledge a framework or set of rules within which the value is absolute. Outside of the framework, maybe not. — tim wood

Don't you see that the supposed value is relative to that framework? Therefore it is not absolute. In what sense could you possibly be using "absolute" here, when you are saying that the value is relative (to this framework), therefore it is absolute? It's like you are saying X is unconditional within these conditions. It's contradiction pure and simple.

Sure, we’re all imbued with a sense of value to be assigned. But value assigned is itself contingent on the object to which it is assigned. — Mww

Don't think of it as value assigned. Simpliciter means not contextualized for judgment. Granted, it is difficult often to disentangle affairs, but then, the entanglements themselves are value intense. There you are with your friend's ax which you borrowed, and he asks for it back, but you know he is in a state of rage, but then the person he might kill you know for a fact to be a serial killer too slippery to be caught, but then again...and all this is maddening to you!

I mean, I'm not at all concerned with how this works out. Simplciter means the pain (pleasure, and all the rest) as such, as an irreducible phenomenon. The spear in your kidney is an intense event, and it bears the stamp of a non discursive and intuited "bad". Not a contingent bad, where one can talk about a bad couch, and discuss its pros and cons.

This tells us a lot about the self (and animal "selves," of course). Is it is as Wittgenstein said, that value never makes an appearance, and the "bad" of the pain is utterly transcendental (he would not even speak of it, would turn his chair to the wall at the very mention) and unavailable to language? I think not. I think we can talk about this just as we can talk meaningfully about qualia and "presence" qua presence. There is just very little to say, and what we can say is bound to the contingency language construction (there are no singular propositions, for affirmations are inherently deferential to their opposites, their defining associative "regions" as Husserl and Heidegger put it), but we DO affirm qualia intuitively, a nd all qualia is valuative, metavaluative, good or bad but entangled.

Language puts all this in question, of course, infamously so. Heidegger though such talk, like Husserl's, was like walking on water, for he know knowledge intuitions were impossible, senseless. My claim is that the impossible is exactly what we face: the metavalue to which all presence is bound. And this makes for the reality of the real. Metavalue Real, the essence of the self.

One does have to put aside presuppositions to allow the the metavalue/metaethical and the meta injunction to be clear. that is, to assault another with a spear to the kidney in wrong grounded in the metainjunction not to do it.

The above requires a close reading.

Yes, that is true, though it does overstate the case, doesn't it? Wittgenstein and Kant famously refused to give sense at all to such things as the "out thereness" beyond logic, intuition and language, using forms of the term "transcendental" to refer to them, if such referring were to be allowed at all (there is the transcendental deduction, but this is open ended merely, not something metaphysical. And Wittgenstein says explicitly he only brings up the matter to say we should pass over it in silence). — Constance

"The map is not the territory". There is the common model, the "in-hereness" of shared human understanding of the world, as distinct from the "out-thereness" of the cosmos. And then there is the indivdual model, the "in-hereness" of the individual understanding of the shared human understanding of the world as distinct from the "out-thereness" of the shared human understanding of the world. "Transcendence" is a relative term; the transcendence of the territory in relation to the common model, and the transcendence of the common model in relation to the individual model.

But these are just relative ways of talking; there is no absolute transcendence to be discovered.

It's contradiction pure and simple. — Metaphysician Undercover

Life is full of contradiction. Anyone who says it isn't is trying to sell you something. And it is no virtue to hang oneself on the hook of a seeming contradiction. As a supposed thinker, you should be able to think through it. Exercise: human life has absolute value. Ans.: no it doesn't, everything is relative; nothing has absolute value (in any sense whatever). Reply: in that case it's ok to kill anyone I like whenever I like - or for that matter do whatever I like whenever I like. Are you one of those people?

Or might we say that in most human cultures most of the time, life always has value, and under most modern sensitivities, absolute value. Does that mean soldiers cannot kill the enemy, or persons defend themselves as necessary? Are you the sort of person who would make this argument? Values sometimes collide and conflict, and then indeed choices have to be made.

On US currency it says, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." That means that my green-tinted piece of linen, within this framework, has absolute value. If the sun goes super-nova tomorrow, will it have the same value? What do you think?

What I was trying to say, is that value, by its very definition, is something which is relative. It is something assigned relative to a scale or some sort of hierarchy. The value therefore is always relative to the scale, and not absolute. To try and make value into something absolute would render it something other than value. A value without a scale?

So I can't even comprehend what you might mean when you suggest that life has absolute value. And, when you say that your money is legal tender for those specific things, this means that it is legal tender for those specific things, therefore it's value is not absolute by any stretch of the imagination.

Are you familiar with Plato's Euthyphro dilemma? We could ask a very similar question here, concerning the relationship between value and ethics. Is value based in ethics, or is ethics based in value. The answer would determine which of the two is more likely to be absolute. We have to consider the conditions carefully before we answer this question. We cannot just refer to examples like pain and pleasure, and conclude that value is primary, because Plato has already demonstrated that there is no necessary relationship between pleasure or pain, and value. So for example, an athlete will subject oneself to pain in training, for the sake of a goal which is valued. So pleasure and pain might be things which are given a positive or negative value, but this doesn't say much about value itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

The argument here places the need for training in a matrix of concerns that are contingent, all such concerns ultimately beg the value question. It runs not unlike those irritating deconstruction questions run: Training? Why train? to be great at football? Why this? and on, and on. The non question begging answer appears only when contingencies are abandoned and inquiry finds it mark: I do it because it is fun, enjoyable, pleasureable, blissful. ALL are bound to contingencies in the living experience, but here, I am doing with value what Kant did with reason: reason is always, already entangled in the very language used to talk about "pure" reason. But one abstracts from the complexity to identify the form just to give analysis. Here, I identify the very mysterious metavalue In the pain, and it is not the form ofethical affairs, but the actuality, the substantive presence.

So you are proposing a "metavalue" which you call "presence". I assume that this would be the end to all ends, like Aristotle suggested happiness as. Is "presence" like existence? The problem with this type of proposal is that we already have presence, and we might already have happiness. So this type of end cannot incline us to act morally, because actions as means, are carried out for the purpose of bringing about the desired end. If we already have what is needed, presence, or happiness, then there is no need to act morally. So as much as you might insist that there ought to be a metavalue, or ultimate end, the absolute within which value is based, I think that this is just a pie in the sky ideal, imaginary, and without any bearing on real people living their real lives. — Metaphysician Undercover

But it is not argument, not yet, about what to do. It is a descriptive claim. An exhaustive description of an ethical case possesses what GE Moore called a non natural property. The badness or goodness of what is in play is IN the fabric of the world. We do not find in the structure of language the actuality of pain.

And I don't see how your example of torturing children is relevant. — Metaphysician Undercover

It just to illustrate a point, and extreme cases make for a clearer illustration. The emphasis is on the way the value dimension of an ethical case is unassailable to competition and objections: no matter what alternative one can imagine to bring against the choice of choosing the one child's welfare, the "badness" of the torture is undiminished. This is NOT how contingency works.

As I said above, it's been a well known fact, since the time of Plato, that value is not grounded in pleasure or pain. It is something distinct from these, as we will forego pleasure for something of value, and we will also subject ourselves to pain, for something of value. Therefore your example, which says something about the "presence" of pain, would only be misconstrued if it were taken to be demonstrating something about the nature of value. — Metaphysician Undercover

Forgoing pleasure in a competition is about the relativity of value. I am identifying something that is not relative, but "absolute" acknowledging that this term is rather self contradictory because language itself does not possess the possibility of absolutes, all propositions being contingently bound to others. The claim rests on the premise that there is something transcendental about ethics that lies at its essence that is nondiscursive and intuitive. One is being invited to simply observe the pain simplciter, observe--- not weigh, compare, contextualize.

"The map is not the territory". There is the common model, the "in-hereness" of shared human understanding of the world, as distinct from the "out-thereness" of the cosmos. And then there is the indivdual model, the "in-hereness" of the individual understanding of the shared human understanding of the world as distinct from the "out-thereness" of the shared human understanding of the world. "Tanscenedence" is a relative term; the transcendence of the territory in relation to the common model, and the transcendence of the common model in relation to the individual model.

But these are just relative ways of talking; there is no absolute transcendence to be discovered. — Janus

Look closely at the argument. It states explicitly as a major premise that regarding value, the map IS the territory, so to speak, hence the impossibility. It is not even about the inhereness of an event. Rather, it looks directly at the "presence" of pain, pleasure, suffering, joy and the rest bypassing the language (the map) that would claim it. When you miss the nail and smash your finger with a hammer, you are not, qua in pain, IN an interpretative event, though language hovers close by for deployment. the argument here looks only at plain, denuded (of words, references, ideas, contexts).

You say transcendence is a relative term, and this is no doubt right, and the same will go to ALL terms in play, and since language rules the understanding and language is a contingent body of meanings, one can never "say" anything that is not contingent. this is essentially the argument of Wittgenstein's (but please, in the tonnage of material written on this, there is room for a library of objections. To argue about this, fine. Just let me know, not that I'm so perfect at Wittgenstein, but I do have my thoughts).

Here is the ONE exception to language ruling over the understanding: value. and it is not as if one can produce a treatise on this and think one has escaped the delimitations of language. Rather, and this is a BIG point: the transcendence of value presents itself in the injunction not to do or to do X. X is, of course, entangled, messy, and we have agreed on this, which is cause for the reduction to the "material essence" if you want to use that kind of language, of ethics.

Yours is pedantic foolishness. When you go inside, are you absolutely inside or only relatively inside? When you pay your bus fare, do you discuss whether your coins are of relative or absolute value? and the answer is that these are foolish questions. I suppose you know what chromatic aberration is (aka color fringing). Yours a kind of intellectual "chromatic" aberration. That is, an attending to the false fringe aspects that emerge and irrupt when the wrong magnification is used on the wrong thing. Meaning is not in any case itself anything absolute in itself. How could it be? Words and concepts are merely descriptive and in any case necessarily incomplete. But their utility lies in correct use and focus. Out of focus - either way - means you see your object poorly or not at all.

If you wish to argue the relativist position, that everything is relative, nothing absolute, be my guest, but I won't attend, for the arguments quickly become absurd, ridiculous, and a waste of time. We have already affirmed that the absolute as a practical matter is always already established within some framework. If you wish take the relativist hammer to that, all that you will be left with is smashed everything. And don't forget to hit the relativity of relativity paradox above that you ignored - that at least and for sure you will want to smash.

The argument here places the need for training in a matrix of concerns that are contingent, all such concerns ultimately beg the value question. It runs not unlike those irritating deconstruction questions run: Training? Why train? to be great at football? Why this? and on, and on. The non question begging answer appears only when contingencies are abandoned and inquiry finds it mark: I do it because it is fun, enjoyable, pleasureable, blissful. ALL are bound to contingencies in the living experience, but here, I am doing with value what Kant did with reason: reason is always, already entangled in the very language used to talk about "pure" reason. But one abstracts from the complexity to identify the form just to give analysis. Here, I identify the very mysterious metavalue In the pain, and it is not the form ofethical affairs, but the actuality, the substantive presence. — Constance

As I said, Plato demonstrated long ago, that we do not base value in pain or pleasure. I gave an example, as to why a person's attitude toward pain does not provide a good represent of one's attitude toward value, therefore pain cannot be used as a metavalue. There are many more examples, but it seems like you are in a condition of denial, so I don't see the point in producing a list of examples.

The emphasis is on the way the value dimension of an ethical case is unassailable to competition and objections: no matter what alternative one can imagine to bring against the choice of choosing the one child's welfare, the "badness" of the torture is undiminished. — Constance

Yes, your state of denying the example, and also the reality about value, demonstrates this unassailability very well. However, the fact that one's personal perspective on value appears to be unassailable does not demonstrate that it is absolute. It just indicates that it appears to the person who holds the unassailable perspective on value, that value is absolute.

I am identifying something that is not relative, but "absolute" acknowledging that this term is rather self contradictory because language itself does not possess the possibility of absolutes, all propositions being contingently bound to others. The claim rests on the premise that there is something transcendental about ethics that lies at its essence that is nondiscursive and intuitive. One is being invited to simply observe the pain simplciter, observe--- not weigh, compare, contextualize. — Constance

The problem though, as I explained, is that a person will subject oneself to pain, for the sake of something valued in some circumstances, yet at other times the same person will avoid pain because in this circumstance avoidance is seen as more valuable. Therefore pain does not suffice as evidence for any sort of absolute value.

Yours is pedantic foolishness. When you go inside, are you absolutely inside or only relatively inside? When you pay your bus fare, do you discuss whether your coins are of relative or absolute value? and the answer is that these are foolish questions. — tim wood

Yes, why are you asking such foolish questions? This is you with the foolishness, not me.

If you wish to argue the relativist position, that everything is relative, nothing absolute, be my guest, but I won't attend, for the arguments quickly become absurd, ridiculous, and a waste of time. — tim wood

No, I'm not arguing that everything is relative, I'm arguing that value is, because that's the nature of what value is. You just seem to be incapable of accepting the fact that you were wrong to deny this obvious fact about value, so now you want to claim that I was arguing everything is relative.

We have already affirmed that the absolute as a practical matter is always already established within some framework. — tim wood

I sure have not affirmed this. As I said, that is contradictory nonsense. The absolute is always outside the framework, as the ideal which the framework is based in. Even the idea of "the absolute as a practical matter" is nonsensical, because any absolute is an ideal, a theoretical principle which is not obtained in practice. Go ahead and keep insisting on your foolish nonsense if you like, insist that when you go into your house you have obtain the absolute inside, or that the fact you can pay a bus fare with coins means that the coins have an absolute value, but I'll have nothing of it. I'll let you live in your absolute fantasy land.

And don't forget to hit the relativity of relativity paradox above that you ignored - that at least and for sure you will want to smash. — tim wood

I have no idea how to interpret your so-called "relativity of relativity paradox". I see no paradox, of course the relativity of relativity is relative. How could it not be without contradiction? Where's the paradox? You might want to explain what you were trying to say, but it appears to be just more foolishness like the rest of the things you've been saying.

But an inquiry into the meaning of Buddhism at the basic level is a very different matter. — Constance

Do you know how many ideas there are about what "the meaning of Buddhism at the basic level" is? As many as there are people willing to entertain them.

You've never read anything by Kierkegaard, have you? I mean, quite seriously, you haven't read a thing of the man who affirmed God over reason. Armchair?

Four years ago, I discarded all the books I had of his and all the notes I made. So I'll just summarize: I was not impressed with his work. Affirming God over reason seems quite ordinary to me.

And you spend so many words on justifying ad hominem arguments?
Off the deep end, I'd say.

*sigh*

No matter, I am right, my detractors wrong. I can argue this very well, and it is the genuine foundation for moral realism and the reality of the self. — Constance

As I said, Plato demonstrated long ago, that we do not base value in pain or pleasure. I gave an example, as to why a person's attitude toward pain does not provide a good represent of one's attitude toward value, therefore pain cannot be used as a metavalue. There are many more examples, but it seems like you are in a condition of denial, so I don't see the point in producing a list of examples. — Metaphysician Undercover

Take another look. It is a descriptive position, and certainly not about how people feel about things, their attitudes. This latter doesn't enter into it. to understand the metaethical issue one has to simply put a lighted match to one's finger and observe. There are clear empirical features, but once these are removed there is the residual value. See Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics, or see G E Moore's Principia Ethica to get an idea of this. the question is about the Good and its nature or essence. Attitudes follow on this.

Yes, your state of denying the example, and also the reality about value, demonstrates this unassailability very well. However, the fact that one's personal perspective on value appears to be unassailable does not demonstrate that it is absolute. It just indicates that it appears to the person who holds the unassailable perspective on value, that value is absolute. — Metaphysician Undercover

try to see that this isn't about a personal perspective. Consider the matter as one would consider qualia. My opinion, attitude, regard for qualia is completely off the table. Arguments that deal with this look to the possibility of apprehending something in the pure, uninterpreted phenomenon. Here, the claim is that the flame on your finger carries a non empirical, non discursive or irreducible intuition of a metavalue, i.e., an ethical badness.

The problem though, as I explained, is that a person will subject oneself to pain, for the sake of something valued in some circumstances, yet at other times the same person will avoid pain because in this circumstance avoidance is seen as more valuable. Therefore pain does not suffice as evidence for any sort of absolute value. — Metaphysician Undercover

But the reasons for opting one way or another are grounded in conditions that are factual and contingent. The value in place remains independent. the argument insists that you abstract from all of the contingencies. Once done, there is a residual non contingent presence, which is the metavalue. All that is required here is observation and description, not judgment. Granted in less striking cases it can be difficult to see whether one is having an enjoyable experience or not. that does happen, but it is not the point at all. If one case can demonstrate and non contingency in the presence of the world, then one has a case for moral realism.

Four years ago, I discarded all the books I had of his and all the notes I made. So I'll just summarize: I was not impressed with his work. Affirming God over reason seems quite ordinary to me. — baker

"sigh" ! You found the Concept of Anxiety ORIDINARY?? Not possible. You thought his existential dialectics ordinary? But it is here that the connection to Buddhism is clearest, where he elucidates the structure of meditation itself. One cannot be interested in Buddhism and think Kierkegaard is a bore. There has to be a radical misunderstanding somewhere.

When I first read this work I instantly thought how Kierkegaard was so aligned with the act of meditation. There is no question of this.

Caputo's How to Read Kierkegaard is a wonderful elucidation.

"sigh" ! You found the Concept of Anxiety ORIDINARY?? Not possible. — Constance

When one grows up as the only non-Catholic among Catholics and is bullied by them, and tries to make sense of it by reading a lot of Catholic literature, one begins to consider many things as ordinary that other people probably don't. It's a long sordid tale.

One cannot be interested in Buddhism and think Kierkegaard is a bore.

Oh, I took to Buddhism because it promised enlightenment, and I thought that once I'd be enlightened, I'd be able to figure out which religion is the right one, specifically, whether Catholicism is true or not. Needless to say, that didn't work out so well.

There has to be a radical misunderstanding somewhere.

Probably because I don't approach religion with self-confidence and in the hope to find a solution to existential problems.
Which also happens to be why moral realism makes so much sense.

When one grows up as the only non-Catholic among Catholics and is bullied by them, and tries to make sense of it by reading a lot of Catholic literature, one begins to consider many things as ordinary that other people probably don't. It's a long sordid tale. — baker

Oh. I see. Well, I frankly understand this. I attended a Catholic high school for a couple of years myself. Very authoritarian, to the point of cruelty. The Catholic philosophy on child rearing is that one is born into sin, and it is the mission of Christian parents teachers to annihilate the freely expressive child. I have talked to the Brothers who were my teachers and found them to be deeply embedded in orthodoxy. NOT moveable.

Oh, I took to Buddhism because it promised enlightenment, and I thought that once I'd be enlightened, I'd be able to figure out which religion is the right one, specifically, whether Catholicism is true or not. Needless to say, that didn't work out so well. — baker

Oh, again. What can I say, I genuinely think there is such a thing as enlightenment and Buddhists have been right all along. Philosophers like Kierkegaard help rehabilitate a conditioned mind by taking mundane experience apart, revealing the underpinnings of mundane events.

Probably because I don't approach religion with self-confidence and in the hope to find a solution to existential problems.
Which also happens to be why moral realism makes so much sense. — baker

You are a moral realist?? As am I, and I argue for this frequently. There are few takers on this as it requires a break with the familiar world. Unfortunately, what I consider the most penetrating reading is the least accessible.

Why are you a moral realist?