a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

All I can do here is to appeal to others:

What point do I keep missing here? And, if you think you understand it, how would you respond to it?

How are our virtual personas even possible unless they are derived from the genes that constitute our biological existence?

As for memes, which ones? Our virtual personas can discuss social, political and economic interactions online that can in fact be bursting at the seams with particular memes.

These things:

“A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that becomes a fad and spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.”

But: an idea, behavior or style in regard to what? And in what particular set of circumstances viewed from what particular point of view? Why your memes and not mine? Why my understanding of them and not yours?

We’ll need a context of course.

I know, I know, you just want to keep telling me what they are and how they are objectively true. My question is:

Anyone else? :sunglasses:

How about you, son?

Death of the Author and the web identity crisis
Zachary Colbert spins a story of power and deceit brought to you via your computer.

Okay, but what doesn’t change are all of those aspects of your existing self that the most imaginative writing in the world won’t, don’t, can’t make go away. The either/or world self is there “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” until [of course] death do we all part…

Still…

Yes, as long as your interactions what others remain virtual by and large. My point though is that in regard to the manner in which others judge us by our “social class, our gender, age, ethnicity etc.” is the extent to which the self embodies precisely the manner in which I construe “I” as a existential contraption rooted historically, culturally and circumstantially in dasein.

Here being “fluid and indefinite” can only be assessed in a particular context given the moral and political prejudices. of others. What is in fact true in regard to these subjunctive judgments is no less “fluid and indefinite” for a reason.

My own, for example.

But all of this is true about us only to the extent that individuals allow this to happen to them. If someone succumbs to pop culture, mass consumption and the lure of celebrity [our 15 minutes in the spotlight] then yes, their identity becomes just another manifestation of the lowest common denominator.

In fact there are any number of individuals right here who wish to reconfigured the identity of ILP into just another outlet for chit-chat.

Death of the Author and the web identity crisis
Zachary Colbert spins a story of power and deceit brought to you via your computer.

Sure, this sort of thing is fascinating to some. Online you can become any “character” your imagination is able to think up. And clearly there any number of individuals who take this option and go all the way out into the deep end with it. They can spend hours and hours and hours in one or another virtual reality. There are now even psychological afflictions being thought up and discussed in regard to it: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23374170/

But this aspect of identity is of little interest to me. Why? Well, in regard to who in fact you really are or in regard to any virtual or pretend identity that you invent on or offline, the points I raise about “I” in my signature threads don’t go away.

And that, in my view, is the part that disturbs the objectivists. Whether “in reality” or in a “make believe” world they cling to the comforting and consoling assumption that they truly do know themselves, And that they can make an objective distinction between “I did the right thing” and “I did the wrong thing”

Here in turn is as aspect of identity that I construe to be more a manifestation of political economy than dasein. Mindless consumption can precipitate moral and political contexts. For example “commodity fetishism”. Here people are so “programed” by our sub-mental materialist culture to define their lives in terms of things that advertisers lead them to, that the actual social, political and economic relationships that that go into bringing these things to the market are completely blocked out. And not just sweat shops and blood diamonds. And not just kids thinking that Santa and his elves are especially busy this time of the year creating all their presents.

But it’s still not my main interest in exploring the nature of identity given the components of my own moral philosophy.

Death of the Author and the web identity crisis
Zachary Colbert spins a story of power and deceit brought to you via your computer.

Talk about a godawful “intellectual contraption”!

No, seriously, in regard to your “truth”, “identity” and “power”, how would you translate that into a description of your own interactions with others?

And wouldn’t it still come down to challenges from others? They don’t accept or respect your definition of those things so how do you go about demonstrating to them that as rational people they are obligated to? The part about being online just makes it more difficult because here by and large we are only exchanging words. Or, occasionally, videos or links that are better able to get our point across.

Yes, but, “in reality” what still counts is our capacity to translate our world of words knowledge into actual rules of behavior able to be enforced legally and politically. Thus, you may subscribe to a particular assessment of your “identity”, but the knowledge you convey about it to others may or may not be accepted by them. And, here, even to the extent you are able to demonstrate that this knowledge does in fact comport with the objective truth, you still need to be able to act it out without others preventing it. “I” here is no less embedded out in a particular world where the powerful prevail, no matter the truth.

Yes, power as an action word rather than as a thing is an important distinction. But either way the components of my own moral philosophy don’t go away. The existential ramifications of dasein are no less marbled throughout the actual rules of behavior that are able to be enforced.

Yes, if the “public” is ignorant and naive and gullible enough to be duped by all of this, it generally means that they have allowed others to create and then to sustain a “sense of self” able to be deceived and hoodwinked and used for the benefit of the others.

At the same time though, are those able to lure many – millions sometimes – into accepting one or another objectivist account of the world around us. Theological, philosophical and/or political in nature. Some can be particularly sophisticated. And persuasive. And, in fact, dots are able to be connected between the words and the world.

We see that here time and time again.

Really, what would possess someone to post banalities like this over and over and over and over again?

Let’s ask him. :laughing:

Death of the Author and the web identity crisis
Zachary Colbert spins a story of power and deceit brought to you via your computer.

No, the “internet” doesn’t do these things. Only particular individuals using the internet to communicate points of view able either to be or not to be established as in fact true. Or, in regard to conflicting goods, true given one set of assumptions only. Communication breakdowns occur precisely my understanding of this or that “sign” is not in alignment with yours. I merely suggest that with some “signs” it can come down to “your right from your side and I’m right from mine”.

Rooted in dasein.

What signs, in reference to what situation? Communicating what information and delivering what meaning? Yet assessments like this can go on paragraph after paragraph and not bring this into the “analysis” at all.

Yes, someone imparting information and meaning in Japanese is not going to be very successful in communicating to someone who does not speak Japanese.

But when the context configures into information and meaning relating to interactions between daseins attempting to communicate conflicting value judgments, those who all speak the same language can go to the dictionary to look up the meaning of words in order to communicate their points. But, time and time again, sharing the same language doesn’t make the disputes go away. Instead, the arguments I make seem more reasonable in explaining that.

LOL? Non verbal codes? All of the above may be technically true when differentiating communication between on and offline exchanges. But there is still the reality of any given situation and the extent to which how any of us construe our identity matters when it comes down to the nitty gritty reality of those who have the actual power to reward or punish this or that behavior.

Yes, it is easier to trick and to con others online. Our “identity” becomes anything we are able to convince someone that it is. But even if, when we leave virtual reality, we lived in a world where it was not possible to disguise our true identity, what would our true identity be in regard to our moral and political value judgments? Would the true identity of liberals be more authentic than the true identities of conservatives in regard to, say, the role of government?

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

Me too. I kept a diary/journal for nearly 15 years. But: those years encompassed a time in my life when one way or another I was a hardcore objectivist. I honestly believed that if I kept track of my life carefully enough I would finally be able to finally pin myself down. Until, instead, it finally dawned on me that, like human existence itself, my own “personal life” was essentially meaningless and absurd. And that one day I too would be dead and gone. Obliterated for all time to come.

So, I took dozens of duotang folders that contained hundreds of pages and walked out behind the apartment complex where I was living at the time [only a couple of miles from where I live now] and just threw them all into the dumpster. And not on an impulse. I thought it through, recognized the futility of my own particular world of words, and did what I did. And I never regretted it.

So, this has never been an option for me:

This is basically gibberish to me. It clearly means something to the author, but my own thinking had changed so radically it would never occur to me ever again to “capture” myself in that way. The good me? The bad me? The important things? The unimportant things? That all became [and still is] largely hogwash to me. Now this fractured and fragmented personality is down for the final count, waiting for godot, and diving into and out of the distractions that mark my day to day existence.

On the other hand, here I am still in pursuit of any possible antidotes that might be found in what’s left of this particular philosophy forum. Go figure in other words.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

What makes this nothing less than profoundly problematic are all of the variables in our lives that we don’t even come close to having either a complete understanding of or control over. In particular, in regard to how, for years, others shaped and molded our understanding of ourselves in order to replicate themselves through us.

Yeah, some of us will own up to that and acknowledge just how wide the gap is between who we think we are and how that was shaped by forces beyond our control. Some will accept in turn that much of their moral and political “self” is derived adventitiously from when they are born historically, or where they were brought up culturally.

But that still does not stop them from just shrugging these crucial factors off and insisting that they really and truly do know who they are. Anyway.

Just ask those who stormed the Capitol Building. None of what I note here has any real bearing at all on the behaviors they choose. They simply think themselves into believing that what they did they did because they were obligated to in order to be true to themselves.

Really, just ask some of the hardcore fulminating fanatics here.

The biological imperatives. The problem here though is that we all share the same biological scaffolding while interacting in a world in which the same physical, chemical, neurological etc., laws result in human interactions in which there are endless disputes over that which is said to constitute the most rational and ethical behaviors. Then come those who in embracing one or another alleged ontological and teleological font insist that even our value judgments can be oriented to an objective truth which binds together all, say, civilized human beings.

Memories are just another manifestation of this. We all have the innate capacity to form memories. We all have the innate capacity to communicate to others what those memories are of and what they mean to us. But then come the inevitable conflicts regarding our reactions to them when those reactions precipitate moral and political agendas at odds.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

The soul. On the other hand, what is the point of connecting the dots between “I” and a “soul” if there does not appear to be a way [philosophically or otherwise] in which to pin down what a soul/the soul/my soul is?

It’s just another configuration of God, for all practical purposes. As for the conscious self going back to the cradle and forward to the grave, my own arguments still seem entirely reasonable to me. Some things we become conscious of are there for all rational people to become conscious of in turn. While other conscious assessments never seem able to get much further than personal opinions. And Locke’s personal identity here would seem no less problematic than yours or mine.

Yes, technically. But if different “souls” can’t agree on what either does or does not constitute, say, social and political justice, how do they manage to configure their individual memories into one frame of mind in which those disagreement dissipate and then fortuitously are subsumed in the best of all possible worlds?

Again the part that most “serious philosophers” authoring articles like this, almost never seem interested in exploring.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

Obviously: how we think about ourselves changes over time as new experiences and new relationships create new memories. For example, we might do things today that might have been thought inconceivable or thought to be atrocious ten years ago. The biological self changes in accordance with the human body that all of us come into the world with. But the moral and political self is considerably more problematic. Memories as chemical and neurological interactions in my brain are the same as in your brain. But the memories themselves are wholly dependent on lives that might be very, very different. You remember what you do and as a result of that you choose one behavior…while my own memories prompt me to choose a conflicting behavior.

Then what? What can we come to agree about regarding this memory induced dissension? Whose memories are the most rational?

Though that’s not the direction the author goes:

Wrong about what?

Sure, as we get older, memories fade. Some get obliterated altogether. But the facts here don’t change. You either received a bike for Christmas when you were ten or you did not. That you have forgotten this doesn’t change the fact of it. Someone might have taken photographs of you on the bike on that Christmas morning. This may or may not jog your memory.

But: The rules of logic? How does that – as a “technical” issue? – really pertain to the facts here? I’m missing an important point obviously.

Instead, what I always focus on are the memories that, over time, prompt us to embrace one set of moral and political values rather than another.

For instance suppose a ten year old is indoctrinated by her parents to embrace a liberal/left wing understanding of the world around her. She remembers that clearly. Then at thirty her experiences and her thinking have convinced her to embrace a conservative/right wing understanding. Though she still remembers her liberal childhood views. Then at eighty she is still very much a conservative but she has completely forgotten being indoctrinated by her parent to think as a liberal thinks.

Again, the facts here are what they are. Someone can have an extremely faulty memory in regard to them while another remembers everything exactly as it unfolded from childhood on.

But the memories themselves linked to the creation of a Self linked to either liberal or a conservative worldview doesn’t enable us to establish whether or not one frame of mind rather than another is the more reasonable.

Or, rather, so it seems to me. Particular memories are just another manifestation of dasein in my view.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

Ask me about the most vivid “false memory” that I had.

But to the extent that a memory is either true or false in regard to one’s sense of identity, the implications for dasein are no less embedded [for me] in the extent to which what you remember is able to be confirmed as in fact true. Whereas your memories of experiences involving moral and political value judgments can be unequivocally true or false…but that doesn’t make what you remember anymore convincing as a value judgment said to be either demonstrably right or demonstrably wrong.

Come on, how can Locke’s “criterion of identity” here not be just the sort of “technical” argument that has little or nothing at all to do with someone other than Lady Gaga being Lady Gaga.

Here we would have to invoke multiple universes or sim worlds or Matrixes in which, reality wise, practically anything goes.

Let’s not forget though that memories unfold “in our head”. And to the extent that either philosophers or doctors or neuroscientists do not fully understand what that entails, it’s all going to be basically a “technical” examination of reality/“reality”. Ending [for some] in the belief that even the technical discussions themselves are only as they ever could be in a wholly determined universe.

The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

No, what really counts as a person? What is the most important factor to take into consideration when pinning down the philosophical parameters of “Know Thyself”?

Well, we all know where I draw the line here: between those things we describe about our self that are able to be confirmed as in fact true objectively, and those things about us that start with, “In my own opinion…”

After all, when push comes to shove, out in the world of actual human interactions, what else “for all practical purposes” is there?

Well, that’s good. Ethics is now my own primary motivation for pursuing philosophy: “how ought one to live?”

And rationality in “special roles” can only be explored substantively given particular contexts.

And I am certainly fully disposed to state my own beliefs and feelings. Not to mention deconstruct yours. :wink:

The I am on your side guy says:

Construction is easy( err) deconstruction waaaay hard(err)

The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

This becomes particular important for those who insist that morality and rationality are interchangeable. Ayn Rand and her objectivists ilk in particular. Here ethics becomes nothing less than a metaphysical certainty. That way the world can be divided the rational few and the irrational many.

Of course when the focus is on the “concept of self” then all one need do is to think up the one and the only conceptual dimension of ethics to go along with it. Your own for example. Indeed, that there are have been hundreds of them championed down through the ages is “proof” of just how crucial it is grasp this relationship philosophically. The irony here being completely lost on the objectivists.

Concepts. Beliefs. Feelings. Stated or not in my view, what really counts must be the extent to which we can anchor them in descriptions of human interactions able to be defended beyond the concepts, beliefs and feelings themselves.

How about this then, I suggest: a particular context in which to explore them.

Instead [of course] this particular context must first give way to philosophical assessments of this sort. We must pin down what it means for “an entity that pursues its own coherent projects as a single entity, with one set of thoughts” to become a part of a group of such individuals such that the task then becomes making a distinction between “I” and “we” and “them”.

What the individuals may disagree about or come together as one and embrace must not become the main focus of “personhood” in examining the “ethical dimension”. At least not “in the beginning”.

Yes, these distinctions are not unimportant. And they are all over the map historically, culturally and experientially. But, in regard to an actual situation in which ethics becomes a major concern, what are the limits of any particular philosophical quest.

That’s precisely why, in my view, we need to include contexts in the quest. From the beginning.