Sartre's Contradiction

[The once and future king]

No.

I am not puting moral law above God. I am saying there is no moral law. There is nothing transcendant above man and his actions.

If a man was simply obeying the moral law which he somehow was congizant off, again he would not be being truely or autheticaly moral.

When I say there is no meaning I mean there is no objective way to qualify any given actions as right or wrong.

Therefore a man must choose his own meanings. This is by no means absurd. The quality of the man will be manifest on earth in the choices and actions that he makes.

The reason for a man to be moral is for the process of being moral not the ends of being moral because as is patently obvious there is no objective transcendant standard to measure the ends by. What ever way we measure the ends must be arbitry.

What effect does it have it on the quality of his being or existenze. What is the subjective truth or, the logic of phenomenon of the act of being moral. The quality of exitenze or subjectivity is most improved by doing difficult things. Not many things are more difficult than putting the needs of others above the needs of oneself.

It is before our eyes the nature of our reality but so few seem to be able to grasp it.

We are existing beings in time and space. Therefore to attribute meaning to things we must simply relate them to their effect on being.

[NotReady]

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I am not puting moral law above God. I am saying there is no moral law. There is nothing transcendant above man and his actions.


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Then why talk about "ought" in any sense of the word, and why talk about value? There's no moral difference between helping an old lady across the street and pushing her in front of an oncoming bus.

Hitler kills Jews because he thinks it's the right thing to do. We kill Hitler because we think he's wrong. But neither Hitler nor the allies can be distinguished from each other if there's no moral law.

Sartre's position leads to all kinds of logical contradictions. He is full of value judgments, but how can anyone make a value judgment if everyone is his own god? This absolute self contradiction is inevitable once the truth of God is rejected. Sartre brings this out better than anyone else I know.

[The once and future king]

Its funny that you say that Satres position leads to contradictions then watching you create a fantasy which in no way can you know the truth of or prove to solve those contradictions. It is deeply humourous that you presume your position is less absurd than mine.

By the way I am not echoing Satres position in patricular, but am just putting forward an existential or phenonomological view point. Kierkergard was an existentialist thinker and also a commited christian. He put forward the famous axioms: "Being is the seperation of thought and object" and "Subjectivity equals truth" He was honest enoght to realise that my description on the nature of human existence (well he was honest enough to supply the intial description that I am repeating) is the only rational and reasonable conclusion.

He goes on to make the most brilliant arguement about why one should be christian. All the time he relates it to the nature of subjectivity.

He argues that belief in God is in fact the ultimate absurdity. It is because of the effect of this absurdity on subjectivity (it is the most subjective thing one can do/subjectivity=truth) that we should be Christian.

Kierkergard though was also defending Christianity from the Metaphysical philosophy and trasnscendant rationality put forward by Hegel. Unfortunatley for him his thoughts were developed to put the nail in the coffin of the idea of any form of transcednatal idealities therefore killing off once and for all the metaphysical fantasy of god.

Later existentail thinkers argue that an existential life can only be valid if lived in the absence of God.

We must relate meaning action and thought to the nature of subjectivity or the fact of us being existing subjects.

This is the only way we can atribute meaning to things without engaging in a fantasy of God or transcendatal things that exist in some unknowable and undetectabel and unprovable realm.

Hitler killed Jews, the only true way we can look at that decision is in the effect it had on the existenze of the man who took those decision. It might be nice if there is an other way, but that other way must ultimately be an act of the imagination and not reason.

I would argue that it had a deeply damaging effect.

However the examples you furnish are redundant because Hitler killed jews for mostly political reasons and when we declared war on Germany it had nothing to do with the fact that he was killing jews.

[David Sklansky]

All of these points can be made about science publishing too - the parallel is pretty tight. "Trash physics", for example, gets "published" all the time, but it's rare for it to get published by a top physics journal and also rare for a strong University press to publish it.

I doubt that actual trash, ie incorrect stuff, is often published. Cold fusion was an exception. And if you are talking math rather than physics, incorrect stuff is almost never published. The fact is that my charge that mathmeticians and physicists are a lot smarter than philosophers holds even more true for the mediocrities in those fields.

[fritzwar]

This is a straightforward factual point. I'm happy to defer on it to my colleagues in physics (about publication of lousy physics). Publication in top journals is tightly refereed. Publication in other settings is quite different -- some "conference proceedings" volumes and non-refereed. Publication of books works this way too -- some presses use highly qualified academic referees. Others use no referees at all. Go to any decent sized book store with both a philosophy and a physics section -- you'll find quite a bit of published trash.

So what are we talking about -- publication in the top journals in the field? and with the top presses? Or published by anyone? If the former, quality control is quite high via formal and rogorous refereeing (which I do lots of). If the latter, no serious quality control measures are in place, which means the quacks and the merely mediocre both get through.

Or so it seems to me, knowing my field and talking to those who work in other major fields.

[fritzwar]

The cold fusion example, of course is an example (as I understand the case) of trash getting past a leading science journal and its referees. This is indeed rare. It's also rare for trash to past the editors of, say, a leading journal such as the British philosophy journal MIND and its tight refereeing practices.

Plenty of bad work in both fields has been published in less illustrious settings, where refereeing is often non-existent or light.

[David Sklansky]

To both of you guys:

If the existence of God logically implies something that is impossible, it means there is definitely no God.

If the non existence of God logically implies something that is impossible, it means there definitely is God.

If the existence of God logically implies something that is extremely farfetched, then it probably means that God probably doesn't exist.

If the non existence of God logically implies something that is extremely farfetched, then it probably means that God exists.

BUT

If the existence of God somehow implies that life sucks or has no meaning (because, for instance, one thinks it means we are all slaves to him) so what?

If the non existence of God somehow implies that life sucks or has no meaning (because, for instance one thinks that there is no inherent right or wrong without God) so what?

[KaneKungFu123]

david,

i am curious why you choose poker as a profession and not NASA scientist. seems like such a waste, given how much smarter you are then everyone else on the globe.

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I'm betting that most philosophers could not get a Phd in math, physics or chemistry form a good university even if their life depended on it. Maybe I am wrong. Plus they are making a futile attempt to ascribe meaning to a world without God.

[/ QUOTE ]

[David Sklansky]

"I agree that most philosophy PhDs couldn't get a PhD from a top University in math or physics, for example. But I also think the following:

(1) most math and physics PhDs couldn't get a PhD from a top philosophy program."

I believe that a much higher percentage of math and physics Phd's could get a a Phd in Philosophy (or almost any other subject for that matter) from a top school than the converse. If I am wrong about this my whole point about philosphers is wrong.

[David Sklansky]

"My sense is that your view of philosophy is driven by stereotypical examples of self-proclaimed philosophers doing largely incomprehensible writing and grandiose theorizing without providing serious arguments and without a grounding in logic and related disciplines. This isn't a significant percentage of what is happening at major US philosophy departments (UCLA is probably the closest one to you - stop by and see if there is anyone there smart enough to get past your description - or ask Chris F - he might know). Anyone doing philosophy the way you're describing it wouldn't last a week in a serious graduate, or even undergraduate, philosophy program."

I don't have the knowledge to dispute your statement.