From: asar.196@wpi.wpi.edu (Prisoner)
Subject: Re: On (un)controlled Prisoners'
Organization: Not the Anonymous Posting Service @ WPI
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 03:15:58 GMT

In article <1992Apr4.182518.19033@wpi.WPI.EDU>
	asar.298@wpi.wpi.edu (Charon)  writes:
> To Prisoner, and I may regret this, but thanks.  Thanks like you
> wouldn't believe.  We may disagree, but we agree to, and I think
> there is still value in what you say even if I think you use more
> words than you need to to say it.

Hunh. I'm usually taken to task for not saying ENOUGH. Sigh.
One can't win. :-)

>                                    When I first heard the word
> 'moderator' for groups like ASAR, I assumed it would be to prevent
> harassment, as a means of security for the users.

This isn't a moderated newsgroup. There IS no security
except that which we provide for ourselves. The only
moderation is of the anonymous posting service where,
apparently, its owner refuses to let certain things through.

>            but to abide, you must know the rules first, and none of
> the guideline postings has ever mentioned the sanctity of Jung.

Or the issue for which my posting was censored.

> Prisoner, you say you respond from hurt or anger, but if you really
> didn't care about us, you'd just go.

Hm. Do you realize that that is a non sequitur? Hurt and
anger are only possible when the thing that hurts or angers
is something that matters. And on the other reading of
"care", meaning, not that your acceptance of me matters to
me, but the feeling of empathy, did I say otherwise? It is
entirely possible to be hurt and angered by someone and yet
feel caring.

Yes, I do feel caring for some of you, those whom I've paid
attention to enough to know something of, and I don't have
any real problem saying that. What I do have a problem with
is acting on it. The reason for this is that I do not know
to what extent my desire to care for others is based on
empathy as opposed to a desire to manipulate them into
caring for me.

> You talk of 'shut-down' and this feeling of hurt, yet say you can
> control your feelings --- you qualify this to say only within the
> limits imposed by nature, but I offer your messages are showing how
> little control you actually have.

When you wrote "(1) we cannot control our feelings..." as a
testable hypothesis, I only had to find one, repeat ONE,
counterexample, to demonstrate that it was false. I chose
myself as that example because it was the first that came to
mind. It is quite irrelevant that my emotional control is
minimal, the mere fact that I _do_ have it proves the
statement false.

I do understand that there is a legimate meaning to "we
cannot control our feelings" and that is "we cannot will
ourselves to feel". That is true. We can will things that
will cause certain feelings but that is not willing the
feelings, that is willing the cause. Example: I can't will
myself happy, but I can recall something that made me happy
once and so cause myself to feel happy again. The emotion
is not willed, but the recall is. However, though that is
not willed emotion, it IS a controlled emotion. On the
negative side, one CAN will an emotion out of existence.
(More accurately: one can cause it to be transformed into
something else.) That, too, is a controlled emotion.

However, there is a very big difference in the statements
"we cannot will ourselves to feel" and "we cannot control
our feelings". The former merely points out a fact of
nature, that we are not constituted so as to be able to will
a feeling into existence. The latter says something very
different. It is trying to tell us that our feelings do not
belong to us, that they are outside monsters that will
pounce on us, outside of our control, and which we might
appease only by certain acts of propitiation. (OK, I
exaggerate. A little.)

>                                    For a grown person to become hurt
> and angry due to the illuminations of phosphors is a bit of a jump;
> is something else here like maybe an experience of the rush, flow and
> ebb of the emotions these phosphors _somehow_ trigger in you, but a
> basic frustration and not being able to quell them?  Again, if your
> logic is correct, and you are hurt and angry at the authors for
> arranging your phosphor-lightings thus, why shut down to protect them
> from your fear of losing control over actions you will later blame on
> your feelings?  I say the why is because you can.  It is a behaviour
> your are exercising your control over and the motive is altruistic:
> you want to spare others.

Because of the imprecision of what you have written, I have
no real idea of what sort of demonstration you are trying
for; what I do know is that you are presenting an assertion
that is bogus. First, let me point out what altruism IS. You
may want to not use that word after you have thought about
this.

Most moral theories suppose two things:

    1) Good is defined in terms of good for anything but the
       person acting: if you choose to benefit yourself, you
       are not being moral.

    2) Good is defined in terms of not being motivated by
       good for oneself: even if you choose to benefit
       someone else, if you are to benefit as well, you are
       not being moral.

Altruism is a specific variant of these kinds of theories,
that supposes that "good" is to be defined as "good for some
other PERSON". An action is altruistic if: someone else
benefits AND you do NOT.

Altruism is vicious. It enjoins us to act for the benefit of
others AND to reject acting for our own good.

A concern for others is not necessarily altruistic. That
depends on what motivates the concern. If that concern is
grounded in a recognition of the basic goodness of others
and the desire to avoid harming or to reward that goodness,
it is not altruism. If that concern is grounded in the
desire for the company of others, or the acceptance of
others, it is not (necessarily) altruism. (That depends, of
course, on what those emotions are grounded in.) If that
concern is grounded in the need to keep a job or to avoid
unnecessary friction or any of the zillions of other reasons
why people might display some kind of concern for others, it
is not altruism. (Again, subject to the reason for the
reason.)

As you might guess, I am not any kind of altruist. I hold
that the proper beneficiary of an action is the person
acting and that an action is only good when it is taken
along with a consideration for the benefit to oneself. Along
with this, I reject the supposition that human beings are
basically monsters who must be tamed by morality; I hold
that human beings are fundamentally good and, by nature,
benefit from the presence of and interaction with other
human beings. I hold that there are many levels of personal
benefit that we obtain from other people, from the pleasures
of watching children at play to the happiness to be found in
intimate conversation, and that our social interactions
should be guided by a consideration for achieving those
benefits rather than by a moral injunction to act for the
benefit of others.

With the theory aside, yes, of course, at least part of the
reasons for my actions is based on a consideration for
others. But that consideration for others is grounded in MY
needs and wants, not in any sort of altruist nonsense.

> I didn't intend to say you were a determinist, as the force of your
> arguement shows a strong feeling of will.  I only intended to point
> out the great gulf between invoking quantum theory as support for any
> theory of human interaction,

Yes. Actually, as any competent philosopher will tell you,
true randomness does not imply volition and one could even
make an argument that, by interfering with the consequences
of a supposed volition, randomness makes volition even more
problematical.

>                              and I guess by lumping you into the
> opposing camp it made you look more detemined (pun intended :-)).
> May I call you a 'determined-ist' or a 'essentially
> self-determinist'?

The correct term is "volitionist", to reflect that I hold
that we do possess a meaningful volition. This term may have
a different meaning in other contexts.

I would not agree with "essentially self-determinist"
without a qualification, as: we possess two natures, our
first nature, our nature as human beings, and our second
nature, which is the consequence of our choices (though
limited by our first nature). It is with respect to our
second nature that I would say that we are essentially
self-determined.

>                     I'd prefer not to call you or anyone here by any
> such labels as it automatically cuts your person down to a tiny
> fraction not only of potential (within natural limits, yes) but even
> of the here and now.

Another thing I disagree with, but to explain why I'd have
to go far afield into epistemology, so I'll just say so and
leave it at that.

> I did not say we were free of cause and effect, and here again I
> think you are making a Shotsky out of a diode (electronics pun) by

Re-volt-ing! I have no capacitance for that! We should carry
out the inductance of you into the punsters hall of infamy!

Wire we subjecting them to these puns? It's all a silicon!
No doubt they'll tell us how much this stuff did gallium.
Arsenide remarks might come showering down on our heads!

:-) (Couldn't resist.)

> assuming there are only two sides and no coin inbetween.  I do think
> you _can_ will any arbitrary path, but it is always up to the real
> world of natural limits as to whether the path will actually
> manifest, or that it will meet the expectations even if it does.

What I think you meant is that we can point ourselves in any
direction that we might imagine, but reality will determine
whether we will actually move in that direction. The way you
put it sounds like it supposes a sort of Platonic set of
ideal paths which the grungy old real world mostly keeps us
out of. It seems a confusion between what we can _imagine_
and what exists in _potential_.

> I also want to agree with your mind-body observation, as there is no
> distinction which can be made and this is what makes you your own
> master within your own power.

Yes, and master within our minds as with our bodies. And,
like our bodies, what we may will to do with our minds is
limited by its capacities.

>                                You talk of good or bad, and as Sun Ra
> said, the Truth not only depends on who you are, but when you are as
> well.

Huh? I'll also add that I consider ordinary words with
capital letters to be like dog turds: something to watch for
and step carefully over.

>        Still, like Prisoner shutting down to protect his friends, a
> felony is an action, but crime-think is not (yet) illegal; we should
> take responsibility for what we do and need not be responsible for
> what we feel.

I disagree. Like every other action of ourselves, we are
ultimately responsible for the actions of our minds,
including our feelings. This does NOT mean that we have
willed them and it does NOT mean that we are to blame for
them, but we ARE responsible for them.

> On a wheel of only-one-or-the-other, your supposition of the
> indefinite malleability (or did you mean infinite mutability) is
> nowhere in what I wrote unless the contrast is greatly enhanced.

No, I saw that in what Sabol wrote. I was contrasting the
very popular view of indefinite malleability (which is not
infinite mutability) with the other popular view of complete
determinism, both of which views are lethal in their own
ways.

>                                                                   A
> better question is to ask which behaviour you would like to modify
> and we can deal with it only in experiential terms, looking only at
> empirical results.

There is no such thing as empirical in the sense that that
word is typically used and as I suspect you are using it.
More precisely: the term "empirical" does not signify the
distinction it is supposed to. For example, empirical is
supposed to exclude any phenomena of consciousness, and I
deny the distinction implied between the reality of my mind
and the reality of the world I live in. The only difference
in that case is that the phenomena of my consciousness are
only directly accessible to me whereas the world I live in
is directly accessible to any who can perceive it. That lack
of accessibility does not affect its reality.

>                     I will still maintain where the behaviour
> changes, the new emerging history of behaviour will change the mind
> _because_ mind and body are the same thing.

The mind and the body are not disjoint but they are also not
identical. Specifically: the mind is a faculty of the body.
As such it possesses relationships to the rest of the body
and THOSE relationships determine what effect, if any,
changing one's behavior will have on one's mind. Your
supposition makes as much sense as saying that because the
body contains a left and a right arm they are the same thing
and thus exercising the left arm will strengthen the right
one.

>                                              The converse is also
> true, I don't deny that, it is true or no one would be here on ASAR
> because there would be no evidence of abuse, no difficulties in our
> lives because of our mental reactions.

The same observations above apply here too.

>                          Prisoner, whether you see it now or not, for
> the first 3 years of your life, you were completely unable to make
> anything of yourself save through the grace of someone.  I've raised
> three kids and I know this to be true empirically.  Human infants
> will just not survive without external caring and support.  QED.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but most of your
thinking seems dominated by the supposition that the mind is
pretty much irrelevant, that the only important
considerations are those relating to the body. It may be
that you don't think that, in which case, you should really
try to integrate things, because it seems that that notion
does inform what you think.

In any case, I disagree with what you say. Yes, in the first
few years of one's life, one is PHYSICALLY dependent on
others for the material necessities of one's life.
Nonetheless, one is making something of one's life. First,
is the bare fact that it is YOU who physically grow; no one
does the growing for you.

More to the point, though, is that the infant is VERY, VERY
busy making something of his MIND. Watch the intentness of
an infant's stare, his explorations of his body and
surroundings, realize the intense effort needed to learn to
speak, all of which are the CHILD'S actions. These make
nonsense of the notion that it is only through the grace of
others that we make something of ourselves.

I'm also going to tell you that the condescending tone of
that statement is quite offensive. You really have no idea
of what my experience is with children; for all you know, I
could have spent the last two decades running a nursery. But
that isn't relevant: what you have tried is called "the
argument from authority"; I reject that sort of argument.

Finally, there is implicit in that statement, when taken in
combination with your previous related statements, the
premise that, because we were physically helpless in the
first few years of our lives, we are thereby mortgaged for
the rest of our lives. That idea is out and out evil.


APS-Name: Prisoner
ap.3029@layout.Berkeley.EDU