Philosophy Now Forum

This has been on my mind for a while now. The concept of individuality seems a bit jarring when you consider both sides of the perspective. What makes your accomplishment yours and not ours? If progress is based on the foundation of different ideas from other people what makes your creation your's per se? When you look at a rock what comes to mind? What ever comes to mind would it be safe to say that it wasn't you yourself who came up with the idea but you in assistance of the rock and the ground you both stand on? The idea that you alone came up with something seems short sighted. This is basically an argument not against individuality but a call to reassess our comprehension of selfness. Yet as I type this I feel some sort of accomplishment as if to say wow look at me I'm so cool and smart . Can you smell the irony?

[Edited by iMod]

It's a matter of perspective, I think.

For example...

I own and use a very old Olympia SM 9 manual typewriter.

Certainly, I didn't design it, or gather up the raw materials to make it; I didn't build it, or transport it from the manufacturer, or sell it.

All I did was buy it.

Now, Dan Puls, the guy I bought the typewriter from, if asked 'What does Henry Quirk owe you?' would probably consult his receipts and conclude 'He owes me nuthin'...Quirk is paid in full.'

That is: Puls had a price, I paid it, now I owe him nuthin'...we transacted, each getting what we wanted.

The same chain of transaction extends, I think, all the way back to the designer of the typewriter...transactions wherein folks each got what he or she wanted, or contracted for, in exchange for what other folks wanted, or contracted for.

So where does 'the individual' (and definitions of 'individual') figure in to all this?

Well, that's kinda the point of my post: your quandary, Antonidas, isn't really about 'the individual' but about 'ownership'.

By way of the chain I describe above, I'm the owner of the typewriter (by way of market transaction).

Change the scenario, of course, and things play out differently. If, instead of market transaction, the above chain were governed by a form of communitarianism, then 'ownership' would leave out 'the individual' in favor of 'the community'.

That is: the market transaction favors the 'the one' while the communitarian scheme favors 'the many'.

Now, notions of what an individual 'is' do play into all of this, just not as the dominant conundrum.

In a market transaction, 'the individual' is assumed as the foundation, the start; in the communitarian scheme, 'the individual' is taken as component of the more important 'community'. In fact, some strains of communitarianism insist 'the individual' has no meaning outside the context of 'community'. That is, without the interaction of 'community', 'individual' ceases to be (as a market favoring guy, I think this is just crazy talk, but...*shrug*).

Again: I think your question is really more about 'ownership', not 'owner' (but, I could be wrong... ).

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............................... In my deepest, most philosophical self, when I identify the most with myself I feel as if I am you.





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Whoever has just finished a task or made something - even if it's only a sandwich - feels that as his own personal individual unique accomplishment. He doesn't usually think through all material, effort, time and energy that was available to make his task possible, any more than he thinks about the whole process of evolution that gave him a big head, upright spine and opposable thumbs. Whenever a human does anything at all, he's at the very top of an enormous pyramid of entities and processes... for a quadrillionth of a second, until the next guy finishes a task to which his own existence contributed in some way; then he sinks into the pyramid.

Bill Wiltrack wrote:.




............................... In my deepest, most philosophical self, when I identify the most with myself I feel as if I am you.

Wuhliheron
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Don't even think about being me. I can't help feeling that there's something unwholesome about you, Wiltrack.

With my identification cards. Otherwise, I'm just a temporary, fragmented consciousness. And if I identify as some other consciousness, or another consciousness as me, well, antipsychotic drugs should come into play, or the law, in terms of identity theft.

Otherwise, who gives a shit.

By the by, Happy New Bank Calendar.

momentarily

-Imp

To a process philosopher this is essentially a non-question. What we identify as the "self" is a process in continuous transition from one state of being to the next which means that our intuitive sense of an unchanging continuity of self is illusory. I feel that I have always been the same ME but it doesn't require a very close analysis to recognise this as a logical fallacy. I am definable only as the sum of my experiences and the sequence of my experiences cannot stop until the grim reaper makes his final move. ME will then become a sequence of events which have had their moment of glory and then vanished into a no-longer-existent past. Shit happens. Existence for the Self is an ever-changing journey with non-existence as its ultimate destination. Who could possibly wish it otherwise?

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Oh - I AM YOU!


Believe me, I am you.







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And welcome to it!

Good actors who act on stage and also in their lives all the time may have a problem with indentifying their "I".

They are never authentic, not even when there is no spectator around.

Their "I" is probably so small that you could not find it with a magnifying glass.

On the other hand those with enormous egos have a huge sense of self, it seems to me.

Antonidas wrote:This has been on my mind for a while now. The concept of individuality seems a bit jarring when you consider both sides of the perspective. What makes your accomplishment yours and not ours? If progress is based on the foundation of different ideas from other people what makes your creation your's per se? When you look at a rock what comes to mind? What ever comes to mind would it be safe to say that it wasn't you yourself who came up with the idea but you in assistance of the rock and the ground you both stand on? The idea that you alone came up with something seems short sighted. This is basically an argument not against individuality but a call to reassess our comprehension of selfness. Yet as I type this I feel some sort of accomplishment as if to say wow look at me I'm so cool and smart . Can you smell the irony?

[Edited by iMod]

Life is like a bowl of All Bran.
You wake up every morning and it's there.

We may need contrails of philosophy to discover that, being as intellectual as we are, but leave it to a bloodhound to discover the unique YOU within a population of millions of THEM in no time at all.

Any dumb spaniel can do it. In fact, that's the ultimate identity test. You're not a ringer with $50,000 worth of cosmetic surgery and 2 years of coaching, nor an alien hatched from a pod in the basement, nor a shape-shifter, if the dog accepts you.... Unless the dog never liked you in the first place, in which case, you probably deserve to be replaced.

How about the DNA ?

Enriched by the life experience which is stored in the memory of the brain.