Lou Gold wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:24 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:22 pm
Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:56 pm
I must concede that BK seems to revert to some degree of aporia here, as he continues to insist in his most recent interview that there is no evidence that any sense of some transcorporeal state of individuated selfhood persists when the corporeal expression of the dissociated alter dissolves. In which case, what is this "you and I" that experiences each other's memories when we die?
Right, but the main point is that BK, like 99% of other modern philosophers, has prevented himself from ever saying anything meaningful about the spiritual i.e. life across the threshold of physical death. Like materialism, this critical idealism has ensured that it can only seek an ethics within the physical world, such as "categorical imperative" of Kant, and all such frameworks will fall short for obvious reasons (assuming there is actually existence beyond the physical). So, for BK it is either say nothing about ethics, adopt materialist utilitarian ethics, or throw out pure abstract speculations. Those are the options and all of them are terrible ones. In that sense, this comment is half critique, half pity for BK. I don't envy a professional philosopher who cannot speak meaningfully about ethics.
Too harsh, methinks, Ashvin. My naive view is that ethics are born out of separation. The professional general, lawyer, doctor, etc needs a code of ethics to constrain the power unleashed by separation from the integrated/instinctual mode known as the garden prior to knowledge of good and evil. Individual creativity is both inevitable and a potentially dangerous thing demanding an ongoing process known as finding balance on the slippery earth or the middle way. To approach this challenge with a profound humility (groundedness in the real) is surely not a failure.
OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not a philosopooper. Ooops, philosopher.
Again, it's all about taking evolution seriously...
When I avoid working against my own client's interests
only because the state bar would disbar me if anyone ever found out, it's good that some moral order has been imposed for the time being, but there is hardly anything genuinely ethical about it. I am avoiding this conflict of interest out of fear of being disbarred, not out of genuine desire to avoid betrayal of my fellow man. This is why Nietzsche said
"most morality is cowardice" - we will tell ourselves it is genuine desire which motivates us so that we can maintain our moral persona to ourselves and others, but we have no warrant to make that claim until we are put into a situation where there is absolutely no threat of social, cultural, economic, legal, or divine punishment,
yet we still freely choose not to betray our fellow man. Who among us has been tested in that way?
Genuine ethics is a hope to look forward to, just like peace and freedom, not a fixed reality which has existed from time immemorial. It is born from the
integration of the physical (separated plane with self-consciousness) with the spiritual (unified plane of moral intuitions). If a philosopher, scientist, or just the average Lou
cuts out one half of that equation (the concrete spiritual), then they cannot be surprised when their "ethical" philosophy leads nowhere fast. It is all self-imposed predicaments we have put ourselves in this manner, so I don't think it's too harsh at all to simply point this out. If his lack of genuine ethical philosophy was due to some intrinsic quality of his that he had no control over (like one's ethnicity, nationality, gender, culture, etc.), then it would be harsh to critique him over it. But it's not due to any of those things, only to the decision to stop philosophizing once he reached his desired destination of Schop critical idealism.
We have all exhibited that same prejudices throughout our lives in our own ways, and it's a safe bet that we are all still doing that to some extent in our own ways.