The fallacy of "first-person plural" philosophy

[dkane75]

First-person singular == ‘I’
FIrst-person plural == ‘We’

What is this concept: “We”?

Its use lies at the heart of the most basic of philosophical quandries. To admit that there is some kind of ultimate “We” is to start off in the wrong direction, and to continue its use is to end up in oblivion. Further, this I-We distinction is that which leads into the first-order political divide that is Conservatism vs. Liberalism.

In other words, any statement that begins “We should…” is necessarily doomed to philosophical irrelevancy due to its ignorance of the primal I think.

I believe that true happiness begins and ends with the acceptance of the “primordality” of the I think. For example, if one were to attempt to live according to the statement, “We should all just get along with each other,” then one is no longer an absolute-I, but a contingent-I. As such, the contingent-I is a subset of the “We,” whereas the absolute-I is a subset of nothing but itself.

To push the envelope even further, the absolute-I is the truth. The contingent-I, however, is the simple ground for mere “truthfulness” – i.e. correlation of thought.

[detrop]

Kane! Where in the hell have you been? Tracking across the desert in search of super-galactic omnipresent oneness?

I haven’t forgot about that offer to come to Tampa and hang-out with ya. Recently I’ve decided to plan a trip to Mexico and find a guerrila band to join. If not, I’m just going to tour the country until I run out of money.

Whadaya think? Wanna come? Check it out, dude: five-thousand dollars equals 50,000 pesos. Can you say “cha-ching?”

[Brad]

Where does the absolute ‘I’ come from?

[Alun_Aedicita]

I think we should all just get along.

Hmm…are you saying that it is impossible for different people to really be in agreement? Perhaps ‘we’ does inherently involve limitations–an underlying compromise among the collective–however, it allows for the fundamentals of ideas like trade, government, and trust. Were all people limited to only themselves, wouldn’t each person besides the self always be viewed as an ‘other’ that the self cannot be reconciled with? Wouldn’t humanity be an ‘anarchy’ in the sense of being what we consider ‘animals’? Wouldn’t the pressures of this lifestyle limit efficiency to such a degree that nobody would even have an opportunity to think for themselves beyond the necessities of survival?

[someoneisatthedoor]

@dkane75

To push the envelope even further, the absolute-I is the truth. The contingent-I, however, is the simple ground for mere “truthfulness” – i.e. correlation of thought.

Beyond Good and Evil

There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are “immediate certainties”; for example, “I think,” or as the superstition of Schopenhauer put it, “I will”; as though knowledge here got hold of its object purely and nakedly as “the thing in it self,” without any falsification on the part of either the subject or the object. But that “immediate certainty,” as well as “absolute knowledge” and the “thing in itself,” involve a contradictio in adjecto [“Contradiction between the noun and the adjective.”]. I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!

Let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely; the philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in this sentence, “I think,” I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an “ego,” and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps “willing” or “feeling”? In short, the assertion “I think” assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further “knowledge,” it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me.

In place of the “immediate certainty” in which the people may believe in the case at hand, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him, truly searching questions of the intellect; to wit: “From where do I get the concept of thinking? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an ego, and even of an ego as cause, and finally of an ego as the cause of thought?” Whoever ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception, like the person who says, "I think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and certain"—will encounter a smile and two question marks from a philosopher nowadays. “Sir,” the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, "it is probable that you are not mistaken; but why insist on the truth?"—

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

It’s actually more accurate to always say “we” instead of “I”, because you are a combination of many different organs, desires, sensations, cells, etc. People feel devided about some issues in life, this is an example of a “we” instead of an “I”. And – within failed [romantic] relationships, the different parts of the body come into conflict, aswel. The sexual parts, the instinctive parts of the brain, the logic, it is hard for these to be in perfect harmony in stressful situations.