Example one: You can use all of your skill, your free will, and drive as safe as possible for you. That does not mean you wont get into an accident. The other drivers may fail. Or there could be a drunk driver. It happens and everyone should know it. Why not realize that all of our life is like this? It’s not just us. It’s not just about us.
Example two: You don’t choose even a bit of the dna you are born with. It shapes and effects you greatly, and had nothing to do with your choices originally.
I consider “self determination” as a philosophy of egotistical thinkers. They think the self is more than it truly is. The self is not the highest thing, but to these people, they will always be the self and the world is made of self causing selves. I think it’s nonsense, but allot of people have bought into that type of thinking.
You could just ignore all that and then everything that you choose otherwise would then be self-determined. So you could actually have 100% self-determination as long as you choose to envision yourself in that way.
I think everything matters, but as humans are living, there are things vital to life, and things which distract or destroy life. According to platonic thinking, truth is always good for us. This means that it is dangerous for someone to believe in anything untrue, even if it feels right or feels empowering. Now, we know that religions and governments, authority figures of ideas, have been capable of doing great harm, or sometimes they help. The ‘self’ can probably do the same. Internal propaganda. Unifying all of the pleasures and desires into a single state of ego. Without egoism, there could be no single living, there would be multiple livings. Society runs on self. It’s so common, so popular, and shapes knowledge and ideology.
I Think the situation is more complicated than this presents. DNA SHAPEs and effects you, you say. It is you. It is not something else that makes me do things, for example, it is Another way of talking about my potentials and tendencies. Mine. Who I am. I don’t want to make this simple in the other direction, but the description of one’s dna as affecting me and then also a focus on not choosing it, deflects from the identity issues involved.
It’s a bit like saying my anger made me do it. We may not have chosen to be born with tendencies towards anger, but we cannot so easily disidentify with anger. We may have been born into a family of abusers and this has contributed to our anger, but still my anger is not me is problematic.
I am not jumping to the other extreme and saying ‘so therefore, you are completely self-determined’.
First self determination and identity issues are being mingled, second some tendencies I am less likely to identify with. Say a neurological disorder. I did not mean to knock over that cup and spill hot coffee on you, I have a genetic neurological disorder DOES make sense as a disidentification. And then there are gray areas.
Alright. I don’t think we need to be ignorant either.
Even while knowing that my self isn’t what it appears to be, I still live it. I can’t break the habit. The habit formed my whole life. There’s no way out. I think most people are stuck in it. But there is probably much better things to do with yourself other than de-egoing it. People just focus on work, family and mass media though, where I live. That’s all there is for them. If you want to know a thing or two, you’d have to talk to the correct beurocratic channel. This means you’d need to talk to a university professor or something, and maybe even then it wouldn’t all work.
Another point: It’s possible to grow dependent on certain ideologies. It’s not as bad as heroin but I think it happens. That is why some christians equate atheism to nihilism, for example. So the egoers would consider non egoers like, tards. Or unreal or something.
So, Moreno joins us.
Almost infinite things effect us. Some internal, some external. That is real causality. But people don’t think of never ending chains and webs when they act, they just do what they most strongly feel like or think like doing. Allot of people are impulsive. Maybe I’ll call it secretly impulsive, for the word alone does not paint the right picture. Humans are one step away from animals, and most people say that animals act by instincts and do not act by free will.
If ‘self-determination’ in the sense you mean is defeated by the fact that accidents happen and we don’t control our DNA, I have to admit I’ve never seen a philosopher advocate self-determination such that there’s anybody for you to be disagreeing with.
I think that self and non self are dualities. They are made up things. It came from our survival process. We needed to save one state of existence and reject another. Self = life, non self = death.
What ‘defeats’ self-determination is the fact that there is no self. There’s just a bunch of forces interacting. The forces come and go. Our body and spirit is like a flock of birds. We can keep crime-punishment, but in realism, we can potentially free ourselves from non truths about so-called self.
I agree with this.
It’s mainly the dna part I have a problem with.
Even if my dna compels me to do things, let’s say, I still do them. I am that guy not some other guy. And if someone Points at me, and refers to me, they are pointing at my DNA also. I can’t Point at my dna like I can Point at a man pushing me into someone else. Sorry, but he pushed me, take it up with him works with the guy, but I don’t Think it Works well with DNA. Hey, my DNA pushed me, shrug.
I don’t think that holds true. I love some things that I consider non-self. My wife, my pets, etc. I don’t reject what isn’t me or consider it death incarnate.
statik, I believe in common sense. It’s profitable to believe a little bit in objects. It’s how we live, think and communicate. That doesn’t mean common sense is the truth. But “truth” is just an idealism. One of humanity’s biggest idealisms. According to that idealism, there is very little literal self determination in our life. But on the common level of communication, we’re always there, conscious, making choices, having desires, etc. And all that is considered self determination.
I wasn’t talking about, well, let’s skip that. Watch out for that straw.
I agree that self-determination, as you’re describing it Dan~, is somewhat of an illusion. Whenever we’re faced with a problem, we often say “Why can’t we just do this and that and solve the problem that way?” But many things can get in the way of “this and that”. But we don’t take the attitude that if we set out to do this and that, it only might solve the problem, or that we hope it will solve the problem; we take the attitude that it will solve the problem.
I had to fix a dead bolt the other day. Ours broke and we decided we’d just get a new one from the stored and install it. Easy-peasy, right? Wrong! I tried for 2 frickin’ hours to install that dead bolt and I couldn’t do it. There was something wrong with the alignment of the screws joining the inside and outside plates. Finally, I gave up in frustration and installed the old dead bolt back in place (later I tried again, this time reading the instructions). We think we have more control than we really do.
I have really tried to understand what position this example is defending. On the one hand it could be defending the position that we don’t have so much Control, as you say at the end. Since you couldn’t do it, for a long time. But then it turns out you had the Power, but you chose to not look at the instructions - I just did this at work with a machine with similar failed and successful results. Anyway, it turns out it really was in your Control. One could decide, from Reading your example, that actually some of the things one has not been able to do, one actually can do if one starts the process more practically or in some other way.
As far as the first part: I often set out with a possible solution to a problem that I only Think might work. I mean, often. And that’s on good Days.
I mean, if I do it regularly, I tend to Think it will solve the problem. If it worked Before. But otherwise…heck, I am embarrassingly pleased and proud each month when I pay my bills. Not that I have enough Money to do it - though that too - but that I manage the mechanics of it.
It’s not really about whether you have the power to accomplish something or not, it’s about whether things go according to plan or not. We have a bad habit of expecting no failures, but when we finally accomplish what we want to accomplish, it sometimes follows after several failed attempts.
Yeah, I’m not saying this doesn’t happen. I’m saying that sometimes this doesn’t happen, when really it should always happen.
I think we can replace “self” with the concepts of internal and external forces. Inside of our body, then outside of our body. Internal forces do exist, I think, and they have an effect. However, all things are finite. This means all our control and effort and self is limited. It makes allot more sense to me to say that we have an inner will, instead of a free will. Most people accept what they are, even if they didn’t choose it. If something is sufficiently appealing or motivated, it becomes self. That is how self works. It is a form of constant association and re-association. We associate all the self with all our bodily actions and processes. But also we know that allot of people can be fooled. We know how world war 1 and 2 went. Propaganda works. It’s an external force, but it still controlled the majority of “free” people.
Ah, OK. Gotcha. I still want to say I am not like this, though perhaps in some areas, I’d have to mull.
I am not sure that is true either. I Think confidence, even so far not justified, can lead to greater performance and Learning. There is some balance Point and intuition that can make this work, and the lack of these can make it a perfect recipe for disaster. And sometimes it is good to go in expecting success. I wanted to emphasize that this has not characterized me, so maybe it doesn’t us as a whole either. But I don’t Think my approach/attitude has been the best for me.
Sure, confidence is good sometimes, but I was speaking strictly in a rational/realistic sense–that is, if you want to be rational and realistic, you never know for sure that your plans are fool proof.
). We think we have more control than we really do.